What Happens When Media Narratives Stop Working

Corporate money keeps flooding Democratic primaries, yet Bernie Sanders endorsed progressives are still pulling off win after win. We dig into why that’s happening, starting with the one issue voters keep screaming about in every poll: cost of living. When rent, groceries, gas, childcare, and healthcare all spike at once, “status quo” politics stops sounding safe and starts sounding out of touch, and candidates who talk plainly about taking on corporations suddenly feel like the realistic option.

We walk through several races that show the pattern. From Montana’s Sam Forstag and the argument that authentic working class messaging can outperform consultant-approved moderation, to California’s Randy Viegas beating a better-funded, establishment-backed opponent, we challenge the tired “preferred opponent” logic and ask a blunt question: if a Democrat tries to look like a Republican-lite, why would anyone switch or even show up? We also talk about why smear tactics and personal-life controversies are losing power, especially when voters care more about how politicians vote than how pundits frame their character.

Then the conversation pivots into media narratives on Gaza and Israel-Palestine, focusing on Sam Harris’s claims about famine reporting and his stated reasons for refusing to debate critics. We argue over what the evidence shows, how moral frameworks get selectively applied, and why “who won the narrative” is often disconnected from what’s happening on the ground. We close with Norm Finkelstein’s warning about far-right influencers trying to launder their reputations through selective outrage, and why solidarity without universal human rights is just marketing.

Subscribe for more conversations like this, share the episode with someone who argues politics online, and leave a review with the moment you disagreed with us most. What part of the current political media ecosystem do you trust least?

Transcript

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Bernie Endorsements And A Pattern

SPEAKER_05 0:49

I'm proud to have the support of Bernie Sanders. That's why I'm excited that I have Sanders Sanders support.

SPEAKER_15 0:54

Anna Lilia Mejia is endorsed by Bernie Sanders and ALC.

SPEAKER_18 0:58

One of the less discussed stories of the election cycle has been how Bernie Sanders back candidates keep winning their primaries despite often being behind in the money race in those very primaries. Because of course, these candidates are often running against pro-uh corporate, pro-APAC candidates. Yet they are still winning. So in this video, I'm going to go over a few of those victories, including the latest one with uh Grant Platinum winning in Maine, which was expected because Janet Mills, the governor there, had uh dropped out of the race because of how badly she had been losing up to that point. So she didn't want to lose outright in the actual vote. But before I even get to any specific candidates or or anything else, I do want to first discuss why this has happened. This gets to what voters actually care about and what what's motivating them from, you know, we're talking about states like Maine, New Jersey, Ohio, California. It's all over the place. It isn't just one place. And it's a universal issue. The problem, of course, being cost of living. So you look at any poll, this is data for progress, but poll after poll will show you that by far, the economy, jobs, and cost of living is the most important issue facing Americans. And that combined with the fact that both under traditional Democrats and, of course, Republicans, this

Cost Of Living Drives Voters

SPEAKER_18 2:18

has only gotten worse through neoliberalism, their pro-corporate agenda of privatization, of investing into the very wealthy and hoping it trickles down to everyone else, that has completely failed. So people, traditional Democratic Party voters who maybe in the past would have would have voted for a Hillary Clinton over a Bernie Sanders are now looking to the alternative, are now actually looking at the burning back candidates with a different solution to the problem than what they've been shown before by traditional Democrats. So another poll here I just want to share. Feel free to pause this on the screen and just take a look at uh each of the uh issues here. But these are all, as Adafruit, voters across party lines strongly support a progressive agenda focused on lowering costs and taking on corporations. So each of these issues are topics that most corporate Democrats don't want to touch. We're talking about reining in corporations and benefiting the working class in various ways. Yet across the board, even Republicans in majorities support each of these initiatives. So this gets us to a clip from Bernie Sanders here discussing what people are feeling.

SPEAKER_12 3:28

All over this country, working people are hurting. And they're asking themselves a simple question. Does anybody in Washington know that I am alive? Does anybody know that I can't afford health care? I can't afford childcare? That I'm worried about what AI will do to my jobs, that I think it's somehow crazy, that in the richest country in the history of the world, I'm told that my children, everything being equal, will have a lower standard of living than I do, which is not very high. And they're asking themselves, how does it happen that in the richest country in the history of the world, which is what we are right now, 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck. Think we discuss that much in Congress? No. Think it's talked about much of the corporate media? No, it is not.

SPEAKER_18 4:27

So, of course, this message from Bernie Sanders is nothing new. When I was covering Bernie Sanders 10 years ago, I was covering how he was saying these same things 30 years before that. So he has been, you know, the most consistent politician in the history of the world at this point. But this message is finally resonating in a way that it hadn't before. And part of that I think has to do with how media is consumed now. A lot of people get their information online, so they see a lot of different sources. They aren't just watching CNN or Fox or MSNBC. But another issue being just how much worse it's gotten for everybody in terms of working more, earning less, cost of living has gone up shot up, whether it's housing, whether it's groceries, whether it's gas. So a message like this connects more and with more people. And let me get to some of these candidates now, because some of them are just incredible. I mean, we're we're talking about people all different walks of life, all different sorts of backgrounds. Let me start here with Sam Forstag. This is a primary that he won in Montana. And again, burning back candidate here. This is a former smoke jumper, somebody, a firefighter who parachutes into forest fires. You can't get more out there and interesting than that. I mean, we're talking about an incredibly brave individual deciding to fight for his community at a political level now. And as New York Times writes here, Four States Kennedy will test a liberal theory, which is a left-wing theory, but regardless, a theory that left-leaning politicians running in Republican strongholds can do better in general elections than

Sam Forstag And Electability Theory

SPEAKER_18 6:01

moderates have done historically. So we're going to see what happens in this race in the fall, but this gets to my theory that Bernie Sanders absolutely would have won the general election in 2016 had he won the Democratic primary. The issue with candidates like Bernie Sanders, like a Sam Forstag, like a Graham Platiner, I believe has always been the primary. Because traditionally, in Democratic primaries, who votes in those? Heavy Democratic Party diehards. The kinds of people that watch MSNBC, CNN, read New York Times, read the Washington Post, and get a view of the political world that is very status quo, very traditional, and never challenges corporate power. It's a much smaller percentage of people that vote in a primary than vote in a general election. And candidates like a Bernie Sanders appeal to a much wider base than just Democratic Party voters. So in a general election, you would both, of course, get the Democratic voter because they're not going to vote for Donald Trump. So a Bernie Sanders would get that vote, but they'll also get a larger percentage of the independent and even some Republican voters because of the wide appeal that candidates like Bernie Sanders has. So look, we're going to see if this theory uh plays out. I truly believe that all, if not, or most, if not all, of these more left-leaning Democrats that are backed by Bernie Sanders and other progressive groups or other progressive um politicians are going to win their general elections against Republicans, regardless of the state, whether it's, you know, Montana, whether it's Maine, whether it's uh California, whatever it is, I truly believe almost all of them, if not all of them, are going to win because of this unique time we are in where people are finally waking up, that the status quo has not worked for them, in combination, of course, with the fact that Donald Trump and Republicans are so deeply hated. That's also, of course, going to uh boost a lot of these Democrats as well. Let me get to a uh quick clip here. This is from Sam Force, so you get a good idea of what this guy's about. When that siren goes off, you go because fire moves so quick.

SPEAKER_05 7:58

Right now, the richest people in this country are trying to burn it all down so they can buy it all up. I'm Sam Forstag, smoke jumper, union leader, son of a nurse and public school teacher. I'm proud to have the support of Bernie Sanders, and the unions, and folk leaders across the state. I'm running for Congress because I'm done pretending. The rich and powerful are gonna take care of us. We take care of us.

SPEAKER_18 8:21

That's why I approve this message. Sam Forstag looks like a great candidate. I hope he wins in the fall. Let's now get to the next Bernie-backed candidate that won their primary, and that is Randy Vegas winning in California in a runoff with uh Valideo, the Republican, at the top of that list. So look, this this is a perfect example of how things have shifted. Because the person that Viegas was essentially running against was the another Democrat, Assembly member Yasmeet Baines. We are talking about the DCC backed candidate, the candidate that had all the money, the candidate that was also backed by pro-Israel groups, losing to this Bernie-backed progressive in Randy Viagas. So the results here with the Republican getting 40% of the vote, and essentially the Democrat vote splitting between Viagas and Yasmeed Baines. So we're

