A (3:23)

Yeah, I mean, where do you begin? Right. I mean, it's all, it's all so snarled up. I feel like I need a more of a leading question than that just to, just to real quick because people probably haven't been following this story. There was an Israeli official who was arrested, I believe in California in sort of like a child sex sting. You know, it was like one of these like honeypot to catch a predator type things. You know, he was arrested along with some other people and he was basically released on bond and he flew back to Israel. Now there are plenty of people who are like, this is not that big of a deal. This guy's got a court date. He's planning on coming back for his court date. I guess we'll see. But this has kicked up a big stir in particular on the kind of anti Israel faction of the right that is like, well, isn't this interesting? This guy's getting sort of this special treatment that we kind of just trust him to come back.

B (4:13)

It's all the things, right? It's the groomers and pedophilia and Israel stuff. It's all of their loves combined into one story.

A (4:22)

And so you can totally see why these things are breaking down. This story's breaking down the way it is, even absent just Marjorie Taylor Greene and Laura Loomer's white hot hatred for one another, right? I mean, Laura Loomer is insanely Trumpy, but she is also very pro Israel. She's kind of like classically Republican in that way. Whereas Marjorie Taylor Greene has long been much more allied with the sort of like New America first sort of Nick Fuentes. Like, is she white nationalism curious, is she not? But, but certainly, you know, much more isolationist. Much, much more. Like we shouldn't be giving favors to anybody and certainly we shouldn't be, you know, like, you know, protecting Israel as Israel contains, continues to bomb Gaza. So like, there's all these weird little like ideological sort of facets to all of this that these that these two very prominent women on the right are sort of grabbing to hurl like javelins at one another as they accuse each other of being traitors to Trump and disloyal and bad for the movement and all these things.

B (5:23)

You know, Marjorie Taylor Greene, as she says in her tweet here, I know that God does not discriminate in his love for children. Why would we? I mean, it just seems right on point to me. Like, I just feel like we should just take her at her word. It's all about God's love.

A (5:37)

So she's right about that one, by the way. I mean, she is ab. I'm glad, I'm glad that somebody is calling out this, like, insane Laura Loomer story. We've been calling it out, right? I mean, we wrote about this. Will Summer and I both wrote about this this week about how just flatly insane it is that Laura Loomer can, can whip up an online firestorm so that like 10 or 11 Palestinian children are, have to be turned around at the airport and can't get, like, the medical care they need on private, on, on private donors dollars in America. I mean, that's, that's, that's just crazy and horrible and wrong and like, yeah, Marjorie Taylor Greene might be, you know, bringing this up just so she can make these sort of like crypto white nationalist points about Laura Loomer. But I guess, like, I'm, I'm, I'm glad she's using her crypto white nationalism to stick up for these Palestinian children rather than for doing something evil like she usually does. How about that? This is an ad by BetterHelp. These days, it feels like there's advice for everything. Cold plunges, gratitude journals, screen detoxes. But how do you know what actually works for you? With the Internet and information overload about mental health and wellness, it can be a struggle to know what's true and what actions to take. These days, using trusted sources and talking to live therapists can get you personalized recommendations and help you break through the noise. A lot of people think to themselves, you know, I've never felt like therapy was for me. I feel like the problems I'm dealing with aren't exactly therapy grade. But therapy isn't just for people who've experienced some major trauma. It can help you be your best, even through the normal slings and arrows that this crazy life throws your way. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally. It's Convenient, too. You can join a session with a therapist at the click of a button, helping you fit therapy into your busy life. Plus, you can switch therapists at any time. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Talk it out with better help, our listeners get 10% off their first month@betterhelp.com Bulwark Takes. That's better. H lp.com Bulwark Takes.

B (7:32)

So we then get the horseshoe. The horseshoe thing happens where we get Sink Uyghur and another sort of lefty hippie peacenik who rush to MTG's side. And there's a little bit of video we can run on that. And they are. They are calling Loomer a Zionist. And, well, here, have a look.

C (7:57)

Loomer hates Marjorie Taylor Greene because Marjorie Taylor Greene has the sign outside of her door letting foreign lobbyists like Israel know, don't come to my office. I'm not taking bribes from you. I'm not interested. I'm America first.

A (8:09)

Aipac. You know what?

B (8:10)

You can bring it on.

C (8:12)

She doesn't want to go to war with Iran on behalf of Israel. She's been vocal about that as well.

B (8:16)

I don't think we should be fighting wars on behalf of Israel.

C (8:19)

Well, that offends the sensibilities of someone who is like a hardcore Zionist, like Laura Loomer, who loves the Israel lobby, loves the influence that the Israel lobby has.

D (8:27)

On our website, ty.com we asked who's running this fight? Laura Loomer, Marjorie Taylor Greene, or neither. 0% believe that it's Laura Loomer.

B (8:35)

Correct.

D (8:36)

Laura Loomer doesn't care about any other issue but Israel.

B (8:39)

That's.

D (8:39)

That's the only thing she's obsessed about, is she's trying to take out America first guys and put an Israeli first guys. And so she's an Israeli Firster through and through. All of her propaganda is on behalf of a foreign government. And I have no idea if she's being paid or not.

