Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 2/17/26: Randy Fine Islamophobia, Israel West Bank Annexation, Lindsey Graham Pushes Iran War, James Talarico Censored By CBS

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2/17/26: Randy Fine Islamophobia, Israel West Bank Annexation, Lindsey Graham Pushes Iran War, James Talarico Censored By CBS · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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0:34
Speaker 2: So Randy Fine, you know, was out doing his Randy
0:38
Speaker 2: Fine thing being Florida six being a disgusting, genocidal racist,
0:42
Speaker 2: and he tweeted this, split this up on the screen.
0:45
Speaker 2: If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs
0:50
Speaker 2: and Muslims is not a difficult one.
0:53
Speaker 3: So this was in response, we can put this up.
0:57
Speaker 3: He had to respond to his own tweet by saying,
1:00
Speaker 3: for context, this is a leader of one of the
1:02
Speaker 3: key mainstream Muslim groups that supported Mom Dannie And it
1:05
Speaker 3: was a post on x from Nardine Kiswani, who said
1:08
Speaker 3: earlier this month, finally NYC is coming to Islam. Dogs
1:12
Speaker 3: definitely have a place in society, just not as indoor pets.
1:16
Speaker 3: Like we've said along they are on clean, a joke
1:21
Speaker 3: that I think was also probably a little bit rooted
1:24
Speaker 3: in some sincere feelings.
1:26
Speaker 4: There are cultural differences with dogs, Crystal.
1:28
Speaker 3: There are some people who do find it to be
1:30
Speaker 3: unclean culturally that folks keep dogs in their house.
1:33
Speaker 4: Not you, though you're dog lover.
1:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a dog. I would also say she
1:38
Speaker 2: does make my house less.
1:40
Speaker 4: I'm clean.
1:42
Speaker 2: Matter, But yeah, I mean, this is just like to me, Emily,
1:45
Speaker 2: this was sort of perfectly emblematic of Trump, the Trump regime,
1:50
Speaker 2: and Trump two point zero in particular. You have a
1:53
Speaker 2: dumb fake outrage fest. By the way, based on lies
1:59
Speaker 2: number one live they're framing this woman is she's like
2:01
Speaker 2: some top zoron Mandania advisor. She's not an advisor to
2:04
Speaker 2: him whatsoever that we know she.
2:05
Speaker 3: Supported his group supported him. Yeah, according to Randy Fine,
2:08
Speaker 3: that's what her.
2:09
Speaker 5: They frame her like.
2:10
Speaker 2: She's like, you know, in the mayor's office every day,
2:13
Speaker 2: guiding him on policy with regard to dogs and other things.
2:16
Speaker 3: She's not exactly Seal Weaver. Well, we're on the scale
2:19
Speaker 3: of Zoran.
2:19
Speaker 2: Contrary, she's on the you know, she's on the council
2:22
Speaker 2: that's going to impose Sharia law in New York City.
2:24
Speaker 4: That's her.
2:25
Speaker 2: She's the head of that task force for zoron Mondani.
2:28
Speaker 2: So anyway, the framing of her relationship that I saw
2:30
Speaker 2: from a bunch of consertives totally incomplete lie. This is
2:32
Speaker 2: a joke, right, It's clear, like and then the New
2:35
Speaker 2: York Post, which is obsessed with Zorn, I think they're
2:38
Speaker 2: the ones that write this up like, oh my god,
2:40
Speaker 2: like it's some you know, newsworthy scandal that someone put
2:44
Speaker 2: a joke on Twitter about this. And then so you've
2:47
Speaker 2: got something that's rooted in idiocy and lies, and then
2:51
Speaker 2: you have this total like genocide. I mean, Randy Fine
2:55
Speaker 2: is a disgusting, disgusting person and this is not the
2:59
Speaker 2: first in right whatsoever. And we've got some of that
3:02
Speaker 2: as well that we could put up on the screen.
3:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was gonna say, let's just go to D
3:06
Speaker 3: seven here. Yeah, we visit some of what Randy Fine.
3:09
Speaker 2: Let's remind let's remind what this man is all about.
3:13
Speaker 2: Here this is a brand new one. This also just
3:15
Speaker 2: came out this week. He says, Palestinian is a synonym
3:18
Speaker 2: for evil. Okay, got that one. The anti Muslim bigotry
3:22
Speaker 2: with this guy is through the roof, absolutely disgusting. He says,
3:25
Speaker 2: Jihadi Momdanni is to blame him for the rise in
3:29
Speaker 2: Muslim terror happening across New York City. Denaturalize and deport
3:33
Speaker 2: him now, okay, so deport Mamdani. Deport Mamdani, who is
3:38
Speaker 2: a US citizen. May the streets of Gaza overflow with
3:42
Speaker 2: the blood of these animals talking about Palestinians. These animals
3:45
Speaker 2: live in Florida, hopefully not for long. There is no
3:47
Speaker 2: suffering adequate for these animals. May the streets of Gaza
3:51
Speaker 2: overflow with blood. Tell your fellow Muslim terrorists to release
3:54
Speaker 2: the hostages and surrender. Until then, starve away talking about
3:59
Speaker 2: the Yeah, talking about the fact that you've got the
4:03
Speaker 2: you know, the Israel's imposing a siege on the entirety
4:06
Speaker 2: of the Gaza strip, including women and children. So just
4:10
Speaker 2: an overt, undeniable racist, anti Muslim bigot whose rhetoric about
4:16
Speaker 2: Muslims very much echoes the rhetoric about Jews leaning up
4:20
Speaker 2: to the Holocaust. So you know, now he's he's embraced
4:24
Speaker 2: this style of Nazi propaganda to completely dehumanize a group
4:29
Speaker 2: of people. So you've got the combination of something fake
4:32
Speaker 2: outrage based on idiocy and lies, combined with just overtly evil,
4:38
Speaker 2: dehumanizing sentiments from Randy Fine. And you know, there were
4:42
Speaker 2: some conservatives like you, Megan Kelly said something. There were
4:45
Speaker 2: a few, like, not that many, but a few conservative
4:49
Speaker 2: influencers who had something to say about this. As of
4:52
Speaker 2: this morning, there is not a single elected Republican official
4:56
Speaker 2: who has said anything about this at all.
5:00
Speaker 5: And this is the same group in.
5:01
Speaker 2: Congress who censured Rashida Talib because she said from the
5:04
Speaker 2: River to the Seed, Palestine would be free, a rally
5:07
Speaker 2: chant that she explains, in her view, means equal rights
5:11
Speaker 2: for all. That is what she's calling for. She gets censured,
5:15
Speaker 2: and this disgusting, vile, racist bigot just gets off Scott
5:19
Speaker 2: free and gets to go on cable doos and be
5:21
Speaker 2: treated like he's a normal human being.
5:23
Speaker 4: Yeah.
5:23
Speaker 3: I mean, he's used the term quote filthy Arab. He
5:27
Speaker 3: has said. I believe he said there's no such thing
5:30
Speaker 3: as an innocent Palestinian child.
5:32
Speaker 4: That's something to that effect.
5:33
Speaker 3: I'll find the exact quote while we're talking about this,
5:36
Speaker 3: but yeah, I'm My response to him was simple. It
5:40
Speaker 3: wasn't even to get into an argument. It was just
5:42
Speaker 3: D three because you know, he's purportedly conservative, so as
5:47
Speaker 3: a conservative, I just responded, all human beings are created
5:50
Speaker 3: in the image of God.
5:52
Speaker 4: For that I got piled on.
5:54
Speaker 3: There was this is D four Joel Berry from the
5:58
Speaker 3: babylon b respond And it doesn't mean we have to
6:01
Speaker 3: let all of them in our country. And so people
6:04
Speaker 3: were also like, hey, it was a joke, blah blah blah.
6:07
Speaker 3: It's like, I don't think anything justifies a sitting congressman
6:11
Speaker 3: playing fast and loose with language that dehumanizes citizens. This
6:16
Speaker 3: is not a Jewish country or a Christian country. This
6:19
Speaker 3: is a country where we have the First Amendment. Thank God,
6:21
Speaker 3: we have the First Amendment. And that is dehumanizing his citizens,
6:26
Speaker 3: even if it's a joke. He's a congressman, and I
6:28
Speaker 3: know we're in the Trump era, but he's a congressman. Yeah,
6:32
Speaker 3: And to dehumanize other people, whether you're joking, you're responding
6:36
Speaker 3: to a joke. He tweeted this without any context. First
6:38
Speaker 3: of all, this guy is way too online. He's like
6:40
Speaker 3: just randomly posting stuff as a congressman.
6:43
Speaker 5: As if we're all supposed to even know what this country.
6:45
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, exactly, which is reckless. If you're going to say, quote,
6:49
Speaker 3: if they force us to choose, the choice between dogs
6:51
Speaker 3: and Muslims is not a difficult one. So it's obviously
6:55
Speaker 3: dehumanized in language. It should obviously be something that people
6:58
Speaker 3: say is not okay. I guess we have a Mila
7:01
Speaker 3: Yanopolis response.
7:05
Speaker 5: Outrage.