California Runoff And The Money War

SPEAKER_18 9:12

going to see what happens in the fall if uh these votes do indeed coalesce around Viegas and uh beat out Valideo. We don't know yet, but it's worth pointing out that um, yes, Yasmi Baines, backed by a pro-Israel group, spent half a million dollars to back her. Half a million in a just a small California runoff. Like, absolutely ridiculous. This line, though, I find hilarious from Politico. Vygot's victory hands Republicans, their preferred opponent. This to me is so insane. Republicans have shown again and again and again that they can beat center, center right Democrats, the pro-corporate, pro-APAC candidates. Republicans repeatedly beat them, I would argue, because those Democrats suppressed an actual vote that would come out for them if they weren't so pro-corporate. But here, the implication here is that Vegas, because he's further left, more progressive, actually a working class fighter. He is somehow a the preferred candidate to Republicans, even though Republicans have not been able to prove that they can be true working class candidates. So again, it's this perception of the world, this perception of the political world, where, oh, this person, this Democrat here, let's say they're in the center, this Republican is uh they're on the right. So if you have a Democrat over here, they have somehow less of a chance because they have to be closer to the Republican to win. That's ridiculous. Why would a Republican voter choose to vote for the Democrat when they could just vote for the Republican? That's why you need to have an actual real choice in a general election where the Democrat truly stands out as somebody who is different than the traditional pro-corporate, pro- at this point, fascist uh Republican. So again, these theories are, these old theories are ridiculous. They're they're done. We're gonna see what happens in the fall. Let me get to uh bringing this up. I mean, I covered this race um last week, I believe it was. Um Adam Hamawi, a doctor who served in Gaza, wins the New Jersey primary. This is also a Bernie back candidate. I did a whole video on that here. You can go check him out. Incredibly impressive individual. Again, this is something that the Democratic Party, as I wrote here, should be embracing. You had somebody who risked their life to go to Gaza to save other lives as a as a surgeon. And we barely know this man's name. He should be propped up as an example of what you want the Democratic Party to be. But of course, leadership of the Democratic Party is not interested in that right now, which is why you have to get all these people out and uh put some some new life in there. Another individual here, Annalia Mejia, winning. This is back in in February. She she won the the big um

More Primary Upsets Across States

SPEAKER_18 11:56

surprising victory in a uh Democratic primary in a in a um it was a special election. But uh again, uh I by the way, I'm showing the Fox News headline here because they they they're they're one of the only ones that put all of the issues in the the subheading here because they think it hurts the candidate. So this is somebody who is yes, backed by Sanders and AOC. That's a positive thing. Also ran a Medicare for all, abolishing ice, and a $25 minimum wage, as if these are supposed to be offensive things that we don't like. Like I it's just it's so silly. But all the money, um, I should say a ton of money was also poured into this race. But this was a a very bizarre one because APAC saw Tom Malinowski as the threat, even though this guy, pro-Israel dude. But because he was a little a tiny bit critical of sending weapons to Israel without any sort of checks, APAC spent against him because they never saw Mejia as any kind of threat, so they didn't think she'd be any factor. So they spent against him as a way to support uh uh Tehisha Wei, who got truly destroyed as the pro-APAC candidate outright, but ended up just helping Annaline Mejia, the one who is the most critical of Israel. So it truly is amazing. Like they spent $2.3 million to try to sink Melanowski, ended up just helping the better candidate in the race. So good on them, I suppose. But again, another Bernie Sanders bad candidate winning that race. Here's another one. This one in Montana, Brian Pointexter winning, and this guy also has a very interesting uh uh uh background, but um winning the uh Ohio House uh District 7 primary race with 37% of the vote. Let me play for you a bit of uh his story as well.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

We have to fundamentally change who has power in our country. I'm Brian Witcher. I'm a dad, I'm a union animal, I'm a Brooklyn fan, I'm a Brookeport City Council member, and I'm wanting for Congress to end this corruption. I am asking you to join me because this might be our last and only chance to get things back on the track, to tell the billionaires where to shoot, and to finally fight the working people.

SPEAKER_18 14:14

Once again, another true working class candidate backed by Bernie Sanders, someone who actually represents their community, winning the primary against any kind of corporate-backed, uh Harvard-endorsed type candidate where they're typically cookie-cutter, staged, say all the same things. Here's somebody who actually speaks like a real person and has a real message. It makes a difference. As uh political rights here, the senator speaking of Bernie Sanders' support has been instrumental in powering unknown candidates to major wins this cycle, a demonstration of just how much political influence the 84-year-old progressive leader still commands. His influence, I believe, has only grown since his uh 2016 run. And it's through his ability to inspire others to run, and also, of course, endorsements and the message that people understood once he ran 2016 and in 2020. People getting that that even though that message may have not won a general election, because again, you had to get through a Democratic primary, ultimately that's a message that resonates um well past those runs. Now, let's get to the obvious. Grant Platiner winning his primary, which was going to happen in uh Maine, 71% of the vote. Jetta Mills essentially uh backed out of the race when she saw that she uh had no chance, even though she was still on the ballot, which is weird. But regardless, um, he won this race. This is so I spoke more on the Grant Platiner, all the Grand Platiner fake controversy in a uh video recently. You can go check out that video for my breakdown on that. But this is an important win to truly understand that, especially in a place like Maine, the smears don't work. I mean, it it's how are you gonna try and smear somebody for uh so one of the things that came out is he was he was sexting with other women early in his marriage. And this is stuff that by the way, he and his

Maine Landslide And Smear Backfire

SPEAKER_18 16:00

wife brought to their own campaign. It's not as if his wife found out all of a sudden when it came out. No, they per purposely brought it to the campaign just to let them know hey, if this comes out, we have to figure out a way, you know, to to discuss this. And someone in the campaign leaked it. So, like, but all that aside, to try and smear the man over that, when you have Susan Collins, a Republican on the other side, who has upheld Donald Trump's entire agenda, is is is the vote that stripped away abortion rights. I mean, you is is the vote that stripped away um uh healthcare funding. You can go down the list. Susan Collins is a terrible person because of her votes and what she does. Worth noting, if you care about personal uh issues, Susan Collins also has a very sketchy past. As Nathan Bernard writes here, Susan Collins had a long-term affair with her current husband, marrying him in 2012 when he divorced his wife, who was dying of cancer. But I gotta admit, I don't care because what matters is not what happened in your personal life and with your husband or with your wife. What matters is what you do with your power as a politician, how you vote, the issues you push. So, Susan Collins, despite doing that questionable thing, or Grant Platter, despite some text he may have sent early in his marriage, I don't care. What matters is how you vote, how you're going to vote, and what we've seen historically from what you do. And we know based on Susan Collins' history, there shouldn't even be a debate here. Obviously, Grant Platter needs to win in the fall. So let me just get to a uh quick clip from his victory speech.

SPEAKER_07 17:38

Now, the national pundits, the political establishment, they keep looking for that one story, that one headline, that one moment in my life that they can define the campaign by. But in trying so hard to understand me, they failed to understand that this is not about me at all.

SPEAKER_10 18:02

No, I gotta admit, that is an amazing line. And I and I'm that I gotta agree with David Doyle here, the Rational National. I think that the fundamental thing that has been missed is that politics has changed now. All the stuff that they are trying to bring up no longer works, and it will never work again for at least 30 years because they

Why Character Attacks Fail Now

SPEAKER_10 18:26

can't they can't bring up Christianity ever again, because Christians stood by and supported the most immoral person on the planet. Anytime the religious right, after Trump is gone, tries to bring up anything, the left is gonna bring up the gazillion things Trump did. And this is this was my problem with uh people so much aligning themselves to political parties. When I first uh started writing the book, uh that I that I authored, um, the Unity Book, believe it or not, the original book was Christians shouldn't vote. And I I and because I thought about younger uh Christians uh voters like uh my uh uh friend Josh Goffram overopinionated, it really made me rethink the position. And then I was, you know, reading how this this changes over time. I'm thinking about Martin Luther King at the time, I'm thinking about Jerry Falwell, and I didn't want to make such definite statements because I realized over the period of time that this stuff changes because life gets more complicated. Um and and but Donald Trump gave us a window. In the same way that if if if the Republicans would have just given Barack Obama a chance, the the the country wouldn't be like it was today. Uh vice same. They they if if Republicans would have gave Obama as much lead way as they gave Donald Trump, you know, because you now you really see where they really are. It was not it was never about character, it was never about morals and values, it was about raw political power. Which is why some of the Christians who's uh in the reform community, I don't take seriously anymore. Because I recognize their their outrage is so selective. There, this guy from Retro Radio, he's still bringing up Barack Obama and all this stuff every day. I'm just like, look, you don't he's doing a bait and switch. He's not willing to talk about President Trump as much as he talks about Obama because he knows if he talks about President Trump, he will lose his audience. He he's not a morally serious person. He will, he will, every time there's Martin Luther King Day, he wants to bring on all these people to talk about how Martin Luther King has sex with somebody else. It's like, yeah, now do it for somebody on your side. Bring up somebody who's been dead for centuries. That would be like every time we talk about the Bible, I I had to bring up King David's sex, I had to bring up you can tell these people are not serious Christians. They use Christianity as a way to hide their bigotry. And I used to really not believe that. I used to always give them the benefit of the doubt. But the rise of Trump and how how the people who read the Bible, the most fastidious people, the the the reformed community, they failed me because I just thought they they are they're gonna show that this is not just about they don't want to talk about cultural topics, they want to talk about expository preaching. They exposited their way to not ever responding to what is going on. And so expository preaching is great, but most of them, most of them, I would I would even go out to say over half of them, I'm about to say 80% of them failed when the expositing actually had to take practical application. So when this is pains me deeply. They are our modern-day Sadducees and Pharisees. They are obsessed with the text so much that they miss the Jesus Christ right in front of them. I mean, for the all of the holy, for for the love of there's a holy one. They literally had a Donald Trump phandanderer, blah blah versus a Jewish ex carpenter. And that when the only job Bernie Sanders ever had besides a politician was he was a carpenter. And he's Jewish. I said, if that's That was not glaring out loud that that their values were it was not about anything besides party I it annoyed me. There are over 500 Bible verses that talk about taking care of the poor, etcetera, etc. You know why they don't want to talk about those Bible verses? Because they like being rich. Period. Period. Even even somebody who like uh I don't even want to look, even somebody that I like, like John MacArthur he gets it gets a pass because the MacArthur Center gives away so much free things and he wrote a lot of great books and everything. So I do think he's in heaven. But he was extremely rich. You know, and so it's just with all the suffering going on around the world, to hold up so much wealth and to keep you some so much personal wealth, I just couldn't do it. I I I would I would always have a certain amount of money that makes sure it goes to the selling of the gospel and all that you know we have to do that, but I would begin trying to make sure every single year I got rid of a minimum of a percentage because it had to go to the poor. And and so I'll get too fired up and not you, I'll be ranting and raving for for hours. But let's get back to the clip.

