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- [00:00]
A
Why have I asked my electrician I found on Angie.com to bury my pet hamster Nibbles in our yard for me? Because I was so moved by how carefully he buried my electrical wires, I knew I could trust him to bury my sweet Nibbles after his untimely end.
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B
Huh?
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A
Nibbles gone too soon. May he scurry in peace. Hey, sorry about your pet, but I just wire stuff. Nibbles would have loved you like a brother. Connecting homeowners with skilled Pros for over 30 years, Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home projects@angie.com booking a VRBO vacation rental means you get VRBoCare and 24. 7 life support. Verified reviews from real guests and top rated homes with the Love by guest filter.
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B
I just booked my VRBO because there was a sweet wine fridge.
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A
We all have our reasons. If you know you, VRBO terms apply. See vrbo.com trust for details.
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B
Okay. Joining me today on IHIP News is a political correspondent for Zitteo and my new very good friend. We met the other night in New York City. I follow him on all of his socials. His name is Prem Tucker Prim. How are you today?
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A
I'm wonderful. It's so great to be with you.
- [01:06]
B
I'm so happy to have you. I want to talk to you about something you posted. Van Jones is jumping in. You know, everybody's having, like, Hasan Piker bedwetting, right? And he has absolutely zero power in the Democratic Party. Why they're not upset at, like, I don't know, Chuck Schumer is beyond me. But that's another podcast for another day. So Van Jones has ventured into this, and I want to play the clip because here's the part that you are criticizing.
- [01:33]
A
Even in armed struggle, there are principles, and the principles of no women, no children, no rapes, no kidnapping. These are moral principles that any liberation struggle has to uphold. There is a way to judge an organization and decide, is it worthy of my support. You ask the question, what are the ends of the organization? What are their goals and what are their means? How are they getting there? In my tradition, the ends have to be more freedom.
- [02:07]
B
That's a pretty sleekly produced video, but what part of that are you responding to?
- [02:13]
A
Well, he had said, I mean, it's a meritable, important discussion about what ideal, I suppose, armed struggle looks like, of course. Firstly, it's hard for those who are not a part of an armed struggle to describe what an ideal or perfect armed struggle looks like, because it's kind of a very imperfect situation. Of course, his principles that he lays out are entirely reasonable at their face. I think what really struck me is when he said I, ideally an armed struggle would not become what they are fighting. And he was saying that while he was criticizing Hamas in comparing it to other armed struggles that he defines to be more benevolent. And the implication that I took from that is, you know, Hamas should not become what they are fighting. Well, if they are fighting the Israeli government, is that Van Jones admitting that the Israeli government is actually who rapes and kidnaps Palestinians at will, who, who kills women and children at will? Of course, as we've seen from documented evidence from international bodies, from let alone Palestinians themselves, as if that is never enough. The Palestinian people, that is true that they have killed 20,000 conservatively children in the past two and a half years. Many, many, many women and also many men. I, I, I, I find it sometimes troubling that we only focus on women and children when it's like all life is so beautiful and important and worth our love. That includes men too, whether they're fathers, brothers, or just men who have no relation to anyone except themselves. They have relations to us as human beings. That's one aspect that, that really struck me is that in his, I don't know, you know, I, I don't want to disparage where he's coming from, but it just feels like, of course, if you judge his arguments at their face, sometimes they feel a bit Hasbara esque, you know, sort of. Does that mean peddling sort of propagandist talking points from the Israeli government's point of view that upon any like, further explication would, would kind of just shatter. So sometimes he seems to be within that milieu such that if he really was absorbed in that when he made this video, he didn't, I guess, really understand the implication of that statement right there, that he seems to be suggesting that the Israeli government is actually culpable for these crimes that he is ascribing to Hamas.
