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Right Makes Antisemite · Politix

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: The White House was considering coming out in favor of a like FINRA for AI,
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: which would be a pretty light touch regulatory model,
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: but striking for like a Republican administration
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: to advocate increased regulation around anything.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that like Mark Zuckerberg got on the horn and like told the White House
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: that it would be better to do something like the MPAA,
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: which is like movie ratings, which is totally fake.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: And like, he's a real piece of shit.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everyone, you're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: This week,
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: we've got the anniversary of the Charlie Kirk shooting,
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Trumpapalooza in Dallas, Texas, and the 25th anniversary of 9-11.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll talk about how this is all excellent news for John McCain.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Then is it time for a moratorium,
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: not on data centers per se,
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: but on AI development itself before these computer nerds unleash forces
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: that will wreck the world?
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: We'll answer that question for you definitively.
• 1:09
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• 1:12
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• 1:16
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• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: upgrade to paid at politics.fm.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the Politics Podcast.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Brian Boitler.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Matthew Iglesias.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: We got a busy week.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: We got...
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Doing good.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're recording this on Tuesday, September 8th.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: I believe tomorrow, Trumpapalooza begins in Dallas.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a two-day event.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: The second day is the anniversary of the Charlie Kirk shooting, which was one year ago.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then I guess that makes Friday, 9-11.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: 25th anniversary.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: We should expect Republicans to handle all this with grace and chill and aplomb, right?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing weird is going to happen?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, I've been monitoring the president's social media feeds over the long weekend.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean...
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I don't want to go like Trump one style,
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: just like chasing after every random shiny object,
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: but like they keep releasing these like completely deranged posts.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: like there was one where Canada and Mexico have been absorbed into the United States
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: of America, which, you know, it's a map.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: This is both like not constructive international relations,
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: diplomacy,
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: et cetera,
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: but like it's also like the opposite of Like what Republicans like think about,
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: like if you just framed it as like open borders with Mexico
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: or like all these Canadians get senators, like they wouldn't even want that.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then he put out this video in which he was depicted as wielding a green lantern ring.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: And he was using the power ring to both construct a border wall on
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: the southern border and also revitalize American manufacturing.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've been watching the new Green Lantern HBO television show.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Probably not.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: I have not.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: This show is like woke as hell.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's some of the most woke stuff I've ever seen.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Its creator, Damon Lindelof, also did the Watchmen series for HBO.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: He is like literally this week hosting a fundraiser for James Tallarico.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know what they're doing.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: And they're going to have this midterm convention as a celebration of Donald Trump,
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: who is grossly unpopular and But has an incredible amount of money.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: He has like hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign cash that he's stockpiled.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: In this MAGA, Inc. Vehicle.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of frontline House Republicans are going to this thing
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: when you might think they would stay away.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because the understanding seems to be that, like,
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: kissing Trump's ass is the way to get this pile of money that he's crafted dumped
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: on your race.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And mobilizing a fundraising advantage is,
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: probably the best thing going for Republicans at this point in the midterms.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: So...
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Is the idea that they think that this money is going to save their seats,
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: like Mike Lawler thinks the difference between victory and defeat is money and
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: that it doesn't matter how close he appears with Trump,
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: or is it more like Republican politics really is just MAGA,
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: not the Super PAC MAGA, Inc., but MAGA, the industrial complex, right?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that if you're going to go down,
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: like CW used to be, go down with your dignity or your integrity intact.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: But now you see that the people who do that just end up being irrelevant
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: in politics,
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: whereas Mike Lawler could end up with a Defense Department job or some shit
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: if he loses, but loses having kissed Trump's ass the whole way.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, that is definitely part of it.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: And this is,
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: something that you see on both sides of the aisle,
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: which is that if you have a vulnerable seat, the best way to hold it is to...
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Distance yourself from party leaders.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: But if you lose anyway,
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: the best way to,
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: you know, still be a player in politics is to be on everybody's good side.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Lee Zeldin, Republican House member.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he ran for governor.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: He lost because he didn't really – in a good cycle for Republicans,
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: he didn't really try to distance himself from Trump in any meaningful way.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: But like now he's EPA administrator.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: He's like a MAGA guy in good standing, has a lot going for him.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: But I do think that trying to get this MAGA, Inc. Money is a big consideration for Republicans.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: They – you know, Trump has been – has –
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Sort of credibly ensconced himself in madman theory in a lot of ways, right?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like, people believe that Trump will do irrational things out of personal pique
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: because he has done it, right?