SPEAKER_07 24:11

This is a movement about us. About the far too many working far too hard and struggling far too much at the hands of the ruling class. It is not a story of my hardship, it's of our hardship.

SPEAKER_18 24:34

This gets to the heart of the issue of that so many voters have with traditional politics is politicians simply not caring about their interests, and instead caring about the interests of corporations and the wealthy, and there is now a clear shift against that. So I just want to end on um, if you watch these videos, if you enjoy my content, make sure you are subscribed and make sure you also hit the bell notification icon and hit all. I am saying this because I've been seeing more and more comments, especially these past few weeks, of people saying, I am not getting your videos in my feed. I had to go out and search your channel to find your videos, even though I am subscribed to you, I'm not seeing them show up. And that is very disturbing to me because YouTube is so unpredictable. I would like people, especially my subscribers, to actually be able to recognize I have a new upload. So the only way that you for sure are supposed to be able to get that is if you have all notifications turned on. And also if you can, if you can afford to, support me on Patreon as well, patreon.com

Subscribe Alerts And Patreon Plug

SPEAKER_18 25:35

slash the rational national. That helps uh to get me by through some of these tougher months where the algorithm is all over the place and my videos aren't getting fed into the feed. Um and it just allows me to continue uh doing what I do. So if you support the show, I would greatly appreciate that support as well.

SPEAKER_10 29:19

So that was a a song is actually in Hebrew. It's a very famous Israeli song, and it's called Someone. Yeah. I I learned because of the prophetic tradition that I believe in, I regularly listen to things like this from different uh languages. That's why a lot of times you see them in the shows. Because I I my spirit will uh identify or with uh with what's being uh heard. Uh it's kind of hard to explain. Um I will just say I'm a prophetic tradition. And so I always tell people when they ask me, I say I am a prophetic Christian, I am not a Constantinian Christian. Uh and maybe that is uh something I will uh

Faith Background And Personal Context

SPEAKER_10 30:05

discuss at a later date. But it but to simplify it, I don't accept every Christian every version of Christianity that that come came after Constantine accepted it as a fixed religion of the Roman Empire, because I fundamentally believe that was of a more of a political choice. And so it it a lot because of that I have to always be reading everybody's uh text. And it works as well with my disability. Uh I have a form of um high-functioning autism, and so because of this, I can just not be still sometimes, and uh, made that my superpower. But anyway, right back with more. Let's get I mean, I I meant to say enough about me, let's get back to the uh real issues that matter.

SPEAKER_16 30:54

Into uh some of the latest statements from Sam Harris, and uh we're gonna begin with what he had to say about famine, and I just want to let you guys all know that the clip you're about to watch uh was edited to include footage um basically disapproving what Sam Harris says. Let's take a look.

SPEAKER_06 31:14

Israel, I think, briefly uh suspended uh food shipments, uh which you know uh strategically was totally unwise, uh, although it might have been uh defensible, you know, at that level of the war. But um the the the photos

Sam Harris Claims About Gaza

SPEAKER_06 31:33

that documented uh the fam so-called famine in Gaza, uh some of which uh won Pulitzer prizes, or at least one of which won one of these photographers won a Pulitzer Prize for this fake photo. It was absolute fakery, right? This was not this was a psyop.

SPEAKER_10 31:51

This is uh I I've Sam Harris disgusts me. So I I I normally don't try to talk about him. I used to think Sam Harris was smart, but but I realized he was just a monster. I read his first book, A Letter to a Christian Nation, and I thought that was good. Then I read uh Douglas Wilson's book, Letter from a Christian Citizen. And then after that, the the show I think it was the moral landscape, is when I realized he was a monster. And then there was a famous back and forth between him and Noam Chomsky, where Chomsky just dismantles him, and uh I fully at that point in time knew that Sam Harris was nothing more than a dangerous bigot. Um because he he pr tries to portray himself as I'm just smart because I talk this way and slow. But uh being that Chomsky historically talks very slower, and uh, you know how Chomsky has uh and I got another point. And Chomsky just dismantled him, and this would made it even better was the correspondence was in email. And so you can go back and see, matter of fact, I will do that on a show, the absolute immorality uh of Sam Harris. He is somebody who uh literally sits around all day uh doing selling meditation apps and can meditate use meditation all day so they would so that way I could say fake was real stuff is fake. When you when the when they were talking about the pictures um of the kids being uh genocide, uh it was not that there was not malnutrition, it was that the uh the kids were not just suffering, they had secondary and third-level conditions. And and that is what makes it so frustrating is like you don't think that uh in a in a war that has been going on for years at a time, you know, since October, I want to say October 7th, uh you know, that uh there won't be there that it's not possible to have m uh multiple things. It was nothing more than obfuscation. And he and for him to pretend like he's some intellectual and he he is a he's a not a morally serious uh person. He he has the same morals and values as Donald Trump. He has his his he his values are outrageous. They're they're they shouldn't be listened to. He's not morally consistent, he he's only concerned about uh power for whatever he believes in at the time, and he will tort himself into to make that fit. Sam Harris is a dangerous uh demagogue, period. I wrote several articles um about the warmongering of atheists because the easy atheists used to sit around Bill Maher, talk about how religious people started all the wars and yada. And now look at that. Look at that. Atheist warmongerers, Sam Harris and Bill Maher. No morals and values, they both disgust me.

SPEAKER_06 36:43

Oh no one was star no one was starving in Gaza, right? And insofar as there was massive food insecurity, a lot of that was Hamas stealing food and hoarding it.

SPEAKER_16 36:59

Well, that is what Sam Harris believes about uh the situation in Gaza, no famine. And uh to disprove what he's saying, uh we cut in some footage showing what the reality in Gaza really is, and uh to his point about uh restricting aid into the Gaza Strip, uh Israel restricted any aid, not a drop of food, no water, nothing, enter the Gaza Strip for three months straight. Three months. And that was after aid was severely restricted to begin with. So Dave, Sam Harris makes a statement like that, but on top of that statement, he uh put out a notice, uh, a statement on his Substack titled Why I Won't Debate Critics of Israel. A note to the making sense community. And uh I believe the reason why he won't engage in a debate is because uh he knows what the reality really is, and uh he would get his ass handed to him. But maybe I'm wrong. What do you think?

SPEAKER_08 37:57

Yeah, come bring that clip into a debate and we'll see how that goes. Um, I mean, you know, it was something I uh one of the things I just always think about when I see this, and when I see a lot of things from Sam Harris, is like, you know, his whole new atheist thing that was all about how irrational religion can lead to these really horrible outcomes. And you know, I guess atheism can get you there too. It could get you right to the point where you gotta defend. I mean, like, not that I don't even consider Sam Harris to be an atheist. This is a different religion here, whatever this is. Um, I was there's been dozens of doctors who have uh testified, have written uh there's a huge New York Times piece uh putting all this together about massive food insecurity, many cases of starvation. Um there's the the the free press rebuttal was that it was like the sicker kids who weren't starving first, even though the sicknesses, by the way, one of the particular sicknesses that they talked about, at least the mother said that the doctors told told her it was because she was malnourished during pregnancy, was why the kid, anyway. Um, even if you just think about the logical brain, as you correctly pointed out, he says, Oh, yeah, they did deny food for a little while, which was maybe strategically not wise. Okay, a little while was three months, was three months with uh Smotrich openly saying, not one ounce of grain will get into Gaza, and it didn't. And think about this, by the way, because I've seen this asserted. I have not read anything that backs this up. Perhaps it's out there and I just haven't seen it, but I've seen a lot of the Israel supporters assert that Hamas is stealing all this food. Now, that might be true. Um, I would imagine that the toughest gang in Gaza would end up with their share of the aid that ends up getting in, much is the case with contraband in prison in general. Um so what? So imagine that's the case. Okay, so you're telling me Hamas is stealing the food, and your response to that is to cut off the aid coming in. So, in other words, Hamas is fine. We're not punishing them, we're not starving out Hamas, we're sit, we're exclusively punishing the civilian population. And Sam Harris can try to spin this in whatever way he wants to, but you know, maybe you don't like the term genocide. The world-leading genocide scholars seem to think it's appropriate, but maybe you don't like that term. But what is this term war? Where's the other military? What military is it? What state is Israel at war with? I thought Jerry Seinfeld just told me there's no such thing as Palestine. So how is how is Israel at war with them? They're not at war with another army or an air force or a navy because Gaza doesn't have any of that. And so what are you talking about here, man? You're talking about the most powerful military in the region systematically destroying a people that they've held captive for 59 years.

