Republicans Suddenly Have Plans Next Week

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This is Matt Rogers from Lost Culture East.

That's with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

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Welcome to Pots day of America.

I'm John Faeffer.

I'm Dan Faeffer.

Okay, Dan, we got a big show today.

Trump's running midterm ads about himself and hoarding his super PAC money.

Republicans are finding excuses to skip next week's Trump a pollusa midterm convention.

President's face is now on a $1 coin.

The gerontocracy prevailed in Massachusetts this week.

Kamala Harris is shrugging off some Democrats rejecting her endorsement.

And Republicans have a new pro data center vote to explain.

Then you'll hear Tommy's conversation with Jasper Nathaniel, an independent journalist

who's been reporting on the ground in the West Bank.

All right, Dan, with 60 days until the midterms, Donald Trump and Democrats completely

agree on what the election should be about, Donald Trump.

Republican candidates and campaigns aren't exactly thrilled with the president constantly

telling voters to pretend he's on the ballot on account of his 38% approval rating.

But there isn't much they can do about it.

On Wednesday night, Trump summoned some of the most vulnerable Republicans in Congress

to the White House so that he could helpfully say each of their names on camera and deliver

the welcome news that he will be hitting the road for 35 Republican candidates in the

last 30 days of the election.

Trump's super PAC also dipped into its $400 million war chest to shell out just under a million

dollars kind of poultry.

For its first midterm ad featuring who else, Donald Trump.

Let's take a look.

He is the toughest, most resilient person that I've ever met and nothing was going to

stop him from fighting so hard for the country he loves.

When the world needs courage, vision and inspiration, it is still turning to America.

There is no challenge Americans can not overcome.

No frontier too vast for us to conquer and our top priority will be to create a nation

that is proud, prosperous and free.

What the fuck was that?

Oh man, it's so good.

I know you do a little show called Political Experts React, but ads, campaign ads.

That has to be one of the most useless ads I've ever seen.

Yes, let me use the industry term.

It sucks.

It's like, let's put aside the obvious strategic blender of putting in the ad, the very

unpopular incumbent president who is mired in a very dumb war right now.

Let's just put that aside.

This ad and then there's another ad that has a similar tone, but actually mentioned some

policies.

Those are the two ads they put up.

I mean, at least that's something.

But here's the thing.

Both those ads, they're just so tonally off.

They are victory laps at a time in which no one thinks America is winning.

You have jaredes of America, countries of the wrong track.

You have in some polls seven and 10 voters were at the economy negatively.

Here you have this doofus doing this victory lap about all the great things he's done

to help America and no one buys it.

My takeaway from this is that this anyone who has spent one minute in a focus group looked

at a poll this cycle or even just like how to conversation with the actual person out

in the world would never make an app like this.

This was an ad made for one swing voter and that swing voter was Donald J. Trump so we

can feel better about itself.

That's what this was.

I understand that.

I even think if you were trying to make Donald Trump feel better about himself, you wouldn't

create an ad like that.

You'd like create an ad about how he was great and did a bunch of things and a couple like

there's not even accomplishments in that ad.

It's just like courage, vision, courage, America, America.

It also is just and it takes for it's so lazy because it's takes from the state of

the union which he delivered as if he was on Xanax.

There's a new Washington Post story that despite assurances from Trump's political advisors

quote, Republicans are increasingly skeptical and suspicious that Trump's actually going

to spend his $400 million war chest on the midterms.

They have concluded that it's already too late some Republicans on campaigns and that

Trump is holding on to the money for his own purposes.

I guess my initial reaction after reading that story and watching that ad is, do they

really want more ads like that?

Is that what they're hoping he'll spend the money on?

I have imagined that's not what they're hoping for.

I'm not even sure what his own purposes are.

I mean, I guess he could steal the money and no one would prosecute him.

They've listed passing on the money to his chosen successor in 28.

Post presidential travel pet projects at like his library, which is estimated to cost around

a billion dollars.

It's going to be a skyscraper in Miami.

I'm not even sure the legality of transferring any money.

You can't give any of this money to another federal candidate so he couldn't give it to

JD Vance or Marco Rubio or Pete Hicks out there take Cruz wherever the Republican nominee

is.

I can't give any of it to anyone on the ballot now.

He can't give it to the RNC or the NRC.

I'm not even sure he can legally give it to his library.

I mean, he could steal it.

He could run ads in supportive JD Vance or whoever else in 2028.

But even if he, whatever reason he's not spending money, which I'm sure is a stupid reason,

or criminal or criminal.

He's already wasted the huge advantage.

When you have a huge money advantage, you deploy it early when your opponents don't have

money because money invested in infrastructure or technology, organizing staff in 10 months

before the election is worth 10 times the money invested one month before the election.

And so and because he's waited so long, he's already going to pay through the nose for

any ads he does buy because ad time has been bought up and they are just truly these

local TV stations.

They are, it's the last days at disco for them and they are gouging every super PAC as

much as possible.

So like he is, he's already wasted his advantage in a huge way.

How much does this matter?

Because I assume that even if he doesn't spend another dime, Republicans still have a pretty

significant cash advantage over Democrats, not just because of the RNC DNC debacle, more

of a DNC debacle than we talked about, but also I think the Senate and House committees

on the Republican side have more than the Democrats as well.

And the Republican super PACs, other than the Trump super PAC, have more money than

the Democratic super PACs.

And so I was actually Elon Musk has already starting to spend as well from his super PAC.

I was looking at the competitive, which is the amount of money being spent in each state

for starting next week.

And it gets alarming very fast.

The disparity between what Republicans are spending on TV and Democrats are spending

is large.

Now, the one hopeful caveat I would give you is dollars a dollar is a bad way of measuring

this because a super PAC, a dollar, you need $3 a super PAC money to essentially get one

dollar of campaign money because by law, let's say it's James Telereco versus the Elon

Musk super PAC.

Telereco can buy you that.

I'm making these numbers up for, let's say if he costs Telereco $10 a net, it will

cost the Republicans $30 a net because by law, the TV stations have to offer the candidates,

the lowest available rate and they can gouges super PACs.

But the Republican money is flowing.

And so this would just be on top of that.

It does, you know, the place where I think it's going to matter most is Texas.

There are a lot of Republicans who do not want to give money to Ken Pax and he's a terrible

fundraiser.

The institutional Senate Republican donors hate Ken Pax and get to say, like John Cornyn,

I spent a gazillion dollars to try to save John Cornyn and James Telereco has raised

truly ungodly sums of money.

And so if Trump does not come in to help Pax and it's not really clear where that money

is going to come from.

I also imagine that in addition to spending on TV, they'll probably want to spend on digital

ads all over the place too and there's no limit there.

I mean, like there's no lower rate for candidates there is there.

That's just a big thing.

No, everyone can gouges everyone.

That's what I figured.

So either way, it seems more like an internal fight between Trump and his advisors and

Republican candidates, but at the end of the day, it's not like we should be celebrating

the fact that Trump may not spend his $400 million.

I think it'd be best if he did not for us.

Best if he did not spend it.

Did not.

Yeah, like we are really hanging on by a threat here to try to stay competitive in all

these places.

And we're going to see, particularly in some of the harder states for us where they're

hoping it's spending advantage is going to start to hurt.

And so if you could take a half a bill, nearly a half billion dollars and keep them in

sidelines, I would endorse that decision.

Are there diminishing returns at some point?

Oh, for sure.

For sure.

But it's just these races are so close.

Performance have so much money that it would be like we don't we're limited in our ability

to expand the map because of our money troubles.

It's not even it's not even money troubles.

The Democrats, the Senate and House Democrats have done a very good job of raising money,

but they're probably just raised a lot more.

And so it's just, let's try to, if Trump does not want to spend $400 million and that's

not spent, that does reduce their money managed by $400 million.

And that's, that's good.

I guess everyone else listening, you can go to vote saveramerica.com.

We have plenty of great candidates and very, very competitive races, some of the most competitive

races in the House and the Senate and down ballot, who you can donate to.

So every dollar counts at this point.

It's to to hammer home for people how truly excited Republicans are about Trump's plan

to make the midterms about Trump.

Our friends at Politico surveyed more than 70 Republican candidates and members of Congress

about whether they plan to attend Trump's midterm convention in Dallas next week, which

of course the RNC chair is calling Trump a pollusa.

Good branding.

Let's just say there are a surprisingly coincidental number of scheduling conflicts.

45 of these Republicans said they're not going.

Dozens more declined to share their plans.

Not a lot of people touting their plans to attend.

CNN tried to pin down a few Republicans in the halls of Congress this week to see if they

were going to go.

Let's see how it went.

How you plan to go to the Republican convention next week?

I'm planning to be in my district.

Are you going to the Republican convention next week?

Are you thinking about it?

Are you going to the Republican convention next week?

I have to be in the district because I have events.

I would love to go.

I was thinking about it.

I'm going to miss out on something important, but I cannot be in two places at the same

time.

Nope, you cannot.

But you get to pick which of those two places you're in and you chose not the convention.

Someone interviewed Max Miller, asked him about it and he said, no, I want to be spending

the time with my family.

Okay.

That's tough one.

So Dan, what if the president throws a party for his party and no one comes?

Hmm.

That would be like most birthday parties that Trump had from age five to 14.

I think they have like 2,000 people attending so far.

I saw somewhere and I think they interviewed Timbershot about it or Republican member of

Congress and he said, oh, I don't know.

