Mehdi Hasan: 9/11's Fallout 25 Years Later

Hey, everybody. A few fun updates for you up for you to the show as for the music that I've been putting at the end of this podcast since I took over. I've been trying to pick songs, have a little Easter eggs for you guys. It's been something I've really enjoyed. It's fun. I've also been doing this like three and a half years now and I'm running out of fun picks and I've got a lot of shit happening in my life. And so when I did instead, as a couple of months ago, I was reached out to some artists that I've spoken to in the past or featured in the past to see if we could just license their songs and use them repeatedly at the end of the show. Orville Peck, The War on Drugs, MJ Lenderman, Shoutout to them are allowing us to use some of their songs. I'm working on some others as well that we can add. From time to time, I'll still pick a little teaser for you guys because I have fun doing it. But this way that takes a little burden off me. Also, there's the playlist that I was creating that I kind of stopped updating this summer. At some point, I'll have a boring day and I'll go back in time and update the playlist, but it doesn't have kind of like the last two months of songs. So I'm sorry about that. But we've got some great and I think kind of cheeky tunes that will now be ending the episodes with and appreciate Orville and MJ and The War on Drugs for letting us do that. We also have just on the event in Springfield, so overwhelmed by the response that we've had. You go to theborg.com/events. We've already sold hundreds of tickets to the event in Dayton, actually. The Springfield benefit. We will also, for people who can't make it, you know, be putting up some links where you can donate to the groups that we're going to be supporting then on profits in the community. We are going to kind of sell out the first round of tickets, I think in Dayton, which is pretty amazing. So it's Friday night. Come hang out with us if you're anywhere near theborg.com/events. It's going to be a meaningful night. We also have some new merch that I've been agitating for for a while. I wore last night my capitalist wing of Antifa, the bulwark shirt. That's on. Then my Instagram followers really got a kick out of it. So it's on the store. We also have a local bill crystal shirt. That's on the store. That's really funny. And we've kind of updated the other stuff, too, with the new logo and the quality of the shirts are better. We got a new hat coming. So a lot of good stuff in the store. Keep an eye on that. So there you go. Up next, it's an interesting show. It's Spicy. And I think you're going to appreciate it. It's Mediason. Stick around. Hello and welcome to the bulwark. Daily, I'm your host Tim Miller. Drined walking back to the show, Founder CEO and editor and chief of Zeteo. We also host the weekly show Median Filtered. It's Mediason. How you doing, man? Good, Tim. Thanks for having me. I'm happy to do it. Just a little behind the curtain for people. Last week, you interviewed Hunter on your show. And I was tickled by it. We'll get to that maybe at the end. And so as, you know, as is my free, his crypto king day for free that is my kind of erratic booking strategy. I watched it. I enjoyed it. I texted you immediately. I looked at the schedule. I was like, we got an opening next Friday. Are you available? You replied, you really want to interview me on 9/11 smiley face. And it hadn't occurred to me, but it felt right. It felt appropriate to do it. There's a lot of people watching this. Bad faith actors who also think it's appropriate for all the wrong reason. Yeah, but that's bullshit. Of course it's bullshit. I mean, I don't know. I just came on this show, Tim, minutes after switching on Twitter and seeing Mamdani shaking hands with Rudy Giuliani at Ground Zero. I wouldn't have shaken that big at time. Rudy Giuliani has been ridiculously Islamophobic and racist in recent days, more so than he normally is. But you know, that's what Muslims in public life have to put up. I wouldn't put up with it. But Zoran Mamdani is much nicer man than me. Isn't that right, though? I gotta say about Zoran. He's given these guys so little work with that they've been stuck with just the bigotry. Like, honestly, I took DeJeska talk about this earlier this week. And she said that I guess some orthodox community or whatever so some complaints. So like, Zoran is tweeting about anti-Semitic attacks when they happen anytime, any place, not even in New York. And he should do that. Like, that's good, right? And he understands the concerns and he's doing what is, you know, everything possibly, publicly as a public figure to assuage them. And I isn't not just a good politics. Isn't that what we want? Don't you want the inverse? Yeah, do you want decent human beings running for office? People who actually give a shit about other human beings? Yeah, well, we're such a cynical nation. We're like, wow, here's the guy who actually seems to care about it. So it gets part-holes fixed the day you ask him to do it. Somebody had a great tweet. I can't remember what it was said, you know, Zoran is running New York like a kid in a movie who suddenly gets all this power and just enjoys it. He looks like he's happy. I don't know if you saw him with the school kids yesterday. He said, you have to mayor. He looks like he's enjoying himself. People around him look like they enjoy themselves. He actually seems to be doing good as in municipal good with his powers. And people can't handle it, as you say. We're so cynical like, no, no, there must be some hidden agenda. No, no, it's a Muslim brotherhood takeover of New York. People are desperate and his approval rating mean we'll go up and up. I think he's nearly 70% right now. It's pretty gross like the way it's been treated. Especially on this 9/11. I mean, in general, I mean, I've been following Zoran since the very beginning. I interviewed him when he was 0.5% in the polls. He's been treated horrifically since the beginning. But I think the last week has possibly been one of the worst weeks of all. This idea that a guy who was 9 years old and 9/11 is somehow responsible for 9/11 shouldn't be invited to a 9/11 ceremony. This made up bullshit story. By the way, Tim, I'm sure you have, I've interviewed 9/11 family members. None of them have said they don't want Zoran Mamdadi to set up. I just interviewed the mother of Vanessa Langlanger who was horrifically four months pregnant. 29 years old and 9/11 died killed in the World Trade Center. She said, the only reason I would go to this ceremony because I love Zoran Mamdadi. So this bullshit that the New York Post and Rudy Giuliani claim to speak for 9/11 families with this fake petition and ridiculous Republican City Council members coming out with more racist shit every day. I don't know if you store the interview, Tim, where he's asked about this again. And you just see it in his eyes. He's like, it's the mayor of New York. It's a really sad day for New York. He wants to represent his people. And instead he's been asked this bullshit bad faith crap about 9/11. Oh, his lawyer was a lawyer for 9/11 suspect. That's what lawyers do. That doesn't mean Zoran Mamdadi was pro 9/11. This kind of absolute endless shit that he's been put through. And by the way, you saw the Vanity Fair piece. I don't know if you saw that as well, where they said, you know, in the eyes of his critics, he's a stand-in for 19 hijackers. And then some of us called out Vanity Fair and they added the word, oh, that's his llama phobic, obviously. They still edited the piece. Yeah, but that's his how Muslims feel now. Again, 20 years later, the same shit, the collective blaming, the stereotyping. It's just endless. Well, I started this by saying, I've been abundantly, look, we went off on CBS in the way that they fucking handled, like comparing, you know, saying that the 9/11 coming off-- I do not say it's tweets, yeah. Yeah, it means it means that that's it's time to reflect on Abdul al-Sahead's positions. It's like, why? Like, what does Abdul al-Sahead had nothing to do with 9/11? So I've been disgusted by just the overt Islamophobic bigotry that would not be acceptable for any other demographic group in the country. You saw what Rudy Giuliani said, right? He specifically said that Muslims want to conquer us, and that's what Mamdani supports. Now, you imagine, and you imagine Zoran, forget another man, you imagine Zoran Mamdani saying, well, Benjamin Netanyahu is coming to New York, and I don't want him in New York because Jews want to conquer New York. So we can't have Netanyahu here. It would be the end of his political career and rightly so, but he wouldn't say that because he's not a man. And there are multiple Republican politicians and leading figures like Laura Lumer, who said, this is the problem, the Islamification of the country. Tommy Tubbavill, who is a United States senator, put out a picture of Mamdani having an iftar gathering, saying the enemy is within the gates. And it's sick. It's horrifying. That is stated. I think that it's worthwhile, at least, for me, having been a former Republican to tell you what people say behind the scenes and what people were saying during this period, and I was a Republican during the 9/11 period. And something that people would say, that I'm curious your response to, is like this idea that I kind of just wanted the Muslim community to be matter. If it was my people, if it was a group of radical gay, former Catholics, or whatever, that flew planes into the building, I would be in the same way that Zoran is really performatively for good reasons, like