- [04:39]
B
And when it comes to what we learn as Americans, like just broadly, it's that Israel is this beautiful democracy and these terrorists are always trying to take them out. But when I started opening up my eyes to this, like just most recently there's a video of IDF soldiers raping a prisoner, and then there's no charges against them. And then I read further that like, they're training dogs to rape prisoners. I'm like, my God. And so then I start thinking like, who is the terrorist in all of this like who is terrorizing whom here? So for the layman, because this is presented to the American public oftentimes in these sleekly produced videos that, oh, this is a complicated thing. You don't understand it. You're not smart enough to understand it. And I take real offense to that. And I think that's incredibly condescending because when you hear stories of kids that have been targeted, multiple agencies, this is widely confirmed, that are targeted here and here, shot in the head or in the heart for those of you that are listening and there's CAT scans and medical doctors that confirmed all this and multiple a Dutch newspaper and the BBC and the New York Times, it seems that that's intentional. And then obviously you're outraged at the injustice of that. And then if you express your outrage, then you're told by the forces that be in a very condescending oh, this is very complicated, you don't understand that or you're being anti Semitic. So in not a broad history lesson, but in practical terms, for Americans that are opening their eyes to this because their taxpayer money is funding this, what is the rub between Israel and Hamas?
- [06:29]
A
Yes, I mean, I think your question already sets up so many of the contradictions that I think have made it so clear to so many people over the past two and a half years that maybe there's something else going on here that makes it where it isn't as complicated as I'm being told to believe. And of course, there's a broad history between Israel and Palestine and Lebanon and so forth. And I don't want to discredit that. It's a long history. But just because there's a history to something doesn't mean you can't have an opinion on what is happening in front of your eyes, especially when you're funding it. And I think another important aspect of your question is this sense of respect. I feel if you can approach the question of Israel and Palestine with this question in mind of respect both for yourself and other human beings, I think the conclusions become a lot clearer. So let me give you an example. You bring up taxpayer dollars in the past two and a half years, the Israeli government and Israeli forces, Israeli settlers have killed a double digit amount of Americans in that time. There has been no accountability for any of those settlers or soldiers who have killed Americans. And for those of you who may not know, some of these Americans are people who might be in Palestine by virtue of wanting to be there to do what we call observation, where they sort of support Palestinians in the west bank by being an American voice alongside them, to observe and document what Israeli settlers do to them and to show that these settlers that, hey, an American is here, too. So sometimes Americans are in Palestine for that reason, too, to offer their support to Palestinians who are being violated. Some people are Americans just because they live there. There are many Palestinian Americans and Americans that live in Palestine who just happen to live there that a lot of people in this country don't realize in that time, there's been no accountability for any of those Americans who have been killed with US Tax dollars. And I know this sounds a little convoluted. I'm getting at this point of respect. Repeatedly in Capitol Hill, I've asked members of Congress, hey, do you even know how many Americans have been killed by Israeli settlers and Israeli soldiers who, of course, American taxpayers fund every single year? Many Republicans who have asked simply do not know the answer. Or in fact, tell me that I'm wrong or that I'm lying or that they've never heard of that, that they've never heard that a foreign country's military or a terrorist organization, a group of terrorists, is what we should really call the behavior of Israeli settlers that are protected by a foreign government killed Americans. And these politicians have no answer for that. And so diluting that, we then get to this broader discussion of Hamas and Israel, which is that what is terrorism? And who gets to decide what is and is not terrorism? And ultimately, this collapses a lot of those designations. You know, a lot of times when we ask officials about, you know, what about all these children in Gaza? What about all the destruction, all these schools, libraries, mosques, churches, hospitals, home is being raised in Gaza. Of course, as many people in this country have seen, the excuse is always, well, Hamas, this, Hamas is a designated terrorist organization. They're. They're.
- [09:37]
B
Okay, soft buildings.
- [09:38]
A
Right, exactly right. All these flippant excuses that in general don't excuse his behavior. But it's. It's the final crutch that if nothing else, we're fighting terrorists. But if you're committing mass terrorism in that campaign, it collapses what is and is not terrorism. And, you know, people like us, we will get attacked for making that point, because to make that point is to eliminate the final crutch. Because if the final crutch is, well, we're attacking terrorists, and you point out, well, you're committing terrorism by doing so, there's nothing else left to possibly justify in this behavior. So for those lay people who are coming to this issue, you know, I myself came to this in years Past without too much connection to it.