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like, supporting Ken Paxton in Texas over John Cornyn.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like, he is quite willing to do electorally self-destructive things
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: for Republicans to— Promote his own ego or his own financial interests
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: or whatever else.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: And he has shown that he will not face backlash from the Republican base for doing that, right?
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like there are no,
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: there are lots of conservative people who are freaking out about the possibility
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: of James Tallarico being the United States Senator.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: And almost none of those people are like mad at Donald Trump for having manifested
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: the circumstances in which that's plausible.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so I just like his dominance of the movement continues to be total.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I was thinking about this in terms of Charlie Kirk, actually.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Something that I've been following,
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: for months and months now is the view that the Mossad killed Charlie Kirk,
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: which I don't know.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how read in on this you are.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm aware that it exists as a theory and that the people who are propounding
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: the theory have gotten more and more and more elaborate about it.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's like a big online community about this.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like I actually had relatives come into town from Europe.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: They live in Europe and they were asking if there might be any merit to the idea
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: that a foreign government killed Charlie Kirk.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so I know it's out there, but I have just to like avoid going insane.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: I know how the QAnon conspiracy theory worked.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: I know how Bush 9-11 conspiracy theories worked.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: I have not sat down with this one to be like,
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: what's the cui bono or however you pronounce it of...
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: The Mossad killing Charlie Kirk.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: So the theory here,
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: which I do think is sort of worth people's time on,
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: the latest version of this,
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: which Brett Weinstein and Jimmy Dore are big into,
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: is they claim that they have evidence that an Israeli gun drone was launched from
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: a U.S. Army spy plane.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: I want to clarify that that is not true.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: You can see detailed debunkings of this.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: But what's always interesting with a conspiracy theory is like what intellectual
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: or political work does this conspiracy
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: theory do?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the theory of Israel killed Charlie is that Charlie Kirk was on the verge
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: of flipping from conventional pro-Israel Republican politics
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: to Tucker Carlson style anti-Israel politics.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: And there are a couple of strands of evidence for that proposition,
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: some text messages and things like this that Kirk sent,
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: because he is friends with Tucker and he – He's friends with Candace Owens.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, and he was taking some shit from donors for that.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: And he was expressing some frustration with his pro-Israel donors over that.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: So the theory is that like Charlie was primed to switch and he was like cooed
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: by some nefarious pro-Israel forces who took him out,
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: which is significant because it was then shortly after, um,
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: Not that shortly, but,
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: it was after Kirk's assassination that Trump initiated this war with Iran, right?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: So part of what the kind of like anti-Semitic right is like doing with this theory, right?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like they are trying to explain the objective political failure of Trump too, right?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like he is...
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: The most unpopular president that there has ever been at this point in time.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: The Iran War has been a big blow to Donald Trump's popularity.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the entirety of it, but it's clearly been a big blow.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so this idea that these nefarious Jewish forces derailed the history
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: of Trumpism is an effort to wrestle with and explain why Republicans are
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: in this state.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: And part of what I think is interesting about it is that you don't see –
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't see really anywhere else,
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: like in the,
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to say nowhere else on the right,
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: but nowhere else in the group of people who like voted for Trump in 2004
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: and were excited about the vibe shift.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's like no articles in the Free Press or the Daily Call or wherever it is
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: that are like taking stock.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like what went wrong here for Donald Trump?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like where were the points of overreach?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: Where were the missed opportunities?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like what did we do?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: The free press is presumably helping Elon Musk compile a whole database of Jewish DNA, right?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they think that that's fine, right?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Hang on.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: I want to pin that for a second.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll get back to it.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't totally understand what
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: work the Charlie Kirk conspiracy theory is doing
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: for people who want to make excuses about why Trump's second presidency failed,
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: right?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to go back to COVID, right?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: The early Republican interest in running down the question of
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: the Wuhan virology lab was pretextual.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: They wanted to find that the virus slipped out of this facility because to
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: the extent it was a Chinese government accident.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: It In some sense would absolve Trump from the fact that it spread around the world
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: and a bunch of people got sick.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas like if this is just a global public health crisis where it's possible that
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: the United States could have been of some use in like preventing the virus
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: from escaping China, then it looks worse for him, right?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like this was in their heads as they like sniffed around for evidence
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: that there was something to the lab leak theory.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: I get that.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: I get why if you're a strong Trump supporter and you're bought in this idea
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: that he is infallible, you need that to be true.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's really helpful for it to be true.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you need Trump to have been done in.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: By some shady Jews.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can just be like, well, Benjamin Netanyahu came and lied him into the war or whatever.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and they do that.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're like, there's a lot of truth to that quote unquote conspiracy theory.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And, and so like, to me,
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, like, like,
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking about the Charlie Kirk shooting anniversary because we're
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: in this weird news cycle, never ending, like most of August.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to start the clock back in 2023,
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: you can,
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: but most of August and continuing to the day where like Where everyone is scouring
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: the Democratic Party for evidence that they're becoming more tolerant
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: of anti-Semitism.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: And have they been sufficiently abject in their denunciations of Hassan Piker?
