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

Hey everybody, a few fun updates for you before we get 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 little Easter eggs for you guys. It's been something that 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 what I did instead a couple months ago is reach 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, shout out 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 we'll 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 we've had. You go to theblog.com slash 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 the nonprofits 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 theblog.com slash 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. And then my Instagram followers really got a kick out of it. So it's up. It's on the store. We also have a woke Bill Crystal shirt that's at the store. It'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. But 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 Mediasun. Stick around. We'll be right back. We'll get to that maybe at the end. And so as you know, as is my pre his crypto king days, pre that as 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 act. 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's genocide in Gaza. Not once have I asked a Jewish American to 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 straight out of college. I just started a new job in a TV company. I was a researcher. And one of the things that came up was, where are the condemnations? That was always the thing. Where are the Muslim condemnations? And 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 has condemned 9-11. People forget this. On 9-11 itself, or the day after, Yasser Arafat went and gave blood, right? He did a blood drive because a couple of Palestinians had cheered. And then it was like, oh, the Palestinians support 9-11. He went and did a blood drive for American victims of 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 had a candlelit vigil for a country that wasn't their friend on 9-11. The Muslim world actually had a lot of solidarity with the US. 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, Mohammed Salman Hamdani, was a NYPD cadet, an EMT, who ran into the Trin Towers. It was his day off. He was not working there. He ran in and he died. 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. 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 bigotry element. I think there's a human desire that's like, I want people to match my anger. Like, you know, like, I feel it about Trump, right? Like, why aren't people, you know, I feel about this, one of these, a couple of these topics we're about to come up with. Why aren't people as mad as fucking I am? And so I do sometimes think that's an element. Can I add one more caveat, which is, you don't give people this, the problem is, the reaction to tragedies often doesn't give people the space to show the emotion you want them to. And I'll give you, I can give you many examples. Let's take the example of Charlie Kirk. Yeah. 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, et cetera. 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, I despise 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 isn't the left madder about that? Well, you 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 he 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 in 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, oh, people were already protesting straight after October 7th, because Israel already killed hundreds of people within days of October the 7th. October 8th was a bad day to protest. I agree it was a bad day to protest, but let me add this. You know that hundreds of people were killed on October 8th in Gaza. You know this, right? Okay. But like the morning, I mean, sure. No, but they were killed. Innocent Palestinians were killed on Sunday. Yeah. Well, I mean, Israel has just been attacked. 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 the 7th. I'm just, that's just the fact. But even some of the protests, people at those protests were like, we knew they were going to do bad things. It's just, this is kind of, this is just like being respectful. 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 the 7th, instantly. It's not like Israel waited a few weeks or waited a month and then took revenge. They started killing Palestinians who did nothing, had nothing to do with October the 7th immediately. Yeah. It is tough. I wrote about this on 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, like I just went back and re-read 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 pilot catastrophe upon clusterfucking the years that followed. Like, that's just true. Like, that's what happened. Right. And it's like, when I say that, nobody complains about that. But Abdul says that, and it's like, why are you focused on that? Right. On this day. But like, after 25 years, like 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 wars on terror. That's an insane, you can't just say, we're only going to mourn 3,000 people. We should mourn 3,000 people 9-11. It was a horrific tragedy what happened on 9-11. 