- [10:22]
B
Right.
- [10:22]
A
I think these contradictions are what led me to work off this idea that it's too complicated for me to understand. I think that is the baseline that I would recommend people to go from is just that there are all these contradictions that are evident to you. Start from there. I'm not asking you to read these 10 books or to, you know, know these 10 talking points. It's just to embrace the contradictions and see them for what they are and how much they disrespect you and your
- [10:48]
B
common sense and especially like, respecting what's happening now. But what is happening right now is more important to me. Those little kids that were targeted with American taxpayer money and just in general, what. Who's funding it? Just targeting kids for sport.
- [11:06]
A
Yeah.
- [11:06]
B
Is so up. It's so alarming. It shocks the conscience. But as it goes to the settlers, I follow Chris, Senator Chris Van Hollen, and he was speaking about on his Instagram about Americans getting killed in the West Bank. So it's like, what's a settler? Because that, to me it sounds like kind of this quaint word. Right. Like, you're settling in. We're going to settle in for dinner and watch some Netflix and chill. Right, Right. Well, as I started reading about this, it's rather disturbing and rather propagandistic in its moniker.
- [11:39]
A
The Israeli government, by virtue of using faith in its project to take over this land, is carrying out not just apartheid in the way that you just described of being able to allow one group of people to completely dominate another, but it's explicitly religious supremacist. And that is what is so ultimately sad about this project, is that it is using and exploiting and taking Judaism as this pathway to then bring people to take other people's land in the name of Judaism, which is just such a bastardization of a beautiful faith. And I think there is that aspect of it, and of course, there is the prime primary in principle issue, which is that Palestinian people are being displaced by people for whom, as you say, are just. They can come from, you know, anywhere, even in. From America, just come to land that is currently a Palestinian's land, whether it's their farmland, their homes, and just be outright evicted. And what I think people do not fully appreciate, and this gets to your point, is that this is a broad movement within Israeli society. The settler movement is what we call it. And as you say, settling is a quaint way of describing it because its impacts are indeed terroristic. It's people coming in with weapons with fists, with whatever mobs of them, in fact, threatening people, taking their homes, horrifying behaviors towards children, women of course, not to just focus on women and children again, but it is the type of behavior that if you read about it in any other context, there would be no ambiguity about what is going on there. And what also people don't understand is that these people are not policed despite the fact that they are explicitly committing crimes. The Israeli government protects these people. In fact, sometimes it funds, it even arms them to a certain extent. And there is no sense of policing there. And so I think Americans especially don't understand that like this is essentially like a paramilitary movement that we are funding by virtue of funding the Israeli government that also protects these people. And in fact, again, many politicians in the Israeli government are explicitly pro settler. I mean, this gets to, I think a broader discussion of one thing that I've been concerned about is that, you know, now we're at a time where we have the US Israeli war in Iran, we have escalating settler terrorist violence in the west bank in Palestine, we have of course the ruins of Gaza that are still being devastated to this day with this, you know, so called board of Peace that is anything but. And of course the Israelite government is, the Israeli government is doing what it did to Palestine, to Lebanon. All of this is happening in such a way where it's hard understandably for people to have the same sort of like focused energy as they did in the past two and a half years on Gaza because it was easy to focus. Now it's sort of spiraling in such a way that you don't know what to focus on. And this gets to this broader project that the Israel government and people within it are pursuing, which is greater Israel, which is taking as much of this land as they can as their own. And I think if people can look at this as kind of the prism that can hopefully help them refocus. And the settler movement is a part of that. It's the taking of land at will. And again, if nothing else, it's funded by people in the United States.
- [15:21]
B
And that's the thing. I think there's going to be degrees of people. You grew up in North Dakota, I grew up in Oklahoma. And there's degrees of people in middle America. American culture is very ethnocentric. Our news is very American based, rarely international. And so you have the people that, I hate to say it, but you had just have to acknowledge, they're like, I don't really care what's going on in the Middle east, it seems like they're fighting all the time.
