The Young Turks - Bibi's Blame Game

Episode Date: February 1, 2024

You’re vital to our work. Support as a member: https://go.tyt.com/signup. The Department of Justice (DOJ) is conducting a criminal probe into Cori Bush, according to six sources familiar with the investigation. The DOJ subpoenaed the House Sergeant at Arms for records relating to the misspending of federal security money. An Israeli military operation destroys a Gaza cemetery, and Israel says Hamas used the site to hide a tunnel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said protests organized by families of hostages in Gaza were helping Hamas, according to reports. The U.S. pulled resources out of the Middle East, and is now rethinking that decision. HOSTS: Ana Kasparian (@AnaKasparian) and Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Watchlist https://www.youtube.com/watchlisttyt Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey https://www.youtube.com/indisputabletyt The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Woo! It's up! Welcome to the Young Turks, Jane Cougar, and I can't with you guys. Look, it's the show that has serious news commentary, yet somehow makes you feel good about the bad news. That's what a lot of our members write in. And I kind of agree with that. I do. I think it's a pretty good description. Do we give you a little bit of help? We do.

I guess. It's been a while since you've said that. Oh, that's a good point. I guess. Has it been a while? Yeah. I don't even know where that came from, but I love it. Where does anything come from? It just pops into my head. You think the other people were saying, oh, you're No, I don't know, it popped into my head one day and not on air. I was just saying it to a friend. Yeah. Anyways, guys, we do make news and we do make commentary. We've got to make room for both, so let's get started. Well, we begin with a surprising investigation by the DOJ into one of the progressive Democrats in the House of Representatives.

So let's discuss that. A department of justice, I'm sorry, the Department of Justice has launched an investigation into to Democratic Congresswoman Cory Bush following allegations that she misused campaign funds to pay her husband to serve as her security guard. Now this investigation initially came to public attention on Monday when the clerk of the House read aloud a required notification by the House Sergeant at Arms that he had received a grand jury subpoena from the DOJ for documents. After consulting with the office, of general counsel, I have determined that compliance with the subpoena is consistent with

the rights and derivatives of the House. William McFarland, the sergeant at arms, wrote in the notice. Now Bush was previously investigated back in 2023, meaning last year, about the alleged misuse of campaign funds on security. But apparently there were limitations to that investigation and the DOJ would have the ability to investigate this further. Now, Bush spent more on security than any other member of the House in the months after the January 6th, 2021 assault on the Capitol. In 2022, Bush's campaign paid $338,193 for security, including $225,281 to a private firm, peace security, $50,000 to Nathaniel Davis, and $60,000 to her husband, Courtney Merritt, according to the complaint. The payments to Merits, her husband, in the amount of $2,500 were twice a month. The complaint noted that Merits did not have a St. Louis private security license, and

that Bush and Merits got married in February of 2023. So at some point, they got married. She started paying him for security. In the middle of that, the timeline is unclear to be quite honest with you. They ended up getting married, but at the time when they weren't married, he was a love interest of hers. So I want to just quickly note that the House Ethics Committee had investigated this last year, and they ended up clearing her of any wrongdoing.

And I'm going to give you her statements in just a moment in response to this DOJ investigation. But I want to go to the last graphic here where the New York Times notes that federal prosecutors have greater investigatory powers than congressional investigators do. Ethics investigators rarely result, or ethics investigations rarely result in discipline against members of Congress. Cenk. Yeah, so I have very mixed feelings on this. I'm going to explain both sides of it. First, on the dates, the security seems to have mainly happened 2021, 2021, 2022, mainly 22 bills,

and they seem to have gotten married February 23rd. So that's the timing of it. Okay, so why mixed feelings? So number one, paying your boyfriend and then husband for security out of campaign funds. Does this sound dicey? Yes, it sounds dicey. Number two, the ethics committee cleared her. Yeah, that's true, but the ethics committee clears almost everyone.

And why is that? Because they all misuse campaign funds like crazy. So when one of them comes in and says, oh, I spent it on my boyfriend and husband, And they're like, we should get a load of the rest of us, right? Not guilty. So the Ethics Committee clearing her, it is slightly relevant for a reason I'm going to come back to later. But you shouldn't say, oh, well, that's it. Then she must be innocent, right?

Then in terms of the need for security, I get it. You know, look, we get crazy threats, et cetera, all the time. She's a member of Congress. She wants to feel safer. Okay. She's one of the leaders of the defund the police movement. Is there a little bit of irony there? Yes, yes.

Yes. So now look guys, you could say full blown irony or you can say half irony because, yes, but she's worried that the police are abusing the citizens. And in her case, clearly she's hiring security to protect her. And if the cops acted like that, maybe she might be in favor. But is there, but is there a sense of irony here? No protection for you, but protection for me? A little bit, a little bit.

