← Conversations with Coleman
Conversations with Coleman
Coleman Hughes and Glenn Greenwald Debate Israel’s Influence on Washington
02:05:15
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- [00:01]
A
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- [02:59]
B
Thank you for having me, Coleman. It's great to be with you again.
- [03:03]
A
Yeah. So to explain to people the, the context of this podcast a little bit, we were, I was originally supposed to debate John Mearsheimer on the power of the Israel lobby. He dropped out of the event. You stepped in and that was going to be, that was looking to be a very exciting live event in New York City. That event, that entire festival got canceled for reasons I don't even really know and not really relevant. But I figured I would invite you on and we could address the same topic in podcast form. Now, obviously, without a moderator, it's hard to do like a real debate, and I'm hoping it's more of a conversation than a debate. And my approach in the past to podcasts where I expect to have a lot of disagreements with a guest is to give my guests a lot of rope and let them speak and try not to interrupt very much. And I think I have a record of doing that. So kind of half playing moderator, question asker, and half playing giving my, my opinions. So first of all, I want to thank you for coming on the show. And I, I guess the, the way I kind of want to structure this is to talk about what I view as a, a narrative that's gotten very far out of hand and, and away from reality about the power of the Israel lobby. With respect to a couple topics, maybe we can start before we get to Iran and, and, and, and wars. We can start with the topic of free speech. Because this is something where I think you and I share a common philosophy, which is that we are both basically free speech absolutists. I think you identify with that label. I, I pretty much do. And you've put your, you know, you've put your money and your, in a lot of ways your, your life, where your mouth is on that topic. You've been an ardent defender of free speech, a very unpopular free speech, whether it's Edward Snowden or countless other examples. And I commend you for that. And I, it's a, it's an issue that's important to me too. However, in preparation for this podcast. I've been watching your podcast with Tucker Carlson recently, and the overall impression given by those podcasts is that we have actually lost free speech with respect to criticism of Israel. And so that's a narrative that I think is totally blown out of proportion. And so I guess I want to start there first talk about maybe why you care about free speech and why you think it's under threat on the topic of anti Semitism and criticism of Israel.
- [05:59]
B
So just quickly, I just want to observe that I think this state that we have completely lost free speech when it comes to Israel is much too far as an overstatement, much too binary. Typically, the way free speech erosions work is they tend to be progressive and gradual and incremental. And for reasons I'll explain in a minute. I think there's absolutely very valid concern in that regard in the United States when it comes to the ability to criticize Israel in general. I think people have kind of disputed and debated about my political ideology and leanings since I began writing about politics 20 plus years ago. And I've always kind of avoided every label except for civil libertarian. And along that, I think accompanying that is free speech absolutist, which I do embrace, as you correctly surmised. And the reason is that I think what that strain has in common is just a general distrust of what human beings individually or as a governing faction will do if they have too much power, if there aren't sufficient constraints on their power. And I just don't trust human beings to declare truth and falsity in some absolute sense that entitles them to prohibit certain views from being expressed on the grounds they're false or that the ideas are dangerous. Because our intellectual history as human beings is the gospel of one generation becomes the discredited truth of the next in pretty much every field. And the potential for abuse if you give people the right to regulate speech or decide which ideas can and can't be expressed is so high that whatever benefits that you can identify from providing that power in a particular case or at a particular moment to me, is vastly outweighed by the dangers as far as Israel is concerned. This is not a new development. It's not something that happened after October 7th. I can go back and show you so many examples of professors being fired or losing tenure, people and media being fired because of their criticism of Israel. In fact, I could make the case to you that that has been the most common form of what then became known as cancel culture, where people have had their careers, ruined their reputations, destroyed job losses as a result of criticizing Israel. There have been all kinds of campus controversies around banning pro Palestinian groups for a long time that I think is at odds with our conception of free speech. And I did find a lot of common cause with conservatives or people with whom I don't necessarily have ideological agreement, because I thought there was a lot of censorship, including by the government, against right wing speech, against people that descended on Covid and Ukraine and race issues. And I was vehemently opposed to that for a long time after October 7th, my concern really became the attacks on free speech with regard to Israel. And I'll just give you for me, one of the most disturbing examples, which is that for as long as I can remember, the American right in this country was opposed to hate speech codes, both in general and especially on college campuses. The idea that you can't express certain views, you'll be punished for certain views if those views are deemed sufficiently hateful or bigoted, obviously suppress debate in all sorts of ways. And one of the very first things the Trump administration did upon getting into office in the second term, supported by, funded by a lot of very, very pro Israel billionaires, was start bullying college campuses, some of our leading universities, to adopt a wildly expanded conception of hate speech codes where faculty members could be fired or students could be expelled or otherwise disciplined for expressing a very wide range of views with respect to Israel or particular Jewish individuals. Just to give you an example, under this expanded definition that was created by Israel, adopted into the criminal law of the EU called the Ihra definition of anti Semitism, the International Holocaust remembrance act definition. You're not allowed to say that Israel is a racist endeavor as its founding or as a country or as an idea. But you're allowed to say that about the United States. You're allowed to say it about any other country on the planet, just not about Israel. You're not allowed to compare the Israeli government's actions to the actions of the Nazis, even though you can do that about American wars or Russian wars or any other country on earth. And I can go down the list, all of these special speech codes that were created specifically to constrain one's ability to criticize Israel. It wasn't about the protests. It doesn't govern conduct. It's not only about guest students, it's about all students on American campus. And there are a lot of different erosions like that on this issue that I could similarly describe for you.
- [10:45]
A
Yeah, so let's talk about the Ihra definition, because this is an area where, well, you and I have some overlap and some agreement. So to start with where I agree, everything you said about the generic defense of free speech, I agreed with every word and it was stated beautifully. When it comes to the IHRA definition, you know, people can look this up. The definition itself is fine. But the examples it gives, many of the examples are like, you know, maybe a third of the examples are just critiques of Israel. Right? They're not, oh, I hate you because you're a Jew. Right. That would be bigotry towards Jews. It's, I think Israel is racist. If you say that, you should totally be allowed to say that like that. That. I completely agree that that should not be included in any campus speech definition of, of anti Semitism. And it's a, it's a shame that the, these administrations kowtowed to the Trump administration on that score. But the reality is just because this policy exists on paper doesn't mean it's actually enforced on campuses. Right? Like when Columbia and Harvard adopted the IHRA definition of, of anti Semitism, the Columbia Spectator and the Harvard Crimson, they immediately publish articles essentially saying exactly the phrases that are proscribed in the definition to, to make the point that a, they should be able to say it, which they're right about, and secondly, to emphasize the point that, like, obviously they knew they were not going to be disciplined. They weren't disciplined. It's very easy to, like, if you were to, if you were to survey the campus newspapers of all of these campuses, there's last, last I checked, there were like 30 that have nominally adopted the IR IHRA definition. It would be 10 to 1 or 100 to 1, the articles published in the campus newspapers that are critical of Israel, calling, you know, the war a genocide or an apartheid state, as opposed to articles defending it. Right? So, you know, you add to that the fact that the pro Israel students on these campuses are, you know, they're outnumbered 5 to 1, 10 to 1. There are all sorts of examples from an organization like FIRE where, you know, recently Columbia University law students, their Student Supporting Israel Club wasn't recognized on campus, I think because of a, it was either because of a Facebook post or because, oh, it's because they adopted the IHRA definition as a club. Obviously a club can have whatever definition it wants of anything, right? Like, I can start the black students Club and be like, I think racism is when you tap your feet three times and turn around, I'll get rubber stamped and approved. But the pro Israel students face a student body that sometimes has power over them. Through student senates and has the power to basically discriminate against them as a club. It happened to SSI at Duke University as well recently. They didn't get officially recognized because of a Facebook post that was pro Israel. There was a case recently the Davidson College administration accused the pro Israel students of harassment, the Pro Israel club, of harassment for handing out flyers. There was another case, like just a couple days ago, where the Catholic, I think it was at the Catholic University of America where the pro Israel club wanted to invite speakers for an event and the university required them to invite a speaker on the other side of the issue, which is a requirement, not level that and any other kind of club. So my, my question for you is, is absolutely there are, there are many cases of pro Palestinian voices, their speech being chilled. And you've, you know, you could talk about the professor Steve Slayda Salada. You bring up these examples pretty often. When I see an organization like fire, which is the foundation for individual rights and expression, when I go to their website, I can guarantee that they're going to have, they're going to make complaints about people's free speech being violated in a way that is neutral to the issue. They're going to have all the examples of pro Palestinian voices that have been chilled and they're going to have all the examples of pro Israel students, pro Israel clubs whose events have been shut down and so forth. And I'm not quite sure about that. When it comes to you, like, are you, do you think, do you see yourself as neutrally advocating for free speech, the violations of free speech, as on both sides of this issue, or consistently taking the one side?
- [15:29]
B
Well, I mean, as you mentioned at the start, I have often at the risk or damaged my own career or standing with allies and like, defended free speech of the views that I find most repugnant, including when I was a lawyer, before I even became a journalist, when I was defending white nationalists or neo Nazis and the attempt to ward off attempts to curb their speech, knowing that it would then be incursions into other types of speech. I was one of the earliest people objecting to the first kinds of big tech censorship of people like Milo Yiannopoulos and Alex Jones, knowing that it would then lead to others. I've defended people on the right with whom I have very little in common politically for a long time. And on this issue, if you show me an example of, and I'll take your word, I'm not as familiar with these cases and I'll explain to you why I would Obviously vehemently condemn if any kind of club or group at a college, university is being discriminated against because of their pro Israel views. I mean, and I don't think anyone who has ever listened to me even minimally doubts that. But if you say to me, have you focused more on the suppression of pro Palestinian speech? I would say absolutely, yes. And I'll give you the reason why. Like these examples that you just cited are individual examples at colleges. And I'll just assume that, you know, you presented every incident fully accurately, that there's no other mitigating factors, and these are individual examples of suppression of free speech on the part of people who support Israel. But what I'm talking about is something on a completely different scale. I'm talking about the federal government forcing our leading universities to adopt codes that enable faculty members to be fired and students to be expelled for expressing what you yourself have acknowledged is a very common range of views about Israel that ought to be permitted. This isn't just one individual dispute at Davidson College. This is the United States government run by a president who was funded in large part by billionaires who are highly supportive of Israel, who did so in order to have a pro Israel agenda, imposing speech codes on American colleges, our leading colleges and universities. And you can say, oh, some people still get away with saying the things that are on the prohibited list. And I have no doubt that they're not enforcing it 100%. It's a very new development. Trump administration has only been in power a year. You're talking about newly enacted speech codes over the last year or so. It'd be like saying, oh, I can point to some people in 2020 and 2021 expressing dissent about Tony Fauci's views of COVID or the World Health Organization. Therefore, look, it's not really a big deal that there was censorship because some people got away with saying it and weren't actually punished. I think, Obviously, when the U.S. government and our major administrations at universities conspire or collaborate to impose speech codes, the danger is that it can be enforced. And the mere fact that it exists is a serious chilling effect. If you're a professor and you know your job is at risk, you can be fired, even if you have tenure for expressing those views. Of course that's going to make you think twice. In fact, there's a Jewish professor of genocide studies at Columbia who every year includes in her curriculum books by the world renowned 20th century philosopher Hannah Arendt, who was very anti Zionist and says a lot of the things that The IHRA definition now precludes. And she basically said, I'm either gonna have to change my curriculum or leave Columbia, because that is something that you're gonna take into account as far as FIRE is concerned. They absolutely. I love fire. To me, they're what the ACLU used to be. I've said that a thousand times. I'm highly supportive of FIRE for exact. That you just said. At the same time, if you go and look at fire, and this is well before October 7th, even though they were created in defense of the ability of conservative students to speak without being censored, because there was so much censorship of conservative students on college campuses, they were at least equally active in the defense of pro Palestinian speech from being censored, even though their executive director and several other founders and key donors are Jewish, are Zionist. They have a very free speech, a principled view of free speech. I think the time that I saw fire, the most rhetorically aggressive, and again, this goes to. What I'm trying to say is that talking about something on a completely different scale was when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who actually went to Israel to sign legislation affecting the free speech rights of people in Florida when it came to Israel, he actually went to Israel to sign a bill governing the rights of Floridians. In 2024, he ordered that all campus groups of Palestine for Justice be closed at every state university. And the reason he did that, he said, was because he believed they were providing material support to terrorist groups. He didn't mean they were furnishing money to them or providing arms to them. He meant that the effect of their speech saying we should stop the war in Gaza, that the Israelis are the aggressors, that this advances the interest of Hamas and Hezbollah and other terrorist groups. And of course, you can't have free speech be the primary or let alone sole basis for accusing people of material support for terrorism. And FIRE said that this was one of the most aggressive, full frontal assaults on free speech by the government in years. And they urge college administrators to reject and refuse to adhere to Governor DeSantis claims. And just one last thing, Coleman. And again, I can point to so many examples, like Norman Finkelstein was approved by the tenure committee at DePaul. But because Alan Dershowitz was on a jihad against him for being supposedly too anti Israel, he pressured, using his public platform and a lot of very high funded groups, DePaul University, to withdraw the offer of tenure. As you mentioned, Steve Salacia, same thing at the University of Illinois, who actually sued The University of Illinois. From it, you're talking about government pressure. There's not a very well organized pro Palestinian lobby in the United States. There's a very well organized and well funded pro Israel lobby in the United States. That's why both parties have been so steadfastly pro Israel. And so I think we're talking about a very different scale. And I would also say the argument that you began kind of making, which is like, oh, pro Israel students on college campuses are outnumbered. They're kind of in a weaker position and they therefore need to some. Some protection. I know you're not endorsing these speech codes, but it, it really does that it is redolent of the left wing argument about black people or trans people or gay people or Muslims on college campuses or these.