- [15:45]
A
Yeah.
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B
And so then from there, the issue is, if you can't get people to care about human rights is the funding of killing people. And I know just about every American cares about money. We value that above and beyond everything else. I noticed something on the settler issue about a month ago online, and it was Cory Booker and Dan Goldman and Richie Torres, all APAC funders, all Israel thumpers. I mean, just completely, like, blinded in the Israeli propaganda, in my opinion. And they all tweeted kind of on the same day, something about, we have to put an end to this settler violence. And it kind of like. I think it was Dan Goldmer. So I was like, no, what. What are. What's going here? What's the backstory on that?
- [16:36]
A
So settler violence in the west bank and in Palestine generally is the easy way out if a member of Congress wants to condemn any part of the Israeli government's behavior because it is so patently obvious in a way where it's much harder to make it sort of shrouded in this essence, that it's complicated or you don't quite understand the history there. And so because that it's a little easier for members of Congress, namely Democrats, to come out with a letter saying, we need to stop settler violence. Of course, to what we were just saying, you can't stop one without the other. You cannot stop settler violence without fundamentally challenging the US Israel relationship and the way that the US Always defers to Israel when it comes to any instance of violence, whether it's by an Israeli bomb or whether it's by an Israeli settler's gun or it's. Or their fist, because they're intertwined. And so it's. It's completely rhetorical. It's a way to throw a bone to people deceased. Look, you know, I care about this, too. If you cared, you would go much further. It's as simple as that. Totally. I'm curious. What was it like when you first con, like, met the issue of Israel in Palestine? Like what. What. Do you remember the first time it really came on your radar?
- [18:04]
B
Probably. It was probably during the campaign. And I told your boss this Medi, when I was on his podcast. My husband has always been. He's more to the left than I am, and he's really critical of Democrats. He's incredibly critical of the opposition party because he thinks that they're sorry for the cussing. But his words, not mine, they're. And he's just like. Of Course they lost. And he was going, what's the deal? He's from small rural Oklahoma. He's criminal defense attorney. He's like, what's the deal with Israel? And I was like, well, they're our ally and they're a democracy. I had the MSNBC talking points.
- [18:39]
A
Sure.
- [18:40]
B
He goes, I don't know, man. Ted Cruz and like Lindsay Gram, like everybody I hate supports Israel. And it just seems like they're always stirring it, stirring it up and bring us, bringing us into things.
- [18:53]
A
Sure.
- [18:53]
B
But then, you know, we. You go back to your lives. Embarrassingly, I will tell you, during the Kamala race and because I was all chips in for Kamala, because I have a lot of red state trauma and there's a total abortion ban in Oklahoma. So a woman that is raped does not have freedom. A person that might have a complicated pregnancy does not have freedom. And I see these things as immediate needs that a Democratic president can solve for these red state draconian laws. Maga super majorities. So as I was going into the DNC every day and there were all these very peaceful, very organized pro Palestine protesters, I'd be like, God damn it, they are going to us. They're going to us. They're going to us. Why weren't they at the rnc? Pisses me off every. Everything always falls on the Democrats. We always have to do everything perfect. Why aren't. Weren't they harassing Trump? But even I knew at that point enough about it. A peripheral knowledge that Donald Trump would be far easier to manipulate and far more homicidal than Kamala Harris. Now there's going be a lot of people in my comment section, she's genocide, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes, she and Biden did that. No question about it. And I think that's why they won't release the autopsy report. But anyway, I was irritated by it a little bit. And I'm just being honest with you because I think this is a democratic journey and I think we all need to talk about where we were as a corporate dim or whatever, of course. And so I'm showing my weakness here. And then after she lost, honestly, my audience, a lot, we have a lot of really young progressive people that were like, you need to be better. You need to talk about Palestine. You need to. And I, I really started listening to people like you, people like Mehdi, other than just Western corporate media. And then, God, once you, once you open up the floodgates, it's just unrelenting. And then once you start engaging in stuff on your Algorithm, Then you get served up more and more. And then you just see the imagery of that. It's a feature, not a bug. It's a feature to bomb infrastructure. It's a feature to kill the breeding population. And then you start looking into, like, just the. The culture. I started reading, like, some polling about Israelis and just. It's so fubar. It's so up.
