Glenn Greenwald and Alex Blumberg join host Jamie Poisson to discuss the Supreme Court ruling allowing a judge to protect the right to burn the American flag and the Israeli flag in the case of a woman who tried to do so.
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00:01:44.900Agued that it's actually, the flag is representative of the state of Israel.
00:01:48.900And so their ruling was, what the judge said was that, essentially, the flag is protected.
00:01:56.160And therefore, what that could mean, and this is why I wanted to ask you, what does that mean?
00:01:59.140Does that mean that if somebody was to burn the flag, defecate the flag, you know, you know, you see it on Twitter quite a lot where people are changing.
00:02:27.940Say that you cannot constitutionally criminalize the burning of the American flag.
00:02:32.080So I would love to say, obviously, that would mean that you can't criminalize the burning of the Israeli flag, too.
00:02:37.360But given all the things I've just already reviewed about how you're allowed to say things about the United States or any other country, you just can't say them about Israel.
00:02:44.780I actually wouldn't feel that confident predicting such an outcome.
00:02:48.500But I will say this is the other crucial irony that you also raised with this case.
00:03:03.940But another conservative grievance, for as long as I can remember, is that, and again, it's a grievance that I think is valid and supported when it was coming from conservatives, is that what liberals do, what people on the left do, in lieu of having debates, is the minute you disagree with them, the minute you say something that they think is wrong or bad, they come and they call you a racist.
00:03:36.280They incite violence against minority groups.
00:03:38.500I don't think there's any group of people who screams racist so casually and frequently as Israel supporters in the United States.
00:03:47.680I mean, anybody in this room who's ever uttered a peep of criticism about Israel doesn't need me to tell you that.
00:03:53.120And it's just so amazing to watch, again, all these conservatives who mocked every accusation of racism, every cry of racism from every other group.
00:04:16.860Obviously, they can't say it's illegal to criticize Israel.
00:04:20.960But what they do is they conflate Israel and the Jews.
00:04:25.240So, if you say, I'm in favor of cutting off money to Israel, they'll say, oh, of course you want to punish the Jews as though Israel and the Jews are the same.
00:04:32.080And then once you make that conflation, then you can say, oh, anyone protesting Israel, anybody condemning Israel, anybody, you know, demonizing the Israeli flag is engaged in anti-Semitism.
00:04:44.900And we're allowed on campuses and elsewhere to outlaw anti-Semitism because that violates education law, that violates the rules of campus.
00:04:54.040This is the fraud that isn't just deployed as a sort of scummy way of arguing, but also increasingly the foundation of this censorship regime that is being implemented for Israel.
00:05:04.320You just equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, and that just makes it so that now you're yelling racism as a way to legally justify these restrictions on free speech.
00:05:16.860And I've got another question for you.
00:05:17.960Now, as you know, Francesca Albanese has been someone who's been vocal against the ongoing genocide that's happening in Gaza.
00:05:26.480She was sanctioned by the U.S. government.
00:05:29.740A group of Israeli lawyers basically began litigation against her and pressured Elon Musk to remove her blue checkmark away from her.
00:05:39.580Now, I'm someone whose blue checkmark has also been removed.
00:05:43.780And the reason, again, was the level of penetration that we had in terms of our profile on X and our spaces.
00:05:49.540Now, what that represents is in terms of the blue checkmark is it represents a form of censorship because you don't get the same level of reach that you had before.
00:05:58.600And it's a way of ensuring a form of censorship without completely banning you.
00:06:04.000And some people, when they get the blue checkmark removed, I mean, they completely have the non-existent.
00:06:08.220If you remember, Matt Taibbi, once he had his blue checkmark removed, his account almost died.
00:06:13.300And so what does that say? And the same thing happened to me for a while until the Israel-Iran situation happened.
00:06:18.580And then obviously that revived my account.
00:06:20.300But blue checkmark being removed is a massive form of censorship.
00:06:23.980That's happened on X, even though X is one of the only free speech platforms left.
00:06:28.400And so I guess my question to you is, what does that say about where we're going?
00:06:32.940Because if this has now happened to Francesca Albanese and one of the reasons they gave in terms of why it was happening,
00:06:39.160what they said, she's promoting biased and malicious activities characterized as unbiased, sorry, unbashed anti-Semitism.
00:06:47.340This is the important bit, expansion of support of terrorism.
00:06:50.420And that bit, the expansion of support of terrorism is their claim that she supports Hamas.
00:06:55.180And the claim that she supports Hamas is the fact that she disagrees with some of the claims that are made about what happened on October the 7th,
00:07:05.080Obviously, I'm one of the people who's exposed a lot of the lies and propaganda about October the 7th.
00:07:09.560And so therefore, I mean, this affects me in the sense of I'm worried about like, you know, how this could escalate.
00:07:14.780You got the blue checkmark removed. It could be banning later.
00:07:17.320So I guess my question to you is telling you that entire thing is,
00:07:19.800when you're seeing this happening to someone as big as Francesca Albanese, a UN rapporteur,
00:07:25.040what does that tell us about where we're going in terms of even social media censorship,
00:07:29.280government involvement, and the links?
00:07:31.220Remember, this was something people complained about in the past.
00:07:33.180Well, I think what's really happening is that you're seeing a precipitous decline in support for Israel among almost every demographic group in America.
00:07:45.160The only group in America that continues overwhelmingly to have favorable views of Israel are old Republicans,
00:07:51.580like Republicans over 55 or 60 or whatever.
00:07:55.220You know, people have had on Fox News for decades who listen to Sean Hannity,
00:07:59.340who believe that whole worldview going back to the Cold War, told that Israel is the bulwark against communism,
00:08:04.800the only democracy in the Middle East, et cetera.
00:08:06.620But every other group, including younger Republicans, by younger, I don't mean 18 to 24.
00:08:10.920I mean like all Republicans under the age of 50, now by a majority, have an unfavorable view of Israel.
00:08:19.880And, you know, the percentage that supports what Israel is doing in Gaza is even lower.
00:08:24.460And so one of the things that I think, and it's a little complicated, I'm just trying to simplify it,
00:08:29.440is one of the things that I think happened is Israel saw a long time ago that there are only a couple places in the United States
00:08:37.080that really permit thriving criticism of Israel, and they set out to destroy those institutions.
00:08:42.140One of the very few places was on American college campuses, because what was happening on American college campuses is
00:08:48.340they decided to replicate the model that was used in the 1980s where students on campuses were urging a boycott of South Africa
00:09:20.520You will go to jail if you advocate for a boycott of Israel.
00:09:23.860And then there are all kinds of laws now in American states.
00:09:26.660Thirty-seven states have a law that says if you, as an American citizen, want to get a contract with the state,
00:09:33.180like you want to, you're like a speech pathologist and you offer, you know, services to school districts to work with kids with a speech deficiency,
00:09:40.400this is a real case, you have to sign a loyalty oath saying you will not boycott Israel.
00:09:46.180And if you don't, you're barred from getting a contract.
00:09:49.400Again, you can boycott any other state, any other country that you want.
00:09:52.780You can even boycott other American states.
00:09:55.560You know, there were liberal boycotts of North Carolina and Georgia because of their Voting Rights Act,
00:09:59.540North Carolina and Indiana because of their trans bathroom bills.
00:10:03.360You're totally fine to boycott your own fellow Americans or any other country in the world.
00:10:07.620You just can't boycott this one country or else you can't get contracts.
00:10:12.140And so this has been something that Israel has been obsessed with and their supporters in the U.S. are college campuses.
00:10:18.320And a lot of this anti-woke stuff, like pundits, like Barry Weiss led this anti-woke movement.
00:10:23.640She, you know, built the free press on it.
00:10:27.180Well, some of that was genuine opposition to the grave accesses of the woke movement, which I shared.
00:10:33.040But a lot of it was really more about they wanted to destroy the credibility of colleges
00:10:38.340because colleges was the ground zero for this boycott Israel movement.
