Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 10/21/26: Trump’s Bizarre Sexual Comments At Rally, GOP Early Vote Panic, Auto Loan Crisis

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10/21/26: Trump’s Bizarre Sexual Comments At Rally, GOP Early Vote Panic, Auto Loan Crisis · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

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Speaker 2: at the top for free today.
0:18
Speaker 4: Well, it looks like early voting patterns appear to favor Democrats.
0:21
Speaker 4: Let's start with the president, who's really clearly feeling the
0:25
Speaker 4: heat right now, trotting on a new campaign tactic. And
0:28
Speaker 4: then we'll break down why Republicans, in addition to the polls,
0:31
Speaker 4: but when you're starting to look at some of this
0:33
Speaker 4: hard facts on the ground, there's polling, there's where the
0:35
Speaker 4: money is moving, but then also early voting patterns that
0:37
Speaker 4: tell us why the president might be using lines like
0:41
Speaker 4: this one, D1.
0:42
Speaker 5: If you want to see what is at stake in
0:44
Speaker 5: this election, just look at what's happening in France, a
0:48
Speaker 5: once great nation that is being conquered, looted, and burned
0:52
Speaker 5: to the ground by migrants, jihadists, and communists who hate Christianity,
0:58
Speaker 5: and they hate, frankly, the Western civilization itself. And as
1:04
Speaker 5: we're seeing in Europe, globalist left-wing politicians have treasonously imported
1:10
Speaker 5: millions and millions of third-world migrants who are totally incompatible
1:15
Speaker 5: with West, and they are incompatible with Western values. They
1:21
Speaker 5: despise everything about France, and they're destroying that country. And
1:26
Speaker 5: we're not going to let that happen to this country.
1:29
Speaker 4: OK, so tough to make the argument in a place
1:33
Speaker 4: like North Carolina or Kansas that, listen, these are.
1:37
Speaker 2: Kansas will burn.
1:38
Speaker 4: This is, yeah, they're not exactly, they're not like exactly
1:41
Speaker 4: even like an Abdul El-Sayed populace, like an Adam Hamilton
1:44
Speaker 4: or certainly Roy Cooper. And these are the places where
1:47
Speaker 4: Trump has been for his week, his week of rallies. Now,
1:50
Speaker 4: he was in Kentucky and cannot, cannot stop talking about
1:55
Speaker 4: John Husted in Ohio.
1:58
Speaker 1: D2, let's listen.
1:59
Speaker 6: He came up, and he was talking very nicely. And
2:01
Speaker 6: I stood right over here, and I examined his ass.
2:06
Speaker 6: I never did that with.
2:08
Speaker 6: No, I never did that with a man before. I
2:12
Speaker 6: examined his ass, and then I looked at his shoulders.
2:14
Speaker 6: I looked at his feet. I looked at his hand.
2:18
Speaker 6: I looked at his jawline.
2:20
Speaker 7: Studying.
2:21
Speaker 2: He's got a jawline.
2:22
Speaker 7: This is.
2:23
Speaker 6: You would be very unfortunate if you picked a fight
2:26
Speaker 6: with him at a bar someday.
2:27
Speaker 7: You want to?
2:28
Speaker 6: Give me that seat. No, I'm not going to give
2:30
Speaker 6: you the seat. But I then patted him on the shoulder,
2:34
Speaker 6: and it was like a piece of steel. I said,
2:37
Speaker 6: I'm still recovering, my hand. I was like, so he's
2:41
Speaker 6: over here, I'm over here, and I'm studying his body.
2:45
Speaker 6: I've never studied the body of a man before.
2:47
Speaker 2: It's not my thing. Nothing wrong with it, of course. Nothing.
2:52
Speaker 6: I always proceeded by saying nothing wrong, but it's never
2:56
Speaker 6: been my thing, to be honest with you. But I
2:59
Speaker 6: looked at his ass. And then I looked at his legs.
3:06
Speaker 6: And I said, his ass is like, it's like a
3:10
Speaker 6: pile of muscle. Then I looked at his legs and
3:14
Speaker 6: I said, man, his feet are big. Then I looked
3:17
Speaker 6: at his shoulders and I tapped him on the shoulder
3:20
Speaker 6: and it actually hurt my hand. It was like a
3:24
Speaker 6: piece of steel. And he said, this guy's a monster.
3:27
Speaker 1: You can't be mad at that, Ryan. I mean, Ryan
3:32
Speaker 1: was cracking up.
3:33
Speaker 3: Imagine you're John Husted. You're going to lose to Sherrod Brown.
3:37
Speaker 3: It looks like you're going to lose Sherrod Brown on
3:39
Speaker 3: the way out. You're just getting a nice little pat.
3:41
Speaker 4: Sherrod Brown does not have the ass that John Husted has.
3:44
Speaker 4: All that work for nothing.
3:46
Speaker 2: I'm going to take his word for it.
3:47
Speaker 4: We don't know because we haven't heard from Trump how
3:50
Speaker 4: that would compare. But probably a more winning argument than...
3:55
Speaker 4: half of the other things he's been saying on the
3:57
Speaker 4: campaign trail, to be.
3:58
Speaker 1: Honest, and it's not even an argument. So it's not working, apparently.
4:02
Speaker 1: Let's read some of the tea leaves here. This is D3.
4:06
Speaker 4: According to the Texas Tribune, Texas voter registration is breaking
4:11
Speaker 4: a record. So it's at 19 million so far. Registrations
4:14
Speaker 4: are up 2.2 percent from the last major general election
4:17
Speaker 4: in 2024, up 2 percent from primary elections in March,
4:21
Speaker 4: and the latest figures are also, get this, 7.7% higher
4:25
Speaker 4: than the last midterm elections in November 2022.
4:28
Speaker 1: Interestingly, some of.
4:30
Speaker 4: The suburbs, some of the fast-growing suburbs, they say, are
4:33
Speaker 4: seeing some of the biggest growth. Texas obviously had a
4:36
Speaker 4: lot of people migrate to the suburbs from places like California, Washington,
4:41
Speaker 4: like blue states, people who are not necessarily like hardcore Republicans,
4:45
Speaker 4: but didn't like pandemic restrictions or felt like they're paying
4:48
Speaker 4: too much in taxes, didn't like the way some of
4:49
Speaker 4: the cities were being run, moved to Texas, but they're not,
4:52
Speaker 4: you know, like dyed in the wool Texas Republicans. They're
4:54
Speaker 4: not like Ken Paxton lovers.
4:58
Speaker 1: And interestingly, there's also a poll of CBS Austin.
5:01
Speaker 4: CBS Austin says, according to the University of Houston's Hobby
5:04
Speaker 4: School of Public Affairs, Independence, 60% of independents say they
5:09
Speaker 4: plan to vote for Tallarico. Only 32 say they plan
5:11
Speaker 4: to vote for Ken Paxton. And the reason I bring
5:13
Speaker 4: that up is when you're looking at fast-growing suburbs with
5:16
Speaker 4: high voter registration, some people might say, well, maybe they're
5:18
Speaker 4: really excited to go for Paxton. I think that's really unlikely. Independents,
5:23
Speaker 4: according to Quinnipiac Nationwide, are swinging for Democrats as well.