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: And meanwhile, Charlie Kirk campaigned with all these people.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: And he, as some liberals learned and were reminded in painful fashion
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: after he was assassinated, he said all kinds of racist shit all the time.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like the 9-11 anniversary too.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: What is it being marked by?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Is it being marked by Republicans just coming out and saying that the mayor
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: of New York should not participate in the anniversary ceremony because he happens
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: to be a Muslim?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Just like gutter racism.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm guessing that there's going to be some gutter racism at Trumpapalooza.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I alluded to the free press helping Elon Musk catalog Jewish DNA.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Elon Musk is on a bender.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Of like Nazi style race science about Jews.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I am like, okay.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like forever frustrated by the fact that like.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we have to draw some distinctions here.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: We need to just like bracket temporarily all stuff about antisemitism on the right.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Cause I think that's, that's a different consideration.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: I have heard this take a lot from people,
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: which is like,
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: why is there so much more attention to the question of anti-Semitism on
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: the left versus Islamophobia on the right?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's...
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: A different bucket of concern.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why isn't the media calling out Randy Fine's rabid Islamophobia, right?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's like, I could do that post on Blue Sky and like everybody would mash retweet on me.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think a question that we need to ask is like, is that what we want, right?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: So Pew did a poll in May.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, do Muslims have a negative, a positive, or a neutral impact on America?
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the results were 17% said positive, 42% said negative.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Compared with other Americans,
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Muslims are less patriotic, more patriotic, or neither more nor less.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: 43% said less patriotic, 4% said more patriotic.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: So...
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: One reason why Republicans
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: engage in overtly anti-Muslim rhetoric is that
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: they feel
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: that it's a winning issue for them.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not sure that elevating,
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: because this isn't like a college dorm,
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: right, where you can just like appeal to the RA.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if the RA says, that's bigoted and Islamophobic, like you lose, right?
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like the voters ultimately decide.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: And if we have a midterm contest that's about like positive or negative affect
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: toward Muslims, that's a...
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: And like a question that all members of vulnerable minority groups need
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: to ask themselves is like, how seriously do you take the problem?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you believe that like anti-Muslim views are like widespread and
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: a serious social issue in the United States of America,
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: which I think is quite plausibly true,
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: then it's like, Elevating that concern can be negative, right?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: this is just what like William Julius Wilson was writing about racism in the 80s
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: and 90s.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: He's somewhat changed his view around like 2019,
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: 2020, and isn't doing interviews anymore because he's elderly and I think not well.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: But in his classic work in the 20th century,
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: he was like, because American public opinion Is fairly racist.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's like not good for black Americans to have a lot
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: of like high profile public discussions of race and racism.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I think like on the Islamophobia question,
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: like that's the prior issue that I think it's like not really for me to say,
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think like,
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: but like.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let's break this down a bit because, because like.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you are a Muslim in America today.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: Much like,
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: not exactly like,
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: but much like if you were a black American in the 1950s,
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: you probably, you might think it's best to keep your head down.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: You might also think it's best to get my skull cracked because that's how you expose
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: the viciousness of the bigotry, right?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but 1950s seems like the wrong analogy to draw here.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm...
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: We are on a podcast.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: Pick the year that you think is most active.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no, no.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like, I actually think that the distinction matters, though, right?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because, like,
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: the reason, like,
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mentioned, like,
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Wilson's work on the 80s and 90s is that there is a difference between, like...