00:10:42.800And it was a place where a lot of anti-Israel protests could thrive.
00:10:46.280And that was why they became so obsessed with colleges.
00:10:48.580And after October 7, it became, you know, kind of this this priority of the U.S. government to impose censorship and force people to fight, you know, to get fired if they weren't sufficiently pro-Israel.
00:11:00.440You know, you could spend the rest of the call like detailing all the things that have been done to colleges, including, you know, forcing Brown to implement a DEI program for Jews, which we can get into if you want.
00:11:09.200So that was one of the things they're panicking and they say, OK, colleges are one place where Israel criticism is permitted.
00:11:15.820So we have to really go hard after them.
00:11:18.880And then the other thing is that I don't think a lot of people realize is that this TikTok ban, when Donald Trump first advocated the TikTok ban, along with Republicans in 2020, the idea was, oh, it's a danger because it's controlled by the Chinese.
00:11:32.280It never got anywhere near the votes to enact.
00:11:41.500And even the Republican sponsors of the TikTok ban will tell you this.
00:11:44.680The only reason why it ended up getting passed and the Biden administration supported it is because Democrats became convinced that one of the main reasons that so many young Americans were turning against Israel was because TikTok allowed too much Israel criticism on the platform.
00:11:59.200It was to protect Israel that TikTok was banned.
00:12:03.020And now they're, you know, desperate to stay in the U.S.
00:12:04.840So one of the things they just did, the ADL demanded, the ADL, you know, was advocating they be closed, obviously, for the reason I just said.
00:12:12.380And then the ADL met with TikTok and said, look, one of the things you can do is hire somebody we approve of to be the chief censor, i.e. the content moderator, in order to moderate anti-Semitism and moderate criticism of Israel.
00:12:26.300And TikTok just went and hired this American Jewish woman who had gone to Israel and joined the IDF and talked in many videos about how, you know, her highest priority is defending the state of Israel.
00:12:39.940She realizes Zionism is central to her identity.
00:12:42.780She's now the person in charge of censorship at TikTok for content about Israel or for content about Jews.
00:12:48.920So TikTok was another major place where Israel criticism was circulating.
00:12:56.240This is why they're panicking, because they see these polling numbers, you know, dropping precipitously.
00:13:01.800And they view U.S. bipartisan support for Israel as existential, not to Israel's survival.
00:13:06.900Israel could survive fine if the U.S. abandoned them.
00:13:09.680What it's crucial to is Israel's ability to bully and dominate that region.
00:13:14.160That's what they need the United States for, you know, to fund their military, their massive military, to deploy our own military assets whenever they're in trouble.
00:13:21.240And they're panicking over these toll numbers.
00:13:24.520It's what's leading to these kind of very extreme reactionary measures.
00:13:28.740Like, AIPAC has come mask off now about who they are and what they do.
00:13:33.080This censorship stuff at college campuses and TikTok.
00:13:36.580And I think they—I don't think—I don't know if they think it'll work.
00:13:39.740The problem is, is that in this world where we have so much independent media, for now our free internet, you know, we're allowed to talk about this.
00:13:46.980It's everywhere on most of the major independent media shows.
00:13:52.160And I genuinely, as a person who is Jewish, I am concerned that this is going to trigger a lot of anti-Semitism.
00:13:59.380Because at some point, people are going to ask, wait a minute, why are we being told we have to send our tax money to this foreign country?
00:14:05.360Who's telling us that we have to do that?
00:14:08.000Why is it that we're now being told that we'll be punished if we say certain things that social media apps have to close?
00:14:13.380And obviously, you know, the retrieval of the blue checkmark from Francesca Albanese, something that all conservatives hated in the pre-Musk Twitter when that would routinely happen.
00:14:25.080I remember Julian Assange got his Twitter verified mark pulled when he released the documents about Hillary Clinton.
00:14:32.100It was like a punishment for people saying the wrong things.
00:14:34.240That was the pre-Musk Twitter censorship regime that all conservatives condemned.
00:14:38.060And now pro-Israel activists are doing that again.
00:14:41.840And it just shows you how extreme this is becoming.
00:14:53.160And we're speaking to a number of large TikTok creators who are basically confirming what you said, that now using Palestine or free Palestine in TikTok videos is just not possible.
00:15:22.060And it happened only a month after October 7th.
00:15:24.260And people, you know, young people that had no idea what 9-11 was or weren't alive when it happened, like, they read this letter.
00:15:30.080And they're like, oh, look at all these reasons why bin Laden has grievances with the United States.
00:15:34.260And the predominant reason why he was pissed off was because of our interventionist-type foreign policy.
00:15:39.640You know, and I'm so glad you raised that.
00:15:41.400But it's like every time I go on any show where I have a long time, like Tucker's show or some long-form podcast, I always raise this because it's the most shocking thing.
00:15:53.040This letter from Osama bin Laden to Americans where he said, look, I know you're hearing that you were attacked because we hate your freedoms and because, like, you let women go on the beach with bikinis.
00:16:06.380So they would give a shit, you know, like in Saudi Arabia or anywhere else if American women are allowed to go on the beach with bikinis.
00:16:13.580There's huge numbers of countries where that's allowed.
00:16:16.160Al-Qaeda, no one from the Middle East goes and attacks them.
00:16:18.760They, you know, the letter was designed to explain why America was attacked.
00:16:24.920And they said, you weren't just an innocent country minding your own business and got attacked on 9-11.
00:16:29.020You've been bombing our countries and interfering on our countries and overthrowing our leaders and imposing pro-American dictators who suppress our people.
00:16:37.680You constantly are bombing us and killing women and children and innocent men.
00:16:41.680And also, you're supporting Israel and you're the reason why Palestinians have no autonomy.
00:16:49.500They're being killed in large numbers.
00:16:51.680And this was a letter that was, you know, all over the place at the time.
00:16:55.060It was on the Guardian website because obviously you don't have to agree with Osama bin Laden, what he did or what he's claimed to have done or even his rationale.
00:17:01.860It's still, of course, a document that should be read.
00:17:04.000I mean, he's a major figure, Osama bin Laden, in the history of our country.
00:17:08.640You should, of course, hear from him what he has to say.
00:17:12.640There are all these young people who didn't live through 9-11 or were way too young when it happened to remember much of it.
00:17:17.300And they hear the propaganda, oh, it happened because they hate us for our freedoms.
00:17:21.260And they read this letter and they're like, oh, my God, wow.
00:17:23.300It seems like the reason we got attacked isn't because of our freedoms, but because of our aggression in the world and our support for Israel.
00:17:29.400And this freaked Israel and its supporters out that huge numbers of young people were passing around this bin Laden letter.
00:17:36.740And within 24 hours, the government demanded it.
00:17:39.980The Guardian removed it from their website.
00:17:42.100This is a major newspaper in one of the world's oldest democracies, one of the oldest newspapers in the West.
00:17:55.060And then TikTok was forced, especially all the threats that they're going to be banned and kicked out of the United States.
00:18:00.360They obey whatever the government says in terms of censorship now.
00:18:03.480They started banning all the hashtags about the Osama bin Laden letter and all the discussion of it.
00:18:08.880Not only does it show how panicked and desperate Zionists are and Israel supporters are,
00:18:14.260but it also shows you how willing people in the United States are to attack the free speech rights and the freedom of information rights of American citizens to protect this foreign country on the other side of the world.
00:18:26.540It is, I still can't believe that that happened.
00:18:29.360And it's crazy too, Glenn, because it's like they didn't get hit with the propaganda because they weren't alive when it happened.
00:18:33.840So they had a fresh set of eyes to read this letter and they're like, oh, this is why they don't like us.
00:18:39.020And I'll never forget this and I'll turn it to Suleiman because I know he has a good question following up.
00:18:42.640But the ADL, when John the Greenblatt went over to the Knesset, right, and he was talking about this TikTok problem, I'll give him credit.
00:18:50.220He was smart enough to understand that the TikTok problem isn't necessarily an app problem, rather it's an age problem.