5:26
Speaker 4: So something to keep in mind as we go through
5:28
Speaker 4: the rest of these numbers. Early voting up as well,
5:31
Speaker 4: D4 in Texas. So this is early vote tracking that
5:36
Speaker 4: shows James Tallarico, according to their modeling here, VoteHub's modeling, 47.3%
5:43
Speaker 4: to 56.6% for Tallarico, 41.2% to 50.5% is their expected
5:49
Speaker 4: margin based on the modeling of where those votes are
5:52
Speaker 4: coming in.
5:52
Speaker 1: That's VoteHub's data. D5, we can go to Virginia.
5:55
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so more than 700,000 people voted.
5:58
Speaker 3: The only caution I would give on this is that
6:03
Speaker 3: people are comparing this to 2024.
6:05
Speaker 2: Yes, 2024 is a presidential year.
6:07
Speaker 1: Right.
6:07
Speaker 3: 2026 is a midterm. One of the differences is that there's, what, 7%
6:13
Speaker 3: more people. So when you're comparing aggregate, like, well, there's
6:16
Speaker 3: more people. But also there are a lot more voting locations. 2024,
6:20
Speaker 3: there were more restrictions in place. And that's been opened
6:23
Speaker 3: up a little bit. So it's easier for people to vote.
6:26
Speaker 3: And I think the voting lasts like two more hours
6:29
Speaker 3: or something into the evening. So Democrats who are super
6:32
Speaker 3: excited about the fact that they're crushing expectations say it's
6:37
Speaker 3: not apples to apples. But the fact that it's presidential
6:41
Speaker 3: versus midterm, it cuts the other direction.
6:44
Speaker 2: Anyway, go ahead.
6:45
Speaker 4: And also I think in Texas where we're seeing some
6:47
Speaker 4: of it, like we were talking about the suburbs, that's
6:48
Speaker 4: I think genuinely interesting. But those would be the places
6:50
Speaker 4: that also just have more people. So worth noting that.
6:53
Speaker 4: Let's go to Virginia. Virginia, the early vote versus the
6:56
Speaker 4: same point in 2022, huge increase.
6:58
Speaker 1: It was 417,867 in 2022.
6:58
Speaker 4: According to data right now, TargetSmart's data right now, 709,219.
7:00
Speaker 4: So that is a very, very big jump in early
7:01
Speaker 4: voting in Virginia, obviously a pretty blue state.
7:03
Speaker 1: There should be a second one there that shows who
7:06
Speaker 1: those people are voting for.
7:23
Speaker 2: And it's Democrats.
7:24
Speaker 1: It's Democrats.
7:24
Speaker 2: But anyway, go ahead.
7:25
Speaker 1: There you go. Yeah, well, no, it's... Let's go to Florida.
7:29
Speaker 1: According to.
7:30
Speaker 2: Not who they're voting for, who they are. Right. They
7:32
Speaker 2: could be voting for anybody, but they're registered Democrats.
7:34
Speaker 1: Yes, makes sense.
7:36
Speaker 4: Jason Frascatore, data analyst, points out that Florida vote by
7:39
Speaker 4: mail and in-person early voting as of October 20th. Florida's
7:43
Speaker 4: now surpassed 10% statewide live turnout and over 1.3 million votes.
7:47
Speaker 4: Democrats increased their lead by a lot compared to the
7:49
Speaker 4: 3 p.m.
7:50
Speaker 1: Update. So statewide vote total.
7:51
Speaker 4: Is 577,903 from Dems, 518,729 from Republicans, and around 300,000
7:53
Speaker 4: from others. So again, more good news for Democrats. And
7:55
Speaker 4: if we go to the final element here, this is
7:56
Speaker 4: from a New York Times chart. Presidential approval heading into
8:11
Speaker 4: midterm share of Americans who approved of the president's job
8:13
Speaker 4: performance in each midterm election year. Ryan pointed this out
8:17
Speaker 4: in the show, another point in the show. Harry Truman,
8:20
Speaker 4: the only president to have a lower approval rating heading
8:24
Speaker 4: into midterms than Donald Trump in modern history.
8:27
Speaker 1: That was 1946.
8:28
Speaker 4: Harry Truman was at 33 percent. Donald Trump, 34 percent.
8:32
Speaker 1: George W.
8:33
Speaker 4: Bush was higher at this point in his presidency than Uh, 37%, 37%.
8:40
Speaker 4: Joe Biden was pretty low, 41%, but Trump is almost,
8:43
Speaker 4: I mean, Trump is running significantly behind Joe Biden in 2022,
8:47
Speaker 4: significantly behind.
8:49
Speaker 1: Himself in 2018.
8:50
Speaker 4: He was at 42%, eight points behind himself in 2018.
8:56
Speaker 3: So Trump is, Trump is unifying, Trump is unifying the
8:59
Speaker 3: country against him. And one, one way that the, these
9:04
Speaker 3: early voting, and then we can move on, um, uh,
9:07
Speaker 3: what these early voting numbers might actually be undercounting the
9:10
Speaker 3: wave is that there's just kind of an assumption like, oh,
9:14
Speaker 3: look at all these registered Republicans who have come out. So, yeah, OK,
9:16
Speaker 3: there's more Democrats that have voted than Republicans. That's not
9:19
Speaker 3: that's bad for Republicans, but at least those Republicans voted.
9:22
Speaker 3: But as callers to your show have suggested and lots
9:25
Speaker 3: of other anecdotal and also polling evidence suggests, a significant
9:29
Speaker 3: chunk of Republicans are moving away from Trump.
9:32
Speaker 4: Or Trump voters, people who voted Republican in 2020, 2022,
9:36
Speaker 4: and especially 2022, but then 2024, when they felt like
9:40
Speaker 4: it was kind of peak cultural leftism.
9:43
Speaker 3: So just because a Republican is turning in a mail
9:45
Speaker 3: ballot doesn't mean that's a vote for a Republican in
9:48
Speaker 3: the House or Senate.
9:49
Speaker 1: That's a good point.
9:51
Speaker 4: And you can say the same thing about Democrats in
9:53
Speaker 4: a place like Ohio, like Rust Belt places, like people
9:56
Speaker 4: who have just consistently voted Dem and then after Obama
9:58
Speaker 4: flipped for Trump. But that would be hard to make
10:01
Speaker 4: now in 2026 because it's not a lot of.
10:03
Speaker 1: There wasn't a lot of change from 24 to 20.
10:05
Speaker 1: Ryan is showing me.
10:07
Speaker 4: Right now the Judge Report lead story, which the headline
10:10
Speaker 4: is Trump thirsts over male senators body, quote, ass like a.
10:13
Speaker 1: Pile of muscle. All the president's hotties. That's a good
10:17
Speaker 1: place to leave it. So that's really what this election
10:19
Speaker 1: comes down to.
10:20
Speaker 2: Great closing message from Trump here.
10:21
Speaker 1: Who does Donald Trump think is hotter? That's how you
10:24
Speaker 1: should vote.
10:25
Speaker 6: Yeah.
10:25
Speaker 1: All right. Well, let's go ahead and get to more
10:28
Speaker 1: bad news, this time in the economy.
