Matt Gaetz, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the establishment wanted Kevin McCarthy out of the House of Representatives because they thought he was too soft on left-wing issues and too weak on right-wing ones. But what does that mean? And what does it have to do with politics? And why does it matter if you're anti-establishment or not? In this episode, Alex Blumberg explains the difference between being an establishment Republican and being an anti-Establishment Republican, and why you need to be loud and get things done in order to be labeled "establishment" or "anti-establishment." He also points out that if you don't do anything about it, you're just whining about the game, which is exactly what we need to do to get anything done in Congress. And if you do anything in Congress, you'll be voted into the minority, which means you'll have to deal with a Democratic President who's willing to compromise and compromise too. And that's a recipe for stagnation and disaster, because, believe it or not, Americans expect that legislation will be crafted, and if you won't do these things, they'll put you in the minority status, you will be stuck in the halls of power - permanently. And that means you will have to compromise, not just with the opposition, but with the majority, and you will fall to the opposition. The problem is, as a result of that compromise, is that you will not be able to do anything that actually gets anything done, and that's even remotely close to getting anything done at all. in the first place. and that will be bad enough to be considered "progressive except maybe not just good at all at all of the things Americans care about or at least, at least not good enough and not good at getting things done . not even good at anything at all, right? Not even good enough? Not good enough at all? Not enough, not even enough, good enough, right enough, bad enough, and not enough enough, at all ? good enough enough? not enough, well, not enough at least enough ? not good, not good right bad enough or enough, enough, well, enough ... so much ... not enough , not enough good enough... etc ENJOYING IT?
00:00:02.000Never run directly into a tree while kicking yourself repeatedly in the nuts.
00:00:05.000Republicans in Congress seem to have forgotten this rule.
00:00:08.000Two weeks ago, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, along with limelight-seeking compatriots like Representative Nancy Mace, decided it was time to get rid of Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.
00:00:17.000Sure, McCarthy had only been Speaker for approximately five minutes.
00:00:20.000And sure, in that time, McCarthy had defeated Joe Biden in a standoff over a continuing resolution and was preparing to pry concessions out of Senate Democrats that amounted to a cut in discretionary spending plus border funding.
00:00:40.000Well, apparently, defining the establishment, it's a little like asking someone to capture the wind in a bottle or to strap starlight with one's hands.
00:00:47.000Sometimes the establishment means Republicans who are in favor of fiscal responsibility, like that establishment Toady Paul Ryan.
00:00:53.000Sometimes the establishment means Republicans who want to expand the size and scope of government, like that establishment RINO, George W. Bush.
00:00:59.000Sometimes the establishment means Republicans who are socially conservative, like that establishment Stooge Mike Pence.
00:01:05.000Sometimes the establishment means Republicans who are socially liberal, like that establishment pawn, Susan Collins.
00:01:10.000Sometimes the establishment means people who are hawkish on foreign policy, like that establishment dunce, Lindsey Graham.
00:01:16.000Sometimes the establishment means people who are dovish on foreign policy, like that establishment doofus, John Huntsman.
00:01:22.000Well, the term establishment used to have a meaning.
00:01:25.000It used to mean a person with power who is too conciliatory to left-wing positions.
00:01:30.000But during Donald Trump's presidency, when he was, you know, the actual president, we learned that power had nothing to do with it.
00:01:36.000Donald Trump, the most powerful person on the planet, wasn't the establishment.
00:01:39.000During Trump's presidency, we learned that friendliness to left-wing positions didn't make you establishment either.
00:01:44.000After all, it was Donald Trump who declared that entitlement programs, the single biggest drivers of America's debt, were off the table for discussion.
00:01:59.000See, the only way to avoid being labeled establishment these days is to get nothing done but to yell really, really, really loudly, particularly about the establishment.
00:02:09.000To be anti-establishment is to complain about losing elections while doing nothing to win them.
00:02:13.000It's to shout that the game is rigged while refusing to even engage in the game at all.
00:02:17.000Being anti-establishment has turned into just whining.
00:02:21.000It's about showing what you're against by posturing, and then telling your audience that if you posture theatrically enough, wave your hands around a lot, your opposition will just surrender.
00:02:32.000Doing any of that is surrender to the opposition.
00:02:35.000Hell, you can even vote with Democrats to take down a Republican Speaker of the House with no backup plan, and you will be considered anti-establishment, all because you yell about the establishment.
00:02:46.000That's fun and games in the commentary.
00:02:47.000After all, in my industry, it's easy to remain ideologically pure.
00:02:51.000The beauty of what people like me do for a living is we can speak on what we wish would happen, what the best of all possible worlds would be.
00:02:58.000We can point out where our politicians are falling short of our principles.
00:03:20.000Now, because Republicans have to deal with a very slim majority in the House, a Democratic Senate, and Democratic President, any Speaker of the House will have to fall short of perfectly performative opposition.
00:03:30.000Being Speaker of a fractious caucus faced with a minority position in the upper chamber and White House necessarily means cutting deals, not just posturing.
00:03:38.000It would have been true of Steve Scalise.
00:03:40.000It would have been true of Jim Jordan, too.
00:03:42.000If Matt Gaetz suddenly became Speaker, it would be true for him as well.
00:03:45.000Our Congress, though, has now been filled with people responding to the incentive structure created for the commentariat.
00:03:50.000You get attention and money for posturing, not legislating.
00:03:55.000You yell about the establishment, i.e.
00:03:56.000anyone who does anything in Congress, and you win points.
00:04:00.000So, according to Matt Gaetz, Kevin McCarthy was the establishment, and that meant he had to be defenestrated in favor of, well, Someone, or no one, or maybe someone who is a no one, we don't actually know actually yet.
