The Megyn Kelly Show - Israel at War, Hamas Terror, Biden Response, Anti-Semitic Uprisings in U.S., with Sen. Ted Cruz, Ric Grenell, and Victor Davis Hanson

00:00:00.540 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:11.740 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:15.360 What a day and what a weekend.

00:00:17.720 It has been an absolutely brutal weekend of news as our world is now different today than when we last talked on Friday.

00:00:24.600 We've watched as Hamas terrorists carried out a coordinated, unprecedented holiday attack on Israel, many now calling this Israel's 9-11.

00:00:37.200 Israeli officials putting the death toll so far at 700, but it's expected to continue rising.

00:00:42.280 I've seen 900 as well. At least nine Americans are among the dead.

00:00:47.500 This is not including the number who have been kidnapped and are now in the custody of these Hamas terrorists.

00:00:55.600 The brutality of this attack is unlike anything many of us have seen, especially when it comes to Israel.

00:01:03.960 The terrorists, unsatisfied with simply taking innocent lives, proceeded to mutilate the bodies, parading young victims in broad daylight through the streets.

00:01:14.160 It's been unbelievable. It's been very difficult to watch.

00:01:17.520 Just on X, formerly known as Twitter, never mind when you think about the poor people who actually had to go through it.

00:01:23.000 One of the deadliest scenes taking place at a music festival along the Gaza-Israeli border.

00:01:29.940 In this video, taken moments before the attacks began, you will see young people dancing, having the time of their lives.

00:01:36.600 Look at this. They all look like they're about 20 years old.

00:01:39.100 But as the video pans over, you see the beginning stages of the attack with dark plumes in the sky above.

00:01:46.980 You start to see what appear to be hang gliders coming in above the skies where the young people are celebrating.

00:01:56.580 And then came in armored vehicles and Hamas terrorists with machine guns, and the young people began running for their lives as the sound of gunfire rang out behind them.

00:02:07.420 The latest reporting? At least 260 young people were killed.

00:02:13.140 Their dead bodies are now being gone through by the Israelis.

00:02:16.720 One of the festival goers was Shani Loki, a German-Israeli woman.

00:02:23.400 In one of the most disturbing scenes from this weekend, videos emerged of Shani being displayed seemingly dead,

00:02:32.180 at a minimum unconscious, nearly naked, as the terrorists held weapons above her body and shouted,

00:02:40.200 Allahu Akbar, in celebration.

00:02:43.880 We've chosen to show you the video. Here it is.

00:02:46.720 Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar.

00:03:07.980 It's absolutely disgusting.

00:03:10.280 We're not gonna be showing you all the videos, but just a few brings home what actually happened there.

00:03:15.840 Her mother, Shawnee's mother, told CNN last night that she was on the phone with Shawnee as her

00:03:20.880 daughter tried to find a place to hide. Shawnee then stopped responding to the messages, and her

00:03:26.080 mother only found out what happened to her when friends started sending her the video, which showed

00:03:30.440 her daughter being driven into the Gaza Strip. Her mother is holding out hope that perhaps her

00:03:35.980 daughter was still alive in the video. We just don't know. She may be, although the appearance

00:03:45.240 in that truck looked very much like someone who's no longer alive. The media is reporting,

00:03:51.880 though, that 70 to 100 people have been kidnapped and taken hostage, among them civilians, children,

00:03:58.300 and grandmothers, and Shawnee's mother said she wanted the video shown. It's too horrific to take

00:04:07.520 in. The videos that we've been seeing all weekend show Hamas terrorists and note to the media

00:04:15.080 it's not militants. Just stop. This is terrorism. Torturing, kidnapping, and absolutely

00:04:24.240 just murdering young women, grandmothers, children, babies, not to mention the young men whose lives

00:04:37.320 have been taken. We always sort of go to the most vulnerable, as we should. Babies and children are

00:04:42.360 in a different league. But we shouldn't make light of the amount of life that's been lost belonging to

00:04:48.460 Israel's next generation young men, like those guys who are at the music festival, too, just trying to

00:04:54.200 enjoy a good time. Another young woman was seen on video being put on the back of a motorcycle. This

00:05:00.020 has gone viral as well. She can be heard screaming, don't kill me, as she is driven away. It's believed

00:05:06.240 some of these people are now being held in locations across Gaza, being used as human shields because

00:05:11.000 this is what Hamas does. They are intentionally trying to complicate Israel's efforts to strike

00:05:17.080 back because they know Israel doesn't like to target civilians, because they know Israel does

00:05:21.640 everything within its power to protect the Palestinian civilians, never mind the Israeli civilians,

00:05:27.560 who have been captured and are now being used as human shields. There are videos out of young

00:05:32.280 Israeli women, presumably captured from places like that music festival, because there are

00:05:36.760 possibly a dozen of them in the films that I have seen, sitting in what looks like some sort of an

00:05:43.000 abandoned building, presumably in Gaza, terrified, crying, holding one another. And you can hear rockets

00:05:50.900 coming down. They know very well what the Israeli government is going to do in response to this terror

00:05:55.640 attack. And they're terrified. They're hoping that they can live through the retaliation. And Israel has

00:06:01.460 zero desire to target its own civilians, never mind Palestine's and Hamas. But it must. And now it will

00:06:08.840 have to figure out how to spare the innocent human lives as it tries to retrieve its citizens and ours

00:06:16.460 who are being held hostage at this moment. There are reports of terrorists going door to door. One mother

00:06:23.160 telling CNN she had been on the phone with her 16 year old and 12 year old who were home alone at the time.

00:06:30.220 They heard gunshots. She heard the door break down. Imagine the terror, a 12 year old, a 16 year old on

00:06:37.100 the other line, and you're not with them. The helpless mother heard terrorists screaming in Arabic and her

00:06:42.780 younger child saying to them, quote, I'm too young to go. And then the phone went dead. She hasn't heard

00:06:50.340 from her children since. I want you to keep this in mind as we get to in a minute, the leftist response,

00:06:58.900 the radical leftist response by people like the 31 student groups at Harvard, by people like elected

00:07:05.620 representatives from Cori Bush to Rashida Tlaib. I want I want you to think about the 12 year old who

00:07:13.280 said, I'm too young to go and hasn't been heard from since. OK, because their response has been

00:07:19.040 utterly inhumane, as inhumane, you could argue, as the terrorists who grabbed those children to begin

00:07:25.180 with. Israel has now called up some 300000 reservists. Gaza is now under blockade and we may

00:07:33.240 be on the verge of witnessing a ground invasion. How else will Israel do it? How are they going to get

00:07:37.660 their people back, if not a ground invasion? Meantime, around the world, we've witnessed

00:07:43.100 many celebrating the Hamas terrorists behavior, including some right here in the United States.

00:07:51.100 We are fortunate enough today to begin with Ted Cruz of Texas. Senator Cruz, thank you so much for

00:07:56.660 being here. I do want to start with what you've done because I've been following it. There have been

00:08:03.220 few greater champions of Israel in the United States Congress than you. And you've met with

00:08:08.600 resistance time and time again under this administration. It's not I'm not trying to

00:08:12.980 blame this on Joe Biden. I understand who's to blame. But the United States's role in facilitating

00:08:19.400 the enrichment of Iran and of Hamas has to be examined. So let's just start there with the money

00:08:26.340 and what what exactly you've been objecting to for the past few years.

00:08:30.380 Well, Megan, you are exactly right. What is unfolding in Israel right now is truly horrific.

00:08:37.420 This is being widely referred to as Israel's 9-11. And it is of that degree of magnitude.

00:08:44.260 We're seeing atrocities carried out against innocent civilians that have not happened since

00:08:49.740 the Holocaust. We are seeing death squads of Hamas terrorists who are going house to house

00:08:56.180 and murdering every individual in the house, murdering women, murdering children, murdering

00:09:02.020 the elderly, murdering infants. We're seeing these death squads viciously raping women and children

00:09:08.720 in front of their parents, in front of the entire street. We're seeing bodies paraded in front of

00:09:15.260 everyone. We're seeing people who have been kidnapped and tortured, paraded and held out as trophies,

00:09:20.860 and then taken back to be used as human shields to guard the missiles, to guard the military

00:09:28.040 headquarters of Hamas. This is a human rights violation and a war crime of a level that just

00:09:35.600 takes the breath away. And there are many reasons to be infuriated about this. But one of the most

00:09:42.940 fundamental is what you are seeing on your screen was in a very, very real sense paid for by Joe Biden

00:09:52.860 and the Biden administration. Since Joe Biden became president, he has flooded roughly $50 billion

00:10:00.480 to the government of Iran, to the Ayatollah. And understand Hamas, those terrorists that are raping

00:10:07.220 and murdering and torturing and killing women and children, they work for Iran. They are Iranian

00:10:13.460 proxies. They are paid for by Iran. They are controlled by Iran. Now, how did Joe Biden send

00:10:19.560 $50 billion to Iran? Well, most recently he sent $6 billion that was explicitly on its face, a ransom,

00:10:28.280 a ransom for five Americans who'd been kidnapped. In doing so, he set a bounty. He set a price

00:10:34.140 that the going price for kidnapping an American is $1,200,000,000. As I said at the time,

00:10:40.680 the chances of other Americans being kidnapped have just escalated. Well, we've seen in the last

00:10:45.440 few days, there are multiple reports of numerous Americans that are among those who've been kidnapped

00:10:50.700 now that the Biden administration has set a price for what they'll pay for kidnapped Americans.

00:10:56.780 But it wasn't just the $6 billion. Because a few weeks earlier, the Biden administration sent an

00:11:02.060 additional $10 billion. That was money that was coming from Iraq. And the Biden administration

00:11:07.900 sent it to Iran. That ups the total to $16 billion. But even that dramatically understates it because

00:11:15.440 from the very beginning, the Biden administration refused to enforce the American sanctions on oil

00:11:21.260 sales. The most effective thing we've done against Iran is sanction their oil sales, which had crippled

00:11:26.940 their economy and brought their economy to its knees. Joe Biden came in, he refused to enforce

00:11:32.840 the sanctions on those oil sales. Right now today, Iran is selling 2 million barrels of oil a day

00:11:41.560 because Joe Biden wants them to, he allows them to. And collectively, all of that money that has gone

00:11:47.700 to the Ayatollah is roughly $50 billion. That money is paying for the rockets that are murdering

00:11:53.720 Israelis. That money is paying for the death squads. And their attack was planned and directed by the

00:12:00.780 Ayatollah and the brutal regime in Iran. It's, it's been confirmed. I mean, it's, it's the Wall Street

00:12:08.700 Journal had a report, uh, pointing that out that they not only did they plan it, uh, not only did they

00:12:13.700 sanction it, but they met the Iranians met with Hamas, uh, in Beirut a couple of months ago and gave the

00:12:19.960 go ahead and sat down and planned it. I mean, this is clearly an Iranian operation and Hamas pulled it

00:12:26.220 off and we'll get to how on earth they managed to pull it off. Because I think a lot of our friends

00:12:31.180 in Israel have been living under the belief that they were safe, thanks to iron dome and so on.