10:32
Speaker 3: Things not looking good out there in the economy. I'm
10:35
Speaker 3: going to put up E2 here. Delinquent auto loans are
10:38
Speaker 3: absolutely surging. And the reason that this is And this
10:43
Speaker 3: is this car buzz, but others are reporting this to
10:45
Speaker 3: one point seven trillion dollar market might be on the
10:47
Speaker 3: verge of collapse.
10:48
Speaker 2: They say the reason.
10:50
Speaker 3: That this is so such a glaring red light to
10:55
Speaker 3: the economy is that.
10:56
Speaker 2: Think about it.
10:58
Speaker 3: What is one of the last things that you're going
11:01
Speaker 3: to stop paying? It's your car note.
11:04
Speaker 6: Yeah.
11:05
Speaker 3: You in fact, you're often you stop paying your rent
11:09
Speaker 3: off and forth. before you stop paying your car note.
11:12
Speaker 3: Because rent, you can fight your landlord and maybe you
11:18
Speaker 3: can get some kind of agreement or get on a
11:20
Speaker 3: payment plan or something. And maybe you can get another
11:23
Speaker 3: apartment if you do get evicted six months later after
11:27
Speaker 3: you're fighting with the landlord.
11:29
Speaker 2: Your car note, though, if you lose your car, you
11:32
Speaker 2: lose your job.
11:33
Speaker 4: You can live out of your car if you're a
11:34
Speaker 4: real dire straits, or you can drive home to live
11:36
Speaker 4: with your parents.
11:37
Speaker 1: Your car is the lifeline.
11:39
Speaker 3: And so it's not just intuitive, but economists will tell
11:42
Speaker 3: you that statistically the car note is the thing that
11:45
Speaker 3: people pay before they pay everything else. And also because
11:51
Speaker 3: it's easier for the capitalist to snatch your car than
11:54
Speaker 3: it is to snatch your apartment. They can take you
11:58
Speaker 3: to court and change the locks, but there's a lot
12:00
Speaker 3: more protections. You can go to landlord-tenant court. You can
12:03
Speaker 3: start making payments. And certainly when it comes to student
12:07
Speaker 3: loans or credit card debt or other things, the consequences
12:13
Speaker 3: are less immediate. If you get your car repossessed, it's gone.
12:17
Speaker 3: You just go out with your keys. You're looking like, wait,
12:22
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure I parked it here.
12:24
Speaker 1: Nowhere to go.
12:25
Speaker 2: And now it's gone.
12:26
Speaker 3: And so now you call in and you're like, I'm
12:30
Speaker 3: going to be late today because I don't have a car.
12:34
Speaker 3: And you do that a couple of times, you're fired.
12:37
Speaker 3: And now you're really screwed. So that's why when they
12:41
Speaker 3: start seeing auto loan delinquencies ticking up significantly, it's a
12:45
Speaker 3: sign that everything else is much worse.
12:49
Speaker 2: Like this is the last thing. This tends to be
12:52
Speaker 2: the last thing to go.
12:54
Speaker 3: And meanwhile, of course, we've been chopping up all these
12:58
Speaker 3: auto loans and putting them in the financial blender and
13:04
Speaker 3: then serving them as these AAA smoothies to investors, throwing
13:08
Speaker 3: them into pension funds and everything else, saying, okay, yes,
13:12
Speaker 3: every one of these loans by itself is bad, but
13:14
Speaker 3: we mixed them all together and now they're good. You
13:17
Speaker 3: may remember that from such films as everything about the
13:22
Speaker 3: great financial crisis.
13:24
Speaker 4: You may. Speaking of which, by the way, why don't
13:26
Speaker 4: we even skip to E5 here? The Free Press had
13:29
Speaker 4: a genuinely good article by Bethany McLean, who literally wrote
13:37
Speaker 4: one of the big books about the financial crisis and
13:39
Speaker 4: is saying basically.
13:40
Speaker 2: That Oh, she wrote the Enron book, right?
13:51
Speaker 1: Oh, the Enron book. I'm sorry, that's what it was, Enron.
13:53
Speaker 4: And is asking, are data centers the next big short,
13:57
Speaker 4: or are they the next Enron? And when you look
13:59
Speaker 4: at the circular financing, which we've covered a lot here,
14:02
Speaker 4: you have NVIDIA investing in the AI companies who are
14:05
Speaker 4: then dependent on NVIDIA.
14:06
Speaker 1: And all of that. It's an open question.
14:09
Speaker 4: One of the things she writes is that when you
14:12
Speaker 4: talk to experts about the... This is a great line.
14:17
Speaker 1: She says.
14:18
Speaker 4: This might lead to the most profound difference between the
14:20
Speaker 4: AI boom and the sagas of Enron and the global
14:22
Speaker 4: financial crisis. In the latter two, the smartest people I
14:25
Speaker 4: knew were skeptics. It was the dumb money that kept
14:27
Speaker 4: the party going. This time, I know very smart people
14:29
Speaker 4: on both sides of the argument. Last week, notwithstanding, it's
14:31
Speaker 4: going to be a while before we know who's right.
14:34
Speaker 4: Very smart people on both sides of the argument. Now,
14:36
Speaker 4: you don't have to even be a very smart person
14:37
Speaker 4: to say, how is OpenAI paying for all these data
14:40
Speaker 4: centers if they're not? profiting, if they're not turning a
14:43
Speaker 4: profit in any given year, but they're spending all this
14:45
Speaker 4: money on the data centers. Yeah, it's a huge problem.
14:48
Speaker 4: And actually, let's go ahead and put this next element
14:51
Speaker 4: up on the screen, E2.
14:52
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, not E2. Let's put E3 up on the screen.
14:55
Speaker 4: This is from the National Association of Realtors, released Tuesday,
14:59
Speaker 4: a report that showed home sales at a record low.
15:04
Speaker 4: They started doing this in 2001.
15:06
Speaker 1: Record low.
15:07
Speaker 4: The pending home sales index tumbled 7.3% to 66% last month.
15:13
Speaker 4: Record low since 2001, monthly home sales.
15:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, and these things are related because the AI build-out
15:23
Speaker 3: is relying on trillions at this point of dollars of
15:29
Speaker 3: capital pouring in.
15:32
Speaker 2: Much of it is pouring in by way of debt. Mm-hmm.
15:37
Speaker 2: What that debt is doing is crowding out all the
15:40
Speaker 2: other debt.
15:41
Speaker 3: It's a real vivid example of this idea of crowding
15:45
Speaker 3: out that they often talk about when it relates to
15:47
Speaker 3: government borrowing, but you're actually seeing it happen in a
15:51
Speaker 3: real and visceral way. So in other words, if you
15:55
Speaker 3: are somebody who wants to buy bonds, because there's so
15:58
Speaker 3: many of these data center bonds, what that means is
16:04
Speaker 3: that if you are a.
16:06
Speaker 3: Homebuyer or if you're like just Pepsi Cola or something,
16:10
Speaker 3: you now have to pay a much higher interest rate
16:13
Speaker 3: to attract investors because there's so much debt out there.