00:04:12.000What we do know is that the speaker will not be Kevin McCarthy, he of the 78% heritage action score.
00:04:17.000And it won't be Steve Scalise, he of the 82% heritage action score.
00:04:21.000Or Jim Jordan, who has the same 82% heritage action score.
00:04:24.000Maybe it'll be Tom Emmer, who also has an 82% heritage action score, but probably not.
00:04:29.000And it probably won't be Patrick McHenry, who also has an 82% heritage action score.
00:04:32.000It won't even be Matt Gaetz, who has An 84% Heritage Action score.
00:04:37.000Actually, it'll probably be no one for a good while longer.
00:04:41.000Meanwhile, Joe Biden will work to ram through a $105 billion defense package that includes $60 billion for Ukraine and $10 billion for Gaza.
00:04:49.000All it will take is peeling off a few Republicans to vote with the Democrats.
00:05:07.000If Republicans keep losing the way they did in 2018 and 2020 and 2021 and 2022, they're not going to have to worry about being establishment because they won't have any power at all.
00:05:17.000Note that none of this has anything to do with principle.
00:05:19.000It has nothing to do with conservatism or victory.
00:05:22.000It has to do instead with applause and cash and fame.
00:05:26.000But for many people in the Republican Party, that's apparently good enough.
00:05:32.000They can still push the ball forward for conservatism.
00:05:34.000But to do that, they need to think about how to win, not merely how to posture and yell and get on TV.
00:05:40.000They'll need to stop running directly into trees.
00:05:43.000If they do not, all they will end up with is a minority position in Congress, a Democrat in the White House, and a terrible, terrible ball ache.
00:05:50.000In just one second, we'll get to Tom McClintock.
00:05:52.000Tom McClintock, a very conservative member of Congress, who's now written an open letter to the people who defenestrated McCarthy, asking them exactly what they're looking for.
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00:07:04.000A lot of conservatives in Congress are very frustrated with the spectacle because on Friday, Jim Jordan, he stood for a third consecutive vote on his speakership and he went down in flaming defeat.
00:07:13.000Not because Jim Jordan is a bad guy, but because this caucus is unbelievably fractious.
00:07:18.000It is very difficult to attain 217 votes when you only have 221.
00:07:22.000All it takes is five people to peel off and grandstand and fundraise in order for a speaker to become impossible.
00:07:29.000So Republicans have been operating without a speaker for the last three weeks.
00:07:32.000Now, the problem with that, of course, is that it makes it very difficult to consolidate against Joe Biden's positions.
00:07:38.000So to take a quick example, as I mentioned before, Joe Biden is now proposing a $105 billion supplemental defense package.
00:07:44.000That defense package lumps together a bunch of things that are not alike at all.
00:07:48.000It lumps together some border security, which is good, and some Taiwan security, which is good, and some Israel security, which is good, with $60 billion in Ukraine security, which is...
00:07:57.000And $10 billion in funding for humanitarian concerns in Gaza, which is super duper bad.
00:08:02.000Now, if you had a Speaker of the House, because bills generally are supposed to initiate in the House, you could split those apart.
00:08:08.000You could force Democrats to take an up or down vote on $14 or $20 billion for Israel, and then force them to take an up or down vote on the $60 billion that Joe Biden is asking for for Ukraine.
00:08:18.000You could force them to take a border vote, just funding the border alone, and at least get them on record as to whether they support that or not.
00:08:24.000You might end up with a crap sandwich, but at the very least, you'd get people on record as to what it is in the bill they actually support.
00:08:30.000But Republicans can't do that right now because they don't have a speaker.
00:08:33.000And this is now irritated Tom McClintock, who again, is one of the most conservative members of Congress from California.
00:08:39.000A super immigration hawk, by the way, Tom McClintock.
00:08:52.000Quote, Dear Wayward Colleagues, Your letter of October 20th, in which you graciously offered to martyr yourselves as long as you can get your way, is perhaps the most selfless act in American history.
00:09:04.000That they were going to vote with the team, but only if they were willing to suffer censure, suspension, or removal from the conference.
00:09:14.000So he says this, I was certain our Republican colleagues who refused to vote with the Republican
00:09:18.000majority would have been inspired by your stirring example of party discipline and loyalty to vote
00:09:21.000with the team as you so eloquently phrased it. I was frankly stunned when they did not.
00:09:26.000I do not understand why a handful of our fellow Republicans couldn't see the simple fairness of the principle to which you have been so unswerving in your devotion.
00:09:34.000We should have been moved by your willingness to suffer censure, suspension, or removal from the conference to enforce your personal preferences on the overwhelming majority of your unenlightened colleagues.
00:09:43.000We should have appreciated how you and 206 House Democrats saved us from a Republican speaker.
00:09:50.000But, says Tom McClintock to, again, he's writing this letter to Andy Biggs, Ken Buck, Tim Burchett, Eli Crane, Matt Gaetz, Bob Goode, Nancy Mason, Matt Rosendale, who are the people who voted against McCarthy the first time to take him down.
00:10:01.000So Tom McClintock says, your sacrifice is not in vain.
00:10:04.000You have succeeded in replacing the outdated concept of majority rule with an exciting new standard that a speaker must be elected by 98.2% of the Republican conference.
00:10:13.000Someday, a messiah will be born unto us who can achieve this miraculous threshold, and on that day your judgment will be vindicated and you will be hailed as the geniuses that you are.
00:10:22.000I think we were all truly humbled to learn that your, quote, fidelity to republican virtues and principles remains unwavering.
00:10:27.000Who could not be moved to tears to read that you offer your self-sacrifice sincerely and with the hope of unity, with purpose?
