UNBIASED - Israel and Hamas Extend 24-Hour Truce After Impasse, Musk Invited to Visit Gaza, Tells X Advertisers to F*ck Themselves, Super PAC Backs Haley (Listener Q&A), and More.

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

1. Quick Rep. George Santos Update: House Debates Resolution to Vote to Expel (1:54)2. Israel and Hamas Extend Truce at Last Minute After Hitting Impasse (4:03)3. Elon Musk Invited to Visit Gaza; Talks with Andrew Ross Sorkin About Antisemitism Accusations, Advertisers Boycotting X, and What Would Happen If X Went Bankrupt (12:50)4. Americans for Prosperity Super PAC Backs Nikki Haley; Listener Q&A (18:00)5. Not Everything Is Bad! Ending the Week With Good News (25:20)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and share it with those you know that also appreciate unbiased news!Subscribe to Jordan's weekly free newsletter featuring hot topics in the news, trending lawsuits, and more.Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok.All sources for this episode can be found here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem? For free assistance, call the Connex Ontario Helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. You are listening to the Jordan is my lawyer podcast, your favorite source of unbiased

news and legal analysis. Enjoy the show. Welcome back to the Jordan is my lawyer podcast. Let's get caught up in the news. I have three stories, full length stories for you today. I also want to quickly address George Santos's potential expulsion because the house was debating whether they were going to expel him on Thursday and then finish this episode with my relatively new segment called not everything is bad, which is basically three pieces of good news to leave you in a better place going into the weekend. As a reminder, I do have my weekly newsletter going out tomorrow. Every Saturday that newsletter goes out, it is free. It's basically just another

source of nonpartisan news for you. I include a lot of links and resources there, so it's pretty helpful and those that are subscribed to the newsletters absolutely love it. So if you do want to subscribe, go to jordanismylawyer.com slash subscribe. There is also a link in the podcast description that'll take you directly there. The other thing I want to remind you, as I always do, if you have left my show a review, thank you so, so much. If you haven't yet, please do so.

It really helps support my show. It lets other people know why they should listen to my show. So thank you in advance for that. And as my legal disclaimer, yes, I am a lawyer. No, I am not your lawyer. Without further ado, let's get into today's stories. To quickly address the situation as to what's going on with Representative George Santos. On Thursday, the House was debating on the resolution that would determine

whether or not they vote to expel him. So I kind of want to set you up for whether it happens or not and what to know. The situation is pretty simple. If he's expelled, he will no longer serve in Congress. If he's not expelled, he stays in Congress. Leading up to this potential vote, he refused to resign. He was asked to resign. He didn't. He maintains his

innocence, and he basically called this effort to expel him a bullying move. And I suppose if you're new to what's going on, just as a very, very quick recap, George Santos was indicted earlier this year for misusing campaign funds, wire fraud, a couple of other charges. He pled not guilty, but more recently, a couple of weeks ago, the House Ethics Committee released a report of their own, which showed some serious wrongdoing and some pretty significant findings. So if you want to get caught up on that, go ahead and listen to my November 17th episode. I go through the full rundown there. That's the background. If he does get expelled, as I said, he will no longer serve in Congress. He would also be only the sixth House representative to ever be expelled in the history of the

United States. There were three House members expelled in 1861 for supporting the Confederacy. One was expelled in 1980 after being convicted of bribery. And most recently, there was a congressman expelled in 2002 after he was convicted on 10 counts of bribery, racketeering, and tax evasion. So George Santos would be the sixth if he is expelled. And this would also be the House's third attempt to expel him. The first two failed. Basically, those who voted against it cited a presumption of innocence. You are innocent until proven guilty. But this would be the first attempt since the House ethics report, which seemed to change a lot of the minds of some of

Santos's Republican colleagues. So that's what I feel you should know on that. Let's now move on to the Israel-Hamas truce and what we can expect on that front going forward. Shortly before midnight on Wednesday, Israel and Hamas agreed to extend their truce by just 24 hours. So previously we saw a two-day extension. This is a 24-hour extension. And actually, before we get into this, I do want to clarify one thing from last episode. You might remember that whole conversation about hostages versus prisoners, and there's this dispute on the Palestinian side of things as to what the proper verbiage is. But I do want to say that it is undisputed that the Israelis are hostages. Therefore, I do not see a problem in calling them what they are. I don't think that makes me biased in any way. They are hostages by definition. The problem comes into play on the

