If Israel Claims A Right To Exist It Must Name Its Borders

A country can’t claim a “right to exist” while refusing to say where it ends. We start with that blunt standard and follow it to the heart of the Israel Palestine conflict: borders, settlements, and the moral and political tricks that let an occupation stretch on for decades. If words like “security” and “existence” never come with a map, they turn into a license for expansion, and everyone watching is forced to argue about abstractions instead of facts. 

From there, we get concrete about U.S. foreign policy and U.S. military aid to Israel. We talk leverage, why settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem keeps happening even when American leaders condemn it, and what it looked like the last time a U.S. president applied real pressure. We also take on the hardest questions around political violence, rejecting the idea that there’s such a thing as a humane occupation while also refusing to excuse atrocities as “justified resistance.” 

Then the scope widens: how media coverage shapes what the public believes about negotiations, why maps get buried, and how international law and the Geneva Conventions should change the way we talk about responsibility. Finally, we bring the same skepticism to current events, walking through detailed reporting on Netanyahu’s push inside the White House for action against Iran, the hedging responses from Trump’s advisers, and the political incentives that turn war into messaging. 

If you want clearer thinking on the two-state solution, West Bank settlements, U.S. leverage, Netanyahu, Trump, Iran, and the stories we’re not being told, this is the conversation. Subscribe, share this with a friend who argues in slogans, and leave a review with the one question you still can’t shake.

Transcript

Opening Challenge On Israel’s Borders

SPEAKER_03 1:23

Very good questions. And I think I know what you're trying to pin me down on. On the first, yes, I do, but I think the securely recognized borders should not allow for Israeli colonization or occupation of the territory of its neighbors, which is what it's doing now. The right to exist argument has been um has been used now to the point where what it's going to mean is that the Israel you're talking about will include the uh the annexed and illegally occupied West Bank. Um so the right to exist argument is going to rebound on those who use it unclearly and who don't say what they mean by Israel. It's very interesting. The Israeli um government has never said uh where it thinks the borders of Israel really ought to be and what it would settle for. I think it would be an immense help if Israel's going to insist on the right to exist, if it tells us where it thinks Israel's boundaries should be, every other country does do that. I'd better give you the straight answer. I think Zionism, the idea of building a state of Jewish farmers on Arab land in the Middle East, is a stupid idea to begin with. I've always thought so. My mother wanted to go and be a Zionist at one point. I tried to talk her out of it. It's been a thing in my family. Um I think it's a bad idea. I think it's a messianic idea, I think it's a superstitious idea. So the idea of Israel's right to exist is Well, the no, now that it's there. No, most many states are founded on injustices or foolishness and bad ideas. The boundaries are drawn by a means of political. It doesn't mean that anyone can just come and evict or destroy them. And I I'm not saying that, but I think I have to say, so as not to seem shady, I've always thought it's a silly, messianic, superstitious nationalist idea, and it's a waste of Judaism. And it guaranteed a quarrel with the Arabs because it meant we're going to take away from you what's most precious, your land, by trying to make Jews into peasants. Already a silly idea. That's not the way to rescue Central European Jewry, you may go into farmers in Palestine. Guaranteed an injustice to the Arabs, which now anyone can see, and is now entering as third, fourth generation. Fourth generation of Palestinians brought up either in exile or dispossession or under occupation and humiliation. And now we know that something has to be done to address what is part of the original sin, original misconception of the thing. So I've been writing in favor of Palestinian homeland all my life. I mean, I I'm no more or no less in favor of it than I was. And now the Bush administration is in the world. It's a matter of principle. And now the Bush administration is in favor of it. Well, yes, they were edging towards it. It's a pity about the timing, because they were edging towards it before. I don't want it to look as if they did it as a concession. But it should be a matter of principle if the if Jews born in Brooklyn have a right to a state in Palestine, and Palestinians born in Jerusalem have a right to a state in Palestine. Anyone who doesn't agree with that principle, I think, is uh is suspect. I think most people do. They do, but they're but why in that case do we have the one and not the other? After all, it's America that pays for all this and arms the Israelis and is is very much involved in it. If it's a matter of principle, then we should have witnessed to it a bit more forcibly than we get. On the point of purchase, I'd like to take up on a single word, very important. You wouldn't say, would you, that the United States has no purchase on the government of Israel.

SPEAKER_04 4:43

No, wouldn't that?

SPEAKER_03 4:44

I mean, in other words, if the Israelis are going to continue to build settlements in an identifiable, just a single suburb of Jerusalem, which where most of the Arab population can produce documents proving they've owned their homes since before the British mandate. If American policy can't get them to stop building in that one identifiable suburb of Jerusalem, then there's no such thing as leverage or purchase. And Obama went to all the trouble to point out that this is a terrible thing. He should have said more than he did, in my view, that it's theft as well as an obstacle to negotiations. And then walked away from that. So that a punk government like that of Netanyahu, under the influence of a rat-bag religious party, the Chass party, crackpot orthodox party that happens to run the Ministry of Housing, is allowed to humiliate the United States in not just in the person of its vice president, who was there at the time, but its president and its Congress and its voters. And immediately the president backpedals, and now he's being attacked by some leading American Jewish organizations as being in principle anti-Israel. So he's had a fight with one of the Democratic Party's most important voting blocs. He's done nothing for the Palestinians, and he's made himself look like a jerk. This is not impressive. But when was American policy in the Middle East impressive? Well, actually, when I'll give you an example. When George Bush Sr. said to the Israelis, if you go on like this, we I will ask Congress to suspend your loan guarantees. I thought that was extremely impressive. And so did everyone else in the Middle East. It led to the nearest we've ever had to a proper peace conference. That was in Madrid. Bill Clinton chose to run that year from the right against Bush, saying that he wanted, he thought Bush was being soft on Cuba, just like Kennedy thought, I don't know how Nixon were being soft on communism in Cuba, and also from the right on Israel, saying if he was president, the Israelis would not be subjected to this kind of pressure. So the last time that there was an impressive American policy, it was a Republican administration and it was undone by the hero of every liberal in this room. Good morning.