7:06
Speaker 2: You are a man of low moral character, unfit to
7:08
Speaker 2: hold public office. Now when Milo Napolis is lecturing you
7:11
Speaker 2: about your moral character, you've done fucked up. Although your nfeline,
7:15
Speaker 2: he says, although in your case quote unfit falls woefully.
7:21
Speaker 2: We support fat jaming in the context of Randy Fine
7:24
Speaker 2: always he was.
7:25
Speaker 4: He was getting roasted badly and rightfully.
7:29
Speaker 2: So right, yeah, Well, and here's the thing, I mean,
7:31
Speaker 2: it's it's like cliche and tried to say at this point,
7:35
Speaker 2: but imagine if you know Ilhan Omer or chijahalib had said,
7:41
Speaker 2: if they force us to choose the choice between dogs
7:44
Speaker 2: and Jews is not a difficult one. You think that
7:47
Speaker 2: they would that everyone. Oh, it's just a joke. It's
7:50
Speaker 2: just a joke, you know about cultural differences. It's just
7:53
Speaker 2: a joke because we you know, that doesn't mean we
7:55
Speaker 2: have to let all the Jews in our country to
7:57
Speaker 2: the babylon Be's point.
7:59
Speaker 5: You know, it's it.
8:00
Speaker 2: It would be a rightfully so in my opinion, it
8:04
Speaker 2: would be a national scandal. She would be censured, very
8:08
Speaker 2: possibly kicked down of Congress. There would be national news
8:11
Speaker 2: cycles about this. Every Democrat would be asked what they
8:14
Speaker 2: think about those comments and would you know, and would
8:17
Speaker 2: condemn them, by the way, and instead this is just
8:21
Speaker 2: you know, I do think democrats are especially progressives, are
8:24
Speaker 2: going to try to push on this because Republicans should
8:27
Speaker 2: have to answer. Republican elected republicans should have to answer
8:30
Speaker 2: what they think about these comments and these sentiments. They
8:32
Speaker 2: should be forced to go on the record about whether
8:34
Speaker 2: they agree that, you know, Muslims are lower than dogs
8:38
Speaker 2: and that dogs should be chosen over Muslims. They should
8:41
Speaker 2: be forced to answer for all of his rhetoric and
8:45
Speaker 2: explain whether or not they agree with it and why.
8:47
Speaker 3: Well he said, yeah, I found the quote there's no
8:49
Speaker 3: such thing as innocent Palestinian civilians, and so to Crystal's point,
8:55
Speaker 3: that is the type of language that is dehumanizing an
8:57
Speaker 3: entire group of people, whereas categorizing literally every single person
9:02
Speaker 3: who considered the considers themselves Palestinian to be a combatant. Essentially,
9:09
Speaker 3: that's how you end up slaughtering innocent people, because you
9:12
Speaker 3: are engaged in a process of categorizing people as worthy
9:20
Speaker 3: of combat deaths.
9:22
Speaker 4: And that is disgusting.
9:24
Speaker 3: It's a problem for the United States, a problem for
9:26
Speaker 3: our foreign policy obviously, and it should be an easy
9:30
Speaker 3: thing to just I mean, this is something he said
9:33
Speaker 3: long ago. So when you then also see him posting this,
9:36
Speaker 3: this wasn't posted in a vacuum. And one of the
9:37
Speaker 3: reasons that like I felt compelled to respond is because
9:40
Speaker 3: he has a history of saying this kind of stuff,
9:42
Speaker 3: and so it's not like you can just say, oh.
9:44
Speaker 4: We really fine. Oh he's just making a joke about dogs, haha.
9:48
Speaker 3: He's just talking about, you know, whether you should let
9:50
Speaker 3: people have massive cultural differences with us into the country. No,
9:54
Speaker 3: he's been doing this over and over again. He obviously,
9:57
Speaker 3: when you're saying things like filthy arab and saying there's
10:00
Speaker 3: no such thing as innocent Palestinian civilians, and then you
10:03
Speaker 3: dehumanize people and say you'd rather have dogs in the
10:06
Speaker 3: United States than Muslims. I mean, it's it's not acceptable
10:11
Speaker 3: from a congressman.
10:12
Speaker 4: Again.
10:12
Speaker 3: I know that we're in a post Trump era and
10:14
Speaker 3: our standards have been lowered.
10:17
Speaker 4: They were already low. I get it, but.
10:20
Speaker 3: It's just an easy thing to say, like, dude, cut
10:22
Speaker 3: it out. I think Megan responded to put that, she
10:25
Speaker 3: just said, what the fuck is this?
10:27
Speaker 4: Basically, wtf is this? The next element?
10:29
Speaker 5: This is Randy Fine, This is Randy Fine.
10:32
Speaker 4: Things big Randy. We should mention that Ryan.
10:36
Speaker 3: I interviewed a man running in a primary against Randy Fine,
10:39
Speaker 3: whose name is Aaron Baker. I think he's like a
10:41
Speaker 3: roofer in Florida six and.
10:43
Speaker 4: He's running against this.
10:45
Speaker 3: He's not just running a primary campaign against Randy Fine
10:48
Speaker 3: on all the issues. He specifically has called out Randy
10:52
Speaker 3: Fine for talking about people in this way over and
10:54
Speaker 3: over again. So if you happen to live in Florida six,
10:57
Speaker 3: go check out the Baker campaign.
11:00
Speaker 2: And he's running as a Republican. He's running a Republican's
11:02
Speaker 2: a very republican district. And Randy Fine when he got
11:06
Speaker 2: elected here dramatically underperformed. You know, it's it's like a
11:11
Speaker 2: republic I don't know, I'm make Ampthie numbers. Was like
11:13
Speaker 2: a Republican twelve plus twenty five district. Probably he won
11:16
Speaker 2: it by like single digits, you know, And it's because
11:20
Speaker 2: he's just like people are revolted by him, that he's
11:23
Speaker 2: so much that couldn't overcome this partisan of a lean
11:25
Speaker 2: of a district. But you know, I'm glad this guy's
11:28
Speaker 2: running against him in the Republican primary because that's where
11:32
Speaker 2: the next congress person will be chosen. In that primer,
11:35
Speaker 2: is very unlikely that a Democrat would be able to
11:38
Speaker 2: unseat him. So go check him out and see if
11:41
Speaker 2: he is to your taste, if you are in that district,
11:43
Speaker 2: or if you want to support someone who wants to
11:45
Speaker 2: get this man out of Congress because he is just
11:48
Speaker 2: a disgrace and.
11:49
Speaker 3: Wants to stand against this. From a conservative perspective, you know,
11:53
Speaker 3: it's unacceptable obviously, especially if you're trying to make the
11:57
Speaker 3: point that your belief or if you're trying to show
12:01
Speaker 3: people you believe that everyone is created equal and in
12:05
Speaker 3: the dignified image of God. This is not an acceptable
12:10
Speaker 3: piece of rhetoric, and it's not an acceptable position to
12:13
Speaker 3: pretend you have the moral high ground while also having
12:17
Speaker 3: Bandy Fine in the coalition. So check out Aaron Baker.
12:22
Speaker 3: All right, Crystal, let's speaking of pasign in the Middle East.
12:26
Speaker 3: Let's talk about the West Bank.
12:30
Speaker 2: There has been a massive acceleration in the process of
12:34
Speaker 2: stealing land in the occupied West Bank, and there's one
12:38
Speaker 2: reporter who has been covering the story extensively that we're
12:41
Speaker 2: very happy to join us this morning. Jasper Nathaniel is
12:43
Speaker 2: an independent journalist covering the occupied West Bank and writes
12:46
Speaker 2: over at his substack infinite jazz.
12:48
Speaker 5: Great to see a Jasper.
12:50
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me back our pleasures.
12:52
Speaker 2: So let's go and put your latest haear sheet up
12:53
Speaker 2: on the screen, headlined here annexation breaks containment where you
12:58
Speaker 2: talk about. Of course, this has been a multi decade
13:02
Speaker 2: process of stealing land from Palestinians executed by the Israeli government,
13:08
Speaker 2: but there's been such an acceleration in recent days and
13:11
Speaker 2: weeks that it has actually broken through in some mainstream
13:15
Speaker 2: media coverage. You say here with a new package of
13:17
Speaker 2: cabinet decisions, Israel's message to Palestinians in the West Bank
13:20
Speaker 2: is clear, take the money and run. Just bring us
13:24
Speaker 2: up to speed on some of the latest decisions that
13:28
Speaker 2: have been made that have led you to this conclusion
13:31
Speaker 2: and led to some actual outbreak of coverage from the
13:34
Speaker 2: mainstream process.
13:35
Speaker 6: Yeah. So just to take a quick step back.
13:37
Speaker 7: You know Bezilil Smotrich, who's the finance Minister of Israel.
13:41
Speaker 6: He's this far right settler.