00:12:35.800 And, and discovered similar to the way that we did on nine 11, that despite Israel strength and

00:12:41.740 amazing, amazing intelligence capabilities and so on, this was a catastrophic failure. Uh,

00:12:47.320 and all of that will have to be seriously looked into, but what, what's likely to happen now,

00:12:52.680 Senator what's likely to happen because Israel hasn't yet unleashed its full force response to

00:12:59.700 this. And now they're looking at a possible possible, um, addition of Hezbollah from Lebanon

00:13:06.120 in the North. We're looking at Iran. I mean, I mean, could there be a direct war there with Iran

00:13:11.760 since they're behind this? What, what about the United States? I mean, how grave is this moment?

00:13:16.400 Look, all of that is possible. And all of that is on the table. Let me say first where you started,

00:13:21.640 uh, you're right that the iron dome system, their missile defense system is incredibly

00:13:25.860 sophisticated. It has saved thousands and thousands of lives because it intercepts rockets as they're

00:13:31.120 coming in before they can murder civilians. However, much of this attack was not just a rocket

00:13:36.780 attack, but it was ground troops that entered from Gaza. And these death squads went house to house

00:13:41.920 house. They went, they went to a rock concert where, where, where students were, were, were enjoying

00:13:47.040 a concert and they just fired indiscriminately murdering the concert goers. Uh, that they went

00:13:52.160 to, to bus stations and just murdered everyone standing at the bus station. And, and so this is a

00:13:57.700 military invasion, uh, that is seeking to commit indiscriminate murder. And in particular to target

00:14:05.680 civilians, this is not aimed at military targets. This is aimed at infants. They are murdering infants.

00:14:11.220 They're, they are in some instances, murdering the children. In other instances, they're murdering

00:14:15.080 the parents and kidnapping the infants and bringing them back to Gaza. Um, I do not, I am sure that

00:14:22.420 Israel will engage in a serious retrospective about how the, the Hamas troops were able to make it out

00:14:29.000 of Gaza and into Israel. There was clearly a security failure on, on Israel's border there. That's,

00:14:35.500 that's a question that will be addressed as time goes forward. But you're right. There's an

00:14:40.060 enormous risk from Lebanon to the North where you have Hezbollah. Hezbollah has thousands upon

00:14:45.460 thousands of guided missiles, missiles that can target civilian population centers. There is a

00:14:51.900 significant expectation that Hezbollah will step in as aggressively as Hamas is doing right now.

00:14:58.160 They're also backed by Iran.

00:14:58.860 Both are backed by Iran. Both are controlled by Iran. And, and, you know, I have to point out also,

00:15:05.260 if you look at Hamas and Gaza, it's not just the money to Iran that Biden is responsible for.

00:15:12.340 One of the very first things Joe Biden did is sent hundreds of millions of dollars into Gaza.

00:15:19.600 Gaza. And, and, and I actually led a group of 17 senators pressing the administration not to send

00:15:27.580 money to Gaza because that money was certain to go straight to Hamas. We've now discovered that the

00:15:34.120 Biden administration, they agreed, they concluded that there was a very high likelihood the money

00:15:39.660 would go to Hamas and be used for terrorism. And nonetheless, they sought and received a waiver,

00:15:46.000 a waiver from U.S. terrorism laws, because it's illegal to send money that you know will be used

00:15:51.260 for terrorism. They concluded, yes, Hamas will use this for terrorism, but we want to send it

00:15:57.040 anyway. I'll tell you also, there were 145 Democrats on the other side in the House who wrote a letter

00:16:04.220 demanding that the Biden administration fund Gaza and let that money go to Hamas. One of those was

00:16:11.100 Colin Allred, the Democrat who's running against me, who said the Biden administration needed to send

00:16:18.260 those millions, even though they knew that that money would be used for terrorism. Well, you're

00:16:23.160 seeing the money that Biden sent being spent right now carrying out war crimes of a degree not seen in

00:16:30.640 a very, very long time. They did know. And this is just with due respect, anybody who thinks it's

00:16:36.900 Ted Cruz, Republican partisan speaking. That's not it. This has been reported on widely in the media.

00:16:41.980 The Washington Free Beacon did a great report on seeing those warnings inside the administration

00:16:46.420 saying this money is going to be used for terrorism. You know, this is very risky. And the Biden

00:16:52.220 administration overruled it and said, we're sending it anyway. And you were leading it. I think you got

00:16:55.920 18 other senators to go along with you saying this. We should not be doing this. We should not be doing

00:17:00.380 this. We know exactly if you should give money to Gaza. You know, there's there's Palestine and then

00:17:04.240 there's Gaza. Gaza is run by Hamas. If you give money to Gaza, it's going to be used by Hamas to

00:17:10.400 target Israelis and Americans. And that's exactly what appears to have happened. It's there has to

00:17:16.480 be at some point some accountability on on our own part for for administration policy. And I'll get to

00:17:22.160 their response in a minute, the ridiculous tweets and so on. But I want to spend a minute more some

00:17:26.140 more time on on what actually happened in Israel. Senator, I don't understand. Like, I don't I

00:17:31.200 don't the the amount of like this must have been in the planning for months, right? Because they came

00:17:38.560 over the fences. They use bulldozers to bulldoze down the fences, which which are dug deep into the

00:17:44.680 ground. It's not like these are like the fences that we have in some parts of our border, which are

00:17:49.760 easily penetrated. The we showed video of the hang gliders coming out. And then there are also

00:17:54.520 paragliders, which have like more of a motor that they use. The Israelis should have been able to see all

00:17:59.980 of that. You can't just turn on a paraglider and learn how to use it in a day. You would have had

00:18:04.440 to get one and practice with it. And the one thing that the Israelis do do, they don't prevent any food

00:18:10.020 or water supplies going to Palestinians or the Gazans, but they do prevent weapons and anything

00:18:15.400 that can be made into a weapon from going into there. And yet all of this somehow got through

00:18:19.400 and was made. And not to mention machine guns. I'm being told American machine guns that the

00:18:25.780 terrorists were seen using to kill. Like how on earth did they get all of these?

00:18:32.400 Well, there needs to be a full investigation to every one of those questions. You're right.

00:18:36.660 The Israelis try very hard to prevent material that can be used for weapons. But part of the

00:18:41.420 problem is the U.S. government and U.N. aid organizations flow cash into Gaza. They call

00:18:48.280 the cash there for things like humanitarian relief. But they send things like pipelines to build

00:18:54.380 water pipes so that people can have fresh water at the homes. And Hamas takes those pipelines and

00:19:00.120 instead cuts them into rockets and uses the material to turn them into weapons of war.

00:19:04.980 That pattern has carried on over and over and over again. As you know, I do a podcast every week

00:19:11.780 called Verdict with Ted Cruz. We do it Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Today's podcast is entirely on

00:19:16.680 this topic. And it walks through the fundamental difference between Hamas terrorists and the IDF,

00:19:24.320 the Israeli Defense Forces. Hamas terrorists deliberately, they use human shields. They use

00:19:30.220 innocent civilians to protect their military, to protect their weapons. So for example,

00:19:34.700 in 2014, the last time there was a major rocket shelling of Israel from Gaza, the headquarters,

00:19:41.180 the military headquarters of Hamas in Gaza was in the basement of a hospital, a hospital that was

00:19:46.980 treating Palestinian women. And they were doing it for a very deliberate purpose, that it gave the

00:19:52.220 Israelis two choices, both of which were terrible. Choice number one is decline to attack Hamas's

00:19:59.900 headquarters. That means their military headquarters is immune for military attack and they can continue

00:20:04.340 to plot murder and acts of war from that headquarters. Option number two is Israel decides to take out

00:20:11.680 that headquarters. If they did so, they would destroy the hospital as well. And the result would be you

00:20:17.620 would see women, you would see infants dead, Palestinian women, Palestinian infants. But let's be clear,

00:20:23.640 Hamas is using Palestinian babies, Palestinian mothers as human shields because they know if Israel has to

00:20:30.980 take them out. That those images will be shown by CNN, will be trumpeted around the world by the New York

00:20:37.960 Times and the corporate media will be useful idiots using those dead Palestinian children as weapons to

00:20:45.820 attack Israel. Hamas does that all the time. They keep rockets and missiles in the same buildings as

00:20:55.740 kindergartens because they want to use their Palestinian kindergarten children as human shields.

00:21:01.160 All of these babies and toddlers they're kidnapping now from Israel. It is very likely they will place

00:21:06.360 those babies and toddlers by missiles, by military targets, by the headquarters of Hamas. Again, to now use not

00:21:14.840 just Palestinian babies, but Israeli babies as well as human shields. That is a war crime. In fact, in 2014, I authored a

00:21:22.640 bipartisan resolution myself and Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat from New York, condemning the use of

00:21:29.000 human shields as a war crime specifically by Hamas. It passed the Senate 100 to nothing. Well, that's what

00:21:35.600 they're doing right now. And Israel is going to respond. They're going to respond vigorously. They're

00:21:40.780 going to take out the Hamas leadership. They're going to take out the Hamas terrorists. They're going to act

00:21:46.460 to free their kidnapped individuals. And a big question now is how aggressively is the Biden

00:21:54.920 administration going to undermine and attack Israel every step of the way? We're already seeing multiple

00:22:00.900 Democrats calling for a ceasefire, even as women are being raped and murdered. The response of Democrats

00:22:07.400 is do nothing in response. Just let the terrorists be. That makes no sense. America should be standing

00:22:14.300 with Israel against this barbarism and these horrific war crimes.

00:22:19.760 It's unbelievable. We've seen the initial response from the Biden administration through

00:22:25.580 this Palestinian working group that Trump disbanded within the State Department was to call for a

00:22:32.460 ceasefire. This is before this is this is as if what with the Twin Towers is still burning and in

00:22:38.020 rubble. Yes. We had been told ceasefire, stand down. You know, no further violence is appropriate.

00:22:42.920 Then they deleted the tweet. And then after that became a controversy at 4 p.m. yesterday,

00:22:49.160 Tony Blinken, Secretary of State, tweets out about his conversation with the Turkish prime minister

00:22:53.800 saying or foreign minister saying Turkish foreign minister and I spoke further on Hamas's terrorist

00:22:58.860 attacks on Israel. I encourage Turkey's advocacy for a ceasefire. What? And the release of all hostages

00:23:05.820 held by Hamas immediately. Later, they had to delete that. And then they put out a different tweet saying,

00:23:11.120 oh, I spoke with the secretary, encouraged Turkey's and continued engagement and highlighted the U.S.'s

00:23:17.620 unwavering focus on halting the attacks by Hamas. Now, here's my question. They were smart enough to

00:23:22.440 delete the tweet twice. But what's the actual policy when Blinken spoke to the Turkish foreign minister?

00:23:28.320 Did he actually, as he said the first time, encourage Turkey's advocacy for a ceasefire? Because

00:23:33.120 that appears to be what we're doing behind the scenes. No, like let let Turkey do it. Let Egypt do it.

