The Young Turks - One-sided Ceasefire

Episode Date: May 18, 2021

Israel-Palestinian conflict marks its deadliest day as scenes of horror unfolds in Gaza. Netanyahu tries to justify the bombing of a building that housed media agencies AP and Al Jazeera. Nearly 30 Democratic Senators sign onto a joint statement calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. Axios warns of Biden’s danger: the great overreaction. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 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. Hello everyone and welcome back to another show, another week here at the damage report. The last week that I'm going to be in charge for a little bit. I'm going to be taking a bit of a staycation, but don't worry. The show will be in good hands. and those hands and the rest of the body attached to them.

Join us now. Francesca Fierantini is here. How's it going, Francesca? I have nobody. It's just hands and this face. It's going great. For the show. But anyway, Francesca is going to be hosting the damage report next week from Monday

through Thursday. I'll be returning on Friday, but you're going to be taking over. It's going to be a bit of TBR meets TDR. Are you excited? Yes, I'm excited to try not to swear for that long over a period of four days, you know, lest we be demonetized or something else bad happens. I don't know, the algorithm gets mad. I'm super excited, John.

And yeah, you need a vacation, a staycation. I have a pretty easy life, but I appreciate that, thank you. When you call it time out, why don't we call it a timeout, you're a Dragon Daddy timeout? me in the corner. Yes. But anyway, I'm excited to have more of your influence on the show. And obviously, you know, like you're gonna be working with our team. We've got our format, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that said, you know, you obviously have a different background. Feel free to bring to the show, whatever you want. I'm sure that people will be very excited for them. Sure, lots of puppets, it'll happen. Awesome. We've talked about that before.

Anyway, that said, thank you everybody for being here through the course of the next hour. We've got a lot for you. We're gonna be giving you updates on what's going on on with Israel and Palestine. Spoiler alert, it's bad. AOC faces cancellation from a couple of the worst actors in politics. Matt Gates, bad updates for him, that's a shame. And Marjorie Green might have broken the law. Weird, nobody could have seen that coming. And then we've got some absolute nonsense that'll be fun. So if we get through the important news, we'll get to that, of course. But thank you for being here. Regardless of what platform you're on, you can of course us hit the like button, share the stream. So the more people know that we're live. And as we go

through this hour of news, feel free to send us tweets, comments, super chats, all that, and we'll respond as we can. Another little thing to look forward to immediately following this show at Twitch.tvy slash TYT, you can join Dr. Rashad Richie's Indisputable. Some are saying it's the best show on Twitch. Some are saying that's indisputable, but you will have to watch to find out for yourself immediately following today's episode of the damage report. And I believe by the way that that Dr. Rashad Ritchie will be joining Francesca for some of her episodes hosting the show. Yep. That said Francesca, are you ready to jump into this thing? I think so. I know. I know the weekends are so nice and then the news returns. So we must

face it with a stiff upper lip. If you want to know how things are going with Israel and Palestine, well pretty much how you expect and pretty much how we predicted. Loss of life has continued to escalate the U.S. has completely abdicated any sort of political or strategic or diplomatic or moral leadership. And there are some good people in U.S. government speaking up for peace and for the civilians that are being slaughtered every single day. But they of course have very little political power. But let's catch up a bit on what's going on. Diplomatic efforts appeared stalled as the level of destruction was quickly escalating the kind of violence that had not been seen since the last major conflict way back in 2014.

That was a battle that ultimately claimed 2,200 lives rendered large areas of the Gaza Strip uninhabitable. Very little had actually been repaired in terms of electrical and water infrastructure, of course. By the way, so that was a quote from The York Times, which by the way, their coverage is fine on this topic. But they reference there, a battle that ultimately claimed 2200 lives. And I thought, wait a second, there's the breakdown on that buddy. And so, Yeah, no, more than 2,100 of those 2,200 were Palestinians. The best three civilians who'd been killed on the Israeli side. There were 64 soldiers and six civilians who were killed.

So that is 70 to more than 2100, which fits the historic pattern. And it reminded me, by the way, of a comment I saw from a professor, Rashid Khalidi, who was on Democracy Now over the last week, who said, one wonders what proportion you have to have of of Arab deaths, of Palestinian deaths over Israeli deaths. Is it 20 to 1 before the US finally begins to recognize that this is not legitimate self-defense? This is a perfect illustration of the bias that has been a feature of American policy for many, many years. That is a perfectly valid sort of philosophical hypothetical. But apparently in past conflicts, no, that sort of ratio is not enough.

Now we're not there quite yet. In the past week though, nearly 200 Palestinians have been killed in the most recent violence, More than 50 of whom were children and Sunday, just yesterday was the deadliest day with at least 42 people killed, including at least 10 children after an attack on a tunnel network caused three buildings to collapse. So Francesca, that's the way that it's going right now. What are your thoughts? Well, I think it's it's devastating and it is sadly so common when it comes to the way that Israel fights and the way that Israel is hell bent on its ultimate goal, you know, which is ethnic cleansing, which is, hey, Palestinians, just move or die or die very slowly. That's why we won't give you access to the COVID-19 vaccine.

Perfect, see how this all works? And so this is, once again, we're calling for a ceasefire. I do think a ceasefire is important, but at the same time, we have to understand that there is no such thing as a status quo in Israel, Palestine. That status quo is continual displacement, is continual ethnic cleansing, it's continually Palestinians living on smaller and smaller swathes of land, losing their homes of becoming refugees in the world without the ability to return. That is the status quo.

It is settlements from the Israeli side continuing to encroach into the West Bank. So remember, even if and when, and man, I do hope there is a ceasefire soon, I do hope this This is not a repeat of 2014, I hope that the world's outrage, which I do think is a little bit more unified this time around, will stop this sooner than getting to that 2000 number or more. But again, we just have to continue to remember, like, what is at the root of this? And the other thing is, you know, we're gonna talk about it, but Israel's been targeting, they've been targeting, journalists, they've been targeting emergency.

workers. They've been targeting civilians. This is how they do, right? This is part for the course. This isn't about a military versus another military because Palestine doesn't have a military, right? Like that's just what happens. And when you talk about Gaza, let's remember, this is the most populated place on earth. It is the most, that's why people call it an open air prison, right? Because it's surrounded by Israeli military and there are people packed in there. So it is, You could argue that it would be a human rights crime or violation to even strike anywhere in Gaza because the chances that you are going to kill civilians is incredibly high. That being said, Israel knows exactly where journalists and civilians and emergency workers live.