- [22:05]
A
I wasn't saying they should have speech codes as a result.
- [22:07]
B
I know you're not. I'm just saying that that depiction. I know you're very clear that you're not in favor of these speech codes. I don't want to suggest otherwise. I'm just saying that was like a depiction of that was a little bit redolent of that to me. So it could be that pro Israel groups or students are being, in individual cases, suppressed, but the scale of the suppression and the censorship. And I'll just add one more quick example just to really underscore what I'm talking about in terms of where the power centers lie in 32, 34 states, might be 36 states, mostly red states, but not only. And I know you heard me talk about those with Tucker, there's a law in place that says if you want to have a contract with the state government, you have to certify that you do not support or participate in the government boycott of Israel. You can boycott the United States and other states. You can boycott North Carolina. You can boycott Norway or Indonesia or Peru. You just can't boycott this one country, Israel. And I actually profiled a woman who had sterling job performances in Texas, where she was a speaker, speech pathologist in Austin school district. But she supported a boycott of Israel and she got fired. This is unbelievable that as citizens of the United States, if you want a contract with the state, you have to certify you don't participate in a boycott or support a boycott of a foreign country. There's no similar laws for Palestinians because the power center in our governments and in our financial private sector power centers are obviously far more pro Israel than anything else.
- [23:37]
A
Okay, so a few points to make in response. I think some of the important context when we talk about what's going on on campuses is that especially prior to October 7th, there was this massive double standard in how different groups were treated. And I think you and I may agree on this. So, for instance, when I was at Columbia, I graduated 2020, there was a case where this white kid named Julian came out and he basically said, hey, I, I like white people. Like, I love white civilization. I don't hate anyone else. I just love being white. He literally didn't attack any other group. I think it was like a dumb expression of ethnic pride. But he's totally allowed to say it. Instantly banned from Barnard's campus. Then you have Kalani James at Columbia a couple years later where he makes a social media post saying, literally, if I fight a Zionist, I'm going to fight to kill. He gets pulled into a hearing because obviously you can't say that on a campus. You can't threaten to kill people. They give him many chances to walk it back, but he doubles and triples down. Yep, if I fight a Zionist, I'm going to fight to kill. Zionists should not be on campus. You know, violence and murder is quite often justified. Nothing happens to him until the story becomes public and then, and then he does get banned. Right, but that was, that hearing was live streamed within Colombia and nothing was done about it. Because for a very long time, college campuses have had a bizarre double standard where the, the slightest speech that would be offensive to African Americans, Hispanics, LGBTQ and so forth, or women is treated as discipline worthy. But really the, the groups that were not protected under those codes were basically whites, men and, and Jews and, and Christians and Christians. And so from my point of view, I think you and I are more on the free speech, absolutist end of this. Meaning in my ideal world, you, you'd be able to say whatever you wanted on a campus essentially up to barring incitements of violence. But if that's just not actually plausible, given how sensitive college campuses are and the culture are, then the second best alternative is to have some kind of speech code regime that actually treats every group the same. Right. And so that didn't exist. And I think a lot of Jews and Zionists accurately detected that and reacted politically after October 7th. And that's what you're seeing. But that's like very necessary context to understand where these sorts of policies came from, even though I agree with you that they're overly broad. Secondly, on this point about the lobby, I think that when we talk about the lobby like the anti BDS laws, these are, these are stupid laws. I agree. Like, if you're contracting with the federal government, you should, you shouldn't have to check a box saying you have any foreign policy position. It's stupid. But to me, the way that I've seen you and Tucker and others like Dave Smith, I had on the podcast talk about the lobby as if it's this extremely powerful entity, when most of what I see the lobby has achieved demonstrates its pretty limited power and it's limited efficacy. For, for instance, if you talk to any lobbyist, and I have talked to lobbyists, not on Israel issues, but on other issues, just like criminal justice lobbyists, they'll tell you way easier to get things passed at the state level. There's very few veto points. You've got to persuade a couple people and if there aren't concentrated stakeholders on the other side of the issue, you can basically get it through. So if you look at where anti BDS laws have been successful, it's only at the state level. They've tried. I'm sure they've lobbied Congress to pass an anti BDS law at the federal level, but they failed. And what does that failure tell you empirically? Well, it tells you about the limits of the lobby's power. We're meant to believe that this lobby is so powerful that it's gotten us into, quote unquote, several wars, but it's not even powerful enough to pass a, a federal contracting law. Right.
- [28:05]
B
Are you saying many other examples Congress for that?
- [28:08]
A
Because I don't know. I, I don't know.
- [28:10]
B
Yeah, I don't think that's true. For reason. I'll explain. Go ahead, go ahead.
- [28:13]
A
Okay. I'm sorry, it's my, it's my assumption, it's my assumption, but maybe they haven't. No, but I think anti BDS laws, actually, no, they, there have been bills before Congress, that's a fact. And they failed that, that, that, that I know, or they've died in committee and so on and so forth. So I don't know where those would go, come from if, if not from the lobby, but maybe you can clarify that later. Let me just finish this point though, which is I, I think, you know, if you look at the actual scale of the Israel lobby, it's a relatively small lobby. Like as I said to Dave Smith, the, the, the entire pro Israel lobby, not just aipac, the entire pro Israel lobby was outspent in terms of lobbying Congress during the Obama years by the dentistry lobbyist. And it's approximately, you know, we're talking 1, 1.5% of the dollar spent lobbying Congress as the lobbies we really think of as big, like Big pharma, Big Oil, Big tobacco, relatively small. It can get things at the state level. It's not nearly powerful enough to get us involved in all these wars that people like to blame on it. And that's, that's basically how I see the issue.
- [29:22]
B
So let me just, you know, in terms of the last point about apac, I mean, I think if we are going to frame it as binaries, like either APAC is all powerful and omnipotent and every single time they snap their fingers and want something, they instantly get all of it. Or the alternative is APAC is really kind of weak. And I think it's kind of a disservice to the discussion. I think the truth lies in the middle, but far, far closer to the, the, the end of the spectrum where they're extremely powerful. And I'll just, I want to just note two things about this. One is to just talk about AIPAC is to emit huge influences on our political system with people who are aligned not just with the agenda of aipac, but the agenda of the Israeli government, a foreign government. So I'll just, you know, one example, one obvious example is Miriam Adelson spent $100 million on Trump's reelection campaign in 2024. Throughout that whole campaign, Trump was appearing at events with Mary Adelson and he was saying things like, I'm going to make my presidency is going to be about making America great again and making Israel great again. He received massive amounts of money from the Adelsons in 2016 as well. And he himself said that by far the people who visited the White House more than anybody else other than people who work there were the Adelson. Sheldon Adelson was alive at the time. Mary Metelson, who was an Israeli citizen who naturalized when she married him later in life, would accompany him. And Trump himself said they would come in, they would not ask for anything about Americans. They wouldn't ask for anything for the United States. They would only ask for things for Israel. And I gave them every single thing that they asked for, including things that he said. I even went further than they thought I could go. Like they raised with me the issue of the Golan Heights. I didn't know what that was. So I called in my advisor, David Friedman, a long time extremist, pro Israel Zionist. He gave me a five minute tutorial on the Golan Heights. And afterwards I said Give the Golan Heights to Israel. And then. And then we did. So Trump himself has talked about the extreme power of not aipac, but pro Israel, the pro Israel lobby. And I should also add to this, like, sometimes I think people trying to pick this view about the pro Israel lobby being extremely powerful as some kind of weird fringe conspiracy theory on the Internet, similar to like 911 theories or JFK, things where people just debate in this conspiracy world. I can show you statements from endless numbers of people who ran the government, like American presidents or people who got very close, who talk. I mean, there are all kinds of tapes with Richard Nixon talking about how the Jewish lobby in the United States is trying to dictate, and often does dictate his foreign policy. He said the same once he left. In interviews, Barry Goldwater, who was the conservative hero who was nominated in 1964, in an interview in 1988, basically went on and on and on, and he was Jewish. Barry Goldwater, about how Israel and its loyalists in the United States run American foreign policy. These are people at the highest levels of government who have had all kinds of experience in running foreign policy. And they understand very well that the influence of this lobby is unlike any others, that now there are a lot of other very powerful lobbies. You name several of them, like the pharmaceutical lobby, obviously Wall Street. These are extremely powerful lobbies. They write bills. The difference, though, is that this is a lobby devoted to the interest of a foreign country. And there's nothing that remotely competes with the power of the pro Israel lobby in terms of lobbies that come from other countries. And that's the reason why it gets so much attention. It's just such a bizarre phenomenon of American political life. Such a unique phenomenon that politicians in both parties so frequently travel there, talk about it, pledge loyalty to it, talk about how important it is that it remains a staple. We hear all the time that Republicans, Democrats, can't agree on anything. Go look at pro Israel resolutions and how they fare. Like Marjorie Taylor Greene talked about this. Thomas Massie, like, every other week they're voting on Israel. And when those votes come up, it's like 413 to 8. For decades, it's been like that, like one of the only issues that doesn't produce polarization in Washington. And that's beyond getting to the question of why we entered the war in Iran and what Joe Kent said, what Marco Rubio said, what a lot of. Even leaving that aside, I'm just telling you that this is a view that has been expressed by the most mainstream American politicians for a long, long time. And I think it's safe to presume that it's not based on nothing.