00:18:55.880They were concerned that the young people that are growing up that are going to eventually become the legislators, the politicians, the business owners, et cetera, were starting to dislike Israel.
00:19:04.060So he's like, we need to nip this in the butt now because it's going to come back and hurt us later on when we don't get support.
00:19:19.440And just, you know, the reality is Israel hasn't really been on the front burner of our politics.
00:19:24.800You maybe go back to 2018 where it kind of was when they shot at people in Gaza who were having nonviolent protests at the gate and they just sniped them and killed them.
00:19:38.120And you probably have to go back to 2014, the last really full-scale attack of Israel on Gaza.
00:19:44.720So it's been like a decade where Israel really wasn't discussed.
00:19:47.740This is the first look that millions of young people are getting, not just at the true face of Israel, but the true nature of the very subservient posture of the United States when it comes to Israel.
00:19:57.780And it doesn't make sense to them because, as you said, they hadn't been subjected to these decades-long propaganda claims that, you know, so many older Americans have their views formed by.
00:20:11.840Just a few more questions on free speech and then we'll start speaking about air to Israel and AIPAC and these various other things.
00:20:18.380But another contentious issue that occurred recently, but what was quite interesting about it was that it split the MAGA base.
00:20:26.340And I'd say largely, a large part of the MAGA base came out in condemnation, which was about the disaster relief, which was that if you boycotted Israel, you basically weren't going to be helped if it came to disaster aid.
00:20:38.560As you know, America all suffers regularly from disasters, whether it's hurricanes or the fires in Hawaii or various other things.
00:20:45.180And they received a high level of condemnation to the point where they restated their position and they made people think like they'd removed it.
00:20:56.020But in reality, they hadn't. They basically said, look, if you do BDS, it's anti-Semitism.
00:21:00.960If you do anti-Semitism, you're not going to get disaster relief.
00:21:04.220But the issue is this got a large number of people within the MAGA movement upset as well.
00:21:09.120So how did what you're seeing is or I'm seeing is some form of corrosion in that in that regard in terms of MAGA or the things that MAGA stood for and how they're not how Trump or his administration is kind of going against that.
00:21:49.200So Glenn, what I'll do is I'll drop you down and then you can come back in the same way you came back in.
00:21:55.020It just is a glitch that happens on X.
00:21:57.740So we'll just wait for Glenn to get back in.
00:21:59.780While he's getting black, while Glenn's getting back in, guys, I've got a few more questions and then I'm going to turn it to some of the panelists who've got questions.
00:22:07.580If you're in the audience and you've got questions for Glenn Greenwald, then do send it through via super chat, which is in the nest.
00:22:14.940And then we'll read that super chat out for you.
00:22:17.820But let me just send the link back to Glenn so you can use.
00:22:20.320I'm not sure if you can use the old one or not.
00:22:21.640But Glenn, if you're hearing this, what you need to do is just, oh yeah, brilliant.
00:22:40.500All right, so I just want to say like, I was saying like, if you go back a few years, this Hurricane Harvey happened in Texas and it devastated huge number of parts of Texas.
00:22:48.280People lost their homes, there were deaths, and a couple of cities in Texas enacted a rule.
00:22:55.920You know, people needed disaster relief.
00:23:01.640And the city was handing out disaster relief that came from the state, and several of them passed a motion in the city council saying, if you boycott Israel, you can't get disaster relief.
00:23:12.320In other words, if you want disaster relief, a condition is you have to sign the same form that you sign if you want a contract with the state, which is like a loyalty pledge to Israel, vowing that you will never boycott Israeli companies.
00:23:22.800You will not boycott the state of Israel, that you don't support a boycott.
00:23:26.420So this was, you know, our country saying to American citizens who had just been devastated by a hurricane, we're not, we're going to let you suffer unless you vow that you have a loyalty to Israel and will never boycott them and don't support a boycott of Israel.
00:23:43.580That is insanity of the highest order.
00:23:46.160I can't honestly think of any other country where that's possible, where you would deny citizens, your own citizens who are victims of a natural disaster relief unless they're willing to pledge loyalty to a foreign country.
00:23:58.040And as I said, these anti-BDS laws in all these states, I mean, Andrew Cuomo, when he was governor of New York, he boycotted North Carolina and Indiana.
00:24:07.080He barred any state employees from going to North Carolina or Indiana to protest their bathroom bill.
00:24:14.880The very next year, he wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post announcing, if you boycott Israel, we'll boycott you.
00:24:20.540So if you support a boycott of Israel, you will never get any contracts from our state.
00:24:24.240You're ineligible for benefits in our state.
00:24:26.500So he supports boycotting American states and punishing American businesses and American citizens who live in those states.
00:24:33.740And Georgia and North Carolina, Indiana lost a huge amount of money as a result of this boycott.
00:24:39.640But it's OK to boycott fellow Americans, but it's not OK to boycott the state of Israel.
00:24:45.240So one of the this has been kind of evolving now for quite a while.
00:24:50.060But, you know, the genius of AIPAC and the Israel lobby has that they've always kept things kind of subtle.
00:24:55.780You know, they operate in the sewers of D.C. and kind of the bowels of the Congress.
00:25:00.960They don't really have to ever come out in the open, but they now have to.
00:25:06.080And now they're being so extreme that they obviously got the Trump administration to say a condition for disaster preparedness funds to prevent your residents from being killed by a hurricane or tornado or any other kind of natural disaster is that you have to promise that you don't boycott Israel.
00:25:25.160And if you have decided you're going to boycott Israel, you're ineligible for these funds.
00:25:29.160That is the most war prioritization I've ever seen.
00:25:31.940And as you said, there was a lot of backlash because that's it's just too extreme.
00:25:36.260It's too out in the open. It's too explicit.
00:25:37.920Like people like that is obviously prioritizing this foreign government over the welfare and safety and security of our own people.
00:25:44.420And so, yeah, the Trump administration pretended to walk it back by removing that language.
00:25:49.300But as you said, the announcement about the removal at the same time made clear that it's actually the same policy saying, look, while we took this language out, we want you to know that any kind of anti-Semitism, which includes boycotting Israel, will result in your exclusion from eligibility for any benefits or funds from our government.
00:26:09.440So the policy is still in place. They just reworded it to make it less explicit.
00:26:14.960And, you know, I that is, I think, the problem for the Israel lobby and the benefit for people of us who hate the Israel lobby is that because of their the pressure that's for the first time being placed on this,
00:26:26.780because of the growing awareness that millions of Americans have for the first time about the way in which their country is so subservient to this foreign country,
00:26:33.720they're having to get more aggressive. They're having to take the mask off.
00:26:36.400They're having to do these things in public. And I guess they feel like they have no other choice.
00:26:41.580But I think they're just going to be fueling the backlash that they're trying to stop.
00:26:45.680Yeah, I completely agree with you, Glenn. One of the major issues that you covered, we also covered on the space.
00:26:50.680But obviously, we appreciate the fact that you covered it with the last platform that you have is the issue in terms of Mahmoud Khalil,
00:26:57.160Romaysa Oztak and basically people in the United States of America being arrested, not for being anti-American,
00:27:02.860but for being basically being against Israel. And for Romaysa Oztak, it wasn't even that.
00:27:07.420It was more about internal university, like in terms of internal university politics, in terms of, you know,
00:27:15.900how how how things within the university should have been dealt with.
00:27:18.940And so and then people were being arrested. Now, one of the arguments, a lot of people found this problematic,
00:27:24.040especially when there was awareness raised. That being said, one of the arguments that people have made against this is that,
00:27:31.360look, they're not. But this is what Marga now are basically saying, largely speaking, not everyone.
00:27:35.380But largely speaking, is, well, they're not U.S. citizens and therefore the rules don't apply to them.
00:27:40.700Now, I know the Supreme Court ruling says differently, but I just do want you to expand on it and just give people an idea.