SPEAKER_16 40:38

Yeah, you know, Dave, I'll I'll tell you why he doesn't want to debate anyone on this. I'm gonna give you one excerpt from uh what he wrote in that Substack post. Let's go to graphic five here, everyone. Um for over a decade, Hamas diverted foreign aid that was meant to improve life in Gaza and used it to build the largest bomb shelter our species has ever constructed. Hundreds of miles of tunnels, and yet no Palestinian civilians were allowed to shelter there during the war. So understand what he is conceding to in that statement. What he is conceding to is that Israel leveled the entirety of the Gaza Strip, which would overwhelmingly kill and maim civilians, knowing that the Hamas militants that they're allegedly targeting are safe underground in the tunnels. That's what he's admitting to.

SPEAKER_08 41:32

Yeah, the logic of it is is so sociopathic. It's it's like uh, you know, look, there was a a hostage situation down at the local bank, and you don't understand how evil this guy holding these people hostage is. He built a tunnel underneath the bank so that he wouldn't get hurt. And so we blew up the bank full of civilians. Like, wait, what? Like it's crazy. Your your whole point here is that are the civil okay, the civilians are only the victims of Hamas. But then Israel's gonna slaughter all of them because they're the victims of Hamas. Well, then I guess they're the victims of both of them. Now, aren't they? Yeah, I by the way, I should mention this as we're doing the segment because I saw you, you did a segment on Sam Harris not that long ago that I saw, maybe like a month or a month or two ago. And uh you had a clip about him talking about me that I had never seen before. And I had seen several of his clips, but I I know you've covered some of them. He always just insults me and never like takes on anything I'm saying. That's kind of the the game, and this is what you won't debate. But he was talking, you had the clip where Keith said, I never heard him say, where he goes, uh he goes, Look, I watched Douglas Murray debate Dave Smith, and Douglas Murray just tore him apart. He totally won. I could have done, he goes, I couldn't have done a better job myself. And then I look at the comments, and it's not that 90% of them agree with Dave, it's that 100% of them agree with Dave. And it was something so like, look, I'm not saying it's not logically impossible that that could happen, that someone could do a really great job in a debate, and 100% of the audience thinks they did a terrible job. But you would think it would probably lead you to like rethink some things. Like if you saw that, you would probably go, I mean, maybe he could have been more effective, seeing as how the response was that. But in other words, this is, and this is why I was telling you off there, I love this, because this is just blatant for everyone to see. It's retreatism. It's just, look, uh, you know, like you could just convince yourself in your mind that you're winning this debate, which is what all the Zionists do, isn't it right, Anna? Every single time you have a debate, all the Zionists go, Anna Kasperian got destroyed in this debate, even though the vast majority of the comments are in your favor. And even though Israel's popularity keeps going down and down and down. And every time a Jewish organization or a Zionist organization has a meeting, the whole thing they're discussing is how we're losing this propaganda war. What do we have to do about Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens and Anna Kasperian and all these people? And like, what but every time they have a debate, they act like they want it. But everyone else sees what's happening. And so the reason Sam won't come debate anyone or even just have a conversation with any of us is because he knows that 100% of the audience will see through this.

SPEAKER_16 44:04

So I'm gonna go ahead and go uh read what his rationale is, and then uh I'm gonna go right through it. Uh so I'll start with the graphics and then we'll go to this B-roll because um, as I read the excerpts of his argument, I want you guys to actually see with your own two eyes what has transpired in both Gaza and the West Bank. So he says, Many readers and podcast listeners have been dismayed by my enduring support for Israel and now urge me to debate someone, really anyone, drawn from a growing cast of scholars, grifters, and moral lunatics who have made it made that beleaguered country their professional or psychiatric obsession. My general attitude, I'm not interested in exploring all the ways that Israel has missed the mark from Prime Minister Netanyahu's corrupt alliance with the far right to the many crimes committed by settlers in the West Bank, to the deaths of innocent non-combatants in several wars. Because none of these failings, however grave, will alter my sense that one, the ethical difference between Israel and her enemies remains vast. And two, the global preoccupation with the Jewish state as though it were the worst villain among nations, is contemptible, the uh being the product of perennial lies and delusions. Now I'm gonna keep reading what he wrote. Then he starts laying this out. Okay, he says the following I think militant Islam is ten times worse than you think it is. When I talk about jihadists and their various groups Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, the IRGC, etc., I'm talking about people who I consider to be worse than Nazis. My views about the conflict in the Middle East will not fundamentally change unless my critics produce evidence, if you're looking at it right now, that Israel has become as evil as her enemies. You can rest assured that if the IDF morps into a death cult that uses its own civilian population as human shields, if the residents of Tel Aviv condone, as they have, the taking of Palestinian infants, old women, and other non-combatants as hostages. Uh if, in no other words, the Israelis begin to resemble the Palestinians, then I won't care who wins this war. If we're being honest, we must concede that there are two very different realities on either side of this conflict culturally, psychologically, ethically, spiritually. Every way that matters. Israel has religious fanatics too. But they aren't the same sort of fanatics we find in Hamas. By the way, some of that footage was put out by uh which is an Israeli human rights organization. So that's the real reason why Harris doesn't want to engage in the debate. This is the thing that's so sick about it. He knows the truth. He knows the truth. And he's okay with it. He's totally fine with what's going on in the Middle East. He doesn't want to say that out loud. He doesn't want to be on camera saying that out loud. But he knows it and he does support it. And so that's why he doesn't want to engage in a debate.

SPEAKER_08 47:24

Yeah, no, that's right. And and he has um always. You know, and he's always uh, you know, I've I've really always hated Sam Harris so much. Um, I like I from way back in the day, and he was so big, and this is like even before I started podcasting or anything like that. But I always just hated all of his his horrible anti-Muslim arguments and even all of that. And I did not think um, you know, he's actually, I think, a pretty smart guy. Uh, but Ben Affleck just did not do a good job uh debating him on Bill Maher's show, and he just kind of screeched at him too much. And Jake actually did a much better job when they sat down and had that long debate back in the day that like blew up the internet. Um, but it was always arguments. Like it was always this like, oh, there are there's you know, jihadists aren't all of the Muslims, but look what percentage of them are sympathetic to them. Look what percentage of them believe this or believe that. It was like the weakest argument ever. I mean, it's like in the same sense that you could make an argument about America, like our version of jihadists are neocons. There are people who just always want to blow up, always want to kill people. We got Lindsay Graham's and he's he's a member of the Senate. He always wants to bomb more things and kill more people. And so, of course, you see this here. All Sam is doing is just demonizing the other side and then whitewashing his side. It's the simplest, oldest trick in the book. Israel does about 80% of the things that he listed there, by the way. Maybe not every last one of them, but they take a ton of Palestinian hostages. They all openly talk about how they're Amalac and less than human and all this stuff. So again, he has to just distract instead of like actually taking on the argument.

SPEAKER_16 49:00

And it's not working. And and look, what did we hear? I can't remember if it was possible smokerage or Ben Gavir. It must have been smokerage or actually don't quote me on that, but one of them just this week talked about we need to have Lebanese women and children to demoralize Lebanon. That's what he said. And again, those are that modern day is real. You want to say that they're not as bad, uh you know, as a real I would say they're definitely on the level, it's not worth at this moment because they're the ones with the power, they're the ones who are having military superpowers backing them and giving them two thousand pound bombs to drop on children's heads. How are you gonna argue that the Israelis are the moral ones? When they just carried out a gen you won't say it's a genocide, but um that Israel human rights organization that's not a rate of genocide. So I don't know. Do I believe the Israelis uh who actually have a moral compass here, or do I believe this guy who's pretending to be an atheist and you know some sort of intellectual? What kind of intellectualism is this if you refuse to engage in the debate? And you know, he's pretending to be ignorant here, right? What when he's saying when he's making those comparisons, but he's not ignorant, he knows what's going on, he knew about the blockade, three-month-long blockade of humanitarian agents of Gaza, and he downplayed it intentionally.

