The Philip DeFranco Show - Nick Fuentes JD Vance Scandal Got Worse & House Votes To Release Epstein Files, BUT There's a Catch

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

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Wait to see if there's a long-standing impact here or it's just a blip. And then I've got more news for you in a second, but do you ever wonder how many subscriptions you're actually paying for? Because if you're like me, it's more than you think. Right, and thanks to today's sponsor, Rocket Money, I found subscriptions I totally forgot about, like the random app I hadn't touched in months. And Rocket Money, it's the personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings.

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And the measure actually got near unanimous support, right? Only one person, Republican Clay Higgins, voted against it. But the path to get here has been incredibly bumpy. And the future, it appears that it might be just as chaotic. To break it all down, we have to start with where Trump stands on this. Right, because for months, he's been calling the Epstein issue a Democrat hoax, trying to distance himself from any ties that it had to him. and trying to go after any Republicans aiming to release the files.

But then, over the weekend, he told House Republicans, okay, support the Epstein File's Transparency Act. And just yesterday, he said that if the legislation makes it to his desk, he'd sign it. But that also doesn't mean that all of a sudden he's just open and willing to talk about the issue. I mean, just last night, he had him being hostile to reporters asking about it and trying to pivot the blame to Democrats. Mr. President, what did Jeffrey Epstein mean in his emails when he said you knew about the girls? I know nothing about that. They would have been a long time ago. It's really what did he be when he spent all the time with Bill Clinton?

Sir, yeah, Jennifer, go ahead, go ahead. Quiet, sir. Quiet, quiet, beginning. Yep, and so this morning when members of Congress and survivors spoke outside of the Capitol about the importance of releasing the files, there was a lot of tension around Trump, where you had survivor Haley Robson saying. And to the president of the United States of America who is not here today, I want to send a clear message to you.

While I do understand that your position has changed on the Epstein, and I'm grateful that you have pledged to sign this bill. I can't help to be skeptical of what the agenda is. So with that being said, I want to relay this message to you. I am traumatized. I am not stupid. Right with it then slamming the president for dragging out the process of getting these files out, arguing that him trying to kick this down the road, it only put the survivors through more unnecessary stress and pain. Right, you know, she was far from the only one to go after how Trump handled this.

First, the administration said it would release every and applauded President Trump for that. Then it fought to release nothing. We are hearing the administration say they intend to investigate various Democrats, who were friends with Epstein. I beg you, President Trump, please stop making this political. It is not about you, President Trump. You are our president.

Please start acting like it. Show some class. I voted for you, but your behavior on this issue has been a national embarrassment. You also had Representative Marjorie Taylor Green, who was in the midst of a major fallout with Trump herself, largely because of the Epstein files, also bringing him up while speaking. That's what we did by fighting so hard against the most powerful people in the world, even the president of the United States. And he called me a traitor for standing with these women and refusing to take my name off the discharge petition.

Let me tell you what a traitor is. A traitor is an American that serves foreign countries. You know, just tons of people questioning why it's been so hard to get to this point. And notably, that has included people on the right like Candace Owens' writing. If you look, it really wouldn't be that difficult for governments to stop empowering pedophiles and to stop trafficking drugs and children, like, is this really too steep of an ask? And that, as you had others like Democratic Representative Robert Garcia saying, Donald Trump didn't reverse course on the Epstein files out of the goodness of his heart,

he was about to lose a major vote. We're going to get the truth in justice. for survivors, release the files now. And also with this, you've had some pointing to people like Speaker Mike Johnson as to why this process has been so difficult. You know, even though this effort's gotten Republican support ahead of the vote, including from the president, this morning, still continue to blast the issue as a democratic distraction. Clearly, this is a political exercise for Democrats and a few others, sadly, and it is as deceitful and dishonest as their pointless stunt to shut down the government.

And you then had him trying to argue that this legislation is not cautious enough with sensitive information, right? Even pulling out of some poster board to lay out his issues with it, saying it doesn't do enough to protect victims' privacy and arguing that it's haphazard nature could implicate innocent people. But the thing there is that the victim's supporter, right? I mean, we just showed you clips of them on Capitol Hill calling for the legislation to pass to release the files. They and many other lawmakers believe it has plenty of protections. But still, ahead of the House vote, you had Johnson calling on the Senate to amend it, right? Even saying that he talked to Majority Leader John Thune.