13:44
Speaker 7: He in early twenty twenty three pulled off what was
13:49
Speaker 7: effectively a sort of bureaucratic coup where he took control
13:53
Speaker 7: of the of governance of the West Bank. And just
13:56
Speaker 7: a reminder, the West Bank is technically and legally a
14:00
Speaker 7: military occupation, which means that it cannot be governed by
14:04
Speaker 7: the state, by the Israeli government. It has to be
14:07
Speaker 7: overseen by the military, and the military has to adhere
14:12
Speaker 7: to the laws of the occupied country or of the
14:16
Speaker 7: occupied people. So what that means is that the laws
14:19
Speaker 7: from Jordanian times preoccupation in nineteen sixty seven are still
14:23
Speaker 7: supposed to be in effect, but those laws have been
14:27
Speaker 7: steadily eroded. And what happened in twenty twenty three was
14:31
Speaker 7: Smotrich installed himself in the Defense ministry, put in basically
14:36
Speaker 7: a chain of command of settlers and stripped all the
14:40
Speaker 7: bureaucratic guard rails away from the settlement movement, who is
14:44
Speaker 7: determined to take over the entire West Bank. So over
14:48
Speaker 7: the last three years or so, there's been all these
14:52
Speaker 7: new policy initiatives meant to both strip authority away from
14:56
Speaker 7: the Palestinian authority but also from the Israeli military, who
15:00
Speaker 7: not necessarily have the same political or ideo ideological agenda
15:05
Speaker 7: of the settlers.
15:06
Speaker 6: And so what the latest cabinet decisions did.
15:10
Speaker 7: The first one that I think is the reason this
15:13
Speaker 7: story sort of broke into mainstream coverage was basically took
15:18
Speaker 7: out what was left of the Oslo Accords, So the
15:22
Speaker 7: Oslo two Accords, I should say, in ninety two. What
15:25
Speaker 7: it did was it divided the West Bank into areas A, B,
15:29
Speaker 7: and C. And there's this misconception that Area A, B
15:32
Speaker 7: and C means who owns the land. But to be clear,
15:36
Speaker 7: the land was still Palestinian land. It never became part
15:39
Speaker 7: of Israel. The occupation was always legally technically supposed to
15:43
Speaker 7: be temporary. So what Oslo did was it said that
15:45
Speaker 7: in Area A, the Palestinian authority is full control. In
15:49
Speaker 7: Area B Israel. These Israeli military, I should say, and
15:53
Speaker 7: the Palestinian Authority have joint security control, and the PA
15:57
Speaker 7: has administrative control, and then an area of C Israel
16:00
Speaker 7: has full control. But again that land, despite who had
16:03
Speaker 7: administrative control, still belongs to the Palestinians. So what the
16:07
Speaker 7: the first Cabinet decision did was it said that now
16:10
Speaker 7: in addition to having administrative control in Area C, the
16:14
Speaker 7: Israeli military is now allowed to go into areas A
16:18
Speaker 7: and B to take control of things like housing development, demolitions,
16:26
Speaker 7: all sorts of sort of municipal activities. And the way
16:29
Speaker 7: the law is phrased, or the cabinet decision is phrased,
16:32
Speaker 7: is typical of how they do things. It doesn't just
16:35
Speaker 7: say Israel now has control of Area A and B.
16:38
Speaker 7: What it says is in instances where there is an
16:41
Speaker 7: environmental hazard, or there is risk to a Jewish heritage site,
16:46
Speaker 7: or there is you know, water theft or something like that,
16:49
Speaker 7: then Israel has the ability to go in and take
16:52
Speaker 7: control to remedy it. But these are essentially pretenses that
16:57
Speaker 7: Israel uses to go into these places take control. So
17:01
Speaker 7: for example, Israel makes it impossible for most Palestinian cities
17:05
Speaker 7: to have a true waste management system. They sabotage their
17:09
Speaker 7: dumping grounds, they steal their routes, they take over garbage trucks.
17:15
Speaker 7: Now they can go into these places where the Palestinians
17:17
Speaker 7: have been left with no choice but to burn their waste.
17:20
Speaker 7: They can then accuse them of creating air pollution and
17:22
Speaker 7: take control of that whole area. So that is just
17:25
Speaker 7: basically the last remnants of where Palestinians actually theoretically had
17:30
Speaker 7: administrative control in Area A. Israel has now taken that
17:33
Speaker 7: away from them. So that was the first thing. The
17:37
Speaker 7: next thing and the reason I said in that and
17:40
Speaker 7: that subhead, take the money and run was what they
17:43
Speaker 7: have basically done is made it really easy for Israelis
17:47
Speaker 7: to now go directly to Palestinian landowners and buy their
17:51
Speaker 7: land in the West Bank. And you know, they have
17:54
Speaker 7: made conditions so bad for Palestinians in the West Bank,
17:58
Speaker 7: both in terms of like the checks and the the
18:02
Speaker 7: you know, increased violence, but they've also really suffocated the economy.
18:07
Speaker 7: They've prevented one hundred thousand Palestinians from going into Israel
18:10
Speaker 7: to work where they were working before. And they've basically
18:13
Speaker 7: caused unemployment and poverty to soar. And now they're saying,
18:17
Speaker 7: no problem, you can just you know, we'll buy you out.
18:20
Speaker 7: You can take the money and go somewhere else. And
18:23
Speaker 7: you know, that is a problem for a number of reasons,
18:26
Speaker 7: but the biggest one is that for a long time,
18:30
Speaker 7: the Israeli military actually had veto power over settlers purchasing
18:35
Speaker 7: Palestinian land. And again the reason for this is because
18:38
Speaker 7: while the settlers want all of the West Bank, the
18:41
Speaker 7: Israeli military historically has been concerned with maintaining some sort
18:46
Speaker 7: of stability or at the very least, you know, ruling
18:49
Speaker 7: with an iron fist. And the settlers are not interested
18:53
Speaker 7: in that. What they would like is to cause chaos
18:55
Speaker 7: and to you know, draw the military in lead to
18:59
Speaker 7: you know, an event where they end up with the land.
19:01
Speaker 7: So now where settlers used to try to, you know,
19:05
Speaker 7: go and buy Palestinian land in like in the mid
19:08
Speaker 7: Deep area, a in the middle of a Palestinian city,
19:11
Speaker 7: the military would say, no chance, that's going to cause
19:13
Speaker 7: a war.
19:13
Speaker 6: Now they can just go and do it.
19:15
Speaker 7: They can buy land wherever they want, wherever Palestinian is
19:17
Speaker 7: willing to sell it to them, and then the military
19:20
Speaker 7: is obligated to go protect them wherever they are. So
19:22
Speaker 7: what it means is that the settlers are now going
19:24
Speaker 7: to be effectively dictating settlement policy by going wherever they want.
19:29
Speaker 7: They're already doing that in the sense of, you know,
19:31
Speaker 7: building these illegal outposts, but now they have a formal
19:34
Speaker 7: legal route to go wherever they want in Palestinian territory,
19:37
Speaker 7: bring the military with them, cause to start a fight,
19:40
Speaker 7: and you know, ultimately end up with that land. So
19:44
Speaker 7: that those are just two of you know, I could I.
19:47
Speaker 3: Could go on, well, I wanted to ask about some
19:49
Speaker 3: of the big picture of politics that maybe even what
19:52
Speaker 3: you could go on here, Jasper, there's a Jerusalem Post
19:55
Speaker 3: headline that didn't get a lot of attention at least
19:57
Speaker 3: that I saw Jews pray on Jerusalems Temple mount as
20:00
Speaker 3: decades old status quo begins to shift. This is one
20:04
Speaker 3: of the most important questions in the entire conflict, And
20:09
Speaker 3: just reading from the piece, they mention here that in
20:14
Speaker 3: the past few weeks and what amounts to a dramatic
20:16
Speaker 3: change to the status quo that has prevailed since nineteen
20:18
Speaker 3: sixty seven, police have begun to allow Jewish prayer on
20:21
Speaker 3: the Temple Mount under certain conditions. That is a very
20:24
Speaker 3: big change, especially relative to the amount of news coverage
20:27
Speaker 3: that's gotten. The Jerusalem Post also mentions that in the
20:29
Speaker 3: past few years, the number of Jews as sending to
20:31
Speaker 3: the Temple Mount has increased dramatically to more than sixty
20:33
Speaker 3: eight thousand in the Hebrew year that ended in September
20:35
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five, an increase of twenty two percent over
20:39
Speaker 3: the previous year, according to an activist group. So the
20:42
Speaker 3: big picture politics, I mean, the landscape here is mounting
20:46
Speaker 3: pressure from the Israeli religious right to completely take over
20:53
Speaker 3: the land and to undo a lot of the norms
20:58
Speaker 3: or the legal standard. It's actually more power, believe in
21:00
Speaker 3: the norms that have governed the area in decades.
21:03
Speaker 4: Is that a correct reading of some of this Jasper?
21:06
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely.
21:07
Speaker 7: I mean, you know, to be honest, it's hard to
21:10
Speaker 7: sort of say how much of it is driven by
21:11
Speaker 7: an actual, you know, religious fervor and how much of
21:15
Speaker 7: it is purely sort of territorial ambition. I mean, I
21:18
Speaker 7: think with the settlers that line is impossible to find.