They sent me a $25,000 bill to go.

So I don't know if I want to go either.

Yeah, that's an important point there.

Is it not just that you were invited to go?

You were invited to go and then pay to go.

And it's 10 to $25,000 most people and then up to $100,000 for some folks.

I see this convention as primarily an opportunity for Democrats.

To because now I imagine they're going to spend if they're halfway smart, which I don't

suggest that they are Republicans, they will at least spend the convention like driving

up Democrats and negatives are trying to and trying to unload the Oppo file on all the

different Democrats running for in the midterms.

So I imagine that's probably what they'll do.

But I feel like for Democrats just having Trump up there speaking and also connecting all

the Republicans who are attending who are in competitive races to Trump will be a boon

to Democrats like Mike Rogers is going.

Apparently, which is why John Heustead who's running again shared Brown and Ohio is going.

Mike Lollars, I think it's going.

Yeah, Mike Lollars going.

I think Susan Collins, wisely to Jay Martz said that she is not going.

But yeah, I'm surprised that Rogers and Heustead are going.

Yeah, it's all very strange.

Like in the end of the day, I think it's a gigantic waste of time at a cheat money.

Like what?

And making us stay up Thursday night because you and I are recording the pod after the

that's true.

Yes, we are the true losers are us.

But it's like what non-political person is going to consume any of this content?

Like what swing voter is going to see it?

It's not going to be covered live on television like an actual convention.

It's not going to get the media attention of an actual convention.

It's not going to have the pomp and circumstance of an actual convention.

And it kind of is like an unlearning of all the lessons that work for Republicans in

2024.

Like when they succeeded was when they were communicating in non-political spaces.

So they decided to have a giant political party that looks like the most political thing

possible to do their main messaging.

Yeah, as one Republican strategist said, the coverage is going to be all about whatever

the crazy shit the president decides to say.

Yeah.

Which is about right.

Now if you're a Republican candidate who can't make the convention or get the president

to campaign with you, fear not.

He's going to do everything he can to make sure voters are thinking about him when they

go to the polls.

For example, the US Mint began selling $1 Trump coins this week.

Trump's face on a coin, legal tender.

You can buy 25 coin rolls for the low price of just $61.

Just a question.

That's $25.1 coins for $61.

Just in case you don't have a calculator on hand, that works out to about $2.44 per

$1.00 coin.

Why would someone do that, John?

Well, Dan, apparently quite a few people have done it because 150,000 were printed or

made by the Mint or whatever the fuck you say.

I think they're minted.

I think they mint them.

Oh, there is a verb for it.

There you go.

Yes, it's minted.

They're minted.

Go ahead.

Make fun of me for that.

I went on the website of the Mint website just to see if I could buy a twig.

Act now.

Well, supplies last.

They're all sold out.

Wow.

They're already sold out.

We're sure that money goes to the treasury, right?

No, no, I'm sure he pockets it.

I'm sure that they were purchased by, I don't know, Maga Inc.

The Trump family.

Yes.

Maybe he thinks that Trump family, I think it's more likely to be someone with a case

before the Department of Justice.

Oh, yes, that's right.

It's legal tender, meaning that you can use it as real money.

It's a dollar.

It's a dollar coin.

Legal tender doesn't guarantee every store will accept Trump coins.

Federal law generally lets private businesses decide what forms of payment they'll accept.

So you can refuse a Trump coin if someone tries to pay you in a Trump coin.

There's good information for people to have.

Interesting.

I think it is funny that it's going to now cost you four Trump coins to put a gallon

of gas in your car.

We shouldn't measure all the costs of the war in Trump coins.

Speaking of the war, you can take those coins with you on your next trip through the Trump

Strait, which is what the president has suggested renaming the Strait of Formus, just to make

sure people forever associate a geopolitical disaster that's led to a global energy crisis

with the man responsible, Donald J. Trump.

How many Trump coins will it take to make sure that happens, you think, that he renames

that because I would pay all my Trump coins to make sure that the Strait of Formus

is renamed the Trump Strait.

It's like renaming the Baghdad airport, the George W. Bush International Airport in

Baghdad.

Just a little big horn is Custer Hill.

Just so everyone can always associate Donald Trump with the Strait of Formus.

It's just what?

What was it?

I don't even understand how he got to that point in his thinking.

And then, well, it is interesting because some of these other things he floated, a gulf

of America, Lake America, no of.

Obviously they happened.

This one he was asked about in the oval today or yesterday.

I can't remember any of the days.

Wednesday, who knows?

And they asked him if he was serious and he was like, no, no, I was just thrown it out

there.

I was just thrown it out there.

Did you mean he probably realized, is that what I wanted?

Do I want to put my name on the Strait of Formus where they're shooting down, shooting

it at oil tankers still six months into this war that I had promised would end in a

couple weeks?

Yeah, not his best idea, John.

Did you see the Wall Street Journal story about how Trump is contemplating just declaring

the Iran war over?

The thing that's so funny about this is he's done it so many times already.

Yes.

Is that line is buried in a story that's entirely the rest of the story.

Where the word in that story is about how they're extending the deployments for troops

into 2027.

I remember seeing that headline thinking that was quite stupid.

Then going back when I went to go back to the store, I was like, this can't be the

same story because this entire story is about the war continuing and how much longer the

troops are going to be there.

But like I don't even like what he would declare it's over.

He did do the mission accomplished truth last week.

He did.

I thought it was over.

He did.

So Alex Ward with the story at Wall Street Journal, a great reporter.

There's been some other reporting around this too.

I believe what they're thinking is they want to have a whole bunch of troops there deployed

maybe into 2027.

But at the same time, they want everyone ahead of the midterms to think that the war is

over, really beyond the midterms.

So who knows?

I could see Trump planning some more formal announcement where he says the war is over.

Maybe he'll do it at Trump Apollosa at the convention or maybe he'll do it in October

when it's closer to election day.

And then they want to have the troops there for afterwards so they can resume the bombing

if they need to resume the bombing and the military strikes and all the rest after the

midterms are over.

So maybe that's it.

Well, let's just play this out for a second.

So let's say it happens that Trump Apollosa, next Thursday night at United United

United, sitting by our computer is waiting to podcast.

Trump makes this big announcement to Claire's the war over.

Says the end of major combat operations in the Trump, the straight of Trump.

And then immediately after that, Iran shoots a missile at something.

And then we respond.

Yep.

Then what happens?

Well, we're just, that's just that doesn't count.

That's not part of the old war.

That's part of a new thing that they're just, we're just mowing the grass.

And in this modern media environment, people know the war is going on.

Not be picking up the newspaper off their front soup, but by going to the gas station.

They're not going to stop going to the gas station.

No, they're not.

And there's been a lot of their Trump coins, but the gas.

Unlike a lot of other Trump ideas, this one seems not particularly well thought out.

No.

I mean, if you dig into all this, there seems to be, and we talked about this a little

on Tuesday's pod, but like, there seems to be a thought that because we have successfully

navigated either around the straight of Hormuz or helped ships through the straight of

Hormuz, so we're getting more oil out than we did before.

That perhaps we could all live with, you know, or maybe that the ultimate goal is like

60 to 70% of pre-war levels of oil get out of the straight of Hormuz.

And maybe if we can get that, then every time Iran fires off a missile and we fire back,

then it'll sort of just fade into the background eventually and people won't really pay much

attention to it.

And now again, that's still 50,000 US troops in the Middle East.

So at some point, they'll probably want to come home to their families and their families

will be wondering where they are.

So I don't know how they're going to get around that either.

I think for the problem for Trump here, or is twofold, one is as long as gas prices remain

elevated over not where they are right now, but where they were before this whole thing

started.

That's the main political problem for Trump, the main pressure point.

But the other thing here is the political problem is not the failure to end the war.

It's the decision to start the war.

What was the fundamental breaking of faith with what so many people, even people who did

not really like Trump, thought he stood for, which was no foreign wars, no forever wars.

And so once he did that, and it was a giant mess, and it continued on, and gas prices went

off, and people suffered, and people died.

I don't think any of that goes away because we get to a very sort of quiet behind the

scenes is really get attention, you know, missile exchange, I mean, pure act missile exchange

with Iran.

Let's see a navigator head in New Pole today that found 20% of Trump 2024 voters regret

voting for him.

And the number one reason cited is Iran.

Forty-five percent cite the war with Iran in Trump's foreign policy, and then close

behind it, 43 percent cite prices in the cost of living, which is because of the war,

mostly the other part is because of Trump's tariffs, the other war, the trade war.

So.

And when you do this in focus groups, the words you hear of broken promises, like that's

the thing, and both of those fall under the broken promises category.

Yep.

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All right, let's talk about the Democrats who just wrapped up their final competitive primary

of a very, very long 2026.

On Tuesday, my home state went to the polls and overwhelmingly chose Ed Markey to be the

Democratic Senate nominee from Massachusetts.

The incumbent Senator easily fended off a challenge from Congressman Seth Moulton, who

attempted to make the race a referendum on generational change in the Democratic Party.

Moulton is 47.

Markey is 80.

But with the backing of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, he made the race about his

progressive Bonafides, telling Politico, quote, it's not about your age.

It's about the age of your ideas.

Isn't that a long time act statement, acts quote?

I feel like I've heard that so many times.

All these things get recycled.

Did he do that because Obama was so young?

We had all we were young, but we had no ideas.