- [34:15]
A
Yeah. So we'll get to Iran in a second. But I want to provide a counterpoint to this because. Okay, so let's talk about Trump and then let's talk about the Israel lobby in general. So Trump, Trump. My model of Trump is that he, this is a president who got famous firing people on television. He basically tells anyone who's pushing him in a direction he doesn't already want to go to fuck off. It's why he has the highest, he must have the highest turnover rate of any, any cabinet in, in recent memory. And, and, and so his reasons for being like by far the most aggressively pro Israel president in, in history. I think he's, you know quite often how lobbies work is they, they take someone who basically already agrees with the issue and then they, they give you a nudge. Right. That, which is why the NRA can't successfully lobby the Democratic Party with all their money much more than the Israel lobby spends to, to become like pro gun. Right. Because what they do is they nudge Republicans that are pretty much already agree with them to be on the margin more amenable to their policy preferences. So there's one place to stand to just understand what lobbying can do and what lobbying can't do. Even the mega lobbies like the tobacco lobby outspent the Israel Lobby 10x during the first George Bush presidency. But they couldn't even prevent the smoke free laws from going into effect. And so, so then let's step back. Like think about the Golan Heights. You mentioned Trump, Trump recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. This is something that any US President could have done at any point. You know, for almost 40 years prior to Trump, like five presidents in a row could have woken up one day and said, I'm going to recognize it, said the magic words with no input from Congress. They would have unilateral authority to do it. And they didn't. And the Israel lobby couldn't secure that victory, though it would have meant a lot to Israel and wouldn't have meant that much to a U.S. president. Right. Why was Trump the one to do it is because the lobby has more influence over him or is it because Trump is a singular figure who he, he likes to do these really risky, bold things. He, I think he likes Israel for a lot of reasons that just have to do with his own beliefs. And it's, he's certainly not the, the, the, there's no evidence that he is uniquely susceptible to this pressure from the Israel lobby that isn't circular. Right. If you're going to say, okay, he does all this stuff that he views that, that the Israel lobby views as beneficial to Israel, well, Trump also views it as beneficial to America, you can disagree with that. You can say, I hate Trump's wars. I hate that he did that. But in Trump's mind, there's no evidence that he doesn't view these policies as a win win. You look back, how did the Rollin heights help the U.S. well, I don't know, but there's a very important distinction between you and I might not think it helps the US But Trump likes what it signals for. For whatever reason, he likes. He likes to back winners. He's a really weird guy in a lot of ways. Right, but let me, let me back up. And we have to include in the data set of this analysis all the times where the Israel lobby or pro Israel interests have wanted something very strongly and not gotten it. The Golan Heights is only one example, and there was very low barrier to any president doing that, and they weren't able to secure it. Another example is in 2002, Condoleezza Rice writes in her memoir, bush gave his famous Palestine speech. Not that famous, but 2002, and they sent the Israelis a courtesy copy. And he was gonna. He was gonna call for two states, which they didn't have a problem with, but they were. He was gonna call the new state Palestine, which they did have a problem with. So they call Condoleezza Rice, say, you can't do this. And Condoleezza's like, what do you mean we can't do this? Fuck off. And then say, okay, okay, just add one word to the speech, please just call it New Palestine instead of Palestine. And Condoleezza Ray is like, what are you talking about? We're not giving it to you for approval. I'm giving it to you as a courtesy. They couldn't even get the President to add one word to his speech. But we're supposed to believe they can get us into multiple wars? They wanted us to bomb Syria's nuclear reactor. Bush didn't want to, so he said no. And so they're. JCPOA is obviously the biggest example. The lobby pulled out the full force of their alleged power to stop the jcpoa, but they couldn't do it. And so there. You have to include all of these in the data set of, of your assessment of the lobby's supposed power.
- [39:11]
B
Yeah, I mean, it reminds me of the first discussion that we had about censorship and in order to shield Israel, where you presented counter examples and you know, they were quite isolated examples. And I said, look, if I were arguing that, you know, there is an absolute bar on criticizing Israel, those would be good counterexamples. But just it would be like someone says, hey, there's a lot of censorship of COVID dissidents going on, which there clearly was. And then I would say, no, there aren't. Here's a YouTube channel that I can find where people are saying that Fauci is a criminal and they're not being censored. And here's a newspaper that ran an editorial once that said that the World Health Organization seems to be politically motivated and abandoning the science and they didn't get punished. So what censorship are you talking about? And these things are not either or binary, yes or no. So let's just take that, that trajectory that, that you, you, you pointed out. I do agree that, that the Iran deal that Obama signed is a counterexample where an American president did something that the bulk of the Israel lobby and certainly Israel opposed. So I'm certainly not arguing that AIPAC or the pro Israel lobby is omnipotent, but look at President Obama as an excellent example, because you're, you, you want to isolate Trump as kind of idiosyncratic or, you know, just kind of his own thing. You know, as I said, you can go back and see all sorts of figures, you know, including Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater and even Harry Truman talking about the pressures of what had been. The Jewish lobby is now a much bigger lobby for Israel because it includes a ton of evangelicals as well, have been convinced that the Bible directs them to support the Netanyahu government or whatever the government of the modern state of Israel is. You have this kind of joining now. But Obama is an excellent example because even though he did sign the Iran deal, he also is his signature on the 10 year memorandum of understanding that obligates the United States to send a minimum of $4 billion every year to Israel. And while a good chunk of that is required to be spent on American defense contractors. So it's basically like a gift certificate that the American taxpayer and American worker give to Israel and say, hey, go shopping on our dime at Boeing and General Dynamics and whatever, not anywhere near all of it is. And then on top of those costs, you have, every time that the United States deploys troops in the Middle east to protect Israel, whenever it gets involved in one of its many wars, its endless wars with its neighbors. We also finance countries in the immediate vicinity of Israel to make sure that the governments and dictatorships that are there stay there because they don't really pick fights with Israel, including Egypt and Jordan, which are billions of dollars more to be added to the list. By far the biggest recipient, by far. By far the biggest recipient of foreign aid over the last 30 years is Israel and the largesse that we constantly give to them. As I said, the obsession that American politicians have with Israel, the fact that in their recesses they don't even go back to their own constituencies, they go back to, they go to Israel and meet with Netanyahu and on a bipartisan basis constantly are doing this. There's no other country that's even remotely closed. You can have countries that get a lot of American aid in spurts, like Ukraine did because of the bipartisan support for their war effort against Russia. But over the last several decades, Israel stands alone on a completely different universe than any other country by far when it comes to the forced support of American taxpayers for this foreign country. Now, I agree with you entirely that even the most powerful lobbies, and again, I'm disputing this quantitative analysis you're bringing because it excludes a lot of different ways that Israel exists influence besides just AIPAC or even what's called the pro Israel lobby. But even the most powerful lobbies don't always get what they want. The tobacco company, as you just said, public opinion just got too hostile and too antagonistic to the tobacco lobby and the tobacco industry for American politicians to continue to protect it. But they had done so for decades. The, the ability, for example, of the gun control lobby of the NRA only to have influence in the Republican party. That's because there are very, very well funded gun control lobbies that, that shower the Democratic party with benefits. And this is what I was getting to when I was talking about the imbalance in power even on American college campuses. Of course, American college campuses, faculties tend to be more left wing. And if you analyze it from that perspective, I agree with you entirely. Being a conservative on American college campuses in a lot of ways is often and significantly more difficult than being a left wing student. But if you look at how American colleges and universities are governed, how they're funded, look at Harvard, like Of the last 35 years, 25 of them have been, have had Jewish presidents who have been very supportive of Israel. People like Larry Summers. On the donor level, you're talking about people like Bill Ackman and all kinds of Leon Black and All kinds of hardcore pro Israel lobby loyalists. And that's why in the wake of October 7th, we thought three presidents of three different Ivy League schools, actually four, fired over this issue of Israel of being insufficiently pro Israel or not protective of enough of Jewish and Israeli students. Something that you barely ever see. I mean, being a president of an Ivy League school is like tenure. And yet you saw one after the next, just fall after October 7th. There's no similar pro Palestinian lobbying group or anti Israel lobbying group that even remotely competes on the same level as the pro Israel lobby does. And, and yes, you can definitely point to examples where Israel didn't get everything that it wanted. There were times that they were just asking for things that were a bridge too far for American presidents. But on the whole, our bipartisan government, both parties equally, are steadfastly pro Israel. They go to speak at aipac, they don't speak at Palestinian groups. The aid packages reflect this. The laws that get passed, like I don't wanna be too dismissive of these anti BDS laws, which you said were at the state level. Yeah, like 34 or 36 states have this like shocking law that has been enforced and has affected a lot of people. And so on the whole, I think it's impossible to deny. And again, not just me or Dave Smith or like some guy on the Internet, but the top people in our government for decades have all said that the Jewish lobby in the United States, now the pro Israel lobby in the United States is incredibly powerful.
- [45:53]
A
Okay, so a couple points to make in response to this. So if I were an America first foreign policy, if I was taking the position that basically we spend too much around the world, we should be spending all that money at home, we're not getting enough in return for it. I would point out, yeah, we spend three or four billion dollars a year default on Israel and more during the we spore, we spend three, four billion dollars a year on our deployments in South Korea for a war that mostly hasn't been hot since 1952 halfway around the world. We spend 3, 4 billion dollars a year on our troop deployments in Europe as a basically like a vestige of the Cold War for European countries that spend 1% on their own defense and we're basically subsidizing their defense for them. All told, we spend what, 60 billion to $100 billion a year on our military bases all around the world, which, you know, like, if we wound them down, you can make an argument does that, Would that money be better spent at home? Totally you can make that argument, but I don't actually see people do that. What I see, what I see is people focusing only on the 4 billion that goes to Israel, like a thousand to one. Right. Which suggests to me it's not like a neutral concern about our financing adventurism and militarism abroad. There's something, there's some unique bias whereby people are way more obsessed with Israel than they are about the fact that we have 30,000 troops deployed at expense, at billion dollar expense yearly in say South Korea and Europe, etc. And so you could critique the whole system and I think that would be consistent. But the fact that it's 1001 Israel makes me think something here is bespeaks of a psychological BIA bias. And so, you know, beyond that, we can talk about the aid, obviously, $4 billion a year. I think something like 80% of it comes back to America and they have to spend it in U.S. defense companies. That's a industry that employs a million Americans. We do get certain benefits from the U.S. israel, close military ties. We get, they have, you know, besides the CIA and MI6, Mossad is one of the best intel intelligence agencies in the world. If they detect an attack, a planned attack on the American homeland, they tell us that. Right? And attacks have been thwarted as a result. We, they have the best missile defense in the world. We benefit from that. We benefit from that insanely good missile defense, rocket defense tech that China and Russia therefore doesn't get to benefit from. That's again, like, you might not like projections of American military power, but that does enhance it. And so all told, it seems to me that the narrative that 0.05% of our budget every year is so galling and only in this one particular case, no one ever talks about South Korea, Europe. That to me bespeaks that there's a huge bias underlying this argument and it's not coming from a place of kind of neutral concern for militarism and spending abroad.
- [49:18]
B
All right, I have a lot to say about that, just a few points rather. But before I do, I just want to get clarity on what you're saying when you use this term several times, the people who are focused on or expressing concerns about American largesse to Israel have a kind of bias. Is one of the words you said a psychological bias? Like, can you. What do you mean by that? Is that like a euphemism for people are bigoted and anti Semitic who talk about Israel? Or what is. What do you mean by that?