And finally, last thing, I'm sorry to say, but it's been about seven or eight, eight days now. I think today might be the ninth day of the siege on Gaza. You guys, people aren't getting in. There is no access for the outside of world to get in and help Gaza. This is Gaza by itself. Yes, there are aid organizations. Yes, there can be money in. But in terms of like what would be the humanitarian thing, which is opening the inroads into Gaza, that is not possible right now. That is incredibly difficult. Humanitarian workers, journalists are not allowed in. Yeah. Yeah. And in that way is largely continuation of the status quo before blockade, you know, both economic and in terms of

you know, necessary medical aid, which was cruel and inhuman, a violation of fundamental human rights before the pandemic, let alone during it. And you systematically destroy the media's ability to accurately describe what's happening there. You're referencing there over the weekend they destroyed the building housing Al Jazeera's Bureau. That adds on to a long list of the AP and a number of other media outlets whose headquarters have all been, they just all happen to be near Hamas, I guess. And, you know, a bunch of absolute troglodytes in right wing media, spent the weekend on social media, applauding the destruction of these media headquarters. But yeah, I totally agree with what you said, though, about, like, even the road to a ceasefire,

which we'll get to, are we calling for one? We'll talk about that. But what we are calling for potentially is a return to the status quo, but not a return to peace. That's the way it's, presented by the mainstream media, but to believe that would require a great deal of ignorance about what the actual situation was. It wasn't peace, it wasn't justice. There was nothing humane about the lives that Gazans were forced to live before the most recent bombing campaigns. And the best case scenario right now, horrifically, is a return to that horror, which I guess is preferable to the widespread loss of civilian life that we're seeing on a daily basis now. And one of the, one of the terrors of doing a show like this is just wondering, like,

while we're doing this, we're not on social media. We're not tracking the news. And I don't know about you, Francesca, but I'm just always horrified. What's happening right now that I'm not seeing? What apartment complex is being destroyed? What, you know, a provider of medical devices in Gaza is being blown up, you know, what home in a refugee camp is being bombed. And that's happening right now. Yeah, I mean, and then that's, yeah, the other thing is just to remember, like, refugee camps have been bombed. A man lost his entire family in a refugee camp. What more do you want from people? How much more are Gazans and Palestinians supposed to sacrifice? Like, what is acceptable? And I think you talked about this, you know, the ratio.

So what if we get to zero Israeli deaths and a hundred Palestinians? Is that acceptable? My guess is no, because that's not part of the plan. The plan is, no, Palestinians deserve it. No matter how many have to die, they deserve it because they are terrorists. End of story. That is exactly the narrative. And that is exactly the project of sort of militarized nation building that

Israel sadly participates in, right? There is no good faith to state solution that is done with. It is not even physically possible at this point, right? And so once again, like remembering there is no line. There is no acceptable resistance. There is no, okay, well, if you just throw rocks, guys, remember what happens when children throw rocks in the West Bank? They are open, fired upon. This last week, 13 Palestinians died in the West Bank, protesting, peaceful protest, I mean, throwing rocks. So again, this is, this is, I mean, we don't need a stretch of the imagination in the United States here when you see peaceful demonstrators, you know, all throughout the summer protesting for black lives and against police brutality, being met with police brutality.

Well, you multiply that by, you know, 73 years and a whole lot more weaponry, and there you go. Yeah. When it comes to Israel Palestine, well right now they seem to be perfectly happy to sit and watch as the death's mount and maybe on the side make a little bit of money. So let's talk about those different aspects of this. First of all, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken expressed dismay at the escalating violence. He's very dismayed and said the United States was ready to quote lend support if the parties seek a ceasefire. Blinken came short of calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas or a statement at the United Nations Security Council. That is such an amazing paragraph. by the Washington Post there. First of all, he's dismayed. Yes, he's devastated by the situation there. They're not calling for a ceasefire. They're saying if the parties seek a ceasefire,

they'll support it. So if Israel decides to stop firing on Gaza, then they'll support that. Well, that's amazing. What's the, are they going to oppose it? That means literally nothing. If the Israeli military decides to stop bombing Gaza, we won't oppose that.

That's an amazing statement. And by the way, they're not pushing for a statement at the UN. What are you talking about? We spent all last week blocking statements condemning this action at the UN. That is the effect that the US had internationally in terms of the diplomatic battle that's being faced right now. And by the way, since the Secretary of State is saying, we're just going to wait and see what the Israeli government decides to do. Well, here is what they've been saying recently. In a televised address, Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel's attacks were continuing at, quote, full force and would quote, take time. Israel wants to levy a heavy price on the Hamas Milton group, he said, flanked by his defense minister and

political rival, Benny Gantz, in a show of unity, reminding us of the domestic political concerns that are underlying this entire thing. But they want to levy a heavy price on the Hamas Milton group. The problem, though, is that that price, the currency of it is children and dead civilians, not mainly Hamas militants, because when you fire on a building that has an office you say is occupied by Hamas, even if we lend you the goodwill to assume that that's correct without the evidence being provided to us. And they've said that it will not be. The entire building goes down. Those people die. The people in the area die or are displaced. And something like 42,000 Palestinians family have already lost their homes. That's the price that

is being levied. Hamas is going to regroup. They're going to fire more missiles or more rockets in the future. That's what they do. But the civilians, those are the people that are currently paying the price, Francesca. I mean, honestly, this is where we're seeing some of that status quo Joe, you know, no, no whatever. My brain is not working, but the status quo Joe nickname, there we go. I was like nomenclature? What are we talking about? It kind of fits. But the status quo, yeah, nickname is really fitting right now when it comes to the Middle East, which is sad because this is a guy who wants to get out and is supposedly getting out of Afghanistan. Yes, there's going to be a bunch of troops left over. But for all intents and purposes,

we're leaving Afghanistan, right? Obama left Iraq. Like these were important steps to get the United States out of the Middle East. It seemed like Biden wanted to reshape what the US's role is, and a lot of his language has been about sort of, look, what are we doing there? We're not helping. And yet, when it comes to Israel, Palestine, and the idea that the United States does not have a role to play, or that they're going to wait, or that they pray for a ceasefire, or that they hope, as Biden said, this will run its course that it'll be over soon, which is just the most callous way to talk about human lives and Israel's decision to continue to bomb and kill them to run its course to be done. They'll be over with it. They'll form a government

pretty soon and then it'll all be over. No, imagine if those 2,000 lives that were lost in 2014 were all Israeli. But the last thing I'll say is just that it is the ball is in the United States court. It is on them to put pressure on Israel full stop. That is where you start to untangle this entire mess. And Obama, look, man, if Biden wants to continue Obama's legacy, that guy did put a little bit of space. Sure, a lot of it was toothless, but he condemned Israeli settlements. He, you know, said that Netanyahu was a pain in his butt, like all those things. He didn't do much about it, but yes, he did say. He didn't do much. He annoyed the hell out of Netanyahu, who came to speak in the United States to Congress without even telling the then president. But what I'm saying is,

it is a sign that Biden is not serious about changing the United States' role in the Middle East. And to be honest, I think he's actually missing the mark when it comes to where the majority of people are in the United States and our role and what it should be. I agree. I agree. And even where a lot of Democrats are. Like there's 30 Senate Democrats calling for a ceasefire. That is not the same thing, by the way, as necessarily wholly embracing a fundamentally new approach to the issue of Israel and Palestine. But they at least, least they're calling for a ceasefire, which the Secretary of State is not. And Biden, Axios has a headline. Some insiders are starting to worry about him doing too much too

fast, becoming hyper FDR, basically. What are you talking about? He's talking about running its course, running its course, as if this is like the Israeli military has a case of restless leg syndrome. He just got to deal with it for a few minutes. No, like they're killing people now. We're the U.S. We love getting involved in what's going on other countries. And now we have an opportunity where potentially we can use our great influence, whether in terms of the military, our economy, soft power, all of that to stop some civilian deaths. Because, like, I don't want us to hit 2,200 more civilian lives lost in this most recent conflict. This could be, it's already devastating. But it could be much worse in just a few weeks if we choose not to act.