Palestinian side and what the politically correct term is for those being detained in Israel. So going forward, I will continue to call the Israelis hostages and I will refer to the Palestinians that are being detained in Israel as people because I don't want to come off as sound, you know, on one side of the conflict or the other. So I just want to clear that up. With that said, this agreement to extend the truce by 24 hours came within 10 minutes of the expiration of the previous extension. But truthfully, it didn't really come as much of a surprise. Both sides were indicating that they were going to agree to an extension,

but there was a holdup that I'll get into in a minute or so. Israel is pretty determined to get their hostages back, and Qatar, acting as the mediator, they have felt pretty optimistic about these extensions throughout the negotiations. But as I said, there was one point where both parties were at an impasse. And the impasse was because neither side could agree to the hostages that Hamas would give up. So remember, the initial terms of the deal, Hamas would give up 10 hostages per day. Israel would give up three Palestinians for every one Israeli hostage. And this deal specifically pertained to women and children. Well, allegedly, when they were in talks to extend on Wednesday, Hamas offered to give seven women and children and the deceased bodies of three others. And their logic was that these

three were killed because of Israel's own bombardment in Gaza. And so, you know, the seven women and children and the three deceased bodies would count, they would total 10. Israeli officials said no, that this agreement is for 10 living hostages and they won't accept anything else. Hamas then allegedly offered to give seven women and children and three elderly hostages, but Israel also, according to sources, you know, involved in this negotiation, said this was unacceptable as well. And that is not entirely clear to me because I know throughout this whole situation, elderly individuals have been given up by Hamas. So I don't necessarily know why that would be a no-go for Israel, but that is what sources say that are close to this negotiation.

Eventually, the Israeli government accepts Hamas's proposal to release only eight Israeli women and children and count two of the Israeli-Russian hostages who were set free the day before as part of Thursday's release. Because remember, the number has to equal 10. So what Hamas said is, hey, we're running out of women and children, but we'll give you eight more. And those two Israeli-Russians that we gave up yesterday, you'll include those in the two Israeli Russians that we gave up yesterday, you'll include those in the 10. So that's ultimately what Israel agreed to. But what this negotiation tells us is that Hamas does not have any more women or children to give up. And if they do, the number is small. So now both parties are in this day-to-day extension phase,

which means each day, it's likely going to get more and more difficult to reach an agreement between the two parties. Following Wednesday's extension, a senior advisor to Netanyahu reiterated the need for living hostages specifically. He said, quote, every day we agreed to an extension for the release of 10 hostages, 10 living hostages. If Hamas continues to release hostages, 10 a day, we will extend the pause. Now, this doesn't change the fact that both sides are ready to go back to fighting once Hamas no longer has hostages to hand over, but it does continue this temporary pause for now. So remember, the truce originally began one week ago on November 24th. On the 27th, it was extended two more days, and the most recent extension is of course that

extension we're talking about that was just agreed to on Wednesday night. But at this point in time, the extensions are only 24-hour extensions. And the terms are the same too. One Israeli woman or child, in exchange for three Palestinians, aid to Gaza is allowed in, there's a pause in fighting, and the United States and Israel have to pause their drone surveillance flights for at least six hours a day. A couple of notes I want to make before we segue off of this topic. Number one, I mentioned how this deal, the deal that's been in place for the last week, involves women and children. Men and soldiers were not included in the original agreement.

So one Israeli official said that Hamas wants to set new terms for the men and soldiers as they near closer to the end of this current deal as they run out of women and children. And Israel did say that it is willing to discuss a different framework for a new deal that involves the men and soldiers that Hamas currently has. The Israeli official said that Hamas wants a different equation. So they want to try to change that one to three ratio. It's not clear in what direction. I'm assuming, you know, more Palestinians in exchange for each hostage, but I can't be sure. The official said that as long as Hamas can provide hostages, Israel is willing to talk. The second thing I want to note is that outside of this deal, there have also been at least 24 foreign nationals released from Hamas's custody. So in total, 102 people have been

released or recovered from Hamas, which includes 78 Israelis and 24 foreigners. And that, by the time you listen to this episode, just keep in mind that number may change, but roughly 180 Palestinians have been released from Israel's custody, and there are still approximately 130 Israeli citizens still in Hamas's custody in Gaza, most of which are men. The third and final thing I want to touch on is that despite the pause in fighting on the ground in Gaza, there is still military action and military force taking place in both Israel and the West Bank. There were at least two incidents this week, there were actually more than that, in which Palestinians and Israelis were killed by gunfire. On Wednesday, the Israeli military killed two Palestinian children when it opened fire in the West Bank. On Thursday,