00:27:47.880Well, this is how a lot of Trump supporters are willing to swallow shit and be like very cheap dates for,
00:27:53.920you know, things that are obviously betrayals of the things they were promised.
00:27:57.280Just if it were the case, the Trump administration decided that we just don't want any more foreign students in the United States.
00:28:03.660They're all getting deported. We're not taking any more foreign students.
00:28:06.960I wouldn't support that policy, but I would understand that a lot of people who are in MAGA would.
00:28:12.220It would be very consistent with with the things they believe, with their values.
00:28:16.180And I could understand them supporting it.
00:28:20.380If you are a foreign student in the United States or you're just a foreigner in the United States, like, say, a Jordan Peterson, just take him as an example, or Douglas Murray, who's constantly in the United States, and you're agitating, you're attacking the government, you're attending protests like Jordan Peterson does, you're not going to get deported as long as you're pro-Israel.
00:28:41.400If you're a foreign student, you can go to all the protests you want.
00:28:44.020You can write all the op-eds you want as long as you're defending Israel.
00:28:47.520No one's getting deported who are foreign students except for one group of people, people who have criticized Israel.
00:28:54.900And in the case of the PhD student at Tufts that you mentioned, Raz Magas took, and I really encourage people to go read this.
00:29:01.660The only thing she did, the government admits, the only thing she did that caused them to send masked ICE agents to snatch her up from the street and put her in a ICE facility, detention facility,
00:29:12.700she co-authored with three other students at Tufts an op-ed saying the Senate voted to implement a boycott of Israel, and so we think that the administration should honor the request of the decision of the faculty Senate.
00:29:28.340As you said, it was more about internal processes.
00:29:30.700She's a Tufts PhD student on the verge of getting her PhD, never broke a law, never got arrested, no one has anything but extremely good things to say about her, and her only crime was that she wrote an op-ed.
00:29:44.300Now, it is true that people who are in the United States, especially legally, have the same protections of the Constitution as Americans, especially under the First Amendment, because the Bill of Rights is not gifts given to a certain group of people called Americans.
00:29:57.500It's restrictions on what the U.S. government can do on its own soil.
00:30:02.320And so, you know, it would be like if Joe Biden in 2022 had said, anybody who criticizes me or supports Donald Trump, if you're a foreign student and you write something in support of Trump or critical of me, Joe Biden, my administration, you're getting deported.
00:30:18.060No one would have any difficulty understanding why that would be a violation of the First Amendment.
00:30:21.860You can't have deportation programs and decisions about who gets deported based exclusively on what political opinions they have.
00:30:30.620So that is what, you know, whenever I denounce these policies, I have so many Trump supporters, like on my show, just like in social media everywhere saying, yeah, we want these people out.
00:30:40.820It's like these people are not going out.
00:30:43.420You know, you're not getting mass deportations of illegal immigrants, nor are you getting mass deportations of foreign students legally in the U.S.
00:30:50.000You're just getting deportations of people who criticize Israel.
00:30:54.100And I don't even if I, you know, disliked a certain view, I wouldn't want the government deporting people based on what political views they have or don't have, especially, again, when it's about a foreign country.
00:31:05.860Not even that you don't get deported if you criticize the United States.
00:31:08.760You can criticize the United States government.
00:31:10.480You just can't criticize the Israeli government.
00:31:13.120And, again, I find that to be a pretty extreme measure for a political movement that called itself America First and Pro Free Speech.
00:31:22.120Suleiman, if I could add something real quick.
00:31:24.380So because I got in, as you guys know, Suleiman knows, I don't know if you know, Glenn, you know, people would put me more on the right wing.
00:31:31.240So I'm constantly getting in arguments with people on the MAGA side because I call them MAGA tards because a lot of them don't have critical thinking skills.
00:31:37.660And I'll kind of explain this Mahmoud Khalil case.
00:31:40.440I'm one of the few people on the right that actually sees this as a big problem.
00:31:43.860And the reason why I see this as a big problem is I basically said, look, I used to work in immigration.
00:32:14.740And basically they put him in deportation proceedings for making political speech.
00:32:19.500What ended up happening was they couldn't deport him because they found that it violated his First Amendment despite the fact that he was a green card holder.
00:32:26.000And I can't tell you how many arguments, guys, I got into, well, people from the right that are too stupid to understand that if they take a green card's rights away, it's going to be an American citizen next.
00:32:35.960And they're like, oh, get him out of here.
00:32:37.540And it's like, no, bro, you guys are literally stepping over dollar bills to pick up pennies with this situation.
00:32:42.900And there's case law on this that proves that it's illegal to deport green card holders for politically protected speech.
00:32:48.560Yeah, and Mahmoud Khalil is a green card holder on his path to citizenship because his wife is an American citizen and so is his newborn infant.
00:32:58.260And, you know, and the one thing I just want to add, because you're so right, Myron, about this, like, Supreme Court precedent, is that this is not a doctrine invented by, like, left-wing Supreme Court justices.
00:33:08.820There are cases in the 19th century where they would have, like, Chinese immigrants in California and they would be accused of committing a certain crime and they would just, like, kind of convict them in this roughshod proceeding no due process.
00:33:20.540And the Supreme Court said that the due process guarantee applies to everybody inside the United States on U.S. soil because, again, it's a restriction on what the U.S. government can do.
00:33:29.740And so in the name of Israel, we're going to take 150 years of precedent about restrictions on our own government to preserve liberty, and we're going to now just sacrifice our own free First Amendment rights, our own ideas about what the government can and can't do in servitude to this foreign country.
00:33:45.100And a lot of it is also based on this, you know, idea that there's only one type of bigotry that needs to be stopped, and that's anti-Semitism, that the only victimhood group is American Jews.
00:34:00.540And so we need to even, you know, dismantle our 150-year-old constitutional protections and precedents in order to protect American Jews because they have unique levels of marginalization and repression, which is actually laughable to assert.
00:34:15.760But that is the foundation for so much of what's taking place.
00:34:21.020And I think I added the case law, guys, up in the nest for you guys.
00:34:26.280So if anyone ever tries to tell you, oh, they got to get Mahmoud Khalil out of here, that's BS.
00:34:30.300This case literally has almost identical facts.
00:34:32.620Green card holder, freedom of speech issue.
00:34:35.020The only difference is they try to label Khalil as a terrorist versus this guy was a communist, which I would argue is a functional equivalent back in the 40s.
00:34:41.340So, yeah, it's just it's amazing to me how, like, so many conservatives, like, don't have their wherewithal to understand that we literally just got out of a pro-censorship presidency.
00:34:49.520And they're just so quick to go, OK, let's just go ahead and take other people's speech.
00:34:56.440One last question on free speech, and then I want to speak about Israel, aid to Israel, and the financial aspects of Israel and a few other topics related to Israel.
00:35:05.540That being said, I saw one of your tweets earlier on today, Glenn, and you were talking about free speech in the United Kingdom.
00:35:11.760And obviously, I vehemently agree with you in terms of each group believing that they are being censored.
00:35:17.220And obviously, me being pro-Palestinian, I mean, I don't think I'm being biased.
00:35:21.460But when you look at the level of censorship that's happening in the United Kingdom, it is large.
00:35:26.040And Chad, I'll leave the case law up here so you guys can look at it for a little bit.
00:35:51.500And so when you look at all of those things, largely speaking, if you look at the UK, it is a censorship.
00:35:56.720It's mainly happening for the pro-Palestinian movement.
00:35:59.340Now, I know people make the argument about Lucy Connolly.
00:36:01.740But if you look at what she said, it is something which is a bit more in the gray area where she was inciting people to basically burn down hotels of migrants.
00:36:08.740But OK, we can have a conversation on whether she was arrested or not.
00:36:12.100But what's your thoughts on that in terms of the censorship that's happening in the UK?
00:36:16.000Do you think that's happening to everybody?
00:36:17.460Do you think it's mainly happening to the more pro-Palestinian position?