No, but I'll come back to the others, but go ahead. But I think it's really important to be fair to her, because while she is an advocate for defunding the police, she never said that she was against hiring private security. So in a situation in which you can't rely on police, just hire private security. It only costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Right, but you could just give it to your husband. That's true, that's true. Okay, so now it sounds like I'm against her, but hold on.

So first of all, she spent a pretty significant chunk on security, including over $220,000 to another group. And this was about $5,000 a month, it sounds like, and a little over $60,000 overall. So you can say, I don't care. I don't care if she spent only $10 or $200,000 is not right. Okay, that's fine. But it was a smaller portion of the amount spent on security. So it's not like she funneled half a million dollars and had no real security. It was just a way of get a scam to just get no security but money to herself.

No, it doesn't appear that way to me. Okay, finally, the real reason why I'm concerned about these charges is why now, why the Justice Department? So ethics committee clears tons of people that are totally guilty, right? Did they go back and investigate all of them? Maybe, but I haven't seen it. So they decide, okay, out of all those folks, we're gonna take Corey Bush and we're going to take this a whole other level, although we almost never do. Now she is a member of the squad, she is one of the few people in Congress who has spoken

out against Israel, I know a couple of deans that were not strong enough in their language of condemnation, et cetera, that all of a sudden their life was dug into. And by the way, in this case, this was a right wing group. They don't hide it, who dug into her life, found this, brought it to the ethics committee, brought it to the Justice Department, et cetera. Now, there's two schools of thought. One is, I don't care, guilty is guilty. The other school of thought is, I can dig into anyone's life and find something wrong.

And then we can all scream, guilty! The question is, why are we digging? Or at least that's half the question. So that's my take. What do you think? Let's just be clear that you're speculating that this was motivated by her support for Palestinians, because there's been no indication that that's the case? No, no, let me.

Okay, maybe you came across some indication that I'm not privy to you. No, no, let me clarify the dates. Okay, go ahead. So the right wing group does not look into her because they looked, started looking to her in 2022, well before the 23 attacks, right? Ethics Committee doesn't have anything to do with that. It's before the October 7th attacks, right? The Justice Department's timing, I don't know except for the fact that it just popped up, right?

They did, apparently they did not look into it back then. They're looking into it now. And it is weird that. this got resolved a long time ago and all of a sudden the justified. Now you could say, Jake, oh, that is just such a coincidence. Anra, the UN group helping Palestinians investigated wild coincidence. The Dean's investigated wild coincidence. This wild coincidence, man, maybe it is.

Literally, maybe it is. And maybe it's if you mess with powerful people. And again, I'm not just, look, this isn't a, it's just group thinking Washington. If you mess with the establishment group think in Washington on any topic, All of a sudden, investigation, interesting. Look, we'll see what the findings of the DOJ investigation ends up being. If it is true that she was engaging in self-dealing by taking campaign funds and effectively paying herself, I mean, you're paying your husband, where do you think that money goes?

It goes to your household, okay? So like, that is a problem. But obviously, this is pending an investigation. We should be fair and wait and see what the results of that investigation end up being. And anyone who stands accused of misusing either campaign money or federal funds, which is not the case here, she's not accused of misusing federal funds. But any type of situation where funds are being misused or misspent, that should be investigated regardless of who it is. Because at the end of the day, you have people donating to your campaign and they're not expecting you to pay yourself or pay family members to allegedly do security for you, even when they don't have a security license, which I think is another pretty fishy part. of the story. So look, we're fair, that's why we get attacked by all sides. So I'll do

more of both sides here because there are both sides. So on the one hand, again, why? Why did you pay your husband? Don't do that. Don't pay your husband over $60,000 or your boyfriend over $60,000. Out of your campaign funds, people gave that money to you, trusting you to To fight for them? Yeah, to fight for them, to run a campaign that's going to be really tough with people spending tons of money against you, et cetera. I mean, I told the story the other day in a member's only episode here. I'll mention it briefly here, become a member to get the whole thing to you. irti.com slash short is I wound up staying at a stripper hotel because I'm trying to save money in New York, right?

Because I don't want to waste people's hard-earned money that they're giving to the campaign, right? And so now when I see over $60,000 to your boyfriend for security, I'm like, I can't believe that you spent campaign funds on that. But okay, okay. On the other hand, Chantelle Brown, establishment Democrat ran against Nina Turner funneled tons of money to her boyfriend, way more than $60,000. I don't remember the exact number now, but it might have been in the millions. You could look up the actual report yourself. But it's crystal clear, no question about it, funneled giant amounts of money. And the establishment didn't pick her despite that corruption.

They picked her because of that corruption. They thought, oh, good, she'll do anything that people ask of her. She's in it for the money, right? So where's the investigation on Jean-Telle Brown? Justice Department, where are you? In fact, I guarantee you, if I said that in Washington, they'd be like, how dare you? That is a Democrat and an African-American woman.

