Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 8/19/26: Trump Panics As Bond Markets Crumble, Trump Crypto Firm To Become Bank, Kushner Bends Knee To Bibi

Transcript

8/19/26: Trump Panics As Bond Markets Crumble, Trump Crypto Firm To Become Bank, Kushner Bends Knee To Bibi · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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0:33
Speaker 2: One thing we have been keeping a close eyeon, and
0:36
Speaker 2: that Trump also seems to keep a close eyeon, is
0:39
Speaker 2: the bond markets. There's been a lot going on there,
0:42
Speaker 2: and no one better to break it down for us
0:44
Speaker 2: than Jeff Stein Pultzer Prize winning journalists and reporter over
0:48
Speaker 2: at notice.
0:48
Speaker 1: Great to see you done, So.
0:50
Speaker 4: Good to hear Pultzerprize when I'm just going to make
0:52
Speaker 4: sure to be obnoxious about that with everyone in my
0:54
Speaker 4: life as possible.
0:57
Speaker 2: I saw, I saw the smile light up your face
1:00
Speaker 2: when I said that Jeff so happy to happy to
1:02
Speaker 2: ride you all of your accolades. Let's go and put
1:05
Speaker 2: d one up on the screen here. We've had a
1:07
Speaker 2: bond selloff here from the New York Times. They say
1:11
Speaker 2: it sent the borrowing costs to the highest level since
1:14
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven. Yields on the thirty years treasury
1:16
Speaker 2: and government bonds across the world rose to multi year
1:19
Speaker 2: highs as investors fret about inflation, deficits and AI spending.
1:24
Speaker 2: Talk to us about what this article is indicating and why.
1:28
Speaker 1: We should care.
1:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a huge topic, the bond yield run up.
1:35
Speaker 4: Do you want me to start on why it matters
1:36
Speaker 4: or what's going on? Why it matters? I think the
1:40
Speaker 4: why it matters is huge, huge, huge, huge, huge. Parts
1:44
Speaker 4: of the American economy are incredibly, incredibly sensitive to this
1:50
Speaker 4: financial indicator that seems totally abstract and sort of beyond
1:55
Speaker 4: what most people understand. And basically, the way this works
1:58
Speaker 4: is that borrowing prices are tied to the amount the
2:03
Speaker 4: Treasury Department pays in response to.
2:07
Speaker 5: Issuing debt.
2:08
Speaker 4: It's basically Treasury says issues an IOU that says I
2:12
Speaker 4: will pay you back at this rate over this amount
2:14
Speaker 4: of time if you a private borrower, buy my debt
2:18
Speaker 4: in exchange for immedia cash, and that percentage, that rate
2:22
Speaker 4: that Treasury pays on that IOU is the benchmark for
2:26
Speaker 4: an impossibly large amount of borrowing in the US economy,
2:30
Speaker 4: including mortgages, car loans, your credit card rates. So it
2:34
Speaker 4: really has a very sort of visceral, immediate impact on
2:38
Speaker 4: millions of small businesses that might want to loan, millions
2:40
Speaker 4: of homeowners that might be trying to, you know, buy
2:42
Speaker 4: their first house, millions of students who are trying to
2:46
Speaker 4: get student loans if it's not you know, if they
2:47
Speaker 4: don't have a federal benefit. And then there's sort of
2:51
Speaker 4: a second potential sort of macroeconomic impact that could impact
2:55
Speaker 4: sort of you directly, and that is the higher the
3:00
Speaker 4: yields get, they're called the sort of that IOU spread
3:03
Speaker 4: is the yields, the higher that gets, the more at
3:06
Speaker 4: risk our financial system is because our banks, you know,
3:11
Speaker 4: not so much the really big ones, but the medium,
3:14
Speaker 4: smaller ones are really their margins are based on expectations
3:18
Speaker 4: for what those IOUs will yield, and if we have
3:22
Speaker 4: huge fluctuations as we're seeing in the bond market, it
3:25
Speaker 4: means that the balance sheets of these banks could be
3:29
Speaker 4: a skew in ways that are really dangerous. And the
3:31
Speaker 4: last time we saw really elevated bond yields was twenty
3:35
Speaker 4: twenty three, and one of the impacts of that of
3:39
Speaker 4: that era was we saw Silicon Valley Bank go under
3:42
Speaker 4: the Biden administration mobilized effective bailout. It was a very
3:47
Speaker 4: big moment for financial markets, and it could have had
3:49
Speaker 4: this sort of major ripple effect throughout the economy.
3:52
Speaker 5: So there's the sort of immediate effect.
3:54
Speaker 4: On consumer borrowing, and then there's this sort of second
3:57
Speaker 4: tier layer of sort of internal plumbing to the financial
4:01
Speaker 4: markets where if we see big shocks that we don't
4:03
Speaker 4: know where they're going, that that gets really scary and
4:07
Speaker 4: gets us back to questions about eight or maybe more
4:10
Speaker 4: like twenty twenty three or but it creates this instability
4:14
Speaker 4: both for foreign governments and for banks because these treasuries
4:17
Speaker 4: are sort of just the bedrock asset that people used
4:19
Speaker 4: to hold liquidity, and so you do not want to
4:21
Speaker 4: see major fluctuations.
4:22
Speaker 5: And then and then we can sort of get to
4:24
Speaker 5: the why is this happening?
4:25
Speaker 6: If that's all yeah, yeah, let's get to that, because
4:27
Speaker 6: if we put this Bloomberg tear sheet up on the screen.
4:29
Speaker 6: They mentioned US tenure yields climb to highest since twenty
4:31
Speaker 6: twenty five as route deepens, and famously, Trump didn't waiver
4:35
Speaker 6: at all basically after Libertate Liberation Day until he said
4:39
Speaker 6: the bond markets were getting a little yippie if I'm
4:41
Speaker 6: remembering correctly, Jeff, So, what's happening this time around? And
4:46
Speaker 6: you know you've covered Trump and Trump's relationship with the
4:50
Speaker 6: bond markets got best and as well, what could we
4:52
Speaker 6: expect to see from the admin?
4:55
Speaker 4: We have a a well, So I guess what's happening
4:57
Speaker 4: now is you have sort of the structural problem and
5:00
Speaker 4: the immediate problem. The structural problem is that, as you
5:03
Speaker 4: know the West Ages, we have sort of a glut
5:07
Speaker 4: of government spending and not enough revenue coming in, and
5:10
Speaker 4: that has pushed out a huge and sort of unprecedented
5:15
Speaker 4: you know, uh issuings of debt, not just in the US,
5:18
Speaker 4: but Germany, the UK, Japan. And what's happening is there's
5:23
Speaker 4: so much debt being issued and not enough buyers, which
5:26
Speaker 4: means that the buyers have the upper hand and they
5:28
Speaker 4: can demand a higher premium, which means that the borrowing
5:32
Speaker 4: gets more expensive for the US government, which is which
5:34
Speaker 4: is sort of the underlying structural problem.
5:37
Speaker 5: Now on top of.
5:39
Speaker 4: That, we've had a series of, as you alluded to,
5:41
Speaker 4: really serious geopolitical developments that sort of exacerbate the sort
5:47
Speaker 4: of like the structural issue there.
5:48
Speaker 5: And basically when when the Straight.
5:51
Speaker 4: Of Hormuz, you know, on off on off with the
5:54
Speaker 4: Iran war, and the effect of that is to raise
5:57
Speaker 4: the risk of inflation. And when inflation goes up, if
6:00
Speaker 4: you have a bond, you're going to say, I need
6:03
Speaker 4: a better rate of return because the value of my
6:06
Speaker 4: bond is going to erode over time. So that plus
6:09
Speaker 4: a few other things that that are reserved, not being
6:11
Speaker 4: clear that it's going to fight inflation. The AI spending
6:15
Speaker 4: boom has really created a huge extra demand for capital.