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Part of the nature of the civil rights movement, right,
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: was that African American leaders in the 1950s and 1960s were dealing with
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: a white public that was torn between thinking that like Jim Crow was kind
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: of manifestly unjust.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: But that also had a lot of anti-Black sentiment and public opinion, right?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like,
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: the point of a lot of this protest stuff,
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: the sit-ins,
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: the nonviolent resistance,
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: et cetera, et cetera, was to, like, raise the stakes, right?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: And be like,
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: you may not love Black people,
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: but are you really going to stand aside as,
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: you know, like, dogs are unleashed on children?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, et cetera, et cetera.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: And, like, amp it up.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not, like...
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: What's going on, right?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like the question is, is like Randy Fine just like says like revolting shit on Twitter.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's a view that it's like there should be some negative consequence for him.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: Clearly,
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: if Rashida Tlaib said about Jews what Randy Fine says about Muslims,
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: like it would be over for her, right?
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it's 100% fair to like observe that asymmetry.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: But the question is like, what do you actually want to do about it?
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay, okay.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is why I wanted to break it down because I think that you're putting too much
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: on Victims of discrimination,
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: like the objects of discrimination by saying like the strategically wise thing
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: to do is to not get yourself embroiled in civil rights politics
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: because it'll blow back.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: And they will point to...
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: How people have used empathy as a way to build their esteem in the eyes of the public.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think it would be a mistake,
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: even though it might technically be right on the polling,
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: for Mamdani to cave to this pressure campaign and to skip the 9-11 memorial.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: And like,
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: I don't believe that even like notwithstanding the polling data you cited,
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: that him standing up to them is the wiser political move, like both right and wise.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: And like Democrats would not be like raising the salience of something dangerous
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: by standing up for him against their attacks.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that's,
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: that's like the,
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: that's like the Muslim side of the question,
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: like Muslim activism side of the question.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: And also to some extent,
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: like the,
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: I get why Hakeem Jeffries isn't trying to do censure resolutions
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: about Randy Fine all the time.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think that the behavior of Islamophobes is inert.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: It just inures to their political benefit.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think when people actually see it manifested,
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: they'll be like, ooh, I'm not sure I really like that.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: So it's more dynamic than I think you're letting on.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: But then my frustration is not about really how this washes out come election time at all.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think that you are selling,
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you're selling journalists short or
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: if you are overestimating how crafty you think they are.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that your typical political journalism is Has in their head
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: a neutral model of what is and what isn't acceptable discourse,
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: or at least what was or wasn't prior to Trump.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that they know that there's no real moral distinction
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: between being publicly anti-Semitic and publicly Islamophobic.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: But somehow, in making news judgment about what is scandalous, they want...
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: John Ossoff,
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: the Jewish senator from Georgia to say that he thinks Hassan Piker is an anti-Semite
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: as if if he didn't,
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: maybe this Jewish senator from Georgia is himself an anti-Semite,
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: but they don't care at all about the bigoted things
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: that these Republicans are saying about Muslims.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, why aren't they doing their job well?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have anything else to say about this other than the poll data that I cited.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like,
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: I would like to hear from opinion leaders in the American Muslim community, like,
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: in all sincerity, like,
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: do they want friends and allies to spend a lot of time drawing attention
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: to Randy Fine's remarks on Muslims?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: Or do they think that that will be counterproductive?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: But, like, taking it seriously.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think the Piker thing, right?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Is like,
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: I
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: think the attacks on Hasan Piker are being,
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: are like, they're bad faith in the best possible sense, right?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like, the issue with Hasan Piker is
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: that Hasan Piker is constantly attacking mainstream Democrats, right?
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like, all the time, right?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like, just like the vast majority of Democrats, Kazan Piker said negative things about.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like, he's talked about how he hates the Democratic Party,
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: how he hates Joe Biden, how he hates Kamala Harris, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so, therefore, like...
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats,
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: like normal people,
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: do not like to see figures who hate them and want to destroy them gain prominence
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: in American society.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: So there is a lot of effort to say,
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: we are going to line up behind Abdul El-Sayed because he won the nomination
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: and we want a Senate majority.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: But they are concerned about Abdul winning, empowering the like anti-party faction on the left.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so it would be really helpful for like 80,
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: 90 percent of elected Democrats if Abdul was like, I'm done with Piker, right?