Acts used to say, acts used to suggest that Biden used that line.

Oh, that's right.

That's right.

It's not about your age.

It's about the age of your ideas.

And I am the youngest guy in this race when it comes to ideas.

What do you think of this victory for the Jaron Tockers?

I think it exposed the limits of generational change campaigns, which is Moulton's campaign

really just was Markey's old, I'm young, without ever being able to explain what was

lost for Massachusetts voters by Markey's age and what would have been gained by Moulton's

younger age.

And usually the case is the younger canism when more in touch with young voters.

But from a policy perspective, Markey was much more in touch with what young voters

actually wanted on healthcare, on climate, on Israel, being the sponsor of the Green New

Deal.

And if you're the young candidate running on a community generational change, you can't

win young voters, you're not going to win.

In fact, you'll probably lose my 30 points as Moulton did.

The other backdrop to this, there are a couple of the backdrops to this.

One is, Markey is eight, even not every 80 year old is the same.

And he seems very, like you watch him in the debates, he's very, he's, he's very with

it in energetic and, and you know, and he didn't have a moment like Biden did at the debate

or John Larson, the candidate from Connecticut had when he sort of froze on the House floor that

sort of haunted him.

And so he seemed, you know, like you look at him and you're like, that guy can do the job.

But what also was different here than it was, perhaps in Maine, both for Biden in 2024

and in Maine for Janet Mills is, this is a safe seat.

It's Massachusetts.

So there's, there wasn't this question of electability.

Like, can he hack it in a, in a really tough campaign?

Right?

It's like he wins his primary, he wins.

If something happens, the Democratic governor points them.

Like it's not, there just wasn't this question of ability to actually defeat Republicans.

And so he won the one, so easily, he actually even won Molten's congressional district by about

eight points, I think.

Yeah, I think Molten only won his, like, hometown and something surrounding towns.

Yeah, Molten was, and it was my congressman when I, or at least my hometown's congressman,

who will now be represented by Dan Coe, former Biden advisor who was in.

So there was a couple other House primaries.

That was one of them where I think it's the result showed that like, these things are

complicated and they don't always fit unarrative, right?

So in the sixth, which is what Molten used to represent, Dan Coe beat the more progressive

challenger there.

Now it was an open seat.

They're both fairly young.

So there's that.

Stephen Lynch, 71 year old congressman from sort of Southern Massachusetts.

He faced a primary challenge from our old White House intern, Patrick Roof.

He was one of the first class of interns in the Obama White House, 2009.

Press speech running office.

No press.

Oh, your office.

Dan.

My office.

He was great.

I guess it's a normal little bit.

Yeah, no, it's great.

But he, so 71, Patrick's 39, Medicare for all.

What?

Hitler's are 39.

I know, right?

Hitler's on Lake and Riley Act.

So you had a younger, more progressive challenger with an older, more conservative incumbent.

And he came, you know, he got first time, first time candidate came within like 10 points

closer than Lynch has ever had in a primary challenge since he had that seat.

But, you know, that that speaks to even the progressive versus more moderate thing.

It doesn't always fit with the narrative too.

And I only point that out because I think we're always like trying to fit all of these

races into, okay, is it old versus young, but this one was progressive versus moderate.

And those are the only two things that matter.

And sometimes it's like personalities matter where you are matter how many people know you,

how many people are paying attention to the race, like all kinds of factors going to

this.

At this point in that, after when somebody people knocked out that candidates are not caught

off guard anymore, like Diane did treat it like any of every other election where she

had faced a challenge and before she knew it, she was in huge trouble.

This is a case where these candidates knew to be care, knew to be part because it was

going on with Markey, but they knew to be in the district, be campaigning, be raising money,

be doing stuff and give them a better chance to offend it off.

Yeah.

All right.

So, in another sign of where the party may or may not be headed, political ran a story

about Democrats in competitive races rejecting the support of their party's last presidential

nominee, Kamala Harris.

On top of Josh Turrick, Rob Sand and Mary Peltola, who we talked about the other week, playbook

got similar answers about Kamala from the Democratic Senate nominee in Kansas, Adam Hamilton,

as well as Rebecca Cook, who's running in a very flippable Wisconsin congressional district

and has received the endorsement of Bernie Sanders and campaigns with him.

Harris acknowledged this sentiment for the first time today, saying in a phone interview

with Peter Alexander of MSNOW that she supports these candidates, quote, doing whatever they

need to do to win.

Harris will be on the trail next week, campaigning for Aaron Ford in Nevada, who Tommy just talked

to this week, and she's recently endorsed and races in New Hampshire, California and Tennessee.

What do you make of Harris's approach here and sort of just this general story, which sort

of was a, you know, now has been sort of churning for a couple of weeks?

I think this is sort of a bullshit test for Harris.

Like it's an unfair question.

Like name the national Democrat, other than possibly Barack Obama, who would be invited

to campaign in Kansas, Iowa, Alaska, like a true national figure.

Well, I mean, would you be invited?

Would Gavin Newsom be invited?

No, but can I ask you a question?

Yeah.

So I agree with that.

And I agree that it's a bullshit test for Kamala Harris alone to pass.

And all those other people who are running should be asked the same question, right, or

potentially running 2028.

Don't you think we need a nominee in 2028, who will be welcomed in a lot more difficult

spaces and a lot more difficult.

Well, this is the real test to me is not Kansas, Iowa, Alaska.

The real test is Georgia, congressional districts like Bob Brooks and Pennsylvania, Kate Connellese,

race against Michael Ollock.

Are you invited to campaign in purple states?

States that you lost by a couple hundred thousand votes at most, Las Vegas, are you invited

to campaign for a duel in Michigan?

That's in me as the fair test.

Well, I bring it up because I was thinking about you mentioned Obama, Obama now, whatever.

Yeah, of course, people want him.

Think about O6, right?

Yeah, and he can't pay that much.

He's the only one.

And you know who they didn't want in many places.

Clinton.

John Kerry.

And Hillary Clinton.

Well, I was saying, you know, O6, John Kerry had just been the nominee, right?

And lost and people didn't want John Kerry anywhere.

But Barack Obama, the black guy named Barack Rossino Obama from Chicago, was invited everywhere.

And you would hope.

And again, it's, this is tough, right?

Because maybe if John Ossoff wins Georgia, you'd say, oh, well, most candidates in purple

and light red states would want Ossoff there.

But like, there's no other midterm between now and in 2028.

So some of the candidates that might be welcomed in those areas and could be great presidential

candidates, James Tallerico, like they're currently running in races right now.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's like you think about the people who are, some of the people who were thinking of

running are not well known enough to be truly polarized.

I'm like, I imagine Mark Kelly, we invited a lot of places.

He's, he's an astronaut, you know, he, but he's not a national political figure in a way.

I'd be curious about Peaboodogedge, you know, that's a good one.

He's been a lot of places actually.

Yeah.

And he's been in places.

And there's one thing to go to all these red places.

And you will see candidates in like these red, these really, really hard states will want

national Democrats to get attention for their race.

But with like Josh Turek, when I campaign with Pete, who won the I will, that's going

to be interesting.

That's the, that's the great question.

That's the great question.

Now, if I was advising Josh Turek, I would say have no national Democrats in the state,

like none.

Right.

Like what is the upside for you at this point?

I'd be very curious to know if Kamala Harris will campaign in Georgia for Keisha Lennett's

bottom, who worked for her.

And where her ability to turn out the black folk couldn't matter a lot in that race.

You know, was she campaigned Pennsylvania, North Carolina is interesting.

I imagine we're Cooper's not going to want anyone in his state.

He doesn't need it.

But that's just to me.

It's just, I read that story this morning.

And it was just like, this is just an unfair question to ask of Kamala Harris when you

don't want to bother with President.

He wasn't going to deep red states to campaign.

There has been a lot of focus on Kamala Harris around this.

But like you are completely right to say, like, what about Gavin Newsom?

What about any of these other, you know, what about AOC?

I do find it interesting that, I mean, and he is a national political figure now who

is very well liked in the party and beyond the party Bernie Sanders campaigning with Rebecca

Cook.

Rebecca Cook is not like a, like a DSA lefty candidate.

She's a pretty moderate working class candidate in a pretty red district in Wisconsin.

And clearly feels that Bernie Sanders by her side is helpful.

Here's my question.

Does Bernie come back to Michigan before election day for Abdul?

Yes, I think so.

I would think so.

Do the AOC come back?

Good question.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Maybe she goes to Ann Arbor.

Maybe she go, you know, I could see her on college campuses.

I mean, I would, if I'm dual, it's ASCIIB.

I would be, I would not, I would be totally, I would say I would be totally if I

would be with him campaigning.

Like you are ready.

There's a gazelle like they want to put you with Bernie Sanders and AOC and that all

you have to do is run heads out through the primary of a pool with AOC and Bernie.

And so you might as well get the benefits of it on college campuses and places like that.

I do think there will be people from the dual campaign and the Michigan Democratic Party

at the Detroit airport just watching to see if a soundpecker gets off the plane.

I'm sure he doesn't go to any event.

Yeah.

They're wondering like, do they have access to the no fly list?

Can we have a state based no fly list?

But yeah, no, I think, I think Bernie's probably a plus for dual in the home stretch.

For sure.

Okay.

One last item that's become a big midterm issue and will almost certainly become an even

bigger 2028 issue, AI and data centers.