21:21
Speaker 6: But you know, what you're.
21:22
Speaker 7: Talking about is Jews increasingly going to the Temple Mount
21:26
Speaker 7: to pray. But in these new cabinet decisions, Israel has
21:29
Speaker 7: again sort of formalized this in two other sacred areas,
21:33
Speaker 7: so in the ibrahimasque in Hebron and in the Rachel's
21:37
Speaker 7: Tomb area near Bethlehem. These are areas that are are
21:41
Speaker 7: deeply sacred to Muslims and to Palestinians in particular, and
21:45
Speaker 7: in these new cabinet decisions, Israel has seized administrative control
21:49
Speaker 7: away from the Palestinians, given it to Israel, which will
21:52
Speaker 7: make it more and more difficult for Palestinians to be
21:56
Speaker 7: able to, you know, go to these sacred places in peace.
21:59
Speaker 7: Israel will now be spending settlements into these areas, demolishing buildings.
22:02
Speaker 7: So you know, what you just described is one of
22:06
Speaker 7: these sort of informal things that the settlers have been
22:08
Speaker 7: doing to take control and cause chaos. And you know,
22:12
Speaker 7: to be blunt about it, like the tail is wagging
22:15
Speaker 7: the dog, because it always starts with the settlers just
22:18
Speaker 7: going rogue and you know, going somewhere where they shouldn't be,
22:21
Speaker 7: bring the military with them. And then months later a
22:26
Speaker 7: new policy initiative comes through or a cabinet decision or
22:29
Speaker 7: some sort of actual legislation in the Kanesset that formalizes it.
22:33
Speaker 7: And so, you know, the same thing is happening with
22:35
Speaker 7: the settler violence. You know, you hear occasionally that the
22:40
Speaker 7: Israeli government or the military condemns, you know, one of
22:43
Speaker 7: these settler attacks, usually when the settlers attacked the military,
22:46
Speaker 7: but every once in a while when they actually attack
22:48
Speaker 7: a Palestinian village, and every once in a while they
22:51
Speaker 7: actually arrest somebody.
22:52
Speaker 6: But then what they do is they.
22:54
Speaker 7: Give money and defense and funds and weapons to the
22:58
Speaker 7: settlers who are out on the front line building these outposts.
23:02
Speaker 7: Like I said before, the military has to follow them
23:04
Speaker 7: wherever they go. And so what started as a couple
23:07
Speaker 7: of settlers going and terrorizing and wreaking havoc on a
23:10
Speaker 7: Palestinian village, over time the government comes in and authorizes
23:14
Speaker 7: it as a formal settlement. And so it is this
23:17
Speaker 7: really sort of nefarious system where the most extremeist, far right, ambitious,
23:24
Speaker 7: frankly racist of the entire political block in Israel are
23:30
Speaker 7: controlling all of the policy decisions in the West Bank
23:34
Speaker 7: by just doing whatever they want to do and knowing
23:36
Speaker 7: that the government will follow close behind to formalize, to
23:39
Speaker 7: legalize what they've been doing.
23:41
Speaker 5: Let's put E three up on the screen.
23:43
Speaker 2: This is, you know, some of the recent West Bank
23:46
Speaker 2: attacks by violent settlers. And you know, I think the
23:51
Speaker 2: reporting that you have done here, Jos, we're not just
23:54
Speaker 2: on the you know, the bureaucratic moves that have been made,
23:57
Speaker 2: but also on this horrific and escalating settler violence.
24:02
Speaker 5: Is you show how the two work together.
24:04
Speaker 2: Because, as you said, if you know, if you are
24:07
Speaker 2: not only having your life made extremely difficulty by the
24:11
Speaker 2: checkpoints and by the dehumanizing apartheid nature of the system
24:15
Speaker 2: and the occupied West Bank, but then you also live
24:18
Speaker 2: under the direct threat of settler violence. And now the
24:23
Speaker 2: government has passed these laws that make it easy for
24:25
Speaker 2: settlers to identify. Okay, this Palestinian owns this piece of land.
24:29
Speaker 2: You can go and terrorize them and threaten them until
24:31
Speaker 2: they agree to sell it to you. You know, it's
24:33
Speaker 2: not exactly free and fair sale. And then they frame
24:36
Speaker 2: the whole thing as oh, it's voluntary migration. You know,
24:39
Speaker 2: they just they're they're ready to move and explore a
24:41
Speaker 2: new part of the country. You can see how the
24:44
Speaker 2: settler attacks work hand in glove with the aims and
24:48
Speaker 2: the goals of the government exactly.
24:50
Speaker 6: I mean, if you live in a.
24:53
Speaker 7: Like the clip you just showed was in mas Riata,
24:56
Speaker 7: this is you know, a bed wind community in the
24:57
Speaker 7: south Hebron Hills, if you live there, I mean that
25:01
Speaker 7: whole area was designated a military training zone decades ago,
25:07
Speaker 7: and that is you know what gives these really military
25:10
Speaker 7: sort of a sensible authority to go in and demolish
25:12
Speaker 7: buildings and prevent them from from building their own structures.
25:18
Speaker 7: Now you have settlers coming in. They are building outposts
25:21
Speaker 7: right next to these villages, terrorizing them on a regular basis.
25:25
Speaker 7: Over sixty of these communities have just gotten up and
25:27
Speaker 7: left on their own in the last just since October seventh.
25:31
Speaker 7: Now you have another option, just take the money and leave.
25:36
Speaker 7: And it's not you know, in my mind, like the
25:40
Speaker 7: strategy is sort of converging with what's happening in Gaza,
25:44
Speaker 7: where you know, sure they are still you know, of
25:46
Speaker 7: course bombing and killing people on a daily basis, but
25:49
Speaker 7: they are also you know, trying to describe what they're
25:54
Speaker 7: doing as sort of a humanitarian situation where they want
25:56
Speaker 7: to help the people of Gaza go and you know,
25:58
Speaker 7: find a better place to find a better way to
26:01
Speaker 7: live outside of Gaza, and then Israel will come in
26:04
Speaker 7: and you know, build industrial cities and factories and you know,
26:09
Speaker 7: perhaps settlements too. So it's you know, this is actually
26:13
Speaker 7: this was in the playbook. This is in the smoke
26:17
Speaker 7: rich Blueprint that he were in twenty seventeen, where he
26:20
Speaker 7: doesn't say we're gonna genocide the Palestinians in the West Bank.
26:23
Speaker 7: He doesn't even say we're gonna run them off the land.
26:26
Speaker 7: He says, look, let's just be practical here. There's not
26:29
Speaker 7: room for both of us here, there's not room for
26:31
Speaker 7: two countries, for two states.
26:32
Speaker 6: So let's give him some options.
26:34
Speaker 7: Option one is they can live as colonial subjects under Israel.
26:40
Speaker 7: Option two is they can leave and maybe we'll even
26:43
Speaker 7: give them money to leave, and they probably will because
26:46
Speaker 7: they want a better life somewhere. And option three, if
26:47
Speaker 7: they don't do that, is we'll fight to the death.
26:50
Speaker 7: Then you know, we'll probably kill them. And so all
26:52
Speaker 7: of these different methods of getting the Palestinines off the land,
26:57
Speaker 7: from the brute force to you knowifocating policies too now
27:01
Speaker 7: just saying look it's really bad here, don't you want
27:03
Speaker 7: to just have a better life somewhere, take this money
27:05
Speaker 7: and go. I mean, all that is working to one end,
27:08
Speaker 7: which is to get the Palestinians out of the West
27:10
Speaker 7: Bank and Gaza.
27:14
Speaker 3: Jasper, want to get your reaction to a couple of
27:17
Speaker 3: recent clips of Senator Lindsay Graham, Republican of South Carolina.
27:21
Speaker 3: Let's rule this first one where lind.
27:23
Speaker 2: South Carolina slash televiv yes, slash slash as he goes
27:26
Speaker 2: there every two weeks ever two weeks.
27:28
Speaker 3: Not bad, probably more often those in South Carolina. All right,
27:31
Speaker 3: here's Lindsay Graham talking about the future of wars.
27:34
Speaker 8: The wars of the future are being planned here in Israel,
27:38
Speaker 8: because if you're not one step ahead of the enemy,
27:41
Speaker 8: you suffer. The most clever, creative military forces on the
27:45
Speaker 8: planet are here in Israel because they have to be
27:48
Speaker 8: to survived.
27:49
Speaker 6: So what we're.
27:49
Speaker 8: Looking at is that Israel is advancing down the road
27:52
Speaker 8: of new weaponry far beyond us, and it would be
27:56
Speaker 8: nice to have a process where we could be partners.
28:01
Speaker 3: We have one more clip, Jasper. That's a great clip
28:03
Speaker 3: to get your take on because you've done so much
28:04
Speaker 3: work in the space. But let's roll E five first,
28:07
Speaker 3: more of Senator Lindsay Graham.
28:09
Speaker 8: Could our soldiers be hid in the region, Absolutely they could.