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: Rather than if Abdul and Piker campaign together,
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: win the general election, and then like Piker runs amok fucking their shit up.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that seems fair to me.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: If I, you know,
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: was a person who Hassan Piker is constantly saying he hates me and wants to see
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: and my career and my whole political party destroyed,
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: I would also want to see people sort of get him down.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what I think is like really fucked up is that,
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_01: you know, over the weekend, the American Jewish Committee, which...
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, has always been involved in Israel-related issues.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: But, like, the name is the American Jewish Committee, right?
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there are, like,
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: you can, there's an America-Israel Political Action Committee, whatever it's called.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there are There are institutions in the United States of America
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: that like you can join and give money to if your top thing
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: in life is America's relationship with Israel.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: The AJC is supposed to represent the interests of American Jews, qua American Jews.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: And they were like throwing a fit over the weekend
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: about Macklemore doing some free Palestine chant at a concert over the weekend.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: And they have like Fuck all to say about J.D.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Vance refusing to disavow Tucker Carlson,
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: about these Charlie Kirk assassination theories, about
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: the Trump administration actively promoting German far-right political parties.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's like they have really chosen institutionally,
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: and the Anti-Defamation League has been very similar,
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: to define the fight against anti-Semitism in America itself.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: Almost exclusively in terms of policing the boundaries around Israel,
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: like discourse about Israel.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's like a really catastrophic misjudgment.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: And Piker gets caught up in this among others, but it's like, it's really bad.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I think distinct from the like specific political calculus,
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: facing Democrats trying to navigate the midterms or something else like that.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the institutional leadership of Jewish institution in
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: the United States is just making like terrible,
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: terrible choice about their priorities.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I actually think that you understate it because I think Israel is obviously
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: a big part of the analysis,
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: but like it really does seem like all of those organizations have decided that
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: the only threat that matters to them is like some sort
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: of cultural left-wing critique of Israel, Zionism, et cetera.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that actually like –
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just like, Tucker Carlson says things that are anti-Israel.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: He also says things that are anti-Semitic, right?
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: And they give all of that a pass, right?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like, Piker, I think, has, he says things that are inflammatory.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: He says them in ways that kind of offend my sensibility as like a Jewish person.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is a conversation for me and my community to have,
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: and we don't need Instruction from you on how to best protect ourselves, right?
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think that he's like refers to stuff as like goyslop, right?
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: The way Tucker Carlson does.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: He knows the line and he toes it, but he stays on the anti-Israel side of it.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think it's like shabby, even though I understand why they do it, of Democrats to –
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Essentially just assert that he is an anti-Semite and then use that as a wedge
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: between him and Abdul El-Sayed when they haven't actually even won the debate over
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: the question, is Hassan Piker an anti-Semite?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: But meanwhile, there is a lot of anti-Semitism on the right.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Some of it pertains to Israel, but some of it just pertaining to Jews have inferior blood.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: And here again, reporters aren't doing their jobs, but also
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just the Democrats aren't attacking Randy Fine.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: They're not attacking Elon Musk.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: They're not saying,
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: you know, if Hassan Piker tried to donate five dollars to me, I'd turn it down.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: You guys are about to take hundreds of millions of dollars from this guy who
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: who says that Jewish blood is inferior.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: And most Jews actually don't have that much Jewish blood
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: and they should just embrace their whiteness.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like this is this is Elon Musk's message.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: I want to I want to.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: I want to dive in on what Elon Musk said there,
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: because I think,
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want you to get into libel lawsuits.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that I'm anywhere close, but hang on, I have the quote.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: I just need to pull it up real quick.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: What he said was,
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: he was on Twitter last week,
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: just in the mentions of various people,
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: including one gentleman who asked the question, Are Jews white?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: Is it Twitter, Paul?
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Elon Musk said, people are what they appear to be.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: Beyond that,
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: unless they can cite specific ACTG sequences,
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: that's DNA, So,
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to clarify, like, I agree that was an insane reply to the question.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: And Elon,
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: there's plenty of other just like anti-Semitic accounts
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: that Elon is constantly yucking it up with,
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: including like he has repeatedly,
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: like endorsed the view that Jews are like a pro-immigration fifth column in
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: the United States of America.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: But in that particular exchange, he did not say that Jews have inferior blood.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: He just said that the Jews he meets are phenotypically white, which I think is true.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, okay.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: The implication is that they would choose to be white
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: if they could just disenthrall themselves from their identitarian
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: belief
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: in their Jewishness.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that it's not actually inscribed in their genetics at all, or very much, right?