two Hamas gunmen pulled up to a bus stop in Jerusalem and fired a bunch of shots, killing three and wounding eight others. Those gunmen were eventually shot dead by off-duty soldiers and an armed civilian that was in the area. Later on Thursday, Israeli forces killed a 21-year-old Palestinian during a prisoner release in the West Bank. That man was not involved in the prisoner release, but apparently there was some sort of confrontation that led to Israeli forces killing him. Hamas has taken responsibility for Thursday's attack at the bus stop in Jerusalem. After the attack, they said, quote, it was a direct response to the unprecedented crimes committed by the occupying forces, including brutal massacres

in the Gaza Strip, the killing of children in the West Bank, and widespread violations against Palestinian prisoners, end quote. Hamas's statement also noted the occupying forces preventing worshippers from accessing the Al-Aqsa Mosque. So all of this to say that despite there being this quote-unquote temporary pause in fighting, there's still violence being had elsewhere between these two parties, and that is what I feel you should know about the current stage of the war between those two. And that brings us to our second story, which involves Elon Musk. The last episode, we covered Elon Musk's visit to Israel. It was right after some anti-Semitism accusations were launched against him. He had commented on another user's post on X. If you want the details,

listen to my last episode. But he went to Israel. The thought generally was that he went to Israel, you know, to settle these anti-Semitism accusations. But he has since said otherwise. He has also addressed advertisers that have pulled their ads from X. He has apologized for his post and he's been invited to Gaza. So I want to talk about all of that. On Tuesday, the day after he visited Israel, Hamas invited Musk to Gaza to see the damage that has been done to the Gaza Strip from Israeli forces. A Hamas senior official said in a press conference in Beirut, quote, We invite him to visit Gaza to see the extent of the

massacres and destruction committed against the people of Gaza in compliance with the standards of objectivity and credibility, end quote. Musk then responded to the invitation on X writing, quote, seems a bit dangerous there right now, but I do believe that a long-term, prosperous Gaza is good for all sides. End quote. While Musk was in Israel, he had made some comments that led Hamas to invite him into Gaza. He said that it was jarring to see the scene of the massacre and that Israel has no choice but to eliminate Hamas. Now, obviously, upon Hamas hearing this, they said, oh, you think that massacre was bad? Come over and look at what's happened to Gaza. But again,

Musk turned down that invitation. The next day, on Wednesday, Musk sat down with Andrew Ross Sorkin, who has been a friend of Musk's for 16 years. They go way back. And Sorkin was basically pressing him on not only his comment on X, but what he has to say to these advertisers. And they talked about a bunch of other things, but those were the two topics that really made headlines. And Musk apologized for his comment on X. He addressed the advertisers. He had some things to say to them, which I will go over. And he basically reiterated the point that he's not an anti-Semite. He clarified what he meant by his comment on X in subsequent comments, but he said the media ignored it.

They took my original comment and ran with it. He said he was sorry. He never intended to come off the way that he did. He said he's not anti-Semitic. If anything, he's philo-Semitic, which a philo-Semitic is someone who has a unique interest in or respect for or appreciation for the Jewish people and their history. He also showed the audience his dog tag, which I told you about last episode, which a father of one of the hostages gave him when he was visiting Israel. He said he will not be taking it off until the very last hostage is home. So really this conversation of him saying, you know, I'm not this anti-Semite that people are

making me out to be. The conversation then transitioned to his trip to Israel, and he clarified that the trip to Israel was not a quote-unquote apology tour and that the trip was independent of what had unfolded on X and that the trip was actually planned before all of this had taken place. From there, the conversation turned to the advertisers that have pulled their ads from X or have threatened to do so. And this is really the conversation that made the headlines. Musk said, quote, I hope they stop. Don't advertise. If somebody is going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail with money, go fuck yourselves. And then there's this long pause. Sorkin's like not really sure what to say. And Musk again says, go fuck yourselves. Is that clear? I hope it is. Hey, Bob, if you're in the audience. And he's, of course, referring to Bob Iger of