6:18
Speaker 4: So that's another reason that there aren't as many people
6:21
Speaker 4: and institutions buying bonds, and so that that's creating all
6:24
Speaker 4: the short term pressure on yields. What the administration is
6:28
Speaker 4: going to do about it is a great question of
6:30
Speaker 4: and trying to get the answer to. We saw up
6:33
Speaker 4: a couple of weeks ago, Treasure Secretary Scott bessan't go
6:36
Speaker 4: out of his way and move to protect the Japanese yen.
6:39
Speaker 4: The administration said, this is absolutely just about protecting our
6:42
Speaker 4: allies and helping our allies. But it wasn't lost on
6:44
Speaker 4: people that treasuries are held over over a trillion trillion
6:50
Speaker 4: dollars in treasures are held by the Japanese. They are
6:52
Speaker 4: the single biggest foreign and holder of US treasuries, and
6:55
Speaker 4: if their currency really is in trouble, they could mass
7:00
Speaker 4: the yen the dollars that they do own to prop
7:03
Speaker 4: up the end, and that would that would be really
7:05
Speaker 4: bad for us the US yields.
7:09
Speaker 5: What else the administration is going to do today?
7:11
Speaker 4: Just a few hours ago we got announcement from the
7:13
Speaker 4: Treasury Department that they are basically changing They're basically buying
7:17
Speaker 4: older debt and trying to issue new debt. The mechanics
7:22
Speaker 4: of this are complicated and really boring.
7:24
Speaker 5: Frankly, so I don't want always do time on it.
7:26
Speaker 4: But it's another move aimed at a basically improving liquidity
7:30
Speaker 4: in the treasury market in the short term, But it
7:33
Speaker 4: doesn't really do anying about sort of the underlying structural
7:35
Speaker 4: issue or the war, which is you know, someone said
7:38
Speaker 4: to me, like, are we basically risking the entire US
7:42
Speaker 4: economy because is real persuaded Trump to go to war
7:45
Speaker 4: with Iran? And there's like not not truth to that,
7:49
Speaker 4: you know, it's there isn't a story there that that
7:52
Speaker 4: has a lot of evidence.
7:54
Speaker 5: To support it.
7:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, and not just the US economy, and say, the
7:57
Speaker 2: entire global economy is being risked right now because because
8:00
Speaker 2: of the choices that have been made for some series
8:03
Speaker 2: of perplexing reasons. Jeff, you're writing over at notice about
8:07
Speaker 2: how important the bond yields are, how closely Trump follows
8:12
Speaker 2: this metric. With the midterms looming, you know, is there
8:16
Speaker 2: a particular level interest rate that he's going to be
8:19
Speaker 2: looking at? Is there some sort of like catastrophic thing
8:23
Speaker 2: that could unfold that would really cause problems? Like what
8:25
Speaker 2: are the specifics here that we should keep our eyes on.
8:28
Speaker 4: Yeah, we are approaching five percent on the ten year,
8:33
Speaker 4: and we're at like five point three on the thirty.
8:37
Speaker 4: If those numbers, If the ten year rises above five
8:40
Speaker 4: percent and the thirty year rises above six, that's when
8:43
Speaker 4: economists have been telling me, like, we will start, you know,
8:47
Speaker 4: expect to start to see real trouble in financial markets
8:51
Speaker 4: at some of the banks, and I'm pretty confident that
8:53
Speaker 4: the administration is going to be doing whatever it can
8:55
Speaker 4: to keep it below that number. But I think, you know, Emily,
8:58
Speaker 4: you mentioned the liberation tariffs, which I think is a
9:01
Speaker 4: really instructive counterpoint, because that was a moment last year.
9:06
Speaker 5: You might remember.
9:07
Speaker 4: I think I was on the on the show a
9:08
Speaker 4: few times when it looked like the Trump administration understood
9:13
Speaker 4: that the massive tariffs they were imposing were causing these
9:16
Speaker 4: huge problems in the bond market, and they backed off.
9:19
Speaker 4: But the thing about that crisis was it was kind
9:22
Speaker 4: of like a switch, like a lever that was like,
9:26
Speaker 4: you know, we can pull this in one direction or
9:29
Speaker 4: the other, like we can turn this on or off
9:31
Speaker 4: to use the switch analogy, And now I think it's
9:34
Speaker 4: pretty clear that it's a lot harder. You know, then
9:37
Speaker 4: Trump could just say, actually, no, let's not really do
9:39
Speaker 4: the tariffs, and that's kind of what they did. Can
9:42
Speaker 4: they really just say, like the war's over and the
9:45
Speaker 4: straight up room was open? And also AI spending is
9:49
Speaker 4: like the number of problems that are causing this current
9:53
Speaker 4: flare up are so much bigger and more complicated than
9:57
Speaker 4: the tariff switch that they could turn on or off on.
10:00
Speaker 4: So in some ways it's more out of their hands.
10:03
Speaker 4: They have a situation that is not as easily resolved
10:07
Speaker 4: as it was last time, and I think that's going
10:09
Speaker 4: to be a real problem if they can't figure out
10:12
Speaker 4: how to get this under control quickly.
10:14
Speaker 2: Jeff, I wanted to talk to you too a little
10:16
Speaker 2: bit more about this Japanese yen situation that you raised.
10:20
Speaker 2: We can put D three up on the screen. Scott
10:23
Speaker 2: Bessant is many things, but one of them is he
10:26
Speaker 2: is sort of a master at currency markets and currency manipulation.
10:30
Speaker 2: That's how he made a lot of his fortune alongside
10:32
Speaker 2: George Soros. We can go back and take a look
10:35
Speaker 2: at that track record. In any case, there was an
10:37
Speaker 2: extraordinary thing that unfolded where journalist was able to capture
10:41
Speaker 2: a photojournalist was able to capture a picture of like
10:43
Speaker 2: a grocery style to do list, and on that to
10:46
Speaker 2: do list was this massive intervention into the Japanese yen
10:50
Speaker 2: market to prop it up that looks to have not
10:54
Speaker 2: really lasted, at least for the long term. Pilkington says,
10:59
Speaker 2: it's been eighteen days. The US Treasury undertook an all
11:01
Speaker 2: hands on deck bailout of the en intervention has now
11:04
Speaker 2: been completely wiped out. Japanese are going to start considering
11:06
Speaker 2: liquidating US treasuries to get the situation under control. And
11:11
Speaker 2: my understanding, Jeff, is that this has implications not only
11:15
Speaker 2: for treasuries and bond yills obviously that's really important, but
11:19
Speaker 2: also could have huge implications in terms of AI investment.
11:24
Speaker 2: Because of this yen carry trade, where for the longest
11:27
Speaker 2: time you could borrow money in Japanese yen at basically
11:31
Speaker 2: zero percent and then use it to invest in things
11:33
Speaker 2: like US treasuries and the AI data center build down.
11:38
Speaker 2: That trade is no longer making the sense that it
11:41
Speaker 2: used to bake, So this could have significant impact on
11:44
Speaker 2: our entire economy.
11:45
Speaker 5: It seems to me.