And that is what Biden is choosing, even though we have an insane amount of leverage. We provide billions of dollars of military aid basically for free, gratis. We don't need anything for it. We won't use that influence for literally anything. We just, yeah, we'll just give you the money and then occasionally sell you some weapons to try to make some money. And that is continuing too with the Biden administration just approving the sale of $735 million in precision guided weapons to Israel. Now, Congress does get to get involved in that. We'll see if the current situation affects that in any way, but right now it's like, it's an amazing situation. He's like we just,

they have a right to self-defense and it's just gonna run its course and oh, they're starting to run out of some of those J-dams. Maybe we can sell them some more and make some more money as this runs its course. Part of the course is our contractors making bank off of the murder of civilians. Yep. No, and I think that's important to remember every time, you know, the Biden administration or anyone says, this is part of our, you know, strategic goals in the region. What are those goals? Can you tell me what those goals are? Are they to displace Palestinian people? Is that the goals? The goal, you know, sort of a an occupied territory that is no more, that is just absent of the Palestinian people? Is it ethnic cleansing?

Is it apartheid? What is your goal, right? Because the U.S. has no goal. What's the goal? Why are you supporting Israel? What are we doing? Are we, oh, are you helping attack Iranian, like, so-called nuclear facilities to just sort of dust up with that country and, like, make us look bad? Because Israel's real good at doing that. Like, what else are you doing? Are you, like, are we working with Saudi Arabia to make sure that we do not enact any kind of consequences when they kill and maim and dismember a journalist. Cool, cool, cool. What is our goal? Truly and honestly, what happens? What happens if we just leave? What happens if we stop giving money to Israel? My guess is it gets better. They've got a pretty fully

functional domestic weapons production industry. I think that they would be okay at this point. We give money to fossil fuel companies. They're massively profitable. We just, some money is fine to about, others not so much. Yeah, and by the way, as of right now, and maybe I'm wrong, maybe this is a knee-jerk sort of dumb internet guy thing to say, but is there any, what would the difference be if it was still Trump? He would have said really annoying things, definitely, ah, he would have said horrible things about Palestinians. But in terms of what the the U.S. government would be doing, what would the difference be? Right now, would there be any difference? We wouldn't, we would block the UN from saying anything in the Security

Council. We wouldn't pressure the Israeli government to stop, and we'd sell them weapons. Yeah. Would there be any difference? Literally between the guy who's here to return the soul and heart of America to help heal versus Donald Trump. No, I don't think. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size. Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it. Shop now at IKEA.ca. I think there would be any difference. Someone suggesting Trump would deport Palestinians.

Sure, that might be, there might be more hate crimes domestically as a result of insane Islamophobic and, you know, anti-Palestinian things that he would say. That's a good point. It could, it can always be worse, I guess. But in terms of the situation in Gaza, I don't think it'd be that different. No, you're totally 100% right. The reaction would be 100% the same and somehow is and oh my God, what is the Biden administration doing.

The only thing I would disagree with and what I think I would say is that the moment that's let us here for me has very much been the violence in East Jerusalem, the displacement of Palestinian families, something that was ongoing before Trump was in office, obviously, and the contested, not even contested, but the aggression from Israel in East Jerusalem and to those residents there and those families. But the bombing of Alaksa mosque, the throwing flashbangs, the tear gas. That all to me says an emboldened Israel, emboldened by the brilliant work of, you know, Babyface Kushner and Donald Trump, who had Israeli settlements named after him. Oh my God. So, you know, moving the embassy to Jerusalem, I think definitely was a sign that like the U.S.

is like a okay with, you know, settler colonialism. And the fact that Biden hasn't moved. it back. I know people say that doesn't matter. I think it matters. I'm sorry. I think it does matter. And so yes, you're totally right. Look, this happened in 2014, happened in 2009. The US has been in pretty much lockstep the entire time. But I do think it gets worse. It has gotten worse. It has gotten. We have an opportunity to potentially make it less worse. I saw a video over the weekend that understandably a lot of people have been very affected by and it shows a child Sort of surveying the devastation of the most recent conflict and talking about it, just openly, honestly, about the horror of the situation. I want you to take a look at this.

I'm always sick. I'm always, I don't know. I can't do anything. All of this. What do you expect me to do? Fix it? I'm only 10. I can't even do anything to do this more. I just want to be a doctor or anything to help my people, my cat. I'm just a kid. I don't even know what to do. I get scared, but not really that much. I get, I do anything for my people, but I don't know what to do.

I'm just 10. I'm just 10. All of this when I see, I little cheery cry every day, saying to myself, why do we deserve this? What did we do to this? My family said they just hate us. They just don't like us because we are Muslims. Why does Muslims act for you like that? You see all of the kids around me? They're just kids. Why wouldn't you just set a missile to them and kill them? It's not fair. It's not fair.

Yeah, that's just devastating, obviously. I'm just imagining yourself in the position of that kid. And I understand that plenty of Americans might watch that video. First of all, they'll never see it thanks to the media bubbles that we exist in. But if they did see it, they would not be capable of putting themselves in the position of that child or imagining what that life would be like. The immediate horror of worrying that every day that you could be killed, the long term horror of believing that that's all that your life will ever be, is just fearing for the future and eventually potentially dying.

Yep, yeah. But the hope I guess at least one silver lining maybe is that thanks to social media and thanks to media progressing very slightly in this issue being willing to acknowledge the fundamental humanity of Palestinians, maybe that video will help to convince people, maybe critical coverage of the situation there will help move people. And it's too late for Biden. He's got decades of we'll do anything for Israel, we'll never question them, whatever locked in. But maybe some day we'll have a president that cares about that girl and what happens to her. Absolutely. And it's what I think the most devastating part of that video is that it doesn't

matter that she's 10, you know? I mean, it's it's really sweet and she's so honest. And and it means a lot when it's conveyed by a child of which there are so many, like the average age in Gaza is like very, it's like 17 or 16, something like this. But but it doesn't matter that she's 10. It doesn't matter that she's not a doctor. Doctors are being bombed. Doctors are being targeted. If she grew up to be a journalist, a journalist was killed along with her two children. She was pregnant. You know, I mean, like how many more stories of this do we need? And, you know, I do think, though, speaking of the media, you know, as someone who used to work for AJ Plus and who's been a big fan of Al Jazeera and their international coverage, Jazeera 10 years ago was the only place that was actually

actually covering a lot of what was going on in Israel, Palestine, in Iraq, in all these other places. And even just in the last 10 years, even since like, let's say 2009 and that war, the Gaza war, or the Israeli bombardment of Gaza in 2009, there's been a change. Like, you can find out so much more information about what's actually going on and outlets, whether it's like Vox or BuzzFeed or, you know, like it's not just TYT and Al Jazeera anymore. Like there Did you see John Oliver last night? Yes, yes, exactly. Basically, it was a refined, funnier version of what we've been saying for the past week.

Yeah. I got jokes, John. I got jokes. No, yeah, no, exactly. It's not funny than what I've been saying. Less funny than you, but yes, and refined. And you would not have seen that 15 years ago. Absolutely.

And so like it feels like it's the same. And that's why I think we're so mad at Biden, because it's like, it's not just we'd expect this. this, it's look around you, there the public opinion is turning, it is changing, get on board with this, and it's because reality is showing itself that this is completely unjust. So yeah, I'm heartened, I also think that everyone does have a role to play. Look, boycott divestment sanctions, which is a movement that sadly a lot of Democrats have decided is somehow bad. It's a nonviolent movement to take money out of Israel and to not do contracts with, you know, a state that is brutalizing on other people, right?

That's the idea. So the Presbyterian Church of the United States participated in BDS, divested its holdings from Israel, like these are ways. That's what happened in South Africa. These are ways that we can move forward and actually affect change. Yeah, agreed, agreed. There are some in the US government who are saying the right things when it comes to the current situation with Israel and Palestine.