SPEAKER_08 50:39

Yeah, and and even like by his own stated framework, you're like, oh, just I hate the Muslims so much. I think they're worse than Nazis. And of course, you you realize he just blends them all together. It's the problem in Palestine is jihad, and the problem in the Muslim world is jihad. It's all like kind of the same thing. It's like, all right, well, I'm certainly not denying that there are major problems in the Muslim world, but has he ever spoken out against any of our alliances with the worst defenders of that? I mean, it's the female uh genital mut mutilation in Kurdistan is horrific. Those are all like our closest allies in Iraq and have been for many years. The human rights abuses of Saudi Arabia are just like off the charts. And there's, you know, that but it's not the Muslims versus the Jews over there. That's not what's happening. We're in bed with all the Gulf, uh, the Sunni Gulf states. We're dead. It's it's majority U.S. stock puppets over there, some of the absolute worst human rights abusers, and even the worst of the Iranian Shi militias were the ones that we put in charge in Iraq. They were the ones we were fighting with, that George W. Bush lost the whole war on behalf of. Of course, we mentioned before Obama supporting the head shoppers and uh Al-Qaeda and uh ISIS over there. And even if you want to say like Bashar al-Assad and many of those guys are banned too, but we were in business with them up until we weren't. You know, we propped up Muhambarak in Egypt for 40 years. And so even if he even if he wants to make this argument, where's all of your outrage about that? Oh, that's right. You don't have it. It's just the Palestinians, it's just this one stateless group of people who nobody else sticks up for. They're the problem is that they're all a bunch of jihadists or something like that. It's just it's garbage. It's really, it's just dehumanizing. It's the worst, it's the worst aspect of humanity. It's demonizing a group of people who are being abused in the most vicious way.

SPEAKER_16 52:26

Dave, I appreciate your voice. I appreciate how passionate you are about this issue and just about history. So please keep doing what you're doing. Thank you for coming on.

SPEAKER_04 52:35

Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wing. Totally not true. But it does keep you updated on our live shows.

SPEAKER_00 52:43

One grows weary. One grows weary of writing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Not because the subject lacks importance, but because one might as well be writing about the tides. The same arguments resurface with each wave of violence, the same justifications are deployed, the same atrocities are committed with the same explanations, and the same international community issues the same meaningless statements of concern. If insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting different results, then the Holy Land is the world's largest psychiatric ward. But here we are in 2025, and I'm told the situation requires comment, as if my comment or anyone else's will make the slightest difference to people who have been murdering each other over the same strip of land since before I was born, and will continue doing so long after I'm gone. Still, one must try to speak clearly about unclear things, especially when the unclear things involve the killing of children, which

A Bleak Essay On The Conflict

SPEAKER_00 53:41

both sides manage to do with appalling regularity, while maintaining their respective claims to moral superiority. Let me begin with what should be obvious, but apparently isn't. Both peoples have legitimate claims to the land, and both peoples have behaved abominably in pressing those claims. The Palestinians were indeed displaced from their homes in 1948, and this displacement was indeed a catastrophe for them, whatever one thinks of the circumstances that led to it. The Jews indeed faced centuries of persecution culminating in genocide, and their desire for a homeland where they could defend themselves is entirely understandable. Anyone who denies either of these facts is not serious about resolving anything. The tragedy is that these two entirely legitimate narratives of suffering have become weapons used to justify further suffering. The Holocaust is invoked to excuse the occupation, as if the gas chambers of Europe gave Israel permanent immunity from moral criticism. The Nakbah is invoked to justify terrorism, as if the displacement of Palestinians gave their descendants the right to blow up buses full of civilians. Both sides have become so invested in their own victimhood that they've lost the ability to recognize the humanity of the other. And now, in 2025, we have the latest round of violence, which looks remarkably like all the previous rounds, except with better technology. Hamas or its successor organizations fire rockets that are increasingly sophisticated but still largely ineffective. Israel responds with airstrikes that are devastatingly effective but politically counterproductive. Civilians die on both sides, though in vastly disproportionate numbers. The international community condemns everyone and no one, and eventually a ceasefire is declared that holds until the next time it doesn't. The American position remains what it has always been. Official support for a two-state solution that everyone knows isn't going to happen, combined with unlimited military aid to Israel and occasional finger wagging about settlements that continue to expand regardless. The Europeans issue statements about international law that no one takes seriously. The Arab states make noises about Palestinian rights while secretly cooperating with Israel on security matters. The whole thing is a diplomatic kabuki theater where everyone knows their lines and no one expects the play to end. What's particularly galling is the religious dimension that poisons everything it touches. Jewish fundamentalists claim God gave them the land. Muslim fundamentalists claim God gave it to them, and Christian fundamentalists support Israel because they think it will hasten the apocalypse, wherein, incidentally, all the Jews will be converted or destroyed. One might think that adults in the 21st century could find better reasons for territorial disputes than the alleged real estate preferences of their respective invisible friends, but apparently not. The settlers, those religious zealots who believe God is a real estate agent who promised them the West Bank, continue their project of making a Palestinian state impossible by creating facts on the ground. They build their hilltop outposts and dare the world to stop them, knowing that the Israeli government will eventually legalize what was illegal and protect what was supposedly unauthorized. They are the most honest actors in this drama, in their way. They want all the land and they're taking it and they don't pretend otherwise. Meanwhile, the Palestinian leadership remains what it has been for decades: corrupt, incompetent, and more interested in maintaining their own power than in improving the lives of their people. The Palestinian Authority governs like a mafia with NGO funding. Hamas governs like a death cult with Iranian backing, and ordinary Palestinians are trapped between them, their Israeli occupiers, and their Arab brothers, who use their cause for rhetorical purposes while treating actual Palestinian refugees like unwanted guests. The peace process, that phrase that should be retired for exhaustion, continues to be invoked by people who know perfectly well that there is no process and there will be no peace. The two-state solution is dead, killed by settlements, demographic changes, and political realities that no one wants to acknowledge. The one-state solution is impossible because it would mean either the end of Israel as a Jewish state or the permanent disenfranchisement of Palestinians, neither of which is acceptable or sustainable. So we're left with the current reality: a de facto one-state arrangement where Palestinians live under Israeli control but without Israeli rights, a situation that looks increasingly like apartheid, yes, I'll use the word that sends Israel's defenders into paroxysms of rage. If you control a territory and its people for more than half a century, if you subject them to different laws than your own citizens, if you restrict their movement and control their resources, what else should we call it? The fact that Israel has legitimate security concerns doesn't change the fundamental nature of the arrangement. But here's what the anti-Israel crowd doesn't want to hear. None of this absolves Palestinian organizations of their own crimes. Terrorism remains terrorism even when practiced by the oppressed. Targeting civilians remains a war crime even when you're the weaker party. The fact that Israel has more power doesn't make Hamas or Islamic Jihad or any of the other death cults into freedom fighters. They're theocratic fascists who would create a Taliban-style state if given the chance, and no amount of legitimate grievance changes that fact. The BDS movement, meanwhile, continues to pretend that boycotting Israeli academics and artists will somehow bring about peace, as if the problem were insufficient economic pressure rather than fundamental disagreements about existence itself. They adopt the tactics of the anti-apartheid movement without understanding that South Africa's white minority needed the black majority in a way that Israel doesn't need the Palestinians. The boycotts make Western activists feel good about themselves, but do nothing for actual Palestinians except to convince Israelis that the world is against them, which hardly encourages concessions. And through it all, the body count rises. Palestinian children killed by Israeli missiles aimed at Hamas leaders who may or may not have been there. Israeli children traumatized by rockets and sirens, even if the Iron Dome intercepts most of the projectiles. Young Israeli soldiers enforcing an occupation that corrupts them even as it oppresses Palestinians. Young Palestinians who see no future except resistance, that usually means their own deaths. The whole thing is a machine for producing human misery, and everyone involved knows it, but no one knows how to stop it. The truth that no one wants to acknowledge is that this conflict will not end until both sides give up things they consider essential to their identity. Israel will have to give up the dream of greater Israel and accept that security doesn't come from controlling territory but from making peace with neighbors. Palestinians will have to give up the dream of return and accept that the refugees aren't going back to homes that no longer exist in villages that have become Tel Aviv suburbs. Both will have to give up the notion that they can win this conflict rather than merely survive it. But this won't happen because both sides are led by people who benefit from the conflict's continuation. Israeli politicians win elections by promising security through strength. Palestinian leaders maintain power by promising resistance until victory. The conflict has become an industry that employs thousands: soldiers, bureaucrats, aid workers, journalists, activists, propagandists. Peace would put them all out of work. So we continue with this grotesque dance, this call and response of violence and retaliation, this competitive victimhood where everyone's grandfather's suffering justifies today's cruelty. The Israeli right becomes more fascistic, the Palestinian resistance more nihilistic, the international community more useless, and the prospects for peace more distant. Anyone who points out the obvious that this is insane, that it solves nothing, that it only perpetuates suffering, is dismissed as naive or treacherous or anti-Semitic or Islamophobic or whatever label serves to shut down thought. I've been called all of these things, usually by people who think criticism of Israel is automatically anti-Semitic, or that acknowledging Palestinian suffering makes one a terrorist sympathizer. This binary thinking, this with us or against us mentality, this inability to hold two thoughts simultaneously, that Israel has the right to exist and Palestinians have the right to freedom, that terrorism is wrong and occupation is wrong, that Hamas is fascistic and Israeli policy is oppressive. This is what makes the conflict so intractable. What would I propose? Since no one asks but everyone expects a solution, complete withdrawal from the occupied territories, massive international investment in Palestinian development, a truth and reconciliation process, shared sovereignty over Jerusalem, compensation for refugees, security guarantees for Israel, and a gradual normalization of relations. Will any of this happen? Of course not. It requires leaders on both sides who care more about their people's future than their own power. And such leaders are notably absent. Instead, we'll have more of the same: more settlements, more rockets, more airstrikes, more children dead, more hatred cultivated for the next generation, more conferences that achieve nothing, more statements of concern, more weapon sales, more humanitarian aid that doesn't address the fundamental problem, more of everything except peace. The saddest part is that Israelis and Palestinians are more alike than different. They're both traumatized peoples who've convinced themselves that their trauma justifies anything. They both claim to want peace while taking actions that make peace impossible. They both believe their cause is just and their methods are justified. They're like two drowning people pulling each other under, each convinced that their survival depends on the other's destruction. Years ago, I met a Palestinian doctor and an Israeli teacher who had both lost children to this conflict. They had become friends, united in their grief and their determination that other parents not suffer as they had. They were working together for peace, against the wishes of many in their respective communities who saw such cooperation as betrayal. They knew their efforts were probably futile, but they continued anyway because, as the doctor said, what else can we do? Hate forever? That's the question, isn't it? What else can we do? The answer apparently is yes. Hate forever, kill forever, suffer forever, in the name of causes that have become more important than the people they're supposedly serving. The land has become more sacred than the lives lost fighting over it. The past has become more important than the future. The dead have become more important than the living. And so it continues this war that's not quite a war, this peace that's not quite a peace, this endless, grinding, soul-destroying conflict that makes everyone involved worse than they might otherwise be. In 2025, as in 1925 or 2005, or probably 2055, the Holy Land remains the place where hope goes to die, where God's supposed favorites act in ways that would shame the devil, where the promise of redemption has become a guarantee of damnation. The international community will continue to pretend that a solution is just around the corner, if only everyone would be reasonable. But reason left this building long ago, replaced by rage and righteousness, and the kind of certainty that allows people to kill children while maintaining their sense of virtue. Until that changes, until both sides decide they'd rather live in peace than die for justice, the killing will continue. And those of us watching from the outside will continue our useless commentary like a Greek chorus in a tragedy that never ends.