- [49:44]
A
If I thought they were bigoted against Jews. I would say. I would just say that openly. I think obviously there are like, I consider Nick Fuentes an anti Semite. Right. Because he, he'll literally say like anti Semitic stuff. But you can be biased against a particular country without necessarily be bigot being bigoted against that. There's a lot of reasons you can have a cognitive bias in life. So, like, what are the reason why.
- [50:08]
B
What are the reasons anti Semitism by why people are biased against Israel?
- [50:12]
A
I would argue, if you want my theory of it, yeah. My theory is that it has a lot to do with the sense that Israel is a country that is a part of the white Western world and that therefore its activities in the Middle east should be judged through the prism of white people oppressing people of color. And that that is a powerful biasing lens. It's an ideological bias. It's not. I'm not accusing people of racism. But that to me explains why there would be so much more focus on Israel that it's really like about us exercising our past demons in the Western world in this sense that like whiteness and Western dominance has been horrible and Israel becomes representative of that. That's what I mean by that.
- [51:05]
B
But one of the counterexamples that you gave is that we have military bases in Europe, especially in Germany, very large military bases, and that these people only care about the ones in Israel, but not in Europe. If it were an issue of people being anti white, wouldn't they be at least as concerned and angry about, if not more so, since Europeans are clearly white in a way, but Jews aren't necessarily.
- [51:27]
A
No, no, because it has to do with Israel is viewed as like an outpost of whiteness in a sea of what is like indigenous brown land that belongs to brown people, whereas Europe is where white people are from. So it doesn't trigger the same psychological effect in Westerners.
- [51:47]
B
All right, so let me just say I'm not sure that Jews are considered white. Certainly there have been times in history, very recent history, when, when they haven't been including the United States. So I think people who are focused on. On whiteness would focus on Europe. But in any event, let me. You know, these are just theories about reading people's intentions as far as your numbers are concerned. Like you're really conflating two extremely different things by trying to compare the cost of our military bases in South Korea to the aid that we give to Israel. We're not talking about a military base in Israel. We don't have a military base in Israel. We have a military base in South Korea, and that costs money because we have to pay for the upkeep of the bases, for the payment to the troops, for whatever it is that they need. These are two completely different things. We're talking here about military aid to Israel. Automatically, every year, $4 billion goes into the coffers of the Israeli Treasury. And yes, a lot of it, but not all of it, is spent on American defense contractors. I don't know why the American taxpayer is forced to empty their pockets to give a gift certificate to Israel to go shopping in Boeing. But also, this $4 billion is not in any sense the actual amount of money that we spend in defense of Israel in 2024 alone. And obviously this was in large part because the Biden administration financed the Israeli destruction of Gaza. The United States Congress, on top of the $4 billion, allocated another $18 billion directly to Israel. So now you're talking about $22 billion on top of that. The Biden administration and the Trump administration deployed massive amounts of military assets to the Middle east in order to protect Israel, including when we were shooting down ballistic missiles in the times when Iran and Israel were in conflict. We keep permanent military bases in the Middle East, a lot of which goes to protecting Israel. This is billions and billions of dollars more. We've lost American lives in that region, at least, you could say, in conjunction with Israel, I would certainly say, and a lot of other people would as well, in order to defend Israel. So the amount of money that we spend on Israel, for Israel is way above $4 billion. That's like the absolute minimum number that we give automatically every year. But it doesn't include countless other costs, including the costs, like I said, for propping up dictatorships in the region that used to be anti Israel, but now are very neutral or even pro Israel, like Egypt and like Jordan. We pay those dictatorships and keep them propped up because they keep the peace with Israel in that region. That same with the entire Persian Gulf. We prop up those tyrannies and dictatorships as well and are encouraging them and actually have already fostered more positive relations between those tyrannies that we support in Israel. So the amount of money we spend, not just the Middle east, but on Israel, you cannot compare it to the amount of money for bases in Germany or South Korea. There are a lot of people who question, why are we, including Trump, by the way, who question why are we have these bases in Germany? There's no real direct threat to Western Europe. Why do we need to spend all this money on Germany or on South Korea. But the Israel issue is a much different issue because the amount of the money, when you add it all up, is vastly different because we're ending up in a lot of wars in the Middle east, but not on behalf of Europe and not on behalf of South Korea. And so people are obviously attentive to that extremely high cost as well. And then there have been people who, like David Petraeus and a lot of other people throughout the years, including people in the Bush 41 administration, even the Bush 43 administration, starting the Obama administration, who have said that one of the main reasons why we pay such a high cost in the Middle east, where we could do a lot of business, where we could do a lot of entrepreneurial ventures, where we could do a lot of commercial partnerships, but have been impeded from doing so because there's so much intense anti American sentiment in that region. A major reason for that is because of the perception, obviously the accurate perception, that we're the ones who finance and arm Israel's aggression against its neighbors and the Israel suppression of Palestinian statehood and Palestinian rights, which you also have to put into the cost of cost to the United States from having being tied at the hip to, to Israel in a way that like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson warned we should never do. We shouldn't have these enduring alliances with foreign countries. So when you add up all the costs, and then on top of that, there's no South Korean lobby to speak of that compares with the pro Israel lobby. There's no pro German lobby to speak of. They're not forcing the US Government to keep those military bases there. The pro Israel lobby is so visible. And just let me add one more point about, like, why the pro Israel lobby is so terrifying to people in Congress. It's because they have demonstrated a unique ability to remove people from Congress in a way that almost no other lobby has been able to do or has tried to do. We have reelection rates in Congress, as I'm sure you know, that compared to like the old Soviet, you know, style elections from like the early 70s under Brezhnev, like 97, 98% reelection rate. These people stay in office for 30 years. But AIPAC has repeatedly demonstrated their ability to remove people from Congress who are too pro Israel. They pour insane amounts of money, like incomparable amounts of money to defeat Cori Bush or Jamaal Bowman. And they run these cynically recruited candidates who supposedly never talk about Israel, even though that's what they're there for. And Israel has done that repeatedly. Is ruined the careers of all kinds of politicians for not being pro Israel enough. So these things don't compare. There's so many factors to the US's relationship that certainly aren't present for Korea, South Korea or Germany or even Europe as a whole.
- [57:35]
A
Okay, you made many points there. I want to see if I can get to all of them. So, first of all, you know, if you're talking about Farah, South Korea does spend a lot of money lobbying Congress, like, you know, 200 or 300 million over the past 10 years. There was a scandal in the 70s where they were bribing congresspeople precisely in their own interests. Like this, this happens. There are tons of lobbies. They all lobby for their own interests. It's. It's a dirty world. You still have to prove that actually the lobbying is getting results and that there aren't simpler explanations for, for why people do things. When you draw this comparison between, like, the point you made about, like, military bases versus direct military aid, like, from my point of view, from point of view of a US taxpayer, it's still, it's all dollars going out of my pocket. You know, I'm not sure there is a huge distinction to be made. And in fact, you can make it in the other direction. You could argue not only do we. Does it cost us 4 billion out of US taxpayer pockets to maintain 30,000 troops in South Korea, but it's also the troops themselves. Like, we actually have personnel there that are in principle threatened and in peril by any kind of breakout of hostilities between North Korea, South Korea. We don't have any troops in Israel. Israel's never asked us to put our troops there. And if they did, if we did have a military base with 30,000 people deployed in Israel, I'm pretty sure that many people who share your viewpoint would cite that as like an escalation of our commitment. So it can't, it can't like, be at the same time true that our commitment to Israel is bigger because we don't have a military base there, even though we spend the same amount of money. And again, it's worth reiterating that like something like 80% of that money comes back to US soil, either profits to weapons companies, income to the million Americans that work for weapon companies, or tax on that income and that profit that goes back and into the coffers. You made another point about, about, you know, like, Jordan and Egypt and how in, in facilitating those peace treaties, which I view those peace treaties as, as a good thing for the, for the Middle east for regional stability and so forth, that we ended up essentially paying both sides as, as a sweetener to help get them to sign on the dotted line there. To me, to reframe that as like all that money is going to Israel's benefit as opposed to all of the sides. Like Egypt did not benefit from its wars with Israel like it was. It really suffered a great deal in its wars with Israel. And to get both sides to sign on the dotted line and make peace. We're actually paying for regional stability, not paying just for Israel's interests. We're paying for Egypt's interests as well. We're paying for our interests insofar as we equate our interests to stability. Right. And so I think there's a, there's a way in which that gets, that gets, that framing gets, like, distorted as like yet more payments that are going to Israel's interests, which I would disagree with. You may have made some other points there that I'm missing, but I do. You can respond to anything you want to respond. I do. Before you leave, want to get to Iran and whether and why you think that this Iran war is fought at Israel's influence. You can put it in your own words.
- [61:06]
B
Yeah. By the way, I just want to say I totally empathize with what you said at the start, that when you have your own show and you invite a guest on and you kind of want to debate, it is difficult because you're playing kind of the both roles and you have to give your guests more time than. Than you might otherwise if you're debating. But I think you're doing an incredibly fair job and take as much time as you want when you're responding. I'm happy about that. Just a couple points that I just wanted to make that I didn't make earlier on this issue of Israel and the benefits that we get. I'm not saying we don't get any benefits from that relationship, but we also pay a lot of costs from behavior that is not typically the behavior of allies. When we were doing the Snowden reporting about NSA spying, NSA documents, there were documents and, and we reported on these and published them that talked about how we give more intelligence tech and surveillance data, including about Americans, to Israel, than any other government in the world. And yet the documents that say who are the greatest spying threats to the United States, who spies us on the most, the most invasively, the most dangerously, number one on the list of surveillance threats and spying threats to the United States was Israel. We have the big case of Jonathan Pollard, who spied for Israel and got extremely sensitive documents. And yet people who claim to be America first patriots, like Mike Huckabee and others, go and meet with Jonathan Pollard and treat him like he's some sort of respectable figure or even some kind of, like, heroic figure, the way he's seen to be in Israel, even though he stole American secrets, some of our most sensitive ones, and gave them to a government. We can debate Middle east policy and how it is in our interest to prop up dictatorships in Egypt and Jordan. I would actually argue that our tendency to prop up dictatorships is a major reason why there's so much animosity to us in that region. And not just in that region, but other regions, including in Iran. But at the end of the day, Egypt and Jordan, who we give billions of dollars to to keep those tyrannies in place, are Israel's neighbors. They don't threaten the United States. Egypt and Jordan can't threaten the United States, but they can threaten Israel. And I'm not saying it's the only reason why we send billions to those regimes to keep peace with Israel, but it's certainly a major factor.
- [63:24]
A
Yeah. So as far as the spying is concerned, yeah, I mean, the Pollard case was terrible, but this is another one of those scenarios where if I were, like, an intellectually honest person concerned about allies spying on allies, I would say, okay, you go looking for evidence, you will find super credible confirmed reports and leaked documents proving that France spies on us, Israel spies on us. We spy quite a bit on Japan, we spy on South Korea. All of these things are. And, yeah, I guess you could debate the extent of it. Right. Which the better spy agencies are going to spy better. Like the Mossad is really good at what it does, and. And the CIA is really good and so forth. And. And so. But the question once again occurs to me is why is it that all of this evidence for allies, spying on allies in this dirty world of espionage exists? And yet I have never heard a single person ever, literally ever complain about an example of it. Except for Israel spying on America because
- [64:32]
B
of how much money we give them.
- [64:35]
A
But again, what about South Korea? South Korea has spied on us. South Korea has absolutely done this, and we're losing $4 billion a year.