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 then 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, neocon. War of choice. We're back at it in Iran. Last night, anybody who lived these last 25 years, this is another reason why it's important to talk about this. So it's like when Donald Trump started this stupid war of choice in Iran, almost immediately after I had Bob Kagan on, who was one of the neocons you criticized about the Iraq war. And we were on the show and we're discussing and we're 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 Houthis now bombed the Saudi pipeline. They're seizing a 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, etc. With classic Trump, because he says, we don't want to call it a 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 Kristol and others who were very pro-Iraq war have come out against this. But others haven't. Mark Thiessen of The Post has been a big supporter. Lynn of Fox, a big supporter. Dubowitz, the foundation, all those neocon guys who supported do support this. Ben Shapiro, Netanyahu himself, of course, famously pro-Iraq war. And Lindsey Graham, the late Lindsey Graham, who loved all of these wars. They didn't learn any lessons at all from any of this stuff. It's interesting. I interviewed General Wesley Clark this week, who was opposed to the Iraq war, but supports this Iran war. Bizarre. Really? Oh, I missed that. Yeah. Although, interestingly, although interestingly, I then did bring up the fact that he's been 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, Tim. The midterms, they made it very clear. The ones to midterms are out of 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's getting destroyed. And so I do worry post midterms. He thinks I've got nothing to lose here. And I just go all out. He went escalate before the midterms. I think the next two months is going to be bad. Look, 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. They have many options that they haven't exercised. 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 Hezbollah pager operation. And they thought, look, Iran's Venezuela, Iran's weaker than it's ever been. We're stronger than we've ever been. Let's do this now. And 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 had Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the slide as a possible replacement. By the way, can we just stop, Tim, for a second and just talk about this? The same people who tell us that everything is anti-Semitism, that you can't support Abdul El-Sayed and Zoran Mandani because they're anti-Semites, that you have to support Israel against Hamas because of anti-Semitism, pitched Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the next president of Iran. Yeah, it's part of the regime change war. Because they don't care about anti-Semitism if you're on the same side. We'll see. And this is kind of ongoing. It's hard, you know, don't have full visibility into the damage of this pipeline attack in Saudi. But that pipeline is how Saudi is getting oil around the strait right now. And depending on the scale of that damage. Well, there's the other strait, right? There's the block. It's what the Iranians have always threatened. And some of us, again, warned about that a while ago. And these guys. uh i don't know what funny thing is now to really think something you guys at the bulwark and as it's a turn as an independent really just stay on this because you know what's going to happen at some point inshallah this war will end and the straight of hormuz will open and donald trump will say victory and we must not let him get away with saying that opening the straight 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 we might not be aligned on every single issue at zateo and the bulwark but i can commit to you that we will both do our part to call out the fake straight of hormuz goalpost shifting victory to not let him get away with that all right ever notice when you google something uh 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 this happened to me last year when we were at our toronto show showed up canada folks and i wanted to watch lsu ole miss 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 and let you access the internet like it should work open secure and on your terms unlike most vpns proton is backed by a strong european privacy law and years of expertise creating a safer faster and more open internet for everyone it all works seamlessly so you can be confident you're getting an extensive service and you're going to be able to access the internet over network high speed connections integrated ad blockers and compatibility services without restrictions you can do it in over 145 countries so whether you want to watch content from anywhere get around blocked sites or just keep your activity private on public wi-fi proton vpn has you covered it's easy to get started right now proton vpn is offering our listeners 70 off a two-year plan when you go to proton vpn.com slash the bulwark that's p-r-o-t-o-n vpn.com slash the bulwark for 70 off your two-year plan that's proton vpn.com slash the bulwark i want to talk about what's happening domestically this was back to what we're talking about the one of these topics where i'm like why isn't everybody as mad as me about this and you know it's not really necessarily a healthy impulse but i wrote about mariam thomas seve and her family this week and yes i'm glad you did the iranian family her mother-in-law was the spokesperson for the hostage takers in 1979 she wasn't born then her husband wasn't born there her teenage son sure as shit wasn't born then and they've been in an internment camp now for over five months and dilly right well the mom and the son are at dilly that the husband has been in an orange jumpsuit in a prison camp 20 20 minutes away they've had no rule of law nothing like this is that this is on the nose japanese internment camp the only reason they're in there is because they're iranian and because of their bloodline and it's just i i don't i'm baffled by this like i'm baffled that there are not that this isn't a front page new york times story though 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 serves me correctly she wrote a piece from inside of prison and her lawyers are fantastic lawyers i know her lawyers and it's it's a horrific i read that piece and i like you i was furious like anytime i read about ice or 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 immigration numbers borders safety it is just to quote adam sower 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 free speech we are the free speech party joe biden was a tyrant because he