The same week the Donald Trump told Americans who opposed data center construction that

they're going to end up quote backwards and poor.

Democrats began pointing out that nearly every single Republican in Congress voted to

prevent states and cities and towns from regulating the construction of data centers and voted

to give tax breaks to AI companies that build data centers, especially in rural areas.

Nearly one in five data centers currently under construction got these tax breaks thanks

to the Republican Congress.

This was part of Trump's big bill that also made massive Medicaid cuts.

If I were running against an incumbent Republican member of Congress, I think I would spend

the next 60 days absolutely hammering my opponent for voting to cut Medicaid, cut taxes

for billionaires, cut taxes for AI companies so they can build data centers in your backyard.

All in the same bill.

Then you throw in their support for the war and Trump's tariffs, making things more expensive

and like that's your campaign.

Are they going to put the data centers on the sites of the rural hospitals they close

with their Medicaid cuts?

Perfect.

That's a mad seat.

There you go.

People close the rural hospital, put in a data center, tax cuts to the data center,

your paying more.

I mean, it's all right there.

I think what do you think of that hit?

I think it's a great hit.

I didn't know that about the one big beautiful bill.

I know about it because you tweeted it.

Then I saw you mentioned a political story as one of the people pushing this.

Oh wow, look at that.

I saw it from Brandon Duke on Twitter who had found it in the bill, the liberal policy guy.

So then I was like, holy shit, is that real?

And then suddenly I saw he came, Jeffery's talking about it at a press conference and I

was like, all right, we're off to the races.

Let's get that shit in an ad.

One tweet can change the world.

No, no, I don't think it was my tweet at all.

I don't think anyone saw it.

Progressives also just launched a more aggressive approach to AI.

On Thursday, Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressman Greg Kassar announced the Ban Artificial

Super Intelligence Act, which would quote permanently ban the development and deployment

of super intelligent AI and pause quote, AI development until a federal regulator has

established safety rules.

Speaking of that hypothetical regulator, political reports that Mark Zuckerberg had a secret

call with Donald Trump where he expressed concerns about plans for a national AI regulator.

You don't say.

And here's what open AI CEO Sam Altman said about calls to regulate AI when he sat down

with Howard Nutlick at the G20 on Wednesday.

Does industry leaders do often do it?

Do interviews?

Always.

I think it would be approximately as bad of an idea to say we're not going to have AI in

our country as it was to say we're not going to have electricity in our country back 100

plus years ago.

My prediction is we won't be talking about AI as much as we do in a decade from now.

Because we'll be dead?

Because we'll just expect it everywhere.

You know, like a kid growing up today will never be smarter than AI.

But he or she will also never have understood a world where every product and service that

they interact with is not really smart and really capable and really helpful.

A fantastic message to parents.

Hey parents, your kids will never be smarter than the machine that I'm building that we

have won.

No guardrails around whatsoever.

And by the way, bulldoze that hospital nearby because we're putting a data center.

Just can we unpack this comment for one second?

Well, first, give me my stipulating that Sim Altman is a very bad spokesperson.

He's probably bad.

He's maybe bad in many ways, but he's not a good spokesperson for his industry.

Like what is the point he's making that your gigantic supercomputer wouldn't which you

much build data centers on every corner to power is smarter than a native old?

Of course it is.

You know what's smarter than a year old?

Like computers we had last year or two years ago.

No, I think he's saying your kids will never, no matter, grown into adults.

Of course they're not.

That's the point of computers.

Look, look at this forklift we build.

It's stronger than any man.

That's the whole fucking point.

Have the forklift.

Look at these cars that are faster than any human can run.

Yes, that's it.

Like that doesn't even make any sense.

Well no, but this raises a good point about Bernie's bill as well, right?

Because what Bernie and Kassar put out is so banned artificial superintelligence.

This is also known as ASI, right?

You might also hear AGI, that's artificial general intelligence, which is AI that matches

human level reasoning.

Now right now the people that build the AI, the hyperscalers, whatever the fuck they are,

Sam Altman, all the rest of them, they don't think that we have quite reached AGI yet,

but maybe we're about to have reached AGI.

I have an announcement.

Oh, have we already done it?

Have we just done it?

Greg Brockman, the president of the company.

He announced it today.

Yeah, they have asked it.

So they think.

Well, this is the problem is that no one knows.

None of these people know exactly.

There's no, we have definitely reached AGI because no one can define exactly what human

level of reasoning and intelligence is.

Like it's sort of, I guess it's just sort of a vibe.

Same thing with artificial superintelligence, which is they say we haven't reached yet,

but you clearly say that we've reached with the forklift a long time ago.

Just saying that we can make things that are stronger and smarter than people.

It just basic computers.

Just basic computers.

I think what Bernie's getting at is like some of these AGI leaders and the people that

are in these companies like Sam Altman have already, Elon Musk have already said like,

oh, sometimes we may not be able to control these machines at some point.

And Bernie's point is if you can't control the machines, then why are you building the

fucking machines if they're beyond human control?

Which is a good question.

That's a great question.

It's a good question.

I don't know that the band actually works or how it works or that it has, like it seems

like more of a, like he's planting a flag in the ground than an actual plan here.

But it does raise the point that again, that people like Sam Altman are like, well, you

know, the kids aren't going to be ever smart as AI and Greg Brockman saying, oh, we've

hit artificial general intelligence and the hugging face disaster where a bunch of AI agents

got out of the sandbox and found the internet and suddenly, you know, took over everything

and tried to hide from humans.

And it's like, and then they all look at this and they're like, well, this is bad.

This is bad.

Five alarms.

Everyone should be really worried about this.

But anyway, we're going to go back to work.

We're going to keep building this because China, we don't want China to have it.

We want if China develops the technology to, you know, render humanity extinct, we got

to get that too.

We got to get that too.

I tweeted, basically after some of the data centers, a few weeks ago, I tweeted that the,

from a, like, just from a pure step back, communications messaging perspective, the

people who do politics and policy and communications at the AI companies have done an absolutely

miserable fucking job.

And one of the points is that these people go out all the time and they are, they proudly

in callously tout as Sam Altman always does the cataclysmic consequences of the product.

And I heard from a lot of people who like, but publicly and then privately who work in

the industry or around the industry who say, no, no, a lot of people who work in AI are

really concerned about the, they're genuinely concerned about it.

And they want, they feel obligated to express that concern.

And I actually do believe a lot of people who work in the industry are concerned.

I think that's a lot of what drives, you know, it's like open a, eggs, a exists because

everyone thought Google was too dangerous and then anthropic exists because of people

and the topic of today's dress.

And I can't wait to find out what the next thing is.

But the problem is you're saying how dangerous your product is on one hand.

The other hand, you're pushing rapidly for an IPO as fast as possible in order to get liquidity

to your investors.

Yep.

And so it's just, there is this, like one day we're going to destroy the world.

The other day we're going to buy the world with the money we make from destroying the

world.

Well, and you're also calling Donald Trump like Mark Zuckerberg or I guess Trump called

him and saying, but I don't want a regulator.

I don't want a regulator.

And you know, Sam Altman's like, well, you know, it's voluntary.

We want these voluntary standards, but of course we're abiding by them because we want

to work with the government on this because we're, you know, we're nice guys.

But like they don't really want the regulation.

The way they fight the regulation is by saying we have to win this race or else China's

going to win.

And then they go out and say, oh yeah, but this is really dangerous.

But also still no regulation.

Thank you.

We'll take care of it.

It really is telling everyone we'll take care of it.

We're going to build the data centers whether you like it or not and, uh, and fuck off.

Which is why I, you and I saw some, some private polling that data centers are down to like

20% approval.

Yeah.

It's a true bipartisan issue.

And it almost never seen an issue reach this level of intensity this quickly.

People would rather have a nuclear power plant or a prison or a methadone clinic.

They were all more favorable being built in your community than a fucking AI data center.

And when they tested it with, oh, and the company building the data center will provide, um,

the power and will make sure that they're bear all the costs and the people in the community

do not, people don't buy it.

It goes up a couple percent, but people just don't trust the AI companies on this even

when you do it ostensibly the right way and make sure that the AI companies bear all

the costs and that people in these communities are held harmless.

They just don't trust that that's going to happen.

They don't trust big tech.

Why would that?

Yeah.

It's fair point.

Um, so I think this, I mean, you know, I, I do hope, you know, obviously there's a,

a smorgasbord of things for Democrats to run on in the midterms, but I think and hope

this will be one of the big issues.

And then certainly this will be a big issue in 2028.

And I think in 2028, the challenge is going to be staking out positions on this that are

responsive to the populist, uh, furor out there, um, while also being like realistic and

responsible, right?

Because like, and I don't say that to be like, oh, we need to find a middle ground, but

these people are developing the technology.

Much of it is already here.

So the question is like, how do we put the, we actually do need to get guardrails around

them.

So we just do need to pass something.

That's right.

Um, okay.

This thing before we get to Tommy's interview with Jasper and Nathaniel, uh, a little news

about someone, uh, you know, Jasper's an actual journalist.

This is about someone who plays a journalist on TV.

Uh, Maria Bartoromo is out at Fox News.

Um, so Fox that happened this morning, Thursday morning, Fox released a rather vague statement

about why, uh, that just said we thank Maria for her work over the last 12 and a half years

and wish her all the best on her next chapter.

Um, but Oliver Darcy, its status news, uh, has the scoop.