Two States As A Principle

SPEAKER_00 6:45

Great. Uh uh like your type type of argument, you basically have intellectual discussion instead of uh a screaming argument. I'm uh I'm a libertarian, I'm basically on the opposite side of the spectrum with you. But uh I wonder if you could clarify a couple things for me. I leave Palestine with the entire area covering Israel and Jordan. I wonder if you could tell me at what point the Palestinians went to Jordan and I realized they were kicked out when they blew up some passenger jets or something. And uh I don't you are you familiar with that?

SPEAKER_03 7:19

Uh yes, I think more than you are. Um I'm not so I I don't well go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Basically revolved around the Palestinians that were from Israel. I don't understand the uh there's 22 Arab states why they have to take over Israel. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_03 7:37

Um well there were 49 American states, but someone told you you couldn't talk from what you're sitting here. Someone told you what you we would all have the openers for ourselves from now on. This will only be this you'd only be a landholder or a household if you uh if you profess the fact otherwise get out. You're happy to go far out over that. I don't think so. And I think if you think about it, you wouldn't insult anyone else uh by treating them their society or their country as as disposable as that. The Palestinians do not feel uh that God gave the land to someone else and they therefore have to be flung out. And I completely agree with them. Uh they've they've every right to resist that ridiculous proposal.

SPEAKER_05 8:23

Cape Scott, Massachusetts. Go ahead, please. Good morning. A question for Mr. Hitchens, please. You go on, your aunt asked away. Do you believe it's healthy for the United States to be so much influenced by Israel? We are a large country, they are very small, but they have much influence in the media and especially in politics. Thanks.

U.S. Leverage Aid And Settlements

SPEAKER_03 8:48

Well, believe me, I I know um I believe I understand the question, and uh, there are various voice in which it can be asked, and including a a tone of voice that I don't like uh that suggests that there's a sort of overt Jewish hand that directs US politicism, which is not true, and uh very often clusters with other forms of unpleasantness. I do think that the United States gives far too great a proportion of its military aid budget to Israel and in return asks for insufficient Israeli responsibility. Uh the Israelis are the custodians of the West Bank by an act of war with their occupation that is not recognized as legal. I've already said what I think should happen about that. There should be a West Bank state in the United States, could make that difference. You could say to the Israelis, we will defend the existence of a Jewish community or a Jewish state in Palestine. We will not underwrite it's becoming an expansionist and colonial state. If you want to do that, you pay the difference yourself. That would that that alone would have probably solved the the uh problem by now. And I do wish, yes, if you want to put it like that, that there was more um cogent discussion along those lines in both the media and in Congress. And as for the Israelis, everybody knows that uh the because I mustn't seem to duck that question, because I know how toxic it is, everybody knows that if you want to occupy people against their will, if you want to be the governor of another people who haven't chosen you, you will end up visiting terrible cruelty on them. There cannot, there certainly cannot be a humane occupation. And the majority of Jewish people in the diaspora and in Israel have for a long time favored a two-state solution to this problem. It's a national question, it's a land question. This is also the expressed view of the United States Congress, of American Jewry, of the United Nations, of the European Union, of really and of the Palestine Liberation Organization. It's what the majority of people involved in this view want. Why can't they get what we all want? Why is it made impossible? Because in both communities a veto is held by the party of God. In the first case, by the Messiah and etc. We think that by establishing fate of compliment violence and stealing of other people's land in the name of the Jewish people and in the name of God, they can help to bring on the messiah. If only if they would get all the Arabs out of this area and all the Jews in Gadda, then the Messiah would come, finally, after such a long, sweaty wave.

SPEAKER_04 12:44

This is the thirty-fifth year of a harsh, brutal, and vicious occupation supported unilaterally by the United States, constant terror and atrocities. Suppose Palestinians say, well, we're under terrorist attack for 35 years, therefore we have a right to carry out suicide. Which is what they say. Do you accept this? Does anybody accept it? Nobody accepts it. All right, then how come everyone accepts the Israeli claim to be doing it, which is much weaker claim? Because after all, there's no symmetry in this situation. They are the military occupiers. Palestine isn't occupying Israel. And this isn't just started now. It's gone on years ago.

No Humane Occupation And Religious Vetoes

SPEAKER_11 13:23

I mean, so does that in your mind justify the child?

SPEAKER_04 13:27

Of course not. It doesn't in anybody's mind.

SPEAKER_11 13:29

It invalidates both sides.