00:23:38.520 Let other people go out there and say ceasefire, ceasefire, which is what we actually want in this

00:23:43.140 administration as opposed to Israel defending itself. Well, the first tweet that the State

00:23:47.660 Department stand out right as the war began, as these invasions began, as the murder and kidnapping

00:23:52.720 and rape began, that came out at three in the morning U.S. time. And I saw it at the time and I

00:23:59.000 responded immediately and said that it was utterly disgraceful and disgusting that everyone involved

00:24:05.100 in writing or approving the tweet should be fired immediately. I will say in response to my

00:24:12.140 highlighting it and calling them out, they deleted the tweet within an hour and they subsequently said,

00:24:17.680 this is not State Department policy. Never mind that it was sent from the Office of Palestinian

00:24:23.660 Affairs on the official State Department Twitter account that they ran away from it when they were

00:24:29.040 called out. All of this happened between three and four in the morning, the night the war began.

00:24:33.720 Since then, you know, there's a there's a simple tell that you can have that that that when anyone

00:24:39.660 in the administration, when anyone in Congress uses the word, you know what they mean. And that word

00:24:45.240 is ceasefire. They keep using the word ceasefire and ceasefire. They're referring in particular to

00:24:50.600 military action. And what they mean by ceasefire is Israel do not attack Hamas. They're not asking

00:24:57.260 the terrorists to stop. They don't expect the terrorists to respect a ceasefire. What they are asking for

00:25:03.320 is let there be no consequences to thousands and thousands of Israelis being murdered, wounded,

00:25:12.820 raped, tortured, kidnapped. Let there be no consequences at all. No nation could allow that

00:25:20.300 to happen. There will be consequences in the military consequences. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime

00:25:25.640 minister, I know very well. I've spent a lot of time with Bibi. He is a man with a sense of gravity,

00:25:31.140 a sense of seriousness. He understands his responsibility to protect the people of Israel.

00:25:37.540 And I have every confidence that the Israeli military is going to go into Gaza and is going

00:25:42.920 to target the Hamas leadership and is going to either capture or kill the leadership of Hamas,

00:25:48.360 is going to take out and destroy the rockets and the weapons that they have, is going to find

00:25:53.520 the terrorists who are committing these acts, is going to capture or kill those terrorists,

00:25:58.640 is going to free as many of those hostages as possible. And one thing to understand also,

00:26:04.040 the way the IDF goes in, they go to extraordinary lengths to avoid civilian deaths. So for example,

00:26:11.900 they have the cell phone numbers of everyone in Gaza. So if they're going to attack a particular

00:26:15.740 building that is a Hamas military asset, that is a headquarters, that is where military

00:26:20.600 equipment is stored, they will send a text to every person in the building saying,

00:26:25.260 get out of the building now. They will drop on the top what are called knock bombs,

00:26:29.820 which basically just make a loud noise, but don't blow up. And that's designed to be a warning

00:26:34.100 to say, get out of the building. If you're a civilian, if you're not a terrorist,

00:26:38.080 get out of the building because this building is getting ready to be destroyed.

00:26:41.440 They have sent text to civilians in Gaza saying the following area are safe zones. You should go there

00:26:48.560 if you're not involved in hostilities, because we are going to take out these military

00:26:52.360 facilities. You know what Hamas is telling the Palestinians? Don't leave the building.

00:26:57.220 Don't leave the military site. Don't get you and your family to harm's way. Why? Because we want

00:27:02.920 your dead body for the idiots in the press to parade around to say, see, those Israelis killed

00:27:09.200 these citizens that we kept right here so they would be killed. It is horrific and evil. And I'll put

00:27:15.400 it this way. It's actually a way Netanyahu put it during one of the earlier rocket attacks. He was

00:27:21.520 talking about how Iron Dome missile interceptors in Israel intercept their rockets and stop them

00:27:27.080 from killing Israeli citizens. And what Bibi said, he said, we use our missiles to protect our

00:27:33.660 citizens. They use their citizens to protect their missiles. Those are not morally equivalent. Those

00:27:41.040 are not the same. One is a nation defending itself. The other is a grotesque act of terrorism.

00:27:47.320 We have Rashida Tlaib, of course, predictably. She's the only Palestinian American member of

00:27:54.340 Congress tweeting out. Finally, she went silent and then finally tweeted out the path to a peaceful

00:27:58.800 future must include lifting the blockade, ending the occupation and dismantling the apartheid system

00:28:05.760 that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance.

00:28:10.100 Hundred percent. She blames Israel. That's what this tweet is. You've got Cori Bush,

00:28:14.300 who, as far as I can tell, has done absolutely nothing in her life other than protest the police

00:28:19.200 killing of Michael Brown, which was brought on by Michael Brown himself. So said Eric Holder,

00:28:24.700 Obama's DOJ attorney general. She's that's how she she came became famous. She said Michael Brown

00:28:30.820 was unfairly killed by the police. It was a lie. Michael Brown had attacked the officer and that's

00:28:36.140 why the officer shot him. That's what Obama's DOJ found. In any event, she became a star and has been

00:28:42.100 pushing to defund the police all along. And now she wants to take it out on the innocent Israelis to

00:28:46.840 her her never ending life of grievance. And she came out today. Same thing. Similar messaging to

00:28:53.860 what we just heard from Tlaib. I mentioned the 31 student groups at your alma mater, Harvard coming

00:29:00.180 out. Similar messaging. Lawrence Tribe, Harvard professor emeritus. Unbelievable. Saying that this is

00:29:07.440 Bibi Netanyahu wagging the dog to deflect from his domestic turmoil when it comes to political

00:29:14.880 disputes. Then then later, I mean, after just a shit storm unleashed on him, he came out and said,

00:29:18.980 oh, you know what? I hadn't really fully appreciated what was going on in Israel before I sent that.

00:29:22.800 I mean, but the reaction from the established left, Senator, has been absolutely disgusting.

00:29:29.180 Well, unfortunately, in today's Democrat Party, anti-Semitism has been normalized. We've seen the

00:29:35.700 rise of the squad. We've seen the rise of AOC and Tlaib and Omar and Cori Bush. And these radical

00:29:43.260 leftists, they loathe the state of Israel. They are blatantly anti-Semitic. They embrace BDS,

00:29:51.920 boycott, divestiture, and sanctioning, targeting Israel. And they wallow in those sentiments. Each

00:29:57.900 of them have had multiple anti-Semitic tropes that they rolled out previously. You'll remember a few years

00:30:04.600 ago when the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, tried to pass a resolution condemning

00:30:10.340 anti-Semitism. And it turned out she couldn't get her conference to agree. The Democrats could not

00:30:15.600 come together and clearly condemn anti-Semitism. They ended up watering it down to just a general

00:30:21.340 condemnation of hatred of any kind for anyone whatsoever, just blurring it all into a bland

00:30:26.920 statement. I'll tell you when that happened, Megan, in the Senate, I was deeply dismayed. And I wanted to

00:30:31.920 see, could the Senate do better? So I went to Tim Kaine, the Democrat from Virginia. Tim is a friend

00:30:38.360 of mine. He's a liberal Democrat, but he's not nuts. And I said, Tim, do you think there's a chance we

00:30:44.060 could bring Republicans together and clearly and unequivocally denounce anti-Semitism? Tim agreed

00:30:49.320 to work with me on it. The two of us drafted a resolution that clearly explicitly denounces

00:30:55.140 anti-Semitism, that it denounces BDS as an explicit form of anti-Semitism, that it denounced the

00:31:02.620 statements made by the squad members as anti-Semitic and unacceptable. We took that resolution. Tim and I

00:31:09.440 went to the Senate floor. We did not know if a Senate Democrat would stand up and object.

00:31:14.580 They did not. And our resolution passed 100 to nothing. The fact that the Senate needed to do that

00:31:21.160 because the House of Representatives couldn't, because Nancy Pelosi could not take up the resolution

00:31:26.940 that the Senate passed because her conference was unwilling to condemn anti-Semitism. That's what

00:31:34.400 you're seeing now. The reaction. Look, some raging anti-Semites in the halls of Congress. Thanks a lot,

00:31:40.680 Minnesota. And at Harvard. Thanks a lot, Missouri. Thanks a lot, the Bronx, where AOC purportedly came

00:31:46.320 from. I mean, they're they're open about it. They're not even trying to hide it. Yes. And

00:31:50.780 they're the reason why a lot of this money does get funneled over there. They really see Israel as

00:31:54.900 the aggressor. And even in the wake of what we just described at the top of the hour, they don't have

00:32:01.060 the thoughtfulness to just put pump the brakes a minute. Just take it easy. I mean, there are

00:32:08.100 literally parents desperately searching for their babies right now. We saw the murders in the streets

00:32:13.280 with our own eyes. We saw we didn't post it. A bus stop full of elderly women, dead, murdered,

00:32:22.380 toppled over. Just who would murder a baby, an elderly person, evil, just absolute evil. And all

00:32:32.160 they want to do is say, well, you're they're evil, too. They're evil. And Megan, the images that people

00:32:38.540 are saying, yes, it is invoking that it is Israel's 9-11. In another way, it's Israel's Pearl Harbor and

00:32:44.200 that it is a military attack that is directed. But but for a great many Israelis and for a great

00:32:49.540 many Jews in America, when they see these images, the association that is impossible to avoid is the

00:32:55.840 association with the Holocaust, because we have not seen since the Holocaust death squads systematically

00:33:03.300 going from house to house to house and just murdering entire families, murdering the mother,

00:33:10.320 the father, the grandmother, the grandfather, the babies, teenagers, toddlers, infants, just

00:33:16.340 indiscriminately slaughtering families for one reason, because they are Jewish. That is the reason

00:33:21.920 in the view of these terrorists, they deserve to be murdered. And we are seeing crowds cheering

00:33:26.980 the murder of entire families. We're seeing crowds tragically, not just in Gaza. We're seeing crowds

00:33:34.220 in other countries, including in regions of America. We're seeing people cheering it on. And

00:33:39.600 the argument, you know, you mentioned that I went to Harvard. I'm a graduate of the Harvard Law School.

00:33:46.320 And I have to say, when I see 31 student groups look at terrorists committing mass murder, committing

00:33:52.080 torture, committing rape, trying to commit genocide, committing kidnappings, targeting infants. And

00:33:58.480 they're cheering them on and saying, Israel's to blame. It's your fault. They're saying to the Israelis

00:34:06.400 that your children are being murdered and raped. That's truly horrific. That is not, that is a level of

00:34:14.320 ideological hatred, bigotry, and blindness that unfortunately is becoming far too common at our

00:34:23.360 so-called elite academic institutions. Their minds are being poisoned. And you got 31 groups all standing

00:34:30.120 around saying, yes, yes, yes, we're with the monsters doing the killing. It's amazing. I, you know,

00:34:37.600 there was a time when Harvard was the most elite of the elite. And you'd say, oh, geez, I wonder if,

00:34:43.920 I could, my kid could go, I could never go there. Maybe my kid, I don't want my kids going anywhere

00:34:47.900 near that place. I don't want them interacting with these lunatics and these 31 student groups.