One that's been reliable on this topic is Alexandria Acosta Cortez, representative who said apartheid states aren't democracies. That seems like that would sort of go without saying, but oddly controversial in some quarters, including by the way, media outlets like MSN, sorry I should say, who said AOC calls Israel apartheid state in Twitter outburst over Gaza attacks. By the way, it's the outburst thing, but then they, can we put their tweet up? It's the photo they chose to use for her. And I understand everybody does this. We sometimes choose our photos to be funny or whatever, but you're saying that her comment about the humanitarian situation in Palestine is an outburst. And you put like her looking at her French

bulldog doing a trick right for the first time. Like that's the photo that you choose to put. I mean, that seems Francesca highly misogynistic. Her tweet was, apartheid states aren't democracies. There were no exclamation points. There were no angry emojis. There was nothing that you could cling to to label it as an outburst. It was a It was a four-word tweet. I appreciate your take on this, which is that I don't think that I would ever have a tweet of mine described as an outburst. I wonder why. And yes, it's absolutely sexist. I mean, this is what AOC's been dealing with for so long, right? It will continue. But she's not wrong, right? And I think it is important for us to remember that.

And I know that people want to sort of deal on the semantics of what is apartheid, what is an apartheid? But it can't be apartheid because there are two states, right? No, there aren't two states, sadly. There is a fledgling Palestinian authority that has got all kinds of problems. Hamas was actually democratically elected. But of course, nobody wants to recognize that. I mean, if you look at the West Bank and you look and you see the ways that there are, like for lack of a better term, Bantu stands, right? That's an apartheid term. Small communities surrounded by Israeli military. That looks a lot like apartheid. It looks a lot like ghettoization. And yes, it's not necessarily part of the state of Israel, but that is not an autonomous sovereign state that has control over its own

livelihood, not even over its own water resources in many cases, a state that is constantly embattled. So it's almost apartheid plus, right? It is apartheid times 10. Meanwhile, inside of 1940. We need to talk about a relatively new show called Un-Fitting the Republic. or UNFTR. As a Young Turks fan, you already know that the government, the media, and corporations are constantly peddling lies that serve the interests of the rich and powerful. But now there's a podcast dedicated to unraveling those lies, debunking the conventional wisdom. In each episode of Un-B-The-Republic or UNFTR, the host delves into a different historical episode or topic that's generally misunderstood or purposely obfuscated by the so-called powers that be.

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So search for UNFDR in your podcast app today and get ready to get informed, angered, and entertained all at the same time. Inside of the state of Israel, it's important to remember, there are Palestinian. There are Muslims who are inside. They have Israeli citizenship, but they don't actually are, they're not afforded all of the rights that other Israeli citizens are, that Israeli Jews are afforded. One case and point is they are they are asked questions and followed if they speak Arabic. That speaking their own language is bad, right? And these are obviously imagine, it's like, you know, it's like low income neighborhoods in the United

States or anywhere in the world, though those Palestinians inside of Israel also don't have full rights also are not, are not like, you know, live in, it's not great for them either. So that's important to remember when we sort of deal with this like, well, what is apartheid, what is an apartheid and all that? Yeah, you're 100% right. Great nuance from Francesca, nuance in short supply in America. The thing is we've been talking about how we really do feel like there has been a noted shift between the 2014 violence and now in how apparently looking at polls, how a lot of

Americans see this issue. And I credit a lot to social media and the media in general being a little bit more willing to, for instance, highlight Palestinian voices, things like that. But even politicians speaking out like the 30 Senate Democrats we talked about earlier, AOC's comments, like she's, like so many of them would have been terrified at the prospect of tweeting something like that before. But now you have people like Rashida to leave, giving speeches on the House floor. That said, there are those who want to go back to the old ways. Megan McCain tweeted every single, I don't know why singles is capitalized.

Elected Democrat in Congress, Congress isn't capitalized, but single is in all caps. Anyway, every single elected Democrat in Congress should have to answer if they agree with with Ocasio-Cortez that Israel is an apartheid state. Technically, she said apartheid states aren't democracies. Interesting that she fills in the blanks. I understand it's not a big leap at this point, but you're doing the work there, buddy. But anyway, Megan McCain added, Corbinism has finally made its full and complete formation over here to America, which just grammatically is a gigantic mess.

But anyway, so many of us have been ringing the alarm bells for years with the dam finally bursting this week. Choose a metaphor and run with it. You got bells, you got dams, you got a lot going on there, Megan McCain. But the idea there is she wants punishment for AOC. She wants AOC to be canceled or whatever. I hate that terminology, but she wants some sort of consequences for AOC for being willing to point out something that seems fundamentally true. Megan McCain doesn't even disagree. It's not that she actually believes that you can maintain this sort of system and have it be a democracy worth a damn. she just likes the status quo. She's fine with it.

It really doesn't bother her. What Gossin's lives were like before the current violence or the violence happening right now. That is not something that bothers her. What bothers her is the idea that that might change as a result of pressure from politicians like Ocaso Cortez. Absolutely. And what bothers her is that there is an invisible line for no particular reason of what we can and cannot say when it comes to Israel. Obviously we know the particular reason is because you'll be charged with anti-Semitism, right? To say nothing to completely erase all the, all the Jews

speaking out right now, all of the, all of the people inside of Israel who've done so much work. No, no, no, they don't matter. You're anti-Semitic. And so to say apartheid, you're automatically anti-Semitic, to say it's all about the Benjamin's, you're automatically anti-Semitic. Like anything that can be skewed is anti-Semitic, it will be. And look, even folks like Nancy Pelosi get, you know, not even, especially, folks like Nancy Pelosi gets sucked into that BS narrative of criticizing the state of Israel or criticizing the Israeli lobby means you're anti-Semitic. What Megan McCain needs to answer for is what conservatives think about Israel Palestine. She needs to answer for the ways that

Republicans treat Israel as some sort of nut so revelatory like this is Armageddon spot When Jesus comes back and all of the Jews are in Israel, in the holy place, and then those who don't convert will perish and all of the Christians will ascend to heaven. That crazy theory that absolutely the far right in the United States, the evangelical right, believes in, that's what Megan McCain needs to talk about, okay? Because you've got some people in your corner who are out of their minds, who are anti-Semitic and Islamophobic, and do not give a damn about anyone's lives, except their own, okay? Let's talk about that. Let's talk about why they actually support Israel. It's because of their like weird biblical prophecy that's not gonna happen, guys. So sorry.

It's not that they're just suddenly interested in foreign aid and charity abroad. It's very specific. And you're 100% right. Great news from Matt Gates as previewed last week, Joel Greenberg, his party bud, Formerly pleaded guilty Monday to sex trafficking of a minor and a host of other crimes, agreeing to cooperate fully with prosecutors and testify in court in hopes of leniency for himself. That is a relative leniency because he agreed to plead guilty to six different charges. Sex trafficking of a child, aggravated identity theft, wire fraud. Some of these come with a mandatory minimum sentence of 12 years and a statutory maximum

potentially decades longer. But that said, because of the deal that he's working out, he might not serve that much time. In exchange for pleading guilty, prosecutors agreed to dismiss 27 other counts that he faced and recommend a term within federal sentencing guidelines, which are often far less than the statutory maximum penalties. They also agree to recommend other possible sentencing breaks. If they determined, for example, that Greenberg provided, quote, substantial assistance in building other cases, they might ask a judge to deviate below the minimum required penalty, according to Greenberg's plea agreement. So what might those other cases look like, well, prosecutors have been exploring whether Greenberg paid women to have sex

with Congressman Matt Gates and whether the two shared sexual partners, including the 17 year old girl at issue in Greenberg's own case. So then wheels are turning Francesca. I mean, it's still America and Greenberg is still a white conservative like elected officials. So he's probably going to be just fine regardless of what he did, but this is not a good development for the congressman. Oh, I'm so glad I didn't have breakfast. Just like, Greenberg and Gates sharing sexual partners. That'll bring up the eggs. Just, yeah, no.