- [21:27]
A
Yeah.
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B
It's so. It shocks the conscience. It really. And then, you know, I always go back to when my youngest son, Roman, he just graduated from high school. That's why I moved out here. And he played AAU basketball, so we'd have to go to all of these rural towns for basketball tournaments. And you see these rural towns where wages have never gone up, they don't have health care, but they have Trump flags and crosses in their yard. Those are their two things. I'm MAGA and I'm Christian. And then you think about the lies that these people are told, the lies they're told by the Republican Party. And you can't have health care. And if you get cancer, tough titties. Yeah, but we never say no.
- [22:12]
A
Yeah.
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B
To Israel and bombing people. And then. And then from there it just compounds and compounds and compounds. My next question for you is. So in Oklahoma City, there is a Lebanese community. And I know a lot of these people. Our kids went to school together. And my Lebanese American friends would always say, like, yeah, you know, my grandmother or my parents lived in Lebanon. And the Israelis bombed us, bombed us, bombed us. And so that's why we came here. Etc. In my mind at the time, absorbed propaganda was just like, oh, yeah, they're always fighting in the Middle East. Stupid me, silly me. Whatever. Right? Just dismissive.
- [22:54]
A
The American mindset. It's.
- [22:56]
B
And then a few days ago, I went to dinner with a woman that is Israeli, and she said, you know, Hezbollah is just bombing Israel all the time. All the time. So what are we supposed to do? Not fight back? So my question for you is, a lot of Americans like me, the journey I just told you about, this isn't happening in a vacuum. Of course a lot of people are opening up their eyes to this. The dam is broken. So there's a thirst for people to be educated. What is the truth about Lebanon and Israel? What is the truth about that? Because what I see is displacing of 2 million people, bombing maternity wards, schools, kids, journalists.
- [23:35]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [23:36]
B
What's going on there?
- [23:37]
A
Well, first, I appreciate you, you know, telling me your journey. I think it's very important. I. I think the more we do that, the better. Because ultimately politics is about changing our mind. It's about evolving and growing and also embracing that with other people. And it's a numbers game also. So all those things mean this is a good thing.
- [23:56]
B
I agree. Thank you.
- [23:58]
A
With regards to your question, I think, again, I, I think it's always okay to lead with empathy and understanding someone for whom all they know is, is where they're socialized. And that includes, you know, for instance, people in Israel who see Hezbollah as this all threatening force. But that's okay to start with, but then, you know, we can take a step to then understand what's exactly going on here, which is that Hamas and Hezbollah like any sort of armed struggle. Whether.
- [24:26]
B
When you say armed struggle, what do you mean?
- [24:29]
A
I mean, so, so let me get into this. I was going to say any armed struggle, whether you view it completely perfectly or not. These happen all over the world, all throughout America, global history, where upon a group of people being continually pummeled and dehumanized and made to be less than, at some point they have to do something. And so Hamas and Hezbollah are the expression of an entire land of people, countries who have been made to turn to something other than what they've tried over and over again, which is continually trying to negotiate just for their equality, for their right to exist as people. And so when you have that framework, then a lot of these questions are like, oh, well, Hezbollah is always bombing Israel or so forth. Those also sort of collapse because like, okay, well, there's a reason that Hezbollah and Hamas exist in the first place and oftentimes throughout history. And I mean, I think a good example of this is in the past two and a half years after October 7, the ways in which these forces exhibited some level of restraint. When you think of the proportions of which the Israeli military was devastating Lebanon, Palestine, and of course now the US Israeli war on Iran, when you think about first why these groups exist, and then secondly, the proportions of violence on each side, things become a bit more clear. And so again, I treat the conversation of Hamas and Hezbollah with a sense of delicateness because you never want