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: And... Like...
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you think that I'm being a little hot in imputing that part of it to him,
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: like that maybe he actually just thinks that these are separate but equal kinds
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: of blood and he's not actually bigoted about like the difference
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: between – I just think
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: he's saying that they aren't, right?
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean he is saying that he does not think that Jews – I guess I took him
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: to be saying that he does not believe that Ashkenazi Jews are genetically distinct
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: from other white Europeans.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, it's like a true white nationalist take, I think.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like he is like trying to appeal to the – but a philo-Semitic white nationalist take.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: And he's trying to appeal to universal whiteness.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: Distinct from these petty nationalisms of Europe,
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: which I think is very much a like,
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: you know, he's part of the white South African diaspora.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: And like, that's like his worldview.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's...
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's more like I can tell based on how Jewish somebody looks,
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: whether they have Jewish blood in them, right?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's what he's saying.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, and anyway,
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: either way,
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: however you interpreted it, my,
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: true to the text way,
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Matt's somewhat more generous way,
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: it is something that only a like race realist anti-Semite type person would say,
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, sure.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just, like I did my best.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Very best to try to get cable news anchors of high standing and Democrats
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: to be like, hey,
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: now it's not supposed rising anti-Semitism on
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: the left versus right-wing Islamophobia.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's just like the question of anti-Semitism.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: Does it matter?
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Is it politically relevant?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a scandal per se if political figures align With people who are deemed
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: to be anti-Semitic or seem to be anti-Semitic or are clearly anti-Semitic.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: And nevertheless, there's just like nothing like no.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, this raises concerns about blah, blah, blah.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: And no,
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: like if Democrats are concerned about the money situation in the election,
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: they could say like Republicans must condemn Elon Musk and refuse to take his money
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: because anti-Semitism is not OK in either party.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: But like.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's not there.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to agree with you about this.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think, Brian,
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: that your habit of locating all blame for everything in the world at the leadership
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: of the Democratic Party is leading you to miss the forest for the trees here.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: Which really is the ADL and the AJC and
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: the other like authoritative Jewish organizations in America.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that is what – like I cited Democrats.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: I cited mainstream media figures.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: I agree with you also.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: The ADL and the American Jewish Committee should care about this.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: But these are interacting – Sure, I agree.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: I agree.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: And, like, I would love to see Chuck Schumer, like, push further on this.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to see many, many figures push harder on this.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: I want a theory, I want a story,
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: like, to tell myself about why it— Why it is not working out this way?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because- But this is what I'm trying to say, right?
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you want, like,
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think the like root cause here is that the,
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: like the people who have ascended to leadership in Jewish institutions
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: in America have like truly decided that like what they care
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: about is consolidating pro-Israel politics.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: So Tucker Carlson,
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: they have some real- Qualms about not because Tucker,
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: like there was a Tucker Carlson clip that was going around today in
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: which he's talking to some guy and they're like yucking it up.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: They're like agreeing that algebra is fake somehow, that this is like a mind game.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then at the end,
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: they're like,
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: oh yeah,
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: they just like,
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: they want you to do math with letters so we can all be good goy slaves.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: And like, that's,
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: Part of an anti-Semitic discourse, clearly.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: But like, that's like not why
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: there's been like some criticism of Tucker.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's that Tucker goes hard against Israel as well as doing anti-Semitic stuff.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so there is some pushback against him, but like J.D.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: Vance did get questions.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like, won't you disavow your friend Tucker Carlson?
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: And he gave like a very vague disavowal.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: He's like,
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: I have some political disagreements with him,
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: but like we're friends and I don't think you should break up after politics.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then he wasn't like followed up on in a rabid kind of way.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: And there was this,
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: reporting about like Vance's appearance at the Republican Jewish coalition, right?
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: Where, you know, there were some skeptics.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: He's not Jewish Republicans' favorite figure.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: But, like, he came there and he just, like, reiterated that he is pro-Israel.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it seems like that is solid for them, right?
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just, like,
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: a catastrophic choice for the future of American Jews that is being made
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: by these leaders to, like, mortgage our...