speaking out against anti-Semitism. I think that there's a desire, unfair, but real, inside people, for Muslims to be like, you know what I'm really mad at? The fuckers, they killed all these people. And maybe people didn't feel satisfied about that. What's your response when people offer that? Yeah, I mean, I've been obviously I've had this discussion for 25 years, and we're on the 25th anniversary. I mean, I would say multiple things, we have 10 hours if we get into it, but I would say a couple of things, which is, number one, the knee-jerk reaction, understandable from Muslims as always, well, why should I? What has it got to do with me? These are 19 foreign hijackers, 15 Saudis, Emirati, Lebanese, Egyptian, 19 guys. I'm trying to lump me in, because there's one Lebanese now, Maddie. Okay, I see. There was one Lebanese in there. But 19 guys and came from our allied countries, but why should I be forced to condemn or disown or speak for them? And that was the response from a lot of people, but even with that response, people still did condemn, right? That was my position. My position was always, if a terrorist attack happens, my position is, I will condemn it, but I'll condemn it because I'm a human being, and I want to condemn the killing of innocent human beings. I'm not going to condemn it out of some collective blaming I owe you a condemnation. That I will not, no, do never do, never have done, never will do. You'll never say, I must condemn it because I'm Muslim. I'm not going to do that. I'll condemn it because I'm a human being. And I think we've seen that over 25 years. No one has asked Jewish people to condemn Israel. I haven't. I've spent three years condemning Israel as genocide in Gaza. Not once have I asked the Jewish American say, you must condemn Israel. Never, never done it. Never will. And I've never asked Christians to condemn what Christian extremists do, what Donald Rumsfeld did in the name of Christianity or what Marco Rubio is doing in the name of Christianity today. So that kind of collective stereotyping and blaming was something Muslims resisted. But the reality is Muslims did condemn 9/11. There was a famous thing at the time. I remember I was a I was a straight out of college. It was my I just started a new job in a TV company. I was a researcher. And one of the things that came up was aware of the condemnation. That was always the thing. Where are the Muslim condemnations? And there was a website was created. Obviously, the internet was not what it is today. But there was a website created where people Muslims like, here's a list. Here's every Imam scholar organization around the world who was condemned 9/11. People forget this on 9/11 itself or the day after. Yasser Arafat went and gave blood. You did a blood drive because Palestinians because a couple of Palestinians cheered and then it was all the Palestinian support 9/11. He went and did a blood drive for American Victor 9/11. Iranians went out into the streets of Tehran. The mayor of Tehran said we are in solidarity with New York. They went out and held candle lit vigil for a country that wasn't their friend on 9/11. The Muslim will actually had a lot of solidarity with the US. Inter the whole world did. And that's one of the great tragedies of 9/11. What could have been had George Bush and the Neocons actually used that moment to actually bring the world together rather than start this very divisive endless war. So this idea that Muslims were either happy about it or not mad about it is just not empirically supported. I was there. Muslims universally condemned it. And by the way, Tim, I just interviewed Talat Hamdani, whose son Muhammad Salman Hamdani was a NYPD cadet and EMT who ran into the Trin Towers. It was his day off. He was not working there. He ran in and he died on 9/11. And the New York Post said, well, maybe he was a terrorist. And to this day the 9/11 memorial will not include her son's name on the list of first responders, even the Mamdani administration has refused to do that because he technically wasn't on duty that day and he wasn't full-time gave his life. So Muslims died on 9/11. Muslims condemned 9/11. Muslims continue to mourn 9/11 including the mayor of New York. So a lot of this is misinformation, I'm sorry to say. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that there's another element of it that is there's this, well, I mean, the other element being there's a big tree element. I think there's a human desire that's like, I want people to match my anger. I feel it about Trump, right? Like, why are people, you know, I feel like there's one of these a couple of these topics we're about to come up with. Why are people as mad as fucking I am, okay? So I do sometimes think that. Can I have one more caveat which is you don't give people the problem is the reaction to tragedies often doesn't give people the space to show the emotion you want them to and I can give you many examples. Let's take the example of Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk was murdered a year ago yesterday. Republicans immediately went into you must condemn this. The left is violent. We must turn him into a martyr, etc. Now, I happen to be one of those people who don't, I don't like people celebrating death. I don't think it's cool when you go, ah, you know, laugh on people's death. He would, the guy was a, I despised the guy. He loathed me. He wanted me deported, but he had a wife and kids. He was murdered completely unjustly. People say, oh, you're not, why is the left madder about that? We didn't give us a chance to be mad. You immediately started attacking us. You immediately started saying we must say Charlie Kirk's amazing, which I'll never say was a horrible human being, but you didn't give us a chance. And on a bigger scale, 9/11 is an interesting example of that where you start this war on Afghanistan and then a war on Iraq. And then the subsequent years, you're like, well, why aren't we talking about 9/11? Well, you've killed 10 times as many people in the interim period. So maybe we're a bit distracted by that. Same with October 7th, people say October 7th, old people were already protesting straight after October 7th, because Israel already killed hundreds of people within days of October 7th. October 8th was a bad data protest. I agree. It was a bad data protest, but let me add this, you know, then hundreds of people were killed on October 8th in Gaza. You know this, right? Okay, but that's the morning. I mean, sure. But they were killed. Innocent Palestinians were killed on Sunday. I mean, Israel killed several hundred people. I know we don't talk about this, Tim, but Israel killed several hundred people, because people like Joe Walsh and others will tell me on social media, you guys were protesting before Israel had even responded. That is a lie. Israel killed hundreds of Palestinians within 24 hours of October 7th. I'm just just a fact. But even some of the protest, people that was protested were like, we knew they were going to do bad things. It's just, and I don't agree with everyone at every protest. I'm not here to defend every protest. I am though saying I don't want the erasure of Palestinians being killed instantly after October 7th, instantly. So like Israel waited a few weeks or waited a month and then to revenge. They started killing Palestinians who did nothing, nothing to do with October 7th immediately. Yeah, it is tough. I wrote about this in the 20 year, and I'll put a link in the show notes, and it's one of these things where it's like, depending on who the speaker is, I just went back and reread what I wrote, and I wrote this for the last 20 years, people who had not really lived had to die. They died because of the fuckers who hijacked the planes. They died because we made a horrifying tragedy worse by Paulic catastrophe upon clusterfucking the years that followed. Like, that's just true. That's what happened, right? When I say that, nobody complains about that, but Abdul says that, and it's like, why are you focused on that on this day? But after 25 years, that is the story. That's a big part of the story. I mean, Zateo's coverage has been, we've done a lot of coverage of 9/11, we've interviewed family members, but we've also talked about what happened after 9/11. I mean, according to the Brown University's cost of war project, something like 800 to 900,000 people, 40 to 50% of them civilians were killed between 2001 and 2023, right, in the war's on terror. That's an insane, you can't just say, we're only going to mourn 3,000 people alive. We should mourn 3,000 people alive. It was a horrific tragedy we were having on time. It was the worst attack on the United States in my lifetime. Of course, we should mourn those deaths. And I said, I've interviewed three different family members this week to talk about their loss, but the idea that we shouldn't talk about the Afghans and the Iraqis and the Pakistanis and all those people who died in the aftermath in wars that Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush and all of those guys unnecessarily started, in my view, of course, we're going to do that. We're human beings. And now we're back at it. Now we're back at it with Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Neocon. We're off choice. We're back at Iran last night. Anybody who lived these last 45 years, this is another reason why it's important to talk about this. It's like when Donald Trump started this stupid war of choice in Iran, almost immediately after I had Bob Kagan on, it was one of the Neocons you criticized about the Iraq war. And we were on the show and we were