Um, on Thursday afternoon, yeah, it says, after Trump delivered his unhinged primetime

speech in which he pushed more conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

Remember that?

Remember the China thing?

Um, uh, I am told, this is Oliver writing this, I am told that Fox News issued guidance

to senior employees instructing them to steer clear of giving credence to Trump's delusional

claims.

Uh, I'm told that the guidance was issued in writing, but ultimately Bartoromo spilled

the secret statuses learned devolving to the White House that Trump's speech had received

scant coverage on the channel because network bosses had ordered it so.

I'm even told the text message in which Fox News brass offered their guidance was shared

by Bartoromo with the White House in doing so.

Bartoromo not only effectively betrayed her employer, but also disclosed confidential

company information violating the terms of her employment agreement.

What do you think about that?

Well, it's more interesting, I guess, than what we all thought when she, when her resignation

or firing was announced, we thought she was going to the White House press secretary.

And I believe she was, that would have been pretty interesting, I think.

Was she on your list of potential?

So I think she was too, but I had knocked a few people off list.

I couldn't remember, but if you remember that she was on my, I remember that because

you said that earlier today.

That's why.

Oh, maybe that's fine.

It's fine.

No.

At one point she was on my list.

Yeah.

And she still could, she still could become press secretary.

It's my rule about my number one choreist, Rachel Campo's stuffy has been really out on

a media tour recently auditioning for this task.

Yeah, and all the, maybe in all the wrong ways, maybe in all the wrong ways.

I wouldn't say she's doing a great job.

All the wrong ways for you if you were hiring the White House press secretary.

Yeah, that's pretty wild.

It is funny that, I mean, it's, I'm here about Roma, whatever, but sort of the internal

drama at Fox, where like the president gives this speech about, you know, China interfering

the election, everyone thinks it's bullshit.

It was sort of weird on Fox, not to hear it.

And sure enough, it was because, I guess, defamation lawsuits work.

If you lose three quarters of a billion dollars for putting a bunch of crazy shit on your

TV, you might learn a lesson from it.

And they certainly did.

And then when so far as to fire her for fucking snitching on them to Donald Trump.

And she is a huge election denier.

Like she is huge.

Prior to the Dominion thing, she was like deep into this.

I mean, as most financial journalists would be, a man, she has had a journey.

Once upon a time, she was like a fairly normal journalist.

Yes.

Very, very popular CMBC anchor.

Can't wait to see where she ends up next.

All right.

Up next, Tommy's interview with independent journalist Jasper Nathaniel.

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Hey, it's John.

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This is Matt Rogers from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

This is Bowen Yang from Los Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang.

We know when people try new food and suddenly it's like, wait.

That's the reaction.

A lot of people are having when they first try Cupid Mayo.

It's the one with the red cap and the little baby on the bottle.

You've probably seen it in the grocery store before.

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And once you notice it, you start seeing it everywhere.

Chefs use it, restaurants use it.

People who really care about flavor use it.

Never try it.

Grab the bottle with the red cap next time you're at the store.

Put it on just about anything.

Then you'll understand.

Cupid, the original Japanese mayonnaise.

My guest today is an independent journalist focused on stories from inside the occupied

West Bank.

Jasper Nathaniel, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me.

Great to see you.

We've talked.

We've zoomed.

I've never mentioned person.

It's great to have you in LA.

Yeah.

Thanks for having me.

If you guys want to find Jasper's work, first of all, you go to Substack and search for

Infinite Jazz or go to InfiniteJaz1z.com.

So he's totally self-funded.

He's an independent journalist.

So if you sign up for a paid subscription, we're sending you back to the West Bank.

Sounds like that's right.

Thank you.

But other Pots in America, folks, get on board.

So I wanted to have this conversation with you today because we've talked a lot about

Gaza on this show.

I don't think we've talked about the West Bank much ever.

And for a variety of reasons that we'll get into, I think the West Bank could have bigger

political implications and could be an even more fundamental part of the 2028 Democratic

primary in particular.

For listeners who want some context or unfamiliar with the issue or the area, the West Bank

is a little piece of territory.

They've got Jordan to their east, Israel everywhere else.

It's home to about 3 million Palestinians, nearly 700,000 Israeli settlers.

And so when you hear people talk about a two-state solution and the creation of a Palestinian

state, the majority of the territory for that state was supposed to be the West Bank.

But for decades now, the West Bank has been carved up and stolen by Israeli settlers.

And so when politicians say to you, I support a two-state solution.

I think the next question has to be, OK, where's the territory?

Where's the state you're talking about?

Right.

Where we draw on those borders.

And so we'll get into all that in a minute.

But first, let's just do the basics.

So Jasper, can you explain to listeners what is the Israeli settler movement and how

was it changed since the October 7th attacks in 2023?

OK.

So just to take an even bigger step back, Israel, when it's 1948 borders, which are the

borders that are recognized by, you know, under international law, expanded in 1967 after

the Six Day War was fought.

So basically Israel took Gaza from Egypt.

They took the West Bank from Jordan and they took a couple other territories.

And the West Bank became under international law and occupied territory.

And that's not just a, like, euphemism or a phrase.

So that actually has legal implications that Israel is ostensibly supposed to adhere to

based on the hate convention and the Geneva convention.

And what those laws amount to is that this is a temporary occupation.

Israel is temporarily administering the territory as it works out a security situation with its

military.

With its military.

It's a military occupation, exactly.

And so what that means is that the Israeli government is not allowed to govern the West

Bank.

It has to actually, again, by international law be governed by these really military.

And the other thing that it means is that Israel cannot do anything to put down permanent

routes in the West Bank because it has to be temporary.

And so when you hear people say the settlement project is fundamentally illegal, it's because

the settlement project is about settling, you know, putting down routes in the West Bank

and the entire project is illegal.

So the settlement movement starts right after 1967, basically.

And the sort of religious tenets of it are that the West Bank is, you know, you've probably

heard the settlers or Mike Huckabee, or, you know, maybe John Federman, I'm not sure,

called Judea and Samaria.

What that refers to is the ancient kingdoms of Israel.

So Samaria was the kingdom in the north.

Judea was the kingdom in the south.

And you know, if you talk to a settler or even Nenyahoo, I think, what they will say

is Judea and Samaria has more biblical significance to Jews than any other part of either Israel,

certainly Gaza, which is virtually no biblical significance to Jews.

And so the reason I give that background is because there is a faction of people in Israel

or of Jews around the world actually who care about the territory much more than they

care about anything else.

And a thing that you hear a lot from settlers is they'll say, if Israel has the right to

claim the land within its 1948 borders based on the Jewish people's connection to the land,

well, we have a much stronger connection here.

The connection in Samaria is much stronger than it is in Tel Aviv.

So why don't we get to claim this?

And so the settlement movement basically is acting on that.

And they are trying to build what, you know, they call facts on the ground, which is Jewish

settlements across the West Bank to turn it into part of Israel, basically.

And since the co-verse of the tax, my understanding is that cellular activity and violence has just

ratcheted up and up and up, right?

Yes, although I mean, this violence actually started before October 7th, as in like this

big escalation.

So in, at the end of 2022, you know, there was a selection in Israel and Nenyahoo forms

as government with these far right factions that had been considered out of bounds even

in Israeli politics, which is really far right.

So you had guys like Idomar Ben Gavir in the Jewish Power Party and Bezilez Smotrich

in the religious Zionism party.

Both of them are settlers themselves.

They take ministerial positions immediately.

And Smotrich, who is a completely messianic settler who has been open about saying that

his life's goal is to create Jewish sovereignty across Judea and Samaria and to Barry, Palestinian

State.

What he does is he pulls up this sort of incredible sleight of hand where he installs himself

inside the defense ministry.

He just makes up a title, additional minister in the Ministry of Defense.

And what he does is he clears out all of these career bureaucrats inside of the defense

ministry who had managed the bureaucracy of the occupation.

And he installs all of these settler ideologues.

So it should be familiar to people who have followed what Doge did or RFK is done at helping

human services.

Like you clear out all the people who had done the basic, put up the basic red tape that

at least made it a little difficult to build a settlement.

And he puts in all these people who are just rubber stamping every new request to build

a new settlement or to authorize an outpost or to call in stateland or something like

that.

And simultaneously Ben Gavir, who becomes a national security minister, directs the

police to stop enforcing certain criminal laws against settlers.

They remove what's called administrative detention against settlers.

And they basically just give the settlers permission to run wild.

And then the sort of last part of this is that the Israeli government and the IDF and

the settlement movement begin working together like never before.

And the settler attacks on Palestinian villages.

We can probably get into this more later, but they're not random.

I mean, they are attacking villages that are in strategic spots that Israel wants to

take over to cut off territorial continuity for Palestinians or to create a new road that

connects to settlements.

And so basically what I'm getting at is like the violence has spun out of control, but

it is it's not chaos.

This is very much part of the central state project in the West Bank, which is to create

Jewish sovereignty across the whole territory.

And just according to the UN, the number of settler attacks has increased every year

since the October 7th attacks in 2023.

2026 is on pace to have more than 2000 violent settler attacks in the West Bank alone.

But despite that frequency and volume of violence, very few of these stories get reported in

Western media or breakthrough.

One incident that did break through in Western media in a big way was one incident you

documented back in October of 2025.

We're going to watch that footage and then I want you to describe what's happening.

So for folks listening and not watching, that was footage of this mass settler brutally

beating an old woman in a group of activists and then we see footage from far away of you

literally sprinting down a hill away from a mob.