00:10:33.000With this in mind, I modestly suggest you plan your martyrdom in the only way that truly matters.
00:10:37.000To have the wisdom to see the damage you have done to the country and to have the courage to set things right before it is too late.
00:10:41.000I enclosed a proposed resolution that perhaps one of you can offer as we begin the fourth week of national paralysis as the world burns around us.
00:11:42.000He isn't a member of the Freedom Caucus.
00:11:43.000His anti-McCarthy crusades have not been joined by Marjorie Taylor Greene.
00:11:47.000Only half the members who joined him in forcing out McCarthy were members of a group he assembled to block McCarthy nine months ago.
00:11:54.000To many Republicans, the hair-gelled Gaetz is personally responsible for not only sparking the current chaos, but setting a destructive precedent that continues to hobble the body as small minorities assemble to block any speaker from being elected.
00:12:04.000But he insists he is about outcomes, not headlines.
00:12:07.000He says he has received a flood of approving feedback from conservatives across the country.
00:12:11.000American decline does, he wrote on social media late Thursday.
00:12:16.000Now, again, you know, Gaetz suggesting that he had, like, as I said before, using your power in order to leverage concessions from a party in favor of conservatism, I'm fine with.
00:12:26.000Chip Roy used Matt Gaetz's pseudo-rebellion back in January in order to do that.
00:12:31.000He had a bunch of promises from McCarthy, many of which were good.
00:12:36.000Matt Gaetz is simply playing a game, and the game is, You become more famous, you're on TV more, and you raise more money, and you raise your profile more, if you yell establishment really loud and run into a tree.
00:13:00.000Already, people like Gates have said they're not going to vote for Emmer.
00:13:03.000Representative Kevin Hearn of Oklahoma, who chairs the Republican Study Committee.
00:13:07.000A bunch of the so-called moderates in the Republican caucus probably will not vote for him.
00:13:12.000He voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
00:13:14.000A bunch of New York Republicans are not going to vote for him because of that.
00:13:16.000Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, who chaired the House Rules Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, he said that he would be running for Speaker as well.
00:13:27.000He also voted against certification of the 2020 election.
00:13:29.000Again, that is gonna be a big split because for a lot of Republicans, in order to demonstrate fealty to Donald Trump, you had to vote against certification.
00:13:38.000But for a lot of Republicans who are in the purple districts, you need to win in order to maintain a majority.
00:13:41.000They're like, do we really want a speaker who's gonna be saddled with that?
00:13:45.000Representative Austin Scott of Georgia emerged as a surprise speaker candidate last week.
00:13:49.000He ran against Jordan in a conference-wide vote and he got almost no votes.
00:13:54.000Representative Byron Donalds of Florida Who's a relative, he's a second term congressman.
00:13:59.000He's become famous mainly as a Trump acolyte.
00:14:03.000And he says that Biden is not the legitimate president, all the rest of this, again, are moderate Republicans gonna vote for Byron Donalds?
00:14:09.000Again, I like a lot of these Congress people.
00:14:11.000I'm just pointing out that when you have an extraordinarily diverse caucus, which is what the Republicans have, and by the way, what Republicans have to have in order to maintain a majority, the speaker position cannot be a purist.
00:14:21.000It's not in the operative incentive structure of the game.
00:14:26.000Other names include Representative Jack Bergman of Michigan, Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana, Representative Dan Muser of Pennsylvania, Representative Gary Palmer of Alabama.
00:14:37.000Do any of these people actually think they're going to be Speaker?
00:14:41.000So, while Republicans are busy kneeling themselves in the groin, actual serious things are happening around the world, and it would be good to have a Republican leadership class capable of doing something except stepping on its own d**k. It's unbelievable.
00:14:55.000At a certain point, you gotta stop jumping on rakes, guys.
00:15:00.000And shouting at walls and bouncing off of...
00:15:04.000Bouncing off spike-filled Indiana Jones tunnels is not a genius idea, as it turns out.
00:15:10.000In just a second, we'll get to the serious things happening in the world.
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00:17:18.000Okay, so while the Republicans are busy Kneeling themselves directly in the groin repeatedly.
00:17:23.000The world continues to spin and bad things continue to happen.
00:17:27.000So over the course of the weekend, Hamas in the Gaza Strip, they decided that they were going to make a PR move.
00:17:33.000Now, this PR move was designed for two purposes.
00:17:36.000One is to try and buy time to stop an Israeli ground invasion into the Gaza Strip and to try and get the media back on side.
00:17:42.000So the media have been itching, itching to get off Israel's side after the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and get back on to the, well, moral parody cycle of violence.
00:17:51.000Hamas really does have some legitimate concerns.
00:17:54.000Like they want back on that train so bad they can taste it.
00:17:59.000Purpose number two is that Qatar, which is a regime in the Middle East that is very heavily aligned with Iran, and is sort of a terrorist home base for negotiations.
00:18:07.000They usually put their political wing in Qatar.
00:18:10.000So for example, when the United States was negotiating with the Taliban, they were doing it in Qatar.
00:18:21.000So Qatar was starting to get significant outside pressure, as they should, to turn Hamas over to the Americans and to stop playing footsie with terrorist groups.
00:18:30.000And so Qatar is making the claim that they are the home of negotiations and the negotiations will only be fruitful if they're sort of left to their own devices.
00:18:40.000So Hamas did a bit of a favor to Qatar, which makes sense because Qatar also passes money to Hamas.
00:18:46.000And Hamas released two American hostages over the weekend.
00:18:51.000They did this late on Friday afternoon.
00:18:53.000The two American hostages happened to be, when I say happened, I mean they were released partially because of this.
00:18:57.000They were related to a reporter for NBC News, which again is a way of trying to buy off the media.