discussing and we were just like, this is stupid. This is not going to achieve any of the results we want. This is going to lead to greater instability in the region. It didn't have to even be somebody that was opposed. It was just had to be somebody that was awake during the last 25 years to learn the lessons of the last 25 years to know that this was going to be a disaster. And last night, it's getting worse. The hoodies, the bomb, the Saudi pipeline, they're seizing and porting the Red Sea, the war, that they won't even call war anymore. They're just calling it conflict. It seems to be expanding now in ways that might have even more disastrous consequences, economically loss of life, et cetera. With classic Trump, because he says, we don't want to call it war, and then he actually calls it a war, and he kind of undermines the messaging. Obviously, it's a war, it's a disaster. It's interesting that you mentioned Kagan and obviously Bill Crystal and others who were very pro-arrot war have come out against this. But others haven't, Mark Teeson of the post has been a big supporter, Mark Levin of Fox, a big supporter, Duba Whits, the foundation, all those Neocon guys who supported him, do support this Ben Shapiro Netanyahu himself, of course, famously pro-arrot war. And Lindsey Graham, the late Lindsey Graham who loved all of these wars, they didn't learn any lessons at all from any other staff. It's interesting, I interview General Wesley Clark this week, who was opposed to the Iraq war, but supports this Arab war bizarre, really weird. I miss that. Yeah, although interestingly, although I interesting, I then did bring up the fact that he's being paid to give speeches to the MEK, this weird, cultish Iranian opposition group. So that might be part of it, but I would never dare suggest that. Look, it's a disaster. I think it's only going to get worse to him. The midterms, they made it very clear. The ones to midterms are the way. He's got no limitations, no restrictions left. Whatever hesitation Trump has now is only because he knows he's getting destroyed his party, he's getting destroyed in these days. I do worry post midterms. He thinks I've got nothing to lose here and I just go all out. He won't ask a lot of fundamentals. I think the next two months are going to be bad. I think that the Iranians understand the political pressure that he's on. Obviously, what we're seeing with the Houthis, understand. They have many options that they have an exercise. Some of us spent 20 years warning about a war against Iran saying, this is going to make Iraq look like a walk in the park. Iran is not Iraq. It is bigger. It is stronger. It has more options. It has much more impact on the global economy. And these guys got hubristic. They saw the attacks on Hamas. They saw the hisbalar-pager operation and they thought, look, Iran's we can then have a bean. We're stronger than we've ever been. Let's do this now. You saw the reporting from the Wall Street Journal about Lindsey Graham telling Donald Trump, you can be this great president if you do this. I'm not one of these people who says it's all Netanyahu. Donald Trump must take responsibility for Iran. But he also is a man-child who's easily manipulated. And these people did easily manipulate him and telling him it would be a short war. It would be over quick. The regime would fall. They even have Mahmoud Ahmedid Ajad on the slide as a possible replacement. Well, wait, can we just stop Tim for a second to talk about this? The same people who tell us that everything is about anti-Semitism. That you can't support Abdul Al-Sedans or on Mamdani because they're anti-Semites. That you have to support Israel against Hamas because of anti-Semitism. Pitched Holocaust denier. Mahmoud Ahmedid Ajad as the next president of Iran. Yeah. It's probably the regime change war because they don't care anti-Semitism if you're on the same side. We'll see. And this is going on. It's hard, you know, don't have full visibility into the damage of this pipeline attack. And Saudi, but that pipeline is how Saudi is getting oil around the street right now. And depending on that damage. Well, there's the other street. There's the Babel Munda, which is what the Houthis can control and block. It's what the Iranians have always threatened. And some of us again warned about that a while ago. And these guys I don't know what, funny thing is now too, the really things, something you guys at the bulwark and Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan, the independent, really just stay on this, because you know what's gonna happen. At some point in Shahrullah this war will end, and the Strait of Hormuz will open, and Donald Trump will say victory, and we must not let him get away would say, that opening the Strait that was open on February 27th is a victory. You can't say the goal of the war is something that was not a problem before the war started, and that's what they're doing. They're basically making. - We might not be aligned on every single issue at Zataya on the bulwark, but I can commit to you that we will both do our part. - To come up with a fake Strait of Hormuz goal post shifting victory. - To not let him get away with that. - All right, never notice when you Google something, then all of a sudden every ad you see is about it, or you try to watch something when traveling, and you find out it's just blocked. It's happened to me last year when we at our Toronto show, shout out Canada folks, and I wanted to watch LSU Ole Miss, I ended up being a loss, but I was able to watch it. Thanks to our friends at Proton VPN. Proton VPN is a secure VPN service designed for people who want to prioritize their digital privacy and security. It keeps what you do online private, let you access the internet like it should work, open, secure, and on your terms. 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And that's not really necessarily a healthy impulse. But I wrote about Mariam Thomas-Sevy and her family this week. And I'm glad you did. You had the Iranian family, her mother-in-law, was a spokesperson for the hostage takers. In 1979, she wasn't born then, her husband wasn't born there. Her teenage son, she was shit, wasn't born then. And they've been in an internment camp now for over five months. And daily, right? Well, the mom and the son are at Dilly. The husband jumpsuit in a prison camp 20 minutes away. They've had no rule of law. Nothing like this is on the nose Japanese internment camp. The only reason they're in there is because they're Iranian. And because of their borderline. And it's just, I'm baffled by this. Like, I'm baffled that there are not, that this isn't a front-page New York Times story. I mean, we wouldn't expect it from CBS, but that the nightly news isn't covering their story. I don't understand. But their story came out via the nation, if memory says me correctly. She wrote a piece from inside of prison. And her lawyer's a fantastic lawyer, I know her lawyers. And it's a horrific, I read that piece. And I like you, I was furious. I go, any time I read about ISO immigration, I just get enraged. Because none of this had to happen. And it's so cruel, it's so deliberate. It's so vicious. It's got nothing to do with immigration numbers, borders, safety. It is just to quote Adam Sauer from the first term, "The cruelty is the point." And what really enrages me even more, because I'm one of these people who just unfortunately is cursed with a memory. I wish I had no memory. But I remember everything. I remember 10 years of Republicans telling me, free speech, free speech, free speech. We are the free speech party. Joe Biden was a tyrant. Because he said to Twitter, maybe he should take down some disinformation tweets about vaccines in the middle of a once in a century pandemic. Meanwhile, this government comes in and starts abducting people off the streets. They pulled that Turkish student. Remesa Oster, they just grabbed her off the street. A small woman in a job. 10 guys, if you see that video, one of the creepiest videos you'll ever watch, where they just grab her. She's just walking on the street and master men take her off the street. - They did this to Mary at school. - They did this to the mother and child. - We just don't have a video. So I guess you can imagine that. Why do it at school drop off? And Tom Homan was asked about this recently. Why are you doing stuff at school, bus stops? He lied about it, pretending not to know about it. And again, speech, they're basically going off to anyone they think they don't like. They're using this very obscure amendment to the 1952 Immigration Act, which allows Marco Rubio's Secretary of State to detain and deport and strip of visas. Anyone he says is a threat to the foreign policy objectives of the United States. They've used it against Manbu Khalil. They've used it against a bunch of students for their speech. This family didn't even exercise any speech. It's not like they were doing some kind of major activism. They were literally minding their own business. It's bloodline, right? It's the fact that his mother was the former vice president of Iran former spokesman for the hostages. And it's just insane that you would punish family members. I thought family members are off limits where I was told by Republicans. But this is collective punishment. It's a form of Islamophobia. And yet it is abusing the powers that these people have. The idea that, I mean, these are the same people. Tim, you know this better than me. You're in the Republican Party. You're born and raised here. In the 1990s and 2000s, the right was obsessed with black helicopters. They were