So what happened there?

So this is an village called Termasaya in the West Bank, which is just east of Ramallah.

And it's actually one of these villages that is made up of largely American citizens.

And so it was the olive harvest, which is for a long time been one of the most violent

times of year for Palestinians because it's when settlers know exactly where they can find

Palestinians away from their homes and they can attack them while they're doing this

thing that's very important to them.

And so I went out with a group of farmers in Termasaya into their olive fields which recently

settlers had built a new outpost there.

Now what an outpost is is it is in his really settlement that does not even have Israel's

approval yet.

So it's basically a bunch of settlers have peeled off from an authorized settlement, planted

a flag somewhere and said, you know, we live here now.

And so it's like set up a camp like literally.

Yes, literally they set up a couple tents and a like shipping container and they start

living there.

So and by the way, they know the guy who started the settlement.

His name is Amishov Mellat.

He's a real person with a real name and a criminal history, frankly.

Nobody knows who he is.

So we go into the olive fields immediately.

We see this guy.

Mellat points a gun at us, threatens us, tells us to get out of the olive fields.

We find another way in and to make a long story short, we got trapped in these olive fields

by settlers who had guns and were threatening us.

And this is Palestinian land and a lot of it is privately owned by American citizens actually

for whatever that's worth.

I run into a group of IDF soldiers and basically pleaded with them to help give us safe

passage out of the olive fields.

They agree.

And then they lead us to come follow them.

And then right as we reach me in Palestinian farmer, we reach where the Israeli soldiers are,

they speed away.

And that's when that mob of settlers appears and it chased me through the olive fields.

Then I documented the clip of that woman, Umsava being clubbed almost a death by a settler.

All in that attack, I want to say five people were hospitalized, homes were torched.

And how was the woman in that clip?

She's, I believe she's in her 60s and she's grandmother.

And she was out there, you know, picking olives.

But I think what's like really instructive about this incident actually is that it was

one of the few settler attacks that on some level sort of broke through.

It was covered in, I mean, it was a huge story in Israel proper and was covered in the

mainstream western media to a certain extent.

And I think it's because there's no way to spin a video of a masked settler clubbing

in old women.

And so it actually created a PR crisis for Israel.

And so what they did was they went out and they made an extraordinarily rare arrest of

the guy who clubbed her.

Now the reason I bring this up is because I actually, these really authorities reached out to

me about this because it was my footage.

And I basically, you know, what I said to them is, you know as well as I do that the guy

you arrested is a foot soldier.

This is a nobody.

We know where he came from.

He came from the outpost, which is in the middle of the term as IAOA fields.

You know where it is.

You know the guy who's leading it.

If you want to end the terror in this community, you have to dismantle that outpost.

And these guys told me on the phone, just watch.

That's what we're going to do.

Fast forward to my visit in June.

I went back to Termasaya.

What had been a couple of shipping containers is now eight shipping containers.

What had been maybe one family living there is now maybe a dozen families living there.

Amishav Mellat is still patrolling the all fields with his gun.

The IDF is there hanging out with them, praying, smoking cigarettes, breaking bread.

And the people of Termasaya just now can't even consider trying to get to their land.

And so again, it's like I bring this up because the way settler violence is sometimes

covered to the extent it's ever covered in the Western media, it looks like a couple

of sort of feral, you know, misguided youth.

And that's certainly how like Nenyan's bad apples describes and bad apples are randomly

attacking a village.

But the Amishav Mellat is a well connected guy.

He is working with high ranking members of the IDF and in the Knesset, in the Israeli

government to build this outpost here and push the Palestinians off their land to expand

the Shiloh settlement actually.

And so every place where you're seeing settler's attacking Palestinians is a place where the

powers that be in the Israeli government and the military and the settler movement have

decided not just we want to go, you know, launch a pogrom against these people, but this

is a strategic point for us to take in our effort to bury the IDF of a Palestinian state.

And so that is why the violence is so widespread right now.

It's because it's calculated and it's methodical and it's being designed at the highest levels

of the Israeli government.

I want to get you asking more about those connections to the government a second.

But let me look, you're an American, you're a journalist in the longer version of that

video, you're yelling press, American press.

One would assume that would afford you some protection from the settlers, not because

they love Americans, but because they know that beating up an American is going to lead

to blow back and a call from the embassy to the Israeli government.

And that could maybe lead to consequences, whereas beating up a Palestinian is almost

never going to lead to consequences.

But just a couple days ago, a crew from NBC News was interviewing a Palestinian woman,

a car full of settlers drives up, they jump out, they beat the shit out of all of them

with clubs and then speed away.

Did that surprise you?

Does that reflect a new level of impunity?

No, that didn't surprise me at all.

These attacks are completely ubiquitous in the West Bank.

The only unusual thing that happened there was that a mainstream outlet went to one of

these villages that is seeing a lot of violence and they ran into the settler's who live

there and they got attacked.

I mean, that's what happens.

It's the same reason why Congressman Rokana had his bus hijacked when he was driving through

the South Teabron Hills.

These people came out and said, oh, it's a hoax, it was a setup, what a coincidence,

like no, go drive through the South Teabron Hills.

That place is run by the violent settlers and the military that supports them.

This is just what happens there.

As a journalist, like you said, I certainly am much more protected at every level than my

Palestinian friends and my Palestinian colleagues, journalists, but I've been going to the West

Bank for years now and each time I go, the settlers seem less and less inhibited in physically

attacking me.

I'm visibly not Palestinian and I'm usually speaking and they know I'm American and they

just have no hesitation whatsoever in attacking me.

And yes, it's because they know in all likelihood they will be celebrated and rewarded for

this.

And I'm not exaggerating, by the way, and this is covered in the Israeli press.

So there's nothing conspiratorial about this.

The settlers who are committing the violence are considered the tip of the spear for the

central Israeli state project of ethnically cleansing the land from the river to the sea.

And so they know that somebody like me who's there to report on what they're doing, I'm

an enemy of the state.

They consider me an enemy of the state and the people attacking me know that maybe if

push comes to shove, Huckabee will have to condemn them or so and so will condemn them.

But there's almost no chance that they're actually going to go to jail or do any real

jail time.

And if anything, it's going to elevate their status in the movement.

Yeah.

Let's talk to you about the government.

Is there any sort of data about Palestinian attacks on Jews in the West Bank?

Because that's sort of the what about is and you always hear what about violence or

terrorism against Jewish communities in the West Bank in particular?

Well, strictly from a numbers perspective, since October 7, 2023, the ratio of Palestinians

who have been killed by Israelis to Israelis who have been killed by Palestinians is about

30 to one.

So there's no comparison from a numbers perspective.

I will also tell you that the communities in the West Bank that are most under attack,

that are seeing the most violence are the most defenseless ones.

These are shepherding villages where there's no history of armed resistance, where there's

barely even any infrastructure let alone weapons.

And they're being attacked because they are the easiest targets and the easiest one

is to chase off the land.

So anybody who claims that settler violence is a response to Palestinian violence, well,

that was a case you would expect to see the settler violence going after places that

do have some history of armed resistance, which exists in the West Bank.

But that's not where it's happening.

It's happening mostly in these completely defenseless Bedouin villages.

But the last thing I just want to say is about this is, you know, the numbers about the

violence and the murder, obviously tell a story.

But the violence against Palestinians in the West Bank goes so much deeper than that.

I mean, these villages that we're talking about that are under attack.

It's difficult to describe what the feeling of just pervasive terror and the air is like

in these places.

You can't go to sleep there because every single night settlers are coming in their ATVs,

they're flying drones, they're firing guns, they're putting flash us floodlights into

homes.

They're beating the crap out of people.

Sometimes they're killing people.

They're burning down homes.

They're burning homes with people still in them.

But young men in these villages who were students or farmers or mechanics are now forced

to be the sort of de facto security in these places.

They don't have any weapons though.

If they dare to throw a rock at a Palestinian, they might be killed by an Israeli soldier

who's invading the village with the settlers and then called a terrorist for throwing a stone.

And so like the terror just goes, the violence and terror and just suffocation of all life

goes so deep that any, you know, question about who's

doing the violence under whom?

I mean, you can just go to those numbers, but also you have to look at who is suppocating

the life out of whom in the West Bank.

It's like day to day cruelty violence all day.

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So, like we were just saying, you know, when these stories do break through, when Israeli

officials are forced to respond, it's some version of, you know, a couple bad apples.

Like how could be the US ambassador to Israel?

To his credit, I think he called some of these recent Israeli settlers terrorists, which

they are.

But he also kind of does the few bad apples shit.

Like you said, though, anyone actually paying attention knows that the Israeli government

is complicit in and supportive of these settlers.

You've described them as the tip of the sphere for the state-backed annexation process.

Can you tell us more about how the government is backing these attackers and sort of what

the end game is?

Sure.

For starters, Bezal Smotrich, who I mentioned before, he is essentially running the military

occupation right now, which is in charge of things like construction tenders and zoning

permits and transportation and checkpoints and whatnot.

So he's already controlling life in the West Bank.

He is also the finance minister.

And they have, they are diverting a disproportionate amount of tax revenue and funds into, not just

the settlements, but the illegal outposts.

And so every dollar that goes into the Israeli government through taxes or, you know, aid

or whatever it is, a disproportionate amount of that is going directly to building out roads

that connect illegal outposts to one another.