said to twitter maybe you should take down some disinformation tweets about vaccines in the middle of a once in a century pandemic meanwhile this off the streets they pulled uh that turkish student ramesa ostok they just grabbed her off the street a little a small woman in a hijab 10 guys have you seen that video one of the creepiest videos you'll ever watch where they just grab her she's just walking on the street and mastermen take her off the street they did this to her at school they did this to the mother and child we just don't have the video so i guess but you can imagine why do it at school drop off and you know 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 they're basically going after anyone they think they don't like they're using this very obscure uh amendment to the 1952 immigration act which allows marco rubio secretary of state to detain and deport and you know strip of visas anyone he says is a threat to the foreign policy objectives of the united states they've used against mahmoud khalil they've used 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 doing some kind of major activism they were literally doing some kind of major activism minding their own business it's bloodline right it's the fact that his mother was the former vice president varan former spokesman for the hostages and it's just insane that you would punish family members i thought family members are off limits we're always told by republicans but this is collective punishment it's a form of 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 were in the republican party you were 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 the elian gonzalez people going in with masked goons that was me i was upset about that now yeah 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 they're not giving them a chance no it's good luck they're not giving them a chance they're not giving them a chance i mean trump last night laura ingram 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 exactly taking over companies i don't know police on the streets yeah ruled by a cultist germany uh it's all it's all there i mean the the guy is ready for a communist state yeah no it's it's amazing and i think to go back to your question it is frustrating i don't want to be sanctimonious or lecturing about this but you know whether it's gaza or whether it's ice whatever it is i wish we had more protests um 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 what do you think it's intimidation i think it's fatigue on the gaza issue i think it's having done it for two years with a democratic president got nowhere what's the point of doing it with a 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 someone who covers Trump. You were someone who covers Trump. I can't keep up with the outrage scandal. What should I be angry about today? 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 Dilley should be on the front page. I agree, but 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 scandals. I would just think that the nightly news would one time once want to cover the internment camp. I hear you. It's just mystifying. The situation 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. 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, you told me that you had interviewed the mother once, Isis' mother, the grandmother. That's wild. I did. Masuma Ebteka, who was vice president of Iran. I interviewed her when she was vice president of Iran. I was at Al Jazeera English. I did lots of interviews with lots of politicians from around the world. And we secured an interview with the vice president of Iran in, I want to say, 2016, 17. And it didn't go so well. And I'm not sure if you've heard of her. I'm not sure. 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, she spoke in English in the interview, but she apparently asked her, A, like, who is this? What is this interview? And I was like, what is a mistake to come and interview me and not prep for the interview beforehand? So that's during the Trump first term though. It's during the Trump first term. Trump was president once. She was vice president. You were interviewing her, asking her hard questions about the proxies that they're supporting, et cetera. And these people, her daughter-in-law, her grandson were living 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're not going to do what he wants to do. 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 Iglesias as well say, oh, you blame everything Republicans do on Democrats. 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 why 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. 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. I 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, you know, the kind of uncommitted movement and Dearborn in particular in Michigan and whether they should vote for Kamala. And you kind of were of the position just summarizing 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 depends how you define that. Remember, she was vice president. 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 an election, right? So in the sense of holding Biden-Harris to account for what was happening in Gaza at that time, I think everyone is legitimate. 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 going to 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 had Pedro on yesterday. People have regrets in his community. Do you feel that? Do you ever hear that from like either left types? 