- [64:46]
B
I showed you what the NSA documents said, but you know that Israel spies on us way more aggressively. There's never been a case of some like French spy or American spy in the Pentagon or the NSA handing secret documents to the French on the scale that Jonathan Pollard. It's Just a much bigger and different scale. And I think the anger comes from the fact that we go to war for this country, we deploy our military to defend Israel almost every year. Billions and billions out the door, and then they steal our secrets. It's just not the behavior of an ally. There's a big difference between spying on a country and stealing its secrets.
- [65:21]
A
Okay, can we get to this claim that we go to war for Israel? Because this is obviously at the core of our disagreement and a lot of anger on this issue.
- [65:30]
B
But before we get. Can I just clarify very quickly when I just said, like, we go to war for Israel, what I meant, and I know, and I do want to talk about whether we went to war for Israel in Iran and Iraq, but all I meant was when Israel has a war, we put our military in that region to defend Israel and put our service members in harm's way for Israel. I mean, that's not in dispute. That's what I was referring to there.
- [65:52]
A
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- [66:53]
A
Okay, so let's talk about the Iran war, since it's what's happening now. You know, I haven't actually seen you talk too much about it, I guess. I think you had a recent Tucker. But can you make the case for me based on actual evidence that we're fighting the Iran war because of Israeli influence of some kind?
- [67:15]
B
Yeah. So I. My view is not that the only reason Trump went and fought a war with Iran and attacked Iran is because of Israel, but that that was a very significant factor. And I'll start with the fact that Iran has been Israel's primary adversary in that region for decades. It has been number one on the wish list of Benjamin Netanyahu, going all the way back to the war on terror and before to lure the United States into a regime change. War in Iran because of Israel's understanding that the main bulwark of resistance against its total and complete domination of that region is, is Iran, that that is their only counterweight to power. It is, in a lot of the eyes of a lot of Israelis, an existential threat to Israel. I don't think it is, but a lot of Israelis believe it is. And if you believe it is, you're going to prioritize that as a war. I don't think anyone thinks Iran is an existential threat to the United States. You have the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to the United States last year seven times, obviously, to talk about the American war against Iran, that he was trying to lure the President into fighting. Of course, we did attack Iran last year in conjunction with Israel. We supposedly, quote, totally and completely obliterated their nuclear program in a way that we were told would mean that we wouldn't have to attack them again, because that problem had been solved for a long time for the foreseeable future. And yet now, after seven visits from Netanyahu, the United States is back in a war against. Not our country that can existentially threaten the United States, not a country that has ever attacked our homeland. We have had terrorist attacks over the past 25 years, some very significant ones. None of them have come from Iranian terrorists or Shia terrorists. They've all come from our best friends in that region, the Sunnis and the Saudis and people who hail from that particular strain of geopolitics and religion. So Iran has not attacked the United States, can't attack the United States in a meaningful way. And then you have the fact, of course, that even on the question of timing and this, I think people are debating what Marco Rubio said, what Trump said, what Tom Cotton and Mike Johnson said. Everyone said in the people I just named and others that we had to go to war with Iran. When asked what the imminent threat was, the imminent threat we were told was, well, Israel was going to go to war with Iran, and they told us they're going to go to war with Iran. And we believe that once Israel did that the Iranians would attack our military bases because of the support we give to Israel. And so we had to also attack preventively because of what Israel was going to do. So they, in their narrative, talk about the centrality of Israel and what it was intending to do as a major reason, at least in terms of the timing, if not the decision itself.
- [70:03]
A
Yeah. Okay, so a few points. I think I believe in the principle of parsimony, which is to say if there's a simple explanation for something, go for the simple explanation. Don't go for the complicated explanation with dubious evidence. You know, Donald Trump lifelong aggressive posture towards Iran for decades, long before he was even president, he believes, as he stated on Andrew Schultz podcast. Now, I'm not saying I believe this because I haven't seen the evidence, but Trump believes that the Iranians were behind the Butler, Pennsylvania assassination attempt that nearly killed him. And then recently we have the, the conviction of Asif Merchant, the Pakistani man who is according to what came out in, in when the jury convicted, backed by Iran assassination attempt that was probably targeted at Trump, potentially Nikki Haley or Joe Biden. So Trump for sure. What we know is Trump believes Iran tried to kill him and got very close maybe multiple times. Trump being an incredibly and unusually vindictive personality. To me that, that sufficiently explains his very aggressive posture towards Iran. You combine that with the fact that he like built a whole identity in the 2010s around opposing not only being a great dealmaker, obviously he's, he's had this identity as being a great deal maker his whole life. But around opposing the nuclear deal, right? So he wants to get some nuclear deal that's like significantly, significantly stronger, like a zero nuclear deal with Iran, which they're not going to go for. And that, that is sufficient to explain why Trump wants to take, why Trump sees aggressive action towards Iran to hamper not only their nuclear capabilities but their conventional missile arsenal so that they can't become strong enough to have a deterrent from us hitting their nuclear programs in the future. All of that is like a pretty simple explanation that makes a lot of sense. It conserves a lot of the facts we know about Donald Trump's psychology and US Foreign policy in the past several decades. And to sort of drive right past that stop on the highway and say this is about Israel because you know, you know, even Marco Rubio, Marco Rubio statement had nothing to do with the influence of the Israel lobby, right? Like let's say Marco Rubio was, was telling the truth there. He obviously walked it back right after. But who knows, maybe who knows which one was a lie, right? Let's say the second one was a lie and he was telling the truth. He was not providing, providing evidence of Israel's leverage or, or ability to like strong arm in any way. Donald Trump's decision making, who was the commander in chief. He was saying basically we, we felt Israel was about to attack. We have bases in the Middle East. At that moment it became in our interest to attack as well. That's not, that's not a point about how much Israel controls us. And, and again, like, I guess the framing, I would also question the framing of that all of our bases in Gulf states in the Middle east are for Israel's benefit. The, you know, there's one thing you could say is that they benefit Israel. Okay, well, that's one fact. A lot of things. There's many win wins in the world. There's many scenarios of mutual benefit. But the Gulf states that we have military bases there, this is a win win for at least in the perception of whoever in the Gulf state made those choices, it's a win win for them too. Right. So you could argue were there for their benefit as well. Right. And again, you can disagree with all of those decisions. You can say, in fact, it's not in our benefit to have all these military bases around the world. That's a totally valid claim and you can argue for that. But what I don't think you can say is because I don't think this is, it's in the US Benefit for us to have a military base in such and such a Gulf state. Therefore, it must be the case that Israel is the reason why their influence in our government is the reason why we're there.
- [74:23]
B
I mean, I presume Benjamin Netanyahu got on a plane seven times last year to fly to Washington, even though he has all sorts of extremely pressing matters at home, including a major corruption scandal where he's criminally indicted, as well as numerous wars still ongoing. I presume he went to Washington seven times for a reason, and that reason was that he knew that he's going there would be able to persuade President Trump to do what Benjamin Netanyahu has been urging the United States to do for many decades in Israel's interest, which is go and commit regime change, war in Iran, even though the last time we changed the regime of Iran in 1953, resulted in an absolute horror show. That was the reason why Iran became so anti American in the first place, why they held our diplomats hostage when the revolution happened, because we had imposed on them a savage tyranny in the form of the Shah of Iran. And so this idea that we're going to go and repeat our same mistakes that we've been making for the last 60 years all around the world, that has produced so much anti American sentiment and so much anger and so much animosity toward us, not for not. And that is just a coincidence that Netanyahu came seven times and that Miriam Adelson was Trump's second largest donor. And all these other pro Israel billionaires who jumped on the train at the last minute with Trump weren't pressuring him. Like, I think, you know, you can never prove for certain what was in Trump's mind, but looking at all the evidence, we're now in a war that Netanyahu has wanted for decades in Israel's interest against a country that cannot threaten American citizens in the United States, but can certainly threaten Israel and has threatened Israel. Even the issue of ballistic missiles, you know, Trump last year in that 12 day war, said that Israel was getting absolutely pummeled by Iranian ballistic missiles. So I understand from an Israeli perspective why you would want to destroy all Iranian ballistic missiles and their conventional arsenal, but they've never shot ballistic missiles at the United States. There's questions about whether or not they even could. And, you know, nuclear deterrence works around the world. And this, I think, is one of the main issues that we have to really consider, which is, you know, war is supposed to be a last resort. So this idea like, oh, Iran tried to kill Trump. You know, I heard that in the Iraq war, President Bush said, Saddam Hussein tried to kill my dad. This is, I know it was obvious when these claims were being circulated in 2024 that they would have the effect of trying to convince Trump, hey, look, they tried to kill you. You should go in and attack Iran. And apparently, I'm sure that did play a factor. But even there, like, why does Iran have so much animosity toward the United States? Why does Iran want to attack our military bases of the United States? Is it just because they're, they're irrational and an apocalyptic cult and hate anybody who doesn't share their religious views? Or is it because the people in that, that leadership have anti American sentiment for the same reason that people have anti American sentiment all over the world, in every continent, in every region. Because we've meddled for so long in their country, we've overthrown their governments, we've imposed dictatorships on them. Or maybe because Trump assassinated one of their most important military generals, one of the most beloved and well regarded military generals in his first term, and they saw that as a fair retaliation. So we have to constantly ask, you know, why is all this happening? And then you look at the fact, I, I'm sure you recall this, you know, where I'm just a few years older than you, like two or three. But, you know, going back to like the first Obama administration, we were hearing from the US Security establishment, from the Western security establishment that the most important thing is that we have to extricate ourselves from the Middle east and pivot to China, that pivot to Asia, because China is our number one competitor or adversary or enemy, depending on how you look at that. And yet, not only haven't we pivoted to Asia, we can't extricate ourselves from the Middle East. We're actually removing anti missile batteries that were incredibly controversial when we put in South Korea in order to bring them over. Now, in order to protect Israel and to protect American bases in this new Middle east war, why can't we extricate ourselves from the Middle East? Coleman, what is it that's there that is so crucial? We're a net exporter of oil. We don't need oil from the Middle East. As Trump said, we don't use the Strait of Hormuz. All those countries would happily sell us whatever oil we wanted to buy from them, including Iran. They would love to be able to sell us oil. So it's not oil. There is no vital interest in the Middle east left for the United States other than Israel. And I would submit that's one of the main reasons we haven't been able to extricate ourselves from the Middle East. And why, despite a president who spent decades and Certainly the last 10 years running for president, vowing never to involve the United States in more regime change wars or more Middle east wars, were now involved in what arguably is the most dangerous one of them all, Trump could just end it quickly. It could end up spiraling into an escalation that he can't control. It's an extremely dangerous situation. And so obviously, you know, Netanyahu thinks that his visits to Washington play a major role. The pro Israel lobby that gave Trump so much money thinks that they're playing an influential role on behalf of Israel. And I think if you look at the kind of overall geopolitics of why we consider the Middle east so important, clearly Israel is a major factor.