28:13
Speaker 8: Can Iran respond if we have an all out attack,
28:16
Speaker 8: absolutely they can. I think the risk associated to that
28:19
Speaker 8: with that as far less and the risk associated with
28:22
Speaker 8: blinking and pulling the plug and not helping the people
28:26
Speaker 8: as you promised.
28:27
Speaker 3: So the future of war in Israel, Jasper, you know
28:30
Speaker 3: all about that? Tell us what Lindsay Graham would actually
28:33
Speaker 3: probably agree with you that he's talking about.
28:36
Speaker 7: Yeah, I saw that clip, and I mean it was
28:38
Speaker 7: one of these moments of like, I don't know if
28:41
Speaker 7: he could take it back, if he could, or if
28:44
Speaker 7: he just you know, wants to be saying the quiet
28:46
Speaker 7: part out loud. I mean, there's a number of things
28:48
Speaker 7: he could be talking about. One of them is you know,
28:50
Speaker 7: the fact that Israel is actually you know, testing out
28:52
Speaker 7: new weaponry, in many cases American weapons that will then
28:58
Speaker 7: you know, go straight to the America military after it's
29:01
Speaker 7: been tested out there.
29:02
Speaker 6: I think.
29:02
Speaker 7: You know, of course, the US, many many Hawks in
29:06
Speaker 7: the government, including our Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have
29:10
Speaker 7: long wanted.
29:10
Speaker 6: War with Iran.
29:12
Speaker 7: You know, Israel is of course wants more than anything
29:16
Speaker 7: or n Yahoo certainly wants more than anything to take
29:18
Speaker 7: out the regime in Iran, and so they're a good
29:21
Speaker 7: sort of proxy to get that war going. But also,
29:25
Speaker 7: I mean, I think it should be said that, like,
29:28
Speaker 7: you know, many people have noted that the genocide in
29:32
Speaker 7: Gaza has sort of you know, stripped away the last
29:36
Speaker 7: pretenses of a rules based order. It's shown that you know,
29:40
Speaker 7: the stronger country can do whatever it wants, not just
29:44
Speaker 7: to to Gaza, where you know they use October seventh
29:48
Speaker 7: as a pretense, but in Lebanon and in Syria and
29:51
Speaker 7: in the West Bank and anywhere they want, the stronger
29:55
Speaker 7: country can just you know go in and dominate with force,
29:58
Speaker 7: as the US has done in vent Isuela and you
30:01
Speaker 7: know potentially in Cuba. And so I think Lindsay Graham
30:04
Speaker 7: is you know, he's sort of projecting his his fantasies
30:08
Speaker 7: of empire onto this situation, and he's just he's saying that, yes,
30:12
Speaker 7: they're going to help us out with the war on Iran,
30:14
Speaker 7: with you know, everything we want to do. They're helping
30:16
Speaker 7: test our weapons. But also, like israel Es setting the
30:19
Speaker 7: new standard, this is how warfare is going to work.
30:21
Speaker 7: This is how empires are going to work going forward and.
30:25
Speaker 2: Just watch yeah, well and speak a little bit to
30:29
Speaker 2: the Trump administration context here as well. I saw Trump
30:33
Speaker 2: made some throwaway comment I believe it was last week
30:35
Speaker 2: about it, Oh, we don't want to see them taking
30:37
Speaker 2: over the West Bank. But we also know that Court's
30:39
Speaker 2: one of his top contributors. Miriam Addilson reportedly gave him
30:43
Speaker 2: some one hundred million dollars plus in exchange for Hey,
30:46
Speaker 2: you're going to You're gonna let them annex the West Bank.
30:48
Speaker 2: And it reminded me also very much of the many
30:50
Speaker 2: reports of how upset Biden was about not now who
30:52
Speaker 2: doing blah blah blah, But it never amounts to any
30:55
Speaker 2: sort of action. You know, do you think there's any
30:57
Speaker 2: possibility that he would see this brazen land grab as
31:02
Speaker 2: a threat to some of the things he wants. I mean,
31:05
Speaker 2: mostly he just wants bragging rights about his quote unquote
31:07
Speaker 2: peace deal and his you know, his peace board, et cetera.
31:11
Speaker 2: How do you see those pieces fitting in?
31:14
Speaker 7: Well, the annexation of the West Bank is even before Trump,
31:17
Speaker 7: but you know it's been done in a way that
31:20
Speaker 7: is deliberately meant to provide plausible deniability to Israel. So
31:26
Speaker 7: they haven't just come out and said, we've annexed the
31:28
Speaker 7: West Bank or we have declared sovereignty over the West Bank.
31:31
Speaker 7: They are, you know, putting in place all these policies that,
31:33
Speaker 7: like I said, are stripping control away from the military
31:36
Speaker 7: occupation and from the Palestinian authority and giving it to Israel,
31:42
Speaker 7: to the basically to the settlers, one step at a time,
31:45
Speaker 7: which amounts to a de facto annexation. But I think that,
31:50
Speaker 7: you know, beyond that, like Trump obviously acts in his
31:54
Speaker 7: own self interest. He I don't even think he knows
31:57
Speaker 7: where the West Bank is. I don't think he could
31:58
Speaker 7: point to it on a map. There are two things
32:01
Speaker 7: that could potentially cause him to speak up, which he
32:05
Speaker 7: actually has done in the past. The first one would
32:08
Speaker 7: be if the Abrahama Cords or you know, the normalization
32:12
Speaker 7: deal is threatened. So in twenty twenty, the UAE actually
32:15
Speaker 7: threatened to pull out of normalization if Israel if Nenya,
32:20
Speaker 7: who pushed forward an annexation effort that he was making,
32:23
Speaker 7: Trump immediately came out and said told Nenyah he couldn't
32:26
Speaker 7: do it. And obviously it's because it was going to
32:30
Speaker 7: cause him to lose his you know, big foreign policy achievement,
32:32
Speaker 7: the Abrahama Cords from the first term. So far, there's
32:36
Speaker 7: no indication that the UAE is threatening that this time around.
32:40
Speaker 6: Qatar has has.
32:42
Speaker 7: You know that a lot of these Arab states who
32:44
Speaker 7: are either already normalizing with Israel or who are considering it,
32:48
Speaker 7: have issued these completely toothless threats. So I don't see
32:53
Speaker 7: that as a factor right now. The other thing, which
32:56
Speaker 7: I have even less hope for is that somebody points
32:59
Speaker 7: out to Trump that, you know, I think point nineteen
33:03
Speaker 7: in your twenty point piece plan says that the Palestinians
33:06
Speaker 7: have to have a path to statehood, to self determination,
33:11
Speaker 7: and what they're doing in the West Bank, which would
33:14
Speaker 7: be in theory, in a parallel universe where the settlement
33:17
Speaker 7: movement was forced out, the West Bank would be the
33:20
Speaker 7: bulk of the Palestinian state in terms of planned and population.
33:24
Speaker 7: And if somebody points out to Trump that, you know,
33:27
Speaker 7: all these new policies in the West Bank are making
33:29
Speaker 7: it completely physically impossible, legally impossible for the Palestinians to
33:34
Speaker 7: have a state, there goes your whole peace plan, and again,
33:37
Speaker 7: you know, it's a legacy play for him. So I
33:40
Speaker 7: think that in theory, he could say, oh, wait a minute,
33:42
Speaker 7: these guys are screwing up my plan, but it doesn't
33:46
Speaker 7: look like that's happening.
33:47
Speaker 3: Well, final point on that for me, Jasper. Jeremy Skahole
33:50
Speaker 3: at dropsite is now reporting a senior HAMAS official has
33:53
Speaker 3: told him that Hamas will not accede to the sweeping demands.
33:56
Speaker 3: Says Jeremy writes from Trump and Yahoo that the Palestinian
33:59
Speaker 3: resistance does arm, nor will it submit to a total
34:02
Speaker 3: demilitization of the Gaza strip end quote. What's your reaction
34:06
Speaker 3: here in that, Jasper, Actually, in light of everything you just.
34:08
Speaker 7: Said, Yeah, I mean listen, like I'm not going to
34:14
Speaker 7: get into the details of the twenty point plan, and
34:17
Speaker 7: like what isn't is impossible. But I'll just say that, like,
34:20
Speaker 7: if I was a Palestine and living in Gaza right now,
34:24
Speaker 7: I would be very concerned about the idea of completely disarming,
34:29
Speaker 7: knowing what's been done to us, not just over the
34:32
Speaker 7: course of two years, but also in theoretically in times
34:35
Speaker 7: of peace. You know, during the March of Great Return,
34:39
Speaker 7: hundreds of people were killed, thousands were maimed by Israeli
34:43
Speaker 7: snipers during a peaceful protest, and so you know, the
34:47
Speaker 7: position that they want the Palestinians to be put in,
34:49
Speaker 7: you know, just at one hundred percent complete mercy of
34:52
Speaker 7: this state and this military that has been massacring them
34:55
Speaker 7: for years and for decades. Really, yeah, I I don't
35:00
Speaker 7: know why they would trust that that would then finally
35:04
Speaker 7: lead to them being able to live in peace. And
35:07
Speaker 7: so look, I think that the peace plan was, you know,
35:11
Speaker 7: it was designed to fail. Maybe not by Trump himself,
35:14
Speaker 7: but I think everybody in Israel knew.