11:47
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you look at what the mechanics of what
11:50
Speaker 4: Vestin did with the first attempt to prop up the en,
11:54
Speaker 4: and basically, you know, you would say, okay, well, if
11:56
Speaker 4: the US is going to buy the en, right, if
11:59
Speaker 4: you buy the en, it increases demand, so it stops
12:02
Speaker 4: the sell off and allows Japan to basically manage its
12:06
Speaker 4: economy without having to dump US dollars. That's kind of
12:09
Speaker 4: the But if you're thinking this through you're like, well,
12:13
Speaker 4: doesn't that mean that the US needs to sell its
12:17
Speaker 4: own treasuries to buy the end? And what's really important,
12:20
Speaker 4: and I think interesting about the way they went about
12:22
Speaker 4: this is bestn't sold the Euro. So the US has
12:26
Speaker 4: holdings of the Euro, and that's what it dumps to
12:31
Speaker 4: be able to buy the end. So it was a
12:33
Speaker 4: move to say, okay, well, we don't want to prop
12:35
Speaker 4: up the end to save the US treasury markets by
12:39
Speaker 4: dumping treasuries. That's like completely counterproductive. But Europe is just
12:43
Speaker 4: over there. They're mostly doing okay, like not really but
12:47
Speaker 4: with the war in Ukraine, but it is someone we
12:50
Speaker 4: can kind of take a bit of a shot at
12:52
Speaker 4: their currency and not have it immediately blow back to us.
12:55
Speaker 4: The Europeans don't have as many US treasuries as Japan
12:58
Speaker 4: or even China, so it's it seemed.
13:00
Speaker 5: Like a logical place to go.
13:02
Speaker 4: The problem is, as you're saying, this intervention has not
13:07
Speaker 4: held up, and now it's like, where's the AMMO going
13:11
Speaker 4: to come from?
13:13
Speaker 5: You could issue more US debt to do this.
13:15
Speaker 4: You could sell US treasuries, but that kind of contradicts
13:20
Speaker 4: potentially the sort of motivation of doing this in the
13:23
Speaker 4: first place. And as you're saying, it's not just the
13:26
Speaker 4: US treasuries that are very well integrated throughout the global economy.
13:30
Speaker 4: The Japanese yen is you know, the Japanese. You know,
13:33
Speaker 4: there's an old saying among economists that there are four
13:36
Speaker 4: kinds of economies in the world, developing, developed, Japan, and Argentina.
13:42
Speaker 5: Part of what makes Japan the stinct.
13:44
Speaker 4: Is because they've had you know, they've been running at
13:47
Speaker 4: a debt of like four hundred percent the GDP, like
13:50
Speaker 4: twice what we have, and so their debt issuance is
13:53
Speaker 4: sort of scattered throughout the global economy, and if they
13:57
Speaker 4: have a real sudden currency shock, you could see similar
14:00
Speaker 4: sort of balance sheet problems to what we have with
14:03
Speaker 4: the suddened evaluation in US treasuries.
14:07
Speaker 6: Well, let's get to Trump's latest world liberty financial situation.
14:12
Speaker 6: Jeff is going to stick around, so stay tuned for that.
14:17
Speaker 6: A major development in the Trump family at crypto corruption.
14:21
Speaker 6: Let's put this first headline up on the screen. Brazen
14:23
Speaker 6: act of self dealing. Lawmakers watchdogs alarmed after Trump regulators
14:28
Speaker 6: let Trump firm start a bank. Just the lead here
14:31
Speaker 6: from CNN reports. Regulators appointed by Trump are allowing the
14:34
Speaker 6: Trump families flagship cryptocurrency venture to become a bank, a
14:38
Speaker 6: move that is alarming ethics watchdogs and some lawmakers. World
14:41
Speaker 6: Liberty Financial, a crypto firm Trump and his sons launched
14:44
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty four, announced late Friday that it received
14:46
Speaker 6: a preliminary conditional approval from banking officials to become a
14:50
Speaker 6: trust bank. Final approval hinges on a series of conditions
14:55
Speaker 6: being met. Jeff Stein, reporter at Notice, is back with
14:58
Speaker 6: us in Jeff, I'm hoping you can help us understand
15:01
Speaker 6: what the hell is going on because World Liberty Financial,
15:05
Speaker 6: as I just mentioned from the CNN report, it's a
15:07
Speaker 6: crypto company, crypto banking. Right now, they have their Clarity
15:10
Speaker 6: Act that's hanging in the balance and may or may
15:13
Speaker 6: not pass by the end of the year. But this
15:15
Speaker 6: is a really murky regulatory area. So what does this
15:20
Speaker 6: even mean? What does this approval even mean? Is it
15:24
Speaker 6: going to stand? Do you think help us break this down?
15:28
Speaker 4: So this is a charter from the OCC the Office
15:32
Speaker 4: of the Control or the Currency. It's been approved by
15:35
Speaker 4: an official that Trump appointed to that position, and what
15:39
Speaker 4: it effectively means is that it does not entail deposit insurance.
15:46
Speaker 4: It doesn't mean that World Liberty Financial has federal backing
15:50
Speaker 4: for if they have a crisis. That is not the case,
15:52
Speaker 4: which I think is a bit of a relief to
15:54
Speaker 4: some people. But it does essentially enable them.
15:57
Speaker 5: To issue their stable coin.
16:00
Speaker 4: USD one is the name of the World Liberty Financial
16:03
Speaker 4: coin is the currency that they issue, and they don't
16:06
Speaker 4: have to go through an intermediary set of institutions to
16:10
Speaker 4: do that. There are a few other benefits. It gives
16:13
Speaker 4: them sort of additional federal credibility. It allows them to
16:16
Speaker 4: A really big one is that they now sort of
16:19
Speaker 4: override state regulation. So if New York was saying, hey, Trump,
16:23
Speaker 4: you can't sell your crypto you know whatever, this way,
16:28
Speaker 4: New York is now not able to go after this
16:32
Speaker 4: bank because it has the sort of federal protection. But
16:36
Speaker 4: the real sort of immediate, sort of short term financial
16:39
Speaker 4: benefit for Trump's crypto company and that he will be
16:44
Speaker 4: able to issue this stable coin. And I was new
16:49
Speaker 4: to a lot of this, so I've been trying to
16:51
Speaker 4: learn a lot about exactly how this works. But essentially
16:54
Speaker 4: this is both the stable coin is basically something that
16:57
Speaker 4: you can buy in trade, right like it's like a
16:59
Speaker 4: meme stock away, like you can buy your stable coin
17:01
Speaker 4: and then trade it. But it also is sort of
17:04
Speaker 4: a way to transact or you know, you know, exchange,
17:08
Speaker 4: have a financial exchange. So if like you're a bank
17:11
Speaker 4: and you're trying to buy a certain number of parts
17:14
Speaker 4: from a company or whatever, you can instead of going
17:17
Speaker 4: through a bank, you can or going through like you know,
17:20
Speaker 4: think about it, like Venmo or PayPal. Basically you can
17:23
Speaker 4: conduct this transaction now in USD one, which is the
17:27
Speaker 4: Trump crypto company. And this is the real thing that
17:30
Speaker 4: I think people need to know. The Trump administrator or
17:33
Speaker 4: not the Trump administration. The Trump family will get a cut.
17:37
Speaker 4: We don't know exactly what that is. The rates vary,
17:39
Speaker 4: but it's typically between you know, one and four percent,
17:42
Speaker 4: maybe two percent. That is the percentage that they will
17:45
Speaker 4: get on whatever transaction let's say a bank or a
17:49
Speaker 4: private company or even an individual wants to do. And
17:52
Speaker 4: so there's no public disclosure as far as we know,
17:57
Speaker 4: according to the experts I talked to, we won't know
17:59
Speaker 4: maybe for a long time what exactly who who is
18:03
Speaker 4: doing this. So if Trump, you know, gets the call
18:05
Speaker 4: from the head of Goldman Sachs and he says, yeah,
18:09
Speaker 4: like I might stick the DOJ on you, but can
18:12
Speaker 4: you conduct your next billion dollar deal in you know,
18:16
Speaker 4: my crypto currency. They can do that and no one
18:20
Speaker 4: would know. So it's I mean the and.