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 there's no way I'd vote for a Democrat because of the genocide. And I'm like, but the genocide is 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 have got a lot of shit since Donald Trump became president. And I had a Yemeni imam on from Michigan, who was one of the people who endorsed Trump on stage in 24. At the time, he was like, yeah, he's the peace candidate. And I've invited him back on several times. You'll be shocked to hear him. He 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. Your audience is probably an audience that's very critical of lefties or Arab Americans who are anti-Harris. I just want to be 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 Gaza was. I'm of the view that Gaza 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. You think cost her the election? As in. I think hurt, obviously. As in, if you tell me what are the issues that cost her. Why did Harris lose? I would put Gaza in the top five reasons of why she lost. Now. I don't know what number one is. We'll never know for sure. 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 or Arizona because of Gaza. She lost multiple swing states. So it slightly annoys me when some centrist Democrats and blue MAGA types would be like, oh, it's all the fault of uncommitted. And most prominent leftists did endorse Harris. Sometimes we talk about left, like, some rando on Twitter is not the left. It really annoys me when we brand the left as like some rando person. The left is Bernie Sanders. The left is AOC. The left now is Zoran Mamdani. The left is Abdul El-Sayed 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 still hate AOC. It's kind of like the 9-11 thing. I think people wanted a little more fervor. AOC was so fervent that people on the left. AOC was great. AOC was great. She gets shit now for saying they were working tirelessly for a ceasefire when they, of course, were not. And she gets shit, but I have to defend AOC from people who hate her because of that one speech she gave at the convention. We all have, you know, our burdens to carry, Matty. You know, I'm dealing with the ex-MAGA types. By the way, the left-back Biden has hunted. You've got to deal with the Jill Stein people. We're going to get to Hunter at the end. We're staying with Hunter at the end. They did not call for him to step aside. Correct. No, that is right. It's something I mentioned quite a bit. September is World Alzheimer's Month, but most people never check 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 and mental stamina leave a data trail in 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're concerned about brain injury or degenerative. generation screening, Alzheimer risk test, Alzheimer 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 slash the bulwark and use code THEBULWARK25 for a $25 credit. Here's something I'm a little bit nervous about, about lefties and the Arab-American crowd. Communism! They're making this scene. That's not it. 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 J.D. Vance. You're on with Sam Minaj, I think, where you said that Tucker has a huge Muslim fan base, even people in your own family. People want to know when you're going to 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. I don't 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 is, they have no idea. They barely know who Tucker Carlson is. The people I'm talking about, they never heard of Tucker Carlson prior to him becoming this pro-Palestine commentator. Now he's in the TikTok feed. Now he's in their feed. It's just all clips of Tucker calling out Ted Cruz, calling out Mike Huckabee. Come on. You're calling out the worst people, right? I cheered Tucker calling out Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz as much as I disliked 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 make one substantive point on this, please. Again, I know I'm speaking to your audience. I just want to—it's not that I'm defending them. I just want to explain what's going through their heads. Through their heads is mainstream media abandoned us. Mainstream media gave Israel a pass. Democrats won't even call for a ceasefire until two years in, still won't call for arms embargo. Hakeem Jeffries still won't. Go after AIPAC. 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 this all, I got it wrong. And Americans love a—love a—love a—love a apology talk. Here's an idea. Maybe those people should just like Chris Van Hollen. He's not as good at monologues. Tim, that's exactly what I say. You know what I say at events when Muslims bring up Tucker and Candace and MTG and say, these people are—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 are because TikTok doesn't give it to you because they're not as sexy as Tucker Carlson and Candace. You know, Delia Ramirez, who sponsored the Block the Bombs Act, congresswoman from Illinois. People don't know her name. She's a fantastic Latina congresswoman who is pushing for justice both on 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. But 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 Bubba the Love Sponge a little while ago. Iraq is a crappy place filled with a bunch of, you know, semi-literate primitive monkeys. I just have zero sympathy for them or their culture, a culture where people just 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 going to play games. Yeah, but then secondly, I mean, they can just shut the fuck up and obey is my view. Really heavily into Islam, I really – 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 tell me what the fuck you want. That's Tucker Carlson. So what people will say now, Tim, I've done – everything you're saying, I've had these conversations. They will say, but now he's a politician. I apologize 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 other 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 – It's Jews. He's a bigot. He was an anti-Muslim bigot then, and now he's an anti-Semite. I was at MSNBC when he was at Fox. He might come right back for you. He might come right back around. I did multiple segments on Tucker Carlson's racism and bigotry when I was at MSNBC and he was at Fox. He said immigrants make this country dirtier, which J.D. Vance said at the convention last night. He said horrific things. By the way, I wouldn't even go back to Bubba stuff because he could say those are old views. We've all had old views that we disown. What about what he's saying right now? Even now in his new phase, he says stuff like great replacement. He goes to the U.K. and says, oh, I don't recognize the U.K. 