16:16
Speaker 3: Investors can just go and get debt from OpenAI or
16:20
Speaker 3: Claude or whatever. And so what that's doing is it's
16:24
Speaker 3: just driving up interest rates and driving up mortgage rates
16:27
Speaker 3: as well. So not only is your electric bill up
16:30
Speaker 3: because of these data centers, but your mortgage rates are.
16:35
Speaker 2: Way up too. And that's the thing that is seizing
16:40
Speaker 2: the housing market up.
16:41
Speaker 4: And if we put the Axios tariff sheet up next,
16:44
Speaker 4: this looks like it's only going to get worse because
16:46
Speaker 4: they report the number of housing units started by builders
16:49
Speaker 4: fell 5.2 percent last month, according to the Census Bureau,
16:52
Speaker 4: to 1.22 million. That's down 7.4% year over year and
16:57
Speaker 4: near post-pandemic lows. So housing units starting is falling. Sales
17:02
Speaker 4: are at a record low since 2001, according to the
17:05
Speaker 4: National Association of Realtors. So that's foreboding.
17:11
Speaker 2: That's not good.
17:12
Speaker 3: And just to give Bethany McLean her flowers, yes, she
17:16
Speaker 3: wrote a very prescient 2001 piece on Enron.
17:20
Speaker 2: She was then co-author of the book. The Smartest Guys
17:23
Speaker 2: in the Room.
17:24
Speaker 5: Yes.
17:24
Speaker 2: It's like the seminal book on Enron.
17:26
Speaker 3: And then she wrote All the Devils Are Here, which
17:28
Speaker 3: is a seminal book on the 2008 financial crisis. So
17:33
Speaker 3: she has the credibility to weigh in on the AI
17:36
Speaker 3: financial engineering and to say, uh-oh. And you were circulating
17:42
Speaker 3: an amazing chart recently that showed that the amount of
17:47
Speaker 3: investment into the AI bubble.
17:50
Speaker 2: Relative to GDP is greater than.
17:52
Speaker 7: Oh, my God.
17:52
Speaker 3: Substantially than our investment in the Internet, investment in radio,
17:57
Speaker 3: in railroads and even canals before that.
18:00
Speaker 1: I knew you were going to mention the canals. You
18:01
Speaker 1: immediately latched on.
18:02
Speaker 4: To the canals because you were like, that was a
18:04
Speaker 4: massive capital investment.
18:05
Speaker 2: That was our first bubble. Yeah, that was the canal bubble.
18:08
Speaker 1: It's not even close. Right. Not even close. Right.
18:11
Speaker 2: So we were digging up half the country.
18:14
Speaker 4: Shaky and they had that's the like and this is
18:16
Speaker 4: to the mclean article she's saying they're very smart people
18:19
Speaker 4: very very fine people uh very smart people on both
18:21
Speaker 4: sides of this argument about whether this is a bubble
18:24
Speaker 4: and previously there was nobody except for maybe one or
18:27
Speaker 4: two people like in the wilderness saying that we might
18:30
Speaker 4: have been in a bubble so that in and of
18:32
Speaker 4: itself is kind of an argument we're in a bubble
18:35
Speaker 4: like we never detected any of it before so uh
18:38
Speaker 4: add another notch to the bubble.
18:40
Speaker 3: Column yeah things are looking bleak all right let's uh
18:43
Speaker 3: Let's bring in Noga. All right, new surveys this week
18:48
Speaker 3: show the opposition moving ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
18:52
Speaker 3: ahead of the elections this coming Tuesday. Joining us to
18:57
Speaker 3: discuss all of this is Israeli journalist Noga Tarnopolsky.
19:00
Speaker 2: Noga, joining us from Jerusalem, thank you so much for
19:04
Speaker 2: being here.
19:05
Speaker 7: My pleasure, Ryan.
19:06
Speaker 3: All right, so our understanding is that neither the opposition
19:10
Speaker 3: camp or Netanyahu's camp at this point have a majority
19:15
Speaker 3: outright without the two Palestinian parties, which are expected to
19:18
Speaker 3: get about 14, 15 seats in the Knesset, but that
19:23
Speaker 3: the opposition has been willing to form a government with
19:27
Speaker 3: the Palestinian parties. And if the surveys, as they are
19:31
Speaker 3: being rolled out this week, are accurate, and my understanding
19:34
Speaker 3: is they tend to be accurate at this point in
19:35
Speaker 3: the election, that with the Palestinian parties and the opposition,
19:38
Speaker 3: there would be enough to form a government that would
19:42
Speaker 3: oust Netanyahu. How would you describe the current state of
19:48
Speaker 3: affairs with just now less than a week to go
19:50
Speaker 3: before the election?
19:52
Speaker 7: Well, the main thing I would say is very, very tense,
19:55
Speaker 7: and there's a real feeling in Israel that Prime Minister
19:59
Speaker 7: Netanyahu could do anything to even still try and postpone
20:02
Speaker 7: the elections. This is being said by former Prime Minister Bennett,
20:07
Speaker 7: by the leading opposition candidate, Eisenkot. There is a very
20:11
Speaker 7: clear sense that Netanyahu will do everything he can. he
20:15
Speaker 7: hasn't been able to do everything he wanted to do.
20:18
Speaker 7: For example, his party requested a ban on these Arab-majority
20:24
Speaker 7: Palestinian Arab-Israeli parties. I'm making a bit of a model
20:28
Speaker 7: of how I'm defining them because there are Palestinian citizens
20:32
Speaker 7: of Palestine, of the Palestinian Authority, who are not Israeli citizens.
20:37
Speaker 7: And here we're talking about complete Israeli citizens who are
20:41
Speaker 7: of Palestinian ethnicity or identify as Arab Israelis or Palestinians.
20:46
Speaker 7: So the parties that are not uniformly Arab but that
20:50
Speaker 7: are majority Arab parties, they could be the kingmaker here.
20:55
Speaker 7: But we don't really know. What we do know is
20:58
Speaker 7: that the last time anyone beat Netanyahu, which was in 2021,
21:04
Speaker 7: A government formed by the man who became Prime Minister Bennett,
21:09
Speaker 7: who is absolutely a right-winger. There's no question about that.
21:15
Speaker 7: He did form a government with one of these two
21:19
Speaker 7: majority Arab parties that is itself a very conservative party.
21:24
Speaker 7: It's an Islamist party. It's not in any way— I don't
21:29
Speaker 7: want to make any implications. It's a completely mainstream party.
21:32
Speaker 7: just very conservative and is conservative in a religious way.
21:38
Speaker 7: But it wants explicitly, and its leader wants to join
21:41
Speaker 7: into the next Israeli government. It's the main platform point
21:46
Speaker 7: of Mansour Abbas, the very, very interesting leader of this party,
21:51
Speaker 7: who appointed not just a Jew, but a former deputy
21:56
Speaker 7: head of the Israel police and internal security man, Yoav Segalovich,
22:02
Speaker 7: to be his number two. So he is explicitly not
22:06
Speaker 7: going in a kind of Arab nationalist direction. He explicitly
22:10
Speaker 7: wants to be part of the government. It's hard for
22:12
Speaker 7: me to imagine any opposition government that would turn that down.