18:23
Speaker 6: The Trump family would get the transaction, see.
18:26
Speaker 5: Correct, that they they own.
18:28
Speaker 4: There's a series of sort of holding companies that make
18:31
Speaker 4: it hard to sort of say they own this percentage
18:34
Speaker 4: because it's like Trump owns seventy percent. Trump personally owns
18:38
Speaker 4: seventy percent of the holding company that owns the other
18:39
Speaker 4: holding company that owns the blah blah blah blah blah.
18:41
Speaker 4: But effectively they are the owners along with the ammorodies.
18:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then it's run by Zach Wickoff, who of
18:50
Speaker 2: course is Steve Wickoff's son, So you've got, you know,
18:54
Speaker 2: all kinds of family corruption going on in this administration.
18:58
Speaker 2: And for my Republican friends ount there. I think a
19:00
Speaker 2: good way to visualize this would be, remember when Hunter
19:04
Speaker 2: Biden was selling his paintings and we didn't know who
19:08
Speaker 2: was buying these paintings for prices that seemed a little
19:11
Speaker 2: bit above market price, Except we're talking about billions of
19:16
Speaker 2: dollars changing hands here, Potentially all thoroughly without any transparency,
19:22
Speaker 2: no scrutiny, and Jeff just helped put this into some
19:26
Speaker 2: historical context because you start to feel crazy tracking this stuff.
19:31
Speaker 2: The level of wealth, specifically through this crypto company, that
19:36
Speaker 2: Trump has been able to accumulate in the second presidency
19:40
Speaker 2: has got to be historically unprecedented, certainly for the US,
19:44
Speaker 2: perhaps for the entire world.
19:47
Speaker 5: Yeah.
19:48
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know what the percentag GDP comparisons would
19:51
Speaker 4: be with like whatever land deals George Washington made by
19:57
Speaker 4: he made over five hundred million dollar I think from
20:00
Speaker 4: World Liberty Financial alone. I'm not one hundred percent sure
20:03
Speaker 4: about that number, but I'm pretty sure that's right over
20:05
Speaker 4: a billion dollars from his crypto investments last year while
20:09
Speaker 4: being president. And you know, it's kind of like a
20:12
Speaker 4: resist lib thing when they're always like Jimmy Carter was
20:14
Speaker 4: forced to sell his peanut farm, and I think that
20:17
Speaker 4: sometimes the lives the amount of money having, you know,
20:21
Speaker 4: working on a biography of Bernie Sanders and you know,
20:25
Speaker 4: reliving some of the Clinton family self enrichment, which is
20:30
Speaker 4: astonishing in its own right. I think Hillary made like
20:33
Speaker 4: something like two million dollars from from Wall Street speeches
20:36
Speaker 4: or the two of them made about that much money,
20:38
Speaker 4: which is itself amazing, but this is still, i mean,
20:40
Speaker 4: five hundred million dollars wall president in one year from
20:44
Speaker 4: one of your many crypto adventures. It is sort of
20:48
Speaker 4: beyond I think it's safe to say anything we've seen,
20:51
Speaker 4: at least in the modern era and probably longer.
20:53
Speaker 6: Which of course is also directly tied to the Ford
20:55
Speaker 6: policy that he's overseeing as president. Like it's this it
20:59
Speaker 6: deals with the UAE to your point, Jeff, about how
21:02
Speaker 6: that's the backer in this case, and that's just getting
21:06
Speaker 6: I mean, that's like basically just scratching the surface. Jared
21:08
Speaker 6: Kushner obviously as well had huge infusion of cash from
21:12
Speaker 6: the Saddi royal family. But the UAE is tied into
21:15
Speaker 6: world liberty financial right, we're just mentioning that that's enormously significant,
21:20
Speaker 6: and there's really no direct parallel between Hunter Biden or
21:23
Speaker 6: the Clintons obviously, who also had their own foreign dealings.
21:26
Speaker 6: But this is the sitting president with that fund and
21:31
Speaker 6: a lot of foreign policy implications on the line and
21:32
Speaker 6: where war in Iran the UAE we covered earlier in
21:35
Speaker 6: the show, says two missiles were launched at it in
21:37
Speaker 6: the last twenty four hours.
21:40
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I spent all the day yesterday on the phone.
21:44
Speaker 4: Work kind of story in this realm that I'm not
21:46
Speaker 4: going to spoil, so you guys have to have me
21:48
Speaker 4: back on to discuss.
21:49
Speaker 6: It and read notice everyone.
21:53
Speaker 5: Thank you guys.
21:54
Speaker 4: I hope there's a breaking cryptocurrency at some point, maybe
22:00
Speaker 4: crystal coin.
22:02
Speaker 7: Oh my god.
22:02
Speaker 2: We're not that desperate yet, Jeff, but we'll see. We'll
22:05
Speaker 2: see how the next couple of years go.
22:08
Speaker 1: Jeff's dying.
22:09
Speaker 6: Thank you so much for doing double duty today. We
22:11
Speaker 6: appreciate it.
22:12
Speaker 5: My pleasure. Happy to be on anytime. Thanks guys.
22:17
Speaker 2: Jared Kushner was recently in Israel for meetings over the
22:21
Speaker 2: purported Gaza peace plan. In an interview after those meetings,
22:25
Speaker 2: he indicated that they would let Israel quote unquote finish
22:28
Speaker 2: the job. Let's take a listen.
22:29
Speaker 7: We're very committed to the fact that we have a
22:31
Speaker 7: plan to rebuild Gaza, but we will not allow Gaza
22:34
Speaker 7: to be rebuilt until the demilitarization occurs. Nobody wants to
22:38
Speaker 7: put more money into a place that's gone on for
22:40
Speaker 7: so long until if it's just going to be taken
22:43
Speaker 7: over by terrorists or blown up again. We're also not
22:45
Speaker 7: going to restrict Israel's right to defend itself if there
22:48
Speaker 7: are any imminent threats, and so we had to clarify
22:50
Speaker 7: what that means. We could be seeing progress, you know,
22:52
Speaker 7: as much in as little as thirty days, hopefully on
22:55
Speaker 7: starting to take some of the weapons out and hopefully
22:58
Speaker 7: filling in some of the tunnels as well next sixty
23:00
Speaker 7: to ninety days as well. So progress could come quite soon,
23:03
Speaker 7: but we do need cooperation from both sides and we're
23:07
Speaker 7: going to hopefully get through, but we've made a lot
23:09
Speaker 7: of progress to get here. For Israel, we think this
23:11
Speaker 7: is a win win situation because if Hamas actually gives
23:14
Speaker 7: over the weapons and the tunnels willingly over the next
23:17
Speaker 7: sixty to ninety days, that obviously would be the elimination
23:20
Speaker 7: of a huge security threat for Israel, almost an unthinkable achievement.
23:24
Speaker 7: And if they don't fall through now in their commitment,
23:26
Speaker 7: everyone will see that they're not genuine about peace, and
23:29
Speaker 7: then Israel will have a lot more support from the
23:31
Speaker 7: US and others to go and finish the job in
23:33
Speaker 7: the appropriate way.