SPEAKER_04 13:32

Those who defend suicide bombing, and there are very few, uh, have not uh don't have a leg to stand on. Those who defend the Israeli atrocities, including the U.S. government, uh, most intellectual opinion, uh, a good bit of the West generally, uh, they don't have a leg to stand on either, and it's and they have a much weaker position. For 35 years, uh, there has been a harsh, brutal, miserable military occupation. Uh, there has not been a political settlement. The reason why there has not been a political settlement is that the United States unilaterally has blocked it for 25 years. Is it supported by the entire world, including the majority of the American people? The answer to that question is yes. There is a political settlement that has been supported by virtually the entire world, including the Arab states, the PLO, Europe, Eastern Europe, Canada.

SPEAKER_11 14:29

Didn't Barack put that on the table?

SPEAKER_04 14:30

No, he did not. He did not. What this is also supported by the majority of the American people. It has just been reiterated by Saudi Arabia. The U.S. has unilaterally blocked it for 25 years. What Barak put on the table, uh, the the population doesn't know this because people like the Western media, the media in Canada and the United States don't tell them. Like you can check and see how often you uh you, for example, or others have reported what I just said. I don't don't bother checking, the answer is zero. Uh the Barak proposal in uh Camp David, in uh uh uh the Barack Clinton proposal, uh, in the United States I didn't check the Canadian media. In the United States, you cannot find a map, which is the most important thing, of course. Check in Canada and see if you can find a map. You go to Israel, you can find a map. If you go to scholarly sources, you can find a map. Here's what you find when you look at a map. You find that this generous, magnanimous proposal uh guaranteed, uh provided uh uh Israel with a salient east of Jerusalem, uh including the city of Ma'ala du Min, which was established primarily by the labor government and Clinton in order to bisect the West Bank. That salient goes almost to Jericho, breaks the West Bank into two cantons. Then there's a second salient to the north, going to the Israeli settlement of Ariel, which bisects the northern part into two cantons. So we've got three cantons in the West Bank, virtually separated. All three of them are separated from a small area of East Jerusalem, which is the center of Palestinian commercial and cultural life and of communications. So you've got four cantons, all separated from the West from Gaza, so that's five cantons, all surrounded by uh Israeli settlements, infrastructure development, and so on, which also incidentally guarantee Israel control of the water resources of the reason. Last comment. This does not rise to the level of South Africa 40 years ago, when South Africa established the Bantu stands. That's the generous, magnanimous offer. Okay. And there's a good reason why maps weren't shown. Because as soon as you look at the map, you see it.

SPEAKER_11 16:48

All right. However, that's the characterization of it. But let me just say Arafat didn't even bother putting a counterproposal on the table. That's not true. They negotiated at Taba afterwards. That's not true. But I I guess my question is if they don't continue to negotiate.

SPEAKER_04 17:05

That's totally false, and no, that's not true. Not only is it false, but not a single participant in the meetings says it. That's a media fabrication.

SPEAKER_11 17:15

That ARFAT didn't put a counterproduction. No, they had a proposal.

SPEAKER_04 17:17

They had a proposal. They proposed the international consensus, uh, which has been accepted by the entire world, the Arab states, the PLO, the majority of the American. Sorry. They proposed a settlement which is in accord with an overwhelming international consensus. My question is if you're not going to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_11 17:34

And is blocked by the United States.

Terror Claims And Moral Asymmetry

SPEAKER_04 17:43

How do we get back? The first way we get back is by trying the experiment of minimal honesty. Okay, let's try that experiment. If we try the experiment of minimal honesty, we look at our own position and we discover what I just described. That for 25 years, the United States has blocked the political settlement, which is supported by the majority of the American population and by the entire world, except for Israel, virtually. I mean, there's some marginal exceptions. So first thing we do is accept the honesty to look at that. We take a look at Camp David, uh, and we see yeah, it was the same. The United States was still proposing uh demanding a Banthustan-style settlement and rejecting the overwhelming international consensus and the position of the American people. We then discover that the United States immediately moved to enhance terror in the region. So let's continue. Uh on September 29th, uh, Ehud Barak uh put a massive military presence outside the Alaksa mosque, uh, very provocative. When people came out of the mosque, uh young people started throwing stones, the Israeli armies started shooting, half a dozen people were killed and escalated. The next couple of days, uh, there was no Palestinian fire at this time, and it's all in occupied territories. In the next couple of days, uh, Israel used uh U.S. helicopters, Israel produces no helicopters, used U.S. helicopters to attack civilian complexes, killing about a dozen people and wounding several dozen. Uh Clinton reacted to that on October 3rd by making the biggest deal in a decade to send Israel new military helicopters, which had just been used for the purpose I described, and of course would continue to be. The U.S. press cooperated with that by refusing to publish the story. To this day, they have not published the fact. Uh, it continued. Uh, when Bush came in, one of his first acts was to send Israel a new shipment of the most advanced military helicopters in the arsenal. That continues right up to a couple of weeks ago with new shipments. You take a look at the reports from, say, Janine by British correspondents like Peter Beaumont and the London Observer. He says the worst atrocity there was the uh Apache helicopters buzzing around, uh, destroying and demolishing everything. Yeah, this is enhancing terror. Uh, and we may easily continue. Uh we can take also, let me continue. On December 15th, 14th, uh, the Security Council tried to pass a resolution uh calling for what everyone recognizes to be the obvious means for reducing terror, namely sending international monitors. That's a way of reducing terror. This happened to be in the middle of a quiet period, which lasted for about three weeks. Uh the U.S. vetoed it. Uh, ten days before that, there was a meeting at Geneva of the high contracting parties of the Fourth Geneva Convention, uh, which has unanimously held for 35 years that it applies to Israel. Uh it the meeting uh condemned the Israeli settlements as illegal, condemned the list of atrocities, uh, willful destruction of property, uh, murder, uh, trials, torture, and so on and so forth. So what happened to that meeting? I'll tell you what happened to that meeting. The U.S. boycotted it. Uh, therefore, the media refused to publish it. Therefore, no one here knows that the United States once again enhanced terror uh by uh refusing to recognize the applicability of conventions, which make virtually everything the United States and the uh Israel are doing there a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, which means a war crime. Just a minute. These conventions were established uh in 1949 in order to criminalize the atrocities of the Nazis in occupied territory. They are customary international law. The United States is obligated as a high contracting party to prosecute violations of those conventions. That means to prosecute its own leadership for the last 25 years.