And so I'm very confident that when this moves forward in the process, if and when it is processed in the Senate, which is no certainty that that will be, that they will take the time methodically to do what we have not been allowed to do in the House to amend this discharge petition and to make sure that these protections are there. And you've seen lawmakers just furious about this, especially the ones that have been leading the Epstein-Files efforts in the House. With Democrat Roe-Kana writing, Swamp is trying to get it amended in the Senate and saying anyone who tried to amend a bill, POTUS says he will sign, is betraying the survivors. As well as Republican Thomas Massey adding, this is how Speaker Johnson

and plans to protect perverts who went to the rape island from embarrassment. Do not let the Senate add an amendment to avoid disclosing those rich and powerful men who have evaded justice for so many years. You know, all of this it's playing out is there are already people noting that there are concerns about the public ultimately getting very little information even if this passes. Right, some thinking that Trump ordered the DOJ to investigate Democrats to block access to certain files. And so this is still not over. This could have a long, long way to go. But for now, I'd love to know your thoughts, opinions, and reactions here.

Right, but then next up today, this MAGA Civil War, it's been getting bigger and messier by the day. With one of the big flash points now being Vice President J.D. Vans jumping head first into this whole Civil War to defend Tucker Carlson's son. Right, because if you don't know, because you're a normal person, Tucker's son Buckley was actually hired in January to work on J.D. Vance's press team.

So he works in the VP's orbit. And also for some background of the story, you also need to know who Tucker's brother is, as he frequently posts about politics online and is also confusingly named Buckley. Right, and so that Buckley actually recently shared a clip of white nationalist group or leader Nick Quintes saying, we didn't vote for Trump because he was an

obnoxious boomer, we voted for Trump because he was going to put America first. And Tucker's brother agreed with Fuentes there, saying, 100% where within this clip is he wrong? And so that it stokes some of the MAGA Civil War flames. Or which makes sense because Tucker Carlson's interview with Nick Fuentes is what kind of just put such a big spotlight on this. It's something that really divided the right, Maga World Republicans. I mean, you'd go online and see tons of people saying things like, oh, he shouldn't have given Nick a platform, saying that Nick's very anti-Semitic. But then, with Tucker sitting down with him and Tucker's brother seemingly posting in support of him,

he had conservative commentator and journalist Sloan Rackmuth, posting about the family. Reclaiming that Tucker's brother idolizes Nick Fuentes and then writing, racism and anti-Semitism is a Carlson family treat. Is Tucker's son Buckley who serves as J.D. Vance's top aide also a vile bigot? America deserves to know how deep the Carlson's family ethnic and religious hatred runs. And, you know, while some people, they thought that it maybe wasn't fair to project the views of the two elder Carlson's onto the younger Buckley, and a follow-up post, she continued. The fact that Tucker and now his brother are prominently platforming Fuentes, it's reasonable to wonder about other Carlson.

Do the people at the highest levels of our government who influence policy share noxious views of Jews? But then the person who came to Buckley's defense, probably the loudest, was J.D. Vance himself, who wrote, Sloan Rackmuth is a quote, journalist who has decided to obsessively attack a staffer in his 20s because she doesn't like the views of his father. Every time I see a public attack on Buckley, it's a complete lie. With him then continuing to argue with the journalist in a thread, noting that her bio says she defends Judeo-Christian values, but J.D. argued, is it a Judeo-Christian value to lie about someone you don't know? Not in any church I ever spent time in. With them adding, I have an extraordinary tolerance for disagreements and criticisms from the various people in our coalition.

But I am a very loyal person and I have zero tolerance for scumbags attacking my staff. Right, and then in response, you had people like Megan Kelly applauding J.D. for this defense arguing, they can't bring down Tucker so they're going after his son. And then also you had Candace Owens retweeting his message and likewise slamming attacks against Tucker. But then also a very big reaction was J.D.'s remarks eliciting more backlash. Or with many noting that he hasn't really commented on the whole Nick Fuentes situation that the rights been infighting about. Trump sort of has, he actually just told reporters the other day that he had no problem with Tucker interviewing Nick. I've had some great interviews with Tucker Carlson, but you can't tell him who to interview him.