00:19:04.000Here was the NBC coverage of the release of the two hostages.
00:19:10.000Remember, there's still 222 of them remaining, including babies.
00:19:14.000On Monday, the group posted a video of a woman and made an offer to release foreign hostages.
00:19:20.000A senior Hamas official then told NBC News the group is willing to release all civilians and dual nationals, with a condition.
00:19:28.000We are ready to release all the civilians, including the foreigners.
00:19:34.000All of the civilians, including the Israeli civilians?
00:20:33.000Hamas knows that if it releases a couple of hostages every so often, they got 222 of them, if they release a couple of hostages every so often, then maybe the world will hold Israel back from going into the Gaza Strip.
00:20:45.000Now, as we'll see, the Biden administration is sending mixed messages on all of this, and the PR war is part and parcel of all of this.
00:20:52.000Hamas committed the worst atrocity in decades, and now they're trying to buy all of that back and make everybody forget about that.
00:20:59.000Because here's the deal, even if they release all the hostages tomorrow, there are still 1,500 dead Jews who were butchered and mutilated, babies murdered in their cribs, and all the rest of it.
00:21:08.000And Hamas is basically expecting that the world will then tell Israel to stop.
00:21:34.000Well, first, Kristen, we've been working on this from day one, engaged with different partners in the region, sending clear messages about the need to immediately and unconditionally release all of the hostages.
00:21:47.000And it was gratifying to see that Judith and Natalie Ronin were released yesterday.
00:21:53.000I had a chance to speak to them as well.
00:21:55.000They sounded Strong of mind, strong of spirit, but there remain many others.
00:22:02.000And we're hopeful that more are released, but the bottom line is this.
00:22:07.000Each and every one of them, now, unconditionally.
00:22:12.000Okay, so that is the right message, obviously.
00:22:14.000But even if all the hostages are released, Hamas still has to go.
00:22:17.000And that's the game that Hamas is playing right now.
00:22:20.000And the reason Hamas has to go, of course, is because what they're attempting to do is obscure what just happened a couple of weeks ago.
00:22:25.000Israel has now done something that it has never done.
00:22:29.000They held a press conference today where they had all the members of the media in the room, and they showed them the full GoPro footage from various Hamas terrorists, showing exactly what they did to Israeli civilians on October 7th.
00:22:43.000Some of it's been described to the general public.
00:22:49.000Here are two... Zaka is a... They're first responders in Israel.
00:22:53.000Here are two Zaka volunteers recalling the atrocities that they saw on the ground when they went into these Israeli areas that had been ravaged by Hamas.
00:24:43.000And what they found were people with charred hands, marks revealing where the victim's hands were bound behind
00:24:47.000their backs with metal wire before they were burned alive.
00:24:50.000One of the images in the slideshow is a completely charred mass of flesh.
00:24:53.000Which at first glance could not even be seen as ever having been belonging to a human being.
00:24:58.000It was only after the CT scan was done of the charred flesh that experts could see what exactly they were looking at.
00:25:03.000And it was a parent and a child bound together, burned alive by Hamas terrorists.
00:25:07.000Two spinal columns were in the CT scan.
00:25:10.000One an adult spinal column and one a child's spinal column.
00:25:13.000They were bound together by metal wires in a final embrace before they were set on fire.
00:25:18.000According to Dr. Chen Kugel, who's the head of the National Center for Forensic Medicine in Tel Aviv.
00:25:25.000He said, the proportion of bodies we've received to our chart is high.
00:25:28.000Many have gunshot wounds in their hands, showing they put their hands up to their faces in defense.
00:25:31.000Many were burned alive in their homes.
00:25:33.000You know they were burned alive because their suit and their trachea in their throats, meaning they were still breathing when they were set on fire.
00:25:39.000Kugel explained that the age range of the victim spans from three months to 80 or 90 years old.
00:25:44.000Many bodies, including those of babies, are without heads.
00:25:46.000Asked if they were decapitated, Kugel answered yes, although he admits that given the circumstances, it's difficult to ascertain whether they were decapitated before or after death, as well as whether they were beheaded by knife or had their heads blown off by RPG.
00:25:59.000You're seeing this from the Holocaust deniers today.
00:26:02.000Well, were they really beheaded with a knife?
00:26:03.000You know, they're probably still alive if they weren't beheaded.
00:26:05.000If they were just, if there was a baby who had his head blown off by an RPG, obviously a very different story.
00:26:09.000The reason that I'm bringing this up again, the reason Israel also is bringing this up again, is to remind people that even if the hostages are turned over, Hamas has to go.
00:26:16.000Israel has to do what it has to do to get rid of Hamas.
00:26:20.000And as we'll see, the West is already sending mixed signals because this is what many in the West do.
00:26:24.000They refuse to see the evil in front of them, and they refuse to understand how the Middle East works, which is that if you do not obliterate the evil today, it rises up and hits you tomorrow.
00:26:33.000Israel, for its part, has been intensifying the bombing on multiple fronts and preparing for this Gaza ground operation.
00:26:38.000There's still significant disagreement, apparently, within Israeli circles over whether to go in on the ground right now or whether to wait it out.
00:26:44.000To essentially keep facilitating movement of Gazan civilians south so they can then hit the tunnels because the last thing Israel would like to do is put 2,000 soldiers in harm's way in a highly dense urban environment that looks much like Mogadishu.
00:27:01.000According to the Wall Street Journal, Israel ramped up its bombing of targets on three fronts, including a rare airstrike in the West Bank, as humanitarian aid trickled into the Gaza Strip in an international effort to ease the hardship the conflict has wrought on the two million civilians trapped there.