22:16
Speaker 4: So this is very interesting. Reuters had a piece on
22:19
Speaker 4: this with a dateline in Nazareth. I wanted to get
22:21
Speaker 4: your take on Noga, where they're kind of breaking down
22:24
Speaker 4: for Americans. The Israeli election process is foreign. It's just
22:28
Speaker 4: so different from how we do our elections, obviously, as
22:30
Speaker 4: parliamentary and you're electing people vote for party. And then
22:33
Speaker 4: you go to the Knesset and take the top 50
22:35
Speaker 4: that have been selected by each party. They get representation
22:37
Speaker 4: in the Knesset and then they vote and elect a leader.
22:39
Speaker 1: So the alliances are really important.
22:41
Speaker 4: Can you break down for us how Arab voter turnout
22:44
Speaker 4: could affect what the makeup of the Knesset looks like
22:47
Speaker 4: and then who is elected prime minister? Just explain to
22:50
Speaker 4: us what those, I guess, alliances and numbers would add
22:54
Speaker 4: up to to get a different outcome than Netanyahu being president.
22:57
Speaker 4: It would be Eisenkot, certainly, right?
23:00
Speaker 7: So no one is going to be president because- A
23:02
Speaker 7: prime minister, yes. Yes. Israel has a president, and he's
23:06
Speaker 7: not part of the government.
23:07
Speaker 6: Right.
23:07
Speaker 7: Like, what remains in former mandatory Israel from the British mandate,
23:12
Speaker 7: whatever you want to call that.
23:15
Speaker 1: Prime minister.
23:16
Speaker 7: Yeah, so- In terms of primacy, let me just take
23:19
Speaker 7: a step back, because it really is a Baroque system,
23:23
Speaker 7: and I'll try and break it down. Basically, whoever is
23:28
Speaker 7: the leader of either the largest party, elected the party
23:33
Speaker 7: that gets the most votes for the parliament, the Knesset,
23:37
Speaker 7: or the leader of the party that is part of
23:41
Speaker 7: the largest Knesset bloc. So there are blocs that are
23:45
Speaker 7: natural allies. The opposition in this case, the opposition to
23:51
Speaker 7: Benjamin Netanyahu is really like the widest possible tent you
23:56
Speaker 7: can imagine going all the way from, I would say,
24:00
Speaker 7: at the really right hand end of this, Avigdor Lieberman.
24:05
Speaker 7: He's sort of an old school, hard right guy. He
24:09
Speaker 7: believes in democracy and law and order, but he's very
24:13
Speaker 7: much a hard right nationalist. All the way to, I
24:17
Speaker 7: don't know if we're going to define the other end
24:19
Speaker 7: either by Ra'am, that's called the United Arab List, officially
24:24
Speaker 7: run by Mansour Abbas, who started his career as a
24:27
Speaker 7: dentist up in the Israeli north, or if we'll go
24:31
Speaker 7: to the largest center-left mixed party. Also, this is a
24:36
Speaker 7: party that is majority Jewish but has Arab candidates called
24:40
Speaker 7: the Democrats. And that party, as you can imagine, is
24:45
Speaker 7: running on a platform of basically trying to preserve what
24:48
Speaker 7: still can of Israeli democracy. The Netanyahu bloc is the
24:53
Speaker 7: bloc we know. It's the current coalition. It's a very,
24:56
Speaker 7: very right-wing, extremist, religious, nationalist bloc. So the polls right
25:03
Speaker 7: now are showing a paradox. When Israelis are asked who
25:08
Speaker 7: would make the best prime minister of Israel, both Gadi Eisenkot,
25:14
Speaker 7: the leader of this larger centrist party that's called Yashar,
25:18
Speaker 7: he's beating Netanyahu by 12 points, and Naftali Bennett, the
25:22
Speaker 7: former prime minister who's leading also a kind of a
25:25
Speaker 7: centrist party, maybe slightly to the right of Eisenkot's party,
25:30
Speaker 7: He also beats Netanyahu quite handily. That said, when we
25:35
Speaker 7: look at the public polls about how people actually vote,
25:40
Speaker 7: their intention of voting, you vote here for a party,
25:44
Speaker 7: not for a leader. And so when people tell you
25:46
Speaker 7: what party they're planning voting for, what we are seeing
25:48
Speaker 7: is something of an impasse among the two blocks. Now,
25:53
Speaker 7: there's still a sizable chunk between 8% and 10% of undecideds.
25:59
Speaker 7: And Israeli polls, you know, are a mixed bag. There
26:02
Speaker 7: have been election nights when the polls have been largely right,
26:05
Speaker 7: and then there have been election nights when the polls
26:08
Speaker 7: really were far off. So I'm preparing a kind of
26:11
Speaker 7: mental yoga for election night so I can be flexible
26:15
Speaker 7: as the results begin to come in.
26:18
Speaker 3: And so where does Eisenkot stand? Tell us who is Eisenkot,
26:23
Speaker 3: and where does he stand when it comes to West
26:27
Speaker 3: Bank settlement or... the attempted ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
26:33
Speaker 7: Well, I just want to say the main issues in
26:37
Speaker 7: this election you might be surprised to know are neither
26:40
Speaker 7: of those two issues. The main issues in this election
26:44
Speaker 7: are cost of living and security as it's defined by Israelis,
26:49
Speaker 7: which is can they ever feel safe again in the
26:51
Speaker 7: state of Israel? Third is will there be a state
26:55
Speaker 7: of Israel in the sense that somewhere between above 60
26:59
Speaker 7: and sometimes above 70% of Israelis say that they're concerned about,
27:05
Speaker 7: you know, the structure of the state. That is how
27:08
Speaker 7: kind of febrile things are here. Gadi Eizenkot is not
27:14
Speaker 7: exactly a cipher, but close to it. He was not
27:18
Speaker 7: a major known public figure, you know, 10 years ago
27:22
Speaker 7: in Israel. He was chief of staff of the army.
27:24
Speaker 7: He does have an interesting story He's the son of
27:28
Speaker 7: Moroccan immigrants. He is very much a self-made man. He
27:33
Speaker 7: strikes me as a profoundly moderate pragmatist. That's my main impression.
27:39
Speaker 7: The issues that he has made his top campaign issues
27:42
Speaker 7: are issues of vast consensus among Israelis. He says, first things,
27:49
Speaker 7: they will begin to cancel the coup d'etat legislation that
27:53
Speaker 7: Netanyahu passed. that they will immediately establish an independent commission
27:59
Speaker 7: of inquiry into what led to October 7th and what
28:02
Speaker 7: has happened since, which begins to address Ryan's question. He
28:07
Speaker 7: has a whole list of these kinds of questions, saving
28:11
Speaker 7: the education system in Israel, that are very much consensus issues.
28:16
Speaker 7: So he has been attacked for being mushy among a
28:21
Speaker 7: lot of people. I'm not sure I see it that way.