Are you trying to target her because she's African? Corey Bush is an African-American woman. Okay, all right, all of a sudden, a giant double standard. If you're part of the establishment, steal anything you like. Oh, you're speaking up against the establishment, we're going to find something on you. And by the way, don't give them something to find. 100%. But here it is.

Point number one. That's point number one. Don't engage in self-dealing. No one's going to investigate you for self-dealing. That's it. All right. Or just be an establishment corrupt politician, and you can get away with millions of dollars of crimes and illegal activities and funnel way more money to your boyfriend.

But you got to make a choice. Are you fighting for the people or are you a corrupt clown like Chantelle Brown? And you're allowed to get away with it. now and get a free tilly dog. Chili dog, not included. The naked guard. Tickets on sale now. August 1st.

All right, let's move on to some other news, including, honestly, a story that I heard on a different broadcast, and it was so insane that I didn't believe it. And then I looked into it, and it's real. So get a load of this. Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is getting real tired of protests by family members of the hostages who remain captive in the Gaza Strip by Hamas. So he actually decided to reach for an oldy but goody allegation meant to shut naysayers up.

He accused them of helping Hamas by engaging in protests. These are Israeli civilians, family members of the hostages who just want their family members back and want Netanyahu to do more to get them back. And because they're an inconvenience for Netanyahu, he is now accusing them of helping Hamas. Speaking at a Tel Aviv press conference on Saturday night, Netanyahu criticized the hostage families protests saying, I understand that it is impossible to control. one's emotions. But the hostage's protest movement doesn't help and only

hardens Hamas's demands and delays the results that we all want, the Jerusalem Post reported. So they initially reported on Netanyahu's statements and it was reported by other outlets afterwards. Now the hostages families hit back in a statement per the Jerusalem Post. It said that prime minister, the prime minister should remember that he is an elected official whose job it is to correct the mistakes, a reference to the security failings on October 7th and the terror attacks on Hamas, on Israel by Hamas, not to scold those whose family members were kidnapped. And I wholeheartedly agree with that statement, but wait until you get a load

of what a former U.S. intelligence analyst who was later convicted for being a spy on behalf of Israel had to say about the protesters, about the family members of the hostages. Paulard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst who was convicted for spying for Israel, previously said the families of those taken captive in Gaza should have been silenced. When Israel declared war, the first thing that the government should have done was declare a state of national emergency and told all the hostages, you will keep your mouth shut or we will shut them for you, he said. He even advocated for imprisoning these family members, saying, quote,

if that means imprisoning to silence certain members of the hostage families, then so be it. We're in a state of war. Yeah, so first of all, I have no interest in listening to the traitor Jonathan Pollard, who is one of the worst people of my lifetime in betraying America. So Israel said, oh, what's the big deal? We're your allies, so we can steal secrets from you. And they begged for him back.

And they said, he's such a wonderful, wonderful guy. He was just stealing on behalf of your beloved friend who always gets you in trouble, always gets you hated by the whole world, always commits war crimes, and then steals from you on top. What's the big deal? Now this Pollard guy's going around like he owns the place. And he's going, oh, yeah, we should, you know, hate the family members of the hostages. Yeah, of course, he's a right wing thug who's a traitor to this country.

And by the way, has done a terrible thing of spreading anti-Semitism in the world. Because what's an anti-Semitic trope? Split loyalties, right? When it gets applied to, you know, nationalized citizens, no one cares. But if it's applied to Jewish Americans, people lose it, right? And rightfully so, there's no split loyalties. And then a spy traitor like Pollard comes along and betrays America on behalf of Israel. And then everybody goes, well, I don't know. Look at this, right? And so don't do that.

He's, he's a single case. He doesn't represent everyone, but he is a terrible, despicable human being. And I remember all those sick politicians who actually lobbied to get him released, even though he's a traitor. Insane. Okay. So anyways, back to Netanyahu. So this guy's 25 times the terrorist that Hamas is. There's no dispute about that. He's killed 25 times the number of civilians. That's a according to if you take the IDF's numbers. The real numbers much larger, but according to the IDF's numbers. So I am not in the camp of, well, Israel is allowed to murder civilians. They did it all by accident.

Oops, did we kill 25 times the number of civilians you killed? My ass. If you believe that you're so blinded by your bias, you can't see straight. You're like, or you think Israeli lives, and this is what are the American position is. Keep it real, but there's a twist on it because of the story. Hold, the American position is, Israeli lives are precious, beautiful, the most important life on the planet Earth. And I agree with that. Every life is the most important life on earth.

I want those Israelis protected. I want them safe. I want them to have a safe haven. But when we turn to the Palestinians, all of a sudden, double standards. I say Palestinian lives are just as precious as Israeli lives. They say, ha, no way. Murder them, murder him, murder him. Kill 25 times as many Palestinians, no one cares because they're lower than dirt.