00:27:12.000Now, again, one of the things that's truly amazing about what's happening in the Gaza Strip right now is that I have never seen in my entire life a war in which the party that was aggressed against is now responsible for the civilians of the party that is the aggressor party.
00:27:26.000During World War II, do you remember a lot of conversation about German civilians and how the allies had to be very, very careful of what they did in terms of killing the Nazis?
00:27:37.000There wasn't a lot of talk about that.
00:27:39.000Was there even a lot of talk about that after 9-11?
00:27:40.000Do you remember all the talk about, we need to make sure that we have humanitarian convoys getting into Kabul?
00:27:45.000During the post 9-11 period, I don't remember that either.
00:27:48.000When it comes to this, all of a sudden it's Israel's responsibility to deal with civilians that are really under the auspices of Hamas.
00:27:54.000That again is a game that's being played by the international community in order to, I would assume, attempt to smuggle in more resources to Hamas, which has been stealing these resources for literally decades at this point.
00:28:05.000International efforts, according to the Wall Street Journal, remain underway to free hostages in Gaza and prevent the fight from escalating into a regional conflict.
00:28:11.000As we'll see, the United States is trying to do that by both bribing and also by threatening.
00:28:17.000In northern Israel, a bunch of northern Israeli towns have been evacuated.
00:28:22.000Kiryat Shmona, which has 22,000 people, was fully evacuated in the northern front because of the possibility that Hezbollah attempts to get in the war and start firing rockets into the north of Israel.
00:28:32.000That, of course, would mean a major escalation.
00:28:35.000Israel also is taking the gloves off in a way that it should have for the last several decades.
00:28:39.000It's taking the gloves off with regard to terror sites.
00:28:42.000So, for example, over the weekend, Israel struck a mosque compound in the West Bank.
00:28:47.000They did that because they knew that weapons were being hidden in the mosque and a major terror attack was being planned from there, so they hit the mosque.
00:28:52.000This, of course, is the reason why Palestinian terrorists like to hide in mosques, because then they get to claim that Israel is striking religious sites.
00:29:02.000Meanwhile, again, the United States is sort of sending a little bit of mixed signals.
00:29:08.000So Tony Blinken, Secretary of State, he said we're concerned at the possibility that Iranian proxies are going to escalate the war against the United States.
00:29:15.000They should be a lot more worried about escalating the war against the United States than we should be worried about them escalating the war against us.
00:29:20.000Just to be perfectly frank about this, if they fire on American warships, everyone in Hezbollah will be dead.
00:29:26.000The United States is not a power to be trifled with.
00:29:28.000And the fact that we are constantly kind of pussyfooting around this like oh well you know we're
00:29:34.000worried about Iranian proxies escalating against us they should be a lot more worried
00:29:37.000about us escalating against them considering the United States military is the most powerful
00:29:40.000fighting force in the history of the world bar none we have a military budget that is the
00:29:44.000rest of the world's combined times two so they like if Hezbollah decides that they want to get it on
00:29:50.000by the way this is the message we should It's like, you want to do this?
00:29:55.000Do you really want to cross that line?
00:30:37.000The President of the United States, in his last speech, he should have said, we don't want you to escalate.
00:30:41.000You should not want you to escalate, because if you escalate, you will be dead.
00:30:45.000I mean, that is how it works in the Middle East.
00:30:47.000And pretending otherwise is really, really, really done.
00:30:49.000By the way, Israel is saying some of that sort of stuff.
00:30:52.000So Nir Barkat, who is a member of the government right now, he's Israel's Minister of the Economy, he warned Iran that if they get directly involved, Israel will, quote, cut the head of the snake off, which is what Israel has to convey.
00:31:05.000If they don't convey that, then Iran will, in fact, get in.
00:31:08.000And it is worthwhile noting here that there is, in fact, a common interest Not necessarily among Iran, but even among Iran, and not escalating this thing.
00:31:19.000Those proxies include the Houthis in Yemen, they include Hezbollah in the north of Israel, they include the Syrian government, they include the Lebanese regime, which is Hezbollah, and they include Hamas.
00:31:28.000Hamas was not supposed to succeed this way.
00:31:30.000The entire goal of this terrorist attack was probably to kill 50 Jews and kidnap five, and instead it killed 1,500 Jews and kidnapped 200.
00:31:36.000And because of that, Hamas is now in existential danger.
00:31:39.000And so Iran would prefer not to have the knight on its chessboard knocked off the chessboard, but that is what's going to happen.
00:31:46.000And so Iran now has to consider whether it prefers to lose its knight in the Gaza Strip plus another knight in Northern Israel slash Southern Lebanon, in Hezbollah, Because if it escalates, that's where this is going.
00:32:28.000So for all the talk about how the entire Arab world is united against Israel, that's not really true.
00:32:32.000Basically of the Iranian proxies who are united against Israel and the Sunnis who are like If Hamas gets taken out, we can't say that we're happy about it, but we're pretty happy about it.
00:32:40.000We're pretty much okay with all of that.
00:32:43.000The United States is seeking another way, which is buy off Hamas.
00:32:55.000You'll be giving them money, and they will use it for the worst possible purposes.
00:32:57.000And yet, And yet, you are seeing, again, this attempt to win Arab support by somehow looking as though you're putting clamps on the state of Israel, when in reality, what the United States should be saying to Israel is, you do what you need to do, and we will push everybody else off the ball.
00:33:12.000But if you appear to be holding Israel back, if you appear to be trying to tell Israel to back off, then what you're really doing is you're providing fodder for the so-called Arab Street.
00:33:22.000Because if you keep saying to Israel over and over and over, you guys, don't violate human rights, don't violate, then you are playing directly into the narrative, which is that there is some sort of human rights comparison between the state of Israel and its enemies.