28:24
Speaker 7: I think that if you are kind of an unknown,
28:26
Speaker 7: it's not a bad way to start if you're facing
28:29
Speaker 7: a very frightened population to say that you stand by
28:33
Speaker 7: the main issues that concern them. I want to add
28:36
Speaker 7: something to this that may play on election day. And
28:39
Speaker 7: I may have mentioned to you in the past, I
28:41
Speaker 7: can't remember. Gadi Aizenkot has paid a monumental and almost
28:47
Speaker 7: incalculable price for this war, Netanyahu's war. He lost a
28:53
Speaker 7: son and he lost two nephews, all within the span
28:58
Speaker 7: of one year. And somehow his quiet nature, his sort
29:03
Speaker 7: of anti-Netanyahu-ness, and just... these dimensions of the loss that
29:10
Speaker 7: his family has paid seem to have provided a kind
29:14
Speaker 7: of Teflon for him during this campaign. So Netanyahu has
29:18
Speaker 7: even put out videos kind of mocking the loss of
29:23
Speaker 7: Gadi Aizenkot's son, who was called Gal. He's put out
29:28
Speaker 7: just racist, flat-out racist campaign videos His top proxy in
29:34
Speaker 7: the Israeli media space, fake media space, a guy called
29:37
Speaker 7: Inon Magal, last week referred to Gadi Eisenkot as a monkey.
29:43
Speaker 7: That's how bad things have gotten here. And yet Gadi
29:46
Speaker 7: Eisenkot is just like floating past it all. I think
29:51
Speaker 7: that's The most important thing I can say about him
29:54
Speaker 7: right now is he's a consensus candidate and he seems
29:57
Speaker 7: immune to most of Netanyahu's arrows.
30:01
Speaker 4: Right.
30:01
Speaker 1: And we wanted to play this ad.
30:02
Speaker 4: Actually, I think it's going to be a voiceover because
30:04
Speaker 4: it's in Hebrew, but we can put it up on
30:06
Speaker 4: the screen where the catchphrase is Benjamin is Palestine.
30:12
Speaker 1: This is apparently an Eisenkot ad.
30:15
Speaker 4: So some of this is going back and forth, Noga,
30:17
Speaker 4: hoping that you could explain to us a little bit about,
30:19
Speaker 4: you know, we just heard here what's coming from the
30:22
Speaker 4: Netanyahu camp, probably shocking for a lot of people to hear.
30:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell us, tell us.
30:25
Speaker 7: All right, I just have to interrupt because it would
30:27
Speaker 7: be huge. That ad is a joke ad. It is
30:30
Speaker 7: a real ad put out by the Eisenkot camp, but
30:33
Speaker 7: it is mocking Netanyahu. I don't think you should run
30:37
Speaker 7: that ad if you don't run the original.
30:41
Speaker 2: Give us the context.
30:42
Speaker 1: Tell us what's happening, going back and forth between them.
30:45
Speaker 7: So the Likud, which is Netanyahu's ruling party, has really
30:49
Speaker 7: struggled to find any slogan that would stick in this election.
30:55
Speaker 7: Something in Netanyahu's messaging is just clearly not working. And
30:58
Speaker 7: their latest slogan is Hayyamin of Palestine, which rhymes, as
31:05
Speaker 7: you can hear it. And what that means is either
31:08
Speaker 7: the right... or Palestine. And this is in part a
31:13
Speaker 7: racist slur against Eisenkot, but it's much more a racist
31:17
Speaker 7: slur against all Arabs who vote in Israel and all
31:21
Speaker 7: of the majority Arab parties in Israel. What Netanyahu is
31:24
Speaker 7: saying is, I'm the only legitimate right. This is how
31:27
Speaker 7: he's trying to kind of decapitate the right-wing parties that
31:31
Speaker 7: are in the opposition to him. He's saying, I'm the
31:33
Speaker 7: only right, and if you go with them, you're going
31:35
Speaker 7: to get Palestine. That's the slur. And the Eisenkot party
31:40
Speaker 7: has responded in an intentionally kind of Armageddon-like ad. It's
31:46
Speaker 7: mocking this, like, catastrophizing tendency, right, of Netanyahu, and says, no, no.
31:54
Speaker 7: which is Benjamin, his full name. It's either Benjamin, right?
31:59
Speaker 7: If you vote for Benjamin, you'll get Palestine. And in fact,
32:03
Speaker 7: what he's showing is all the times that Netanyahu shook
32:07
Speaker 7: Yasser Arafat's hand or lied about West Bank issues or somehow.
32:12
Speaker 1: The Qatar elements, right? I'm sure that comes up as well.
32:15
Speaker 7: Yeah, and actually, I can share with you really bad
32:19
Speaker 7: news for Netanyahu today on the legal front. Not only
32:24
Speaker 7: is the investigation into his top aides being agents of
32:27
Speaker 7: Qatar heating up, and we're expecting an indictment against his
32:32
Speaker 7: right-hand man, Yonatan Urych, in the next few weeks, but
32:37
Speaker 7: there has been an avalanche of accusations in the last
32:41
Speaker 7: week that Netanyahu himself is suspected of acting as a
32:46
Speaker 7: Qatari agent. Now, I may have hinted at this before
32:49
Speaker 7: when talking with you, but this is no longer hints,
32:52
Speaker 7: and it's not just me. Naftali Bennett, the former prime minister,
32:55
Speaker 7: Rony Alsheikh, the former chief police officer, police commissioner of Israel,
33:03
Speaker 7: Udi Levy, who was in charge of terror financing for
33:06
Speaker 7: the Mossad, and many more top officials who have top
33:11
Speaker 7: security clearances, crucially, are coming out in public in the
33:15
Speaker 7: last week and saying, he has to be investigated for treason.
33:20
Speaker 7: I'm not the one using the word, they are. So
33:23
Speaker 7: that confronts Netanyahu. Plus today, the worst news for him
33:28
Speaker 7: is that a previously established investigative committee into something that
33:33
Speaker 7: basically also amounts to treason. An investigation into the illicit
33:38
Speaker 7: or improper sale of submarines to Egypt. I won't get
33:43
Speaker 7: into all the details, but the bottom line is that
33:46
Speaker 7: Netanyahu authorized a sale of German submarines to Egypt behind
33:52
Speaker 7: the back of his own army against the security interests
33:56
Speaker 7: of Israel. and to the financial benefit of his first cousin.
34:00
Speaker 7: That came up today because Netanyahu has now been formally
34:03
Speaker 7: and officially called to provide testimony under oath to that commission.
34:07
Speaker 7: So he's not having a good week.
34:10
Speaker 3: And so if Gotti Eisenkot is known here in the
34:13
Speaker 3: United States, he's mostly known as the guy who came
34:17
Speaker 3: up with the Dahiya Doctrine, which was this 2006 doctrine
34:23
Speaker 3: established in 2006. It said that if you tell me
34:26
Speaker 3: I'm describing it accurately, if you punish a civilian population enough,
34:29
Speaker 3: they will then force out Hezbollah. And so it's this
34:34
Speaker 3: idea that collective punishment can be strategically valuable. Does that
34:41
Speaker 3: play a role at all or is it so domestic focused?
34:45
Speaker 3: The election is kind of domestic focused just on the
34:49
Speaker 3: kind of Israeli population that none of this really matters
34:52
Speaker 3: and it's just kind of from outside that we're like, oh,
34:56
Speaker 3: these are the different candidates?