They're subhuman according to the American government. Well, Joe Biden wonders why there's not a single Muslim who's going to vote for him in Michigan. You treat people like they're subhuman. You don't mind that they're butchered by the butcher of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Netanyahu. A awful terrorist, and now he says, I don't even care about Israeli lives. Remember, they shot three Israeli hostages already waving a white flag. They're like, who can't shoot everyone in Gaza? You see someone that's a guy in the street, murder him, right?

Oh, oops, I'm sorry, it was accident. It was accident. They just having to kill every shirtless guy, every guy waving a white flag. We showed an Israeli hostage and a Palestinian hostage. Murdered, murdered by the IDF on orders from Benjamin Netanyahu. And now he says, well, I don't even care here. I'll say it because there's no consequences. I don't care about the hostages.

In fact, I blame the hostage families. It's your fault. How dare you complain that they took hostages and I'm just murdering your civilians, not even trying to get the hostages back. of anger in Israel among the civilian population in Israel over what happened on October 7th, both anger and then fear for the future because their security was violated. They're worried that it'll be violated again. They don't want to lose other friends, family members, totally understandable. And that fear, and we experienced it here in the United States, that same fear that we experienced

after 9-11 makes you honestly very vulnerable to strong men who want to consolidate more power for themselves and commit terrible, brutal acts, sometimes war crimes in other countries. And certainly what we're seeing in Gaza right now, tons of war crimes that we talk about on a regular basis. What I'm trying to get people to understand is that when you start to allow your government to dehumanize others and use ridiculous allegations to deflect from the responsibility they should be taking for the potential war crimes they're committing, you have to consider

that that treatment of others will eventually turn into the treatment that you're going to deal with by your own government. And so while Netanyahu and other members of the Israeli government have had no problem going around accusing anyone who happens to be a critic of theirs on the international stage of either being anti-Semitic or of aiding and abetting Hamas, A lot of people in the Israeli civilian population sat back and let it happen and thought, no, it's totally true. Anyone who dare speak against what the IDF and the Israeli government is doing, they're aiding and abetting Hamas.

That's all we need to do. We need to accuse them of aiding and abetting Hamas over and over again. Well, now you have Benjamin Netanyahu pointing fingers at the family members of the hostages, people who are suffering something that I can't even imagine. And he's accusing them of aiding and abetting Hamas. Yeah. There's another way that he's eating and abetting Hamas, but I'm going to get to that one second. One more thing about Nanjahou, he says that accountability for what went wrong in actually defending Israel.

What he's doing right now is Gaza is not defense, it's offense. He's butchering people to send a message or whatever, but he's barely gotten any Hamas fighters. Can't point to any. They claim that they killed 9,000 out of the 27,000 dead. That's two-thirds civilians, according to their own claims. But they haven't shown any evidence of 9,000 dead. They've barely got into the tunnels at all. This operation has been a miserable failure, has not returned one hostage,

has killed three hostages. Okay, so they're ofer, none. They did a peace deal, a ceasefire deal to get the hostages back. The war didn't help at all. They haven't found a single hostage, total miserable failure. They asked for accountability. He says, no, no, no, no, right after the war. Okay, when's the war going to be over?

He says after we get total victory. Which is honestly. Okay, so that's an impossible standard. It is, especially when you consider how this brutal assault on ordinary Palestinian civilians, all of these deaths of Palestinian civilians is leading to increase support for Hamas. Both in Gaza and the West Bank, because, I mean, again, I mean, I don't feel like I need to have to, I don't have to keep repeating this, but I'm going to repeat. I guess, losing your entire family will radicalize you.

It's just normal human nature. No, no, eventually after you've murdered enough of them, the Palestinians will magically love Jews and Israel. They'll be like, oh my God, I didn't know. Oh, thank you for murdering my grandmother and my two kids. I now love you. Okay, and then they're total victory, total victory. Even according to the IDF numbers, they say they killed 9,000 Hamas,

there's at least 30,000 more. So how are you going to kill the other 30,000? How are you going to kill the other 30,000 that you couldn't even come close to according to your numbers? Total victory. Years and years and years and years later. So he can stay in power. So he can stay in power for the rest of his life. Okay, if you fall for that and you're in Israel, no matter what side you are about the Palestinians, this guy let you down on October 7th was a corrupt piece of crap to begin with.

Funded Hamas himself. And funded Hamas himself. And you're going to buy his load of crap about, oh yeah, yeah, wait to the board. over except it's never got to be over and then you think you're ever going to have peace of security in Israel when Netanyahu says basically confesses that he wants permanent war he says I'm never going to give the Palestinians a state and we're going to go with this war until there's quote unquote total victory that means war forever that means Israel is never safe but oh the beloved Netanyahu at

least he gets to retain power is that a fair deal Israel do you feel like you're getting the better in that deal so the Haasich families should shut up and and you should never have peace and security, but Netanyahu is elevated. The great terrorist Netanyahu is the leader of Israel. You should be so proud. 25 times a terrorist Hamas is. That's a fact. Young Turks. All right, back on TOT, Jake, Anna, Bunny, Ment. Bunny, thanks for sign in that join button below. We appreciate you.