I mean, if he wants to interview Nick Fuentes, I don't know much about him, but if he wants to do it, get the word out. Let them, you know, people have to decide. Ultimately people have to decide. While JD has touched on the infighting, mostly to dismiss it as a stupid distraction, he hasn't really weighed in on where the party should draw the line with Nick Fuentes. Right, and that's something that has shocked a lot of Republicans because Fuentes has said some kind of just plainly awful things about about JD and his family. And now they're all in favor of a fat race mixer who's married to a jit, who named his son Vivek. Your guy is literally a fat, gay race trader who married a j.

And so you had a lot of people, including plenty of people on the right, seeing J.D. rushing to Buckley Carlson's defense over this and saying, seeing our VP attack a small reporter over serious and legitimate concerns about Carlson's son working for him tells me everything I need to know about where he stands. It should be pointed out that he didn't even defend his wife this strongly after Groyper's viciously attacked her. You then also had conservative commentators like Dave Rubin adding, You were totally right, nobody should be judged for their parents' words or actions.

But, and I think you know this, the very people relentlessly attacking Jews now have Indians next up on the docket, and that includes your wife, even if she eventually converts to Christianity. So yes, Tucker can interview whoever he wants, his brother can post garbage memes all day, and his son, who maybe just fine, can work for the vice president. But I think people are asking you to stand up when you see something evil. And with that, moving forward, you have some saying they wouldn't support any potential presidential run from him, because of this, saying supporting Roypers and woke right will destroy his career. Yesterday, Vance demonstrated his priorities.

So I will say with all this, it is worth noting that he has addressed Nick in the past. Right over a year ago, he actually disavowed him. Nick Fuentes, an avowed anti-Semite, went after your wife. He had previously dined at Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump. Does this have any room in your movement, in the MAGA movement? Of course it doesn't have any room in the MAGA movement. And of course... Did you disavow him and this?

And of course, Donald Trump has criticized this person. Look, I think the guy's a total loser. Certainly I disavow him. Of course, the big issue for a lot of the Republicans that are concerned about this is that was August of 2024. When you're talking about JD Vans, you never kind of know where he stands at that exact moment until he says it. This is a man who once equated Donald Trump to America's Hitler and now he is his vice president.

And also what's changed since 204 is that Nick's position on the right has drastically changed. He has become much more mainstream. And so you're kind of seeing people in two camps, some, saying this shows that J.D. Vance is scared of the Nick Fuentes wing of the Republicans. Though then you also have others saying, well, J.D. Vance actually, he's more on this side now. He doesn't want to alienate them in case he needs their support at some point. And also with this, I'll say in this part is my opinion. I can't really tell if J.D. Vance talking about the infighting that he's seeing on the right as

being kind of small and stupid, if that's the way he actually sees it or not. But if he does see it that way, he is incredibly wrong. The following thing that Fuentes has built up on the right is enough to, I think, derail a 2028 election. Tucker Carlson having Nick Fuentes on his podcast, that wasn't him opening up the tent. That was him bending the knee. As far as what that means for the future of the Republican Party, that's what we're going to have to wait to see. But it does feel like more and more every day, and this could obviously change at the drop of the hat. Maga, as we know it, is kind of getting torn apart and becoming a different thing with different goals. Right. And there's the question of,

well, what takes the stage after Trump? But for now, as we wait to see how things play out even in the short term, let me know your thoughts, opinions, and reactions. And then there's even more we're going to dive into in a minute, but first let me say, you know, you ever Google your symptoms and five minutes later, like you're convinced you have 48 hours to live? And so yeah, maybe it's time to see an actual doctor, which is why today's sponsor, Zock Doc exists. ZockDococ is a free app and website where you can search and compare high quality in-network doctors and click to instantly book an appointment. Over 100,000 doctors across every specialty, mental health, dental, primary care, urgent care, whatever you need. You can simply filter by insurance, location, ratings,

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But then next up in the news, we should talk about how 20% of the internet just went dark this morning after the web hosting service Cloudflare went down. We're essentially reminding everyone that the internet is just kind of held together with duct tape and sticks. You know, as far as what Cloudflare is, it's a company that provide services that help protect websites against hackers and fake traffic as well as optimize how web pages load. And so that means that while it doesn't directly host sites, an outage there, it has the same effect and it crashed everything from social media sites like X to AI models like chat GPT. And funny enough, like these graphs would actually look worse

if it wasn't for the fact that down detector itself was also affected by the outage. But as far as Cloudflare, they say they first noticed issues early this morning with a spike in what they called unusual traffic. Not too long afterwards, they said Cloudflare is experiencing an internal service degradation. Some services may be intermittently impacted. We are focused on restoring service. We will update as we are able to remediate. More updates to follow shortly.