23:34
Speaker 2: Those comments represent one more instance of the US capitulating
23:39
Speaker 2: to Israeli demands and positioning, this time with regard to
23:43
Speaker 2: potential demilitarization and dearming of Hamas in the Gaza strip.
23:47
Speaker 2: Join us now to talk about why we seem to
23:49
Speaker 2: see this trend happening over and over again. Our Eli
23:53
Speaker 2: Clifton of the Quincy Institute and Ion Lastic, political science
23:56
Speaker 2: professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and they are also
23:58
Speaker 2: co authors of a new book, Israel's Lobby America in
24:03
Speaker 2: the Grip of a Foreign Powers. Gentleman, welcome to you both.
24:06
Speaker 5: Thank you for having us.
24:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, so let me go ahead and start
24:10
Speaker 2: with you. Why did you think it was important to
24:13
Speaker 2: write this book at this particular moment.
24:16
Speaker 8: There have been many books in the past about the
24:18
Speaker 8: Israel lobby. John Meerscheimer and Steve Walt wrote an important
24:22
Speaker 8: book twenty years ago. But the world has changed so
24:25
Speaker 8: much and the lobby has changed with it to pose
24:27
Speaker 8: threats to America which are much more severe than people
24:32
Speaker 8: have realized in the past. In the past, what is
24:37
Speaker 8: now a toxic special relationship with Israel cost America a
24:40
Speaker 8: great deal in its foreign relations. Now it's not just
24:43
Speaker 8: a matter of paying a high price abroad, for policies
24:48
Speaker 8: that can have no daylight between Washington and Jerusalem. But
24:52
Speaker 8: there's threats to American freedoms at home because the lobby,
24:57
Speaker 8: unable to defend Israeli policy, is resorting to suppressing American freedoms,
25:03
Speaker 8: specifically punishing prosecuting anyone who tries to seriously criticize the
25:10
Speaker 8: relationship between the United States and Israel or criticize Israeli policies,
25:14
Speaker 8: especially in Gaza and.
25:15
Speaker 5: Lebanon and Eil.
25:16
Speaker 6: I want to ask about that point, about the changes
25:18
Speaker 6: that have taken place just in very recent years. You
25:21
Speaker 6: get into a lot of this in the book, both
25:22
Speaker 6: of changes in Israeli politics, but also I just wanted
25:25
Speaker 6: to zero on this one point. You want to make
25:27
Speaker 6: you right the twenty ten Citizens United versus Federal Election
25:29
Speaker 6: Commission Supreme Court decision, combined with a dramatic increase in
25:33
Speaker 6: the proportion of national wealth controlled by the super rich,
25:35
Speaker 6: open to the floodgates for narrow special interests to invest
25:38
Speaker 6: unlimited money in the American campaign finance economy. And could
25:42
Speaker 6: you walk us through a bit how we have seen
25:44
Speaker 6: post Citizens United, particularly money started concentrating, start concentrating even
25:49
Speaker 6: more on this issue in particular.
25:51
Speaker 5: That's right.
25:51
Speaker 9: So to be clear when Citizens United, when in the
25:55
Speaker 9: Speech Now Decisions first came down that the greatest fear
25:58
Speaker 9: that was being discussed was the possibility that corporate money
26:02
Speaker 9: and dark money would flood our campaigns, and they did
26:05
Speaker 9: to a degree. That was a well placed fear. But
26:08
Speaker 9: perhaps the thing that people hadn't anticipated is that a
26:11
Speaker 9: small group of plutocrats of billionaire donors would mobilize and
26:17
Speaker 9: would do so publicly stating that the reason that they
26:20
Speaker 9: were doing it was because of Israel and their desire
26:23
Speaker 9: to get politicians elected and to get policies in place
26:26
Speaker 9: that would continue that no daylight policy between Washington and Israel.
26:31
Speaker 9: And what we saw in the first post Citizen's United election,
26:34
Speaker 9: which was in twenty twelve, was suddenly Sheldon Adilson came
26:37
Speaker 9: out of the gates, giving millions and millions of dollars
26:40
Speaker 9: to first to new Gingrich's primary campaign and then Mitt
26:44
Speaker 9: Romney's when Mitt Romney was the nominee for the Republican Party.
26:48
Speaker 9: And what was really interesting to see in that campaign
26:51
Speaker 9: was the degree of honesty and forthright manner with which Adelson,
26:55
Speaker 9: his advisors and Newt Gingrich talked about this new influx
26:59
Speaker 9: of money into the campaign, saying that the reason that
27:02
Speaker 9: Adelson himself said the reason he was doing it was
27:04
Speaker 9: because of Israel. New Gingrich said, the reason my biggest
27:07
Speaker 9: donor is doing this is because of Israel, a foreign country,
27:10
Speaker 9: And Adilson's own advisors were out there really trying to
27:13
Speaker 9: make clear that the reason this was happening was because
27:16
Speaker 9: of Israel. Now flash forward, as we track in our book,
27:19
Speaker 9: nine billionaires gave over one point seven billion dollars into
27:23
Speaker 9: our campaign, into our campaign finance system to influence our elections.
27:27
Speaker 9: Since Citizens United and all of those billionaires spoke about
27:31
Speaker 9: or through their philanthropy, we can infer that the reason
27:34
Speaker 9: that they were motivated to engage in our political process
27:37
Speaker 9: and to give such large sums of money was because
27:40
Speaker 9: of Israel. That was their central driving issue for engaging
27:43
Speaker 9: with that degree of money and wealth seeking to determine
27:47
Speaker 9: the outcomes of elections.
27:49
Speaker 1: So I would say that it is a key element.
27:52
Speaker 9: Is the Citizens United decision allowed the lobby to pivot
27:56
Speaker 9: to this focus on a small group of ultra rich individuals,
27:59
Speaker 9: even as Israel's public support for Israel within the electorate
28:02
Speaker 9: creators during this time, but it is made up for
28:05
Speaker 9: by the fact that our elections have become something that
28:08
Speaker 9: plutocrats are allowed to have an outsized say.
28:11
Speaker 2: In and eli is that the only mechanism that is
28:15
Speaker 2: used here to create to create impact in our politics,
28:19
Speaker 2: to wield influence in our politics. And I don't mean
28:22
Speaker 2: to downplay whatsoever we've all witnessed just in this election
28:25
Speaker 2: season alone, the tens of millions of dollars that are
28:28
Speaker 2: flooding into some of these races, mostly to confuse and
28:31
Speaker 2: miss lead voters that ads have nothing to do whatsoever
28:34
Speaker 2: with Israel. Oftentimes the money is funneled through a variety
28:37
Speaker 2: of different packs to try to obscure where it ultimately
28:39
Speaker 2: is coming from. So we know that that has a
28:41
Speaker 2: massive impact. Are there other mechanisms that they use as well, though,
28:45
Speaker 2: in order to try to get the results from our
28:48
Speaker 2: elected leadership that we may not be as aware of.
28:53
Speaker 1: Well, I think that in tern of trying to control
28:55
Speaker 1: the debate, which is something that Ion referenced earlier, that
28:59
Speaker 1: these plutocrats and you look at what the other things
29:01
Speaker 1: they advocate for and the things that they are actually
29:04
Speaker 1: directly involved in controlling. For instance, Miriam Addelson serving as
29:07
Speaker 1: the president of the mccabee Task Force. Mccabee task Force
29:11
Speaker 1: is the main organization that was pushing for the deportation
29:14
Speaker 1: of pac Mood Khalil, that has been pushing for the
29:16
Speaker 1: withholding of federal funds to universities because they've allowed criticism
29:20
Speaker 1: of Israel on their campuses. And as a result, you're
29:22
Speaker 1: seeing that there is basically a mobilization of state power
29:26
Speaker 1: to try to stifle criticism of Israel and calls for
29:30
Speaker 1: a meaningful change in policy from elected officials. Now, it
29:34
Speaker 1: really helps if you're leading that push.