My ovaries just dried up, like, I'm sorry. Do not reproduce. Men are trash. No, I, look, part of me is like, yes, yes, yes, squeal, squeal, tell it all, tell it all. I mean, he wrote it all down trying to get a part of trying to get a pardon from Trump. Remember that through Roger Stone? Like, oh my God,

you're so cute. But yes, please tell us all about Matt Gates. But also like, it just makes you so mad, right? Because we know our criminal justice system, we know who's locked up on like nonviolent drug offenses or on like who loses their lives over counterfeiting a $20 bill allegedly. Like, ugh. And yet over the weekend, we learned that Gates and Greenberg also were like Coke buddies, right? And they like, you know, they had one of the women was like, that they hung out with was an Instagram model slash like weed company dealer and who like, you know, would court the young women just, it's all gross like for that party, just don't go in, you know,

room three, two, five or whatever, like it's just one of those. But anyway, so what I'm saying is I hope there are actual, I hope something sticks. I hope it's not just, oh, well, if you, you know, if you rat on Matt Gates, then that's fine. Like they're drug possession charges here. Yeah, no, he's going to jail. Like you don't, well, I would hope you don't traffic a child and get away with it unless you're a congressman. He made the very poor life choice of not becoming a Republican congressman. He really should have worked on that.

But anyway, he, we'll see, we'll see what information he has. The fact that they vacated 27 counts, I'm not an expert. Maybe we have Adrian Lawrence joining us tomorrow, we'll ask her, it seems to me that you would not do that unless you had received significant cooperation already. And apparently he has been providing investigators information about Gates specifically since last year, according to a person familiar with the matter. So this would seem to indicate that he provided something more than just you know, a evidence free confession letter to Donald Trump. There's got to be more than that. And there almost certainly is, by the way, because one of the threads that has been weaving

its way through all of these updates for the past month or so is that Gates has done a terrible job of hiding literally any of this, you know, from starting from his face and his whole deal to two people who heard comments directly of him repeatedly boasting to people in Florida politics about women he met through Greenberg, to not hiding his vener. Enmo activity, this guy was as arrogant and overconfident as he was fundamentally mediocre. And those two things, the confluence of those, might be enough to break through the legal protections, sort of just implicitly there for white conservative elected officials. Yeah, we'll see. We will see, we will see.

Yeah, we will see. Marjorie Green apparently, beyond just being horrible, also, also apparently broke the law. So Channel 2 Action News in Atlanta revealed just a few days ago that it obtained paperwork through public records requests that showed that the new Congresswoman and her husband claimed what's called a homestead exemption on two properties. One in Fulton County and one in Floyd County, which is a district that Green now represents, remembering of course that she jumped districts to improve her chance of getting elected, which is something that people say that they don't like and yet they keep rewarding politicians for doing

it. Anyway, what does this actually mean? Well, it's a tax break that lowers the amount of property that homeowners must pay on their homes, but it can only be claimed for one house for fairly obvious reasons, the owner's primary residents. So you're supposed to choose one of those. They decided if one is good, two is twice as nice. So in the county's Floyd County application, Green's husband reportedly left blank a question that asked whether they had an active homestead exemption in another part of the state, which is a note that we're going to return to. But meanwhile, Fulton County confirmed to the TV network that the Paris tax break on their home in that county was still active. So they had simultaneous.

homestead exemptions in two different counties, explicitly what you're not supposed to do. And it is one thing, and look, spoiler alert, they're going to claim that it was just an oversight or whatever, or that the county's made a mistake. But when you are directly asked, hey now, you don't already have one of these, do you? And you're like, I didn't see that. Or this doesn't look like anything to me. That seems a bit more suspicious. When you just, you accidentally don't confirm or deny whether you're breaking the law. Francesca, what are your thoughts? Look, as someone who's terrible at test taking, I have left a lot of boxes blank.

So I feel like I identify with that a little bit, but I don't have two homes. I don't have one home. So there you go. Marjorie Green in the end of the day is exactly what so many MAGA folks are, which are not the working poor. They're not blue collar. They are people who inherited a a boatload of money from their dads or a boat itself, and then are claiming that they're the, they're the forgotten class that they, and that class really means white people. And we know that she's done this, right? Like, this is just, again, it is par for the course. It makes sense, I would be disappointed if she had been honest on her taxes. It's on brand.

And a brand will continue, by the way. It keeps going. So like over on Twitch, let's see, try to find the comment. Okay, very smooth John. Oh yeah, Rayu Raul says this is clearly the left trying to cancel green. I bet this will be her reply to this. Well, sort of and that's just all that like Gates, all of these updates have come out. Just devastating stuff from his best bud, like a guy he trusts to share sexual partners and lines of coke with. And his response is, they're just trying to cancel me. They're really coming for you, but I'm in the wake. Like, come on, conservatives, do you not get bored with that? Like, if we found out that like AOC had run a guy down and buried him in the forest,

and she's like, this is cancel culture run amok. I would want a little bit more than that, I think. I'd want to know why she bought that shovel and that quick lime. I would want details, but they don't. They really don't. And so here is how you can respond if you're a conservative. Green responded to the allegations by telling the channel 2 action news that the reporter on the story quote needs to mind his own business instead of launching yet another pathetic attempt to smear me and my family. Mind your own business? Yep, CNN. Just mind your own business. Mm-hmm. I never kiss and tell. What does that even mean? You know. Good enough. You were being alleged to have broken the law and you say, mind your beeswax. That's not good enough.

My daddy always told me to just, you know, if you don't have tea to spill, you just keep stirring it. That might be a, I don't even know, that might be real. Anyway, 15 hours after the story aired, they'd had a little bit of time to do what passes for thinking. A spokesperson for Marjorie Green issued a second statement calling it fake news, obviously, and blaming Fulton County for the air writing quote. Fulton County did not respond a request to cancel the exemption in January, possibly due to COVID. Everything has now been corrected. Okay, so that is a specific verifiable claim. If you sent them requests to fix this error, bring the receipts. And if you did, fine. Okay, then we'll move on. Maybe chain-elect and two action news, got it wrong. It still begs the question of why you weirdly left off the acknowledgement of whether you were breaking the law with the homestead exemption

and all of that, but maybe it's possible. But until you provide that information, I'm just going to be one of those Americans that sees another rich person trying to violate tax laws to get ever more wealthy and think, that's not the most surprising thing in the world. And Republican politicians break a lot of laws these days. So I think the onus is going to be a little bit on you, especially because we're not at the point of actual charges. This is not an, you know, like innocent until proven guilty thing. This is, the media has done an investigation. You can respond however you want, and thus far, your response is kind of blow. That's all I'm saying. Any other thoughts? No. You said it. Okay.