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 U.K. So even now he's saying reactionary things. Even now, Candace Owens I don't think is anti-ICE or Nick Fuentes. 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-Semite Holocaust denier 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 a left-wing thing, Tim. This is a centrist thing. You're seeing it in Michigan. Literally, right now in Michigan, there are Jewish Democrats saying, I'm going to vote for Mike Rogers because I don't like Abdul El-Sayed. If you don't like Abdul El-Sayed, stay home. But vote for Mike Rogers? That's insane. You're voting for a white supremacist party. So a lot of people do this. Jews, Muslims, leftists, 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, okay? Like that's what the fucking bulwark's about. My point is that like 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. More than the bigotry is the trust. My main issue is, I don't know if I trust these people. MTG has switched. She's saying stuff that I like the sound of now. But like, 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 sides of the spectrum can swap views like this, change them out, and people shouldn't fall for it. And I said it 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, three years, or even two weeks ago, I know this stuff. So I need to see more evidence of any kind of substantive change. 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 that, I'm against the Republicans. He goes on Bloomberg with my friend, Michelle Hussain. 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 at CrookedCon. And I was just like, and he agrees with this. I was like, this is your job. Like, again, like I said earlier, we all have jobs in this world. And it's like, as a prominent influencer on the left, to talk to people and make people understand who the real Candace and Tucker are and, you know, have as much energy for hating them as for, you know, I don't know, whoever, Richie Torres or whatever, who you have substantive disagreements on. So for a lot of people, it's like, I don't know. It's not a bigot and a liar. What a lot, but you know, and there's other people like Cenk 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 Bassem Yusuf, who is a comedian, you know, I do stuff with him at Zateo. He went on Candace Show. I said, why'd you do this? Why? And he said, his argument, I'm not saying I agree with it, 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's on fire. She's bringing you a bucket of piss though. That's what she's bringing you. She's bringing you a bucket of piss. I wish I'd had that comeback. But the point is, their argument is, and I understand it. No, I'm not saying 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 is 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. They also care about what's happening at Dilley Detention Center. And if you also care about what's happening at Dilley Detention Center, then of course you can't ally with MTG or Tucker or Candace because they support what's happening at Dilley Detention Center. And here's the most important thing going back to JD, because let's talk about him. Because that is Tucker's project is to support JD. And I do feel like we're just sleepwalking into the same thing that we ran into in 2024. And JD Vance is anti-war. Yeah, he's trying to do this thing now. It's the same shit Trump did. You're the vice president. This is the signature foreign policy initiative. Initiative of this administration. And so JD leaks to the New York Times yesterday. That's obviously him. About how he's had to- And they ran it uncritically with no caveat. They said, JD Vance, comma, who has been opposed to this war from the outset. He has? Since when? He's never said it. He's leaked to the New York Times that he's against it. And then last night in 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 big Iraq war supporter. And so we don't know what Charlie would think. He was a war supporter, by the way. 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 straw 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, though, J.D. Vance has a big problem in making that case, which is why he needs Tucker Carlson, because J.D. Vance has the charisma of a piece of wood. J.D. Vance is not a communicator. He's deeply unlikable. 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 a gun to my head. I don't think he will be the 2028 Republican. I think he will be, so we can fight that out. 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 who runs in 2028 has to find some way to disown Trump, and Trump won't allow anyone to do that. Well, this is how he's going to do it. He's going to be like, I was against it. Look at the New York Times. Unless Trump's dead, he can't do it, right? Unless Trump has died at that point. That's his biggest risk. People keep forgetting. 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 reporter piece about this, which is, okay, it's Rubio, it's Vance. 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 J.D.'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 bad side. 