B (8:51)

All right, so that comes out. And then Loomer replies to explain why it is that she hates Marjorie Taylor Greene. And she says, actually, I hate MTG because she planted a hit piece on me in the New York Times with blatant lies when Trump hired me to work on his campaign in 2023. So, wow. Loomer then details the history of their friendship and says that MTG had promised to help her when she was deplatformed, but that MTG never left a finger and that now that she, Laura Loomer, has raised herself up by her bootstraps and overcome all of the forces that were raid against her. MTG is a. What's this, what's this word? MTG was consumed with a jealous rage and she is a malicious liar. And I'm just looking for other things. A dumb hick who is a con woman and a liar and then she turned into a jealous, subversive Neanderthal. No mentions about Arby's in all of this, which frankly shocked me. But it feels like, like if, if somebody enjoys putting Arby's down into their pants, that, that should be the very first sentence on the Wikipedia page every time you talk about them. But that's okay. It is funny that MTG goes about this stuff, at least with the pretext of, hey, we're fighting about the issues. And Loomer's just like, no, none of this about the issues. I just hate her because she tried to hurt me in the media.

A (10:36)

This has always kind of been Loomer's superpower. Right? Which is just that she is willing to go lower than anybody. And that is easier said than done in sort of like the swamp of right wing infotainment today. Right? I mean, she will, she will win any race to the bottom with literally any person. And sometimes, you know, these are, sometimes it's even with people who are more theatrically evil even than Marjorie Taylor Greene. Sometimes Laura Loomer feuds with like Nick Fuentes and they're like, you know, that's like, you know, the rumble in the jungle in this department. But, but, but yes, I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene, she's very popular online among the crowd that just eats this stuff up. But she is also a congresswoman. You know, she, she sort of feels the need to sort of like tie it back to these issues and, and pretend that it's sort of high handed in this way. At bottom, this is sort of a seething hatred thing. We've talked about this a lot. And, and Loomer is more comfortable talking about that because she sort of gets and is at peace with the fact that seething hatred is the core of this whole political project. Right. I mean, it's not, it's not like people are ever going to be like, whoa, slow down, Laura. Like, like, let's, let's, let's, let's do the. When they go low, we go high here. No, I mean that's, that's not what people are signing up for. That's not why people come to her content that's not why people stay with her content. One thing that you said right at the beginning though, I actually think I disagree with because you said right at the top. Well, it's not really important, but it is a lot of fun and it is fun. I mean, like it's, it's totally messy and insane. But I honestly think these sorts of moments are kind of important because, and let me, let me know what you think of this because this is just like a thought that I just had one second ago. But, but it sort of seems to me like this is the only way that MAGA can process internal policy disagreement. Because if there's anything, because if there's stuff that they disagree on, usually it's just kind of hush hush. And usually it's like, oh gosh, well, like that's kind of awkward that we disagree. Let's yell at the Democrats some more. Let's yell at, you know, Joe Biden and the fake news media and all of those people some more and like keep our, our fire focused on the enemy. But it's in these struggles with the influencers who are all just terrible people and all just hate one another, like truly hate one another. This is the only place this kind of stuff ever seems to bubble up because it's like, well, this is something I can hit somebody with and something I can like, you know, steal a little market share with. And so it's like, it's like an entire movement that can only process its own internal disagreements about like, Israel and foreign policy and, and whether we should be allies with a nation that's, you know, bombing another nation, you know, into smithereens. All this stuff can only ever really be talked about through the psychotic lens of this cat fight between these two awful women. I mean, it's very, very strange because.

B (13:12)

No one can ever disagree with the strong man himself. So you have to frame any disagreements through a proxy. Right. You know, if only, if only Comrade Stalin knew what was going on then.

A (13:25)

And he himself exists in sort of this much more unformed protean, like, kind of like he can kind of be all things to all people because he does not take the strong policy stances on any of this stuff. And so, and so everybody can kind of assume he's on their side or.

B (13:38)

He changes them because he doesn't actually believe them. That's the other, the other advantage he has is that he doesn't believe any of this stuff. So he can take both sides of every issue, like back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and nobody Blames him for it. Whereas it's only the people who, like, have actual beliefs. I want to try something on you, Andrew, because I don't think we've talked about this before. One of my long running bits, and it's only like halfway a bit, is that I, I think I like Marjorie Taylor Greene, possibly as a human being, because I believe, and this may be wrong, I don't have any. Any special insight here, just from watching her from the outside, that unlike 95% of Maga, she genuinely believes all of this. And to my mind, I will take somebody who genuinely believes it all over Marco Rubio every day of the week and twice on Sunday, right? Somebody who's not positioning or playing an angle or even like Laura Loomer, just like looking to get big, right? Looking to get a White House job and get a consulting. It seems to me that MTG genuinely believes all of everything, like a child. And I, I don't know, I feel like we can work with that. You could, you could interact with that, you can interface with that. I feel like maybe if MTG and I went to the Outback Steakhouse together and split a bloomin on, we could, we could find some common ground and maybe even be friends who agree to disagree and that. Because that. What this gets at is what you were saying. So MTG believes all the make America great stuff, whereas Loomer understands that everything is just about the seething hatred. And that is like the fundamental divide here within MAGA is they're the. The people who are basically the marks who are like, but I thought we were making America great again. I thought we weren't doing forever wars. I thought, hold on. What about the Epstein files? It's those people versus the people who were only ever there to hurt all the people they hate. What do you think? Do you buy any of that?