And O Beach, Babe 21, O gifted 20 young turks memberships. Thank you. Anna. Well, we've got a little more on the situation in Gaza, but what I really want to focus on is the fact that CNN keeps breaking incredible investigations on what's happening in Gaza, which was not expected. So shoutouts to Jeremy Diamond for this report. Yep. These were all graves. This was a cemetery.

But the military says that they were forced to come in here because they discovered a Hamas tunnel running right underneath that cemetery. But the Israeli military failed to prove that stunning claim during a three-hour tour of the area. And yet another example of potential international war crimes, Israeli defense forces destroyed the Bani Suhela cemetery in Kahnunis in southern Gaza, exhuming the corpses of Palestinians buried at the site. Under international law, cemeteries and religious sites receive special protection, and destroying them could be considered a war crime.

At this point, every time I mention potential war crimes, I can't help but feel like. like, it's useless to even mention that because this is what's been happening since the international criminal court of justice came out and said that it is plausible that there is a genocide being carried out in Gaza and then gave Israel actionable steps to take to prevent a genocide. And instead we have more cemeteries being destroyed, more corpses being dug up. The IDF says there is no way to accomplish its military goal of defeating Hamas without finding the tunnels where they say the militants have built command and control centers, transported weapons, and hidden some of the 130 hostages it is believed to be holding.

They say digging up the tunnels involves unavoidable collateral damage to sacrosanct spaces. But CNN investigated the claims of a so-called command center under the cemetery, and they came up short on that evidence to justify what the IDF has been doing at this site. A week after CNN's investigation found that the Israeli military damaged or destroyed at least 16 cemeteries in Gaza since the beginning of the war, the Israeli military invited CNN into Gaza to explain why it partially destroyed one of those cemeteries. But Israeli commanders failed to prove their claim during the three-hour visit to the Boni Suhila cemetery and its surrounding area. So I want to go to the first clip here where they'll talk about an entrance to the tunnel, but note that that entrance of the tunnel is not at the cemetery. It's a little away from the cemetery.

Let's watch. Where are we right now? I mean, what's above us? So we're in a headquarters of a Hamas commander. Above us is a cemetery that I showed you from the outside. If you look at the satellite imagery of the cemetery, there is a wide area. that the military has cleared. Why is that necessary in order to uncover these tunnels? We had to reach the tunnels. We had to reach the tunnels. We had to uncover the tunnels. We had

to prevent from the enemy to flank us. But there's no way for us to verify whether we are actually beneath the graveyard. General Goldfuss takes us back out of the tunnel, but not into the cemetery. Instead, we leave the same way we came in, before walking back to the enormous hole, where the cemetery once stood. We're asking the general if we can actually see the shaft to the tunnel. But the answer is no. So as CNN reports in the print version of this story, they say, however, IDF commanders declined to show reporters the tunnel shaft.

They said emerged inside the cemetery, claiming that there was sensitive machinery underground and that the structure was unstable. And a spokesperson for the IDF said that they would provide a video of the tunnel shaft in the enormous hole that you witnessed in that video, which represents where the cemetery was, but they never did. Instead, the IDF had provided drone footage that showed two other tunnel entrances, one of which CNN entered, and you saw that in the video, near the cemetery, but not at the cemetery.

CNN then later geolocated the tunnel entrances using footage filmed on the ground, and so I want to go to this last video showing you what happened next. The only military later provided this drone footage, showing the tunnel shaft we entered and another one nearby. CNN geolocated the footage using this satellite image. This outline shows where the cemetery once stood, and these are the two tunnel entrances clearly outside the graveyard. As for the tunnel, they say they found here where the cemetery once stood, the military never provided any evidence. So again, pretty incredible reporting from CNN. They're not just simply taking what the IDF says at face value, and they're doing their best to investigate it on the ground, which is pretty incredible.

And look, even if you're not a religious person, I'm not a religious person. I understand what it means to exhum bodies. And then by the way, they were super careless with the bodies and later gave dozens of bodies to Palestinians near the Rafa border. they couldn't identify the bodies and just ended up burying them in a mass grave. Just think about what it feels like to be a family member who might want to visit your loved one at the cemetery and now you no longer have the ability to do so. It's just, it's sick, it really is. All of this is so incredibly sick.