They weren't kidding. They kept updating with about 20 coming out as a recording. And you know, an outage like this, it's a pretty massive deal, and it led to speculation on whether this was a cyber attack. But with that, you had Cloudflare saying that that actually is not what happened, and it seems to even caused by a software problem on their end. And then, after a few hours, they said they had implemented a fix. And actually, as I'm recording this, you had their CTO saying that all the services were back up and running.

And with that, you had him writing, I won't mince words. Earlier today, we failed our customers in the broader internet when a problem in Cloudflare network impacted large amounts of traffic that rely on us. The sites, businesses, and organizations that rely on Cloudflare depend on us being available, and I apologize for the impact that we caused. With him then saying that an investigation was being conducted, and that issue, impact it caused and time to resolution is unacceptable. And adding, work is already underway to make sure it does not happen again,

but I know it caused real pain today. And while in the grand scheme, you know, this outage was relatively benign and short-lived, outages like this can be a major problem for companies and just even the economy as a whole. Right, last month, there was an outage at Amazon Web Services, which is an even bigger web hosting service. It was down for 24 hours, and some estimated that it cost Fortune 500 companies billions of dollars. And that is, you know, we saw earlier this year, Google's web hosting services had a similar issue, and that led to major sites falling apart and coming down. And so for some,

you know, this is kind of just the latest failure and a reminder that a lot of the internet, it relies on just a handful of companies. Right. Many wondering then what happens if something were to take them offline more permanently, or like, say, a dedicated cyber attack. And more and more these days, it feels like more of a when rather than an if. But then next step today, imagine having a badge in a gun and just fearing for your life when confronted by a deaf, blind 13-pound shitsuit. It's different, but it kind of reminds me of that that cop that just lit up his own patrol car with a man that was handcuffed inside because he got spooked by an acorn. But this story, it takes place in Sturgeon, Missouri, which is a small town of a little more than a thousand residents. So it then soon became the target of righteous fury from all over the country. We're talking death, death, mass, resignations, calls to change laws around police training, and I'm getting ahead of myself. Because while Nicholas Hunter was out having dinner as adorable little five-year-old 13-pound deaf and blind shitsu named Teddy, he escaped his And when a neighbor then spotted Teddy wandering around her yard, she posted on Facebook trying to identify his own. Then, after noticing that, you know, he seemed confused and at least partially blind, she called the authorities, worried that he was gonna wander off or hurt himself.

Thing is, Sturgeon doesn't have dedicated animal control. So the cops responded instead, with half of the entire police department arriving on the scene, meaning a single officer. The department's so small, it actually only has two cops. So Officer Myron Woodson shows up, finds Teddy scampering around this idyllic feel like a good boy and tries to grab him with a catch pole. There you go. Put your head in there. Put your head in there. There you go.

I'm not going to let you bite me. You're looking all afraid. But then at one point muttering to himself that he should just throw a blanket over it and pick it up, but for no clear reason he doesn't. And then just three minutes into this encounter, Woodson decides what the situation really calls for is lethal force.

Yeah, I know this sounds weird, but believe me, if you watch the moments leading up to this decision, nothing visibly changes. It's genuinely shocking the first time you see it because you expect maybe the dog to attack him or something, but it doesn't. It's still just wandering. around.

Oh, baby. Oh, baby. And so the dog keeps walking away and then seemingly without any provocation whatsoever, the cop draws his gun. And that's all I can show because right then he fires a shot, pauses for about five seconds, fires another shot and then just kind of strolls away. Have the dispatch it. Let's pick it up.