35:16
Speaker 6: It was going to fail.
35:16
Speaker 7: I mean, n Yahoo was saying one thing to the
35:18
Speaker 7: US press and another thing to the Israeli press about yeah,
35:22
Speaker 7: don't worry, we're not going to actually you know, we're
35:24
Speaker 7: not going to actually stop trying to destroy Hamas, We're
35:27
Speaker 7: not going to actually let them have a state.
35:29
Speaker 6: And so to me, this is just.
35:30
Speaker 7: Like the completely predictable outcome of what was always a
35:33
Speaker 7: sham peace process. And I don't know what's going to happen,
35:38
Speaker 7: but with guys like Kushner and you know, Wikoff and
35:42
Speaker 7: Trump and Tony Blair and then Yahoo in control, I mean,
35:46
Speaker 7: it looks pretty bleak.
35:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that really is kind of my last
35:50
Speaker 2: question is you said earlier that the plan for Gosen,
35:53
Speaker 2: the plan for the West Bank have effectively converged, with
35:56
Speaker 2: that plan being make people so miserable that they leave,
36:00
Speaker 2: or that we just you don't completely subjugate them, or
36:03
Speaker 2: if they don't step on a line, we kill them.
36:06
Speaker 2: I mean, do you think that plan is going to work.
36:10
Speaker 7: Well, it's working in the sense that they are getting
36:13
Speaker 7: more and more land literally every day.
36:15
Speaker 6: I mean yesterday or two days ago.
36:17
Speaker 7: On Sunday, the Israeli government approved land registration drive in
36:22
Speaker 7: the West Bank and Area See, which means that they
36:24
Speaker 7: will now go through all of the land in Area Sea,
36:27
Speaker 7: which is like sixty percent of the West Bank, forced
36:31
Speaker 7: Palestinians to prove that they own the land, which is
36:33
Speaker 7: impossible for many of them to do because they've not
36:35
Speaker 7: been able to get titles since nineteen sixty seven. And
36:39
Speaker 7: anything that they can't prove becomes theirs. And so you know,
36:42
Speaker 7: that is just one of any number of policies that
36:45
Speaker 7: will never get any coverage in the Western press. That
36:48
Speaker 7: is just you know, tightening Israel's grip on the West Bank.
36:51
Speaker 7: It will drive Palestinians off the land. So in one sense, yes,
36:56
Speaker 7: it's going to work. In another sense, I mean, I
36:58
Speaker 7: know lots of palace any people. I've spent a lot
37:01
Speaker 7: of time in the West Bank, and a lot of
37:04
Speaker 7: them are are just not going to leave. They're just
37:07
Speaker 7: not going to leave. And I think the same is
37:10
Speaker 7: probably true of a lot of people in Conset. To
37:11
Speaker 7: be clear, I think a lot of people would leave,
37:13
Speaker 7: And I mean, I'm certainly not in a position to
37:15
Speaker 7: judge somebody for wanting to have a more peaceful life
37:19
Speaker 7: for them and their family, but a lot of people
37:21
Speaker 7: just will not. And so I don't see I certainly
37:25
Speaker 7: don't see a sort of neat resolution that you know,
37:27
Speaker 7: Israel just gains control of everything anytime soon. I think
37:32
Speaker 7: it's going to be bloody and messy. And you know,
37:37
Speaker 7: the only thing that could really stop Israel is a
37:41
Speaker 7: weapons ban from the US, in my opinion.
37:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jasper, thank you so much for your reporting and
37:46
Speaker 2: for spending some time with us this morning.
37:47
Speaker 5: We're very grateful, my pleasure.
37:49
Speaker 6: Thanks both.
37:53
Speaker 3: We're happy to be joined right now by Will Creeley,
37:56
Speaker 3: who's the legal director over at the Foundation for Individual
37:58
Speaker 3: Individual Rights and Expression.
38:00
Speaker 4: Will thanks for joining us.
38:02
Speaker 9: It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me of course.
38:03
Speaker 3: There's a lot of news on the free expression front
38:07
Speaker 3: to get to. Actually starting with something that broke overnight,
38:10
Speaker 3: we can put the deadline tear sheet up on the screen.
38:12
Speaker 4: This is F three.
38:15
Speaker 3: Stephen Colbert is saying that CBS told him he could
38:20
Speaker 3: not interview an interview he had already recorded with Democratic
38:25
Speaker 3: Senate primary candidate James Tallerico of Texas on the Late Show. Now,
38:31
Speaker 3: Tallerico posted the clip anyway, but people in the FCC
38:35
Speaker 3: camp are saying, actually it was because CBS would need
38:38
Speaker 3: to or CBS should feel in some sense responsible to
38:42
Speaker 3: then quote unquote platform Jasmine Crockett for the equal time rule.
38:48
Speaker 3: So this is starting to really get traction. As we're
38:50
Speaker 3: talking right now, Will could you give us your legal perspective,
38:54
Speaker 3: having followed a lot of these cases, and particularly the
38:57
Speaker 3: FCC and Trump two point zero, what's going on here?
39:00
Speaker 9: Yeah, there's a lot to get to.
39:02
Speaker 10: First of all, I think it's of a piece with
39:04
Speaker 10: what we've seen from the FCC over the past year,
39:07
Speaker 10: very aggressive, very expansive understanding of their legal authority to
39:13
Speaker 10: frankly at bully broadcasters into taking political lines that the
39:18
Speaker 10: FCC would like them to take. I think that there's
39:21
Speaker 10: an equal time rule that requires broadcasters generally to provide
39:27
Speaker 10: equal time on what are called bona fide news broadcast
39:31
Speaker 10: news programs to candidates running for the same office. For
39:35
Speaker 10: a long time, the FCC has understood this to mean
39:38
Speaker 10: really news broadcasts, not things like Saturday Night Live or
39:43
Speaker 10: other kind of comedy talk shows. But recently, over the
39:46
Speaker 10: past year and a half, we've seen a push to
39:48
Speaker 10: expand the equal time rule to things like Saturday Live.
39:52
Speaker 9: We had Kamala Harris when she was running up here on.
39:54
Speaker 10: Saturday Live, and NBC then offered Donald Trump time on
39:59
Speaker 10: a NASCAR broadcast. A couple points here, though the candidate
40:03
Speaker 10: has to request that equal time. Well, I'm not clear
40:05
Speaker 10: that that's happened here and between what happened last week
40:09
Speaker 10: with the View and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr pushing for
40:14
Speaker 10: the View to provide equal time seems like this is
40:17
Speaker 10: of a piece with that. Again, it's just part of
40:19
Speaker 10: a very aggressive, very expansive understanding of the FCC's authority,
40:24
Speaker 10: and I think it should make all of us a
40:25
Speaker 10: little bit nervous. The FCC does not have the power
40:29
Speaker 10: to be the nation's editor in chief, or the nation
40:31
Speaker 10: censor in chief.
40:32
Speaker 9: But that's what they're increasingly acting like.
40:34
Speaker 2: I think the piece about the View is really important
40:36
Speaker 2: for people to understand, and for those who don't know.
40:38
Speaker 2: The FCC launcher probe last week into ABC's The View
40:42
Speaker 2: after an interview with James Tallerrego and so you know,
40:46
Speaker 2: part of the reason why they launched these probes or
40:49
Speaker 2: threaten these lawsuits is not just about that one media
40:53
Speaker 2: outlet or media property. It's so that other places like
40:56
Speaker 2: CBS and like Stephen Colbert and the executives there say, oh,
41:00
Speaker 2: maybe this is too hot to touch. We are going
41:03
Speaker 2: to self censor without even the FCC potentially even getting
41:07
Speaker 2: involved here because we see what happened over there on
41:09
Speaker 2: the View.
41:10
Speaker 9: That's exactly right.
41:11
Speaker 10: It's designed to send a message to if you will
41:15
Speaker 10: chill expression on our airwaves. You know, I am old
41:18
Speaker 10: enough to remember two years ago when Brendan Carr said
41:21
Speaker 10: it's not the job of the FCC to be intruding
41:25
Speaker 10: itself making political decisions for our nation's broadcasters. But that
41:29
Speaker 10: Brendon Carr is long gone, and what we have now
41:31
Speaker 10: is something else. We have a a FCC that's willing
41:35
Speaker 10: to push its authority to make broadcasters think twice about
41:39
Speaker 10: the airs that they view on their show. I just
41:41
Speaker 10: want to note that all this is wildly unsuccessful. I
41:44
Speaker 10: logged onto the Stephen Colbert YouTube channel just before hopping
41:50
Speaker 10: on here, and it has something like six hundred and
41:51
Speaker 10: fifty thousand views overnight. You know, they should ask barbar
41:55
Speaker 10: Streisend how well it goes when you try and shut
41:57
Speaker 10: people up. Yeah.
41:58
Speaker 5: Well, that's a great point.