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: Interests on behalf of like this
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: like fucking like Macklemore concert shit,
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: that's like,
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, man,
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: like you don't need to agree with his political takes,
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: but like people are just allowed to express their views about foreign policy.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it's always been like that.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: And like tying the banner of The problem with the word antisemitism is
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: that it's hard to say what the opposite of it is,
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: but anti-antisemitism,
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: to just endless policing of people's views on a foreign policy question,
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: rather than their views about diaspora Jews, is really bad.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: But it's a decision that has been...
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: Made and like re-inscribed over at least the past 10,
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: 15 years and like consciously doubled down on after October 7th.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, it's really bad.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: But we also know that the American Jews, because, you know,
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't say there's a lot of Jews in America, but there's a bunch.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: But the ones who are most attached to Jewish institutional life are also the most pro-Israel.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: so there's a lot of people like you and me and a million other kind
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: of like secular Jews bouncing around in left of center politics who are like annoyed
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: by this trend, but we don't have any pull.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like in the institutions that matter and that count and like we're fucked.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: I take all this,
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: it's like contingent on the concession that Schumer,
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: who I think does notice how much money Elon Musk spends on election,
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: elections should be out there saying they should return that money,
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: they should reject the money, whatever.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: It is a good,
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: it does not help me understand why people like Kristen Welker or like the,
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: like Both Dan Abash and Jake Tapper at CNN are like outside of like Twitter
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: and Blue Sky, like respected journalists in the like the Beltway community, right?
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: And they're also Jewish and they also like cover this question a lot,
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: both as it pertains to Israel and as it pertains to anti-Semitism,
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: the way you and I, think, understand it.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they all
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: hopped aboard the Hassan Piker discourse.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: They were part of the large contingent of journalists
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: who were buttonholing Democrats everywhere to get their condemnation.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: And just as a matter of like, okay, I'm a journalist.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm supposed to unearth facts and apply neutral standards to political actors and
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then report what shakes out of all that.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, do not feel like a inherent impulsion to be like, ah,
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: I need to apply this standard equally and go talk to some Republicans
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: about their friend Elon Musk.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but wait, wait, wait.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: And like,
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: this is the, I think maybe the insoluble problem in political journalism.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, in a totally different, like,
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: It reminds me of like the Clinton email obsession where on its own terms,
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: like if you zoom in enough,
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: you'd be like, oh,
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: I get why reporters want to know more about Hillary Clinton's record keeping
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: and email practices.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: But in the totality of the coverage,
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: it's like,
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: You misled everyone into believing that the less corrupt candidate was
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: the more corrupt candidate.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: And like the same thing is happening now is that an unfair
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: and imbalanced application of this standard to the Democratic Party is leaving a lot
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: of people with the misimpression that the party with
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: the bigger – Antisemitism problem is the Democratic Party, not the Republican Party.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a big problem unto itself.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: And OK, I want to defend Jake Tapper here.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in November 2023.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: Elon Musk said,
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: you have said the actual truth in response to like a super anti-Semitic tweet
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: from some anti-Semitic account out there.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: This was in fact like a huge controversy at the time that it happened.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: And he faced advertiser boycotts over it,
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: extensive coverage from Jake Tapper personally, et cetera.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: And like Musk was made to apologize.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then he was having apologized the next time he was at the New York Times Deal Book Summit.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: He was asked about it again.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: He apologized again.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: He said it was one of the dumbest things he'd ever done.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then like what happened after that is that the Jewish people Again,
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: like the Jewish institutions in America chose to accept the apology.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: And like, grant him his kosher certification.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: And like, that is the cause of the asymmetry.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: But why does it affect what Jake or any other journalist thinks is their obligation
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: to do when they're interviewing candidates in both parties?
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is like...
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: You don't understand why the official stance of the main...
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: Anti-Semitism organizations in America.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: I am being a little coy in that I understand that for a lot of journalists,
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: the idea of what constitutes scandalous behavior or bad behavior or
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: a story we're covering is whether it causes these like validators out there
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: to act angry, right?
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: I know that, but I don't think that it's right in any sense.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so we actually agree on what's happening.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: But like,
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: is there...
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: Why 10 years into the Trump presidency have these specific journalists,
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: but like the journalism community, media,
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: like the people who kind of inscribe the professional norms
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: that we all think we're adhering to be like, hey,
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: this isn't working because that party has figured out how to hack it
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: and make us chase a bunch of shiny objects and create false impressions about
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: the truth of things, right?