Right, and even the neighbor's like, ah, that was kind of nonchalant. Yeah, just no answer. And then later on, Hunter, the dog's owner shows up and Woodson's literally just like, what's up, bro? What's up? You want our adult? So this guy, he's distraught, he's just as confused as we are right now,

and he just starts selling the cop with the neighbor told him. I spoke with her, and she has stated that the dog, she fed him, gave him water, and he was not a fed. And she was just waiting, which nobody ever contacted her after she called. What does that say right there? Does that say no contact? She said, don't call her.

If a dog is a threat to a person and harms a person or shows immediate threat, that's when you use force. There is many other tactics to be used. You want to tell me how to do the job. There's no talking. You already took care of it and you handled it very poorly. Also, I like to be on the record that you told me whatever on the phone when I called about this situation. Do you want me to respond to anything or he just wants to lecture me? So they go around in circles like that for close to eight minutes, more than twice the amount of time that Woodson spent actually trying to catch the dog.

With Hunter, that arguing that the dog was deaf and blind and clearly, not a threat, but Woodson countered that he didn't know anything about the dog. How am I supposed to know the dog's condition? Then you have under arguing that he could have used other means of subduing the dog, such as a taser or a lasso, but Woodson counters that he had no taser and tried using a lasso. So Hunter says, well, you're supposed to catch it and bring it to a pound, not just shoot it. But then Woodson replies that they don't have a humane society there and says that even if he did put the dog somewhere, if it had internal bleeding, then it would be suffering

and people would get mad at him for that instead. So Hunter's like, well, wouldn't the dog be squealing if it was in pain? and Woodson then came up with the most lawyer response I've ever heard. You think all dogs squealed when they're in pain? Most dogs squeal. Not all, but most. Okay. Then, Hunter arguing that the dog showed none of the signs of aggression and all the signs of confusion. But Woodson argues back that without all the information, it's impossible to discern if a dog is peaceful.

But then Hunter pointing out that all you need to do is grab an object, touch the dog with it, and see how it responds. And to that, Woodson had no answer. They just kind of stand there in awkward silence for 15 seconds and then say their goodbye. I'm still sorry, it happened to you, brother. All right. Have a better night. Right, so there was all of that, and then the news breaks, and people are just pissed. They hold meetings, they protest, they start a petition, they demand the officer be fired. And when the video ended up being released, you had many saying that Woodson, he wasn't threatened, he was just lazy.

We're saying that it looked like he got tired of trying to catch a dog after three minutes, a lackluster effort, and he just shot it instead. See, some just calling him a straight-up sociopath, though you had Woodson saying that day, I don't enjoy seeing dogs. Also with this, you saw pretty quickly the city posted on Facebook that Woodson shot Teddy because he feared that it had rabies. Right from the body cam footage, it's clear that Woodson believed that the dog was injured, with him at one point wondering out loud if it had a broken neck, but he never mentions rabies, even during his argument with Hunter. And then you had the city adding in a follow-up post that officials had reviewed the body cam video

when they found that the officer's actions were justified. But with that, the public outrages just grew and grew, and after initially defending Woodson, you had Sturgeon's mayor just resigning. With then, the new mayor, Seth Truesdell, suspending Woodson, who eventually left the department. And you had Truesdale telling ABC that after the shooting, the city was just inundated with hundreds of calls a day from all over the the world explaining we were getting death threats bomb threats city officials docks to their home address their kids pictures blasted all over facebook i lost my entire city staff so i had to replace everybody that was working for the city twice eventually sturgeon disbanded its police department and now it contracts with the county sheriff's office and animal control instead but that's also not where it ends because hunter had a million dollar civil rights lawsuit that was pending and the news now is that the city is settled or the city coughing up five hundred thousand dollars in damages with just over two hundred eighty thousand going to hunter and the rest going to his lawyers who said mr hunter is relieved this matter is concluded, but nothing can ever bring his teddy back. Teddy was a good dog who did not deserve this. Now they're also hoping that Missouri is going to pass legislation mandating training officers encountering people's pets. Right, because it's James Crosby, the guy who wrote the National Sheriff's Association Law Enforcement Dog Encounter Training Course explained to ABC, police shooting pets is way more common than people think. And adding one of the reasons is that police departments sadly are not required to report to any central government entity or anybody when they use deadly force against an animal. Explaining most jurisdictions consider it to be no different than if they shot a suitcase,