obsessed with, don't tread on me. They're Elian Gonzalez. People going in with massed goons. Well, that was me. I was upset about that. Why are we upset now? That was Al Gore and Bill Clinton. And it was their masked men thugs. And now a Republican administration is doing this to completely harmless people who are here legally, by the way. They're here legally. They've committed no crimes. And you're sending jack booted thugs to break them out of cars and put them in detention centers with no, and they're not even deporting them, right? They're actually not, they're not giving them a chance. No, it's good luck there. I mean, Trump last night, Laura Ingraham asked him his one sentence reason for why people should vote Republican in the midterms. It's like fear of communism. And I'm like, what is it that you don't like about communism? Take it over companies. I don't know. It's like a police on the streets. Yeah, rule by a cult of these Germany. It's all that. I mean, the guy is ready for a communist state. Yeah. No, it's, it's amazing. Let me go back to your question. It is frustrating. I don't want to be sanctimonious or lecturing about this. But whether it's Gaza or whether it's ICE, whatever it is, I wish we had more protests. I wish we had more people on the streets. I get why people aren't protesting in the same way they have before. I get the fear. I get the intimidation. I think it's a mixture of factors. What's your reason why? I think it's intimidation. I think it's fatigue. On the Gaza issue, I think it's having done it for two years with the Democratic president. I don't know where, what's the point of doing it with the Republican president? I think there's a mixture of factors. I think it's also, you know, Steve Bannon said it best, which is flood the zone with shit. I as someone who covers Trump, you as someone who covers Trump, I can't keep up with the outrage scandal. What should I be angry about today? Like, is it immigration? Is it the brazen corruption in front of our eyes? Is it the cruelty? Is it the racism from the loomers? What are we supposed to be mad about? How do we organize to focus on one issue? You say Dili should be on the front page. I agree. I can tell you seven other things that should also be on the front page. They can't all be on the front page. I don't want to be a New York Times defender. But the reality is, Donald Trump does enough scandal. I would just think that the nightly news would one time once we want to cover that. Oh, 100% I hear you. I just think it's just misdefying the situation. This is, boy, we're torturing this boy. But the mainstream media has bought into the narrative that underlying Trump's abuses and cruelty is a legitimate campaign to deport criminals. And you have to start from the premise that nothing is legitimate about what Trump is doing. I don't buy this whole, you must start from well, the border was out of control on Biden. And something, no, once you concede that premise, that actually what he's doing is driven by any kind of legitimate policy concern, you've lost the argument. Well, this is how they pitched putting these people in the camp is that Marco said, well, that we can't have terrorists in the country, they're terrorists. And this is a 9/11 echo too. And, you know, because of their mother, I don't know, you told me that you had interviewed the mother once. I did. I did. That's wild. Massouma Eptica, who was vice president of Iran. I interviewed her when she was vice president of Iran. I was at Al Jazeera in which I did lots of interviews with lots of politicians around the world. And we secured it into the vice president of Iran in, I want to say, 2016, '17. And it didn't go so well for her, because I tend to do quite tough interviews. And she's not used to that in Iran. You'll be shocked to hear. I don't really do very many accountability interviews on TV there. She got very upset. I believe she complained to Al Jazeera afterwards. It was very funny, because she was sitting in the studio. And I could hear her saying, I think we had an interpreter. She spoke English in the interview, but she apparently asked her, "Hey, who is this? What is this interview?" I was like, "What is a mistake to call an interview?" And I'll prep an interview before I add. So yeah, during the Trump first term, that's pretty telling. I mean, like, okay. So Trump was president once. She was vice president. You were interviewing her, asking her hard questions about the proxies that they're supporting, etc. And these people, her daughter-in-law, her grandson, who are looking their life. Which tells you everything about that first term versus the second term is where the, you know, how the second term is on steroids versus the first term is that they're doing things they never would have dreamt of doing in term one, because there are no guardrails. There are no quote unquote adults in the room. He did get second term vindication after Garland. I mean, unfortunately, Democrats have a lot of things to answer for here. Trump is the way he is because they let him get back into power in the way he got back into power with no accountability. And I know people get upset. And the Matt Eglace is as well. So you blame everything Republicans do on the macro. But yes, I do blame Merrick Garland for why we're in this situation. 100%. And he came back, he came back feeling vindicated, feeling angry, feeling I'm going to get revenge, feeling like there's nothing that can stop me now. And that's where they're doing this. I mean, imagine if I told you during the campaign that they are just going to round people up for no crimes, hold them indefinitely. And the Secretary of State is going to do it with the stroke of a pen. It's going to be masked guys doing it. You would have said or not you, but others would have said TDS. Maybe he's got Trump deranged. He was like, oh, he's a fascist, is he? He's gone beyond even what I was thinking he was going to say. We're going to do so quick. - I think some people would turn back to you. I think believe the last time we were on together was right before the election, and we kind of went back and forth a bit on this question of whether the kind of uncommitted movement and deer born in particular in Michigan and whether they should vote for Kamala, and you kind of were out of the position, just summarized, it was like you understand why they're upset. You think that they should vote for Kamala. I was like, I don't even understand why it's a close call. That was basically the degree of our disagreement. I'm looking at this now. I do think you look back at that. And some of the left activists have to be like, God, we maybe spent a little too much time pissing in the Kamala tent and not enough time reminding people about the threats. - I'm almost with you, the pissing on the Kamala tent, and how you define that. Remember, she was vice president in an active administration that was governing the country in 2024. Like, you can't just give up accountability because it's our election, right? So in the sense of holding Biden Harris to account for what was happening in Gaza at that time, I think everyone has a legitimate deal. I was doing it, but I was trying to walk and chew gum at the same time. I was trying to say, Biden's doing bad stuff. Hey, Biden, stop doing bad stuff. Stop sending weapons to Gaza. But I wasn't glazing Trump. I wasn't suggesting that he's gonna be somehow better. Some people on the left did. And those people should hang their heads in shame forever. - I asked Maga people in there. I'm like, I'd paid her on yesterday about whether people have regrets in this community. Do you feel that do you ever hear that from like either left types or. - Oh, I've had people come up to me all over the place and say, I voted for Jill Stein. I feel stupid. I've had a lot of people showing regret. But at the same time, I've had people say, no, I don't have any regret because I've no way I'd vote for a Democrat because of the genocide. And I'm like, but the genocide's still happening and it's worse in many ways now in terms of what's happening with Gaza and the future of Gaza and Israel and Lebanon and Iran. I mean, look, Dearborn is a town that I know well. I have many friends there. It's a great place. It got a lot of shit because it became like a kind of shorthand for Arab-American opposition to Harrison Biden. But it's a community filled with Lebanese people and Iranian people and their countries, I've got a lot of shit since Donald Trump became president. And I had a Yemeni Marmon from Michigan who was one of the people who endorsed Trump on stage in 24. And at the time, he's like, yeah, he's the peace candidate. And I've invited him back on several times. He'll be shocked here to me, has not come back on to talk about how the peace record is going 18 months into this presidency. But look, I just want to be clear because your audience is probably an audience that's very critical of lefties or Arab-Americans who are anti-Harris. That's what we clear. She lost seven states, all seven states. You can make it about Michigan as much as you want, but this was much more. I wish I could say, Garza was, I'm of the view that Garza did hurt her and did cost her the election in a way, but it wasn't the only issue. There were many reasons she lost her. - You didn't cost her the election. - I think her, I think her. - As in, if you tell me what are the issues that cost her, why did Harris lose? I would put Garza in the top five reasons of why she lost. Now, I don't know what number one is. We'll never know for sure. There's a mix of things, the timing, whether she was a good