34:59
Speaker 7: It's hard for me to answer that because it's a
35:01
Speaker 7: multi-layered question that you've asked me. I think that kind
35:06
Speaker 7: of security policy hawks, like you just said, do know
35:10
Speaker 7: a Gadiacin code for what was known at the time,
35:13
Speaker 7: 10 years ago, 20 years ago, as the Daphne doctrine,
35:19
Speaker 7: which was not exactly the way you put it, but
35:23
Speaker 7: basically the doctrine held that if Israel confronts attacks, at
35:30
Speaker 7: the time we were talking about missiles launched from civilian
35:33
Speaker 7: population centers, that's why it's called the Dahya Doctrine for
35:37
Speaker 7: the Dahya neighborhood in the south of Beirut, where at
35:41
Speaker 7: that time Hezbollah had basically its head of operations, all
35:44
Speaker 7: of its operations. They were also in the south of
35:47
Speaker 7: the country, but they were launching attacks to from the Dakhia,
35:52
Speaker 7: this doctrine held that Israel should respond disproportionately. That was
35:57
Speaker 7: the word that's the heart of this doctrine. That doctrine also,
36:02
Speaker 7: one could say, is the doctrine that has failed to
36:05
Speaker 7: provide Israel security either in Lebanon or in Gaza. And
36:11
Speaker 7: if the Dakhia doctrine was ever really fully adopted by Israel,
36:14
Speaker 7: I think we'd have to say it was after October
36:17
Speaker 7: 7th in this certainly disproportionate and also, I think, ultimately vain.
36:24
Speaker 7: You know, no results in terms of Israeli security, destruction,
36:29
Speaker 7: wanton destruction of Gaza. But the reason that that is
36:33
Speaker 7: not an issue in this election is that Eisenkot was
36:37
Speaker 7: known in Israel at the time that he was the
36:39
Speaker 7: military chief, which is 20 years ago now, mostly for
36:43
Speaker 7: other things. For example, He became very well known because
36:47
Speaker 7: he stood against Netanyahu in the case of a soldier
36:51
Speaker 7: who I'm sure you remember, Elor Azaria, an Israeli army
36:56
Speaker 7: soldier who shot and killed a Palestinian who was accused
37:01
Speaker 7: of committing a terror attack, who lay wounded and incapacitated
37:05
Speaker 7: on the ground, and who was handcuffed and his legs
37:09
Speaker 7: were cuffed, who absolutely had no threat. no ability to
37:15
Speaker 7: threaten any soldiers, this soldier came up and just shot
37:17
Speaker 7: him in the head. And he was court-martialed and he
37:20
Speaker 7: was sent to jail. And that happened because Eisenkot said
37:24
Speaker 7: that was the only way to maintain any kind of discipline.
37:27
Speaker 7: Netanyahu initially supported Eisenkot in that very famous case here locally,
37:32
Speaker 7: and then U-turned and supported the amnesty, the pardon of
37:38
Speaker 7: this soldier and demanded that he be released. It became
37:40
Speaker 7: a huge scandal here. So Eisenkot's doctrine during the time
37:44
Speaker 7: that he had military power was never put into place.
37:48
Speaker 7: And since, I don't know if what happened since October
37:53
Speaker 7: 7th can fairly be called a Dachshund doctrine, but something
37:56
Speaker 7: like that, Netanyahu was taken full credit for it. And
37:59
Speaker 7: it's not even associated with Eisenkot, who did join Netanyahu's
38:05
Speaker 7: government at the beginning of the war as a kind
38:07
Speaker 7: of national unity effort, and then abandoned the government when
38:13
Speaker 7: he publicly said that Netanyahu was engaged in a policy
38:16
Speaker 7: of eternal war with no strategic aims in Gaza. Those
38:21
Speaker 7: are the issues, if we're talking about security, that have been,
38:23
Speaker 7: I would say, pretty major.
38:26
Speaker 4: Netanyahu gets the Trump endorsement this week. Is there daylight
38:30
Speaker 4: between Eisenhower that you can tell us about and Netanyahu
38:32
Speaker 4: when it comes to the U.S.
38:34
Speaker 1: Alliance?
38:34
Speaker 4: Do they have a different posture on Trump and then
38:37
Speaker 4: specifically on Trump and then generally on the alliance, the
38:40
Speaker 4: security alliance with the United States?
38:45
Speaker 7: I think the answer is yes. But first, let me
38:47
Speaker 7: tell you that Netanyahu has always boasted about his flawless
38:51
Speaker 7: English and it's become like a calling card for him.
38:54
Speaker 7: Eisenkot's English is halting. Eisenkot's English is much like the
38:58
Speaker 7: English of many foreign leaders, right? Heavily accented and a
39:01
Speaker 7: little stumbling. And so many of the original or the
39:05
Speaker 7: initially cooed ads mocked Eisenkot for not speaking English as if,
39:11
Speaker 7: as we heard this week, as if he were being
39:12
Speaker 7: seen as a monkey, right? Or as a kind of
39:15
Speaker 7: a mental idiot, something very offensive. That is another effort
39:19
Speaker 7: that really boomeranged against the Likud campaign. It just didn't work.
39:25
Speaker 7: In terms of the U.S. alliance, Netanyahu is a bit
39:29
Speaker 7: all over the place, right? So he has said at
39:31
Speaker 7: the same time that he basically is a worshipful servant
39:36
Speaker 7: of Trump. At the same time, he tells Israelis he's
39:38
Speaker 7: the only one who can say no to Donald Trump.
39:42
Speaker 7: He was humiliated by Trump, let's not forget, on more
39:45
Speaker 7: than one occasion, but notably when Trump forced him to
39:49
Speaker 7: apologize from a pre-written text to the Qatari prime minister
39:53
Speaker 7: on the phone from the Oval Office. What Eisenkotz says
39:57
Speaker 7: is that Israeli-American ties have to be rehabilitated. And now
40:04
Speaker 7: I'm quoting, like every other strategic interest this country has.
40:08
Speaker 7: So he's referring to the judiciary, the education system, and
40:11
Speaker 7: he's counting the Israeli-US relationship as one of those strategic assets. Now,
40:17
Speaker 7: Netanyahu on the one hand depends so much on Trump
40:20
Speaker 7: that he begged for this endorsement. And on the other hand,
40:24
Speaker 7: in the last year, basically to placate kind of, I
40:27
Speaker 7: would say, rebel Republicans, he has gone on the record
40:31
Speaker 7: saying that he wants to wean Israel from American security aid.
40:36
Speaker 7: In the real world, he's running an eternal war policy
40:39
Speaker 7: that depends almost entirely on ongoing and even greater U.S.
40:44
Speaker 7: security aid to Israel. So, Eisenkot has not gotten into
40:48
Speaker 7: the details of that. He very much has decried the
40:53
Speaker 7: collapse of Israel's diplomatic standing and what he calls also
40:57
Speaker 7: the irresponsible crash of Israel's standing in the United States.
41:02
Speaker 7: Whenever Netanyahu puts out a statement about how You know,
41:06
Speaker 7: he's Trump's best buddy. Eisenkot says a lot of good.
41:10
Speaker 7: That did you on October 7th, right? Or that kind
41:14
Speaker 7: of retort. But Eisenkot has not put out any significant
41:19
Speaker 7: policy sheets or had like a major press conference devoted
41:24
Speaker 7: to the Israel-U.S. relationship.