00:34:52.740 There's probably a fair amount of the professors who are sympathetic towards that position. I don't

00:34:57.740 want them anywhere near those people. I want them on the outside condemning them and let making their

00:35:03.720 own voices heard. But this is just too dark to stomach stand by because we just got word on what

00:35:09.660 President Biden is now doing. You won't be surprised when you hear what it is more with Senator Ted Cruz.

00:35:21.480 As we were just talking about, we have seen celebrations in support of this Hamas terrorism

00:35:28.820 around the world, including right here at home. In New York City, a rally was held yesterday with

00:35:35.400 participants chanting, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Take a listen.

00:35:42.220 That's enough of that. They held signs stating when people are occupied, resistance is justified.

00:36:11.100 And, quote, end all U.S. aid to apartheid Israel and violence, quote, by any means necessary. These

00:36:18.100 are Americans. These are Americans sitting out there in Times Square. Unlike the left, it's not that I

00:36:22.980 feel they don't have a right to be there, but their message is insane. Up in Canada, our friends over at

00:36:28.300 Rebel News caught video of young men cheering, waving flags and honking in support of the Hamas-led

00:36:33.640 terrorism attack on Israel. Look at this. They're having a great time. They're thrilled. They're

00:36:50.200 thrilled. Ontario's premier, that's Canada's version of a governor, Doug Ford. They're called

00:36:56.320 these, quote, hate rallies that have no place in Ontario, saying they're reprehensible and disgusting.

00:37:00.880 He's not wrong about that. Yet they continue. In Australia, pro-Palestinian protesters demanded

00:37:06.240 that Australia cut ties with Israel and, quote, free Palestine.

00:37:09.620 It's amazing. There's no sobriety. There's no moment of honoring the dead, those who are still in

00:37:34.900 harm's way and suffering. And Senator Ted Cruz, not that these people are relevant to the discussion,

00:37:40.260 but it is somewhat telling. Actor Josh Gad put out a tweet, and he's got family in Israel,

00:37:49.260 in support of Israel, and had to post a second tweet saying, my God, the amount of negative incoming

00:37:55.860 I received for saying just, I stand with Israel. Kylie Jenner, again, what her reaction is not

00:38:02.960 important, but the backlash is telling. She has 400 million followers on Instagram. She similarly put

00:38:09.000 out the Israeli flag with, I stand with Israel. She had to delete it an hour later because there

00:38:13.460 was so much blowback to her in just putting it. I mean, these same people are probably posting

00:38:18.860 Ukrainian flags as we speak. But when it comes to Israel, very different story.

00:38:24.940 Well, there is a normalization of anti-Semitism, of hatred for Israel among the left today. We see

00:38:32.040 it in our university campuses where Jewish students are regularly afraid to be identified as Jewish

00:38:39.040 students, to wear a yarmulke, to wear clothing that identifies that they're Jewish because the

00:38:45.680 virulent hatred for Israel is such that they endure harassing. They see Hillel centers that are vandalized,

00:38:55.880 that have swastikas drawn on them. And the growth of this among the radical left is a very disturbing

00:39:04.680 problem, especially because so-called mainstream Democrats don't stand up against it. They don't

00:39:12.940 stand up. As I described a few minutes ago, Pelosi was not able to get the Democrats to come together

00:39:18.340 to say anti-Semitism is bad. That is a dangerous dynamic. And listen, if you look at the people who

00:39:25.720 are celebrating across the world, both in the U.S. and abroad, those were the same people who were

00:39:31.440 celebrating after September 11th. After the towers went down on September 11th, you had the very same

00:39:37.640 people cheering because there's a simple truth. Those who hate America hate Israel. And those who

00:39:46.600 hate Israel hate America. The radical left is angry. It is violent. It embraces terrorism.

00:39:54.980 The Ayatollah in Iran, to whom Joe Biden has sent $50 billion, he regularly chants in front of mobs of

00:40:05.460 crowds, death to America and death to Israel. The two are interrelated.

00:40:11.100 He literally, to forgive the interruption, he literally tweeted out in the wake of this,

00:40:15.320 quote, God willing, the cancer of the usurper Zionist regime will be eradicated at the hands

00:40:20.360 of the Palestinian people and went on from there. By the way, that tweet stayed up finally after all

00:40:27.040 these people said, how does that get, you know, how does that live on Twitter on X? They put a warning

00:40:31.900 on it, which is fine under Elon Musk. He's trying to allow, you know, people to see it. Now you have

00:40:36.560 to click on it if you want to see it. But the point is, I mean, can you, the Ayatollah's on there

00:40:39.740 and Trump for years was kicked off. I want to tell you about President Biden because we don't have that

00:40:45.240 much time with you left and I want to get to this. He called a lid on any press available. He's done.

00:40:50.340 He's done working. As of noon, that happened as we went to air, Senator. He's done, I guess,

00:40:56.240 for the day. And this was his message after, I mean, for 12 hours, absolutely nothing. Absolutely

00:41:02.760 not. Then a paper statement, 14 hours. Finally, he released a statement. The American president

00:41:06.840 was sleeping. It seems the 3 a.m. phone call came in. He didn't pick up because he said he

00:41:10.920 didn't hear about this until 730 or 8 the next morning. It had been going on all night. Finally,

00:41:16.300 he managed to put out a statement. You tell me whether his heart is even in this. I don't you while you

00:41:21.000 watch it. Today, the people of Israel are under attack, orchestrated by a terrorist organization,

00:41:28.460 Hamas. The United States stands with Israel. We will not ever fail to have their back.

00:41:35.680 No, the world's seen appalling images. Thousands of rockets in the space of hours raining down on

00:41:43.040 Israeli cities. I got up this morning and started this at 738 o'clock, my call. Israel has the right

00:41:49.200 to defend itself and its people. Full stop. There's never justification for terrorist attacks.

00:41:56.240 And my administration's support for Israel's security is rock solid and unwavering. Let me

00:42:02.120 say this as clearly as I can. This is not a moment for any party hostile to Israel to exploit

00:42:08.460 these attacks to seek advantage. The world is watching.

00:42:13.000 So what's happening here? What's happening after, you know, given all the money that you already

00:42:18.720 described that we've given to Israel's enemies and he's, he's saying the right things, at least

00:42:23.600 in front of that microphone, not via his state department, but in front of that microphone,

00:42:27.680 he's smart enough to say the right things. So what's happening here?

00:42:31.480 You know, the immediate question that leaps to mind is, are you going to stop the money?

00:42:35.200 Are you going to stop sending money to the vicious terrorists who are committing these atrocities?

00:42:42.560 And are you going to enforce the oil sanctions? Iran is selling 2 million barrels of oil a day.

00:42:48.000 They did so yesterday. They'll do so today. They'll do so tomorrow. Each and every day,

00:42:53.300 Joe Biden continues to compound it because his administration, their, their holy grail,

00:42:59.540 their white whale of foreign policy is they want to enter into a nuclear agreement with Iran

00:43:05.220 that is a complete capitulation that allows the Ayatollah, the person directing these terror attacks

00:43:10.380 to have nuclear weapons. And the only thing that might be worse than what we're seeing now

00:43:15.480 is seeing this instead playing out with a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv. And instead of talking about

00:43:21.960 thousands who've been kidnapped or tortured or raped or murdered, we might be talking about millions

00:43:27.520 who were murdered in a nuclear attack. That's what Biden. Is there any chance that the Iran deal

00:43:33.240 goes forward after this? According to the Biden administration? Yes, it remains their obsession.

00:43:39.880 They cannot be dissuaded by facts. Look, before this war attacked, before this war began, Iran was

00:43:47.500 actively trying to murder the former U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, the former national security

00:43:54.340 advisor to the president, John Bolton, and the former assistant secretary of state, Brian Hooks.

00:43:59.900 Every month, the Biden State Department spends over $2 million simply providing security because the

00:44:07.540 Iranian hit squads are trying to murder them. At the same time, Biden and his underlings are sitting

00:44:15.700 down with Iran, swilling Chardonnay, laughing and negotiating a deal. And in fact, and I forced

00:44:21.920 Blinken to answer this under oath, I said, Mr. Secretary, is it true that the State Department

00:44:28.060 is spending $2 million a month in security to stop Iran from murdering these former senior officials?

00:44:33.440 He said, yes, that's true. I said, is it true that your State Department asked Iran while you're

00:44:39.160 negotiating with them to stop actively trying to murder former U.S. officials? He said, yes, that's true.

00:44:46.240 And is it true they said, no, we will not stop trying to murder them? And he said, yeah, that's true,

00:44:51.480 too. He acknowledged nothing wrong with any of this. Finally, I just asked him, I said, Mr. Secretary,

00:44:58.020 would you agree that that murdering a U.S. Secretary of State is a pretty big deal?

00:45:04.000 And Tony Blinken was forced to laugh and say, well, yes, that is a big deal. And I said, then why the

00:45:10.320 hell do you sit down and negotiate with them and give them billions of dollars and pretend that they're

00:45:16.280 real good faith negotiators when they are trying to murder us? That is the degree of zealotry in

00:45:24.520 this Biden administration. Now, there will be a question of how much support should come from

00:45:32.080 the United States. You know, you've seen the numbers on support for Ukraine going off the cliff

00:45:36.820 among Republicans. What's your take on that? Israel is a different story. It's a very important ally in

00:45:46.020 a very important region. But you know the attitude, the appetite right now for getting us further

00:45:51.340 involved in external conflicts. So how do you see that? Listen, I believe Israel is fundamentally

00:45:57.000 different. America should stand with Israel, period. We should ensure that Israel has the weapons it

00:46:04.440 needs to defeat Hamas and to defeat Hezbollah. If Hezbollah gets actively engaged in this,

00:46:09.360 we should ensure that they have the time to do so. Now, that doesn't mean we should send

00:46:13.120 U.S. soldiers into harm's way, but it does mean we should provide the military support that is

00:46:18.380 necessary. And every bit as importantly, America needs to defend Israel in the international sphere,

00:46:23.680 because the left, the haters of Israel will try to attack it and try to demand a ceasefire,

00:46:29.580 which means Israel surrender to the terrorists. America needs to make clear, no, Israel must defeat

00:46:36.320 the terrorists, not surrender to them. Do you think it's relevant? I mean, we have Mike Pence out

00:46:43.600 there today saying, you know what, this is also a problem with Republicans like Trump, like Vivek

00:46:48.040 Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis wanting to stand down and lead from behind. You know, that's not America.

00:46:55.740 We need to leave from, you know, he's back sort of in the Reagan policies when it comes to foreign

00:46:59.820 policy. What do you make of that? Look, there are real disagreements about Ukraine policy with the

00:47:06.300 Biden administration and among the candidates running for president. I understand those disagreements.