29:36
Speaker 9: For the weaponization of state power to stifle speech, if
29:40
Speaker 9: you happen to also have been the largest donors to
29:43
Speaker 9: the politicians who have the ability to make those decisions.
29:48
Speaker 6: I also wanted to ask Ian what it's like to
29:51
Speaker 6: be a researcher in the space, a writer in this space,
29:54
Speaker 6: because obviously you referenced ner Scheimer. That's been something that
29:58
Speaker 6: we've had him talk about on the show as well. Oh,
30:00
Speaker 6: but just talk to us a little bit about the pressure,
30:03
Speaker 6: the pushback. Maybe it's maybe it's less now because of
30:06
Speaker 6: public opinion, as Crystal referenced earlier, but the headwinds, what's
30:10
Speaker 6: it been like, you know, to work on this book
30:11
Speaker 6: and speak out on this issue.
30:13
Speaker 8: Well, I mean, I've been working in this space for
30:16
Speaker 8: over half a century. I have felt a responsibility and
30:21
Speaker 8: a fascination. I'm Jewish. I have been exposed to just
30:26
Speaker 8: about every argument, every smear you can imagine. But in
30:30
Speaker 8: fact I've survived, and what I have found it has
30:34
Speaker 8: changed since the Walton Meerscheimer book is that the country
30:39
Speaker 8: knows that Apak and the Israel Lobby is now an issue.
30:42
Speaker 8: And although the reviewers of the Walton Merherscheimer book could
30:46
Speaker 8: smear them as anti Semites and then prevent people from
30:49
Speaker 8: really ever reading the book, most of those reviews never
30:52
Speaker 8: dealt with anything the book said, just talked about the
30:55
Speaker 8: authors as if they were anti Semites. I don't think
30:57
Speaker 8: the lobby can get away with that with our book.
31:00
Speaker 8: I think they're going to have to either try to
31:03
Speaker 8: stay silent because they can't argue against us, or actually
31:07
Speaker 8: engage the arguments, in which case we will have accomplished
31:10
Speaker 8: a great deal. Because the objective of the lobby now
31:14
Speaker 8: is to prevent discussion of Israel publicly and to control
31:18
Speaker 8: and punish those who try to raise that issue. So
31:21
Speaker 8: things have changed. One has to have a thick skin
31:24
Speaker 8: and a sense of humor, but one also has to
31:27
Speaker 8: focus on the facts, on the analysis, not on appeals
31:32
Speaker 8: to prejudices, appeals to mysterious conspiracy theories. Know, we're talking
31:38
Speaker 8: about very specific mechanisms of power, mechanisms of influence that
31:43
Speaker 8: operate in the United States, and that do so legally,
31:47
Speaker 8: and that do so with success because of the commitment
31:51
Speaker 8: of the people behind them, and because of the structure
31:53
Speaker 8: of American politics that encourages the mobilization of special interests.
32:00
Speaker 2: Pick up on some of that, so we've been tracking,
32:02
Speaker 2: of course, in today's show, the Florida election results, on
32:05
Speaker 2: the one hand, which are highly relevant to this conversation. Actually,
32:08
Speaker 2: on the one hand, you had the shock victory of
32:10
Speaker 2: Angie Nixon, who is a DSA member. She's an avowed
32:14
Speaker 2: anti Zionist, she opposes genocide. She introduced a resolution that
32:18
Speaker 2: got two votes in the Florida State House calling for
32:22
Speaker 2: a ceasefire in November, you know, just a month after
32:25
Speaker 2: October seventh. Then on the Republican side, you have some
32:29
Speaker 2: i think it's fair to say, genuine bigots running capturing
32:33
Speaker 2: the attention of young Republicans in particularly at James Fishback
32:36
Speaker 2: running for governor at Dan Filsaria and running against a fellow,
32:39
Speaker 2: another bigot, Randy Fine, in that primary. Both of them lost,
32:44
Speaker 2: but they both also got into double digits, and they
32:46
Speaker 2: both also did quite well, quite well among young Republicans.
32:51
Speaker 2: So I'm curious what you make of those developed how
32:54
Speaker 2: you make sense of those developments, and how you view them,
32:57
Speaker 2: and whether or not you are concerned that some of
33:00
Speaker 2: the genuine information that you reveal here could fuel some
33:06
Speaker 2: of those bigoted conspiracy theories.
33:09
Speaker 9: Well, to answer both of those questions, To address the
33:12
Speaker 9: first one, I think it's really important to zoom out
33:15
Speaker 9: from sort of the horse race political coverage. And believe me,
33:18
Speaker 9: I'm susceptible to being pulled into that as much as anyone,
33:21
Speaker 9: but I think it's really important to look at overall,
33:25
Speaker 9: what does it take for Israel's lobby to continue to
33:28
Speaker 9: be competitive within this environment. Where as we talked about earlier,
33:32
Speaker 9: they can't even talk about.
33:33
Speaker 1: Israel in the ads that they are paying to put
33:35
Speaker 1: on the air.
33:37
Speaker 9: And the simple answer is that the price is literally
33:40
Speaker 9: going up. At this point in the twenty twenty six
33:44
Speaker 9: election cycle, Israel lobby super packs have raised around one
33:49
Speaker 9: hundred and sixty million dollars and spent around one hundred
33:52
Speaker 9: and fifty of that, and that number is going to
33:55
Speaker 9: continue to tick up going into the general election.
33:57
Speaker 1: They're not raising, They're not done raising or spending.
34:00
Speaker 9: I think it's entirely plausible that they will raise and
34:02
Speaker 9: spend somewhere in the vicinity of a quarter of a
34:04
Speaker 9: billion dollars trying to influence election outcomes, both in the
34:08
Speaker 9: primaries as well as in the general election in this cycle.
34:11
Speaker 9: So the numbers are going up at a really, really
34:15
Speaker 9: rapid pace of what they have to spend and they're getting.
34:18
Speaker 9: The short answer is, obviously, as you alluded to, mixed
34:20
Speaker 9: success in getting the candidates elected that they would like
34:23
Speaker 9: to see. But each win and each loss is costing
34:26
Speaker 9: a lot more money than it used to.
34:28
Speaker 1: That is very very clear.
34:30
Speaker 9: As for whether the message and the facts that we
34:33
Speaker 9: present in our book can be misused by bigots or
34:36
Speaker 9: anti Semites, I'm sure that some of them can.
34:39
Speaker 1: But I think it's also.
34:41
Speaker 9: Dangerous to abandon this space and to avoid engaging with
34:47
Speaker 9: the very very clear reality that the pro Israel special
34:51
Speaker 9: interest groups and the rules that they have in our
34:54
Speaker 9: elections and in our democracy at this point because abandoning
34:58
Speaker 9: that space, not in engaging with it, because of the
35:01
Speaker 9: fact that there might be some uncomfortable facts in there
35:03
Speaker 9: that could be misused by people who already hold anti
35:07
Speaker 9: Semitic or conspiratorial views, effectively sort of abandons that space
35:11
Speaker 9: to those people, allowing them to sort of run roughshod
35:15
Speaker 9: with whatever theories, even if they're no longer fact based
35:19
Speaker 9: in any way, shape or form they want to try
35:21
Speaker 9: to propagate for their own nefarious purposes.