SPEAKER_13 1:05:37

What about Colbert, who I always thought was talented?

SPEAKER_11 1:05:40

Extremely. He did the best show ever. I liked his show way better than the Daily Show when he did the Colbert report. And then he became that guy. The guy that he was. Who knows? Uh your guess is I'm I'm not a psychiatrist, but uh he became the thing he used to lampoon. He became that guy. And um he just repeats military-industrial complex uh talking points. You know, he's he helped build up the the momentum for the Ukraine war. And they like, you know, I said it's about John Stewart, too. You know, John Stewart, who can supremely talented. These people are supremely talented, but he'll never tell his audience the truth about the Ukraine war. Just like he'll never tell people why he hung a medal on a Nazi at Disney World, right? Um and he told the truth about the the virus, the COVID virus, and Colbert. I remember that.

Colbert Stewart Maher And The Line

SPEAKER_11 1:06:32

Colbert kept trying to stop him and cut take the lights out from underneath his his comedy bit, which was brilliant. He had to literally get off the couch and walk towards the camera so he could finish his comedy bit about where the COVID virus came from. You remember this very well. Yes. And so he paid a big social price for that. John Stewart. He did, yeah. And so he talked about boy, I I I found I found out that uh I didn't know that certain medicines were uh political. We talked about ivermectin, and then there's a right-wing medicine. He talked about this. Um and then to make up for that, he had to give uh a tongue bath to Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice. I don't know if he remembers that. No, yeah, which we that's penance. That is penance. And then he had to hang hang a medal on a Nazi at Disney World, which he'll never go anywhere when anybody will ask. And kind of by the way I'm a big fan of John Stewart. And but I just don't, you know, Chris Hedges t what told me when the first time he came on my show was that I'm like, John Stewart's great. Well, when he takes down both sides, when he's like, he'll never challenge the establishment, Jimmy, which is why he's there. And I'm like, uh, in a re in a meaningful way. And that's true. And that's why he's allowed to go on those TV shows and and and have a TV show. Uh I mean, same thing with Bill Maher, right? If if they were really a threat, they wouldn't be there. They're not a threat.

SPEAKER_13 1:07:47

But Bill Ma I mean, Bill Maher is not, you know, I don't want to be mean, not a talented guy. Remember going to his house and he has this amazing house. Um and it's like, wow, you've really on the basis of very little native talent. I mean, literally, I know comedians no one's ever heard of who are like geniuses. Not the case for Bill Maher. This was 25 almost 30 years ago I first thought this. I was like, wow, this guy, how did he get so successful?

SPEAKER_11 1:08:16

So remember when he did tell the truth when he had that truth. I'll never forget it. Yeah, so he told the truth, but well, the the hijackers on 911 were cowards. He said, You get to say whatever you want about them, but they you know, ri they gave up their own life for a cause, and that's the opposite. And boy, oh boy, did he pay a price when he got his mind right immediately, and so they canceled him. And the story I've heard was. Is that his management company also represented um the uh Sopranos, right? And so uh HBO wanted the Sopranos bad. And so they said, okay, we'll give you the Sopranos, but you have to give Bill Maher a show. And that's how he got his show at HBO. And just like George Costanza said on Seinfeld when they were pitching a TV show on that sitcom, that they asked George Costanza, why would anybody want to watch this? And he goes, because it's on TV. And that's why people watch Bill Maher, because he's on TV. And um and he gets big nine guests, right? Which I'm jealous of. No doubt about it. Um, but uh he he won't bring on people every time he brings on someone that's to his left, he gets schooled and he gets embarrassed. Like Glenn Greenwald. Well, Glenn Greenwald has schooled him hard. I've showed that video many times. Glenn's amazing. And he maybe had Glenn on, dude. That's that was back in 2011 or 2010 or and he's never had him on again. Of course not. Yeah. So anytime he has someone uh to his left, people don't like to, you know, people who consider themselves liberal, the last thing they want to do is be challenged from their left. And so he'll never break. But Bill Marl, that's why he's he's he loves to hand be friends with like Ann Coulter and people like that. Uh, but he's not gonna do that the other way. And um, so yeah, that's what that's what we're left with. And that's how he got that job. And um, that's why, and nobody knows the ratings of HBO, right? They don't they don't release them a subscription. But um, and uh, you know, I'll say fully that uh I'm I'm jealous of the influence he gets to have on the culture. And I'm I would uh and I'm jealous that he has that show. But it's waning for sure. Nobody likes him. That's the weird thing, right? No, you know, and my wife always says, can't we at least have somebody who's fun to look at? If he's gonna be wrong about everything.

SPEAKER_13 1:10:26

I do think though the Gaza tragedy has forced people into sunlight, kind of, because like if you're defending that, you don't have to hate Israel or you know have any kind of wacky views, but like how could you defend that? How can a normal person defend that? You're not a normal person if you're defending that. I think Tucker, you don't think Israel has a right to defend itself? I think everybody has the right to defend themselves. I just like that's genocide, that's murdering children. So, and I think a person who's like likes Israel, loves Israel, even could say, Yeah, I love Israel, but like I love America, but I'm not gonna defend the grotesque things that our country has done. Why would I defend that? Exactly. I degrade myself and I lie when I do that. So why couldn't you say, yeah, I really love Israel, you know? But that's disgusting. What the starving people who didn't do anything wrong? Like, how could you defend that?

SPEAKER_11 1:11:18

And people don't know that there's a thing called the Greater Israel Project, which I didn't know. I didn't I didn't know most of the stuff until October 7th, right? Yeah. I I mean I had covered when Israel would go in and mow the lawn, you know, I would cover how horrible that was, but I didn't really understand the genesis of it and I didn't understand what was going on. And uh, but I after October 7th, I did. Now I now I understand. I understand that, you know, the Israel was founded by terrorists' organizations and there was a thing called the NACPA, and that uh they say it was invented so uh because of the Holocaust, and that's not why, because Zionism has been around since the early 1800s. Yes, so it has nothing to do with that. There was always a problem. And they couldn't get, you know, they couldn't get people to move to the middle of the debt. And people nobody wanted to get the Jews didn't want to go there. So they had to make a deal with Hitler to get people to go. So it's I I know all that stuff now, and I know that it's uh, you know, why a two-state solution isn't the solution, and uh you have to

Right-Wing Grifts And Left Infighting

SPEAKER_11 1:12:12

have a one-state solution, which Bernie Sanders' video just went around of him uh saying that he doesn't support a one-state solution because then Israel wouldn't be a Jewish state.

unknown 1:12:21

What?

SPEAKER_11 1:12:21

And he was like, I support Israel. He said, This is it, this is our this is our you know progressive lefty leader. I was shocked by that video. Is that real? That's real. Yeah. But he was uh, you know, he was also two years earlier to that video, he was uh talking to Ezra Klein, and he said, Yeah, but you know, open borders are that's a that's a Koch brothers so it just it's amazing the the the real but he's always been mm uh a warmonger. He was you know Bernie Sanders, he was he was for Kosovo and all that stuff. He was yeah.