00:47:10.680 I disagree with how the Biden administration has implemented this war in Ukraine. Among other things,

00:47:15.800 they've sent billions of dollars to Iran. Iran is using some of that money for drones

00:47:20.460 that the Russians are using to kill Ukrainians. So just like the Biden administration is funding

00:47:25.860 Hamas to wage war on Israel, the Biden administration is also funding Iran for Russia to wage war on

00:47:32.940 Ukraine. They're funding both sides of the war. It's incoherent. That being said, this war was caused by

00:47:39.600 Biden's weakness. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't put it in the middle of the disagreements in the Republican

00:47:44.140 primary. Senator Cruz, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

00:47:52.840 Joining me now for more analysis is former acting director of national intelligence under the Trump

00:47:57.740 administration and ambassador to Germany, Rick Grinnell. Great to have you here today. It's,

00:48:03.620 I want to start with this because we, we left off on this note with Ted Cruz. We actually have

00:48:07.780 the Mike Pence soundbite, and this is going to be debated at length now when it comes to American

00:48:12.880 policy and how we're going to respond, how an active role, how active and a role we should be

00:48:19.040 playing. Here's Mike Pence yesterday on America's role in this whole thing. This is what happens when

00:48:25.980 we have leading voices like Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis signaling retreat from

00:48:32.500 America's role as leader of the free world. I look that what happened in Ukraine was an unprovoked

00:48:39.220 invasion by Russia. What happened this weekend was an unprovoked invasion by Hamas into Israel.

00:48:47.740 And I really believe now more than ever, both the debate within the Republican party and the debate

00:48:53.780 within America is whether or not we're, we're going to once again, stand without apology as the leader of

00:49:00.420 the free world, as the arsenal of democracy. What do you make of it, Ambassador?

00:49:04.920 One of the reasons why I think we in the America first foreign policy world want to think about

00:49:11.920 these issues only in accordance to what is good for America and putting America first is because

00:49:18.880 we need to be able to prioritize when America would get involved. I've been a big proponent of

00:49:27.100 not giving just unlimited amounts of money to Ukraine because I didn't see how it immediately

00:49:35.360 impacted the United States. Certainly, we are the leader of the free world and we should be pushing

00:49:40.220 peace agreements. But in moments like this with Israel, this is the whole reason why we say why we

00:49:46.520 should be saying no to Ukraine. We don't want to deplete all of our munitions and hardware

00:49:53.180 everywhere in Ukraine when we are, when they're needed in Israel. And so I think we have to stand

00:50:00.800 with our ally Israel right now. And by the way, I actually believe that there's a lot of Arab countries

00:50:06.060 that also are secretly standing with Israel. They don't want a big, huge Middle East war. And so

00:50:14.040 hopefully, Anthony Blinken is working behind the scenes. Now is the time to have really an incredibly

00:50:20.720 tough diplomatic effort, a diplomacy surge. When you go and you talk to the Turks and you talk to

00:50:27.420 the Lebanese and you talk to the Egyptians and the Syrians, including the Russians, the Russians can play

00:50:32.640 a very important role right now by making sure that Syria does not get involved and that their border

00:50:39.960 with Israel is not penetrated to open up another front. The Russians have a lot of influence in Syria.

00:50:50.620 right now. And we should be talking to them. I think America has a lot of influence on Lebanon

00:50:56.120 and Egypt. And that's where moving some of our hardware in immediately is a diplomatic action.

00:51:02.720 I don't like to, you know, try as a diplomat, try to push the military option. But I do think for

00:51:09.840 diplomats who are negotiating to have a credible threat of military action behind the diplomats

00:51:16.740 only helps the diplomats at the table. Hmm. So where do you see this going? Because

00:51:22.960 this is what I was trying to ask Ted Cruz. This could, it could get very, very bad. It could go

00:51:28.600 well beyond Israel and Hamas. It could involve Hezbollah. It could involve Iran. It could involve

00:51:34.620 even potentially us. What do you see as the most likely outcome?

00:51:39.120 Well, look, it's hard to talk about these issues and do hypotheticals because you certainly don't

00:51:45.400 want to give weight to any one thing and make it come into fruition because you're talking about it.

00:51:52.460 So I think most people are going to be very hesitant. But I think what you just touched on

00:51:56.300 is exactly the fear is that it really could get into all of these different areas. I think Turkey right

00:52:02.220 now is a key, key ally. Remember, they're a member of NATO. They've been a member of NATO since 1951.

00:52:10.960 We have a lot of people I would put into the camp of Democrats who are very skeptical of Turkey and

00:52:18.080 they want to push them away. Certainly the Biden administration has not been a good friend to

00:52:23.560 Erdogan. The Biden administration hasn't been a good friend to the Saudis. And we need the Saudis right

00:52:28.560 now. I go back to my point is I'm not sure that Arab governments are all unequivocally on the part

00:52:37.860 of the Palestinians. I believe that the Iranians, for instance, they don't care about the Palestinians.

00:52:44.280 They're using them. Now, look what's happening. You have the Iranians pushing Hamas to start this war.

00:52:50.620 And now look at what's going to happen to Gaza. Look what's going to happen to the people inside

00:52:56.800 that area. Do you think that Iran is going to take those refugees? They're going to take care

00:53:02.560 of those refugees? No, they're using them as pawns. And the more that we can make clear to the Arab

00:53:08.680 people in this region that they are being used by Iran, the better. And I do think that we'll get

00:53:16.720 help from the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Lebanese, even the Syrians and the Turks on this message.

00:53:23.840 I mean, there are some who are saying, first thing, I think this was Josh Hammer, who's a

00:53:29.480 syndicated columnist, was saying, first thing is we need to evacuate as many civilians from Gaza as

00:53:35.320 possible and ideally move them to Egypt if Egypt would help. And then we need to raise Gaza,

00:53:40.820 we meaning Israel and us with our assistance. We need to raise Gaza and make it look like a parking lot.

00:53:46.400 There cannot be any getting along with the folks in Gaza. Hamas has proven that if you want to get

00:53:52.720 rid of Hamas, you've got to get you've got to raise Gaza. And, you know, with with the caveat

00:53:58.080 that I just said, trying to get Egypt to take as many of the civilians as it will. What do you think

00:54:02.820 of that? I've worked at the State Department for 12 years, Megan, you know that. And I'm a diplomat

00:54:08.580 and I try to talk about peaceful solutions. I think in this particular instance, it's very difficult

00:54:14.660 to think about what the peace is. I'm all for Israel being able to defend itself and take the time to

00:54:22.960 root out the problem. I don't know if what that means, but I certainly know I want to give Israel

00:54:28.900 enough time. Here is one of the problems with Josh's assumptions. I don't think Egypt is going to take

00:54:36.180 these individuals. If they were going to take them, they would have taken them a long time ago.

00:54:40.280 So they've got a wall keeping the Palestinian people out and not able to go into Egypt. But

00:54:49.400 but I do think, you know, out of the 21 members of the Arab League, that we should be able to sit down

00:54:55.780 again with a diplomatic surge. And I and I don't have faith with Anthony Blinken being able to do this.

00:55:01.620 He certainly hasn't been able to come up with a peace plan for for Ukraine, even though the Chinese

00:55:08.020 have one. But I do think right now the State Department has a lot of foreign service officers

00:55:14.940 who are really good. Let me let me highlight one, a woman who is right now being held up as U.S.

00:55:25.960 ambassador to Egypt. She's a career foreign service officer and she would be amazing. But guess who's

00:55:33.100 holding her up? Bob Menendez, who's supposed to be the Egyptian government expert, but he doesn't

00:55:39.780 want the foreign service officer going in. And I believe that the reason he doesn't want her going

00:55:45.220 in is because when she was in Bulgaria, her top issue was getting rid of corruption. She rooted out

00:55:52.740 corruption and was a corruption czar in Bulgaria. And that was her top priority. And she wants to do the

00:56:00.640 same thing in Egypt. And guess what? Bob Menendez doesn't want her there. He's holding her up.

00:56:05.280 So we need to have these foreign service officers who are good and not every one of them are good,

00:56:10.940 but she's very good and she needs the support. And we need to have an ambassador in Egypt.

00:56:18.640 What, you know, I realize that you're not former defense secretary, but the situation of trying to

00:56:26.700 get back the hostages, nine of whom are ours. Very difficult. At least nine Americans now sitting

00:56:32.760 there wondering whether we're coming to get them. Uh, we paid what, as Ted Cruz said, 1.2 billion

00:56:38.520 per, uh, prisoner to Iran to get our people back. Now we got at least nine Americans who are prisoner

00:56:44.380 to Hamas. We can't just sit back and say, well, I guess it's Israel's problem, right? I mean, what,

00:56:49.000 what should we be doing? And what do you anticipate Israel doing? Because,

00:56:52.740 you know, there are minefields, there are booby traps. It is not easy to go in and steal back

00:57:00.680 any hostage that Hamas has taken. Nevermind hundreds of them, the women, the children,

00:57:05.940 the Americans, that everyone that they Hamas. I mean, you, you've got to give them credit for

00:57:10.900 smartly making it a lot harder for Israel. I mean, this is just because Israel cares. They care about

00:57:17.680 life. Yeah. Look, our, our, um, America's top priority has to be getting these individuals back,

00:57:24.820 uh, whether it's a hostage or someone who, um, has been killed. We've got to bring the Americans home.

00:57:31.660 So what I would advocate is the secretary of state and the secretary of defense need to sit in the

00:57:35.940 oval office and they need to both present their plans, how to do this again, a diplomatic surge.

00:57:41.560 You've got to get the Egyptians to start helping. You've got to get the Saudis to start helping.

00:57:45.540 You've got to get, uh, Lebanese and Turkey, go to Erdogan. And if you can't get our people freed as

00:57:53.400 Americans by, by making it very clear, we're trying this diplomatically. If you're not going to release

00:57:59.800 the Americans, then the Pentagon is going to come in and they will not negotiate. And the Pentagon needs

00:58:07.100 to have a plan. We have the most amazing American men and women who know how to, uh, go in and rescue

00:58:14.580 Americans. They have, they, they do it the world over. When I was us ambassador to Germany, uh, we

00:58:20.280 were called upon by the Germans to rescue some of their hostages and we do it. This is what America

00:58:26.540 does. And so I believe that the Americans, uh, on the Pentagon side need to be prepared. If diplomacy

00:58:34.360 fails that we need to have a small window for diplomacy. I'm not, I'm not naive about this,

00:58:38.920 probably not going to work, but we need to have a surge. I don't understand why Anthony Blinken is

00:58:45.280 not in the region right now. Get on a plane. He, he has his own plane and immediately start talking to

00:58:53.100 these capitals and try to come up with something that, that would help. And if he finds in 48 hours

00:59:00.180 that we cannot come up with a diplomatic, peaceful plan, he needs to be warning all of these governments.

00:59:06.980 The United States is coming in to get its people and the Pentagon is coming in right behind the

00:59:11.960 diplomats who are trying to negotiate and the Pentagon doesn't negotiate. This is the difference

00:59:17.560 between a threat of military action and a credible threat of military action. Donald Trump always had

00:59:24.160 a credible threat. Matter of fact, Chancellor Merkel once told me the problem with your president,

00:59:30.000 Mr. Ambassador is that I never can figure out what he's going to do next. And I remember thinking to

00:59:35.540 myself, don't smile, don't laugh in her face, but this is exactly what we need for American diplomacy

00:59:43.000 is a president who is not predictable. Well, I mean, I think a lot of us are thinking about that

00:59:49.460 right now. I mean, about whether they would have done this had it been a president Trump. I mean,

00:59:54.520 it's bad enough what they've done to the Israelis, but you're taking American hostages. You're taking

00:59:59.000 American hostages now. Now you want to mess with the United States of America directly.