- [79:46]
A
Okay, so a couple points to make. I mean, it seems to me a lot of the, the evidence you're marshaling is like, it's not evidence that Netanyahu's visits actually caused a change in thinking. It's like, obviously when foreign leaders visit America, they're always hoping to influence and they're. And they're going to. If they have a 10% chance of influence, they're going to visit. You know, we're the global superpower. You're still, all your work is ahead of you in proving that those visits actually did cause the influence that you're alleging they did. A mere coincidence. I mean, this is like, I think the core of a lot of my disagreements with what you're saying. Conceptually, the mere coincidence of, of two heads of state, you know, doing something, or the coincidence of, you know, Saudi Arabia, if Saudi Arabia came out right now and said, oh, we are so happy that Trump is finally doing this regime change in Iran. You know, we've been visiting this X many times a year. We spend, you know, whatever it is, $50 million a year on Farah, lobbying Congress to be harsher on Iran. Well, all of that would be equally evidence, just as, just as much evidence of Saudi influence behind this decision as the various points of data points you're pointing to about Israelis. Right? Like, it's like, so you're still. All your work is ahead of you when you point out a coincidence of, of motives and goals. And it's really, it's like the notion of a common enemy, right? Iran has had this revolutionary government. They hate America. Let's, I'll just, like, grant you, I'll grant you the reason they hate America is, is the, the 1953 coup. But, okay, we agree they hate America. They also hate Israel. One is the Great Satan, one is the little Satan. This is their ideology. They chant it, they teach it to school children, et cetera. Well, we're in a situation now where they have admitted openly. It's not like sketchy CIA intelligence and, you know, some, you know, uranium, African mine, or an Italian journalist. It's not like Iraq war stuff. It's like Iran has come out and said, we've enriched kilograms of uranium to 60%. The IAEA, which is the neutral UN body that looks into nuclear proliferation, not an interested party like, like the CIA or MI6 that can be overzealous or, or whatever, has said, yep, the Iranians are telling the truth. They have enriched kilograms of uranium to 60%. They come out and say it on state TV. In Iran, pretty much everyone agrees, including the Iranians, that they've done this. They brag about it. There are zero examples in the history of nuclear proliferation of a state that has enriched kilograms of uranium to 60% and then not gone on to get a bomb. There are literally zero. So if this were like India or Pakistan claiming we're at 60 and we've got kilograms, I wouldn't even believe that they didn't want a bomb. Obviously, they're, obviously, they're angling for a bomb, right? And so then the question becomes, you know, Is it in the US interest for Iran to go nuclear? I would argue since they're self identified as our adversaries, it's clearly not in the US interest for us to allow them to get a bomb. And if that's true, then it becomes a matter of, you know, when do you time the intervention, right? It's like, do we, if they're at the 90 yard line, do we wait till we detect them sprinting towards the finish to weaponize a bomb? I don't think that makes sense. I mean the whole, the, you know, obviously Americans are traumatized by the Iraq war experience where we were told there was going to be WMD Iraq, we sent our boys to die and we spent all this money and bam, there's no wmd. It's like this is a, this, this was actually I consider a kind of psychological trauma to the American psyche. But if you actually look at the whole history of the CIA's efforts to keep tabs on nuclear proliferation around the world, they far more often have made the opposite mistake. They thought, CIA thought the Soviet Union would get a bomb in the middle mid-1950s. They were five years ahead of schedule. They got in 49. The CIA was surprised in 1964 when China got a nuclear weapon. The CIA, Israel was ahead of the CIA schedule when they got a bomb in 1967. India's nuclear test in the mid-70s surprised the CIA. You know, in South Africa hid their entire nuclear arsenal from the CIA for 14 years successfully. That's South Africa. And obviously the most important example was after The Gulf War, 1991, where, you know, we discover that Saddam Hussein, his nuclear program is way further advanced than any intelligence estimate had it before the Gulf War. And then in 1998, once again, the Indians test a nuclear bomb. Totally surprised the CIA. Right? So there are just far more examples of the CIA underestimating and not being aware that countries have made the final sprint towards a nuclear bomb. We can't wait for that.
- [85:04]
B
Okay, so first of all, you mentioned Iraq and of course that does shape people's perceptions, as it should, because we relied into a war in the Middle east based on exactly the same arguments that are being made now about Iran by exactly the same people, by exactly the same ideologies. And so obviously it's like, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. And so people are saying, rightly so, and most Americans oppose the war. I think in large part for this reason. We don't see Iran as a real threat. And it's because not Just the experience in Iraq. We've been lied to into wars by our governments continually, including in Vietnam, when we were told the Gulf of Tonkin was an incident where the North Vietnamese had attacked American ships. None of that turned out to be true. We were told that in Libya, that it wasn't a regime change war, it was just to protect people in the ghazi. And it turned into a regime change war that destroyed that country. There's a lot of reasons why Americans are extremely skeptical about what the US Government is telling them. And there's a lot of good reasons to be, as far as, like, evidence for Israel's role and the decision to go to war. You know, again, I mean, other than a confession in secret by Trump where he doesn't realize he's being taped, but actually is. And I can show you a recording where Trump admits to Melania, you know what? I'm going to war, even though I don't want to, but I'm doing it for Israel. I can't show you smoking gun proof it doesn't exist, but there's some pretty strong evidence. And beyond everything I just said, Joe Kent, who was appointed by President Trump to one of the most sensitive positions in the entire US Government, he was the director of National Counterterrorism center with the highest top secret clearance, resigned just last week and said Iran was never an imminent threat to us. We went to war because of Israeli influence. You can talk to people in the Pentagon, up and down the US Government who will tell you the same thing. I'm not saying it means they're telling the truth, but it's certainly strong evidence. When people at the highest levels of our government who have the most sensitive access to the most sensitive data are coming and saying that this is a war for Israel and that Iran posed no imminent threat, you have to at least count that as evidence. As far as Netanyahu's visits, yes, Trump and the American president will meet with leaders. You don't meet with the leader seven times. It's so off the charts. It's kind of like US Aid to Israel. Trump didn't meet with any other leader more than twice. And the reason is, is because Netanyahu was coming and his mission. And it's not just last year. It's been for decades. You know, you can go back to 2003 and 2004 when we were in Iraq and there were a lot of neocons saying, once we're done with Baghdad, we're moving on to Tehran. This has been at the top of the pro Israel agenda, the Israeli agenda for many decades. And let me just finally address the nuclear issue because, you know, everything you said about the nuclear issue and Iran, you know, I think is very contestable. For example, Iran has the absolute right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to enrich uranium up to all sorts of amounts that they've never exceeded. Israel doesn't even belong to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. You want to talk about a country that, that has a secret nuclear weapons stash that has never been inspected. You know, start with Israel. Iran is a party to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty and all the inspection that entails. They agree to massive, more intrusive inspection as part of the Iran deal, where the IAEA was all over the place in Iran, certifying that they weren't crossing the nuclear threshold. Unfortunately, that all went away once President Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal. But as far as the nuclear program is concerned, two months before Trump bombed with huge bunker busters all three of their nuclear facilities last year, Tulsi Gabbard went to the Senate under oath and said the consensus of the intelligence community, the consensus of the intelligence community that she leads is that Iran has not tried to pursue a nuclear weapon. They're not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. There's been no decision by the government to pursue a nuclear weapon. Two months later, when Trump went and bombed those facilities and he was asked, but your own director of national intelligence said, they're not even trying to get a nuclear weapon. He said, I don't care what she says. Okay, maybe Iran was. Even though Tulsi Gabbard didn't know about it, even though she leads all the intelligencies. Trump himself said, and you can go on the White House site right now, that that operation completely and totally obliterated Iran's entire nuclear program. So even if they were headed toward this danger zone before that, the US Government itself, Trump himself said exactly that. It's still up on the website. And when journalists said to him, okay, so we've completely and totally obliterated their nuclear program. So that means like six months from now or a year from now, you're not going to come back and say, oh, we have to go attack Iran again, because maybe we didn't totally and completely obliterated, he said the whole. He accused the people raising that question of like, disrespecting our pilots and their bravery. He called it fake news. On the White House website, it still says it's fake news. Anyone who questions whether Iran has any residual nuclear capability so Suddenly out of the blue, we're going to now go again and have a war with Iran over this nuclear program that we were told eight months ago the United States completely and totally obliterated. I mean, that's one of the reasons why a lot of people think Israel has such a significant role here because none of the government's claims beyond Israel as to why we had to go start a major war with Iran make any sense. And then the last issue, I will say, like proliferation is a big concern. All these countries have gotten nuclear weapons, including North Korea. And to me, you know, Coleman, this is like the hub of the issue. This is really the key of the issue is when the United States got nuclear weapons and then the Soviet Union got nuclear weapons and then France and the UK got nuclear weapons and looked like Brazil and Argentina wanted nuclear weapons because of the tensions between them. And, and it became a huge issue. We decided as a world that we wanted to make non proliferation a major goal of humanity and that's why the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty was created. Unfortunately, Israel didn't sign on to it. But I agree with you completely. It is dangerous. But this is the problem is that we, the United States, along with Israel, but mostly the United States, has sent a signal to the world that if you are a rational leader that wants to protect your country, the only rational choice you have is to try and get nuclear weapons. Because we've created a world where if you don't have nuclear weapons, we can attack you at any time. We can invade your country and nab your president and say we had the right to arrest him like we did in Venezuela. We can attack you in Iraq or Libya or Syria or all over the world. But if you do have nuclear weapons, no matter how crazy you are, like North Korea, we will never mess with you. We will never, ever mess with you. And I don't blame, I think Iran made a mistake in not getting nuclear weapons and not actually making the decision, as the intelligence community said, to get nuclear weapons. So if we're worried about this threat that Iran poses, we should be asking why is it that they supposedly pose a threat to us. And especially since war is a last resort, we should be asking that question. And there's no need for Iran to be a threat to the United States. I don't even think they are. And so yes, this is not definitive proof that we did it for Israel, but it's not a coincidence that we're at war with Israel's greatest enemy and the enemy that the United, that Israel has wanted the United States to go and take out for many decades.