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 his 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 Fuentes type. Not that I want that, but strategically, if I'm looking 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 J.D.'s going to try to do that subtly. That's tough to do. Here he is last night. I just want 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 J.D. last night, talking, 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 write Hillbilly Elegy, right? When he was writing about that community, was there a lot of immigrants there? I'm pretty sure the whole point of Hillbilly Elegy 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 immigrants. Like, how do they watch that and not go take a shower that their son-in-law just threw them and their entire community under the bus and their 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 H-1B 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. Like, the fake racist, I hate you. Any time I hate, I prefer the true believers on the right. I'm sorry. He interviewed with me in 2016. Before I interviewed Masama Ebteka, I interviewed J.D. Vance in 2016 for Al Jazeera, and he was a never-Trumper. And he said, Mehdi, 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, the 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 want you to 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. Mamdani and Tallarico and Abdul. A mosque was attacked in San Diego in May of this year by two neo-Nazis who killed three Muslim women. Bishop has 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 dirtier. 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. And that ties back to our conversation about how Tucker is still using as a stalking horse. They're obviously talking. That's a Tucker line. It's a Tucker line. That he's using right there. J.D. 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 it. I, as a brown-skinned immigrant to the United States, every time I hear J.D. Vance being racist, I'm going to remind him that his kids are brown, his wife is brown, and his parent-in-laws are immigrants. Yes, I'm fucking going to remind you of 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. With, okay, yeah. And you mentioned Matt Iglesias. Both of us sometimes get a little hot on the Twitter. So I want to kind of separate out. There was some name-calling Noah said some gross things. And, like, that's just not worth getting into the podcast. He said 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-esque from a centrist pundit. Yeah, a bad thing to say. The broader conversation, though, and it's something that Noah says that Matt says a lot, I think it's something worth exploring. Because we're now at minute 47 on 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 it with Jasper Nathaniel, who I just really respect the work he's doing in the West Bank. And we've talked about that. But 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, he was 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. They think about America's daily life and public policy and political movements. And worldview should revolve around things that are happening in the Middle East. No. Screw the Middle East. So, again, an inartful 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. Maybe the big lesson on the 25th anniversary of 9-11 is 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, like, 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. Not to pick a side, but just to say, kind of like, well, Homer into the bushes. Maybe this shouldn't be as much. So, a couple of things. First of all, I don't accept it's all religious, but that's a conversation for another day. The problem with the Matt Iglesias, 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, oh, I wish we could do Homer into the bushes. No, no, no. We have a 50, 60-year legacy of foreign policy in that part of the world. We've started multiple wars. When better than now to start Homering into the bushes, though? I hear that. Okay, let's say that's a fair point. Like, hey, they fucked it up the last 25 years, but why not start today? Okay, what does it look like? Does it mean ending USAID to Israel? Because I haven't heard Iglesias or Noah Smith call for that. Yes. Does it mean ending arms trade? And 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 of the Middle East. By the way, I'm of 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, et cetera, 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 think bin Laden probably would have 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 it's, you know, this was, there's this idea that the United States Middle East policy- I mean, there was, obviously, Al-Qaeda attacks in various places in Europe that didn't have bases. 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 of Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas will still hate us. Okay, 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 to hate you. 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? You think any leftist wants us 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, like, halve the size of the Pentagon. I mean, I was watching some left, and Ro Khanna was on a left, I think it was majority report, where he was getting screamed at because he doesn't want to arm the Palestinians. So, I mean, I do think there are some left. It wasn't majority, it was dropside. It was dropside. Yeah, okay, sorry. It was dropside, but that was more a debate about the double standards when it comes to our right to self-defense. And I'm glad you brought that up. So if you're going to stay out of it, what does that, 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? October 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 Iglesias and Noah Smith stand on that? I would have said, stay out of it. If you're really anti-interventionist, just stay out of it, right? Why are we arming? 