00:33:38.000It makes me feel a lot more comfortable as a human being that, God forbid, something happens to me, my family, at least financially, is taken care of.
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00:35:47.000And yet you're seeing kind of this weird push from the West all about human rights and encouraging Israel to follow the rules of war.
00:35:54.000Understand the entire basis for the terrorist opposition to Israel is trying to get Israel to quote unquote obey the rules of war in ways that no other country would while violating the rules of war yourself.
00:36:17.000So over the weekend, he was asked whether Israel should delay the ground invasion as he was walking up the stairs to Air Force One, trying not to trip.
00:36:24.000And he said, yes, which like, dude, that is a confidential military discussion that you are having with the Israeli government.
00:36:31.000That is not something you should be spilling to the press.
00:36:33.000That's just buying time for Hamas, obviously.
00:37:14.000Tony Blinken then tried to walk that one back again.
00:37:15.000These sorts of mixed signals do have ramifications in real bloody terms.
00:37:20.000Have you asked the Israeli government to delay in order to give you more time to broker the release of these hostages?
00:37:27.000First, step back for a second because it's important to remember what happened.
00:37:31.000It's incredible how quickly that gets lost because it was only a couple of weeks ago that Hamas Invaded Israel with its terrorist fighters and Slaughtered and I use that that word very deliberately slaughtered So many people again men women young children babies old people You name it and they continue to rain rockets down on Israel when I was there a few days ago We were in the but we were we had to take shelter a couple of times because of the rockets from Hamas so my point is this
00:38:05.000No country, no country can be expected to tolerate this, to live with this.
00:38:10.000And as we said from the start, Israel has both the right and even the obligation, not only to defend itself, but to try to make sure that, to the best of its ability, this can't happen again.
00:38:21.000Now, the problem is that the opposing point of view, the sort of, but isn't it a cycle?
00:38:26.000That point of view is incredibly strong in the State Department, so much so that Blinken had to have a listening session with all of his little buddies over at the State Department.
00:38:47.000Okay, so Blingin tried to walk it back, but then you have the mixed message that is coming out of the Biden administration, which is, but there are so many good people on every side.
00:38:55.000There are good people on both sides, you might say.
00:38:57.000So Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, who's been very strong in saying Israel should be able to defend itself, then he keeps adding this tag, Israel has to follow the laws of war.
00:39:40.000To your point, each target, John, needs to be assessed, carefully assessed, and we need to do everything we can to make sure that civilians are not injured or threatened.
00:39:52.000So the right thing to do is to make sure that we account for civilians in our planning, that we provide corridors for their movement out of the battle space, that we are not destroying protected Properties and where possible and I think the Israelis have been doing this for some time again They are a professional force and we will encourage continue to encourage them to make sure that they're doing things in accordance with the law of war
00:40:27.000Yeah, they need everybody looking over their shoulder and telling them to do things in accordance with the law of war.
00:40:44.000Joe Biden did a lot of this last week when he gave his address where he talked about how the Israelis had to be warned over and over not to take revenge like 9-11.
00:40:49.000They had to be warned about the mistakes of 9-11.
00:40:53.000The Israelis have to be told about human rights.
00:40:55.000They have to be lectured like small school children about human rights.
00:40:58.000Meanwhile, the people they're facing are, you know, raping women and taking them captive.
00:41:02.000So Biden over the weekend, he tweeted out, this is the Western attempt to go back to sleep.
00:41:09.000The reason the two-state solution is dead is not because Israel wants it dead.
00:41:13.000If Israel could have handed over control of the Gaza Strip to Egypt, it would do it today.
00:41:16.000If Israel could hand over control of Jenin to Jordan, it would do it today.
00:41:20.000Israel has no interest in governing these areas because Israel does not want to govern these areas.
00:41:25.000They're violent and very difficult to run.
00:41:28.000And yet the reason the two-state solution is dead is because of that.
00:41:31.000It's because these areas are very violent and very difficult to run because they keep electing terror groups, for example, and have heavy levels of support for the terror groups.
00:41:38.000We can all pretend away that the civilian population in the Palestinian areas of the West Bank, that these are full Western liberal-minded people.
00:41:51.000And so when you say there ought to be a peace process, With, quote-unquote, the Palestinian people.
00:41:55.000The only people you can negotiate with are the representatives of the Palestinian people.
00:41:59.000So far, in history, they've had the following representatives.
00:42:01.000The Palestinian Authority, led by Yasser Arafat, followed by the Palestinian Authority, led by the Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas, Islamic Jihad, an actual terrorist group, and Hamas, an actual terrorist group.
00:42:13.000So, what are you jabbering about a two-state solution for?
00:42:16.000We'll get to the wages of that in a moment, because again, it sets up this false binary that makes it impossible for Israel to do what it needs to do to preserve its own security.
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00:43:25.000So again, what should have happened with the Hamas attack is the West waking up to what the threat is, and that would have a bunch of consequences.
00:43:32.000In terms of the Middle East situation, it would remind the West that the so-called free Palestine movement is in fact a pro-terror movement that hates the West and seeks its destruction.
00:43:44.000You can pretend that away, or you can't, but it would mean that Israel would be far less pressured to make concessions to terrorist groups.
00:43:50.000In terms of what the West would do, it would mean that the West would seriously think about restricting its immigration protocols.
00:43:55.000I mean, the number of radicalized Islamic immigrants from Northern Africa and the Middle East over the course of the last 20 years in Europe is astonishing, which is why you are seeing giant, giant rallies across the West.
00:44:07.000Those are not mainly left-wing people.