It's a level of cruelty that even at this point in my life, I shouldn't be this naive, but it's unimaginable to me, absolutely unimaginable to me. Yeah, so first of all, tremendous credit to Jeremy Diamond, who so far has been the best reporter on the scene and to CNN. So I think that Israel assumed that CNN would help them do propaganda because this was super careless on their part. They say here, come here, reporter, we're going to take you and your camera people to show you how this graveyard that we destroyed is, you know, because of a series of tunnels we've underneath it that we were so concerned about, then it turns out the tunnels are not under the graveyard at all. You saw the video, right? And Jeremy Diamond asked, well, where are they? I don't understand. Like how, I thought we were going to come out of the cemetery. And then they

asked, hey, listen, guys, since you asked us, and it's already on tape, you got to send us a drone video showing us how the graveyard is connected to the tunnels. Right. And Israel sends nothing back because they don't have anything. They were lying. And they were, they must have assumed that CNN would help them lie. So let me just correct you a little bit because it's important to get this right. So the IDF did end up sending a drone video to CNN with the hope of identifying tunnel shafts that CNN, I guess, would mistake for tunnel shafts at the cemetery. But CNN did their due diligence and they did, you know, geolocation of those tunnel shafts that that were shown in the drone footage.

And they're like, no, this isn't at the cemetery. Yeah, it's a good clarification, not a correction because I said there was no video of anything coming out of the graveyard. And so look, I think that to be fair to the IDF, they probably thought it's American media, we just have to give them a fig leaf and they'll help us do propaganda. That's what we did, we've done the last 40, 50 years. All of a sudden this Jeremy Diamond guy starts doing real reporting, what the hell's going on So they must have been blindsided by an actual reporter there.

Again, great credit to CNN, you don't see me say that often. It's because it doesn't happen often, but when it does, I love it. Thank you, more of that. Okay, now let's get back to the main issue. So look, in a previous report also by Jeremy Diamond on CNN, they showed the 16 Muslim cemeteries had been destroyed. And then very important, I was waiting a whole story to see if he was going to cover this, he was going to cover this and he did, he said, but none of the Jewish and Christian cemeteries

in Gaza were touched. And there are Jewish and Christian cemeteries in Gaza. The ostensible reason that Israel had given last week when they first had the CNN to that first report was, oh, we're busy looking for the bodies of the hostages. And we had to dig, you never know. They could put it into the graves. They could put it into the graves. You'd never know. And they're like, okay, yeah, but we could also put it in the graves of the Jewish or the Christian and cemeteries, and that might even be more likely, right? But you didn't touch them because that sacrosanct, you don't want to violate that sacred ground.

But when it comes to Muslim sacred ground, oh, you violated it 16 times, didn't care at all, dug up the bodies, threw them around, don't know what they are. It's sick, it's sick, it's sick, it's sick. It shouldn't happen to any bodies, okay? I don't care about the religious, you know, affiliation. I don't care about the identities of the, the corpses at these grave sites and cemeteries. It's sick, it's so sick that they did this. No, no, the reason that the identities matter is because this is Israel spitting in the

Palestinians face and in Muslim faces all across the world and going, look at this, we desecrated your ancestors. What are you gonna do about it? Ha ha, nothing, because we have the 2,000 pound bombs, we have a giant military, we have America backing us, and you guys don't have anything. Ha ha, we'll kill you anytime we like, we'll occupy you forever, and now we'll spit on your ancestors, but we're the good guys. By the way, we'll kill 25 times the number of civilians you did, but we're the good guys and you guys are the terrorists. Sorry, no way, IDF are

definite terrorists. That guy you saw on tape, that so-called general or whatever he was, terrorist. This is what war crimes are. This is what terrorists do. And then they call, oh my God, can you believe what Hamas did? Yeah, I hate what Hamas did. How about what you sick people are doing? So that's referring to the IDF and Net. And so look, there's there's, there's no subtlety at all anymore. They're purposely killing civilians. They're purposely desecrating graves. They're saying we're going to destroy everything in Gaza.

And they have 60% of the buildings are gone. 85% of the people are homeless. 25% of the people are starving. Right now, 85% of the people that are starving in the world are in Gaza. I'm sorry, 80%. 80% of all of the people starving in the world are in Gaza. And Israel's the good guys and the Palestinians are the bad guys? If you think that you're so biased, you can't see straight, or you're just not that bright,

you're like, what's higher? One or 25? I can't tell. Oh, what's worse? Wait, which one is occupying which? I can't tell. In America, it makes it look like the Palestinians are occupying the Israelis. No, the Israelis have brutally, brutally occupying. and demeaned and humiliated these people for the last 75 years. And I'm not going to be quiet about it. I mean, I don't care if it offends you. Those dead people in Gaza offend me 10,000 times more. And if they don't offend you, there's something wrong in your moral core.

If you look at them and go, who cares? Palestinians, they had it coming. Muslims, who cares? If you say that, you're a sick person. So go get help. All right, we'll be back with more news after the break, including the Biden administration, rethinking whether it made sense to pull taxpayer money and resources away from the Middle East. Looks like we're going to go for a full-on war in that region and we're going to pump more money into it.