Camp David Maps And Media Narratives

SPEAKER_03 24:00

Um I've got a friend in um in Jerusalem, uh, he's an old resistance fighter from Europe called Israel Shahak, who now lives in Israel and defends the human and the national uh rights of the Palestinians. And whenever I call him up and say how are things, he's prone to reply, Well, Christopher Faces, there are encouraging signs of polarization. And the fact that he knows how to think that way, and and most people don't, and are afraid of confrontation and um of polarization, and indeed indeed always use those words as if they were pejorative. Whereas if you can claim to be a healer or a unifier, you're axiomatically privileged. In American society should make us wonder why it is that actually the consensus has somewhat managed to absorb this movie. Seems to me people underestimate all the time the fantastic equipment of shock absorption that this consensus has. Now, I would say having the book drove me to read the autobiography again, and to read James Baldwin's original script for the first time, and also to read another book that's very interesting, which is Spike Lee's own compilation of the book of the movie. Contains a lot of the original interviews he did. I think I'd like to offer just some reasons why I think the consensus has absorbed it. Partly that's by the will of the critics and most people who write in this country, because when they can absorb, when they can say that something is healing or entertaining, they will. And partly I think it is Spygley's fault. Uh that that it was so easily assimilable into the general wet blanket of cultural discussion in the United States. Um if you consider the autobiography, the uh the movie interview book that's just called X You can get many bookstore pick back, and the Baldwin script, you'll find four important things I think that are missing. Um have been rendered blandly. Uh some critics point out there are some autobiographical details. I think my comrade on the right is quite correct in saying there's much too much show-off stuff of the early pimp days, the Malcolm Little days. Partly that's also to give Spagley a chance to show off against Malcolm. Which I won't ask him, which I'm asking about, which is the bit against the Oscar, which I wasn't displeased to see. It was quite fun as well. Then there are things where we we, even those of us who admire him, can't be certain that the author of the autobiography was telling the truth about his father, um, and about the torturing of his own house, which is blamed on other black militants, possibly rightly, possibly not, or maybe was uh self-inflicted torturing, where these are just done uncritically. These are where it's too authentic in following the world, or too faithful, I mean to say. Then there is the relationship between Malcolm X and two very interesting and very diverse political groups way outside the American consensus. The first of these is the Socialist Workers' Party, uh Trotskyist internationalist Marxist group with which Malcolm X was working closely at the time he was murdered, which was considered to the left of the left and was very much persecuted by the Communist and fellow traveling consensus, which had a large part in the um the soft center of the civil rights movement, a hard internationalist group with which he, especially in Harlem, he was moving to have relations. The second outgroup was, of course, the Nation of Islam. Now, since Spike Lee put Farrakhan into do the right thing, where he really had basically no place, no business, and Spike Lee gave has in the book of the movie a very long and very tough interview with Farrakhan about his relations with Malcolm X. Where the question comes up, Farrakhan called in his papers and uh other editorials in the same paper was called for the murder of Malcolm X. And this is discussed and confronted by Spider Lee, who used also the Nation of Islam's youth movement as security for the movie. How come that he just dodges the whole question? How come that the you wouldn't know there was such a person then or now, and there's both in the whole film? How come that this hard, sharp question is simply left out? We know that Mr. Lee knew of its presence there. Now, I think that if you do leave out these things, there are rewards from critics who say how much you are maturing and how increasingly you earn your place in the respectable consensus, and indeed you may get Academy Award nominations. But you cannot complain if the if the big embrace moves around to say, Well, at least you know how to avoid confrontation or anything that brings life to politics or to thought. Um can I just want to ask you a clarifying question? Um I think I know what you mean about uh Jefferson and Sally and some of that. I think would you say it was the same thing that you would have a very hard time getting uh a film dramatization of Jay Gahua's tapes of Martin Luther King in the Motel onto TV now? I don't know if you uh you oh I'm sorry, because I'm very I was just taking uh you probably would.

SPEAKER_10 29:04

I mean, people would get very upset about whether or not they would be able to to to stop it. I don't know, but I do know that people probably would kill people, and I'm assuming this, because they gave up so much to get that holiday, that I'm not quite sure what else they're prepared to give up to get a move. Uh uh I mean on the real model for king as opposed to the real model for kill. I mean, they gave up a tremendous amount on him to get the holiday. So I'm not sure what else they would give up in order to get a mummy done.