00:44:10.000There's some left-wing hangers-on who are too stupid to recognize that the first people who get beheaded if the radical Muslims take over are them.
00:44:17.000But the reason that you're seeing, for example, a 100,000-person pro-Hamas rally in London That is not because you have a bunch of people in London who are moderate Muslims who are just a little upset about the human rights situation in the Middle East.
00:44:31.000It's because you have imported hundreds of thousands throughout Europe, millions of radicalized Islamists who hate the West.
00:45:01.000The Metropolitan Police estimated 100,000 people participated in the protest.
00:45:09.000They'll have signs that say, free Palestine.
00:45:15.000By that they mean, by the way, like all of Israel should be obliterated.
00:45:19.000And again, these are not all, you know, nice left-wingers who just went to the wrong university.
00:45:24.000A huge percentage of these people are new immigrants from the Middle East and from Northern Africa who hate Jews, like really, really hate Jews.
00:45:32.000And that starts in the Middle East and pretending that it doesn't is a serious mistake.
00:45:35.000So Joe Biden, for example, yesterday, he tweeted out and strategically he's trying to He's trying to have it both ways.
00:45:42.000He's trying to say Israel should defend itself, but also the people that it's fighting with very often.
00:46:32.000As far as ignoring the humanity of innocent Palestinians who only want to live in peace, there are two things that are happening there.
00:46:37.000One, he is thrusting the responsibility for civilians in Gaza, not on the legitimate government of Gaza, the Hamas, right?
00:46:44.000If the United States is attacked by a foreign power, the Russians, you know whose responsibility it is for safeguarding the civilians in the United States?
00:47:07.000You get to be a terrorist group, and you have no responsibility for your own civilian population.
00:47:11.000Also, the suggestion beneath all of this is that, again, Hamas is just a few bad apples.
00:47:16.000Just a few people who are bad apples that there's no actual- which is why a two-state solution is possible, after all.
00:47:21.000If it turns out that Hamas is a few bad apples, and the Palestinian Authority is a few bad apples, and Islamic Jihad is a few bad apples, Then really, and Lion's Den is a few bad apples, and Hezbollah is a few, they're just a few bad apples.
00:47:32.000I mean, yeah, a lot of them, but they're really just a few bad, so peace is still possible.
00:47:37.000Justin Trudeau, a moron, he tweeted similarly along these lines.
00:47:43.000He tweeted out, quote, as members of the Palestinian Arab and Black communities gathered for prayer yesterday, I wanted them to know this.
00:48:03.000But this sort of moral equivalence language is what people are comfortable with.
00:48:06.000Now, I just want to point out here that these so-called peace partners here are not peace partners, both governmentally, as well as, yes, the civilian population in Judea and Samaria in the West Bank.
00:48:15.000There is no evidence whatsoever that they are seeking a negotiated peace deal in which the state of Israel gets to continue to exist.
00:49:11.000It doesn't mean that they shouldn't attempt to minimize civilian casualties, which they are.
00:49:14.000This is why they're pushing people south toward where the electricity and water are still running.
00:49:17.000By the way, shops are still open in southern Gaza.
00:49:20.000Well, what it does mean is that this lie, that basically it's a few people at the top who are the problem, and the rest of the population, they are just Western liberals, so we can either import them into the West, or we can force Israel to make concessions that ends with a Palestinian state, because after all, aren't we all the same underneath?
00:51:10.000It's just, it's so, it's so devastating.
00:51:12.000So this is the guy they show on BBC, right?
00:51:14.000I mean, this is the kind of person they show on BBC crying from the inside of a hospital.
00:51:17.000What they don't show is the first half where he's celebrating the rockets being fired into Israel.
00:51:21.000This sort of double message is what continues to allow the West to blind itself on a routine basis, just constantly blinding itself.
00:51:29.000By the way, while we are trying to get the humanitarian aid into Gaza, it is worth noting here that Hamas is literally, literally right now, according to Anthony Blinken, preventing American citizens in Gaza, not the kidnapped, like Arab Americans who are in Gaza, Hamas is trying to stop them from leaving.
00:51:48.000So we're smuggling them aid, and at the same time, Hamas is trying to prevent the American civilians from leaving.
00:51:53.000But don't worry, these are so many wonderful people.
00:51:56.000In terms of what's happening in Gaza, I know there are an estimated five to six hundred Americans there.
00:52:03.000Is there any chance Israel lets some of those Americans out, or Egypt allows some of those Americans in?
00:52:10.000And, to date at least, Hamas has blocked them from leaving, showing once again its total disregard for civilians of any kind who are stuck in Gaza.
00:52:35.000And, by the way, they're constantly being told things that are untrue about the nature of many people who immigrate to the West.
00:52:42.000So, just to take a quick example, there's a poll from an organization called Signal This poll pulled Americans on a wide variety of issues, including the Palestinians.
00:52:54.000And one of the things that I found is that, for example, Muslim Americans in the United States, according to this poll, have a plus 16 net favorable rating for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and a net 4% favorable rating for the leader of Hamas.
00:53:10.000Americans, by the way, are 47 points underwater on the leader of the Hamas terrorist organization, but Muslim Americans are four points over water on the leader of Hamas.
00:53:21.000Also, it turns out that Muslim Americans, unfortunately, a majority of Muslim Americans, according to this SignalPoll, are not anti-Hamas, which is unfortunate.
00:53:33.000Apparently, a majority of Muslim Americans have a positive view of Gaza.
00:53:39.000Not only that, it turns out that A majority of Muslim Americans disagree that Israel should invade Gaza.
00:53:47.000A majority, like a large majority, 58% of Muslim Americans agree that Hamas was justified in its attack on Israel. 58%.