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 less. And this was a Bibi 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 are 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 or more? They needed reloading. That's why we bypassed Congress twice. But look, it's an important issue. So your problem is with Iglesias' 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. Do they support that? There's a notion that, like, gosh, American politics, pluralistic society, we have a lot, there's a lot of issues in the world. Like, there are activist groups, both pro-Israel and anti, that are, like, really making this too big of an issue. But it's not both sides, though, is it? Let's go, can we take Michigan as an example, Tim? Sure. In Michigan, AIPAC spent $30 million. Insane. I criticize that a lot. It's totally insane. There's no equivalent on the other side. There's just not. There's just zero comparison. So if you want to say, why did the Michigan race become about Israel, where Haley Stevens, taking money from a massive pro-Israel group to fund Hecate, campaign dark money from Republicans, by the way, who fund AIPAC, that makes it an issue. If you don't put lots of AIPAC money into a race, maybe we won't talk about AIPAC. I mean, you said earlier that Gaza's your number one issue. I think that there are a lot of activists and a lot of left-wing folks that that is the main issue. That's the animating issue. People are allowed to do that. That's allowed. That's okay. But Tim, can I just be clear when I said that? Because people are going to clip it out of context. You're talking about money. People are going to clip it out of context. When I say Gaza's number one issue, I mean the genocide that's been happening now. I don't mean the Middle East is my number one issue. When I go to vote, I don't go to vote based on what's happening in Egypt or whatever it is. I just want to be clear about that. I'm talking about specifically the last two and a half years, 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 at 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, apartheid 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- I'm for that. Yeah, I'm talking about the politics. American politics, the money. We're in a democratic primary where it's like we have pro-Israel groups. Take the money. Here's my test. I'll put my hand up. 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 American politics, 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 the mayor of New York. 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. 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 now. We're bombing Iran. I think that might be where things are going. 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 project out a lot of still bitching. 100%. Can I give you one example from the UK right now? Ed Miliband, who is the foreign secretary of the UK. I wrote a book about him many years ago. He was the 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 UK. A lot of pro-Israel groups losing their minds, even though public support it. A lot of people on the left are like, well, it doesn't go far enough. I know, yeah, it doesn't go far. But take the win. Israel's pissed off. The supporters of Israel are pissed off. The British government has never done anything like this before. So yes, I say to my fellow listeners, 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 of days, but I'm used to long. 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. 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 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 of the shit coin what'd you make of your convo he won't he won't come on here he doesn't he's mad at me but what would you i think i think he or his family may be mad at me now um he he did a great interview i thought he took my questions he answered them on gaza he was very honest and raw um but you know 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 a community like if you're going to slag off the trump family for all this 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 up with laptop as your coin after doing this media tour it's just 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 changing 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 him 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 i'll just say i'm not buying a timeshare from you hunter biden i'm not buying anything from hunter biden i can be true on that 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 i'm gonna say last thing sorry to be boring lastly before i go it what i say and others say who are smart about this i think is it's bad it's bad that trucker carlson is getting popular in some parts of the left and some parts of muslim world 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 uh 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 well it's fine to take apac 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 through our whole conversation and i appreciate that you wanted to end with that because it's kind of i kind of feel like i what was the thing you said the early internet where they created a list of the muslims that condemned 9-11 i kind of want to create a list of all the democrats that have done the right thing yes and it's just like and people are still mad because it's like they're not giving them the energy that we want and i just and so it's like and that's a human nature but you know so maybe more energy on it anyway let's end in agreement i appreciate you very much brother thank you for coming on thank you a fun day to do it and uh everybody else uh you can say that i can't say that it's not a fun day for our country that is an imbalance and it is a sad day for our country everybody we'll be back monday with bill crystal ironically see you all then find me a friend someone to walk with two too many boys too small a town feels like i'm always wandering the grounds you call me up i let it ring heartbreaking me only one thing got me again it's the end of the world so done with this i miss drinking beer missing the songs for you too slow to hate summer came late fires on the west side i'm rolling the waves let's misbehave catch it before it's almost gone try to pretend it's the end of the world so kiss me to death then the bulwark daily is brought to you thanks for the work of lead producer katie cooper associate producer ansley skipper and with video editing by dante de chico and audio engineering and editing by jason brown