Hi. It's a B-roll. We get to use this B-roll because the spaceman are coming, apparently. I want to show you a video that we saw over the weekend from the former head of the UFO investigation program, now known as the UAP program, unidentified aerial phenomena. Anyway, here is what this former head had to say. Buried away in the Pentagon, ATIP was part of a $22 million program sponsored by then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to investigate UFOs. When Elizondo took over in 2010, he focused on the national security implications of unidentified aerial phenomena documented by U.S. service members. Imagine a technology that can do 6 to 700 G forces that can fly at 13,000 miles an hour,

that it can evade radar, and that can fly through air and water and possibly space. And, oh, by the way, has no obvious signs of propulsion, no wings, no control surfaces, and yet still can defy the natural effects of Earth's gravity. That's precisely what we're seeing. Elizondo tells us A-Tip was a loose-knit mix of scientists, electro-optical engineers, avionics and intelligence experts, often working part-time.

They combed through data and records and analyzed videos like this. A Navy aircrew struggles to lock on to a fast-moving object off the U.S. Atlantic coast in 2015. Okay, so Francesca, look, you requested this story and I have to say it is amazing that that this stuff is out there. I don't mean that the craft are out there. You mean the truth? Is the truth out there? Is that the truth out there? Well, I just want to believe. But the Pentagon has a group looking into this. They have this crazy video. Look, there are crazy people in the government.

We know that. So just because the former head of this group is saying it doesn't mean this guy's not crazy, I don't know him, we don't hang out. But it's barely news that the Pentagon is seriously looking into and has some evidence of these UAPs, which I understand that you would not pronounce this this way, but I am really struggling to not call those whops. Yeah, it's WAP. Or WAPS, but anyway. That's why they come to Earth this year. They were like, oh, that's us, whap, weap. And it can, it can travel fast through water. So that's not a problem for it. Okay, now that said, Chesky, you requested this story. Tell me what you think about it. Okay, first of all, Mulder, wow. Mulder really kind of like let himself go, grew the soul patch.

Come on, you know, I'm not, okay, fine. But no, there literally is like an X-Files entity within the Pentagon, $22 million, and they tried to shut it down. And then according to 60 minutes, both this, this guy, Elizondo and his partner, his Scully, obviously, continued to work on this. They fell in love. There was like a hot moment in the movie. Anyway, no, no, no, but I don't think they fell in love, but I would. But the point is, they continued to work on it even though the budget was cut from what they were doing. And we've all seen those videos where it's like, bro-y pilots are like, whoa, dude, check it all. Which I think is just really funny. All of them played in my mind by Keanu Reeves, but yes. It is, it is interesting. Obviously, there are people, I, I, my problem with this story, is anyone who thinks they know that those are definitively... At TYT, we frequently talk about all the ways that big tech companies are taking control of our online lives, constantly monitoring us and storing our data.

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That's E-X-P-R-E-S-V-P-N dot com slash T-YT. Check it out today. WAPs or definitively not WAPs, like that they are definitively UFOs or not. Because there are a lot of people like, n'-uh, because an astrophysicist would know that, like, you think they don't know that? You think they're not? You think these guys just got their job off LinkedIn? You know, it's not the Trump administration.

Yeah. Now, look, I obviously like I joked, but I do want to believe, I'm a nerd, I grew up on Star Trek and Star Wars and Battlestar Galactic and all that stuff, I want to believe, but I will say while the evidence is interesting and you know what, hold on, I'm gonna save my conclusion, we have a little bit more of this and I'm fascinated now, so let's go to more from 60 minutes. Anything that enters an airspace that's not supposed to be there is a threat. After receiving classified briefings on UAPs, Senator Marco Rubio called for a detailed analysis.

This past December, while he was still head of the Intelligence Committee, he asked the Director of National Intelligence and the Pentagon to present Congress an unclassified report by next month. This is a bizarre issue. The Pentagon and other branches of the military have a long history of sort of dismissing this. What makes you think that this time is going to be different? I mean, we're gonna find out when we get that report.

You know, there's a stigma on Capitol Hill. I mean, some of my colleagues are very interested in this topic and some kind of, you know, giggle when you bring it up. But I don't think we can allow the stigma to keep us from having an answer to a very fundamental question. Okay. Him, look, it being Marco Rubio that's working on it, does not necessarily give me more faith necessarily.

He is a joke in a lot of different ways, but yes, there are people who take this seriously. I will say though, Francesca, I find that in recent years, even though this should have no effect whatsoever on an evaluation of whether intelligent life exists somewhere else in the universe or its ability to travel to us, I find it harder to believe that aliens exist and have visited us because of what we've experienced for the past few years. I don't know why, but it feels for for some reason that like Trump being president and aliens existing doesn't seem right together. Or maybe more importantly, I kind of don't want aliens to exist as much because after the experience of the pandemic, are you telling me you have faith in how humanity would respond

to the revelation that aliens exist and they're among us? Do you want any part of that after the maskers? It'll be just like Independence Day will all join together and then someone will punch an alien and be like, welcome to Earth, bitch. Like, that's exactly. That part would definitely happen, but it would be a hate crime. It'd be on the streets of Brooklyn. Some alien would just be walking.

All the, all the wokies who just hate, you know, the idea of punch. Is it ever okay to punch an alien? I wonder, let's talk about it. I just, oh God, can you imagine how Fox and friends would talk about them? Oh, it'd be devastating. We'd finally get an alien congressperson, and they would just, they'd have all these ads where, like, They have like a UFO on a target and they're shooting it or whatever. It would just, it'd be too much. I don't, I used to want aliens, but I just hope that they give us a wide birth for the next 20 or 30.

We're not ready for them. No, I'm definitely, look, if they're real, I'm definitely like going to the highest mountain top with a sign and being like, take me, like you're going to be like the woman from Independence Day on the rooftop. I am, I am so that one. I like, like anyone else want to join me. Hell yeah, because it's got to be better than this. It's got to be better. But I think the real thing is, Is it, is it Elon Musk's pet project? I don't know, guys, I don't think so. You love Space Force or SpaceX, but how many of those rockets have just fell into the ocean, okay? It's not that amazing. Tesla's are exploding, okay? I don't think Elon's got this one. Is it China? I don't know, I don't think so either. I don't know if there's any other country or any other private entity

that can do this, like that amount of speed and like going in the water and I don't know, I don't think so. Is John? Is John an X-Man? No, I'm not. I wouldn't be able to, I'd be too excited. I wouldn't be able to keep it secret. Yeah, I don't know, I don't think that it's within our capabilities.

That said, it could be something else. I'm too dumb to continue this sentence, but smart enough to know not to. Anyway, I will say, I hope that in the next few weeks, John Oliver delves into this, because I wanted to find more stuff like the Marco Rubio, old stuff of like politicians revealing too much, that's what I want. Because I do, I do want to believe. I want to believe, and more importantly, I want to have faith that aliens being revealed could be anything other than just another massive disaster and disappointment, fundamental disappointment and depression of the species that we are. No, they're definitely, it's like they're like parents in

kindergarten where they're slow driving by and they're like, they're not ready. They're not playing well enough yet, you know, let them, let them work it out, then mom will come to the rescue, that kind of thing, you know? I don't know if that's how parenting works, but the point is, we're not ready for aliens. We've got way too much to figure out, but or it could unite us. No, that was the most unrealistic thing about independent thing. Anyway, thank you, Francesca, as always, for making this day in the start of the week a little bit more fantastic. I want you to rest up between now and next week. I know you're not going to, you've got a ton of work to do, but you're going to be taking

the reins on the damage report, and so I'm very excited for that. Yeah, me too, and everybody listen to the Bituation Room podcast, wherever you get your podcast and follow me at Franie Fio on YouTube and everywhere else. And by the way, everybody, we do have a top 10 list coming. It is going to be one of the solo ones, a much requested top 10 movies in the MCU. It's about to get nerdy in a particular way that Francesca would just mock me too much. So I'm gonna do it myself. I'm gonna give you my top 10. That will be available later on today for our tier two and tier three members on YouTube. So if you're already one of those,