SPEAKER_13 1:12:51

It's sad. Bernie Sanders, I'm I saw one Bernie Sanders speech in person, and it was uh, you know, in Iowa when he was running in 16, and it was all about the oligarchy's bad. And you know, at the time I had pretty conventional views, but I've never been for oligarchy. Why would I be for that? It's the enemy of democracy. So I was like, you know, and I know a lot of billionaires, and some are nice, but most are like gravely overrated. And like I I kind of liked his speech, you know, it was pure economic populism. Yeah. And then so I thought, yeah, I get it. And by the way, the audience was not all like, I don't know, people playing hacky sack or hippies or whatever. It was like normal people.

SPEAKER_11 1:13:31

And that really kind of when he was on the anti-olig tour? Totally. Isn't it amazing that he didn't do any of those anti-oligarch tours when Joe Biden was president? I know. Kind of amazing. All of a sudden, oligarchy's a problem now. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden had more billionaire donors than Trump did, but somehow now it's a problem. And uh what uh what else they didn't show you was that there were pro-Palestinian protesters.

SPEAKER_10 1:13:53

No, they're being flippant because Jimmy Dore is basically on the outs with the left. He uh on TYT and wanted to do his own thing. You can go look up all uh all of the he was definitely critical. He's been Bernie Sanders has been saying the exact same thing consistently for over 40 years. His his positions on wars, like all everything, has to be nuanced. This is not a serious conversation as far as that because they're they're they're thinking in binaries, left and right. They don't think that it's not a left and right thing, it's not it's it's a hundred options and you have to pick the best out of whatever. Not only that, Bernie Sanders has he caucuses with a party. And so it it's it's like you have to he you have to walk a two jump gum at the same time. He was tea he ta he was talking about all those policies during the Biden administration. He was up he was over, he was uh uh the same guy. It's basically this is just them, Jimmy Dore trying to play the I'm out lefting Jon Stewart. I'm more lefty than uh Corbert, I'm more lefty than you know, and and that's and now you kind of see it this is that kind of happens on the both the left and the right. Jimmy Dore is the Donald Trump of the left. And so he you know, but and that's kind of what happens. The the extremes of both parties, uh either or nothing's ever good enough. And that's why I always say I stand firm as a man without an island. Actually, yeah. And Tucker plays this a game too because he's obviously a massive hypocrite. Tucker Tucker used to be above the love sponge show when I was growing up. He had he talked the same stuff about Muslims being dirty, etc. etc. etc. But now, because he's a grifter, it's it's basically he's he's uh he knows where his bread is buttered. So if you go look at how Tucker Carlson came to prominence, he came to prominence by taking down Pat Buchanan uh by and by saying, Well, you were trying to pretend like you don't know, you played this line just asking questions game. And the funny thing is, when Tucker's chick started to run out, he turned into Pat Buchanan. Made made money doing that. When that stick ran out, he turned into um Dr. Donald Trump. Now that that stick's run out, he is going, now he's a real Christian. Tucker is whatever he needs to be to make the money. He he will he's on the in the news, and his gimmick is I reinvent myself as I read the tea leaves. When it gets to the very, very end when I see something's over, I become the morally brave one. It's just uh it's kind of a gimmick.

SPEAKER_14 1:16:48

I saw this answer from Norm uh Finkelstein on uh opening with it? I'm well uh he put it up. Uh-oh. We're we're I'm sorry, Sam. I'm I'm hosting the show today and I want to cover this.

SPEAKER_19 1:17:02

Inter-office politics happening over this clip.

SPEAKER_14 1:17:05

Um I I just but I really like this because you know, Norm, I think uh he said some things that I have had disagreements with in the past, I think particularly about trans people. And so it could have gone either way here with uh in my view, but it it's great to see how he's really principled about this.

SPEAKER_09 1:17:24

Um Yeah, on this particular question, I think this was always the way it was gonna go.

SPEAKER_14 1:17:29

Yes. I mean, I I had an inkling, but I'm happy to see that he is using his platform to say things like this as well, because you know, he's gained an audience, obviously, as a critic of Israel. Um, but he's not doing

Finkelstein On Bad Faith Allies

SPEAKER_14 1:17:43

the thing that other, I think, you know, media figures who are critical of Israel are doing right now, which is laundering the reputation of people like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, who uh are attacking Israel not because they have the values that we have about it, not because they are fundamentally against imperialism, not because they don't believe in apartheid, not because they believe in universal human rights. And here is what Norm said articulating that um about figures like that.

SPEAKER_20 1:18:20

I'm being attacked because of the remarks I made about uh Mr. Tucker Carlson, Ms. Candy Silva, Nicole Gardez. And uh I say it happens that on aspects of Gaza our interests intersect. I I get that, and I'm glad Tucker Carlson sang a lot of what he sang. I am, but Gaza is not my be and be all and and all, it's part of my worldview, the fight for justice. I'm not about mass deportations now. I'm not I'm not about making America great again. These de factors from Trump de factors in a positive way. They're defecting because they say he betrayed what he originally promised. I never particularly liked what he originally promised. I don't want uh make America uh put America first. That's not part of my vocabulary or my world view. How does mass deportations now? How does that cohere with compassion for the people in Gaza? That to me is very strange. The right wing supporting self-determination of nations, national liberation struggles, compassion with the poor, the hobbled masses, that doesn't sound like their profile. So I have to ask myself the question what is going on?

SPEAKER_17 1:20:18

Steve Bannon said we need to stop giving all this money to Israel, we need to use it to build the wall and ice detection facilities.

SPEAKER_20 1:20:29

I find it very strange that suddenly this the plight of Gaza has become the cause of the far right. That's very strange.

SPEAKER_14 1:20:42

Um and I think uh it's so well said, but what also uh you can add to it is that it's not sincere in many ways from many of these figures. Um they right now there is a kind of influencer economy on the right that is competing for attention, and they're doing it in a variety of different ways. With Charlie Kirk's death has been a part of it. It's that fight uh interpersonally between Candace Owens and Erica Kirk drives views, and so they're placing themselves at the center of what is ostensibly news or is close to news as a way to kind of gain attention in the influencer economy that is the internet, really, right now. And you'll see that often too, with right-wingers that will victimize themselves uh and talk about how they're being persecuted because they speak out against Israel. They're placing themselves at the center of the story, really, over the more salient things about like, you know, Palestinian liberation. Like Greta Thunberg, when she uh came back and was abused by the Israeli forces uh on the float after they took her off the flotilla, she essentially refused to talk about her own experience because she wanted it to be more about Palestinians. Like that is somebody who's really committed to universal human rights. That's what you would foreground. Um, that's not how the right wing media ecosystem is covering Gaza right now. And they're doing when, and in many ways, some of these right wing figures, they're speaking about Israel in this way because it's a taboo, right? Like now you get to say the R-word again. You can say all these slurs online, um, but they're doing it to get a reaction and to look like they are in some way counter-cultural in their criticisms of Israel. Oh, you can't say this, and it takes just a few, you know, scratches beneath the surface for them to abandon the pretense that it's about Zionism and it's more about Jews. So I think we should not over, we should not be so swayed by how these right-wing MAGA influencers are acting in relation to this issue and think that it has any kind of political salience behind it because it's in part it's so self-serving and it's about marketing themselves in a way um that gets a maximum amount of attention.

SPEAKER_09 1:23:26

I mean, Tucker Carlson just wants to do Israel stuff here. Here's a clip of him on uh Megan Kelly uh last year, uh April 29th, 2025. I'll just play a little bit of this so you'll get the fucking uh point. But this is what he wants the Fed to be doing instead of uh helping uh uh create an ethnostate in Israel. He wants to do it here.

SPEAKER_13 1:23:45

Federal government intrudes into every decision you make in your personal life, but somehow they're totally incapable with all of that technology of telling us how many non-citizens are living here illegally. I call bullshit on that. That's a lie. And I also wonder like, what is the the abs the aggregate number of deportees in the last hundred days? If it's under a million, I'll just say I'm disappointed. And Isaiah says someone voted for Trump who loves Trump. I like Tom Holman, but like what is this? The scale of this, because this country's so large, is opaque to most people. Fuck that Nazi.

SPEAKER_15 1:24:20

There you go. I mean, it's also just like an attractive lie. It's inaccurate to try to separate and blame all of America's issues in the Middle East on Israel. Like, Israel is just the tip of the spear for the American foreign policy agenda um in the region. It's one of our permanent military bases for destabilizing the Middle East and like launching these campaigns into you know the various countries that we want to, at the very least, prevent our enemies or adversaries from being able to have access to the resources of. And so a lot of what they're selling is just you know not true. It's not so useful to try to distinguish between like what Israel is doing in Gaza or in Lebanon and the United States as like a these completely discrete entities because we've been marching in lockstep with them for this entire time, and we enable them up until the point when they started doing it too, right? So, you know, for a lot of people, they want to believe this narrative that Tupper Carlson and Candace Owens is selling, that there's something separate from the United States that's causing us to do all these bad things. And, you know, people have been pushing variations of this for a long time. It's like, oh, it's not the FBI, it's the deep state within the FBI, it's like the secret cabal within the billionaire class that is controlling things. And in reality, a lot of what we're seeing is is happening in plain sight. There's nothing, you know, there are things happening in secret, right? But they are just like color for the things we're happening in plain sight. Like Israel doesn't run the United States. Israel is able to lead the United States around by its nose because we have so much, we have so much invested and destabilizing that region that is manifested by Israel. And that exists like, you know, as part of the United States, if foreign policy, not something like completely discrete from it.