Disney, who pulled their ads from X. Naturally, Sorkin asked Musk, how would X survive without the advertisers, given that the current business model relies on ad revenue to stay afloat? And Musk said that if X goes bankrupt because of an advertiser boycott, the public will know that and do what they wish with that information. Sorkin sort of played the devil's advocate a little bit and said, well, won't people say the company went bankrupt because of you and what you posted, which is what caused the boycott? And again, Musk just said the public can decide. The public is the judge. And I do have this whole entire conversation linked in the sources section per usual. So if you want to watch it, it is there

for you. But let's take a quick break. When we come back, we'll discuss Nikki Haley's endorsement, do a little Q&A with that, and then we'll end on a positive note with not everything is bad. The super PAC, Americans for Prosperity, announced this week it will be endorsing Nikki Haley for the Republican presidential nomination. In a letter addressed to grassroots leaders, activists, and interested parties, Americans for Prosperity wrote, quote, AFP action is proud to throw our full support behind Nikki Haley, who offers America the opportunity to turn the page on the current political era, to win the Republican primary, and defeat Joe Biden next November. End quote. The memo also said that Haley is the best choice for our country. Now, I do feel as if this headline is pretty self-explanatory, so how I want to cover this is by answering some of your

questions. I asked you on Instagram yesterday what questions you have about this story. You guys submitted them. So I chose five that I want to answer. The first question is a very generic question, but I think it's a good one. What is a super PAC? And the reason I think this is a good question is because it sets the tone for what's going on. It gives us a better understanding. PAC stands for Political Action Committee. And basically a PAC is this legal entity. It's a tax exempt legal entity that pools money from various donors and spends that money on electoral politics, the components that go into getting a candidate elected, like advertising. In regular PACs, there are caps on how much a donor can donate, how much money can be given to a candidate. But in PACs, PACs can donate directly to a candidate. Now, a super PAC is different.

Super PACs can give unlimited amounts of money because they're quote-unquote independent from any one particular candidate in other words super PACs can't donate money to one specific candidate or contribute to what's called coordinated expenditures for a particular candidate but they can spend money advocating for or against candidates. So the waters are a bit murky, but the difference being Super PAC, the donations are unlimited, the spend is unlimited, but the difference is Super PACs cannot directly contribute to one particular candidate's campaign, whereas a regular PAC can. Question number two is, why endorse Haley when Trump is leading in the polls and leading in comparison to Biden? The most popular thought on this, and there is

weight to this, because in the memo written by a senior advisor at AFP, the senior advisor really talks about New Hampshire and Iowa. Those are really the two polls they're focused on. So although Donald Trump is leading far and away in the national polls, the margins are a bit tighter in Iowa and New Hampshire. Nationally, Trump has a 51-point lead on Haley, but in Iowa, Trump's lead decreases by half to 27 points, and in New Hampshire, Trump's lead is 22 points. Historically, some candidates have come back to win in Iowa and New Hampshire, despite being down 20 plus points, George H.W. Bush being one of them in 1980. But it's worth mentioning, despite coming back in Iowa in 1980, George H.W. did not get the Republican

nomination that year. He lost to Reagan. In fact, none of the candidates who came back from their 20-plus point deficit in Iowa or New Hampshire ended up winning the presidential race. However, another reason that AFP backed Haley is because AFP does not want Trump to be elected. They are anti-Trump. Back in February, AFP sent out a memo stating that it wanted to help the United States move on from Trump. It's been running ads against Trump. AFP has consistently been against Trump, so they're not going to endorse Trump. And then ultimately the decision came down to DeSantis and Haley, which brings me to the next listener question, which is why Haley and not DeSantis? We don't really have a straightforward answer from AFP on this, but if you read the memo, specifically the polling memo from AFP's senior advisor, they cited Haley's, quote, sustained momentum in recent months.

And AFP looked specifically at Iowa and New Hampshire to see what was going on and determined that the support for Haley is growing, whereas the support for DeSantis is shrinking. The memo also said that Haley is more viable amongst GOP primary voters to take on Trump and cited Haley's likability numbers, which according to the data show Haley is the most likable candidate with the lowest unfavorable numbers of any of the candidates. And finally, the memo also cited the idea that Haley has more room to make her case to primary voters, given the fact that she's less defined than Trump or DeSantis. And they base this information off of the fact that in Iowa and New Hampshire, voters are less clear on Haley's policy positions than they are on DeSantis or Trump's,