it's coming. If you'd like to get access to it, you got time and you'll get access to the entire library past top 10 lists. We've got like 30 of them at this point and we have a lot of fun with them. That said, until next time, stay safe out there. Stay staying out there. We'll see you soon. Okay, everyone. Welcome back to another top 10 list. Thank you, first of all, for being tier two or tier three members on YouTube and making this available. We do have something special for you. So almost always these top 10 lists are myself and Francesca Fiorentini. Occasionally, when the topic merits, I'll do it solo. And that is the case this week. I'm doing a request. I've seen a couple of different times, which is for me to rank the top 10 Marvel movies. It was

pretty much the instant I had posted the top 10 Star Wars movies. People were like, well, we want to hear your terrible take on the MCU. So I have combed through the 23 current films and this is my ranking. I also had to resist the urge to put Black Widow on the list. No, I haven't seen it yet, but I know that it's going to be great. It's got David Harbor. It's got Florence Pugh. I think it's going to be really good. But I'm only going with the ones that have currently been made available. this is I think it's a good timing for it because we're about to launch into the next big wave of movies and over the course of this year we've got black widow we've got um sang chi is coming out we've got the eternals dr strange is less than a year away like the number of movies is going to double in the next

couple of years but this is like up until basically around end game that first big thing so feel free to at me feel free to post below know you're going to hate my list, but this is what I've got. At number 10, we have got Spider-Man Homecoming. Now, I did not have very high hopes for Spider-Man, the relaunch of Spider-Man, mostly because I really liked the Toby McGuire, Spider-Man, and I'm not that huge of a fan of the character. I never watched the ones with Andrew Garfield, I'm going to say. And so I actually took like a year and a half to watch Spider-Man Homecoming. I didn't see it in theaters. I didn't watch it immediately once it was made available. But I think they did a really good job

of relaunching the character. I think that the actor they got quite good. He gets the sort of quippy, funny part of Spider-Man. He doesn't seem like a sort of stoic, battle-hardened warrior like, you know, a lot of the other characters. I thought that the suite of side characters they put in there were good. And the vulture was great. Incredibly tense scenes, that scene where they're driving together, I think to the dance, I think it is. One of the tenses scenes in the MCU. And the other one was okay, far from home.

I thought it was fine. But Homecoming, just a very clean movie, a great version of that origin story for Spider-Man. We'll see how the next one goes. And Spider-Man generally, by the way, has been a great addition to the MCU. At number nine, I have the big original, Marvels, the Avengers,

which, you know, it's not super highly ranked. I think it's really good, you know, the bringing together of the team, it was really the proof of concept for the MCU that this thing can actually work. We can do all of our solo things. And then you know what? We can bring them all together and make something good. That said, for me, Loki's not the best villain. I don't know. The ending, I liked them teaming up together at the end. Iron Man, you know, making that sacrifice is a great, you know, sort of, I guess, foreshadowing of what's going to end up happening with him an end game. But it's a lot of punching

the Chittari or whatever. So, it was fine. It was fine. It was a good movie. I like the stuff on the little floating base and all that. Coming at number eight, Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2. Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, not as good of a film as the first one. I think most people would agree on that. That said,

it does have certain advantages over most of the rest of the MCU. The Marvel sense of humor, the quippy, Joss Whedon sort of thing that they do, is probably at its best in Guardians of the Galaxy. And that might not have been quite as good in the second one as the first, but still very good. Great moments with Drax, you know, his belief that he's, you know, can just turn invisible. Baby Groot, quite good. I like the expanding of the team with Mantis.

I thought that the larger role for Yandu was quite good. The villain, I didn't find ego. I didn't find nearly as interesting as the stuff with Ronan. Even though, you know, Ronan's not the best character or whatever. But I didn't love the stuff with the father. But, you know, we find out that, you know, Yandu is Mary Poppins, y'all. It's got some great moments. Very funny.

Almost as good of a theme track soundtrack as the first one. So not bad at number eight. Number seven is Thor Ragdon. And Thor Ragnarok makes the list, it almost should be higher up on the list. They apparently decided, okay, we've done Thor 1, fine, we've done Thor 2, maybe the worst movie in the MCU. We need something new. And that something new was bringing in other characters, you know, at this point in the

MCU, none of these movies are truly solo anymore, and that helps. But more importantly, can we get a sense of humor? Honestly, can we not have Thor be this sort of boring stick in the mud? And they did that. And wow, they did a great job in Thor Ragnarok. Taka Wighti is obviously awesome. I thought that the sort of buddy comedy between him and the Hulk was great. Hello was an awesome villain.

Very good. He brings in some side characters that he meets on the Gladiator planet that are great additions to the story as well. and oh what's the name of the guy Jeff Goldblum is awesome in whatever he does and this is a great role for him as well so it was an exciting movie great soundtrack good humor Thor Ragnarok and especially because I did not like that second one at all

now Thor Love and Thunder I have very high expectations for it's one of the most anticipated MCU movies because of how good Ragnarok was that said there are six movies I deemed better although I'm wondering now number six is black panther black panther was 95% awesome great it's not really an origin story for the hero but it's the first that we're really seeing it me get a little bit of them in civil

wars so getting to see not just black panther but actually seeing a bunch of wakonda of his extended family the culture of wakanda how they choose the black panther the spirituality of it it was just great world building. It was more world building than we generally get. Like as a as a counter example, Dr. Strange, I feel like building out that world, not as compelling. And, you know, maybe there are other examples of that. Thor the Dark World. No, not nearly as compelling of setting up a sort of new world within a world. They did a great job with Black Panther in that. Some pretty good fights, some good side characters. I thought that having Bilbo there quite good. That said, while the conflict at the heart of Black Panther is very interesting,

and I like it, the political, you know, like ramifications and all that, I didn't love the villains so much. And more so than that, the final fight is, it was DC quality. It was two CGI characters punching each other a whole bunch. And that is when these movies are at their worst. I loved Wonder Woman, the last fight at the end of Wonder Woman was terrible because it's two CGI creations punching each other. And so that unfortunately was sort of part of the end of Black Panther.

But overall, a great movie, obviously very excited for the second one. Obviously, the context is the tragedy of the loss. But yeah. Number five is going to be Captain America Civil War. So this is not technically an Avengers movie.

It is a Captain America movie, but it is effectively an Avengers movie. And it was great. I mean, like, really cranking up the conflict and making all of these different characters choose which side they're going to support having the philosophy battled about as they're actually battling each other. Was it handled perfectly well? Perhaps not.

There's been great criticism of how the sort of iconic scene of Captain America Civil War is the airport fight, like they're joking as they're fighting each other, which makes for great cinema, but doesn't really make sense that these longtime friends and allies would be joking as they're potentially killing each other. Okay, but set that aside, the fights are some of the best. It might be one of the best big group battles, you know, before we get to end game. You get a little bit more Iron Man. You get the introduction of Spider-Man. You get the introduction of Black Panther. I think the Winter Soldier becomes a much more interesting character there. This movie did a lot of work in setting up the stuff that will happen later. I need to

rewatch it again. I think I've honestly only seen it once, but it really did stand out. They did a great job. Now, number four, we get into very hard decisions here. I mean, they've all been hard, but it is very hard to choose favorites. It reminds me a lot of the Star Wars list. Number four, I'm putting Iron Man. Oh, that feels like it should be higher up. So, Iron Man, so Iron Man, was the first. I mean, technically Incredible Hulk, but we're really not counting that. Iron Man was,

here is a modern superhero movie. That's not Batman or whatever. And it was very different that even those, like Batman, those movies were very successful, but this is a very different sort of thing. It's a character that not a lot of people had a great deal of familiarity with if you weren't a fan of the comics,

which I really wasn't. There are certain comics I read, but I didn't read Avengers growing up. And they brought in he was just he was a very compelling actor taking the role seriously it wasn't overly campy unnecessarily it was funny

but had great action it's an amazing origin story the the first 25 minutes or so of Iron Man is among the better 25 minutes of all the MCU movies like what a great origin story and the fact that immediately right off the bat in the MCU they're talking about the military They're talking about war, what our obligations are, what is humane and all of that. And so quite good.