00:53:56.000So, you know, when it comes to, again, the lie that all human beings think the same way and have the same values, that's wrong.
00:54:02.000And it's a stupid, stupid thing to believe.
00:54:04.000But Americans are ingesting it, which is why, for example, there's a new poll from the Wall Street Journal, and what it shows is a 2022 survey.
00:54:13.00075% of Americans have a positive view of the Israeli people.
00:54:17.00051% of Americans have a favorable view of the Palestinian people.
00:54:22.000I'm just wondering what that would be based on.
00:54:25.000Seriously, you can have an unfavorable view of people and also not believe that they should be mistreated or harmed in any way, but it's that separation.
00:54:35.000It's this idea that, again, everybody just wants the same thing.
00:54:38.000Everybody just would love to have the same.
00:54:44.000By the way, this new poll from the Wall Street Journal shows that if you're under the age of 30, a broad majority do not support Israel and its war against Hamas.
00:54:54.000The statistics among young people, by the way, are just devastating.
00:54:58.000Because again, when you indoctrinate people in a post-colonialist, idiotic, wild left-wing, wretched-of-the-earth mindset, this is what you end up with.
00:55:07.000So, there's polling data that now shows that young Americans particularly are heavily sympathetic to actual terrorism.
00:55:17.000According to this poll from Harvard-Harris, this Harvard-Harris poll shows, here's the question, do you think the Hamas killing of 1,200 Israeli civilians in Israel can be justified by the grievances of Palestinians or is not justified?
00:55:30.000The older you get, the more sane you are on this question.
00:55:31.000If you are above the age of 65, 91% say not justified.
00:55:35.000If you are between the ages of 18 and 24, a majority, a majority, 51% of people aged 18 to 24 believe that Hamas is justified in murdering 1,200 civilians.
00:56:43.000People, um, getting rough with the police officers.
00:56:55.000But, you know, no big deal because they're of the right political persuasion.
00:56:59.000At Barry Weiss's free press, Barry, of course, is a Zionist and a Jew, and at her offices at the free press, somebody came by and graffitied outside the office, F Jews, So, obviously people who, they have territorial disputes.
00:57:17.000Meanwhile, a woman who is a Detroit Jewish community leader named Samantha Wool was murdered over the weekend.
00:57:27.000The police have yet to establish who exactly did it, but they're jumping to the conclusion that they know the motive, which is interesting.
00:57:33.000So we'll find out whether that is true or not.
00:57:35.000But certainly, tensions are running incredibly high.
00:57:39.000According to the Washington Free Beacon, an Israeli Harvard Business School student was accosted and harassed amid a Gaza die-in on campus.
00:58:00.000So Skokie is most famously the site of a neo-Nazi march in which the left suggested that everyone has the right to free speech and all the rest of it.
00:58:07.000But the new neo-Nazis, the neo-neo-Nazis, they arrived in Skokie as well.
00:58:12.000They were supposed to hold their protest actually in in downtown Chicago.
00:58:17.000And then they saw that the Jews were going to hold their protest in Skokie,
00:58:19.000which is a heavily Jewish part of Chicago.
00:58:49.000But the fact that they're going to Jewish areas, meaning the anti-Semites are going to Jewish areas in order to start trouble, that, of course, is not a shock.
00:59:20.000shame on you after massacring you know twelve hundred jews
00:59:24.000that's that makes perfect sense so tensions are high
00:59:28.000The good news is, again, when you cultivate not only people who are terror supporters in the West, but also a bunch of useful idiots in the West, that's very helpful.
00:59:37.000The New York Times is populated entirely by useful idiots.
00:59:39.000This is how you have useful idiot Michelle Goldberg writing an entire column called, It's Impossible to Know What to Believe in this Hideous War.
00:59:47.000No, I actually know what to believe and who to believe in this hideous war, actually.
01:00:12.000We must not kill Gazan children to try to protect Israel's children.
01:00:15.000No one's killing Gazan children except for Hamas, which is putting its children in the way of bombs.
01:00:20.000But Nicholas Kristof, again, looking for that moral equivalence, that very comfortable, lukewarm, soft embrace of moral equivalence.
01:00:28.000The crisis in the Middle East is a naughty test of our humanity, asking how to respond to a grotesque provocation for which there is no good remedy.
01:00:34.000And in this test, we in the West are not doing well.
01:00:37.000The acceptance of large-scale bombing of Gaza and a ground invasion, likely to begin, suggests Palestinian children are lesser victims, devalued by their association with Hamas.
01:01:02.000Everybody, including me, was willing to overlook his space-Jews routine, in which he suggested that, of course, the Jews were the big colonizers in the Middle East, and he basically parroted all of the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, anti-Jewish nonsense that has been promoted around the left wing for years and years in one of his old specials.
01:01:20.000And I kind of looked the other way, and I was like, okay, whatever, you know, he's a comedian.
01:01:22.000Well, apparently, he was sort of standing for Hamas, and of course, calling Israel a human rights violator at one of his shows last week.
01:02:43.000You must leave the terrorists in place.
01:02:45.000They wrote a letter to the President, quote, Dear President, we come together as artists and advocates, but most importantly, as human beings, witnessing the devastating loss of lives and unfolding horrors in Israel and Palestine.
01:02:55.000We ask that as President of the United States, you call for an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Gaza and Israel before another life is lost.
01:03:02.000There is zero mention in this entire letter of Hamas.
01:03:05.000There is zero mention of what led off this conflict.
01:03:07.000This is the way, by the way, that moral morons do what they do.
01:03:11.000What they do is they just ignore the beginning of every war.
01:03:13.000It's a fun way to, again, escape moral culpability and the fact that you, in fact, are a fellow traveler with Hamas to do all of this stuff.