So we've got that and more coming up. Don't miss it. All right, back on TYT, Jank and Anna, with you, more news. All right, well, let's get to the Biden administration's thinking on the Middle East. The Biden administration is now reconsidering whether it was a bright idea to pull American resources out of the Middle East, especially following the October 7th Hamas. atrocities committed against Israel. Now, according to a political report, the Biden administration was completely caught off guard when the terrorist attack happened on October 7th. And so now they're wondering if maybe it makes sense to pump more money into the region and increase their abilities and capabilities to collect information on the ground there. Officials interviewed

by Politico liken the scenes inside the White House following the October 7th, attacks and in the Pentagon, the State Department, and intelligence agencies in the weeks following the initial attacks, today's following the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi in 2012. Now, Aaron Banco, who is the reporter behind this story, explains that the United States slowly but surely pulling out of the Middle East has led to a bit of a vacuum in regard to intelligence. And so they feel that it is a problem to just simply rely on Israel for intelligence, because as we all know, Israel failed to take the intelligence they had about an impending

Hamas attack seriously. That was a story that was reported by the New York Times. And so now since October 7th, senior officials have said publicly that Israel did not share key details. It had collected about a potential assault by Hamas from Gaza. The US and Israel have a strong intelligence sharing partnership. one that would have allowed for Israel to share details of a possible attack by Hamas. But as that New York Times reporting had indicated months ago, the IDF and the Israeli government

simply didn't take the, basically the blueprint that Hamas had for the attack. They didn't take it seriously. They didn't think Hamas had the capability to carry out those atrocities. And so since they dismissed it, they unfortunately became very vulnerable to the attack that happened on October 7th, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government did not seriously consider information from its own intelligence ranks that Hamas was planning an attack and did not pass on the blueprints it had obtained two U.S. officials. So as a result, now the United States is thinking, well, maybe we need to have some people on the ground to collect intelligence

on behalf of the United States. In the weeks that followed October 7th, officials assessed that while Hamas didn't pose a direct threat to the U.S., other groups are individuals sympathetic to Hamas could attack the U.S. in the region, they became particularly concerned that Hezbollah might try to target U.S. troops and diplomats abroad and even Americans at home. So now the argument is, well, we need to pump more money, more of these finite resources into the Middle East,

essentially reversing some of what we had given Biden credit for in pulling out of the Middle East. So yeah, great, we're going back into the Middle East. I bet this ends well. So we're gonna spend a billion dollars. You think they're only going to spend a billion dollars? That's their original plan. I remember before the Iraq war, they said that the whole thing might cost,

I remember now in a congressional hearing, $1.2 billion. It costs in the trillions, in the trillions. So every time these guys say, oh, no, we got this. We're gonna go and kill more people in the Middle East. And we're gonna, you know, intelligence. We're gonna do intelligence work in the Middle East. And then we're gonna put our troops there and then they're gonna get fired on.

And we're gonna pretend to be outraged. Oh my God, I can't believe after we were killing all you guys. You killed some of us back. Oh, that we have to kill you more. And then we're gonna start a much bigger war. We're gonna spend trillions of dollars. And then America's safer. Is it?

Has anything that we have done in our lifetimes in the Middle East? made us any safer. I would argue that almost everything we've done in the Middle East has made us less safe. We have went an antagonized country. Back in the 1950s, we did coups against democratically elected governments like the one in Iran. And people were so mad about that. It led to a revolution where they went in a fundamentalist Muslim direction. And now we've been fighting them for the last 70 years because of the awful thing that we did

in deposing their Democratic elected president. Why did we do that? Because he wouldn't sell to our corporations at the right profit margin. I have a question, and this is a, this is a sincere question, it's not rhetorical, and try to control yourself as you answer, because I am genuinely curious. So the United States keeps pointing at Israel as like our top ally in the region, an important critical ally to the United States. So we already know what we provide for Israel, literally billions and billions of dollars every single year in military funding. which they then use to carry out their war crimes in the Gaza Strip, and sometimes also in the occupied West Bank, don't feel really great about that. But what do we get in return?

And I'm genuinely asking, because one of the things that was widely reported was that a critical thing that Israel provides to the United States government is Intel. And clearly, I mean, this report is a clear indication that we can't rely on Israel for Intel. So what exactly do we get out of Israel? I want to know because, yes, it is transactional. Every relationship we have on the international stage is transactional. Don't make a mistake about that. What do we get out of Israel?

Okay, so let me give me the facts and then I'll give you the commentary. I've read hundreds of articles about this over the last 25 years. They always say two things. Number one is, and this is by an overwhelming margins, number one is intelligence. And they say, oh, you don't know, you guys don't know. It's super secret intelligence, but it's critical. Is it? First of all, we missed 9-11, so how they didn't help us.

We didn't have, so that was when we needed it. Okay, so that was the one time we needed it and nothing. October 7th in Israel, they had that intelligence. They didn't share it. They didn't do anything to themselves about it, and they didn't share it with us. They just dismissed it. So do they, does that mean they share no intelligence? No, first of all, they steal intelligence from us.