It's giving them guns.

And by the way, obviously, US taxpayer dollars are paying for this stuff too for bulldozers.

And so the Israeli government is supporting the settler movement on a very material level.

But I think again, it goes to like, there was in fact a time, not that long ago, when

there was some sort of, there was a little bit of real estate between the settlement movement

and the government and the IDF.

I mean, there were certainly like alliances across them and there was a lot, there was

political and ideological overlap.

But a lot of the time the IDF and the settlers were fighting with each other because the IDF

was ostensibly trying to, you know, maintain security with the higher.

They shut down their settlements.

Exactly.

We'll shut down the illegal outposts.

Because they saw the settlers as troublemakers.

Today in the West Bank, the head of the central command, which is basically the commander of

the IDF in the West Bank, he's a settler himself.

He appointed a guy.

And again, what I'm saying now, this was first reported in the Israeli press.

He appointed someone whose full-time job is to go to these illegal outposts to meet with

the settler leaders there and discuss with them what their needs are in terms of funding,

in terms of infrastructure, in terms of weapons, but also to pull out maps and talk about

what are the places where they want to expand to.

And what that means is these are the places that we're going to launch attacks.

And then they launch these attacks over 60 Palestinian communities have actually been

fully ethnically clandest chased off of their land since October 7th.

Sometimes it makes a little bit of news, usually it doesn't.

But then what happens when nobody's paying attention anymore is the Israeli government

retroactively legalizes that outpost and it becomes a settlement.

And so what that means is that the violent settlers, when I say they're the tip of the

spear, they are quite literally the ones clearing the land, maybe occasionally they'll be condemned

for PR purposes.

But then when nobody's paying attention anymore, that now became a new settlement or a neighborhood

of an existing settlement or something.

So it is quite literally all part of the same project.

And you're talking about Smotritch, there's another guy, it's Mark Ben Gavir, who just

to be clear is part of the Israeli government.

Bibin Netanyahu did not win the last election outright.

It's a parliamentary system so we had to build a coalition of other parties to get enough

votes in the Kinesid to rule.

Ben Gavir is the national security minister.

It's hard to describe how extreme he is without sounding hyperbolic.

He used to have a photo on his wall of a guy named Baruch Goldstein who is a terrorist

who I think he machined gun, something like 29 Palestinians.

A Brooklyn Jew, who are like me.

Yeah.

He recently posted an AI video that we're going to show for you guys of himself sending

Palestinians on train tracks into a prison.

They go in fat, they come out crying and skinny.

I think it's deliberately designed to look like a concentration camp.

Let's watch that.

So it's pretty sickening stuff.

Israel's elections coming up in October.

Everyone would like to see Netanyahu lose.

We would like to see this current coalition blown up so that people like Ben Gavir are

no longer in power.

However, the person most likely to replace Netanyahu as a guy named Gadi Eisenkot, a lot

of Israel supporters in the US who are mad about who are supporters of Israel but are mad

about what happened in Gaza, for example.

Talk about getting rid of Netanyahu like it's a panacea but the alternatives aren't

great when it comes to the West Bank, right?

Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah.

I mean, the main opposition candidate is a guy named Gadi Eisenkot who he is considered

by some to be the sort of centrist liberal savior of Israel.

In fairness to him, he is less openly extreme than Netanyahu or Ben Gavir or Smotrich.

I guess I'll just give a couple quick anecdotes about him, the first one.

Eisenkot developed the doctrine that the IDF uses, which basically states that if you apply

disproportionate force to civilian infrastructure in enemy territories, then you will pressure

the civilians there to pressure their government.

That is why all of Gaza's civilian infrastructure was destroyed.

I mean, it is because of that doctrine, basically.

And so this is the guy who created that.

The second thing I want to say about him is that earlier this year, he visited one of the

most infamously violent outposts in the West Bank to meet with the leaders there in a

clear signal that if the government changes hands, don't worry.

Like you still got a man on the inside.

There's no reason to visit a violent outpost, which again, is illegal, even under Israeli

law.

It's a reason to make that visit unless you are sending a clear political signal to them.

And the third thing I'll say is he has had to come out time and time again and reiterate

he is against the creation of a Palestinian state, against it.

It will never happen under his watch, he says.

And so, again, I mean, I'm not going to pretend that there would be no difference between

him and Netanyahu or if they replace the defense minister or the national security minister,

whatever.

And the fundamentals are still there.

I mean, there's still a project to ethically cleanse the West Bank and to ethically cleanse

Gaza and parts of Lebanon and, you know, who knows where else between the river and the

sea.

And that is, there's nothing in the existing Israeli political system that shows that that

could change.

I do also want to quickly go back to the Ben Ghibir thing real quick though.

I mean, I think that video is instructive in some ways because first of all, it's an

accurate representation of what's happening.

I mean, besides like how, you know, they show Palestinians being like, you know, overweight

going in, I suppose that's just ridiculous.

But there is an actual policy of starving Palestinians in Israeli prisons, a literal

policy.

Ben Ghibir, when he came into power, he instructed the prisons to cut down on the food

rations among many other things, to cut down on the number of beds they get.

So some of many cells are overcrowded.

There's policies of actual torture.

The Israeli Supreme Court last year ruled that the Israeli prison system was not feeding

their Palestinian prisoners enough to survive and instructed them to remedy that.

And Ben Ghibir just said no thanks.

So there is literally a policy of starvation and there's over 10,000 Palestinian prisoners,

thousands of them are being held without charge.

Many of them are children.

And so, you know, including American children, including American children, the reason I bring

this up is just because there is this tendency among, I think, liberal supporters of

Israel to describe Ben Ghibir as a sort of fringe figure.

And what I always come back to is that that Nick Kristoff story, Abed in the New York

Times about what's happening in these really prisons, about rape and sexual assault in

Israeli prisons.

And the same people that are willing to condemn Ben Ghibir and condemn videos like that,

called that blood libel, accused Kristoff of blood libel.

And they acted completely incredulous that something like that could happen in Israeli

prison.

It's kind of like what you said.

This guy is in charge.

Ben Ghibir runs the prison system.

He runs the police force.

He's in charge of law and order in Israel and the occupied territories.

And so if you can see a video like that and condemn it, you really need to take that next

step and say, with his power, what has he actually done?

Besides what he's showing us right here in this video.

And you give him rifles.

We are videos of him handing out like a force that are being handed to settlers in

the West Bank that are being used to kill Americans among others.

I'm sure the people who are listening to this who are frustrated and feel like this is

like two liberals coming down hard on Israel.

And they feel like there's maybe too much of this in the conversation.

And I just want to point out that the New York Times recently featured a lot of top retired

Israeli military officials who went to the West Bank and were just horrified by what they

saw.

The headline was these generals fought for Israel and now they see Jewish terrorism

as the threat.

A retired major general says quote, what the settlers are doing here is the real threat

to Israel.

This is more concerning to me than Iran, Gaza or Lebanon.

Another says this ethnic cleansing to put it simply a retired Air Force general says,

once a society behaves this way, that society is doomed, even compared the efforts to Nazi

era efforts to erase the Jewish people.

If you or I made those comments, Jasper, like the ADL.

Well, that is a direct to those Israeli generals.

That is a direct violation of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism to compare Israel to Nazis.

And so I'm waiting for Jonathan Greenblatt and the ADL to come out and condemn these Israeli

generals for saying those things.

But no, I mean, listen, there is no other side of this story of what's happening in the

West Bank.

They're just simply isn't anybody who is still defending the settlement movement or the

IDF there or just Israel's policy in the West Bank.

You're just not looking at what's actually happening.

When you have IDF generals in that article, like lists their accomplishments of like

the extreme violence as the phrase is that they committed in the West Bank in Gaza and

Lebanon and Syria and all these places, if those people are coming out and saying it,

then I mean, it's just again, it's like as far as I'm concerned, yeah, there's just

no argument anymore that this is not happening.

And the most hawkish hawks, the most hawkish hawks, and I do want to say that like, you

know, the way this is being talked about among a lot of Israelis, including these guys,

is that it's a threat to Israel.

It's a huge PR issue for Israel, first of all.

These videos, you know, of Palestinians being attacked by settlers and looks bad for

Israel, it's creating all this bad press.

So they recognize that it's a problem for Israel, but you don't hear nearly enough of

this talking about the principal issue here, which is a Palestinians who are being violently

attacked and having their homestone and whatnot.

And so I just, I want to point that out.

Yeah.

And the hope for a Palestinian state.

So look, you know, you and I have talked on, positive world, my foreign policy show a

couple times.

We've talked about your reporting on the show more often than that.

But I wanted to have this conversation on this show, the more kind of domestic political

show, because I think I hope that these issues are going to be a big part of the 2028 Democratic

primary.

And generally, you know, I think we all should be talking about how what's happening is

existential and a threat to any hope of a Palestinian state or a two-state solution.

I know you're a journalist.

You're not like a policy white paper guy, but are there Democrats out there proposing

ideas that you think are good or ideas that you wish they would propose or implement?

I'm going to answer that question a little bit differently.

There are Democrats who are saying some things that I think are positive.

Chris Van Hollen being, I think, the sort of the lead one, and are talking more openly

about what is happening in the West Bank and in Gaza and whatnot.

And it's good to see a shift in that direction.

I think that there is still a refusal to face the reality of what's happening because it

is politically inconvenient.

Let me give you like one specific example of that.