SPEAKER_03 29:36

I mean, the other night on PBS there was, in effect, um, footage of um Jeremy Hoover in a dress uh as a transvestite hooker in the in the Plaza Hotel. Well, I was actually more than there was uh there was testimony from living witnesses. I thought it was the perfect revenge for Hoover's uh prurient uh taping of other people. I thought it was uh as is Anthony Summer's book.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

And I bet you that will end up in a movie. I think we'll see Jay Ogre Hoover in the movie.

SPEAKER_03 30:03

I think that I think we will see Jerry Hoover in a in a little nice black little number strutting up and down. It will happen. And the reason I'm saying this is not the reason I'm saying this is I do think actually all these things are not only possible but but uh probably necessary.

SPEAKER_10 30:18

Well, I don't think you can to me you can't compare hoover who's been exposed. When you're talking about Malcolm X to me as a black person, then with the white person, you're talking about, you know, Thomas Jefferson's. I don't I you don't compare Malcolm X with Diego Hoover, fair enough. You know, and uh if you're gonna compare him, you compare him with the Thomas Jeffersons and the George Washingtons and the, you know, the uh the Robin E. Lee's, you know, and those kinds of people, and how they are treated, the lies that have been told about them in movies and books to Gomorrahs and everything. For centuries, these lies have been told. Um, I feel lucky in having gotten to know Brother Malcolm, is that I personally don't have to look upon him as a myth, as a god. I can see him as a great black man. Not a great man, as a great black man.

SPEAKER_06 31:16

Netanyahu, when he visited Well, yesterday the New York Times dropped a massive story bylined by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, going through the kind of TikTok account leading up to the war and how uh Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when he visited in mid-February, February 11th is the date here, spoke to the president and laid out what he believed was a uh the the how would we describe this, Ryan, the likely case of scenarios should Trump launch another air campaign against Iran. Uh this was a big, big story. And I've I've seen some people saying, well, now we all trust the New York Times again, uh, because it's got some huge details about what different members of Trump's cabinet, what different advisors were saying to him. Uh if Jonathan Swan's byline is on a Trump story, I mean Maggie Haberman has uh obviously a lot of access as well, but if Jonathan Swan's byline is on anything, I'm taking it very, very seriously.

SPEAKER_08 32:20

I think they're both tremendous reporters, uh, and they're very well sourced. Um and they are the kinds of people that are gonna get a story like this. Because and the way these are these I I I haven't done the inside the situation room ones really, but like these Oval Office or like top congressional leadership stories are they're fun to do because once you get one person telling you what happened in the meeting, it's so fun from there. Because then you go to everybody else and you're like, so this is what Vance says happened. And they're like, and once you've got it, then everyone else comes. And they're like, Oh, okay, you already have it clearly, but you only have it from one perspective. Let me tell you my perspective. So that's clearly what happened here. Somebody came to them and was like, here's what happened in this these couple meetings, and then they were able to go to everybody else, and then they were obviously able to say, Do you have any notes? Because they have some direct quotes in here.

SPEAKER_06 33:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_08 33:19

So let's let's roll through.

SPEAKER_06 33:20

I was gonna say this is verbatim quotes. And uh we'll we'll start here with C2. This is what happened. So again, we're at February 11th. The black SUV carrying Prime Minister Netanyahu arrived at the White House just before 11 a.m. The Israeli leader Reports of Times, who had been pressing for months for the U.S. to agree to a major assault in Iran, was whisked inside with little ceremony out of view of reporters, primed for one of the most high-stakes moments in his long career. U.S. and Israeli officials gathered first in the cabinet room, then Mr. Netanyahu headed downstairs for the main event, a highly classified presentation on Iran for Trump and his team in the Situation Room, which was rarely used for in-person meetings with foreign leaders. I was really surprised by that detail, Ryan. Mr. Trump sat down, but not in his usual position at the head of the room's mahogany conference table. Instead, the president took a seat on one side, facing the large screens mounted along the wall. Mr. Netanyahu sat on the other side, directly opposing the president. All right, so the story then goes on to report verbatim quotes from people throughout Trump's cabinet, which makes us wonder. Um, I guess I can speak for both of us, Ryan, if somebody was operating off of a recording and it was impossible for people to deny these verbatim quotes.

SPEAKER_08 34:32

I think it's probably notes.

SPEAKER_06 34:33

Notes, possibly, yeah. That would make sense too. So here's generally in their recording. I would think not.

SPEAKER_08 34:39

You can't trade your devices and not.

Geneva Conventions And War Crimes Duty

SPEAKER_06 34:41

I mean, Trump can, but so this is a long quote, for example. So this is from chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, uh, Dan Raisin Kane, who says, Sir, this is in my experience, standard operating procedure for the Israelis. They oversell and their plans are not always well developed. They know they need us, and that's why they're hard selling. So this is Trump going around the room asking his advisors for their response to what they had heard the day before. So this is the day after Trump is in a meeting uh with these advisors. So you'll get a sense of who was in the room. But uh February 12th, you have uh CIA head John Ratcliffe there. Obviously, Dan Cain is in there. Let's keep going through these quotes. JD Vance says, um, according to the time, according to the Times, you know I think this is a bad idea, but if you want to do it, I'll support you. John Ratcliffe, head of the CIA, quote, offered no opinion on whether to proceed, but he discussed the stunning new intelligence that the Iranian leadership was about to gather in the Ayatollah's compound in Tehran. The CIA director told the president that regime change was possible depending on how the term was defined. Quote, if we just mean killing the supreme leader, we can probably do that. And then we also go through um Marco Rubio, who said basically, according to the Times, the Israeli assessment was bullshit.