01:00:04.420 Can I bring up one point on that? There's a tweet, an old tweet when President Trump was

01:00:10.400 president. And I saw it circulated yesterday, where President Trump says he warns Iran in a tweet,

01:00:18.460 you touch one American and you will live to regret it.

01:00:22.300 And that statement was so credible that we didn't have the Iranians messing with Americans then.

01:00:30.600 We didn't have Americans. Even Rick on 9-11 of this year, Trump tweeted out or truthed out.

01:00:36.520 And I have it someplace here, but it was it was saying that this Iran deal where we paid the six

01:00:41.940 billion would lead to the bad guys taking additional American hostages.

01:00:47.720 Of course, they're upping the ante. Bloomberg News, no friend of conservatives reported at the end of

01:00:56.620 August that the Biden administration was on the record confirming that they were easing the sanctions

01:01:03.320 from Iran and they Iran was beginning to sell more oil, their oil spiked. Look, once again, when the

01:01:10.820 Iranians see that the Biden administration is easing the sanctions, letting them sell oil,

01:01:17.720 giving them six billion dollars, telling the Europeans that they can absolutely start doing

01:01:24.760 trade with the Iranians. And then we see the pro-Iranians Americans getting security clearances

01:01:33.020 and moving inside the State Department and the Pentagon. What do you think message that message

01:01:39.180 is that's sent to the Iranian radical regime?

01:01:42.140 They've had this utopian vision vision about Iran, right? It's like they really thought just

01:01:47.840 like Obama thought that we could just hold hands and forget all about all that terrorism stuff.

01:01:53.780 You know, things are looking a lot better. They had just sent out some tweet. Anthony Blinken did

01:01:57.340 saying the Middle East hasn't been this quiet in years. And then there was Trump. My team sent me

01:02:03.460 his truth from Truth Social on 9-11 of this year. Can you believe crooked Joe Biden's giving six

01:02:08.700 billion to the terrorist regime in Iran? That money will be used for terrorism all over the Middle

01:02:14.220 East and indeed the world. This incompetent fool is destroying America. He had the audacity to announce

01:02:20.000 this terrible deal today, September 11th, to pay for hostages will lead to kidnapping, ransom and blackmail

01:02:26.880 against Americans across the globe. And of course, it was Iran behind what we're seeing right now in

01:02:33.460 Israel with Hamas. It was Iran. And that and, you know, it's we can get into the six billion and how

01:02:38.360 it went down. But money's fungible. We said that they could get this payment that they were owed

01:02:42.560 out of South Korea and they knew it was coming and they cut a deal. They've obviously been helping

01:02:48.560 Hamas plan this for months and The Wall Street Journal has confirmed it. So diplomatically, as you

01:02:54.400 talk about, you know, these groups, Saudi Arabia was just about, well, maybe that's too optimistic,

01:02:59.120 but was seriously considering signing a deal to improve relationship, the relations with Israel,

01:03:06.880 similar to the way we saw Egypt and Jordan do when Trump was president. And now there's some concern

01:03:12.720 this could derail that, though there's a preliminary indication from the Saudis that it won't.

01:03:18.480 The Iranians do not want that deal for all sorts of reasons. They do not want the Saudis getting closer

01:03:24.180 to Israel. And all these entities like Egypt, like Jordan, like the Saudis who get a little

01:03:29.260 closer to Israel, they're not getting any closer to Iran. So Iran gets further ostracized. Israel gets

01:03:34.260 less ostracized. But will this have the effect? Some are speculating of making the Saudis back off of

01:03:39.660 that deal. Well, I think this whole war is about the Saudi Israel peace negotiations and the fact that

01:03:47.560 the Iranians don't want it. Look, let me just say one thing that's really important. Donald Trump and

01:03:53.160 the Trump administration absolutely believes in engagement. Joe Biden has tried to engage with

01:03:58.800 Iran. The problem is the Democrats for years keep going back to engagement, even though engagement

01:04:04.560 doesn't work. I believe that engagement is sometimes key. Take, for instance, when President Trump went to

01:04:11.720 North Korea, looked at Kim Jong-un and said, hey, let's try talking. Let's try to engage here. And it

01:04:18.940 worked. A lot of times engagement doesn't work. And you have to, you know, use military force and take

01:04:25.300 out Qasem Soleimani, as President Trump did, because he was the leading leader of terrorism. And so what I

01:04:31.880 like about the Trump policy is that he tried engagement, he was willing to try engagement, but he

01:04:36.740 was also willing to evaluate whether or not it worked quickly, and to do something else. Sanctions. Remember

01:04:42.720 when Pastor Brunson was in Turkey, what did President Trump do? He told Erdogan, well, shut down your

01:04:49.240 economy. You don't want to return Pastor Brunson? Well, I give you 48 hours because I'm going to shut

01:04:55.500 down your economy. That credibility that Trump has with someone like Erdogan worked. They returned him

01:05:02.280 peaceful, totally diplomatic, using tools like sanctions, like tough statements, like engagement.

01:05:09.680 But President Trump is also willing to use the military in specific instances. And that's what

01:05:17.000 I think is needed right now. We need to be able to have a both a diplomatic plan, as well as a military

01:05:24.020 plan. And that's where I have a lot of trouble with the Biden administration. We have lots of war

01:05:29.660 plans. The Pentagon seems to be doing really well with having a plan of action and a request for more

01:05:35.880 money for more war. But we literally do not have a State Department that's functioning right.

01:05:42.840 Anthony Blinken has been evacuating our embassies regularly, sometimes first, we're the first ones

01:05:49.820 to evacuate in a situation. And we're not utilizing diplomacy. But yet, what is he doing? He's talking

01:05:56.880 about, and I don't make this up, culinary diplomacy, music diplomacy, and the armed embassies program is

01:06:05.160 being expanded. The problem, too, here is that not only did Israel have a massive intelligence failure,

01:06:11.300 we did, too. I mean, we also keep a very close eye on Hamas in this region. It's in our interest,

01:06:16.920 for all the reasons we've been discussing, to maintain a peace there. And we apparently got caught

01:06:23.020 just as off guard as they did. And I referenced it a second ago. But here's Jake Sullivan,

01:06:26.880 the National Security Advisor. Last week, he was appearing at the Atlantic Festival. This is last

01:06:33.720 week. Listen. And what we said is we want to depressurize, deescalate, and ultimately integrate

01:06:42.180 the Middle East region. The war in Yemen is in its 19-month truce. For now, the Iranian attacks

01:06:49.240 against U.S. forces have stopped. Our presence in Iraq is stable. I emphasize for now, because all

01:06:54.620 of that can change. And the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.

01:07:03.180 Clearly, we had no idea.

01:07:05.340 Well, look, I don't know if you saw this. Let's see if your staff can pull up this tweet. Jeff

01:07:09.500 morale. I tweeted it out just a little bit ago. Jeff morale, who was the former head of CIA,

01:07:16.100 a big Democrat, signed the letter, the 51 individuals who said that Hunter's laptop was

01:07:22.700 Russian disinformation and you shouldn't look at it. Jeff morale just this morning said it's not an

01:07:28.100 American intelligence failure because the violence happened in Israel. And he says that would be like

01:07:36.020 saying on 9-11, it was an intelligence failure for Israel because they didn't suspect what was

01:07:41.980 happening in our country. That's not the way allies work. That's certainly not the way the U.S.-Israeli

01:07:48.000 relationship works. We share a lot of intelligence. By the way, Five Eyes is another organization

01:07:55.780 that should be sharing all of this intelligence. So we already see the Biden team, and I put

01:08:02.760 Morel in that because he's worked very closely with the Biden team, scrambling to say this is not

01:08:09.240 our fault. This is not an intelligence failure from America, but of course it is.

01:08:15.120 Wow. Yes, looking for it. Here we go. My team just sent it to me. Mike Morel this morning

01:08:21.860 saying, let's see. NBC News stated implied that the Hamas attack on Israel was a U.S. intelligence

01:08:30.760 failure. Let me be clear. This was not a U.S. intel failure. The equivalent would be saying that 9-11

01:08:36.720 was an Israeli or U.K. intelligence failure. Yeah, you're exactly right. It's just as you said.

01:08:41.660 I've got to ask you about the media. It's really no surprise what they're doing, but they're doing

01:08:47.920 their own sort of old tricks. The headlines in the news have been absolutely ridiculous.

01:08:55.060 I'm biased against Israel and in favor of Hamas. I mean, Hamas, in favor of Hamas. They refuse to call

01:09:01.800 them terrorists. They refuse. Even Joe Biden's calling them terrorists. Even his administration

01:09:07.000 using the word terror. It's like that should be the green light for the Washington Post and the New York

01:09:10.920 Times. But they're apparently too left to even take that marching order, and they've stuck with

01:09:16.140 militants. Here was the Washington Post headline yesterday. Israel formally declares war against Hamas

01:09:23.860 as hundreds killed on both sides. Oh, my God. Tells you absolutely nothing about who started it,

01:09:33.140 what's being done. I actually tweeted this out. Here's my alternate headline where I'm running

01:09:37.180 Washington Post. Hamas terrorists murder, kidnap hundreds of innocents in unprovoked attack.

01:09:44.080 Israel acknowledges it's war. I mean, just so people can see the difference in what the media is

01:09:49.760 doing. This morning on Morning Joe, Rick, there was this exchange where the ADL's Jonathan Greenblatt,

01:09:57.000 I mean, that's a far left organization now, far left. But this guy, even this guy had too much

01:10:02.380 on Morning Joe in the way they were characterizing things. Watch this.

01:10:07.240 I am angry. I am angry with the world that allowed the dehumanization of Israelis and sanitized

01:10:14.980 the terrorism of Hamas. I must say, I love this show, and I love this network. But I've got to ask,

01:10:22.100 who is writing the scripts? Hamas, the people who did this, they are not fighters, Jonathan.

01:10:28.660 They are not militants. And I'm looking right at the camera. They are terrorists. It is a barbarian

01:10:34.920 who rapes and brutalizes women, who kills children in front of their parents.

01:10:46.400 I mean, it's something when you even have somebody on the set of Morning Joe calling out the network.

01:10:51.640 You know, I'm really glad that you ran that clip. I didn't see it. I don't watch Morning Joe. But

01:10:56.860 you, Megan, have a ton of independent listeners. So many people that I know that either are not

01:11:04.440 really that political or don't really like Republicans and Democrats listen to you. And

01:11:10.620 what I just want to point out is that this is, as you say, a very far left activist, Democrat activist,

01:11:18.140 who is now saying that MSNBC has gone too far, the media have gone too far,

01:11:23.900 that this woke type policy has taken over, and that we've lost common sense. And I appeal to all

01:11:33.020 of the people that listen to you in this podcast, to really understand what that means is that when

01:11:39.760 you're losing Democrats, activist Democrats, because the Democrats have literally gone crazy,

01:11:46.460 and lost common sense, you really need to be able to pull this back. You got to stop voting for these

01:11:53.200 people. They're radicals, and they're really changing our country. And I'll finish with this.