00:36:21.080There's no doubt that there's pervasive censorship in the EU generally and in the UK and in places like Canada against people who hold right-wing views.
00:36:31.940I can show you a lot of cases, not just the Lucy Connolly one, including in the UK.
00:36:35.620I've spent a lot of years denouncing that, warning about the dangers of the Online Safety Act and the Digital Services Act, which is the one in the EU and C-11 in Canada.
00:36:44.940And I don't really see it so much as a left-right issue.
00:36:48.160I think that anybody who expresses views or engages in activism threatening to establishment dogma and establishment centers of power are going to be subject to this kind of censorship because of how it's defined.
00:37:02.220And it's just going to get defined as extremist and dangerous speech.
00:37:04.740I mean, as Myron said, it was done to communists.
00:37:08.600That was a lot of the free speech precedent that we now use during the Cold War.
00:37:12.940And now it's the same thing being done to people who support pro-Palestinian ideas.
00:37:19.800And so there definitely is a major right-wing component of it.
00:37:22.880And that has gotten a lot of attention.
00:37:25.880But since October 7th, the overwhelming measures of censorship, of arresting people for views, of banning protests, of sending the police to violently beat people just for peacefully gathering, for shutting down events, shutting down groups,
00:37:41.780culminating with this unbelievably dangerous decision by the UK to label Palestine action a terrorist group, even though they've never used violence against anybody, they've never threatened bombs or any of the things we typically associate with terrorism.
00:37:57.360They, like, vandalized a few planes with, like, spray paint.
00:38:00.380They protested in front of businesses, military and weapons manufacturers that supply the IDF with arms.
00:38:06.440But to call them a terrorist group, which means that not only can they not exist, but you will get arrested if you go to any protest.
00:38:15.000And hundreds, if not thousands of people have been arrested.
00:38:17.100I mean, like, old women who are, you know, were born in the UK.
00:38:21.040If you hold a sign saying Palestine action was unjustly silenced, you will be arrested for having expressed support for what is now a designated terrorist group.
00:38:30.360After October 7th, both France and Germany banned all pro-Palestinian protests while allowing pro-Israel protests.
00:38:37.860So it wasn't that certain flags were banned.
00:38:40.160It wasn't that certain statements were banned.
00:38:42.200Any pro-Palestinian protest in France were banned and Germany was banned.
00:38:46.960They have allowed them in the UK, but they arrest people constantly.
00:38:50.280And, you know, this has been going on in the US, too.
00:38:51.880Sometimes I will hear people on the right say, yeah, it's about time that the left also suffers from some of the censorship that they've been advocating.
00:38:59.340And I do think there is something karmic.
00:39:01.560I do think if you're a political group that advocates censorship, on some level you should have to live under and suffer from the system that you're advocating.
00:39:10.400The best thing is to eliminate it for everybody.
00:39:12.060But short of that, you know, that's one way to do it.
00:39:14.480But the reality is on American campuses, one of the groups that have been most censored for decades are critics of Israel.
00:39:21.760You know, there was a Alan Dershowitz went on a jihad against Norman Finkelstein, who got approved for censorship and then had a censorship offer withdrawn because Alan Dershowitz convinced them that he was an anti-Semite.
00:39:35.600Norm Finkelstein, whose parents were in actual concentration camps.
00:39:38.900There was a Palestinian professor who got hired by the University of Illinois and offered tenure.
00:39:44.840And then people found his tweets from when Gaza was bombing the crap out of when Israel was bombing the crap out of Gaza in 2014.
00:39:52.080We had a lot of very passionate, excitable statements against Israel in favor of Gaza.
00:39:56.220And Jewish donors went to the administration and said, you cannot hire this person.
00:40:01.440Jewish student group said, we don't feel safe with somebody who has these views on campus.
00:40:07.980We don't feel like they're, you know, the same exact left-wing arguments that have been made on censorship campuses for a year.
00:40:12.640And the University of Illinois denied him censor, rejected him and fired him.
00:40:16.500He sued and they ended up having to pay a million dollars because it was so blatantly unconstitutional.
00:40:22.520You can't withdraw censorship tenure offers because of someone's opinion.
00:40:26.220So this has been going on for a long time.
00:40:27.980You know, Ron DeSantis closed all pro-Palestinian groups on all Florida campuses, accusing them of material support for terrorism simply by virtue of the views they were expressing.
00:40:37.480So, yes, there is a lot of censorship against primarily right-wing populist, anti-establishment conservatives.
00:40:44.980You know, not the Mitch McConnell or Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney types or Liz Cheney types.
00:40:49.220But, you know, the people who are Trump supporters and people who support Nigel Farage in the U.K. or Marine Le Pen in France or AFD in Germany.
00:40:58.160But there's also an immense amount of censorship in defense of Israel, punishing and even arresting and criminalizing people who support the Palestinian cause who are critical of Israel.
00:41:07.360And what's so unfortunate is there are some people who object in both cases, but vanishingly few.
00:41:13.800And that's what the censorship regime needs most are people who only object when their own side is the target and create justifications for when people of other views are the targets.
00:41:23.220Yeah, it's important to be consistent. That's the only way you can stop this mass censorship.
00:41:28.220I want to just change direction of the conversation now.
00:41:31.620And that's in terms of something that has really got the American conscious to be aware of what's going on.
00:41:38.240And it's not just specifically in terms of the genocide that's happened.
00:41:42.000I think a large people have woken up because of that, just seeing the horrors of men, women and children being killed in real time.
00:41:48.220But also when you look at the funding of Israel, the Trump administration since January 20, since his inauguration, I believe, has sent 18.5 billion to Israel.
00:42:02.540So this is separate to the normal 3.5, 4 billion that is sent to Israel.
00:42:06.140When you look at the level of how Americans are suffering right now, you go to America, people have got two, three jobs, homelessness is at a sky high, sending 8.5 billion to Israel.
00:42:17.360I mean, just explain the problems with that, first of all.
00:42:19.920And the second thing is we see Americans, that being almost a breaking point for Americans to now start speaking out against Israel.
00:42:28.200And do you think that's going to expand even more so based on as things in America become worse?
00:42:33.920Yes. And I think you've understated these numbers.
00:42:38.140Your numbers are correct, but it radically understates how much the United States spends on behalf of Israel.
00:42:42.960In the year after October 7th under Joe Biden, we sent an additional 17.5 billion dollars that was approved by Congress to Israel.
00:42:54.100There's a 10-year agreement that Obama negotiated with Netanyahu on his way out in 2016, a memorandum of understanding,
00:43:01.120where the minimum that the United States sends to Israel is $4 billion every year automatically, no matter what else happens.
00:43:08.820Some of that they're required to use to buy weapons from American arms manufacturers.
00:43:13.500So it's kind of like a gift certificate given by the American taxpayer to Israel to let them go shopping at Raytheon and Lockheed and General Dynamics and the like and Palantir.
00:43:22.820But not all of it is required to be sent with American companies.
00:43:25.540A lot of it is just gifts. But on top of that, every time Israel has a new war, decides they want to go to war or bomb some other country,
00:43:32.600we always send them billions and billions of more like we did in 2024, like we've done in 2025, in order to support those wars.
00:43:40.000But then also, whenever Israel is in a war, we deploy our own military.
00:43:45.000We put our service members in harm's way in that region to protect Israel, to use anti-missile defense systems to protect Israel from missile shot at them.
00:43:55.220We have constant appointments in that region that also cost billions and billions of dollars.
00:43:59.280There have been American service members killed in the Middle East because we have them at these tiny, unprotected bases.
00:44:04.920And, you know, Israel will go bomb Iran or they'll bomb Syria and some militia in Iraq will then go and, you know, attack an American military base with short-range missiles or even grenades that are fired.
00:44:18.020And there have been several deaths of American citizens who are deployed in that region for no other reason than to protect Israel.
00:44:23.460So the amount of money that we spend is way beyond just the cash that we give them.
00:44:29.720And then, of course, there's also a huge price we pay in terms of our soft power and our standing in the world.