35:24
Speaker 1: So I think it's extremely important to present.
35:27
Speaker 9: Facts, to engage with this as a real phenomenon in
35:30
Speaker 9: our democracy, and to talk about it in a manner
35:32
Speaker 9: that explicitly rejects anti Semitism and bigotry and generalizations about
35:38
Speaker 9: Jewish Americans. The lobby would like nothing more than to
35:41
Speaker 9: conflate Jewish Americans with the Israel lobby, And as we
35:45
Speaker 9: try to lay out explicitly in our book from the
35:47
Speaker 9: introduction onwards, that is a falsehood, that is an anti
35:51
Speaker 9: Semitic trope as a matter of fact, and we really
35:54
Speaker 9: need to examine the facts to understand why that is
35:57
Speaker 9: so so wrong.
35:59
Speaker 6: And last questions me is to you and you can
36:01
Speaker 6: certainly pick up on that last point as well. I'm
36:03
Speaker 6: just going to ask you know, we started this segment
36:05
Speaker 6: with the Jared Kushner clip, the recent Dared Kushner clip.
36:07
Speaker 6: He's certainly been involved in these negotiating negotiations, are either
36:10
Speaker 6: leading these negotiations in the Iran war of the Gaza
36:14
Speaker 6: conflict as well? What have we seen with the Trump
36:17
Speaker 6: administration that takes this to a different level.
36:21
Speaker 8: Well, let me do it both, quoite, let me follow
36:23
Speaker 8: up a bit on Elisa. Yeah, because there's no question
36:26
Speaker 8: that the lobby is using the conflation of anti Semitism
36:29
Speaker 8: with criticism of Israel in order, as I said, to
36:31
Speaker 8: suppress and prevent discussion of Israel and it's evaluating its policies.
36:37
Speaker 8: One of the techniques they use is to call Israel
36:40
Speaker 8: the collective Jew. And once they call treat Israel as
36:44
Speaker 8: the collective Jew, then any criticism of Israel can be
36:47
Speaker 8: seen as and condemned as an attack on all Jews.
36:51
Speaker 8: This is an outrageous because it forces American Jews into
36:55
Speaker 8: a position as if Israel is their home land, it's
36:57
Speaker 8: their country. That's not true. But then the lobby goes
37:01
Speaker 8: up ahead in benefits, tries to benefit from what it
37:06
Speaker 8: sees as our codes is an upsurgeon anti Semitism. There
37:09
Speaker 8: really is a threat of anti Semitism in the United States,
37:12
Speaker 8: and most of it is due to Israel's policies in
37:15
Speaker 8: the name of the Jewish people. So it's people like
37:18
Speaker 8: us who are focusing on the facts, not on wacky
37:21
Speaker 8: conspiracy theories or mystical ideas that can make that key
37:25
Speaker 8: distinction between criticism of Israel and normal and real anti semitism.
37:32
Speaker 8: Now look at Jared Kushner. You know, I find it
37:35
Speaker 8: a little amusing when Jared Kishner was on CBS after
37:41
Speaker 8: these so called success of forming the Board of Peace
37:44
Speaker 8: and ending the war, what he said was very clearly,
37:48
Speaker 8: yes we got the cease fire and all this other
37:51
Speaker 8: silly stuff. He has spent a lot of time on
37:55
Speaker 8: their complex issues. Is nothing's really going to be done
37:58
Speaker 8: about it, and so I've I don't take seriously all
38:01
Speaker 8: of this fluff about the border peace and reconstruction. He
38:05
Speaker 8: is shoulder to shoulder with the Israeli government. He may
38:09
Speaker 8: put a few ambiguous words around it, but you could
38:12
Speaker 8: tear in that talk that he gave that he never
38:15
Speaker 8: looks for what the interests or the safety of Palestinians are.
38:19
Speaker 8: Everything is couched as if it's all a matter of
38:22
Speaker 8: what's a win win for Israel. This is exactly what
38:25
Speaker 8: we're talking about in this demand by the lobby that
38:29
Speaker 8: any American government, whether it's I Associates, whether it's an
38:33
Speaker 8: ideological commitment as Biden had Desionism, whether it's a purely
38:37
Speaker 8: transactional commitment, which is what the Trump administration has, but
38:41
Speaker 8: the insistence of the lobby that there'll be no daylight
38:43
Speaker 8: between the American government and the Israeli government, and that
38:46
Speaker 8: is costing the United States more and more and more.
38:51
Speaker 2: And I just want to get your perspective as a
38:53
Speaker 2: political scientist on some of the election results that we've seen,
38:57
Speaker 2: specifically this Angie Nixon shockvictory in Florida. She spent literally
39:01
Speaker 2: zero dollars on television, zero dollars and was able to win.
39:06
Speaker 2: And it wasn't even closed to Alex vann In, his
39:08
Speaker 2: well known figure was the star of one of the
39:11
Speaker 2: Trump impeachments. He was running millions of dollars of TV
39:15
Speaker 2: ads across the state. I'm not going to pretend Israel
39:18
Speaker 2: was the only issue but it was a very clear
39:21
Speaker 2: dividing line between these two candidates, and Angie Nixon was
39:25
Speaker 2: able to prevail against incredibly long odds. Here, I wonder
39:30
Speaker 2: what you make of this result, and perhaps by get
39:33
Speaker 2: back to you started by saying or at a particularly
39:35
Speaker 2: dangerous moment because of the way that the Israel lobby
39:38
Speaker 2: is trying to crack down on free speech here in
39:41
Speaker 2: the US. It also seems that there at a particularly
39:44
Speaker 2: precarious and vulnerable moment given the way that these political
39:48
Speaker 2: results have changed, and given the way that public opinion
39:50
Speaker 2: has shifted so dramatically.
39:53
Speaker 8: Well, there's a complicated set of questions you're asking me,
39:55
Speaker 8: and one can't learn everything one wants to learn by
39:58
Speaker 8: the outcome of one election, one primary election in Florida.
40:03
Speaker 8: One thing that's happening is that the Democratic base has
40:06
Speaker 8: become much more critical of Israel and for the first
40:09
Speaker 8: time motivated to vote in large measure about the Israeli situation.
40:15
Speaker 8: Plus a commitment commitments that are associated with alienation from capitalism,
40:21
Speaker 8: that capitalism isn't working for a lot of the people
40:23
Speaker 8: in a democratic base and they don't think it can.
40:26
Speaker 8: But that on the other hand, I think those who
40:28
Speaker 8: are concerned that too many candidates from that progressive DSA
40:34
Speaker 8: orientation might not be able to prevail in the general election.
40:38
Speaker 8: Are correct. This country is polarized. There's a very even split,
40:43
Speaker 8: and I think people can reasonably worry about about that.
40:48
Speaker 8: I think one of the things that is going on,
40:49
Speaker 8: which we have been tracking since Obama came to power,
40:54
Speaker 8: is the role of social media and whether Vinman, for example,
40:58
Speaker 8: ended up spending his money very very unwisely on conventional
41:02
Speaker 8: television commercials, whereas Nixon actually cleverly used social media, which
41:07
Speaker 8: is much more important for at least for the Democratic
41:10
Speaker 8: base voters in the primary. So there's a lot that's
41:14
Speaker 8: going on. On the Israeli side. Israelis are increasingly aware
41:18
Speaker 8: but that their love affair with Trump has cost them
41:23
Speaker 8: in norm and their extremity of the policies that Netta
41:27
Speaker 8: was engaged in. It has cost them tremendous amount of
41:31
Speaker 8: standing in the United States that they are now fighting
41:34
Speaker 8: for an Israeli position in the United States they never
41:37
Speaker 8: had to at the public opinion level, and starting starting
41:42
Speaker 8: to feel that at the level of the political class,
41:45
Speaker 8: these always are in an election campaign. Right now, Netiao
41:48
Speaker 8: may or may not win return as a prime minister.