Jonathan Pollard, as we talked about earlier in the show, is a traitor who stole intelligence and gave it to the Israelis. But okay, every once in all, do they give real intelligence? Of course they do. And what is it about? The Norwegians, right? Oh, no, no, it's about Muslims in the area that might attack Israel. Wait, how does that help us? They say, oh yeah, yeah, but some of them might also attack you because of your support for us. Wait, how does that help us? So they give us a hit list of people we should assassinate on their behalf to protect their. But how does it help us? The only other thing ever mentioned in any of those articles is, oh, they're really good at tech and we have a good trading partner. So what? China's

really good at tech. And by the way, we trade with China 10,000 times more than we trade with Israel. Does that mean we should do whatever the hell China tells us to do? That China is the best ally we have, that makes no logical sense at all. We do great trading with, again, with Sweden and Kenya and all these. Why? That's not an argument for us giving them $4 billion a year. Plus, they specialize in security and military tech as well. Yeah, to kill more Muslims and to occupy them for longer so that the whole Muslim world can hate us because we're giving them a blank check and not helping, well, we're helping to oppress Palestinians for 75 years. straight now. Okay, so my commentary is, and I defy anyone to show anything else.

Israel gives us zero. They just say, okay, give me the money. Now, by the way, go run cover for me, the United Nations and the whole world. You should be responsible and everyone should hate you instead of me because you're the one really backing me and I couldn't do it without you. So everybody, your hatred towards America, okay? And by the way, if you're going to attack, don't attack us. Attack America and give us money. And I'm not going to give you anything back. By the way, every once in a while, I'll spy on you and steal stuff, even though you're giving me everything anyway. So I don't see how this is an ally. Then the only other thing that anybody ever says is only democracy in the Middle East.

So hold on, I have two things about that. Number one, I know this is a tiny thing, but it bothers me because they go, well, Turkey, you know, I'll say sometimes, hey, it's the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and then people alive go, yeah, right, it's Middle Eastern. Turkey's, of course, Middle Eastern. Look at you, brown person, right? Well, Turkey's a democracy, and Turkey doesn't occupy. anyone. Turkey is definitely a better. Look, I don't like the current right wing government. Oh, it turns out you can criticize things that are your own ethnicity.

Okay, I know crazy thought. Anyway, I don't like the current right wing government, but then they're definitely a better ally. And they help us with Russia from sometimes. They help us with Iran. They help us in Syria. They actually help us with things that we need. Now, Turkey goes with those terrible things that I'm not in favor of. Like slaughtering Kurds in Syria. Yes, that's right. And we criticize them for that. Again, Again, I thought you were supposed to be massively biased in favor your own ethnicity and background. Well, oh, it turns out you can be fair. Anyways, so Turkey is a democracy and no one ever cares.

And no, they don't get the same special privileges that Israel gets. And besides which, Israel is only a democracy if you live inside Israel, but not in the areas where they imprison five million Palestinians. So okay, let's go back in the Middle East so Israel can drag us into another war. So we can spend trillions of dollars who the bigger, financial backers here are not Israel. The defense contractors and the oil companies are going to make so much money from instability in the Middle East. The U.S. has slowly begun to move resources back to the Middle East in recent weeks as violence escalates in Gaza, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, the Red Sea, and between Israel and Hezbollah on the border with Lebanon. And how much money are we talking

about here. Well, we didn't get exact figures, like a holistic number that would include many years of continuing whatever we're doing in the Middle East. But here's what Politico reports. The Pentagon has estimated that it will cost more than a billion dollars just to rebuild our presence in the Middle East after October 7th. It has sent several ships and submarines along with 1,200 troops to the region. The State Department and White House, meanwhile, have dispatched advisors to Israel to help coordinate with the Netanyahu government and intelligence agencies have upped their collection work in countries, including Iraq and Syria, to monitor the movements and planning of Iranian proxies.

Here, I can solve all those problems for you because they'll say, oh, whoa, would you want us to do nothing about it? No, get back into the Iran peace deal, get the uranium out of Iran so they can't develop nukes and the occupation. And you won't have to worry about killing tons, hundreds of thousands. of Muslims in the Middle East because they won't hate you. No, I got a great idea. Instead, the defense contractors can make trillions of dollars more because that's what they're is.

You know, when she read, no, we're sending submarines and ships and 1,200 troops, I thought parentheses so they can get killed and we could pretend to be outraged so we can start bigger conflicts so that you can all die and send us more money because all the people who bribe American politicians are about to get stinking rich as we head back. in the Middle East to create a giant mess that'll land right on top of your head. But don't worry, everybody at Raytheon is going to be swimming in money. All right, let's take a break. When we come back for the second hour of the show, we'll get into some electoral politics here in the United States, including Senator

Joe Manchin, proving himself to be one of the most delusional American politicians, maybe in American history, and that's saying a lot. He really thinks he's a popular dude. So we've got that and more coming up. Don't miss it. I'm going to be a bit of a mrs. I'm going to be