- [92:26]
A
Okay, I want to address point by point. You started by citing Joe Kent as, as, you know, basically the extent of the actual evidence that exists on Trump's motives in these actions. Joe Kent resigned, He made these allegations that Trump was influenced by the Israel lobby and so forth. Joe Kent went on Tucker Carlson in the aftermath of that and speculated that Israel was the one that tried to kill Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. Now, to understand how absolutely stupid and insane that conspiracy theory is, you just have to consider what we talked about earlier of how aggressively pro Israel Trump has been. Like, he is, he is singular in that respect. He is, he is. There's a town in Israel named after Trump. They like Trump much more than they like Netanyahu. In Israel, they like Trump. They might damn near like Trump more than they like Ben Gurion at this point. So the idea that Israel would have tried to kill Trump on the, on the campaign trail, to me tells me that something is going seriously wrong in Joe Kent's mind. I don't know if it's mental illness or something like that, some kind of paranoid tendency, but I, I, for that reason, I do not view him as a credible source of information alone. You add, on top of that, I know damn well if I was resigning from counterterrorism, I was that high up in power and I was saying, I, I know for a fact the, the, the United States President was influenced by lobbyists. That statement would be followed by a whole bunch of receipts. I was in this meeting and this is the, this is the name of the lobbyist who said this. You know, zero receipts we've gotten from Joe. Ken, it's the, it's impossible for me to think that he has all this evidence and he's withholding it. And that in combination with his weird conspiracy theories makes me just totally discredit him as a source. So as far as I'm concerned, there is zero credible evidence at this point that Trump made this decision because of Israel. And as an evidence based person, I have to be like, show me the evidence. So secondly, you said, you referenced the Tulsi Gabbard testimony last year about Iran where she said that Iran has not made the decision to get a nuclear bomb. I noticed though that you left out the sentence she said literally right after that, which is, she said two things right after that. One, she said that Iran has the highest level of uranium enrichment in its history and that its level of enriched uranium is, quote, direct, quote, unprecedented for a country without nuclear weapons in Other words, there is no, there is no purpose to have this amount of uranium enriched at this level unless you have a medium or long term goal to get a nuke. Right. And then the other thing she said, again, like within 30 seconds of the part you quoted of her testimony, is that in recent years the taboo in Iranian politics on openly discussing pursuing nukes has weakened, which makes the pursuit of a nuke more likely. And so when you put all of her comments in con in context, it seems like what she's saying is Iran is on the 10 yard line. They have not yet made the decision to sprint to the end zone, which is very different than saying Iran is in general not angling for a nuke. Right. So another thing I would say that's I think really important to keep in mind about Iran is, is I guess, I guess two things. One is I, I, I very much question the rationality of the Iranian regime. There are many data points I can bring up, you know, if I have no reason to disbelieve the Asif Merchant jury conviction which found that Iran supported an attempt to assassinate Trump or Joe Biden or Nikki Haley in around 2024 or whenever it was, you know, that that's an extremely stupid decision to make purely from a rational self preservation point of view because you know, successfully killing Trump potentially could have led to a regime change war that could have led to the deaths of everyone at the top of, you know, there's like a definitely non zero chance America would have responded eventually in with, with overwhelming force. You look at some of the other decisions the Iranian regime has made over the years. 2018, Iran has one of its own diplomats in Vienna like smuggle bombs into Paris at this rally with that has like 100,000 people at it and British members of Parliament and try to detonate a bomb, right. That could have killed a hundred people, includ it could have killed a, a British diplomat. I mean that's the sort of thing that rather backfired on ISIS when they did it in France, which led the world to form a coalition and take all of, you know, much of ISIS's territory in Iraq and Syria. You know, you add to that the example from 2011 when the Iranians hatched a plan to, you know, murder for hire plot in Washington D.C. to kill this Saudi diplomat by blowing up a restaurant in Washington D.C. now again, I put myself up in the IRGC, I'm an Iranian loyalist, I love Iran, whatever, but I'm being rational. What do I say when I'm in that room? Hold on, guys, are you really telling me we're going to blow up a restaurant in the capital of the United States in order to kill one Saudi diplomat and kill who knows how many American civilians? Don't you think this could backfire? On, don't, don't you think this could lead to all of us dying? This is not a regime. I mean, and then finally the, the, the sum total of the Iranians actions have led to like half of the regime leaders being killed recently. Right. So if you're, if you're talking about deterrence and the psychology of whether like heads of state or regimes are rational, rationally interested in their own self preservation, I really don't see that as being true of the Iranian regime.
- [98:57]
B
All right, a few things about this. I actually have to start with the last point, but I'll just go in order so I don't forget things you said. Look, Trump is singularly pro Israel. So it makes sense that he kind of stands out that there's streets named after him in Israel. And to that point I would say you're absolutely right. The Israelis absolutely worship Trump. There are signs all over Israel venerating him, saying that he's the greatest friend Israel has ever had. They want to give him awards that aren't even supposed to go to non Israelis. But they're so enamored of how dedicated he has been to Israel. And I don't blame them. If I were Israeli, I would also love Trump. Now, he's not nearly as loved in the country that he's supposed to be representing among the population whose interests he's supposed to be serving because he has been very devoted to the interest of Israel and to Israelis. And I don't blame him. Now. I would say it's, I don't blame them for, for loving Trump. Now I will say that it is kind of odd because back in 2016, when this whole Never Trump movement emerged among lifelong Republicans, if you go and look at what the catalyst for it was, Trump had made several statements about Israel and Palestine that really disturbed the hardcore pro Israel neocons who became the Never Trumpers like Bill Kristol and David Frum and that whole crowd. And he was saying things like, we've been way too pro Israel. We have to be more even handed in the relationship between Israel and Palestine because otherwise we can't arbitrate a two state solution which is in our interest. That's what really alarmed these, these neocons. And Trump learned, especially when he was running for president in 2024, when he wasn't just running for president. He was basically running to stay out of prison for life. If Trump had lost that election, the Democrats had won, Trump was going to prison for life. He needed to do whatever he could to curry favor with the pro Israel crowd, and he did. And that's why so many of them were so devoted to him, even though they began by backing Ron DeSantis, who they viewed as a much more natural ally. And so Trump sold himself to the Israel lobby. He was desperate to win that election, not just because he wanted to be president, but because he wanted to stay out of jail. And from the start, you look at this agenda, you know, we go back to what we're talking about. Instituting speech codes on American universities to protect Israel, task force to combat antisemitism, this and this and this. For Israel, meeting with Netanyahu more times than anybody else, bombing Iran twice in conjunction with Israel. It has been an extremely pro Israel agenda, which is precisely why there are signs in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv that say, thank you, Trump, for making Israel great again. Because they understand how devoted to their interests he's been. Let me just say something about Jack. Jack, Joe Kent. Because like I said, I don't think Joe Kent's statement should be taken as gospel. They're not dispositive. The idea that he's supposed to present evidence, I think is a bit unreasonable, because whatever evidence he could present, by definition, would be top secret. And they're already looking to imprison him the way they do with every whistleblower from Daniel Ellsberg to Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning and anyone who has ever been in government, who reveals government wrongdoing or government secrets that they don't want the public to know, they try and destroy and imprison them. Excuse me. So I don't blame Joe Kent, who's already under FBI investigation, for not showing us all the top secret documents that he pilfered from the government when he left. But as I said, this is somebody who devoted his entire life to defending America. He went and fought in all of these wars that the people who are now attacking him and demonizing him want it to happen, but wouldn't put themselves or their own kids or their own family in harm's way. He went and fought in these wars. He lost his wife in these wars. He then went to work because Trump appointed him at the highest levels of the federal government. The minute he says something about Israel, now we're supposed to say he's mentally ill, he's a sick person. He has some kind of dark heart. And all these other attacks, you go back and look at what has been said about every American whistleblower. They immediately, when Daniel Ellsberg revealed that the US Government was lying about the war in Vietnam, said he's a Kremlin agent, they broke into a psychoanalyst office because they wanted to present him as some, you know, degenerate who is psychosexually twisted. This is the playbook on every single whistleblower. And I'm going to need a lot more before I conclude that Joe Kent is mentally ill, before I completely discount what he says. And like I said, Coleman, he is not the only one who has been saying that America goes to war for Israel, that American foreign policy is dominated by Israel. American politicians at the highest level, including presidents, have been saying that for decades. Scholars have written books on this. This is not something that Joe Kent woke up and invented one day. And I think these kind of character talks on him as a way of disproving what he has said are a bit ugly. Let me just address the final point, which is about the irrationality of Iran, because this is something that we've been told forever. Iran is like this religiously fanatical doomsday apocalyptic cult. They don't really care about their own lives. They're willing to sacrifice their own lives because they believe in the afterlife is much better and that they become martyrs and they're willing to engage in mass suicide. I personally haven't seen any evidence of that. In fact, if you go and talk to foreign policy experts throughout the west or even military strategists now, they will tell you how smart and strategic and cunning and pragmatic Iran has been. Not irrational and suicidal. When the Israelis assassinated people on their own soil that they invited to Iran for their inauguration, and then when Israel bombed their consulate in Syria and blew the whole thing up, their response was incredibly restrained. They used their slowest missiles, their oldest missiles. They didn't punish Israel in the way they did during the 12 Day War, and that they're doing now. They purposely held back because they didn't want to spiral up the escalation ladder. You look at who's been fighting wars and bombing people throughout the Middle East. It's not Iran starting wars. It's been Israel starting wars. It's been the United States starting wars. We invaded a country right on the Iranian border and all this stuff about, oh, Iran wanted to use violence here. I mean, are you kidding? You know the history of the CIA. I don't need to Go through all that and not just the distant history of the CIA or of the Mossad. We've blown things up all the time. Israel began as a country through classic acts of terrorism. They blew up the King David Hotel led by Menachem Begin, who became prime minister of that country, and killed dozens of British people and all sorts of innocent Palestinians as well, because they were engaged in classic acts of terrorism. We funded groups all over the world that engage in exactly these kind of tactics of blowing things up, of killing people, the Contras in Nicaragua. We were even on Al Qaeda and ISIS side in the dirty war that we waged against Syria. This is not evidence of irrationality. This is evidence of a country willing to use violence. But there's no way you can be an American citizen and point to some other country and be like, look at how much violence they use. Look at how irrational they are. When everything that you've said about Iran is something the United States and Israel has done a thousand times over and even far worse. I don't think Iran is an irrational country. I don't think they want to be nuked off the face of the earth. I think even if they got nuclear weapons, which again, if they were rational, they would have gotten nuclear weapons. I think the one irrational thing they've done is they didn't get nuclear weapons and as a result are left defenseless. But if they had nuclear weapons, the idea that they would commit mass suicide instantaneously by using it against Israel or the United States, knowing it would ensure their complete obliteration. There's nothing in the Iranian behavior that suggests that they're eager to die in mass like that. This is what we were told about Iraq. They would pass nuclear weapons to Al Qaeda because they don't care about their lives. And then even if the United States retaliated and destroyed all of Iraq, they wouldn't care. This is the kind of fear mongering and warmongering rhetoric that we've been subjected to for a long time, and it merits extreme amounts of skepticism.
- [106:52]
A
Okay, so first off, my point about Joe Kent, not really a character attack, but like, I don't know what he's. What he's like personally, but if I hear anyone say that they think Israel tried to kill Donald Trump, immediately, my opinion of their intellect and sanity and in their. The. The degree to which they're in touch with reality would go down. Not. And I'm not saying that because I don't have sympathy for whistleblowers. I do. I actually do have a lot of Sympathy for whistleblowers. If they blow the whistle responsibly on government overreach, I'm totally for that. And I'm against characteristics assassinations. I'm against what they try to do that Ellsberg. So don't let me in with that, that motive. What I'm saying is anyone who says something as, as insanely illogical as Israel tried to get Trump killed, clearly there is something going on making that person irrational, right? So that, that was my point about Joe Kent. It's not like a character assassination per se. My point about, you know, Iran is irrational. Well, yeah, they are. I'm not, I'm not making a moral point. I'm not saying that. So like for instance, if Mike Tyson goes up to a guy in a bar and picks a fight, that's not necessarily irrational because he's Mike Tyson, right? If I, all five foot seven of me, no training in martial arts, go and pick a fight with a guy in a bar, that's incredibly irrational of me vis a vis my own self preservation. So my point in pointing out all of the terror attacks that Iran backs all over the world is not to say that like we don't, we haven't done bad things, right? My point is irrational irrationality from the point of view of the person, right? The, the head of MI MI5 recently said Iran has tried to, to consummate like 20 terror attacks on UK soil in the past three years. I mean, this is extremely optional behavior, to put it mildly. Most, most countries around the world that are in, in Iran's position in the global dominance hierarchy would not dream of doing such things because it would be so irrational of them to pursue, given the backlash, it would yield. And again, I would, I would submit to you the, the very fact that the sum total of Iranian, the Iranian regime's actions has led to so many of them being killed basically for doing all of this extremely optional behavior, backing terror attacks all around the world, funding and arming proxies all over the Middle East, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria when they're like not the richest country to be able to do this thing to, to, to do all this to begin with is it all speaks of, of a level, a certain level of irrationality that, that actually most regimes around the world don't exhibit. North Korea doesn't exhibit that level of irrationality. I don't think we can let that have a bomb. And the final point I'll make, and I've taken a lot of your Time so we can wind down to a conclusion. And I have one question to ask you before, before I let you go and I'll give you last word, but I, you know, like forget the point about are they a jihadist death cult for a moment and just focus on the point of command and control and nuclear proliferation. Right. You and I both know, and I've heard you talk about during the Cold War there were extremely close calls between America and the Soviet Union where we almost went to nuclear war by accident. Right. And those were the modern, most advanced countries in the world with redundant systems of warning, really tight, tightly knit command and control operations. Look, that's happened. There was a, the, the event in Hawaii a couple years ago where a systems operator in Hawaii thought that he was seeing a missile launch from North Korea to Hawaii. And you know, like that ended up working out because we have so many redundant systems of warning. I absolutely do not trust the Iranian regime even from the point of view of accidental firings, accidental signals to, to not accidentally start a nuclear war. If, if the US and Soviet Union could come that close, obviously Iran can. And from the US point of view, like I agree with you, it's in, it's in the Iranians regime's self interest. It's, and it's in any of our adversaries self interest for regime preservation, for them to snap their fingers and have a nuclear weapon and insulate the regime. It's not in the US interest. For as an American, it is not in our interest for nuclear weapons to proliferate to our adversaries or even to our allies. It would be better if Israel didn't have a nuclear weapon. And you know, we, we persuade South Korea and Japan not to go nuclear because they're under our umbrella. From my point of view, the fewer potential points of contact between nuclear states basically the better. And so it absolutely is in the American interest to prevent this from happening. And I just don't think that we can trust. There's no ideal time to do it and I don't even know if it has a high odds of success. So from that point of view, I'm not a cheerleader for it, but I do think that overall that's my view of it and so respond to that and then I'll ask you one more question and give you another chance to respond and then let you go.