01:11:58.480 I have a lot of friends in my life who are first and second generation Americans.

01:12:03.280 And the left wants you to think that they are all voting for Democrats. But actually,

01:12:09.360 every first and second generation American that I know is absolutely conservative. They look at what's

01:12:16.480 happened to the media, the DC media, the White House press corps, and they say, wow, all they are is parrots

01:12:22.960 for the ruling party. I left that. That's what I escaped from. And they see it very clearly. And they're

01:12:29.200 the canaries in the coal mine for the rest of us in America.

01:12:31.760 It's really disheartening. You look at what's happening on the national level, and you see Trump,

01:12:38.720 who sends out some not nice posts about people like Elaine Chao. He may or may not have handled

01:12:46.000 the documents perfectly. The other side is trying to trans our kids. I mean, literally cutting boys'

01:12:50.960 penises off saying, you know, because some random parent says, yes, I think he's actually a girl.

01:12:56.480 And doing this, funding Iran, despite the fact that they know what will happen, funding Hamas,

01:13:02.480 despite the fact that they know what will happen and leaving, you know, Israel twisting in the wind.

01:13:08.560 So now they come out and try to say the right words to try to reassure us that their hearts are

01:13:12.000 in the right place. But their actions have been leading, have been contributing to this chaos,

01:13:17.120 to those murders, to that death. And we're supposed to just

01:13:20.960 I guess sit in our offense about Trump's, you know, not using the King's English and vote for

01:13:27.040 for Democrats. I don't. Rick, you've been very consistent on this all along and a true voice of

01:13:33.120 reason on this. And I am grateful to you. Thanks for being here today. All the best. Thank you.

01:13:40.400 Up next, another voice of reason. It's really going to be good to talk to him. His tweets over

01:13:44.720 this weekend have been invaluable, like especially invaluable. Victor Davis Hanson joins us to put it

01:13:50.800 all in perspective. Victor Davis Hanson joins me now. Victor, I want to get your reaction to this

01:14:00.480 whole thing. Let me just start with this, though. So far, though, former President George W. Bush

01:14:07.840 and former President Donald Trump have both addressed what we're seeing, the terrorist attack

01:14:12.000 by Hamas on Israel. Nothing, nothing from Bill Clinton or from Barack Obama. In fact, Obama's last

01:14:20.560 tweet from Saturday, which is the day this had unleashed it when it started overnight Friday,

01:14:25.840 was for decades. Nargis Mohamedy has been a vocal advocate for women and girls in Iran. This Nobel Prize

01:14:33.680 is a well-deserved recognition of her courage and the hope that she represents not only for women in Iran,

01:14:38.320 but women fighting repression and violence around the world. How about the women who actually were

01:14:42.880 the victim of repression and violence in Israel? Not no words for them. Former President Obama,

01:14:48.560 nothing to say about the children being murdered in Israel. So far, I guess he couldn't find time to

01:14:54.400 actually use his little thumbs and tweet something out. Your thoughts on it. We can't because the policy

01:15:02.240 that the Biden administration has implemented came from Barack Obama. Remember when Obama left office

01:15:08.720 on news that Donald Trump was going to cut off all aid to the Palestinians, which he in fact did.

01:15:15.520 In the last, really the last few hours of his administration, John Kerry rushed through

01:15:19.920 millions of dollars to send to the Palestinian Authority. And they had been warned, just as Biden had

01:15:26.240 been warned by their own State Department, that that money was fungible and would end up in the hands

01:15:31.840 of Hamas. So their idea of making of the Middle East was to be neutral and therefore maybe

01:15:39.760 tilt against Israel and the Gulf states and create, I guess they call it creative tension,

01:15:45.360 and support Iran somewhat and Hezbollah and Hamas, and there would be a balance there,

01:15:50.320 and the United States would then be the adjudicator. And they had national sympathies with revolutionary

01:15:56.240 regimes. And it was a disaster. And so Biden came in and what did he do? He put Robert Malley. And

01:16:03.040 Robert Malley was a complete anti-Semitic bigot. And the first thing he did was try to renew the Iran

01:16:10.240 deal. And now what's happened, the FBI is investigating him for disseminating classified documents and putting

01:16:16.880 pro-Iranian activists in important billets in the State Department. And Anthony Blinken,

01:16:23.840 what has he done? He said, you were misinforming people, he said, to suggest that Iran may have

01:16:29.920 given money to Hamas in anticipation of getting $6 billion. That was really poor isle. He said,

01:16:38.240 we haven't given them the money. We didn't release the South Korean money yet. But of course,

01:16:42.560 Iran knew it was coming, so they made the necessary adjustments in their budget. And they've given

01:16:46.880 100,000 rockets to Hamas. And of course, then Blinken just today had to delete another tweet,

01:16:53.440 where he and the Turkish minister, foreign minister called for a ceasefire. And same thing with whatever

01:16:59.600 the U.S. State Department, U.S. Affairs Bureau, Palestinian Affairs Bureau, you remember that tweet

01:17:07.360 right after the killing, they said that there should be immediate ceasefire. So something's wrong with

01:17:13.360 our government when they tweet, and then the Secretary of State and the State Department have to dismantle

01:17:19.200 that tweet, because they're embarrassed that it's even beyond the pale for their own party,

01:17:23.920 as you showed in that clip. And when you give, Jake Sullivan just gave a talk a week ago, Megan,

01:17:30.240 where he bragged that this was the quietest time he'd ever seen in the Middle East.

01:17:34.560 Yeah, we just played it.

01:17:34.640 So they knew what they were doing. Yeah, they knew what they were doing. They were trying to

01:17:39.840 bring Iran in and normalize it and normalize Hamas. And Hamas and Iran played them like a fiddle.

01:17:45.200 And they just acted as if they were peaceful. And they want engagement where for months they planned

01:17:50.320 and planned and planned this mass murder. And now they they're very defensive because the world is

01:17:57.280 watching and they know what happened when they I mean, it's really chilling if you think about it.

01:18:03.440 We gave them that six billion. We approved the release of that six billion to Iran on 9-11.

01:18:08.480 That's when we announced it here. And at that moment, we know from the Wall Street Journal's

01:18:12.720 reporting they were meeting Iran was meeting with Hamas to plan this this terrorist attack.

01:18:17.520 I mean, so what are we going to do about it? What what are we going to like what the defenders are

01:18:22.080 saying? Well, it has hasn't technically been released yet. It's still sitting in South Korea.

01:18:25.840 OK, are we going to are we going to stop it? Are we going to shut it now? What are we going to do?

01:18:29.360 What are we going to do when it comes to Iran? Because it looks like right now, not only are we not

01:18:33.600 going to stop it, but we're going to continue on with the Iran, the Iran deal that's become an obsession

01:18:38.640 for the Obama and Biden team. We are going to continue because Secretary Blinken just said

01:18:45.200 a few hours ago that he saw there was no evidence that Iran had planned this. That's what he said.

01:18:50.320 He had not seen any evidence and their way of thinking, the more that yes, the more that you

01:18:56.560 indulge Iran and Hamas, they will interpret that magnanimity to be reciprocated and kind. And they look

01:19:03.920 at it as weakness to be exploited, not to be reciprocated and kind. And they and they have

01:19:09.200 nothing but contempt for us. And they know that. But they they have something about Israel. They've

01:19:14.560 adopted this revolutionary fervor and the United States left that somehow the success and the

01:19:21.280 humanitarianism, the democratic institutions of Israel cause people in that area to feel envious or

01:19:28.480 jealous or angry. And they buy into that. Neo-colonialist, neo-imperialist Jews in the

01:19:35.760 Middle East shouldn't be there. And it's prevalent in the Democratic Party. It's very ironic because

01:19:40.960 they keep talking about MAGA and semi-fascist MAGA and the MAGA tail wagging the Republican dog. And

01:19:46.720 actually, the radicalization of the parties is in the Democratic Party. And you can see these insane

01:19:52.160 postings by the squad members and a lot of their identity politics caucus members and what we see

01:19:59.760 with the Democratic Socialist protests. And they're captive to that group. And that means they're not

01:20:05.680 able to maneuver in a normal way. And that's why we have all these calls from so-called statesmen in

01:20:11.440 the Democratic Party and the Biden administration calling for equality or symmetry or ceasefire.

01:20:20.000 So it's really boggling that a bunch of murderers come in and they murder people in their homes,

01:20:26.720 maybe 900, 1,000, 1,100, we don't know. And then they say, okay, let's call it quits now and just stop.

01:20:33.040 And I was really struck by that statement in the US Palestinian Affairs State Department tweet where

01:20:40.240 they said that this cycle of violence and terrorism is bad, but the violence in response to it is bad.

01:20:48.880 And I thought to myself, do they believe that about Ukraine? What if we just said, well,

01:20:54.240 Vladimir Putin's terror, it's okay. And it wouldn't do any good for the Ukrainians to reply

01:20:59.520 with violence because it would just accelerate the cycle of violence.

01:21:03.440 So it's something about Israel that they target and they get rid of norms. They just focus on Israel in

01:21:12.480 a way they don't to any other, and they're never consistent. And why? I don't know. I have a

01:21:17.920 suspicion, but our State Department and government have been kind of infiltrated by these hard leftists.

01:21:26.640 I mean, it certainly appears that way, given the tweets that they've sent out for them to follow

01:21:32.000 up with the Turkish ambassador tweet or foreign minister right after they already had to take

01:21:36.640 down that other tweet from the State Department. They already learned their lesson or should have.

01:21:40.960 And as I was saying earlier in the show, before you got here, Victor, the thing that concerns me

01:21:45.120 about the tweet saying, oh, from Blinken, just spoke with the Turkish foreign minister,

01:21:50.560 and we will back their call for a ceasefire, the Turkish call for a ceasefire. Then he had to take

01:21:55.200 it down. Then the new cleansed tweet didn't have that in it. Well, that doesn't change the substance

01:22:01.280 of the conversation the two men actually had. And I don't think he would have written in a tweet that

01:22:06.400 they had, we had agreed to back Turkey's call for a ceasefire if we hadn't actually said that.

01:22:11.600 Right. So that's clearly where we actually stand. We want a ceasefire. We want it immediately. We

01:22:15.600 want it truly. It's like saying to the United States as the towers were burning, you know what?

01:22:21.200 Hold your fire. Yeah. Ceasefire. Now's the time to deescalate.