00:44:36.640You know, David Petraeus and other generals have said the reason why we can't get things done in the Middle East,
00:44:42.640the reason why there's so much anti-American hatred in the Middle East is because of the role we play in enabling Israel to continue to repress the Palestinians,
00:44:50.460the refusal of the United States to demand a two-state solution.
00:44:54.140And so we pay in so many other ways, too, for tying ourselves at the hip to this country.
00:44:58.720And on top of that, we're now paying with our civil liberties and with all sorts of other freedoms at home.
00:45:05.100And, you know, again, I do think when the federal government does something like, you know, say you can't get disaster relief funds if you boycott Israel,
00:45:13.580or just a day before the Trump administration defunded the most important pure and applied mathematical program led by the world's greatest mathematician,
00:45:24.000all because they were associated with UCLA, which allowed too many anti-Israel protests.
00:45:29.760Applied mathematics is the most important thing to stay competitive with China.
00:45:33.580It drives AI, it drives encryption, it drives Bitcoin.
00:45:38.420Mathematics is crucial to detecting securities fraud.
00:45:40.900I mean, the idea of defunding the leading mathematician who's working on contracts,
00:45:47.680research contracts for the United States to hand the United States technology and knowledge that will enable the United States to stay competitive
00:45:54.460or even ahead of China and all these crucial future technologies, all because they're associated with an institution that allowed protests against Israel.
00:46:03.560I mean, the list never ends of the badness that the United States is willing to sacrifice in order to serve this the interests of this foreign country.
00:46:13.180And the money alone, I think a lot of people are starting to ask about that.
00:46:17.720There's this video where Zoran Mandani went on the street.
00:46:20.880This was before he was known, when he first started campaigning, and he purposely went to the neighborhoods of New York that had the biggest swing towards Trump,
00:46:27.420which were predominantly black and Latino and other immigrant neighborhoods.
00:46:35.320And many of them said, I'm really sick and tired of watching our communities fall apart while our government sends billions to Ukraine, billions to Israel.
00:46:44.680You know, like they're interested in the interest of everybody except us.
00:46:48.000And they had immigration complaints, too, because those are typically the groups that pay the biggest price for untrammeled immigration.
00:46:53.240So, yes, you can only do this for so long.
00:46:55.800Basically, you can do this if it's not really widely understood that it's happening.
00:47:00.040But because they've had to come out of the closet with it, because they've had to be so explicit about it in panic and desperation, more and more people are hearing it.
00:47:08.080And, of course, more and more people don't get their news from ABC or The New York Times, where none of this has ever been permitted.
00:47:13.820They're getting it from places like this and, you know, places like Joe Rogan and Theo Vaughn and all these kind of places that people trust more than anything else,
00:47:23.120where or Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens or whomever, where this kind of discourse they're hearing for the first time and they're finding it very persuasive.
00:47:30.540Yeah, I completely agree with you, Glenn.
00:47:34.700Another question I've got for you is the AIPAC, right?
00:47:39.940That's something, again, that Americans have become aware of.
00:47:42.180Now, one of the arguments people make, obviously, we've broke this down and demonstrated the stupidity of it.
00:47:46.720But that being said, I do want to hear your perspective is that when people argue about foreign influence and they'll say, oh, there's foreign influence from Qatar, there's foreign influence from Saudi Arabia, there's foreign influence from various UAE countries.
00:47:58.980And then when you are Iran and therefore try to diminish the kind of influence that Israel has through AIPAC and then non-foreign registered lobbies as well.
00:48:09.720If you can explain your thoughts on that and also break down, like, how, you know, the aspects of the foreign lobby and then the non-foreign lobby of it as well.
00:48:18.420I mean, this argument is too much of a joke to even take seriously.
00:48:21.640Barry Weiss's arm of the Israeli government, the free press, tried to publish a story about, no, no, don't think about Israeli influence.
00:48:35.140And I said this the other day, like, when members of Congress make constant pilgrimages to Qatar and tweet out, I stand with Qatar and they're constantly in Doha, or when the leader of Qatar comes to the U.S. Congress, as Netanyahu does every other year,
00:48:50.820and is treated like a victorious emperor, where everybody is just constantly on their feet cheering, doesn't want to be, no one wants to be in either party the last person to stop clapping,
00:48:59.560or when we send, you know, $20 billion a year to fund Qatar, or when, you know, we expel students or deport people for criticizing Qatar,
00:49:10.340then I'll be interested in hearing about the influence that Qatar has as a foreign country inside the United States.
00:49:28.240You know, it's something you can't even take seriously as an argument.
00:49:32.100OK, one other question I've got, and then I'm going to bring in the questions from the speakers, and then we've got a large number of questions from the audience as well, is about the Epstein files.
00:49:41.940Now, I do think the Democrats have kind of jumped on this and were largely quiet during Biden's administration.
00:49:48.140Ilhan Omar is a prime example of that, someone who remained quiet up until this year when she said you need to release the Epstein files and, you know, call people pedophiles and various other things.
00:49:57.380That being said, what's your thoughts on, A, the non-release of the Epstein files, B, the Trump's kind of connection to it, and how this could be some form of blackmail against Trump?
00:50:10.500I saw you retweeted something that, I mean, sorry, you tweeted something that I also tweeted, as did many others, was a blog on the Times of Israel where someone mentioned how they were blackmailing Trump.
00:50:21.540What's your thoughts on this whole issue?
00:50:24.100Yeah, just quickly, in terms of timing, I'm loving this conversation.
00:50:27.000I wish I could stay up for another two hours, but my own show starts at 7 p.m. Eastern, like the show we do on Rumble, so I have to go maybe in like 15 minutes or so.
00:50:37.560The main question I was always interested in with Epstein, aside obviously from whether there are people to whom he sex-trafficked underage girls who are in high positions of prominence and power,
00:50:50.280was whether Epstein had ties or worked with or for a foreign intelligence agency, specifically the Mossad.
00:50:57.220Because if you look at Epstein's entire life, it's nothing but being propped up by and financed by and funded by people with, you know, either extreme connections to the Israeli government or, you know, his best friend with whom he spent the most time was the former defense minister of Israel, the former prime minister of Israel, Ehud Barak.
00:51:20.040He was with him constantly, to say nothing of the fact that Zizane Maxwell's father, Robert Maxwell, was a Jewish billionaire who was openly an agent of the Mossad when he died, even though he lived in the UK his whole life.
00:51:34.660His casket was taken to Israel at a state funeral for him where every major Israeli leader attended.
00:51:39.820Lex Wexner, who is responsible for a huge amount of Jeffrey Epstein's mysterious wealth, does no philanthropy other than supporting Zionist and pro-Israel groups.
00:51:50.380Same with Leon Black, the venture capitalist who also funneled a lot of money to Israel.
00:51:58.740To say nothing of all the visits that Jeffrey Epstein made to Israel, the doors that slung open, the way he was treated, the red carpet that he was.
00:52:05.700And the thing that, you know, I think is infuriating is even when, you know, Pam Bondi announced that, released that weird statement to Politico saying, or to Axo saying, you know, we checked and nothing to see here.
00:52:37.160We have more important things to talk.
00:52:38.320The question that he was asked that prompted that was, do you know if Jeffrey Epstein had ties to domestic or foreign intelligence agencies?
00:52:45.920And then Pam Bondi, when Trump said, if you want to answer, Pam, you can do it.
00:52:54.940That question never occurred to her before.
00:52:56.700Like they never even bothered to look into it.
00:52:58.340And to this very day, there's no definitive statement one way or the other.
00:53:03.340And, you know, given all the people at the highest levels of the Trump administration, including J.D. Vance and Dan Bongino and Kash Patel and Pam Bondi and so many others who made this their number one issue for four years, Donald Trump Jr. as well.
00:53:18.800Why isn't why aren't we getting these files?
00:53:20.560Who's covering up for these predators?
00:53:22.120Who's covering up for these pedophiles?