to undermine or invalidate a people's right to fight back. And of course that does not mean then, you know, people say, oh, so do you support X, Y and Z things from what Hamas says? No, that doesn't mean A does not equal B from that. But I think this dovetails well into a very important conversation, which is how people treat the idea of a Palestinian state. So, for example, right now there's a lot of conversation sort of going towards this, like in American politics of what it means to create a Palestinian state for there to be two states. For those who might be new to this discussion, the idea of Palestine is stateless, it's under Israeli occupation. And so one conversations about giving, giving Palestinian people a state, which already is a crazy premise, but there's always been this discussion of can it be two states side by side? Can it be one multi ethnic democratic state where people coexist altogether in a state of equal rights for all? The American political conventional wisdom is two states. That's like the ideal golden path that one day we'll get there. And it's always a conversation of a path to a two state solution. A path, a path, a path. It's never about what we're doing now to create any form of a state. But what I'm getting at here is every time in American politics, even a Palestinian state is discussed, it's always emphasized that it is a demilitarized Palestinian state. For what other nation is there an expectation that they cannot defend themselves that is not a state. And so even in discussions of what a solution looks like to this conflict, we are still imagining that they are subservient to the rest of us. And so that's how far we are from a real conversation about what Palestinian humanity is such that these conversations about Hamas and Hezbollah are so ridiculous because you're denying even the future for them to defend themselves. So how can you fully, wholeheartedly lecture them trying to do so now, even if it's not all Palestinians or what have you, it is an expression of the fact that we do not treat them with dignity as human beings. And so I think that is kind of how I think about this conversation with someone for whom might be skeptical or might be, you know, someone from Israel. I of course want to lead with empathy. But you, you have to be real about what's going on here.
- [28:41]
B
So there's always certain statements that are said, Israel never offensively attacks. They only respond this statement. And I'm just going to ask you, is this a lie or not? Is this a lie? Israel only responds, and they're never provocative.
- [29:00]
A
It's a lie.
- [29:01]
B
Right, okay. And that's what I thought.
- [29:03]
A
Yes. I don't need to divulge into all the history of it just to tell you all that there have been time after time, instance after instance, of the Israeli government unprompted, unprovoked, or disproportionately enacting huge amounts of violence. On Palestinian people massacre after massacre many times in the past, for which they have killed hundreds, if not over a thousand Palestinians in one fell swoop. Pre October 7th. October 7th, if you will, with no proportional response by the Palestinian people or by Hamas against the Israelis. And so, yes, you can say it's been back and forth and they've been fighting for a long time, but it's, it's not this just amorphous force that commands the, the, you know, just a broad Middle east to always be shrouded in battle. Like, that's a ridiculous, insane way to look at people who are people just like you. So it's a lie. It's a lie, yeah.
- [30:00]
B
Okay, let's move on to Iran.
- [30:03]
A
Sure.
- [30:04]
B
So what do you think BB Is after here? Is this a fixation? Like Donald Trump is with the ballroom? Like, just laser focus? He's been after it for like 40 years. It doesn't make any sense. Is part of Iran's territory part of the Greater Israel Project? Israel as a country doesn't really have any natural resources. It's teeny tiny. Iran is resource rich. Is he looking to Balkanize the area? Because it's clear that the Americans and the Israeli government is not there to liberate the Iranians. When they started double tapping schools and carpet bombing infrastructure, then it's like nobody's, nobody's buying that shit anymore. So what is his fixation on Iran? 40 year fixation on Iran. And do you think that's the first part of the question? Second part of the question, Does Benjamin Netanyahu and his APAC funders that gave Trump almost as much money as Elon Musk did, are they like, okay, this is our time. All gas, no brakes. This is the time that we can do it, because no other US President will let us go this far.