41:59
Speaker 3: Last thought on this before we get to BONDI will
42:02
Speaker 3: you i'ven't interviewed Brendan Carr before, and I think one
42:05
Speaker 3: point he makes a persuasive case on is the underlying
42:07
Speaker 3: law here that does actually say broadcasters who are acting
42:12
Speaker 3: or broadcasters have a duty to act in the public interest.
42:15
Speaker 3: And that's where all of the stems from. He says,
42:18
Speaker 3: you know, and this is obviously I don't want to
42:21
Speaker 3: say tongue in cheek, but because he would say it's
42:22
Speaker 3: totally sincere, he says he has the duty responsibility.
42:26
Speaker 4: To enforce that.
42:27
Speaker 3: He's not making the rules, he's just enforcing them. But
42:29
Speaker 3: he has, you know, so before it might be time
42:32
Speaker 3: to think whether or not that's just completely outdated, is it?
42:36
Speaker 3: Do you think, well, that's a fair case that even
42:38
Speaker 3: having this rule on the books seems like it's already
42:41
Speaker 3: putting the government in a precarious position.
42:44
Speaker 9: Absolutely, I do.
42:46
Speaker 10: And even if we take Chair McCart his word as
42:50
Speaker 10: to just calling balls and strikes for his existing legal authority, again,
42:54
Speaker 10: I want to make two points. First, all, that's different
42:55
Speaker 10: than what he said as Commissioner when he said that,
42:57
Speaker 10: you know, the FCC should has to per law abide
43:01
Speaker 10: by its First Amendment responsibilities before any federal statutory authority.
43:06
Speaker 10: And second, voll Fire just submitted a comment just last
43:09
Speaker 10: year arguing that the FCC should really go back and
43:12
Speaker 10: delete a number of its content based regulations. They're outdated,
43:17
Speaker 10: they provide the opportunity for political mischief, like we've seen
43:20
Speaker 10: in the past year with leveraging political messaging for merger approval,
43:25
Speaker 10: and they really reflect in an era where.
43:28
Speaker 9: We had scarcity. Right, we had only a couple broadcasters
43:31
Speaker 9: in town.
43:31
Speaker 10: You know, I'm old enough to remember seeing just what
43:34
Speaker 10: I had on the three major networks in Fox and
43:37
Speaker 10: those days are long gone. Aside reference, right, you can
43:39
Speaker 10: go to YouTube and you know, see whatever political candidate
43:42
Speaker 10: you want, as much as you want those rules no
43:44
Speaker 10: longer make sense, and they provide the federal government the
43:47
Speaker 10: cudgel to swing at folks they.
43:50
Speaker 2: Don't like, right, because we don't see this uniformly enforced.
43:54
Speaker 2: This happens in certain instances, you know, with candidates that
43:58
Speaker 2: they don't want to get a higher per file file,
44:01
Speaker 2: or with certain commentary that they then pull out in
44:03
Speaker 2: the hammer that they can wield.
44:05
Speaker 5: Here.
44:05
Speaker 2: All right, let's talk about this lawsuit that you that
44:07
Speaker 2: your organization, FIRE has filed. Let's put F one up
44:11
Speaker 2: on the screen. I think this is really significant. Fire
44:14
Speaker 2: sues Bondie and NOAM for censoring Facebook group and app
44:17
Speaker 2: reporting ICE activity. So in this in this release, do
44:21
Speaker 2: you say the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is
44:23
Speaker 2: suing Attorney General Pambondi and Sectuary of Homeland Security christynome
44:27
Speaker 2: On behalf of k Rozato and Mark Hodges, who respectively
44:30
Speaker 2: created a Facebook group and an app that hosted video
44:33
Speaker 2: footage of ICE operations to inform the public and hold
44:36
Speaker 2: our government accountable. Talk to us about what happened here
44:40
Speaker 2: and what you are alleging the government did to pressure
44:44
Speaker 2: these tech companies to censor these accounts.
44:46
Speaker 10: Sure thing, well, Risotto had a Facebook group that allowed
44:51
Speaker 10: community members to report to each other on what was happening.
44:55
Speaker 10: When ICE surged in Chicago, the idea was to let
45:00
Speaker 10: neighbors talk to each other about what they were seeing, so,
45:02
Speaker 10: you know, not just to quote unquote evade ICE, but
45:04
Speaker 10: also just to give a heads up. You know, maybe
45:06
Speaker 10: maybe your commute is going to be crazy, or maybe
45:09
Speaker 10: you know you don't want your kids walking past masked
45:13
Speaker 10: armed federal agents. You know, all kinds of reasons that
45:15
Speaker 10: you might want to be aware of what ICE is doing.
45:19
Speaker 10: And I should note right at the outset that is
45:21
Speaker 10: fully protected by the First Amendment. You have the right
45:23
Speaker 10: to comment on law enforcement movements. You've got the right
45:26
Speaker 10: to record police, including ICE. Those are public servants. They
45:29
Speaker 10: work for us. You have the First Amendment right to
45:32
Speaker 10: criticize them. You have the first men right to protest,
45:34
Speaker 10: you have the first men right to record. That's why,
45:35
Speaker 10: to be very clear, there's a lot of debate on
45:38
Speaker 10: Twitter about those points, a lot of Twitter lawyers telling
45:40
Speaker 10: me that that's actually impeding law enforcement.
45:42
Speaker 9: No, it's not.
45:43
Speaker 3: Can you break that down actually, well, like, what is
45:45
Speaker 3: the legal background of the definition of impede in that context?
45:49
Speaker 9: Right?
45:50
Speaker 6: Right?
45:50
Speaker 10: If i'm impeding somebody, I'm going in and obstructing them.
45:53
Speaker 9: Usually there's some kind of physical aspect.
45:55
Speaker 10: If I'm recording them across the street, I'm not impeding
45:57
Speaker 10: law enforcement operations. There's a Supreme Court case called Hill
46:01
Speaker 10: vers City of Houston, where a man is watching a
46:05
Speaker 10: Houston Police Department officer arresting another man and he says
46:09
Speaker 10: something like, why don't you pick on someone on your
46:10
Speaker 10: own size, and then he gets arrested for obstructing and
46:14
Speaker 10: interfering with that arrest. The court says, no, this is
46:16
Speaker 10: the difference between the United States and a police state.
46:19
Speaker 10: We have the right to comment and criticize law enforcement
46:23
Speaker 10: even while they're in the process of administering an arrest.
46:28
Speaker 10: In In other words, kind of imped means what it says,
46:31
Speaker 10: it means right, It's more than just words.
46:32
Speaker 9: It's more than just recording.
46:34
Speaker 10: If a law enforcement officer tells you to back up,
46:37
Speaker 10: should probably back up.
46:38
Speaker 9: But if you're recording, or certainly if you're.
46:40
Speaker 10: On a Facebook group talking about what Ice is doing,
46:43
Speaker 10: that's fully protected by the First Amendment. We're not talking
46:45
Speaker 10: about some kind of secret police state yet. And that's
46:48
Speaker 10: what we're fighting to.
46:49
Speaker 2: Prevent There was also some reporting I wanted to get
46:52
Speaker 2: your reaction to in the New York Times. We can
46:54
Speaker 2: put F two up on the screen about how often
46:58
Speaker 2: the government is pressuring social media companies not only to
47:01
Speaker 2: take down content, but to reveal the identities of some
47:05
Speaker 2: of the people are trying to remain anonymous for understandable reasons, frankly,
47:10
Speaker 2: behind accounts that are posting anti ICE content. The part
47:15
Speaker 2: of this reads the Department of Homeland Security is expanding
47:18
Speaker 2: its efforts to identify Americans who oppose ICE by sending
47:21
Speaker 2: tech companies legal requests for the names, email addresses, telephone numbers,
47:25
Speaker 2: and other identifying data behind social media accounts that track
47:29
Speaker 2: or criticize the agency. One of the things that we
47:33
Speaker 2: have really appreciated here about fire is that you have
47:36
Speaker 2: stood for free speech regardless of partisanship. So under the
47:40
Speaker 2: Biden administration, where there are abuses, you all were right there,
47:43
Speaker 2: and no under the Trump administration, with extraordinary abuses, you
47:46
Speaker 2: continue to be on the side of the First Amendment.
47:49
Speaker 2: Can you put this in context in terms of what
47:52
Speaker 2: is happening here, how extensive it is, and what sort
47:56
Speaker 2: of a threat to free speech? This ultimately represents.
48:00
Speaker 10: Yeah, this feels like a full court press from the
48:02
Speaker 10: administration to go after anybody who dares criticized report upon
48:07
Speaker 10: track what's happening with ICE in the Department of Homeland Security.
48:11
Speaker 10: So in our large lawsuit, we're pushing back against pressure
48:14
Speaker 10: brought by the Attorney General and Secretary Gnome on Facebook
48:19
Speaker 10: and Apple to remove the apps and the Facebook groups
48:23
Speaker 10: that report on ICE.
48:24
Speaker 9: That's unconstitutional, that's job owing.