- [112:16]
B
Okay, great. I'll try and be brief, but I do, since it's the last point, I do, I do want to make just one point in general, but just quickly on A couple things that we've been talking about as far as Joe Ken is concerned. I mean, I listened to his Tucker interview. I, I, maybe I just didn't hear it. And I tried Googling it while, while you were talking to see if I could find it where he suggested that Israel was behind the assassination of Trump and Butler. Maybe he did. I know he insinuated or said that he wasn't allowed to investigate whether Israel was involved in the assassination of Charlie Kirk, who was a very, very outspoken critic of.
- [112:50]
A
I'll double check it and if I'm wrong, I'll cut it out.
- [112:52]
B
So, so anyway, I just, but I'm not denying it. I'm just saying I didn't hear that and I couldn't, I couldn't find it. The other thing I would say is, you know, there are a lot of people who spout a lot of crazy conspiracy theories who are very respected and platformed constantly and treated as credible experts in our discourse. The people who said that Saddam Hussein was in bed with Osama bin Laden, that he would give nuclear weapons to Al Qaeda, that he had weapons of mass destruction. The people who said that Trump and Russia colluded in order to hack into the DNC emails, which turned out to be a complete fantasy. All the people who lied about COVID Lots of crazy conspiracy theories that go around and some end up being disqualifying and others for whatever reasons, don't. And that is one of the double standards that has long concerned me about Iran and this idea that they're irrational because, look, they just did something that resulted in a bunch of their leaders being killed. I don't think rationality means that you engage in full scale submission and surrender to whoever happens to be stronger than you. And I do think this has become kind of an American ethos recently that, oh, anyone, the only rational course is just to avoid conflict and stay alive and never fight with anybody as strong as you. That's why we only go to war with weaker countries. But the American founding was based on this idea that we were going to go to war with the most powerful empire in the world, which was an incredibly risky thing. A lot of American revolutionary fighters died in that war and they started that war knowing they were going to die because the ethos was captured by Patrick Henry, which is give me liberty or give me death. Iran is an extremely proud culture. The Persian cult civilization has been around for thousands of years, basically where they are. And this idea that, oh, because the United States is stronger or Israel is stronger and can attack Them, they have to swallow whatever they're given. They have swallowed a lot. I mentioned a few examples, but I don't think the fact that they're defending themselves and they're not on their knees begging for surrender is proof that they're irrational. I mean, some of the most heroic and noble acts in history have been from people who were willing to give up their own lives for a cause that they believed in. And Persian sovereignty and Iranian sovereignty is a cause that a lot of Iranian leaders believe in and have given their life for. And I don't think that makes them irrational. The final point I want to make, Coleman, is just like on foreign policy in general, I do think one of the biggest problems we have as Americans is that we naturally see the world through an American prism, which is true of every country. And as a result, we often don't see ourselves in the way that is the rest of the world see this, and that is real. A lot of the violence and aggression and evil in the world just has come from the United States. I mean, Martin Luther King said In his famous 1967 speech in the Vietnam War, he said the United States is, quote, the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. And it's the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. I just want to leave you with one point about why countries feel a need to get a nuclear weapon, why we end up in so many wars. There's this woman named Fiona Hill who's like a longtime Washington foreign policy advisor. She was a British very, very hawkish on Russia, on China. She gave a speech to the EU in 2023 or 2024 where she said China is rapidly increasing its influence in places where Europe and the United States have long exclusively dominated, like in Africa and Latin America, all over the world, basically. China has not fought a war since 1979. That's 47 years that China has emerged as this massive military power with influence all over the world where their interests are protected and they don't go and fight wars. They don't see wars as an important part of their national survival or self interest. And I think that model has proven correct. And what she said was the reason so many countries prefer now to go to China to deal with China and away from the United States and their servants in Europe is because they perceive that we are a bully country, that we believe in might is right, that we go around the world attacking people at will. We don't care about international law. We don't care about anything other than the fact that if we can do it and we're stronger, we can attack you at any time. And nobody wants to live in a world with a country that is dominating the world that has that mentality. And I think with this Iran war and the idea that we pay lip service to that war is a last resort, we ought to think about what we ourselves are spawning and whether or not a lot of these quote unquote threats that come from anti American sentiment could easily be eradicated if we stop the aggression that sponsored in the first place.
- [117:31]
A
Okay, so I'm going to ask you one last question and you can have the last word. And I want to thank you again for, you know, being civil. That we can have like civil and, but, but strong disagreements is something that I think is, is increasingly lost.
- [117:49]
B
Totally agree.
- [117:49]
A
In the, in like the shouting match orgy of, of, of, of what media has, has become or maybe it's always been that. I want to ask you about your relationship with Tucker Carlson. So I, I, I, I watched all of your recent episodes in preparation for this and you know, I know you as a journalist and I've seen that you believe a journalist's job, at least one of a journalist's job jobs, is to hold powerful people to account. In my view, Tucker Carlson is a fairly powerful person in the following sense. He is close to power. He seems to have JD Vance on speed dial. Right. And probably many other members of the administration. Polymarket right now has him like neck and neck with Ron DeSantis to be the next Republican nominee for president. Right. So is he the most powerful guy in the country? No, but he's, he's a hell of a lot more, more powerful than, than you and I. And routinely in the past five years, I've heard him say, and promulgate lies to an extent that is really shocking to me. Like whether it's 2020 election was stolen or in his words, Pizzagate is basically real. Alien entities live underwater and they're spiritual beings and they've been here for 50,000 years and the government has been covering it up. Alex Jones is a supernatural prophet who predicted 9, 11. Now these are not jokes, by the way. Like, these could be made as funny jokes by a comic and I would have no problem with it. But he's saying these things with a furrowed brow as totally true, not hyperbole, not, not jokes. And so do you as a journalist feel that you have a responsibility to hold him accountable for the lies that he's promulgating to millions in his audience?
- [120:00]
B
So I won't dispute any of the examples, except to say that on the Alex Jones one, you go back and look what Alex Jones was saying in the 90s, and there's a documentary about him that's fantastic by Alex Lee Moyer that documents his work in the 1990s. And I'm not saying he predicted 9 11, like in some clairvoyant sense or with a Ouija board, but the conflict that ended up resulting, he predicted with extreme precision in a way that I think anybody who listened to it with an open mind would. Would give him credit for having done, which doesn't take away from all the other things that he's done. I would also say that we really pick and choose. Like when we. I mean, we talked before about what kinds of people who remain in good standing in the discourse who have spouted the most insane conspiracy theories, but because they serve the US Foreign policy interest or agenda or the US Security state or some other powerful interests, we don't consider them disqualified. I gave a bunch of examples. And yet then when we pick and choose, like, oh, look, this person has said something that seems unproven or weird or conspiratorial, suddenly we're supposed to denounce them and kick them out of the public discourse or at least announce them for that particular lie. You know, our country is founded on the idea that there's a lot of truths that are unknown, that we can't prove, that are supernatural, that come from God, that aren't visible, that aren't explainable by science. We have lived in a country that has been the byproduct of serious conspiracy theories, not just imaginary ones, that has caused people to lose trust and faith in the government. And I do think you can go too far on a spectrum where you're too cynical about the US Government and start disbelieving everything it says. But I. But I think there's far less of that, and it's far less dangerous than the other side of the spectrum where people just recite US Government claims as gospel and believe everything they're being told by the government, because that's proven to be far more dangerous in Tucker's case. You know, if you go and ask Tucker, he will tell you that, you know, for a long time, I was his harshest critic. He said, I wrote, you know, the meanest things about him. But I actually, in the last decade, absolutely consider Tucker to be an overall force for good. I mean, in. Obviously, if you're opposed to the Iran war, as most Americans are, Tucker's efforts to stop this war were Herculean. And he sacrificed his relationship with President Trump, who ended up denouncing him publicly. He did not get his way that that war did start. There's been many other instances where Tucker did not get his way. And President Trump, you know, most people would not jeopardize a relationship with President Trump for a cause because of how valuable that relationship is. Tucker has repeatedly done so. I'm not saying everything Tucker has said has been in agreement with me. I'm not saying it hasn't deviated from the facts. I'm not saying that he doesn't occasionally wander into conspiracy theory. I think that's true of a lot of people. In fact, most people. But I don't feel my reporting, my journalism has focused on the people who can start wars, like the US Security state and the people who can spy on us, like the NSA and the people who go around the world killing people, like the CIA and the president, who can start wars. And has, in every instance of my lifetime except Trump's first term, started wars all over the world. That's my focus. There are a lot of people who say crazy things in our culture and in the environment. But until people can show me that Tucker Carlson is responsible for wars and death. When someone asked me why I interviewed Nick Fontes on my show, I was on Piers Morgan's show and that question came up and I said, look how many people you interview who have actually have huge amounts of blood on their hands. People who supported the Israeli destruction of Gaza or the invasion of Iraq or all these assassinations around the world, or coups and funding of horrific militias. I'm going to, in that list of priorities, suddenly decide to Tucker Carlson, who I do think has done far more good than harm on free speech, on foreign policy, on wars, on economic populism, that's going to be the target of the person I'm going to bicker with about things that he said that I'm disagree with. No, that's that he's not even close to the top of my list. The fact that I have, I consider him a personal friend probably weighs into that as well. It's one of the reasons why I try and keep a distance from political and media circles. And living in Brazil has helped me with that. But the much bigger factor is on my list of things that I think need checking. There's no shortage of people attacking Tucker Carlson every single day. But there are a shortage of people attacking all the other institutions, the much more damaging and powerful ones that I that I listed.
- [124:40]
A
Okay. Glenn Greenwald, thank you much for. Thank you so much for doing the show. And is your show still called Systems Update or are you doing something else?
- [124:48]
B
I basically have stopped. That Nightly show is just too much. You probably empathize with how many shows you do. So we're back at substack. But yeah, I do want to just take time to thank you, Coleman. It's always been a pleasure to talk to you. We definitely have disagreed more than agreed in the last couple of years, but I anticipated this would be a good, civil, and yet very spirited conversation, as you said. And it was. And I'm always really happy to talk to you whenever you want.