SPEAKER_08 36:08

Yeah. So basically, yeah, so the Israelis, so Netanyahu said, um, Netanyahu came in and made a hard this his hard pitch was February 11th, and he's and he makes four points, right? So the first point he makes is we can decapitate the regime. And there was this meeting with the Ayatollah's meeting above ground with a bunch of leadership, so uh we can take him out. He then says we can uh degrade Iran's uh capacity to attack its allies. Um like no, the I mean not its allies, our allies, the Gulf, the Gulf allies, and we can they'll be so weak they won't be able to block the Strait of Hormuz. Uh, we will be able to overthrow the regime, and we will be able to replace them with a secular regime. So that would, those were the four things that Netanyahu claimed were possible. So then they asked the CIA overnight to go over this stuff. They come back the next day for this February 12th meeting, which you're talking about here. That's when Rubio says, no, this is bullshit.

SPEAKER_06 37:13

And then there's a February 26th meeting, by the way, which is where so there's February 11th, and that's in Yahoo, February 12th, and then February 26th.

SPEAKER_08 37:20

Let's linger on February 12th just a little bit. Um, because that's where Ratcliffe also says that he's the head of the CIA. He's like, what do you think about this assessment from the Israelis that these four things are possible? Uh you know, CIA calls it farcicle. Yes. Ratcliffe says they always do. Oh no, Kane says they always do this. Um Ratcliffe's like, yeah, no. Like nobody, like they didn't really think that this was accurate. Now, CIA says, yes, can we can we kill the Ayatollah and top leaders? Yeah, we can probably do that. Yep. And the CIA seems to have botched a little bit our ability to stop them from attacking the Gulf allies. Like so they were even wrong about that. But the CIA was very clear, you can't do you're not gonna do regime change. It's very unlikely. I mean, you're not gonna replace them with a secular leader.

SPEAKER_06 38:05

Even though again Netanyahu was telling truth. And Trump, according to the story, Netanyahu lays all this out, and Trump says basically subversion of sounds good.

SPEAKER_08 38:12

Yeah, and then and and then CIA says, well, you can't actually accomplish that. And Trump says, well, that's their problem. And and the Times writes, it's not clear if he even meant regime change was Israel's problem or the Iranian people's problem. But either way, Trump's like, all right, so actually the thing you're saying you want to do, we can't actually do, but we can kill the Ayatollah? All right. So anyway, go ahead.

SPEAKER_06 38:33

Well, no, let's flash forward to February 26th, where again, according to the Times story, and we can speculate on the sourcing for it. Obviously, they're sourcing across the board because they have, again, direct quotes uh from multiple meetings, but it's clear, with the possible exception of Hegseth, utterly tepid reactions across the board from Trump's advisors.

SPEAKER_08 38:57

Nobody really other than Hegseth wants to do this, it seems like.

SPEAKER_06 38:59

Yeah, it nobody's excited about it. Everybody is supporting Trump and making it very clear that they support Trump, which is obviously cowardly.

SPEAKER_08 39:07

If you oppose staunchly, it turns out it was important and Trump wanted to have people that would push back against him.

SPEAKER_06 39:13

Good point.

SPEAKER_08 39:14

Get these clowns in there and who are against it but won't say it, plus Hegseth, and we get a war.

SPEAKER_06 39:20

Right. So this February 26th meeting is Ratcliffe, Vance, Susie Wiles, White House counsel David Warrington, Stephen Chung, Caroline Levitt, and Dan Cain, Hegseth, Rubio. So president opens up the meeting, they go around the room, this is where JD says, you know, I think this is a bad idea, but if you want to do it, I support you. Susie Wiles says if Trump feels he needs to proceed for America's national security, then he should go ahead. Ratcliffe says, if we just mean killing the Supreme Leader, we can probably do that. So it depends on how you define regime change. White House counsel says it's, quote, a legally permissible option in terms of how the plan had been conceived by U.S. officials and presented to the president. That's how the Times describes it, and did not offer a personal opinion. Stephen Chung apparently laid out the likely public relations fallout. Quote, Mr. Trump had run for office opposed to further wars. People had not voted for conflict overseas. The plans weren't contrary to everything the administration had said after the bombing campaign against Iran in June, goes on to say, you know, that whatever decision Mr. Trump made would be the right one. Caroline Levitt said it was his decision and that the press team would manage it as best they could. Hagseth says they would have to take care of the Iranians eventually, so they might as well do it now. They could run the campaign in a certain amount of time with a given level of forces. Rubio says if our goal is regime change or an uprising, we shouldn't do it. But if the goal is to destroy Iran's missile program, that's a goal we can achieve. Everyone deferred to the president's instincts, and Trump ended basically by saying, I think we need to do it.

SPEAKER_08 40:59

And so good for them. We did actually diminish Iran's missile supply because Iran blew up all its missiles in Gulf countries and in Israel. Congratulations. And yeah, the missiles blew up, but they they blew up inside petrochemical plants, oil refineries, at American military bases that are now uninhabitable and hit hundreds, maybe thousands of uh sites, targets in Israel.