candidate, et cetera, et cetera. But my point is it clearly hurt her, but it wasn't the only issue. And it would be absurd to say she lost, I don't know, Pennsylvania, Arizona, because of Garza. She lost multiple swing states. So as slightly a noise, we won some centrist Democrats and blue mega types would be like, "Oh, it's on the fault of uncommitted." By the way, uncommitted came out against Trump. Just factually, people were trying to attack, and I would say, "Uncommitly came out and said, "do not vote for Donald Trump." They made that very clear. And most prominent leftists did endorse Harris. Sometimes when we talk about left, like some random on Twitter is not the left. It really annoys me when we brand the left is like some random person. The left is Bernie Sanders. The left is AOC. The left now is Zoraan Mamdani. The left is Abdul Alseh now. I mean, they all, Abdul endorsed Kamala Harris. Bernie Sanders endorsed Kamala Harris. AOC endorsed Kamala Harris. She spoke at the convention. A lot of far leftists don't hate AOC. I don't like the 9/11 thing. I think people wanted a little more fervor. People wanted a little more. AOC was so fervent, the people on the outside now. AOC was great, AOC. She gets shit now for saying they were working tirelessly for Cesar when they, of course, were not. And she gets shit. And I have to defend AOC from people who hate her because of that one speech she gave it again. We all have, you know, our burdens to carry. Maddie, you know, I'm dealing with the left-backed times. You've got to deal with the Jelstein people. We're going to get 100th the end. We're saying we're going to get 100th the end. They're very quickly on Hunter Biden separately. He reminded me, and he's reminded many people, that the people who backed his dad when the centrist returning over to the left. Bernie Sanders, AOC supported Joe Biden in June. They did not call for him to step aside. If you correct. No, that is right. Something I mentioned quite a bit. September is world Alzheimer's month. But most people never checked their brain health until something's feeling off or wrong. I wanted to stop waiting and look at my own data. And I didn't want to take one of those Donald Trump tests, like person, man, woman, camera, TV. Did I just pull that straight off the top? Straight off the dome? I think I got that right. Look at me, just like Donald Trump, no dementia here. And here's the thing, though, that isn't really a test. So one thing that you can use is tests from function health. Your focus is mental stamina, leave a data trail on your blood, and function tracks it. And they track the core biomarkers that are tied to brain health, omega-3 index, MMA, magnesium, and some other things that are hard for me to pronounce, because I didn't do well in the science portion of the ACT. Plus, function members can add on brain-related add-on tests. If you can sort of have brain injury or degeneration screening, Alzheimer's test, Alzheimer's detection test. Check your brain and health the way I do. Function provides 160 plus lab tests for $1 a day and member pricing on advanced imaging. Join at functionhealth.com/thebolark and use code of the Bolark 25 for a $25 credit. Here's something I'm a little bit nervous about, about lefties and their American crowd, which they're making this thing, that's not it. I'm not, I don't have my capitalist wing of antifa shirt that I was wearing last night. What is worrying me is that making the same mistake over again, but instead of Donald Trump, it's Tucker Carlson. - Yeah. - And potentially JD Vance. - You won with some inage, I think. Where you said that Tucker has a huge Muslim fan base, even people in your own family. People wanna know when you're gonna go on his show. That seems pretty alarming to me. It feels like just another version of Donald Trump, the peace candidate. - Agreed. - It's alarming to me too. Say it in a positive way. And people who tell me they love Tucker, I do try and remind them of who Tucker is. The problem is Tim, you, me, your audience, my audience, very Newsy plugged in audiences. Think about Normie Americans. Normie Americans don't follow the news. They don't follow the stuff. They don't know if I start telling them what Tucker Carlson, they have no idea. They barely know who Tucker Carlson is. And the people I'm talking about, they never heard of Tucker Carlson prior to him becoming this pro-Palestine. - Now they're coming to take Tucker feed. - Now he's in their feed. It's just all clips of Tucker calling out Ted Cruz, calling out Mike Cuckabee. Come on, you're calling out the worst people, right? I chaired Tucker calling out Mike Cuckabee and Ted Cruz as much as I dislike Tucker Carlson, right? Because he's clearly in the right in those exchanges and they're clearly odious people. So I get it again, but look, the reason, let me just wait one substep to the point on this. Please, again, I know I'm speaking to your audience. I just wanna, it's not that I'm defending through, I just wanna explain what's going through their heads. Through their heads is mainstream media abandoners. mainstream media gave Israel a pass. Democrats won't even call for a cease-fartil two years and still won't call for arms embargo. I keep Jeff, he still won't go off to APEC. Chuck Schumer still says his job is to make sure the left is pro-Israel. This guy is saying the stuff that liberals and leftists aren't saying. So why wouldn't we support this guy? He sounds like he's fresh and different. He sounds contrite. By the way, Tucker says it's all, I got it wrong. And Americans love a, love a, love a, love a, maybe a politician. - Here's an idea. Maybe those people should just like Chris Van Halen and he's as good at monologues. - That's exactly what I say. - We don't want to say events when Muslims bring up Tucker and Candice and MTG and say, these people are saying, shouldn't we ally with these people on the right? They're saying the right stuff. I say number one, they're saying the wrong stuff on everything else. They don't like immigrants. They don't like non-Christians. And number two, there are people on the Democratic side who are saying good stuff. You just don't know who they're because TikTok doesn't give it to you because they're not sexy as Tucker Carlson and Candice, you know, Delia Ramirez, who sponsored the block, the bombsack, Congresswoman from Illinois. People don't know her name. She's a fantastic Latina Congresswoman who is pushing for justice, both her ice and on Gaza. People don't know her. She's not Tucker Carlson. - Let's help the algorithm. Here's the truth about Tucker Carlson. He's a bigot and he is an anti-Muslim bigot that right now he hates the Jews more. And so that's why he's on the side of Muslims. But here is Tucker Carlson talking his real views about Muslims on above of the love sponge little while ago. - Rock is a crappy place filled with a bunch of, you know, semi-literate, per-bearing, I just have zero sympathy for them or their culture, a culture where people who don't use toilet paper or forks. - And the way they treat women, you know, I agree with you, their culture is, but you're in their homeland and you're over there as an American who they hate and they want nothing more than the Americans off of their soil. So they're not gonna play games. - I mean, they can just shut the fuck up in obey is my view. Really heavily into Islam. I'm sorry, I just don't, I don't care for you that much. And I don't care what that sounds like. You can call me a racist, you can call it a fuck you want. - That's Tucker Carlson. - So what people will say now, Tim, I've done, well, everything you're saying, I've had these conversations, they will say, but now he's apologized for that. Now he's defending Islam. He called out Donald Trump when Trump mocked Islam. Candace Owens has come out and said, I was wrong on Islam. I was lied to about Islam. I'm not anti-Muslim. You're right to say that they have different targets right now. And I've said this to many people. We should make alliances with people who agree with us. You and I are allied against Trump. We don't agree on everything else, but we agree that Trump is an existential threat to this country. You and I have always agreed on that. You can ally with people you disagree with on the things. The problem is, is that if they are basically saying, okay, it's Israel now, slash Jews, slash whatever it is now. And then Muslims later. - That's true. - He's a bigot. - Yeah, I mean, he was an anti-Muslim bigot that I now is an anti-Muslim. - He was an MSNBC when he was a fuck. - He might come right back to it. - I didn't come right back around. - I didn't multiple segments on Tucker Carlson's racism and bigotry when I was at MSNBC and he was a fucks, right? he said immigrants make this country dirtier, which JD Vance had at the convention last night. He said horrific things. By the way, I wouldn't even go back to Bubba stuff 'cause he could say those are old views, we've all had old views that we disowned. What about what he's saying right now? Even now in his new phase, he says stuff like great replacement. He goes to the UK and says, "Oh, I don't recognize the UK. There's so many Muslims in London." He just did that the other day, right? He did it with Piers Morgan and Piers Morgan had to defend Muslims and defend the UK. So even now he's saying reactionary things. Even now, Candace Owens, I don't think is anti-ice or Nick Frentis. There's another name who has conned a lot of people because he says things about Israel, even though he's a card-carrying anti-Samaha Holocaust and anti-Muslim. So look, my politics have always been Tim. My enemy's enemy is not necessarily my friend. I've never bought into that logic. And I think too many people on all sides of the spectrum. This is not just the left wing thing, Tim. This is a centrist thing. You're seeing it in Michigan. Literally, right now, I'm Michigan, and they're a Jewish Democrat saying, "I'm gonna vote for Mike Rogers." 