meaning Haley still has room to kind of finesse, if you will. So overall, AFP just believes Haley is, they believe in Haley more as a candidate than it does DeSantis. Question number four, what was the response from DeSantis and Trump? A DeSantis campaign spokesperson said, quote, congratulations to Donald Trump on securing the Koch endorsement. And the Koch brothers run AFP, just to put that out there. Continues on, like clockwork, the pro-open borders, pro-jailbreak bill establishment is lining up behind a moderate who has no mathematical pathway of defeating the former president. Every dollar spent on Nikki Haley's candidacy should be reported as an in-kind to the Trump campaign. No one has a stronger record of beating the establishment than Ron DeSantis,

and this time will be no different, end quote. Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social, quote, The globalist Koch fake network, Americans for China Prosperity, who constantly admit that they did better in business under President Trump than ever before, have decided to back Nikki Birdbrain Haley over Ron DeSanctimonious, a minor hit for Ron. I was never in the running because I'm all about making America, not the outside world, great again. These losers have fought me from 2016 to the present. They are bad for our country, and so is a very weak and ineffective birdbrain who still says that, quote, President Trump was a great president. I will never run against him, end quote. Finishes by saying she's down 50 points. She better start running fast, end quote. And the fifth question was, why does this matter? I suppose it matters because it may cause Haley, rather than DeSantis, to be the runner-up against Trump, but I wouldn't say it necessarily matters as much as it's just nice to be informed. I guess it matters to be informed, that's what I would say. And now, on to more lighthearted news. It's time for Not Everything

Is Bad, my personal favorite segment, and a relatively new segment where I tell you about the good news so you can end the week on a happy note. Number one, all 41 construction workers who became trapped in an underground tunnel in northern India were rescued on Tuesday after 17 days trapped underground. On November 12th, a landslide hit a portion of India, which caused the 41 construction workers to become trapped. They had no way out. And over the last two and a half weeks, rescue workers have been trying to come up with a plan to get them out. Luckily, and very fortunately, soon after the workers became trapped,

rescuers were actually able to get these steel pipes into the tunnel, which allowed the men to get necessities like oxygen and food. So hot meals would be sent through this tunnel and they were able to eat. And during all of this, they were trying to drill through all of the debris to, you know, to get in there and get a bigger tunnel put in. But last Friday, the drilling machine that was being used to do this broke, and then teams started having to work by hand. By Tuesday, the teams had drilled through more than 100 feet of rubble using hand drills.

Ultimately, rescue teams were able to get these three feet in diameter steel pipes down into the tunnel. The men were put one by one onto rolling stretchers and pulled through the pipes out to safety. All of the men are in good health. They could not be happier to be reunited with their loved ones. Number two. This next one's bittersweet. Casey McIntyre, a mother, wife, and publisher at Penguin Random House, passed away earlier this month after battling ovarian cancer for years. But before she passed, she made it her mission to help other people. McIntyre and

her husband worked to set up a fund with a non-profit group called RIP Medical Debt, which buys up debt for millions of dollars at a time at a fraction of the original cost. So basically for every dollar that the nonprofit receives in donations, it can relieve roughly $100 of medical debt. When McIntyre passed, she had a pre-written note shared with her followers on social media. The post said in part, quote, to celebrate my life, I have arranged to buy up others' medical debt and then destroy the debt. I am so lucky to have had access to the best medical care, and I am keenly aware that so many in our country don't have access to good care. That post was made on November 14th.

By November 28th, two weeks later, the fund had accumulated more than $680,000. Now, if you remember that math we just talked about, according to RIP Medical Debt, that equates to almost $70 million in medical debt for others. And according to a rep at RIP Medical Debt, once the debt is paid off, they simply notify the people that their debts have been cleared. They don't use it to profit off of, you know, buying the debt in any way. It's just a good deed. And number three, the Somerville Police Department in South Carolina made some headlines this week following their annual Turkey No Ticket Week. The cops do their

normal surveilling during the week of Thanksgiving, but instead of handing out tickets to drivers that may have been ticketed for maybe minor speeding infractions, the officer instead gives a free turkey. So people get pulled over, they see the lights behind them, they're like, oh, this sucks. And all of a sudden the cop is walking up with a free turkey ahead of Thanksgiving. The police chief Douglas writes that he feels it's essential to utilize every unique idea to help break down the walls between the community and law enforcement. He also said, quote, the holidays can be challenging for many reasons, so giving back to the community is another way to brighten the season for those who are struggling, end quote. And that concludes this episode. Thank you so much for being here. As always, don't forget that newsletter goes out tomorrow. I hope you have a great weekend,

and I will talk to you on Tuesday.