00:53:46.400So even if you did see them, the information in there would be totally false because Obama and Hillary fabricated the information in these files, even though they were in the custody of Trump for four years, which is when Jeffrey Epstein was actually re prosecuted in 2018.
00:54:00.280None of it makes sense except as a obviously desperate attempt to protect some people or some group of people who exert a lot of power in this world to the point where they can even make Trump, you know, kind of engage in these very embarrassing and obviously absurd behaviors to justify its concealment.
00:54:23.220Would you support amnesty for the people in the files if we were if we could loosen the grip that they have with that blackmail material?
00:54:30.860I think, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it depends, right?
00:54:37.020If like there's something very disturbing about giving amnesty to someone who is a serial rapist of underage girls.
00:54:44.540But at the same time, that is, you know, sometimes there is a higher good that as hard of a pill that is to swallow, you know, to find out the truth is, you know, something that is absolutely critical.
00:54:55.360I mean, maybe there's less there than we think, but the fact that they won't show us makes it very difficult to believe that.
00:55:01.900And I think seeing it is of such importance that even things like that ought to be considered.
00:55:08.000Well, keep in mind, they moved here to a lower security prison in Texas.
00:55:11.520And, you know, Trump's defense attorney, Todd Blanche, had like a nine hour long conversation.
00:55:16.120And DOJ right now is trying to figure out if they're going to release the the the footage.
00:55:42.900What do you think the consequences are for America if this genocide is actually fulfilled or the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is actually?
00:55:53.520Yeah, I'm going to read super chats after this.
00:55:55.180When Glenn leaves, I'll read super chats, guys.
00:55:57.000Do you think what are the consequences and push, you know, that America will have to face?
00:56:01.360When the ICC issued arrest warrants for Putin for alleged war crimes in Ukraine and the American government cheered the ICC, about six months after that, South Africa was hosting the annual BRICS meeting, the alternative coalition founded by Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa and China.
00:56:24.260And the South Africans are allies with Russia, and yet South Africa told Putin, you can't come here physically because we're going to be forced to arrest you.
00:56:33.680And the president of South Africa gave an interview and he said, we're not a big country that can just ignore international conventions and international law.
00:56:41.060We're actually vulnerable to being punished if we violate international conventions, such as the ICC convention that we signed that says anyone with an arrest warrant can't come on our soil and we have the obligation to apprehend them.
00:56:52.800That's the unfortunate reality of international law is, you know, if you're a powerful enough and a strong enough country, you're pretty much exempt from the consequences.
00:57:00.840So I don't ever imagine an American president being, you know, forcibly taken to The Hague.
00:57:07.320And in 2002, Bush and Cheney were really worried about war crimes prosecutions as part of the war on terror.
00:57:12.340First of all, we actually enacted a law that authorized the president to send the U.S. military into The Hague to rescue any American officials or any American soldiers who were on trial there for war crimes.
00:57:25.500So I don't think there's going to be anything like that.
00:57:27.780But I do think already, you know, I mean, it is important, especially when you have a multipolar world.
00:57:32.860The U.S. is not the only major power anymore.
00:57:35.960China, at the very least, is, you know, pretty much getting to unequal terms with the United States.
00:57:41.920How you're perceived in the world, like your relationships in the world, your soft power, those things really matter.
00:57:46.520They don't matter much if you're the sole superpower, only brute force matters.
00:57:50.560And that, I think, is what's being already severely eroded and will continue to erode further because the Israelis are going to do so much worse to the people of Gaza.
00:57:58.520Dr. Michael, jump in with your question.
00:58:02.180Yeah, Glenn, it's great to have you on here, and I'm a great admirer of your work, and so is my son, who's a journalist.
00:58:09.060We know that both parties are Zionists or under Zionist control.
00:58:13.820But why do you think the mask has come off with respect to Zionist control of the U.S. government under Trump and so-called MAGA?
00:58:20.840And what's the reason for this domination?
00:58:22.800Norman Finkelstein believes it's the result of the power of what he calls now the Jewish supremacist billionaire class.
00:58:44.680Yeah, I mean, the only caveat I would give to that is that there is a major part of the government composed of Christian Zionists who have been sold on the idea, which never really existed before, that their religious duty, their highest religious duty is to protect Israel, and they're a big part of the Republican Party.
00:59:03.440But I think it's a minor factor when compared to, yes, what is the—I mean, here's the thing.
00:59:12.760All four of my grandparents were Jewish.
00:59:14.220I grew up in a neighborhood where there was a lot of Jewish people.
00:59:16.920I went to school with a lot of Jewish people.
00:59:18.160I went to day camp, you know, summer camp, Jewish summer camp.
00:59:21.460And you are absolutely told constantly from the time that you are born, if you're Jewish, that your primary obligation as a Jewish person in the world is to love and protect and defend and be loyal to Israel.
00:59:36.400That is absolutely what you are taught, that the safety of the Jewish people depends upon the strength and security of Israel.
00:59:43.200And, you know, you have Zionists saying this all the time.
00:59:45.900I can show you clips of, like, Harvard professors who are hardcore neocons, Jewish professors at Harvard, who say, like, your duty is to enroll and not necessarily in the IDF, but nonetheless the Israeli army and not the fight on the battlefield, but the battle for words.
00:59:58.140This is absolutely pervading, you know, the cultural indoctrination of pretty much every Jewish person.
01:00:06.720And I don't think that's controversial to say.
01:00:09.740And so, yes, when you have these people get to adulthood and they never really critically evaluate what they were inculcated with and end up having exactly the same views that their parents and their teachers and their community and their friends and their neighbors told them what to think and they still have those views.
01:00:23.560Obviously, they're going to use their wealth, if you have a Jewish billionaire, to fulfill what you were told is your highest obligation, your highest loyalty.
01:00:33.820And the biggest donor to Donald Trump after Elon Musk was Mary Maddelson and, you know, people like Bill Ackman.
01:00:41.800A lot of these hardcore Israel supporters didn't actually trust Trump, and they really all aligned behind Ron DeSantis.
01:00:47.300I mean, Ron DeSantis is so hardcore in his devotion to Israel that twice he went to Israel to sign hate speech laws governing the people of Florida, and he went to Israel to sign those laws.
01:00:57.060I mean, again, it's like sometimes this stuff has become so normalized, but if you actually think about it, it's crazy.
01:01:02.160But obviously, in our political system, billionaire wealth is, you know, political power, and there are a lot of billionaires who might have different interests, but a lot of Jewish billionaires are focused like a laser on Israel.
01:01:18.500And I'll just tell you one last thing. There's a video of this. I posted it several times where Donald Trump spoke before this Israeli-American group where Miriam Adelson was, and they were all waving not American flags but Israel flags while Trump spoke to them.
01:01:32.240He was in the United States but speaking to a pro-Israel group.
01:01:36.640And he said that other than the people who worked in the White House in his first term, the people who went to the White House by far the most were Sheldon and Miriam Adelson because they were massive funders of his first campaign too.
01:01:49.240And every time they went to the White House, they didn't come for any reason.
01:01:52.880They didn't come to talk about the United States or Americans or American cities.
01:01:55.760They came to demand things for Israel, he said, and he would always give it to them, and he even gave it more.
01:02:01.020He's like, I gave them the Golan Heights. That was Trump's to give.
01:02:03.460He told David Friedman, he didn't know what the Golan Heights was, he said, I told David Friedman, his hardcore pro-Israel ambassador, give me a five-minute lesson on the Golan Heights.
01:02:13.640He did, and he said at the end, okay, this belongs to Israel.
01:02:16.500And he boasted of how much he gave to the Adelsons, who always were there to demand things for Israel.
01:02:21.420Sometimes he would get annoyed, and they would come back always for more.
01:02:24.040And he would say, give me a couple weeks, will you, and then I'll do more for Israel.
01:02:26.920So this is right out of Trump's mouth.
01:02:28.460This is Trump explaining not only what he is influenced by, but the people who are influencing him.