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SPEAKER_06 41:30

But did we actually destroy their ability to quickly reconstitute the missile supply?

SPEAKER_08 41:35

Because a bunch of people ask that too. They're like, well, hey, boss, like, can't they just get more missiles?

SPEAKER_06 41:41

Right. Well, especially if they're charging for people to come in and out of hormuz.

SPEAKER_08 41:46

Yeah, every ship they can buy a couple missiles, or you can buy a ton of little drones.

SPEAKER_06 41:50

And my understanding is that it's actually fairly it's it's a relatively quick timeline for them to reconstitute their trains, there are trains that run from China to Iran.

SPEAKER_08 42:01

You just load the trains up, pay for it.

SPEAKER_06 42:04

Well, this is Eli.

SPEAKER_08 42:05

Exactly, with the money they're making from hormofs.

SPEAKER_06 42:08

This is this is Eli Lake writing in the free press this morning, um, arguing no fan of yours. Quote, in five weeks of war, although Eli was very opposed to the way Trump was talking about wiping out a civilization. I do know this. This is disappointing. Very, very marriage. Yeah. Yes. Quote, in five weeks of war, the regime has lost its navy, most of its missile launchers, and a good chunk of its defense industrial base, along with the top tier of its political and military leadership. Add to this the damage already done to its nuclear program in last June's 12-day war. There are more than 900 pounds of uranium buried under the rubble of what used to be underground enrichment facilities. A year ago, Iran was on the brink of obtaining a nuclear weapon and the ballistic missiles to deliver it as far as Europe. Today, the regime's military has been reduced to a shell of itself. That is, as Eli puts it in the headline, Trump's Mad Men Act delivering in Iran. What say you, Ryan Greg?

SPEAKER_08 43:01

Excellent. Go ahead. Like swallow that cope and let's end the war. Good. Whether Eli believes that or not, I have no idea. I doubt it. But let's just let him pretend to believe it and let all of his allies pretend to believe it, and we'll just move on. You won. Good win. Good job.

SPEAKER_06 43:21

The New York Times also had it also had this point from uh the the reporting that Tucker had been coming to the Oval Office, Tucker Carlson, several times over the previous year to warn Trump that a war with Iran would destroy his presidency. And then a couple of weeks before the war began, according to uh Swan and Haberman, quote, Mr. Trump, who had known Mr. Carlson for years, tried to reassure him over the phone. I know you're worried about it, but it's going to be okay because it always is, is what he said when Tucker asked how Trump knew it would be okay. Always okay. Because it always is. So this was the Bulwark podcast with Tim Miller and Josh Gottheimer that you flagged, uh, which is interesting because to your point about swallowing the cope, um, Chris Murphy was out as you referred to it yesterday. He was on CNN playing a dangerous game, is what you said. Uh so let's get to the Democratic response a bit.

SPEAKER_08 44:09

Yeah, we'll have uh we'll have yeah, Murphy in a second. Um Gottheimer, so watch this entire uh interview or debate, actually, it turns into between Tim Miller and Gottheimer. Um but as the New York Times, as Marco Rubio already said, by the way, the timing of the war was driven by Israel. We now know that Marco Rubio thought the Israeli arguments for the war were BS. That's a direct quote from Rubio. That gives color and context to Rubio then blaming Israel for why we launched the war when we did. Like that, you know, that that helps us to understand that that was not a kind of accident or a Freudian slip or something. It was Rubio was not happy at that moment that the war had started and and and and that we had launched it on Israeli terms. On Israeli terms, and he considered to be bullshit.

SPEAKER_06 44:51

Uh which gives new meaning to the quote that he said about the imminent threat, why we had to act, because the imminent threat that was he said it was basically the imminent threat was that we were threatened by Israel making their attack. So Israel makes the attack and then it's going to blow back on the US, so that's why we had to act preemptively, because we knew. So he said it would have had to have happened at some point, but the immediate precipitating factor was that Israel was going to move. So we needed to move to prevent the blowback. That is interesting in light of Rubio calling Netanyahu's precipitating factor, activity bullshit.

SPEAKER_08 45:20

Yeah, and so and now we know that Netanyahu made this 90-minute hard sell in the situation room uh on February 11th, and that that precipitated the decision making to go in. So Miller asks Josh Gottheimer, who is uh compete, consistently competes for not just Democrats, top Israel defender, but maybe all in all of Congress. Uh so he's here he is. Here's Tim Miller asking Gottheimer if he's allowed to say that Netanyahu urged the US to go to war, now, given all we know. And Gottheimer will not give an inch. Let's here, just D6.

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SPEAKER_09 45:53

One thing, like, we both are I'm concerned about the increasing anti-Semitism in this country. I know you already have talked about it. And I just, and and and and so it worries me, like, I think that an average American That's why I'm not on Pikers. That's why I'm not on Pikers showing on your own. Okay, we can talk about that next. Um it worries me. I think that an average American would look at this war that we're in and say, I don't understand what our direct interest is. It's costing me more at the bump. Uh that Iran was we were not responding to a to a recent terror attack on us from Iran. Obviously, Iran's been attacking us for a long time through proxies, but like if you're just an average American, you're like, I don't understand why we're doing this. I hear that that Bibi Netmianhu was encouraging Trump to do it. Like, I don't I don't think that it's crazy for regular people to look at this in this country and say, okay, I mean, it seems like Israel was influencing us to get into this war. And and I don't know why we can't just say that. I think I think it's It creates distrust when we can't just say what is true. Like that's just true.