A (15:47)

I think I do buy some of it. And I hate to like, be the Debbie Downer on a rare sort of ray of halfway JBL Lite. I do think that there's something to be said that even though she very sincerely seems to believe all of these crazy things and there is something to be said about that, I have never seen a lot of evidence that that is married to a person who is like all that great on a personal level either, if you know what I mean, in the, in the person of Marjorie Taylor Greene. I mean, just like watching the sort of like, nonsensical antics she gets up to in her day job in Congress and just the way she treats all of the people around her is just so.

B (16:25)

Well, she seems to have gone away. I mean this is if anybody was like done dug deep on the MTG background show, which comes from a very well to do family, was. I think their money is in construction. And then she seems to have had like a real Eat Pray Love kind of break and journey in which she got super into cross. You know, like people who suddenly in middle age get super into CrossFit. Again, no judgment, but there's often something there. Like there's a precipitating event and then like her marriage sort of falls apart and then she's suddenly politically engaged and then all of a sudden she's. She's a first, she's just running around with videos, with video cameras yelling at high school kids from Parkland. And then the next thing she knows she's in Congress. I mean again, this, her path is really idiosyncratic. This is not the path of 99% of the people who wind up in Congress. Right. Most of them are people who are strivers who have been angling for something since they middle school. They've been running for stuff and looking to get power and get. And she just seems to have been like a normal, ish, lower upper class or upper, upper middle class person who was living her life and then like something happened and I find that interesting.

A (17:42)

Yeah, no, that's absolutely true. People if they haven't read it before and are interested in sort of Marjorie Taylor Greene's journey. Elena Plot had a really good profile of her a year.

B (17:51)

Elena's just fantastic.

A (17:53)

Yeah, yeah. Where they just kind of really went deep on like how a person. I think that was actually the title of the profile is like why is Marjorie Taylor Greene like this? Or something like that. Which, which seems like a dig, but really that was like Elena went in like why is Marjorie Taylor Greene like this? Like that's interesting that a person becomes like this. And it's. I think it's totally, totally true that like she, she is a person who has been deformed by certain pressures. Like she, she was relatively normal and then she got into politics at exactly a. Like the way to succeed in right wing politics was to contort yourself into like this unbelievable caricature of a person. And that was her kind of secret sauce is that she was always able to kind of like grab at all of the insane psycho stuff that was, that was like percolating online, but sort of pair it to this sort of like down home normal semen lady. Like, like whatever the female version of the Georgia Good old boy is. Was kind of like her brand and then. And then she was. Has just been so rewarded for that for so long that, like, it has melted her soul in, in a lot of ways. But, but I think you're absolutely right that, that unlike Loomer, who has been just a total striver and has been like, basically running a strategy since she was like 20, Marjorie Taylor Greene had basically a normal life and then. And then has now just late in life, not late in life. She's in middle age. But, but, but this is, you know, gone on this journey like you say, that has warped and deformed her and turned her into. Turned her into. Into a different thing. But it all kind of happened to her sort of organically. I think. I think I agree with you on that.

B (19:28)

Yeah. So if you had to. Before we get out of here, if you had to be picking a team. Team MTG or Team Lumer, this is an impossible choice.

A (19:40)

Let's just circle back around to. I'll, I'll take the safe route, circle back around to where I was at the beginning and say in this dispute, which again, in part is about whether or not the US Government should boot Palestinian child amputees out of the country before they get their, their medical care rather than just letting them have the medical care and then go back in that dispute. I'm. I'm very much team Marjorie Taylor Greene. I think what Laura Loomer did there was despicable.

B (20:06)

Yeah. I mean, I'm Team mtg, provisionally. Team mtg, basically all the way down the line. I feel like, again, she and I mtg, if you see this, let's go hang out at an outback. I feel like an outback is the perfect place for us. I don't know why. I don't know why the Outback Steakhouse is the place that calls to me for Herb. That's where I'd like to go.

A (20:28)

Good video content for the Bulwark.

B (20:30)

I would watch and go in the comments and talk about whether or not here's when we make trouble. Is Laura Loomer's stance, do you think, long term, productive for the Israeli relationship with the American public or not? Because this is one thing that I don't understand if Republicans are picking up on it or not, but it seems to me that the extent to which the Israeli government has become an appendage of the U.S. republican Party and has leaned into all of the worst caricatures that anti Semites have conjured up over the Israeli government over the years, that this is long term, very, very dangerous for Israel and I'd like to hear your thoughts on that in the comments. See you later, guys. Hit like hit. Subscribe. Follow us along as we come back for more things that the next thing won't be as fun as this. I promise that. Thanks, Andrew. Good luck, America.