41:26
Speaker 3: And what is the thinking inside Israeli political observers about
41:32
Speaker 3: what Netanyahu might do between now and the election. I
41:35
Speaker 3: know that there's a lot of rumors that we could
41:37
Speaker 3: get renewed major combat operations against Iran, that it could
41:40
Speaker 3: launch an attack that delays the election, or it could
41:45
Speaker 3: come after the election to make it difficult to form
41:47
Speaker 3: a government. What are people thinking about what Netanyahu might
41:52
Speaker 3: do between now and Tuesday?
41:55
Speaker 7: I'd have to say that for serious observers of the
41:58
Speaker 7: political scene here, And I'm counting among them, you know,
42:03
Speaker 7: former Prime Minister Ehud Barak and other very senior officials
42:07
Speaker 7: who've gone on the record. They're saying explicitly and openly
42:11
Speaker 7: to Israelis that the greatest danger facing the nation is
42:14
Speaker 7: what Netanyahu could do and that he could do anything. So,
42:18
Speaker 7: for example, again today, there was an issue with the Likud,
42:23
Speaker 7: Prime Minister Netanyahu's party, attempting to trick electoral observers. There's
42:29
Speaker 7: a whole system here of election observers and being able
42:33
Speaker 7: to basically trying to put in place a system whereby
42:36
Speaker 7: the Likud will be able to intimidate people who have
42:39
Speaker 7: previously voted for the Likud but haven't come in to
42:42
Speaker 7: vote yet this time. That's completely illegal, but the Likud
42:46
Speaker 7: is not really even hiding the efforts to do that.
42:48
Speaker 7: They're making efforts to intimidate Arab Palestinian voters. They made
42:53
Speaker 7: an effort to try and prevent people who live in
42:56
Speaker 7: old age homes from voting. And every single day, every
43:01
Speaker 7: single day, Netanyahu is hitting this gong that you just
43:05
Speaker 7: described of basically declaring that war, a renewed war with
43:10
Speaker 7: Iran could come any day, any minute. And he has
43:13
Speaker 7: succeeded in scaring a lot of people. I spent a
43:17
Speaker 7: day yesterday in Jerusalem doing a kind of Vox Pop,
43:21
Speaker 7: I went around a kind of a neighborhood where you
43:23
Speaker 7: have a lot of garages and kind of hardware stores,
43:28
Speaker 7: that kind of an urban scene. And I talked to
43:32
Speaker 7: quite a few people, like between six and eight people
43:35
Speaker 7: who had traditionally voted for the Likud for Netanyahu. And
43:40
Speaker 7: then when I spoke with them over the last year
43:43
Speaker 7: or so, just chit-chatting, basically told me they realized that
43:47
Speaker 7: he was over and that they were looking for someone
43:49
Speaker 7: else to vote for. And some of those people came
43:52
Speaker 7: back to me yesterday and said, you know, we looked,
43:54
Speaker 7: but there's no one else who can replace him. And
43:57
Speaker 7: Netanyahu is really using fear. I mean, terrifying people. It's
44:02
Speaker 7: to that extent that you almost don't hear Israelis making plans.
44:07
Speaker 7: Among Israelis who loathe Netanyahu or those who fear him,
44:11
Speaker 7: those who are voting for him and those who never would,
44:14
Speaker 7: you hear people saying, you know, like, let's meet Wednesday
44:17
Speaker 7: for dinner, like, if nothing happens. There's tremendous fear. There's
44:21
Speaker 7: tremendous fear that if there's an electoral surprise and Netanyahu,
44:26
Speaker 7: you know, undisputedly loses the elections and that becomes known
44:31
Speaker 7: fairly early, right? We'll see the first exit polls will
44:34
Speaker 7: be at 10 p.m. Israel time on Tuesday. We may
44:37
Speaker 7: or may not then have a panorama of how things look,
44:40
Speaker 7: but there is a very great fear that Netanyahu will
44:43
Speaker 7: try to unleash violent gangs. Violent gangs who have been
44:48
Speaker 7: armed by his interior defense minister, a former terrorist, Itamar Ben-Gvir.
44:53
Speaker 7: There are real fears of major disturbances also on election day.
44:58
Speaker 7: Netanyahu is known in the past for kind of pulling
45:01
Speaker 7: off illegal, ugly surprises on election day, like putting up
45:05
Speaker 7: a video saying that the Arabs are voting in hordes,
45:09
Speaker 7: that kind of thing. It's expected to be worse this year.
45:12
Speaker 7: a feeling of like almost like physical girding for any
45:17
Speaker 7: number of shenanigans that Netanyahu and his party could still
45:20
Speaker 7: pull off. And it's, I think, important to remember, by far,
45:24
Speaker 7: Netanyahu is the most powerful person in this country. And
45:28
Speaker 7: while there are still guardrails, they're weakened. And he's in
45:32
Speaker 7: a very desperate situation. So if he thinks there's a
45:35
Speaker 7: real chance that he could be out, I think he
45:39
Speaker 7: may try and do anything. Hmm.
45:42
Speaker 2: Well, Noga, thank you so much for updating us. We
45:45
Speaker 2: watched this closely. Appreciate it.
45:46
Speaker 1: Thank you.
45:48
Speaker 7: It's always great to talk with you guys.
45:50
Speaker 2: All right. We'll see you next time.
45:51
Speaker 7: Take care. Bye bye.
45:53
Speaker 3: As we were talking, somebody actually just forwarded me a
45:57
Speaker 3: news report going around Israel that at a commencement ceremony,
46:02
Speaker 3: Prime Minister Benjamin, an officer's graduation ceremony, talking about Iran's
46:06
Speaker 3: nuclear program and saying the only way to stop it
46:09
Speaker 3: is to remove the regime. So he's ramping up his
46:12
Speaker 3: rhetoric in the days leading into this election.
46:16
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we'll stay on top of that. We'll bring
46:20
Speaker 4: everybody updates on the Brad Lander case as we get them. Obviously,
46:23
Speaker 4: follow Ryan on X for that. And I will be
46:26
Speaker 4: laser focused on them.
46:27
Speaker 3: He's claiming that the Iranians are trying to pursue a
46:29
Speaker 3: nuclear weapon again.
46:31
Speaker 2: Oh, wow.
46:32
Speaker 1: Oh, I thought they were on the brink of collapse.
46:33
Speaker 2: There's only one way to remove this threat, toppling the
46:35
Speaker 2: regime in Iran.
46:36
Speaker 4: Yeah.
46:37
Speaker 5: Well.
46:37
Speaker 1: While you guys cover that, I'll be laser focused on
46:39
Speaker 1: the Brewers. That's what I was going to say.
46:41
Speaker 2: Excellent.
46:42
Speaker 1: All right, everyone.
46:43
Speaker 2: Go Brewers.
46:44
Speaker 1: Have a great weekend.
46:45
Speaker 4: We'll actually see you on Friday. Crystal and Sager will
46:47
Speaker 4: be back in tomorrow. But hope you all have a
46:49
Speaker 4: wonderful weekend.
46:50
Speaker 1: Stay safe. We'll see you soon.