And adding, it's very rare for a healthy adult to be killed or even seriously attacked by a dog. In fact, more police officers are killed by horses and cows and have ever been killed by dogs. No police officer has died kind of related to a dog attack since 1932. And that officer was allergic to the rabies vaccine. But then also regarding this specific case, you had Crosby calling a potentially the least justifiable dog shooting I've ever witnessed in my 30 plus years working with law enforcement. And then we're gonna get into even more in just a minute, but first, you know, have you ever tried to focus and you end up reorganizing your desktop icons instead? Because yeah, I mean, my brain, it feels like a toddler with espresso at times, energetic, distracted, and somehow always sticky. And that, it's why I used today's sponsor, Brain.fm, the app that basically gives my brain a manager.

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That's brain.fm. slash defranco because your brain deserves better than caffeine in chaos. Right, but then next up in the news, we should talk about how the UN Security Council has approved Donald Trump's plan for Gaza. where with a resolution passing by a vote of 13 to zero with Russia and China abstaining, and now the 20-point framework that Trump announced back in September is enshrined an international law. You know, that plan has actually been partly implemented since last month's ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect. Where there was the exchange, a pullback of Israeli forces, and the increased flow of humanitarian aid. Well, there's definitely been a number of issues, some of which we'll get into in a bit, it's generally been seen as having helm. But also, there are a lot of questions about what's left to be implemented, including not only how it'll be done, but also if it can be done and if it should be.

You know, starting with what we do know, under the UN-back plan, the highest authority in Gaza, until at least the end of 27 is going to be a board of peace chaired by Trump himself. And the other members, at least according to Trump, would include the most powerful and respected leaders throughout the world. While this board will have to report to the UN, it won't be bound by the wishes of the UN or by the Palestinian Authority. It'll also have supervisory authority over a yet-to-be-established Palestinian technocratic committee responsible for day-to-day operations of Gava's civil service and administration. And similarly, the board would oversee an international stabilization force, tasks with facilitating the process of demilitarizing the Gaza Strip, as well as the permanent decommissioning of weapons from non-state armed groups.

But Hamas, they've already rejected what it described as an imposed international guardianship mechanism, insisting that it will not disarm and saying in a statement, assigning the international force with tasks and roles inside the Gaza Strip, including disarming the resistance, strips it of its neutrality and turns it into a party to the conflict in favor of the occupation. Also, with that, the resolution authorizes the force to, quote, use all necessary measures to carry out its And you've got U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Michael Waltz, claiming that Indonesia and Azerbaijan have already agreed to take part. But also, no country is publicly committed to sending peacekeepers, and it's not clear who would want to send them if they find themselves in direct confrontation with Hamas. So this is ultimately said to be one of the biggest obstacles to the plan's implementation, and there you had Israel's ambassador to the UN making clear yesterday.

The demilitarization of Hamas is a basic condition of the peace agreement and adding, there will be no future in Gaza as long as Hamas possesses weapons. And connected to that, the plan leaves a lot of leeway for Israel to maintain its military presence in Gaza. long term. It's saying that its withdrawal will be, quote, based on standards, milestones, and timeframes linked to demilitarization agreed between the IDF, ISF, the guarantors, and the United States. Right, and then also carving out an exception for an indefinite security perimeter presence that it said will remain until Gaza is properly secured from any resurgent terror threat. You know, similar vague and conditional language is tied to the issue of Palestinian self-determination

and statehood. Even just the mention a statehood was reportedly a late compromise to secure the backing of Arab and Muslim majority countries. But also the plan only allows for that, as a possibility once the Palestinian Authority has reformed itself and the rebuilding of Gaza is underway, saying the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood. And with that, after facing outrage from extremists and his governing coalition, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu reaffirmed his government's long-held objection to the creation of an independent Palestine, saying, our opposition to a Palestinian state on any territory has not changed. But even with all that, you had Trump still celebrating the vote as a moment of true historic proportion on social media and adding that the members of the board and many more exciting announcements will be made. made in the coming weeks. Right, so we'll have to see where this goes. But, you know, all of this, it's coming more than two years after Hamas killed more than 1,200 on October 7. Right, and that was then followed by Israel killing tens of thousands of Palestinians and an assault that has been