It's very easy for a Democrat to come out and say, Palestinians should have a right to

live in dignity.

It's very easy to condemn settler violence.

There's nothing hard about that for a Democrat to do.

It's much more difficult to say these Palestinians who are being attacked by armed settlers, how

are they going to defend themselves?

When you are in a Palestinian community and you have settlers with machine guns and

a military behind them coming into the village, burning their homes, killing their people,

attacking them, how are they supposed to defend themselves?

And I think the question about cutting off military aid to Israel, I think I'm glad

that that has been mainstreamed or at least like the Overton window has shifted on it.

But the next question becomes, how are the Palestinians supposed to defend themselves?

I would just like to hear that talked about by Democratic politicians.

I think the second thing is I can't bear to hear them talk about a two-state solution anymore.

If you're going to talk about a two-state solution, this is basically what I'm asking of

Democratic politicians.

You are talking about creating a Palestinian state, creating enough territory in the West

Bank for Palestinians to have an actual state.

The Israeli government from the left to the right is against that.

The Israeli military is directly fighting against that.

The settlers are certainly against it.

So at that point, if you're going to create a Palestinian state there, you're going to

war with Israel.

You are literally, you have to go to war with Israel to create a Palestinian state.

And so if you are talking about a two-state solution, you have to also explain your plan

for going to war with Israel to create that state.

But in lieu of that, I think that they should be talking to the extent they're talking

about solutions at all.

Beyond things like a full arms embargo is a one-state solution.

Because what you have right now is a single state and a part-tied state.

All you got to do is say, all these people living under occupation are now citizens too.

And then you can actually have a democracy.

It won't be a Jewish state anymore, but it'll be a democracy.

And it'll have Jewish people and Muslims and Christians living there.

But you cannot have both a...

Look, the reality is, there's...

With the situation as it is today, where there is no possibility of creating an actual

Palestinian state there, it can't be both the Jewish state and a democracy.

Right?

I mean, it is a democracy when you give everybody the right to vote, and then it is no

longer a majority Jewish state.

And so that's a reality that politicians have to reckon with.

And again, nobody is talking about killing all the Jews there, anything insane like that.

We're talking about just giving equal rights to everybody who lives there.

Well, yeah, I mean, I think what you're doing here is kind of popping bubbles and the

fictions that are such a central part of the talking points, right?

Like I think in reality, there is no way for innocent villagers to defend themselves

against a well-armed settler movement and the idea.

So the conversation sort of has to be what can the international community do to put structures

in place to defend them, whether it's like the UN or something.

But it also, Tommy, I mean, it's also like when politicians talk about a Palestinian state,

even the, you know, the Stancelley pro-Pal Sainé ones say, well, it will be a demilitarized

state.

Why?

Why should the Palestinians be demilitarized when they are being literally killed every

single day?

I mean, that like, the double standard there is just staggering.

And I just think that like the way, I mean, listen, a Palestinian with a gun is considered

a terrorist to the mainstream media and to politicians.

Like it doesn't matter how they got that gun.

It doesn't matter what they're using it for, if it's for self-defense or whatever, they're

just considered a terrorist.

And that needs to change.

I mean, and again, like I'm not prescribing solutions here, but I want to say if you can

acknowledge that there are terrorists roaming the West Bank, Jewish terrorists roaming the

West Bank, terrorizing communities, killing people, how do you propose those people protect

themselves?

And it's up to you how you want to talk about doing that.

But I would like to see that reality acknowledged as opposed to politicians just saying the sort

of like easy, basic things about.

We need two states living side by side.

Yeah.

And you know, you don't, you know, condemning the violence settlers and condemning

Smotritch and Ben Gavirin.

But while it's like, it's a little bigger than that.

Oh, first of all, I mean, I think we're both getting like moving past kind of the broken

conversation of a decade ago, those talking points were kind of not operative for a very

long time, even before October 7th, frankly.

And also, I think, you know, the reality of the idea that you would forcibly expel hundreds

of thousands of settlers from the West Bank would lead to a massive military conflict.

There would be all sorts of resistance from within the Israeli government.

So it seems very unlikely to happen.

So what's the next thing that we're talking about?

I think it's kind of the point we're both getting at here.

This question for you, I mean, you are your Jewish, a lot of Jewish Americans, friends,

family, mind grew up hearing a very different story about Israel than the one, you know,

we've been telling for the last 40 minutes.

How does it feel for you to go the West Bank to witness this occupation and oppression,

like kind of what, what part of your own upbringing and religion do you kind of bring to this

work?

Mm-hmm.

Well, I mean, first I want to say that it's not fair that because I'm Jewish, my voice,

like it carries more weight to some people.

I mean, everything that I'm reporting has been reported on by Palestinians for much

longer than I've been doing it.

And I just want to sort of establish that.

Now to your question, I mean, I'm 100% Jewish despite what many people online like to say

about me.

What do they say?

They just say you're a fake Jew, you're a copo, you're a Nazi, you're a traitor, you're

a ham sandwich, blah, blah, blah.

Do you see one of us tweeting about genetic makeup today?

I did see that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Jews of Jews.

Yeah, that's always a good game to go into.

So I'm Jewish, but also on my mom's side, my grandparents escaped the Holocaust.

Most of my mom's mother's family was exterminated.

My mom's dad came from, they escaped the Russian pogroms.

On my dad's side, his parents lived in Iraq in Baghdad.

They were Jews in Baghdad for generations.

And they had to leave when there was a rise in anti-Semitism as well.

So the point I'm making is just that like I grew up in a house that was Jewish and that

had a very real sense of deadly anti-Semitism.

As far as like how our Jewishness manifested, I think it was in two main ways.

The first one was questioning and challenging everything.

And that includes the stories we heard about the Jewish state.

And some difficult questions about that.

And it also taught me, you know, the expression that you hear more now, which is never again

means never again for anyone.

And at the end of the day, in other words, say that is like a valuing human life.

And you know, when I go to the West Bank, the reality is people know I'm Jewish.

I mean, I tell people, and they just know at this point.

It is the Palestinians who are feeding me and taking me into their homes and protecting

me.

And it is Jewish settlers and soldiers who are trying to kill me.

And it does sort of beg the question about what sort of Jewishness this is.

These Israelis who are trying to kill me are practicing.

The last thing I want to say about this though is that I think that as you know, speaking

as Jewish American again, who had a bar mitzvah, who has been Jewish my whole life since

people like to say you're an as a Jew, who still goes to synagogue, it is we are long

overdue as Jewish Americans to have a reckoning with what our institutions and our organizations

and our synagogues have facilitated and enabled.

And you know, on one level, that is just the sort of unwavering support that the institutions

have given to Israel and the way they have defended Israel, you know, through a genocide,

through ethnic cleansing, through all these things.

But it actually goes beyond that.

It goes to, I mean, frankly, material support for terror.

And so what I'm talking about here is things like the Jewish National Fund, which is the

organization that provides those little blue tin sedaka boxes in synagogues where people

put in their loose change.

And then that money goes to Israel.

It's in thousands of synagogues across the country.

A lot of that money goes to bringing non-native invasive trees into Israel, which service

basically they're planting trees that are basically like serving as tender for forest fires over

there.

That's neither here nor there.

Great.

Another place that money has gone, this came out earlier this year, was that money was going

directly to an organization that is training the hilltop youth, the most violent settlers

in the West Bank, training them to be little foot soldiers, little child soldiers in the

West Bank attacking Palestinians.

This was reported in the times of Israel.

So again, you are talking about thousands of synagogues across the country who are providing

material support for terror against Palestinians.

And I'm not suggesting that every, you know, like my Jewish family, every Jewish person

knows this is happening on a material level.

But I think it is pastime for people to take a close look at not just what the Jewish

institutions represent, but what they are actually supporting and ask yourself, is this

what being Jewish is?

Is this what it's supposed to be?

Is this valuing human life?

And I mean, frankly, it's upsetting.

It's really upsetting.

And the way I deal with it is by doing the work that I do and by talking about things

like this.

And, you know, I refuse to accept that the religion is irredeemable or anything.

And I'm not suggesting anything like that.

But this is what the institutions are supporting.

And listen, Jonathan Griebout of the ADL, he's called you an anti-Semite, right?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, because I thought.

I mean, like, 10 yellow dragons in the world.

So it's just like it's so these institutions, these Jewish institutions are so corrupt and

broken.

And it goes so deep, really encourage Jewish Americans to think more deeply about this and

think about like, what does it mean to you to be Jewish?

What do you want to support?

What do you want to represent?

And yeah, I hope people ask those questions.

Well, you're reporting on what's happening in the West Bank has been invaluable to me.

And I think Obey Creative folks would check it out.

Again, go to Sub-Sack.

It's Infinite Jazz 1Z.

Infinite Jazz.

If you get a paid subscription, you can pay the fund Jasper's Next Trip to the West Bank.

So thanks for coming in.

Thanks a lot.

Appreciate it.

Thanks to Jasper Nathaniel for coming on the show.

Love it.

We'll be back on Sunday with a conversation with the host of Crookhead's new podcast

still counting, which brings back the voices of 538 and will be out Wednesday evenings

starting September 9th.

Have a good week.

And everyone.

Bye, everyone.

Fucking still in my line, sir, at the end.

Pods in America is a Crookhead media production.

Our show is produced by Austin Fisher, Saul Rubin, McKenna Roberts, and Ferris Safari,

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Hey, it's John.

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