'Cause I don't like Abdul Al-Said. If you don't like Abdul Al-Said, stay home. But vote for Mike Rogers, that's insane. You're voting for a white supremacist party. - Insane. - So a lot of people do this. Jews, Muslims, leftist, Christians, conservatives. They do this whole, my enemy's enemy is my friend. That's not the way you should do politics. Have some consistent principles. - I'm for doing coalitions across disagreements. Like that's what the market bull works about. My point is that Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are bigots and liars, right? And so they're not actually allies across differences. - Well, that's the key point you're making is more than the bigotry is the trust. My main issue is, I don't know if I trust these people. I'm MTG has switched. She's saying stuff that I like, the sound of now. But I also know MTG's record. Can you just twist on a dime? I worry about, we live in an age of grift. We live in an age where people on all side spectrum can swap views like this, change them out, and people shouldn't fall for it. And I said earlier in the conversation, I'm cursed with a memory. I remember things. So unlike my friends in the Muslim community or in the left community who just don't know what Tucker was saying one year, two years, or even two weeks ago, I know this stuff. So I need to see more evidence of any kind of substance. My worry is like yours. And Hassan Piker and I had this conversation. Interesting enough. Hassan is also very skeptical of the Tucker turn. We both agreed that the job that Tucker Carlson is probably doing is to bring people back to a future Republican party under Vance. When he says, I'm against the Republicans. He goes on Bloomberg with my friend Michalus, and he says, I'm not a Republican. I'm against the Republican party. And then he goes, I love JD Vance. You can't be against the Republican party. If you support the Republican vice president, that's a contradiction. I talked to Hassan about this off stage last year, a crooked con. And he agrees with this. I was like, this is your job. Again, like I said earlier, we all have jobs in this world. And it's like, as a prominent influencer on the left. And we all to talk to people and make you understand what the real Candace and Tucker are. And have as much energy for hating them as for-- I don't know. [INTERPOSING VOICES] But for a few words or whatever, who, who, who, you know, have subsided-- - So for a lot of people, it's not a big deal. - What a lot of people say it's not a big deal. And then there's a lot of people like Chenk and Anna, at Young Turks and others, who say, no, no, we must ally with Tucker. And I don't agree with them. I've said that publicly. But what a lot of good faith normies would say is, look, we care about the genocide in Gaza. I think Basemusef, who is a comedian, you know, I do stuff with him. It's a deal. He went on Candace and I said, why'd you do this? Why? And he said, his argument. I'm not saying I agree with him, but this is his argument. He says, when the house is on fire, you do not turn away a bucket from anyone who's bringing you a bucket of water, right? And that is the view of some people, which is, Gaza is on fire. - If they're bringing you a bucket of piss, though. That's what she's bringing you. - I wish I had that come back. But the point is, their argument is, and I understand it. I don't say I agree with it, but it's like, Gaza is a huge issue. We've been abandoned by mainstream media and mainstream political leadership. These people are saying something and they have platforms and it's worth it. Now, my argument is, Gaza's my number one issue, because it's a genocide. I've said that very clearly. It's the number one issue in the world for me. What's happened to the Palestinians in the last three years? But it's not the only issue. I also care about what's happening at Dilly detention center. And if you also care about what's happening at Dilly detention center, then of course, you can't ally with MTG or Tucker or Candace, because they support what's happening at Dilly detention center. - And here's the most important thing going back to JD, 'cause let's talk about him. 'Cause that is Tucker's project is to support JD. And I do feel like we're just walking into, yeah, we're running himself into the same thing that we ran into in 2024. - JD, and said he will. - Yeah, he's trying to do this thing now. It's the same shit Trump did. So you're the vice president. This is the signature foreign policy initiative of this administration. And so JD leaks to the New York Times yesterday. It's obviously him about how they set it. - And they ran it. And they ran it uncritically with no caveat. They said JD Vance, who has been opposed to this war from the outset. - Yes, since when? He's never said it. He's leaked to the New York Times that he's against it. And then last night at his speech, he does this very strange gambit, where he talks about how his friend Charlie Kirk was always against war, which is not true, by the way. Charlie Kirk was a bigger rockward supporter. And so, so we don't know what Charlie would think. - Because it was supposed to be. - Yeah, so we don't know what Charlie would think now, but we think he'd probably be against the war. And so if you're like Charlie, he would still vote for us, though anyway. And so he tries to do this thing where he creates like, Charlie Kirk's ghost as a strong man, as like an imaginary person who would be against the Iran War, but would still vote for Republicans. And like that's how he's trying to weasel out of this. And I just am worried that it's going to work for some people. - Oh, I think it will work for some Republicans and some non-Republicans. I do think no JD Vance has a big problem in making that case, which is why he needs Tucker Carlson, because JD Vance has the charisma of a piece of wood. JD Vance is not a communicator. He's deeply unlikeable. People have short memories. I know we're all dunking on Tim Waltz these days, but if you go back and look at the polling from 2024, he was the most unpopular running mate in modern polling of running mates. He was talking about weird cat ladies and pissing people off if you remember. I strongly believe he will not be, I don't do predictions anymore, but I personally have gone to my head. I don't think he will be the 2028 Republican candidate. - I think he will be, so we can talk. - Okay, we'll talk again in 2028, the internet's forever. I don't think he'll be the candidate, because I just don't think he's going to be able, I think the Trump presidency is going to be such a car crash, such a pile of shit in 2028. There's no way that he can run without disowning Trump. The candidate runs in 20, it has to find some way to disown Trump. And Trump won't allow anyone to do that. - Everybody's going to do it. He's going to be like, I was against it. I look at the New York Times. Unless Trump's dead, he can't do it, right? Unless Trump has died at that point. Don't, people keep forgetting, that's his biggest risk. - People keep forgetting that in 2028, Donald Trump may not be the candidate. I think I'm not ruling out that he tries to stay on, but let's assume he steps aside. The big thing no one talks about is, I've not seen a single think piece or analysis piece or report a piece about this, which is, okay, it's Rubio's vans. Where's Donald Trump? You think he's just playing golf quietly, keeping his views to himself? - No, he will be tweeting and posting every day about what they've done wrong. By the way, he'll also be the sitting president during the election campaign. He'll be doing shit every day to undermine the candidate. He doesn't care about anyone but himself. He doesn't care if he fucks them over. In fact, he might want them to lose so that he looks like a winner. - I agree with this. If JD's not the nominee, it's for this reason. And this is it. It's not his lack of charisma and the fact that he has a punchable face or whatever. It's like the fact that he gets on Trump's bat. He gets too far out on the ledge. - I don't think he's not the nominee because of lack of charisma. I think he loses a general election because of lack of charisma. But I think he's not the nominee because I don't think you can distance yourself from Trump in the way he wants to. It has to be someone who's willing to come out, scorched earth against Trump. And there's an audience for it further to the right. It has to be, I'm sorry to say this. It has to be like a fwentess type. Not that I want that, but strategically, if I look at the Republican Party, that is the only lane I can see is coming at Trump from the right, saying you did do more of what we wanted from the right. There's no other lane that exists. - So JD is going to try to do that subtly. That's tough to do. - JD is last night, I just wanted to play one clip because we were live streaming and I couldn't take very much. And so this line kind of slipped past me and so I don't want to let it do that. So we'll cover it this morning. Here's JD last night talking about his concerns about being called a racist. - And we were tired of being called racist for noticing that our country was becoming dirtier and poorer and less safe and less prosperous. - Can I just ask, he did right hillbilly allergy, right? Was