01:02:35.760And, you know, it's just kind of evident.
01:02:38.080I mean, it's a fact that maybe makes people uncomfortable, but it's nonetheless a fact.
01:02:43.980I've got another question from a super chat, obviously taking into consideration that the people who have been killed, journalists who have been killed in Gaza.
01:05:07.900You know, this is Frederick Douglass when he became emancipated as a slave.
01:05:11.180He said, look, it's a double wrong to censor because it's a double wrong because it's an offense against the person's right to hear.
01:05:17.360And, you know, Glenn, as the world's greatest journalist, in my opinion, because you have no ideology, and someone who's anti-war and always advocating for free speech, you remind me a little bit of Christopher Hidgens in that way.
01:05:28.800Because the right wing will not like you this year, and I would love to hear your commentary on this.
01:05:34.620And then, you know, two years from now, all of a sudden, it'll be the left wing again.
01:05:38.280But you're always advocating for the same thing.
01:05:40.820I have to say, I really appreciate your courage.
01:05:44.160But I'd love to hear, are we winning on that free speech battle?
01:05:47.620I feel like that the worst and the dumbest people are fighting on the other side.
01:05:52.320Their arguments, they're almost flailing at this point.
01:05:55.040I agree with you about Ron DeSantis especially.
01:05:57.720It really is almost embarrassing to see a candidate that people really liked that is all of a sudden saying, no, no, no, this is a dangerous thing to say.
01:06:06.920And here you are advocating for, hey, it's really dangerous to let the people with all the money and the media and the weapons control your speech.
01:06:20.200You know, as somebody, I, you know, I've been defending free speech for 30 years.
01:06:24.880First, as a lawyer, I took a lot of pro bono cases defending typically people on the far right, but sometimes people on the far left from government acts of censorship and then obviously doing it as a journalist as well.
01:06:36.380I mean, the hardest thing to do is to get people to accept free speech as a principle.
01:06:40.980And the reason it's so hard is because if you believe in something strongly, then the views that are diametrically opposed to your beliefs, you can get people to see those not as speech but as some kind of danger, some kind of violence, some kind of incitement, some kind of terrorism, some kind of insurrection.
01:06:56.520It's very easy to just constantly demonize it, and then people think, yeah, we need to ban that, not because I'm censoring views, but we're banning something more dangerous.
01:07:05.900You know, in Brazil, for example, I did reporting in 2020 that I actually ended up freeing Lula De Silva from prison, even though that wasn't my intention, but that was the result.
01:07:17.800And Jair Bolsonaro was the president at the time and, you know, threatened to imprison me, and then I actually was indicted for the journalism that I was doing, even though it got thrown out.
01:07:26.400So I'm no friend of the Bolsonaro movement, but now there's this extreme left-wing censorship regime in Brazil led by the Supreme Court that is entirely about silencing the entire Bolsonaro movement.
01:07:40.660And, you know, it's not hard for me to stand up and object to the attacks on the Bolsonaro movement because they're so anti-democratic and dangerous.
01:07:52.300But I understand the difficulty in that because I've seen it so often where people just, you know, there's a huge number of people in the Brazilian office to look at Bolsonaro and say that's an insurrectionary movement.
01:08:10.140Same with Israel supporters who look at people who, you know, criticize Israel.
01:08:14.040No, these aren't people expressing opinions.
01:08:16.040These are Hamas supporters, terrorist supporters.
01:08:18.900You know, they're defending Hamas, and that's it.
01:08:21.720And then people are willing to support their censorship because they don't see it as censorship.
01:08:25.820But, you know, I do have optimism about where this issue is going.
01:08:30.100I mean, just as somebody who's been – you know, you go look back at when John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt wrote the Israel Lobby in 2006, 2007.
01:09:09.780Well, listen, please make sure before you leave to reiterate your show tonight.
01:09:13.620I will tell everybody I listen assiduously to Glenn Greenwald's shows, and it really is all around anti-war.
01:09:19.500I will just only add this or reiterate what you just said, Glenn, is that once the censorious people get a foothold, notice that they change the language.
01:09:27.360Notice that all of a sudden I'm an anti-Semite because I don't want to kill Semites in Gaza.
01:09:32.600So really, once they get that censorious foothold, censorious foothold, and they tend to change the meaning of words and put everybody on the defensive in the process.
01:10:34.740And as a kind of ardent critic of, I guess, what we would loosely call the JQ, I just want to thank you, as I do, Simon, and so many others that are of kind of Jewish heritage,
01:10:44.160but are willing to honestly critique these things, which I think is, frankly, the most pressing matter of the entirety of the West in the modern world.
01:10:52.200And, of course, we're talking the political piece here.
01:10:54.460But I just want to share just a real quick little statement and then use this to refer to a question.
01:11:24.200The new CEO coming in under Skydance, David Ellison, of course, Jewish, and is the son of Larry Ellison, the CEO of Oracle, who also is Jewish.
01:11:34.120And I mentioned it because it's an $8 billion acquisition that many are saying is one of the most significant in the media and tech space because it might redefine what we know of as entertainment in the future space.
01:11:45.040And so I mentioned that just to suggest that this is something that seems to be all-encompassing on the political front, as well as big technology, the media.
01:11:53.680And so knowing that it is this grand, perhaps in scale, if we can suggest for a moment that perhaps it is and that that's not conspiratorial, I would just be kind of curious for your thoughts on the best way to actively try and reverse engineer what seems to be the supremacist system that has a foothold on everything, knowing that any ounce of opposition to it is just going to be slurred.
01:12:17.080And prospectively even have the politicians, you know, cracking down with some kind of legal ramifications for doing so, because all I want to do is genuinely solve this problem without any violence, any animus, any anything.
01:12:34.280I've done a couple of segments on the Ellison family's acquisition of Paramount and therefore CBS News, because one of the things that that his son, is it David Ellison?
01:12:46.360I think it's David Ellison, who's spearheading the project that he wants to do is buy Barry Weiss's free press for something like 200, 250 million dollars, even though it's not anywhere near remotely worth that.
01:12:59.500If you look at their presence on YouTube and other places, it barely has a footprint.
01:13:03.440And then elevate Barry Weiss to this sort of like editorial ombudsman to make sure that CBS News is doing what he calls objective reporting, but which, of course, he means ensuring that there's no criticism of Israel.
01:13:15.260There were a lot of controversial 60 minute segments that were deemed too anti-Israel, too pro-Gaza, anti-Semitic.
01:13:22.440And so all of this, of course, is an effort to seize control of some of the most prestigious and longstanding American media outlets, not just CBS News, but CBS and Paramount and all of its properties.
01:13:34.700Now, the reason why I don't find it as threatening as I might have even say 10 years ago is because there is this gigantic explosion of independent media.
01:13:45.320And, you know, I was on Substack and I purposely went to Rumble because of how devoted Rumble was to, you know, rejecting any government's request to censor to preserve this place of free speech on the Internet.
01:13:57.040I mean, Nick Fuentes is banned from every platform, basically, although he's got reinstated X, but he does a show every night on Rumble.
01:14:02.440And, you know, they're determined to maintain this space, this this this kind of refuge of free speech.
01:14:09.980And that's why I think preserving a free Internet and independent media is the most important thing, because, yes, CBS News, 60 Minutes, all those shows still have a lot of influence.
01:14:20.180They don't have anywhere near the stranglehold on the discourse that they had even, you know, 10 years ago.
01:14:25.980And the reason is, is that now people have lost faith and trust in those media brands for a very good reason.
01:14:31.280They know they've been lied to continuously by them and that they don't have their interests and heart.
01:14:36.180And so much countervailing narrative now comes from independent media.
01:14:40.740Everything is so fractured and diffuse in terms of where people are getting their information that power centers can't really control the narrative any longer.
04:39:29.580Well, as Ambassador Huckabee said, if we're practicing genocide, we're surely doing a very bad job of it because we could have, you know, basically eliminated the entire population of Gaza.