And it's this good of a movie, even though the villain isn't that great. He's okay. The, is the Ironmonger, I think it is? It was fine. It was fine. And better than Iron Man 2 or 3, it prove that this format could work. And so thank you to Iron Man. Quite good movie.

I watched it again recently, and it really does hold up. at number three we have Avengers Infinity War so I mean how do you like these last three how do you really choose infinity war it is the a massive confluence of characters even beyond what we'd seen in past Avengers movies like one of the biggest cliffhangers in movies you know like the loss of so much they come so close there's this amazing huge battle at the end of it. You have the different missions that are going on simultaneously. As I'm talking about, I'm feeling like I got to watch this movie again. It was just great. There were so many really tense, close moments. Yeah, Avengers Infinity War was quite good. I saw that several times in theaters. Obviously, you know, people, people went crazy for it. Understandably so. I think it's, well, I can't say anything about spoiling the top two. But, uh, Good. I need to watch that again soon. Number two, I have Guardians of the Galaxy.

Am I crazy that I ranked this so high? I've always loved Guardians of the Galaxy. I've watched it maybe the most of these movies. It's either that or maybe Endgame at this point that I've watched the most, but Guardians of the Galaxy really nailed the humor, as I talked about with the second volume, but it's like kind of a cleaner movie. Like having this group of really interesting characters who you watch the trailer and you just assume, oh, it's this team that's going to fight crime or whatever, like around the galaxy, but no, like there's a lot of conflict, huge personalities clashing with each other, beset on all sides by different sets of enemies, and yet they're like sort of learning to come together. And throughout it, as I said,

great sense of humor, the best soundtrack of any of these movies, some of the most interesting characters. Like, I'm a huge Rocket Raccoon fan. It's got some iconic fights. Yandu is absolutely awesome at it. The villain Ronan is okay, honestly. Some of the sub-villains are maybe more compelling, like Nebula. But the final assault with, was it on Nova Prime, where Ronan's ship is coming in and they lock the big net against them. Awesome. The dance off is great. It's got a great conclusion. It really made the Infinity Stones far more interesting, and it broadened the scope of the movies. I mean, I guess Thor did that a little bit, too. But now you're really seeing that this is beyond just Earth. Love Guardians of the Galaxy. I think it's held up very well

to rewatching. But that does leave one more film, which everybody at this point already knows what it is. In fact, I already said its name. Number one is Avengers End game. And I worry that this might be sort of a cheat, because what makes endgame so good is not necessarily the content of endgame, or at least the majority of the content of end game. Although, I think that they did interesting things with the characters. I think that Hawkeye side, look, Tony Stark, very interesting turn for him. How each person has processed those years really lets you see each of these characters through a new lens. I mean, like, what happened to Thor?

Obviously, pretty fascinating. He's been through a lot. Hulk as well. Like, there's been a lot of growth in these characters. Damn, Infinity War was good, though. But anyway, like, it moves fast. You don't expect the killing of Thanos so early. The mission is really interesting.

The fact that it involves time travel, for the most part, I'm generally against in films like this, but they did interesting things with it, having, you know, Captain America fight himself, being able to re-see some of those iconic scenes involving Loki or Captain America in the elevator. That was pretty cool. You know, making Ant Man a significant part of this. I wish that I'd been able to fit one of the Ant Man's on the list, but it just unfortunately didn't fit. And then, of course, you have the bulk of it.

Great showdowns between the sort of core characters and Thanos. everybody rightfully loses it when Captain America finally lifts Molnir. That's all great. And then the moment of moments, the one that made this the number one, the most iconic moment in any movie, I think, Sue me, I know I'm a nerd or whatever. And the moment that, God, I'm so glad that I saw this in theaters and I can't wait to someday see it in theaters again.

I saw it two or three times, I think, is the portal scene. It is, like if movies are, about setting up this series of conflicts and obstacles, trying and failing, and then eventually having sort of this deep dark moment before triumph. This, they had set it up for 22 movies at that point. And you really do feel like we're going to lose everything again. It is so dark, the depths that they go to, and then they come back in. And I love, By the way, now that it's Anthony Mackey, that that's the sort of first moment of it. And then you have Black Panther.

I really liked Captain Falcon in the Winter Soldier. Sorry, Falcon and the Winter Soldier. But that portal scene is just amazing. Great moments in the huge fight. I mean, look, it's a big mess, obviously. Not every moment can be perfect. But they made room for things like long before I was a huge fan of, you know, Wanda, thanks to Wanda vision. She has that great moment with Thanos.

That started to make me think, well, maybe this is a pretty interesting character, actually. The return of Captain Marvel is done amazingly. Dr. Strange gets a good couple moments in, you know, Spider-Man. Yes, the Girls Get It Done moment is a little bit hitting you over the head, but I loved it. I thought that it was pretty great. And they really do a good job of giving everyone,

basically everyone, a couple of good moments during this showdown of showdowns. And then the resolution of the storylines of both Tony Stark and Captain America, amazing character arcs over so many movies. And I think both of them were done very well. Yeah, I mean, that was just, it was a great movie. Like, I was just, I mean, you can watch the audience reactions and all that. And it's, I don't know, it still hits me the same. And there's never been anything like it.

There's never been anything like Endgame because there's never been anything like the MCU to lead to. There's been series with a lot of movies. There's a billion James Bond movies, but it isn't the same thing. You can't have that same sort of moment. This was a very carefully constructed and almost universally, expertly constructed and conceived of arc of movies. And either like it or you don't, I guess. There's some people that don't. all I know is it was an amazing ride

I'm looking forward to a rewatch of basically all the movies was just a couple that I'm not a huge fan of and very excited for what comes next like I cannot wait to be in the theaters watching Black Widow and seeing what the hell the Eternals is about I don't generally I do a lot of research on these movies afterward to get more context

I don't generally do it beforehand I went into the Guardians of the Galaxy knowing nothing about the Guardians of the Galaxy I'm going to do the same for the Eternals but Sang Chi great trailer can't wait to see what that's about

the series so far Wanda Vision was amazing Falcon and the Winter Soldier was great so I have great hopes from that I just think that

they ended it right and they're launching into another phase that like could it be even better I don't know we'll see we'll see

but anyway maybe in about a year we'll have had about four new movies I'll see if maybe the list has changed with the rewatch and everything

but feel free to let me know you think the correct order is down below. And as always, I'm always down to see your suggestions for top 10 lists. I would love to credit you if you provide a good one. So feel free to do that. And thank you, as always, for being Tier 2 or Tier 3 members, providing a little bit of financial support and making this extra content possible. Love doing it for you. And look forward to seeing what comes in future Mondays.

Until then, see you next time. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Jank Huger, and I'll see you soon.