when he was writing about that community, was there a lot of immigrants there? I'm pretty sure the whole point of hillbilly allergy was that Appalachia was dirty and poor. That was the fucking book that he wrote. - And not because of people from Pakistan or Afghanistan. I mean, first of all, there's so many things to respond to that. Number one, just the fundamental racism of that statement. Number two, the fact that his in-laws are Indian immigrant. It's like how do they watch that and not go take a shower that their son-in-law just through them and their entire community under the bus and then mixed-race grandkids under the bus. Just deeply disgusting to say immigrants made this country dirty when your in-laws are Indian immigrants who your party hates as we saw during the whole musk H1B debacle a year ago. And number three, the fakery of it. Like, I prefer the real racists, right? I prefer the actual people who are racist in their core and like the fake racist, I hate you any any time I hate. I prefer the true believers on the right. I'm sorry. He interviewed with me in 2016. Before I interviewed Master Mahabtika, I interviewed J.D. Vance in 2016 for Al Jazeera and he was a never-trumper. And he said, "Medi, Donald Trump is taking my party "in a dark direction. "He's putting Muslim friends of mine at risk." Sorry, J.D. Are you talking about yourself then when you say we were accused of being racist? You were accusing Trump of being Hitler. You were telling me on Al Jazeera that we should stand by our Muslim allies and not go into a dark place. And now you have the nerve to pretend that you're part of this amorphous right wing. We were silenced when we were trying to be racist. You weren't even trying to be racist when everyone else was trying to be racist. So like the inconsistency of it, there's sheer opportunism of it. And obviously dangerous, it's super, super dangerous. We live in an age where there's a massive amount of political violence. I know the right one, you don't believe it's the left. But last night Ted Cruz was speaking and I believe people were shouting out, shoot him or whatever it is about Mamdani and Taloriko and Abdul Abbasque was attacked in San Diego and May of this year by two neo-Nazis who killed three Muslim was tried to kill a whole elementary school of Muslim kids. There are consequences to this rhetoric. You mentioned Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson, one of the most outrageous things he said at Fox was when he said immigrants make the country dirty. At the time, it was so controversial that advertisers pulled out of Fox. They started boycotting Fox. Look at the overton window. Today, the Vice President of the United States can say the same line. No one blinks. It's just normalized. Back to our conversation about how Tucker is still using as a stocking horse. They're obviously talking. That's a Tucker line. It is using right there. JD Vance has a nerve to the other day to say, Abdul brought his wife into it. When number one, Donald Trump brought Abdul's wife into it as Abdul pointed out. And number two, yeah. We are going to bring an eye as an eye as a brown skin immigrant to United States. Every time I hear JD Vance being racist, I'm going to remind him that his kids are brown. His wife isn't brown and his parent in laws are immigrants. Yes, I'm fucking going to remind you that. I have nothing to add to that. You had an internet dispute with Noah Smith this past week. You could fill in the gap with multiple names. Yeah, you mentioned Madagglades. It's both of us sometimes get a little hot on the Twitter. So I kind of, I want to kind of separate out. There was some name calling Noah said some gross things. And that's just not worth getting in the pockets. So I should go live in the Middle East because I love it there. And I don't love America. And America wants me gone. Which is very Stephen Miller asked for my centrist pundit. Yeah, a bad thing to say. The broader conversation now. And it's something that Noah says that Matt says a lot. I think it's something worth exploring. Because right now, I'm in it 47 in the podcast. Like 43 minutes of it has been discussing Middle East politics and Islamophobia and anti-Semitism and all this stuff. We live in a pluralistic society here in America. And you know, Matt was going at with Jasper Nathana, who I just really respect the work he's doing in the West Bank. And we've talked about that. But that Matt just kind of summarized it this way. He says here's what I think we should do. I think we should end aid to Israel and try to be as uninvolved with this situation as possible. Noah talking to you said that you're speaking about a dispute between you and a pro-Israel guy on Twitter. These people get up every day and think only about the Middle East. I think about America's daily life and public policy and political movements and world view should revolve around things that are happening in the Middle East. No, screw the Middle East. So again, an in-artful way to put that. But what about the broader conversation of like, man, our politics is way too fucking much about these religious disputes and these territorial disputes in the Middle East. And like we should talk about that way less. Yeah, maybe the big lesson on the 25th anniversary of 9/11 as we should do as little as possible over there. I agree. But I do think that there are folks here that are making that very challenging by really centering that as the main issue in our discourse. Do you mean are you saying people on the left or right? I think both. I think pro-Israel and anti-Israel activists online want our politics to be very much about what's happening in Israel and the surrounding Middle East. Yeah, I think not to pick a side. But just to say kind of like, well, Homer into the bushes. So maybe this shouldn't be a problem. Yeah, so so a couple of things. First of all, I don't accept all religious battles. But that's a conversation for another day. The problem with the Mattie Glacier's Noah Smith position is they don't believe it. They've never done anything or said anything to affect that view. You can't just turn up on Twitter and go, ah, I wish we could do Homer into the bushes. No, no, no. We have a 50, 60 year legacy of foreign policy in that could be in that part of the world. We've started. We're better than now to start Homer into the bushes though. I hear that. OK, let's start. Well, let's talk to you about the last 25 years. But why not start? OK, what's it look like? Does it mean ending USA to Israel? Because I haven't heard the Glacier from Noah Smith call for that? Yes. Does it mean ending Armstrong? Not just to Israel. Let's do the region. Why are we supporting Egypt? We're supporting Egypt because we're supporting Israel. Why are we supporting Saudi Arabia? Why are we propping up all these dictatorships? I'm against all of that. People on the left are against all of that. I'm all for pulling out the Middle East. By the way, I'm over the view that 9/11 happened because we were in the Middle East. Because we had bases in Saudi Arabia. Because we were supporting Israel. Etc. And Egypt. And all these places that Zawahiri and Bin Laden came from, right? So you want to talk about 25th anniversary of 9/11. We shouldn't have been over there. I've been with Bin Laden probably at a found a reason to not like us besides the base in Saudi Arabia. We'll have to agree to disagree on that. The US had no role in the Middle East. I mean, Bin Laden famously put out a video saying, I'm not attacking Sweden, am I? And this was just the idea that the United States Middle East policy-- And there was obviously OK to attack in your-- And there have been a place-- You know what? But the point is, the war with the great Satan, the great enemy, is we are there, right? And by the way, let's test it out. This is the same thing with Israel. They go, if we pull out a guard on the West Bank, Hamas will still hate us. OK, we'll pull out. And when that happens, then we can all say, Hamas has no reason to hate you. And Palestinians have no reason. But while you're occupying the land, of course, there's going to be violent backlash. Same thing with us, right? Pull out of the Middle East. I'm happy. I don't want any American base in the Middle East. I don't want-- you think I want a $1.6 trillion pentagon budget. Do you think any leftist wants a spending billions of dollars on arms to foreign countries, subsidies on arms, wants bases built, wants fighter jets sent to these countries? No leftist, I know, wants that. I'm with Ben Cohen who wants to halve the size of the pentagon. I mean, I was watching some left in it. Rokana was on-- I think it was majority reports, where he was getting screamed at because he doesn't want to arm the Palestinians. So I mean, I don't do think-- It was a majority world-- It was drop site. It was drop site. Yeah, it was drop site. It was drop site. But that was more a debate about the double standards when it comes to all rights self-defense. And I'm glad you brought that up. So if you're going to stay out of it, let's talk this through. What does that mean then? On October the 8th morning, what is US policy? What is the US position at that moment? Because-- I could over 8th, 2026 or 2023. No, 2023. Let's take that as a concrete role, where the US decided to throw its full arms and weight behind Israel's response, quote unquote. Now, where does Eglaceus and Noah Smith stand on that? Arda said, stay out of it. If you're really an anti-interventionist, stay out of it. Why are we army? And by the way, everyone complains, why do you talk about Israel all the time? Because