SPEAKER_07 46:42

Tim, how do you know? But you're just asserting some see what you just did is exactly what I have a problem with. You are you are basing something on like we have no facts that you know that you that you weren't in the middle of the year.

SPEAKER_09 46:53

I mean, you think the New York Times is wrong? There was a February 11th meeting in the situation room. BMU was in the situation room. You don't think you think that's you think that's fake news?

SPEAKER_07 46:59

Do I think the president and the prime minister have met and talked about Iran many times over the years, like like President Biden did with uh the Prime Minister, like President Obama did with the Prime Minister? Going back like to the beginning of time, do I think people have talked about these threats together, our allies? Absolutely. So I know You didn't talk to any other allies? You didn't talk to Japan, you didn't talk to Europe. Do I know like actually what caused the decision? No. And and by the way, the New York Times doesn't know. And the only people who know were people who were like in the decision inner circle about what actually made them make the decision.

SPEAKER_09 47:30

It seems like Bibi was in the decision inner circle. They planned it together.

SPEAKER_07 47:34

When we have gone to other gone into other conflicts before, like like Obama did, like uh Biden just did. Like, do you think that we didn't he didn't have consultation with our allies?

SPEAKER_09 47:43

Of course he did. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I don't understand why people just won't why we can't just say this. Why we can't just say it's true.

SPEAKER_07 47:48

There's a huge difference between saying somebody made us do it, they told pushed us into it, versus saying, sure, we consulted with our allies and we thought it was the best for America's national security.

SPEAKER_08 47:56

So I don't know, Emily. I think that that this stuff is over. Like, that's just like psychedelic. Like it's like the near like you can't even say that Netanyahu urged the US to go to war when Netanyahu went to the situation room and gave a 90-minute hard sell urging the US to go to war. Like, Trump still has agency. Trump is to blame for taking the man's advice. 100%. It is still a fact that Netanyahu in February spent 90 minutes in the situation room with Masad and the military commanders behind him on the screens making the case to war, and Trump bought the case. Like that is a historical fact. And to tell people that you can't say that is just actually bizarre.

SPEAKER_06 48:35

Oh, it's completely bizarre, but they're still doing it. That's where, I mean, we've heard it how many times over the last month it's relentless. And Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat, is still doing it. You know, how many days into the war? It's just absurd. After Marco Rubio himself made this point, after uh multiple Trump advisors, Mike Johnson came out and said what happened. So I mean, yeah, like what are we doing? Obviously, people like Josh Gottheimer know that public opinion is swinging in the wrong direction and they're tripling down on making that situation worse. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 49:02

There's also, I think there's Gottheimer's locked in. Like this is this is who he is, he's not changing. Um but that was just insane. Like, and we'll we'll talk about um some more of that interview in the in the next segment. Um because the whole thing is just Tim just like begging him to like be reasonable and Gottheimer refusing.

SPEAKER_06 49:25

When to level with him, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 49:26

Just to just level him. Like, what's wrong with saying that Daniel went to urged him? Exactly. Because he did.

SPEAKER_06 49:32

Because again, for Israel, and I don't actually disagree with this. For Israel, it's an existential question. For Iran in this case, when you have the American president, a nuclear power saying that it's an entire civilization on the line to never come back again. That's existential. So nuclear war puts nuclear weapons put countries around the world in existential positions, which is one of the constantly uh in existential positions, which is one of the realities of the last not even 100 years that we haven't quite reckoned with, that has wreaked havoc around the world, that is just the existence of nuclear weapons, uh, puts countries in existential threats constantly, and that creates paranoia. And the peer the paranoia creates irrationality. And that's where you have uh, I think again, this tripling down over and over again on an irrational argument. It's stemming from a paranoia, and the paranoia paranoia itself might be irrational, but again, it's coming from uh the fact that there are countries armed with nuclear weapons, and that's around the entire world. So it sounds like woo and silly, but it actually is really true. It creates complete irrationality and paranoia in geopolitics. And uh so for Netanyahu, it is you're coming to the White House and making this case. Um and I can look at that as an American who is just offended by the way we are treated by Netanyahu and say, from his perspective, it's not the most insane thing in the world to try to go to Americans into this war. He thinks he's acting in his own interest. Now, I don't think he's actually acting in his own interest, but he does.

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SPEAKER_08 50:47

And you know, the the country that has nuclear weapons, of course, is Israel. And Israel spent the whole 1980s arming Iran to get them to fight their other enemy, Iraq. And so, my advice to Israel, if it wants to take it, because they've taken their own advice for a very long time, it doesn't seem to be going well for them, take mine. Stop treating everybody as around you as an existential threat and try coexistence. Right. And also, if you can arm Iran in the 1980s, why why can't you just reach a peace deal with them now? And just end the occupation? Like stop expanding your territory, like become a real state. States have borders. Like if you're Israel has a right to exist, okay, well then Israel should is a state. Like if you think you have a right to exist, then as a state, be a state. Stop being this weird thing that has no borders. It just keeps moving its borders wherever it feels like. That's not a state. I don't know what that is. That's not a state, in the way we understand it.