41:53
Speaker 8: My hunch is that he will not. But in Israel
41:57
Speaker 8: there'll be an attempt by the lobby to use the
41:59
Speaker 8: disappearance of Netanyahu as a new day that Israel's completely changed.
42:03
Speaker 8: But really the government that wakes in the wings, although
42:06
Speaker 8: it won't have the extremity of some of the ministers
42:11
Speaker 8: in the Netanyago government, they will not change Israel's policies
42:16
Speaker 8: toward Palestinians. Those policies are not going to change. The
42:20
Speaker 8: fear that I have is that American politicians will use
42:23
Speaker 8: a cosmetic change in Israeli profile political profile to treat
42:28
Speaker 8: it as if everything has changed in the United States can
42:31
Speaker 8: go back to a comfortable special relationship with the quote
42:35
Speaker 8: unquote only democracy in the Middle East. In my opinion,
42:39
Speaker 8: the United States really has to reorient itself toward this
42:41
Speaker 8: problem and think about solutions in the future that are
42:46
Speaker 8: anchored in an end to the occupation of the West
42:48
Speaker 8: Bank and Gaza through integration of all the people who
42:51
Speaker 8: live between the Jordan and the Sea into one democratic country.
42:55
Speaker 8: It can be called Israel, it can be called Israel Palestine,
42:58
Speaker 8: but it has to be democratic and it has to
43:01
Speaker 8: honor the collective principle of equality for everyone who lives
43:06
Speaker 8: under the same government.
43:08
Speaker 2: And ELI one last one for you. We have seen examples,
43:11
Speaker 2: of course, in both recent and longer history of presidents
43:16
Speaker 2: that buck what Israeli leadership wants them to do. Probably
43:19
Speaker 2: the most significant example in recent years is President Obama
43:23
Speaker 2: moving forward with the JCPOA the Iranian nuclear Deal.
43:27
Speaker 8: How do you.
43:28
Speaker 2: Explain those instances and is there a danger that this
43:32
Speaker 2: analysis that focuses so much on simply the interests of
43:35
Speaker 2: the Israel lobby and the impact of that money denies
43:39
Speaker 2: agency to Biden and Trump for taking these what I
43:44
Speaker 2: think most Americans would agree our horrific actions and enabling
43:47
Speaker 2: what most would say as a genocide.
43:49
Speaker 9: Well, I think Obama's success with the jcpoa at least
43:53
Speaker 9: short term success with it, since ultimately it was torn up,
43:57
Speaker 9: was that he proved that you can stare down the lobby,
44:00
Speaker 9: that you can actually mobilize your party if it becomes
44:04
Speaker 9: If the lobby leans in and makes this a partisan issue,
44:06
Speaker 9: which they did much by following Netanyahu's lead in mobilizing
44:11
Speaker 9: Republicans to oppose it, it turns out that most Democrats,
44:16
Speaker 9: if urged to do so, by the leader of their
44:19
Speaker 9: party when that leader is the president, will ultimately choose
44:23
Speaker 9: to stand with the Democratic Party. And I think that
44:26
Speaker 9: that's something that APAC, even going into that fight, was
44:30
Speaker 9: very concerned about, because that was a monumental shift in
44:34
Speaker 9: how the Israel lobby functions in that they had previously
44:39
Speaker 9: held a great deal of power by only picking fights
44:42
Speaker 9: that they could generally win, but also maintaining the appearance
44:46
Speaker 9: of a bipartisan consensus around their core issues. And that
44:50
Speaker 9: was really a PAC becoming partisan, starting to engage in
44:54
Speaker 9: partisan politics. They quickly spun up a super pack in
44:57
Speaker 9: the wake of that, which again engages in both I
45:00
Speaker 9: may in general elections around the country. They entered into
45:03
Speaker 9: our electoral politics in a way that they had not
45:05
Speaker 9: done so before. Now as for does this somehow sell
45:10
Speaker 9: short the agency of presidents, I don't think it does.
45:14
Speaker 9: Obviously they have agency. But what we try to show
45:16
Speaker 9: in the book time and time again are the instances
45:19
Speaker 9: in which presidents really did state what it was that
45:22
Speaker 9: they wanted to do, what their top advisors wanted them
45:25
Speaker 9: to do. We pride examples Truman, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter.
45:31
Speaker 9: Certainly the example of Obama obviously the example of Trump,
45:34
Speaker 9: certainly Obama in his first term, incidentally with his failed
45:37
Speaker 9: attempt to push for a two state solution as his
45:40
Speaker 9: foreign policy priority in his first term, and time and again,
45:44
Speaker 9: what we show are the instances in which they have
45:46
Speaker 9: pretty much shown both with their top advisors and these
45:49
Speaker 9: presidents wanted to pursue.
45:50
Speaker 1: And then we show the.
45:51
Speaker 9: Mechanisms through which the lobby tried to steer these presidents
45:56
Speaker 9: away from either imposing a piece on the Israeli policy
46:00
Speaker 9: conflict or the ways in which they sought to shape
46:03
Speaker 9: US policy regionally when it comes to issues like Iran.
46:07
Speaker 9: And what that show is isn't that these presidents didn't
46:09
Speaker 9: have agency, but that the lobby did have an enormous
46:13
Speaker 9: capacity and really a one sided ability to bring pressure
46:18
Speaker 9: onto presidents to shape their decision making in a manner
46:22
Speaker 9: that brought in concerns about domestic political repercussions, but in
46:27
Speaker 9: doing so steered them away from the strategic and security
46:31
Speaker 9: oriented policies that they wanted to pursue. Now, again, that
46:34
Speaker 9: doesn't remove any agency from these presidents, but it does
46:37
Speaker 9: show how a lobby that is largely aligned with a
46:40
Speaker 9: foreign country can operate when there is absolutely, at least historically,
46:45
Speaker 9: nothing to counterbalance its influence inside the hulls of power.
46:49
Speaker 2: The book is Israel's lobby could not possibly be more
46:54
Speaker 2: timely highly recommended to everyone. Go and pick it up
46:57
Speaker 2: and check it out. Gentlemen, thank you so much for
47:00
Speaker 2: joining us this morning, and also for writing the book
47:02
Speaker 2: and helping to uh locid date this dynamic for all Americans.
47:07
Speaker 1: Thank you having well that doesn't for us.
47:10
Speaker 6: On today's edition of Breaking Points, Crystal jeff Stein gave
47:14
Speaker 6: me a really good new idea, crystal Coin. I like this, uh,
47:19
Speaker 6: the Crystal crypto endeavor.
47:22
Speaker 1: I think we can make a lot of money. I
47:24
Speaker 1: think you could make a.
47:24
Speaker 5: Lot of money.
47:25
Speaker 2: I think I could lose any shred of integrity or
47:29
Speaker 2: self respect I've ever had, and we'll probably lose a
47:31
Speaker 2: lot of money.
47:32
Speaker 6: What we're gonna do is launch kyle Coin, and nobody's
47:35
Speaker 6: gonna tell him.
47:40
Speaker 2: All right, we'll work on that one in the meantime.
47:43
Speaker 2: I'll be back here tomorrow with Sager and we will
47:46
Speaker 2: see you guys.
47:46
Speaker 4: Then.
47:46
Speaker 6: Sounds good to have a great day, everyone,