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so we need to,
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_00: we need to like Retrench further and like use our own judgment about what is fair
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: and what is, you know, to make coverage decisions.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: And like I think that there is a world in which it makes perfect sense.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: For journalists to only be interested in the question of whether Hassan Piker is
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: an anti-Semite, right?
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that world is one where Republicans just openly admit that in our mind,
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: big tent means that all bigots are welcome.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have any standards in that regards.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if media were to say, okay,
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: that's who the Republican Party is,
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: they're the party of bigots,
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: we're not going to hold them to a standard that they won't hold themselves to.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: But the Democrats say that they're the pluralist party.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so now we have to interrogate how sincere they are about that.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like that makes sense to me.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: That is like a logically coherent way to present information to voters, right?
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: The one that they've adopted through the whole Trump era that gave us
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: the email scandal, that gave us the Hunter Biden laptop.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: And now they're like, oh, rising antisemitism is a thing of the left.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: It is like, so like manifestly failed.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: It drives me- Failed at what?
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: Failed at like a method that creates clear and accurate information for the public.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: I just, I feel like we're agreeing.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, we are.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very frustrated by the situation and you're a smart guy and I am hoping
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: that you have some ideas about how we can wield whatever little influence we have
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: to make them- Do a better job at the journalism they do, right?
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: But I just don't think this is like a journal.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: When a Democrat says something that other Democrats are sincerely upset about,
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: that puts a dynamic in play.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: There are lots of Jewish Republicans.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: They did seem mad.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: At Elon Musk in November of 2023 about that tweet.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a big story.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: But like Elon and them successfully got to yes on like, we don't mind.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so the story goes away.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you can say that this reflects poorly on Jonathan Greenblatt at the ADL.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: You could say it reflects poorly on Randy Fine.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_01: You could say it reflects poorly on what's her name, Adelson.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Jared Kushner personally,
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: but it's like,
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think that throughout the Trump era,
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: there's been this yearning from Democrats for like
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: some set of like media referees
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: to like Solve political problems.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: They're the referee.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: They have to come in and say,
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_00: you're doing pro-Trump biased journalism, CNN, Jake Tapper, Dana Bash, whoever.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: And like make them reckon with the fact that they are actually
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_00: in their choices holding the parties to different standards, right?
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like my desire isn't like,
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: it's for somebody who is like tuning in late because they're
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: a low information voter,
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: but they want a little bit of information about what's happening in politics
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: so they know how to cast their ballot.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: For them to tune in.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: To a little bit of CNN or, or,
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: or glance over the headlines on a newspaper and,
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: and walk away with a correct impression.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: But like say you are like typical Jewish American, right?
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: Kicking around and you're against antisemitism and you're strongly pro-Israel
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: and you think that, uh, Strident critics of Israel are bad anti-Semites.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so you impressionistically gather that the Republicans are the party
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: that will be pro-Israel.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the Democrats seem pretty divided on this question now.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're...
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: You're drawing the correct – so I just – like I don't actually think
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: that people are being like misinformed or confused about this.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I do.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think that like – I think that
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: the very,
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: very idiosyncratic but highly represented in professional Democratic Party politics,
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_01: secular Jews who are pretty skeptical of Israel –
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: Are really frustrated by the way other Jews.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: We are not the center of anyone's universe.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think that if you poll an average American,
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: so definitely not a secular Jewish liberal,
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: they would say that anti-Semitism is bad.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if asked to define it, they would not say...
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: Criticism of Israel.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: They would say the hatred of Jews as people, right?
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, again,
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: like this is a question of like,
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_01: why have Jewish institutions adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism?
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: That is a good question, too.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I kind of feel like the institutions that have in the past proven
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_00: at least somewhat responsive to internal critique and to like ref working
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: and stuff like that is the media.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm trying to do my part, but
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: I can't even persuade you.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: We got to take a break here.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: We got to go from APAC to AIPAC.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: Make it happen.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_00: See what a digital overlords will do.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know what?
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: The good thing about rising antisemitism on the left and right is that none
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: of it matters because what's going to kill the Jews is AI.
• 51:05
  Okay.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to hear that conversation, go to politics.fm and upgrade your subscription.