48:26
Speaker 10: As you say, we opposed it under the Biden administration,
48:28
Speaker 10: and we're sure as hell oppose it here when it's
48:31
Speaker 10: being used by the Trump administration as a kind of
48:33
Speaker 10: indirect coercive censorship, trying to put the screws on a
48:36
Speaker 10: private actor to remove speech that's protected but that the
48:40
Speaker 10: administration doesn't like.
48:41
Speaker 9: And here with this latest.
48:42
Speaker 10: Reporting from the New York Times and also a couple
48:44
Speaker 10: weeks before from the Washington Post, we're against things very aggressive,
48:48
Speaker 10: very expansive understanding of what constitutes some kind of criminal
48:53
Speaker 10: activity or some kind of suspicious activity.
48:55
Speaker 9: That the federal government can tract.
48:57
Speaker 10: So they're issuing these administrative subpene is to social media
49:02
Speaker 10: companies and asking them to provide all the details about
49:04
Speaker 10: those users and really, what I think anybody can see
49:07
Speaker 10: just from a common sense standpoint is the intention is
49:10
Speaker 10: to chill speech. They want you to think twice before
49:12
Speaker 10: you say, you know, to hell with ICE on social
49:15
Speaker 10: media because you don't want to get that knock on
49:17
Speaker 10: the door. That's not a free society. That's not the
49:19
Speaker 10: United States of America that we love. And I don't
49:21
Speaker 10: care what administration is doing that that should outrage everybody
49:25
Speaker 10: in this country. We have a right to criticize police
49:27
Speaker 10: without worrying that you're going to get some knock on
49:29
Speaker 10: the door, as folks have been getting because your social
49:32
Speaker 10: media company turned over all your information to the FEDS.
49:34
Speaker 9: I mean, what the hell are we even talking about?
49:36
Speaker 9: This is crazy.
49:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the broader question of the anti ICE activism
49:43
Speaker 3: the legal I'm genuinely curious, well for the legal perspective
49:47
Speaker 3: on publicly available information. If you've people following ICE agents
49:52
Speaker 3: in public and then communicating, coordinating in a signal group,
49:55
Speaker 3: saying they're here, they're there, these license plates are in
49:58
Speaker 3: the public domain using them for one reason or the other,
50:03
Speaker 3: is there any legal standard that coordination constitutes it impeding
50:08
Speaker 3: or obstructing, Because that's the argument that gets made, But
50:13
Speaker 3: I just it seems like there aren't a lot of
50:16
Speaker 3: there maybe isn't a lot of precedent on what that
50:19
Speaker 3: actually is or what it could be. But I'm you
50:22
Speaker 3: probably know the existing precedent will, So I appreciate.
50:25
Speaker 9: The question because it's an important one, right. There is
50:27
Speaker 9: speech integral to criminal conduct.
50:29
Speaker 10: If you are, you know, coordinating a bank robbery and
50:32
Speaker 10: then you go ahead and you know, you try and
50:34
Speaker 10: execute the plan. At that point, the coordination, you know,
50:37
Speaker 10: is part of the eventual criminality. But the really important
50:41
Speaker 10: threshold is that there has to be that criminality. Just
50:43
Speaker 10: talking with each other about where ice is or where
50:46
Speaker 10: your next protest is going to be, that's all protected.
50:49
Speaker 10: You have to have the step from just protected protests
50:52
Speaker 10: and protected speech is some kind of criminal activity. And
50:54
Speaker 10: that's a high bar, and it should be a high
50:56
Speaker 10: bar in our free society. And that's not what I'm
50:58
Speaker 10: not seeing here. The federal govern is pushing a very
51:01
Speaker 10: broad interpretation of doxing. Doxing is not a legal term
51:05
Speaker 10: of part. There's no crime against doxing. Just as you say,
51:08
Speaker 10: if the information is in the public, if law enforcement
51:10
Speaker 10: is walking around in public, you can report on them.
51:12
Speaker 10: You can call up your friend and your text them
51:15
Speaker 10: on signal whatever say hey they're over here. That's protected activity.
51:18
Speaker 10: If you say, hey they're over here, let's jump them. Okay,
51:21
Speaker 10: now we're talking about something else. But we haven't seen
51:24
Speaker 10: any evidence of that. And you've got to be really
51:26
Speaker 10: wary of the government blurring the lines between just talking
51:28
Speaker 10: about somebody and actually doing something. There's a big difference
51:31
Speaker 10: between speech and action, and we need to keep that.
51:34
Speaker 9: SACA sainct Well.
51:35
Speaker 2: I think the administration themselves are not very confident in
51:38
Speaker 2: their legal standing here because according to this New York
51:41
Speaker 2: Times piece, they say in September they sent Meta these
51:44
Speaker 2: administrative subpoenas, which are just basically like pieces of paper
51:47
Speaker 2: that they're like, yeah, I go, we think we should
51:49
Speaker 2: be able to do this to identify the people behind
51:51
Speaker 2: Instagram accounts that posted about ice raids in California supporting
51:55
Speaker 2: the ACLU.
51:56
Speaker 5: The subpoenas were challenged in court.
51:58
Speaker 2: DHS withdrew the quests for information before a judge could rule.
52:03
Speaker 2: And I think there's another instance where they document the
52:05
Speaker 2: same tactic where when there's pushback and they say you
52:08
Speaker 2: can't do this, We're going to court they're like, oh,
52:10
Speaker 2: never mind, We're good because they don't feel that they
52:13
Speaker 2: are on solid legal ground here and they don't want
52:16
Speaker 2: an actual judge's ruling because now they can live in
52:20
Speaker 2: this sort of you know, a morphous like, well, we
52:22
Speaker 2: think we have this power, but if you get an
52:24
Speaker 2: actual legal decision, then you can no longer live in
52:28
Speaker 2: that state of ambiguity. And you know, you have to
52:30
Speaker 2: decide whether you're going to listen to the courts or
52:32
Speaker 2: whether you're going to flagrantly violate their orders, which of
52:35
Speaker 2: course they've done thousands of times as well.
52:37
Speaker 9: That's exactly right. You know, they seem like habitual line steppers.
52:40
Speaker 10: You know, you got to push back a little bit
52:41
Speaker 10: and then you know, maybe we'll get some space to operate.
52:44
Speaker 9: Let me plug right now.
52:45
Speaker 10: If any of your viewers are dealing with one of
52:48
Speaker 10: these administratives and poenas I think it might be, please
52:50
Speaker 10: get in touch with us at fire dot org. We'd
52:52
Speaker 10: love to hear from you, because, just as you say,
52:54
Speaker 10: the only way to really win here is to fight back.
52:57
Speaker 9: You have a first men right, but it doesn't mean
52:58
Speaker 9: much if you don't fight to extra. That's why we're
53:00
Speaker 9: so proud of our brave.
53:02
Speaker 10: Plaintiffs in our ice cases, in our lawsuit against Gnome
53:07
Speaker 10: and Bondy. It takes a lot of guts to stand
53:09
Speaker 10: up and fight, and that's what we're here to help
53:10
Speaker 10: you do.
53:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's why we're so grateful for the work
53:13
Speaker 2: that you guys do, because a lot of people out
53:15
Speaker 2: there on their own, as individuals, would have would be
53:17
Speaker 2: you know, it would be terrifying to go up against
53:19
Speaker 2: the federal groom. I'm sure it's still terrifying to go
53:21
Speaker 2: up against the federal government, but at least they have
53:23
Speaker 2: some great allies and people like yourself. Well, thank you
53:26
Speaker 2: so much for joining us today. We're really grateful for
53:27
Speaker 2: your time.
53:28
Speaker 9: Yes, did my pleasure. Thank you both.
53:30
Speaker 2: All Right, guys, that does it for us. Make sure
53:32
Speaker 2: to check out Sager's episode with Andrew Schultz. I believe
53:35
Speaker 2: that will come out tomorrow and Emily and Ryan will
53:38
Speaker 2: be in for the show previously known as Count of
53:40
Speaker 2: Points tomorrow.
53:40
Speaker 4: Oh is it not a bro show?
53:42
Speaker 5: Oh?
53:43
Speaker 10: I don't know.
53:43
Speaker 4: We should check and see if it's brough show. Okay,
53:45
Speaker 4: I'll check and see. It doesn't matter.
53:47
Speaker 2: A mystery show, yeah, mystery like those you know, little
53:50
Speaker 2: packages the kids get in the unboxed and you won't
53:52
Speaker 2: know really you unbox the episode.
53:54
Speaker 4: Remember the candy like the wonder Ball, It's like, what's
53:57
Speaker 4: in the wonder bawl?
53:58
Speaker 5: No, I know, but that's sounds fun.
54:00
Speaker 4: A millennial.
54:01
Speaker 2: My daughter's very My daughter's very into these like unboxing
54:05
Speaker 2: and the mystery, like you know, stuffy plushies that are
54:08
Speaker 2: inside the box.
54:09
Speaker 5: That's where my brain.
54:10
Speaker 4: Oh so this is the version of that. Yes, I
54:12
Speaker 4: love it.
54:12
Speaker 2: All right anyway, someone will see you here tomorrow and
54:15
Speaker 2: have a great day.
54:16
Speaker 4: See everyone.