we're arming Israel. Again, put it to the test. If we stop arming and stop funding Israel, then Americans will talk about Israel. And this was a BB Netanyahu and Ben Shapiro position, though. I like Israel would have been able to defend themselves without our military aid. But they wouldn't have been able to get away with, for example, at the UN without our diplomatic veto. And actually, that's not true, by the way, Tim. Israeli generals on the record saying, we would have run out of ammo. We can't even fight Iran on our own. You think Israel would have done three years more? They needed reloading. That's why we bypass Congress twice. But look, it's an important issue. - So your problem is with Euclacius's past position? - No, no, no. My problem is, I don't believe that they say what they mean. I don't believe they actually support cutting our defense budget, pulling our bases out of the Middle East, stopping funding Egypt and Israel. That's what I support. - What do they say to the notion that like, gosh, American politics, pluralist society, we have a lot, there's a lot of issues in the world that like their activist groups, both pro-Israel and anti-it that are like really making this too big of an issue. But it's not both sides. - That's true. - Let's go, can we take Michigan as an example, Tim? In Michigan, APEX spent $30 million. - It's different. - I could say that a lot. - There's no equivalent on the other side. There's just not, there's zero comparison. So if you want to say, why did the Michigan race become about Israel, where Hayley Stevens taking money from a massive pro-Israel group to fund their campaign, dark money from Republicans, by the way, who fund APEX, that makes it an issue. If you don't put lots of APEX money into a race, maybe we won't talk about APEX. - I mean, you said earlier the causation on board issue, I think that there are a lot of activists and there a lot of left-means, you folks said that is the main issue. That's the animating issue. People are allowed to. - Of course it is. - That's allowed. - But that's true. - But Tim, can I just be clear when I said that? - Tim, can I just be clear? - Tim, can I just be clear when I said that? I don't go to vote based on what's happening in Egypt, whatever, I just want to be clear about that, I'm talking about specifically the last two and a half years of three years of genocide. Pre-2023, the Middle East was also an issue, we also supported Israel, but it wasn't the top issue for most people. It was an issue that I still cared about, but it wasn't my top issue. In Donald Trump's first term, Middle East was not my top issue. Donald Trump doing shit here in home was my top issue. But now, Middle East is still my top issue because it's a genocide, you may not agree with that, others may not agree with that. But if you think it's a genocide, obviously you're going to feel strongly about it, for a lot of people in the 80s, a part of South Africa was their top issue, right? That was a huge cause for the liberals across the West in the 1980s. So you're going to have these big moral causes that people care about, but if you're talking about American politics. - Yeah, I'm talking about the politics. - American politics is a monocratic primary, where it's-- - Take the money out of the political groups. - Here's my test, I'll put my hand out, I can't speak for other people. If you take pro-Israel money out of American politics, if you take pro-Israel litmus tests out of America, where every politician has to declare their love for Israel, Mandani was asked in a debate, will you go to Israel first? No, he's American, why? If you get American policy bases out of the Middle East, if you get American money out of Israel, Egypt, and then I still go on and on about Israel, then you can attack me and I'll say, yes, I'm out. But until you do that, don't come and lecture me about, no, we should stay, why do you only talk about this stuff? We talk about it because we're involved in multiple wars, right? - I think that might be where things are going. And so I guess my request would be, if that's where things go, particularly in the democratic party, I'd like people to take the W. - Because I do. - 100% out a lot. - 100% - Still bitching. - 100%, can I give you one example from the U.K. right now, Ed Miliband, who is the foreign secretary of the U.K. I wrote a book about him many years ago, he was a leader, now he's a foreign secretary, he's Jewish. He just announced a settlement ban on goods, right? Sanctions on settlements, huge controversy in the U.K. A lot of pro-Israel groups losing their mind, even the public support it. A lot of people on left like, well, it doesn't go too far enough, I know, yeah, it doesn't go far enough. But take the win, Israel's pissed off, supporters of Israel pissed off, the British government's never done anything like this before. So yes, I say to my fellow nurses, please take the wins, wherever we find them, there aren't many of them, but take them. - We went long and I don't want to do hunter, I don't have the spirit for it, but I just, you did speak to him. - Well, let's just, let's just for kicks, he's got a crypto, let's watch. Hey everyone, hunter here, it has been a long couple days, but I'm used to long days. I want to make one thing clear, is that this is my fucking token. I've been working on this thing for six months straight, and I have gone. - In between interviews? - In deep, in terms of. the cryptocurrency and understanding exactly what I was getting into and what I was getting into was trying to do something just markedly different than what has been offered up to the community in the past two years. That's something that actually could help build community and do something that's worthwhile. - We're building community with a shit coin. What'd you make of your conval? He won't come on here. He doesn't, he's mad at me. But what would you make of your conval? - I think he is family, maybe mad at me now. He did a great interview. I thought he took my questions. He answered them on Gaza. He was very honest and raw. But I wondered, I asked him at the beginning, why are you doing all these interviews? You do one every day. You've done like 40 interviews before I got to you. And I think this is the reason why. I think we saw, he was building up to something. And that was this community, that community. Like if you're going to slag off the Trump family for all the stuff, it's just insane that you would come out with. I know he's got his reasoning and he's got his justification. But it's insane. Come on, you can't come out with laptop as your coin after doing this media tour. It's just, I said it earlier about like, grift and people's positions. People don't trust people who are doing these kind of U-turns and change in views. And a lot of people, by the way, a lot of people love Hunter Biden now because he's been criticizing Gaza as a genocide. I see people on the left like it now. Again, I want to reserve judgment and see have these people really changed. And this is not helping. It's not helping. - No, it ain't. I'm not sold to say. I'm not buying a time share from Hunter Biden. - I'm not buying anything from Hunter Biden. - I would recommend that everybody not do that, or from his friend Tucker Carlson. I think the best thing to do is probably just to kind of walk away from both of their content activations. - But I'm gonna say lasting, sorry to be of the boring, - Last year before I go. What I say and others say who are smart about this, I think, is it's bad. It's bad that Tucker Carlson is getting popular in some parts of the left and some parts of us involved. But again, it's an indictment of the Democrats and liberals. How did you leave a lane open? How did you leave an anti-war critical of Israel lane open for Candace Owens and MTG and Tucker to take how the hell do Democrats still have leaders who are still saying what is fine to take eight-pack money? Why is it that we need these freaks to be condemning what Israel is doing because too many Democrats just stay silent? - I agree with this, but this is a through line for a whole conversation. And I appreciate the one to end with that because it's kind of, I kind of feel like, what was the thing you said that early internet where they created a list of the Muslims that can damage 9/11? I kind of want to create a list of all the Democrats that have done the right thing. - Yes. - And people are still mad because it's like they're not giving them the energy that they want. And I just, and so it's like, and that's a human nature, but I agree. - So maybe more energy on it. Anyway, maybe end in agreement. - I appreciate you very much, brother. Thank you for coming on. - Thank you. - Thank you. A fun day to do it. And everybody else, you can say that. I can't say that. It's not a fun day for a country. - That is an imbalance. And it is a sad day for a country. Everybody will be back one day with Bill Crystal. Ironically, see y'all then. - Bye-bye. ♪ Done with this year, a mistrink will be ♪ ♪ Missing the songs for you to slow to hate ♪ ♪ Summer came late, fires on the wet side ♪ ♪ I'm rolling the waves, let's miss being ♪ ♪ Catch it before it's almost gone ♪ ♪ Try to pretend it's the end of the world ♪ ♪ So kiss me to death, there's nothing left to decide ♪ ♪ Nothing to prove, nothing to lose only told ♪ ♪ Don't tell me your name will burn our mistakes ♪ ♪ To destroy the end of the world ♪ - The Bullwork Daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, associate producer Anzali Skipper, and with video editing by Dante DeCicco and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.