01:22:26.800 You've got to remember, Turkey just sent an armed drone into a U.S. installation that the U.S. Air Force

01:22:32.560 shot down. About nine months ago, it threatened our other NATO partner, Greece, and said that one

01:22:39.360 morning the Greeks would wake up and missiles would be falling down upon them in Athens. They

01:22:44.560 have 75 to 80 overflights every month in the Aegean into Greek airspace. They tried to block Sweden,

01:22:51.600 of all countries, from joining NATO. And they're selling arms right now to Russia in the Ukraine

01:22:57.840 conflict. And we couldn't trust them with eight F-35 assembly components. They were giving the

01:23:06.000 information to the Russians. So that's a problem. And everybody knows that they have the second

01:23:10.560 largest army in NATO, and we can't do anything about it, we think. And we have a nuclear base.

01:23:15.280 They're a base with apparently nuclear weapons, which is also problematic. But Turkey is a very,

01:23:20.720 very different Turkey than it was 15 years ago. And the idea that Blinken, on the aftermath of this

01:23:26.800 disaster, this genocidal attack, the idea that he would partner with the Turkish foreign minister to call on

01:23:34.400 Israel to stop whatever it is planning to do is really amazing. It's kind of despicable. It really

01:23:41.520 is despicable.

01:23:42.080 Excellent perspective. Can I read this to you? This is just breaking.

01:23:46.240 This is dark, Victor. It's breaking on the Daily Mail. It was retweeted by our friend Ben Shapiro.

01:23:52.480 The spokesman for the Hamas al-Aqsam brigades has stated that if Israel continues to conduct airstrikes

01:23:58.800 on civilian homes in the Gaza Strip, they will be forced to begin executing hostages and posting

01:24:05.360 the videos online. Well, I mean, there's no difference from them and ISIS, is there? And

01:24:12.800 remember how ISIS rebirthed, because when Obama came into power, he picked whom to be his ISIS advisor,

01:24:20.640 Robert Malley. And Robert Malley, within months, had empowered ISIS to take over most of Iraq. And

01:24:27.680 then Donald Trump came in and said he was going to bomb the proverbial SHIT out of them. And he did.

01:24:33.360 And that was the end of it. And so, I don't think that that threat is going to stop the retaliation

01:24:41.920 from Israel. If they execute Americans, then it'll be very interesting to see what we're going to do

01:24:48.560 about it. But I would like to see all aid to all the Palestinians be cut off as it was during the

01:24:56.160 Trump administration, when they didn't do this. They didn't do this. And I think we should have

01:25:01.520 a travel ban from anybody in the West Bank and Gaza, because you know what's going to happen?

01:25:06.480 There's going to be a lot of refugees and people who want out of Gaza. And the first place they're going

01:25:11.680 to want to come is the United States and Europe. And I think that would be a disaster to let any of them

01:25:16.640 them in. We should have a travel ban. We should secure our border immediately.

01:25:20.560 When you have eight million people coming in and Iran is bragging that that's an open

01:25:24.320 conduit for them, there's no way to check things. And it gets back to this idea that

01:25:31.920 when we elected Joe Biden, people were told that he was not able to stand up to the job.

01:25:38.480 He was non-composmentes, and we all know that. He should be giving an hourly press briefing.

01:25:44.320 He used to have the main players be talking to them. And yet we have Blinken and Sullivan,

01:25:50.560 one who assured us there was nothing wrong, and the other that we should have a ceasefire.

01:25:54.960 And it goes back to the idea, I don't want to be too controversial, Megan, but you know,

01:25:59.360 Anthony Blinken got this job because during the 2020 campaign, in a brilliant move, he called Mike

01:26:06.480 Morrell up and had 51 intelligence officers lie to the nation that this laptop, right before the

01:26:13.040 debate was helpful to Joe Biden, and perhaps to the election. And Jake Sullivan got the job probably

01:26:18.880 because in 2016, he did something similar by trying to fabricate the so-called ping story that the Trump

01:26:27.520 towers was communicating with the Russians. They both were completely disproved, but it didn't matter.

01:26:31.440 So these jobs are rewards for that political service, which was really unethical during the

01:26:38.000 campaigns. And so when this duo came in, I saw what they did, and we saw what they did at Anchorage

01:26:44.800 when the Chinese dressed them down, and they just stood there and took it. It's been downhill for both

01:26:50.640 of them ever since. Well, I mean, this tweet, what's happening, all of it just makes me think,

01:26:58.080 my God, how soon can November 2024 get here? We're in danger now. We're actually in danger.

01:27:03.520 Well, I think we're really in danger. We've been sounding the alarm on this for a long time. I mean, from

01:27:08.880 Afghanistan to Ukraine to now this. I mean, there are real consequences to the American stance in the

01:27:18.800 world and how people perceive us and our willingness and our capabilities to stand up

01:27:24.240 for what's right. So can you put some perspective on that?

01:27:28.800 Well, it's very reminiscent of the collapse of the Carter foreign policy in 1980. Right at the end of

01:27:34.080 1979, the Russians went into Afghanistan. There was all this Russian nuclear missiles were pointed at

01:27:39.760 West Germany. And it was the same idea that if you virtue signal, we've been doing that since the

01:27:46.160 Biden administration came in. And so there was, you know, we won't react to Ukraine, the invasion,

01:27:51.840 if it's a minor offensive, Putin goes in. And then you talk about maybe he went in because of

01:27:57.920 Afghanistan. No, no, no, that had nothing to do with it. We had a righteous strike when we took out

01:28:02.320 those people and we had a wonderful airlift. And they really insult our intelligence. And there's

01:28:07.600 been more of that. That's what I get so angry about when Blinken says there's no connection from a

01:28:12.720 promised that six billions on the way to the Iranians in anticipation of that freeing up

01:28:18.960 other money. And he says, anybody who says that is misinforming. And that's just a blatant lie.

01:28:25.040 And so these countries all around us now, we have Russia and China and North Korea and Iran,

01:28:31.520 and perhaps Turkey. And we have, it's a very multipolar dangerous world right now. And we've

01:28:38.720 drained 250,000 artillery shells out of our strategic Israel stock that was designed just for this type of

01:28:45.920 emergency. We've been taking those stocks and sending them to Ukraine. And the idea was that

01:28:51.680 Americans would put munitions of all sorts on Israeli territory. If Israel got in an existential

01:28:58.080 conflict until we got the airlifts going, they could draw on these. And what did the

01:29:02.000 Biden administration do? It was kind of the counterpart of drawing down the strategic

01:29:06.560 petroleum reserve. They just drew them down. They didn't refill them. And they sent them to Ukraine.

01:29:12.080 So they're destructive people. They're really nihilist. And it's going to be very difficult to get

01:29:17.440 through the next year and a half. As you know, the Republican Party's having a bit of an internal

01:29:22.480 conflict over Ukraine and whether we need to be more Reagan-esque, you know, lead from the front.

01:29:28.240 And we're America. We're the leader of the free world. And we need to stand up to the,

01:29:32.160 you know, regional bullies like Putin. Otherwise, we're going to get a lot more

01:29:36.000 incursions in other countries. And is this really America's problem? You know, it's a complicated region.

01:29:41.680 We've spent enough and we have our own problems and so on.

01:29:45.040 Um, I've heard a lot of people online saying, if you are horrified by what you're seeing Hamas do

01:29:52.480 to Israelis, you should pay closer attention to what the Russians are doing to Ukrainian children

01:29:57.200 and women. And there are hideous videos and stories of that too. Is it the same? Is that a fair comparison?

01:30:07.120 It is not. And it's not because of morality. It's because of geostrategic reckoning. And by that,

01:30:13.440 I mean, we all support giving Ukraine the wherewithal to protect itself. And we've done

01:30:18.960 that. And I've supported it. You've supported it. But to win that war, according to their own agenda,

01:30:26.000 as they define it, is to get back all of the land. We can understand that from February 24th,

01:30:31.200 2020, but they want to get back Crimea and Donbass, which Obama, when they stole it under his tenure and

01:30:38.880 Trump and Biden never said that that was going to happen. They never said it once. Now that is the

01:30:45.040 position of us in support of Ukraine. And that requires, to be frank, preemptive or at least deep

01:30:51.520 strikes into Russia. And the problem I have with that is never in the history of proxy wars have the

01:30:59.040 United States used a proxy or aided a proxy to attack a nuclear superpower. We didn't do it in

01:31:06.320 Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Korea. And any time that the Soviets did that to us in Cuba in 62,

01:31:14.480 we went to DEFCON 2 immediately. And when they did it in 1917, the Germans used Mexico on the Zimmerman

01:31:21.200 telegram and promised them New Mexico and Arizona if they would help us, help the Germans. We went to

01:31:26.800 World War I over it. So that is a very touchy subject when you start giving aid to a third

01:31:32.800 party who uses that wherewithal to attack the motherland. It doesn't mean it's not justified.

01:31:38.560 It does not mean it's not strategically rational to do that. It just means that when you have a nuclear

01:31:44.560 power, it's a different sort of circumstances. And yet, blindly, we just say, on to Moscow. So they've

01:31:52.080 had drones hit the Kremlin. They've taken out the Black Sea Fleet. They've hit fuel dump boats. Yes,

01:31:57.680 that's very good. It helps Ukraine defend itself. But incrementally and insidiously, we are egging on

01:32:05.760 the Russians. And every time they threaten us or threaten the West, we say, oh, that's just more

01:32:11.120 Putin's boilerplate. Yes, maybe so. But at some critical point, it will not be. And we're going to

01:32:16.800 find ourselves in a very difficult position. Whereas we could say there's 600,000 wounded and

01:32:24.080 dead, probably more like 800,000. This is Stalingrad Verdun nightmare. Let us protect the Ukraine so it can

01:32:31.360 get back to February 24th lines. And let's negotiate the Crimea and the Donbass. And you say that and

01:32:38.160 everybody says you're appeasing. So they just want to go on and kill, kill, kill. And I think it's very

01:32:45.600 dangerous what we're doing. It's very different than backing our closest ally that's a democratic

01:32:50.160 country. And notice one thing. Israel didn't announce martial law and the suspension of elections

01:32:56.960 like Ukraine did under its existential threat. It's still a functioning democracy in a way. Ukraine is

01:33:02.960 not. And if, I mean, if Israel ceases to exist, to pretend that that's not a massive foreign policy

01:33:08.880 crisis for America is to be completely dense. Victor Davis Hanson, thank you. So much appreciate

01:33:15.840 hearing from you. Keep up the amazing Twitter game too, by the way, X game. Listen, before we go,

01:33:20.960 I hope everybody will say a prayer for those families who are in harm's way right now. I'm

01:33:25.360 thinking about those children and those women and the men too, in those terror tunnels, terrified

01:33:32.720 about what's coming their way. And now if these barbarians actually start executing

01:33:37.680 these innocents on camera, all one can hope is that it will result in the full force of the world

01:33:45.600 raining down on them to make sure this never happens again. My prayers are with all of them. I know yours

01:33:51.840 are too. We'll see you tomorrow.

The Megyn Kelly Show - October 09, 2023

Israel at War, Hamas Terror, Biden Response, Anti-Semitic Uprisings in U.S., with Sen. Ted Cruz, Ric Grenell, and Victor Davis Hanson ｜ Ep. 643

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