described by experts, rights groups, and a UN commission as genocide. And while the ceasefires now seen as holding, it's not without issues, to say the least. But Israeli strikes and gunfire have continued to take lives in just the past few weeks. And there have also continued to be reports of Israel blocking humanitarian aid. And you know, with that, it was only last week that Israel finally they reopened a key border crossing in the north that has been closed for months. And since then, the first heavy winter rains of the season have only made the situation more dire. Because according to the UN, Israel destroyed 80% of the buildings in Gaza, and so many people

that are just living in makeshift shelters. But also with that, many items, including tent poles, are classed as dual use by Israel, meaning that they have a military use as well as civilian purpose and their entry is banned or heavily restricted. And so you've had one collection of NGOs saying that 4,000 pallets of aid containing non-food items, including tents and bedding, they've been blocked from entering since the ceasefire went into effect. Also, outside of Gaza, we're continuing to get more and more evidence of how bad conditions are in Israeli prisons and detention centers.

We're with a new report from an Israel-based human rights group, finding that at least 98 Palestinians have died in custody since October 7, 2023. Though the organization also claimed that the actual death toll over the past two years is likely significantly higher. And that, because Israel's refused to provide information about hundreds of Palestinians that have been detained during the war. Or with the director of the groups of the prisoners and detainees department arguing, the alarming rate at which people are killed in Israeli custody reveals a system that has lost all more. And then with that, another issue that you have rights groups speaking out about right now is settler violence in the occupied West Bank, where we saw a well-documented surge in these types of attacks after October 7th, but it's reportedly gotten even worse since the ceasefire went into effect in Gaza.

You've got the UN logging more than 260 attacks resulting in Palestinian casualties or damage to property in October alone. That's the highest monthly count since they began monitoring in 2006. And then with that you have activists saying that settlers operate with virtual impunity, noting that investigations into settler violence rarely result in charges or almost never lead to convictions. Although, I will say, lately it's actually gotten so bad you even had Netanyahu coming out against it. Even if he also downplayed the issue and many doubt that he'll actually really do anything. But also, I'll say any push to maybe take action there that might have gotten undermined today by Palestinian attackers who stabbed an Israeli to death and wounded three more in the West Bank before being shot down by troops. But to finish up here, there is another thread that we need to follow connected to all this and it's a kind of a strange one.

So basically hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza, they recently showed up in South Africa on chartered planes without the proper documents. and no one really knows who was behind it or why this happened. But you've also had South Africa's foreign minister suggesting that Israel is enabling the flights as part of a clear agenda to cleanse the Palestinians out of Gaza and the West Bank. Though the Israeli military has said that it received approval from a third country to send the Palestinian families to South Africa, but it didn't name the country. And so otherwise, what we know is that the flights have been linked to a shadowy company run by an Israeli-Istonian national.

And that is, you had places like the New York Times speaking to some of the Palestinians to get an idea of what happened, and one, explaining that he'd been contacted by a man on the phone, claiming to work for a humanitarian organization. He's saying that this man offered to fly him and his family out of Gaza, but only if he paid $1,600 per person up front to a crypto account. And then, months later, after paying more than $6,000, he said he got a call telling him to be in Khan, Eunice, in four hours. And then when they got there, they boarded a bus,

and they were told to tell anyone who asked that they were part of a French embassy evacuation. With Israeli troops reportedly processing them through checkpoints and telling them to leave all their belongings behind. Then they flew out of an Israeli airport, not even being told until mid-flight that they were going to Kenya. And then once they got there, they flew to South Africa where this Palestinian man said they received one last message, which said that a guest house had been booked for his family, but for only a week, even though the group had promised a month. But then also with this, you have South Africa saying, you know, it'll help those who have already arrived, but they won't accept any more flights.

But for now, we'll have to see if we get any clarity on what exactly went on there, as well as to see how things continue moving forward. But that, my friends, brings us to the end of today's show, though, there's more to watch just to click away. You've got my newest podcast with Scott Galloway and or if you have missed yesterday's a little DeFranco's show. I got you right here. No matter what you do, let me just say thank you for watching. I love yo faces and I'll see you right back here tomorrow. Because it already looks like there's gonna be a lot we're gonna have to go through.