SPEAKER_14 1:26:05

Yeah, I mean, uh, and uh we're so down uh the road there as well. Like there's a sunk, there's almost like a sunk cost fallacy with our Israel policy.

SPEAKER_09 1:26:16

Um literally look at how much money we spend on our budget each year towards what end? Missiles and bombs? Like where are the for what? I mean, really, it was always gonna be this. We were gonna use them somewhere. What are we gonna do invade China? No, we're gonna use it to continue like you know, um I mean there there Israel knows how to use it, I guess is what I'm trying to say. And they found a use for it, and it's this dumbass around war.

SPEAKER_14 1:26:40

Yep, and I it's just important also that we uh make this case now defensively, because I we don't want figures like this where there's no actual political constituency on the right, as we're seeing, because the Republicans are in power right now, that is actually going to impact Israel policy or our policy towards the Palestinians. Like if this was so significant, Donald Trump is in power right now. We have a Republican House and a Republican Senate. If this was more than, you know, influencer uh commentators trying to brand themselves and dis distinguish themselves and say these things, also by the way, to gesture towards the Nick Fuentes audience, which many of these folks are trying to capture as well, um, that that if you're gonna and saying all these taboo things, right? That the if this was significant enough, it would be translating into uh there being some sort of response from the Republicans. But Bernie's uh bill that blocked the bulldozers for the genocide uh got no Republican support. You had 40 Democrats and then seven Democrats uh that voted against it. And then the bombs won as well. It was only Democrats. There were 12 Democrats uh that voted to continue to send these a thousand-pound bombs.

SPEAKER_09 1:27:57

I think Massy may have signed on to it like yesterday or something.

SPEAKER_14 1:28:00

I was thinking about the Senate bill, but but but but yeah, I mean there's just there's the But he's gone now. Republicans voted him up. Exactly. Uh, if this was something that uh uh if if this was a meaningful political uh I guess movement beyond a media strategy for people to go on each other's podcasts, then we would be seeing some movement, but we're not.

SPEAKER_19 1:28:27

I want to point out how how significant it is for Norman Finkelstein, of all people, to uh to point it out, because he is uh well respected on uh the issue of Israel and Palestine, and rightfully so. He's very well educated on it and knows it deeply and has been speaking about it for far longer than uh many, especially those on the right who suddenly had this so-called awakening. And um, you know, I feel like he's someone who uh everyone, right or left, looks at him and says, this guy knows what he's talking about when it comes to this issue. So for him to point this out, um, I don't think he's gonna convince anyone who actually cares on the right who may have had some, you know, whatever, not influencers, like, you know, the base, the few that may have had some awakening. Uh, but I I do think he will uh for sure stop some uh uh people on the left who are falling for

Tucker Deportations And US Policy

SPEAKER_19 1:29:21

uh uh Candace Owens and and Tucker Carlson and those like them.

SPEAKER_15 1:29:26

Right. I I mean I think they're trying to bank on like what the Republican Party will look like in 15 years when all the Fox News boomers are just like dead from old age now, and they haven't really been replaced with any new people because you know there haven't been any opportunities to cause people to become homeowners and move to the suburbs and become more conservative, like Fox News hopes you'll do, because no, there are no jobs. There are no house, the cost of housing is out of control. Who can afford them? But in reality, like even what they're selling in terms of the solution to Iran, like the isolationism that seems to define a lot of the politics of this new wave of the anti-neocon right, that's also just not a practical solution anymore. Like we've been acting as the global policeman for so long that even in the case of Iran, like we can't just leave. Like we can't like just leave without paying reparations, we can't leave without negotiating a settlement. And that's true about a lot of the like entanglements we've gotten into. Like Donald Trump has in some ways done that, like, for example, with the USAID. And we're seeing what the just leave strategy does when we leave a vacuum of money, of support, of logistics that like was never able to grow organically because of the various forms that neocolonialism has taken in parts of the world. Right, whether it's soft power preventing like domestic uh industry from growing or anything like that. And so the Chunk of Carlson strategy just isn't viable either. There isn't organically because of the various forms that neocolonialism has taken in parts of the world, right? Whether it's soft power preventing like domestic uh industry from growing or anything like that. And so the Tucker Carlson strategy just isn't viable either. There is no like just leave and let like the Middle East just fall into whatever, because then like their isolationism will just be tested in 20 years with the blowback that comes from things like this. Because if we just left, like, you know, who would who are, I mean, in this case, Iran would just win and fully take over the region. But in general, like there would be consequences for just leaving, which we just, I would argue, would just leave us back to this position where like they're suddenly now advocating for doing more overseas actions.

SPEAKER_14 1:31:29

Yeah. Right. That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_09 1:31:33

Um just like to flash this up on the screen as a coda. Um, this is Tucker Carlson's most recent episode. Uh whites are dying, it's not an accident, and the only crime is noticing. So white people are discriminated against, uh, which is bad news for me.

SPEAKER_14 1:31:48

Um Yeah, dang. I hate to I hate to I hate to hear this.

SPEAKER_09 1:31:54

Finally, someone says it.

SPEAKER_14 1:31:58

Um Dave from Jamaica, sad to see that Norm has to point this out because it's obvious, but folks like TYT and Brianna Joy Gray are so simplistic in their thinking when it comes to evaluating tactics. I guess this is what happens when the core of people's politics is who is nice to me.

SPEAKER_10 1:32:12

See now, this is where I say they make the same mistakes. Because they like that because Emma Vign and Anna Kasperian and the TYT people used to be friends. So they literally are the same thing too. They don't have they're they ha they're playing the same game they accuse everybody else of playing. They're trying to out left people, and TYT is saying we take our allies where we can. If somebody if somebody comes over here and they're a grifter, who cares? They're saying the right things are gonna take 'em. And then they're saying and just because these are the left people now, no moral purity. This is why I say I'm a man without an island. Because they they literally criticize people for the exact same thing that they do. This is the problem. And so they they there's something going on inside of them beside with in a in a psychological way. They are upset when you don't agree with them. They're upset when you start to agree with them. Because they're upset when you semi-agree with them. There is no win. And so uh I I can see why a lot of people just disengage.

SPEAKER_09 1:33:44

A lot of it is from people who embarrass themselves by saying Trump was gonna be anti-war, like for instance, Glenn Greenwald, who uh responded to this by saying we can't be too pure about people. No, uh, we should say, like, hey, uh, it's nice that you uh uh criticize this, we'll keep doing that. Um what do you think about occupied American cities because of some horseshit about uh immigration um uh rates, which uh like only Nazis believe, but it's apparently like defining our politics now.

SPEAKER_14 1:34:08

I think that Dave's right that they're simplistic in their thinking with evaluating tactics, but they think you might be generous in ascribing tactics to their motivations where it's it's it's media, it's media, it's attention, it's clicks, it's you know.

SPEAKER_10 1:34:24

And now this is what's funny. How an Eminow. What is she a psychologist? She was doesn't she do media? Can't can't the same thing be said for her? She doesn't care about any any of these issues, she's just doing it for clicks. This is glib and short-sighted. And this is from people who remember her and Anna Kasparian used to be best friends. But this is why Malcolm X used to talk about white liberals. This is why, and and I don't do the race thing, but this is why I'm always very careful with my allies. Because sometimes it's like, do you really believe what you what you're saying you believe? Or are you saying it because you think that somebody like me wants to hear it? And um I I can't I don't know who's genuine and who's not in this, but it's just like to be able to speak with such certainty and then not understand that you are literally talking about yourself is is that it's mind-boggling.

SPEAKER_14 1:35:29

Um because of how shallow the the reasoning on their end is. Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_10 1:35:40

Did you put on makeup this morning? Are you working for free? This is just not serious analysis. Uh I don't I don't we we get it. I'm gonna. The show's running longer than I want it to be. Thank you for tuning in, and I'll see you on the next episode.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:22

I worship you, King of the Universe. Blessed are you, made out of creation, so mighty the power in you, you free us from the darkness, change us up perverse. You deliver us from the

Closing Thoughts And Outro Music

SPEAKER_02 1:36:46

wood, teaching us gross virus When my heart gets weak, my soul feels tired You bring new light, lift me higher and higher, every road I walk, every scar and booze Every time you know it's confused I was dumb. When I sack how you bite me Fighting on my girls and fightin' on my fish But your voice got to it's strong inside money You took my broken pieces in your hand for little you knew who I am Now you still like six I think that's the same.