- [31:09]
A
Yeah. I think, first to your second question, I think it is very true that right now, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli government and all the forces behind it are very much trying to take advantage of this moment. Donald Trump and all of his allies are very, very pro Israel, despite what others may have thought before, whether it was in the lead up to 24, 20, 24. Otherwise, he's always been very pro Israel, at least in his actions. And obviously that's come with plummeting public opinion on how Americans feel about the Israel government, about how they feel about funding the Israel government and its violence. And so, yeah, they feel right now is an opportune time. Of course, Benjamin Netanyahu is also facing his own political challenges, both in terms of the election and who's opposing him and also his legal challenges, you know, and trying to avoid legal consequences. So right now he's like, yeah, I'll gas, no brakes for sure. To your first point, I think his and the Israeli government's fixation on Iran is in part, yes, because of Greater Israel, because Iran is one force in the area for whom could counteract that ambition to take as much land as possible, to take much of Lebanon, Palestine and so forth at will. And, and so Iran was always a countervailing force to that. And so to dismantle and destroy Iran as much as they can serves their, their Greater Israel project. It's, it's. And you know, they might tell the US government that yo, we're serving as, we're fighting your wars for you. It's not even a big deal, like, let us do this, just kind of support us, wink, wink. And that's how they kind of try to frame it that like, well, the US doesn't like Iran either, so we're doing it for you. But you know, it's, it's largely for their own motivations.
- [32:53]
B
All right, last question. And this is super important.
- [32:55]
A
Sure.
- [32:56]
B
Most important question of the day.
- [32:57]
A
Yeah.
- [32:58]
B
As we move into 28, there is an electorate that is awakening both on the right and on the left regarding the blank check to Israel. And you have discontent. Right, left, center. I have some friends that are rather progressive that are really fixated on this issue. Really fixated. And the Democratic Party leadership does a piss poor job leading, morally leading with clarity on this issue. And I had a conversation with a friend of mine, he's an Iranian American, lives in la. Shocker. And he said, you know, I really am liking Tucker Carlson. And I said, oh for sake, please tell me that you're not buying into 32nd, 45 second, 60 second clips because I'm just telling you, at least he's saying what the Democrats won't, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, he says demons attacked him in his sleep. This is, this is a man who will throw gay people under the bus. He will throw everybody under the bus. I'm very concerned, very concerned that this issue is become so to the forefront of Americans brains. You're from middle America, I'm from middle America. A message that is going to hit hard with the electorate is Donald Trump and Maga was Israel first and they spent all your money and they sent it over there and he lied to us and he wasn't America first. But Tucker and Marjorie, we're the Real America first. That is going to hit hard. That shit is going to hit as hard as when Trump hugged the flag. Remember that? When he hugged it. A lot of people comment that, oh, he just loves America so much. I'm very worried that there's a vacuum.
- [34:51]
A
Yeah.
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B
And demagogue, bigoted actors that have clarity on one issue are going to fill that Voice because in 60 second clips, the way we all receive our news now, they're outflanking Democratic leadership on this issue. What is your take on that?
- [35:11]
A
I understand people for whom have felt so, so disenchanted by politicians for the past two and a half years and beyond on this issue. Finally feeling heard when someone like Tucker Carlson says something they find to be truth telling. What I would encourage people to understand is you're not agreeing with him, he's agreeing with you. You should take pride in the fact that you were there and it's okay. It doesn't matter how long someone takes to get to a place, but he's agreeing with you. That doesn't necessarily mean that you guys agree with so many other things. And that also doesn't mean that I'm telling people, oh, well, you gotta just vote for the Democrat. I'm not in the business of that. I believe politicians have to earn our votes and our trust. I'm not in the business of telling people who to and not to vote for. But what I am in the business of is for people to take pride in themselves as well and to not. Because this conversation is about, of course, the weak Democratic leadership ultimately and how feckless they are and how unresponsive they are and how much we say, if you just do this one thing, it'll be so much better for everyone. Like, you're gonna win more. We're all gonna be happier. We need to stop begging people to do things when those things are an anathema to their interests. I think it's high time that we sort of stop wasting our time with the think pieces and the columns and the discussions about, like, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries. You just have to do this one thing. Please. Come on. It's going to be great for everyone. It's enough. They're not interested. And that's okay. That's their prerogative. Politics can be ours, too. Politics does not have to be something where we're always screaming at a wall that will not listen to us, at an immovable force that is just not interested in hearing what we have to say. Politics is something we're A part of politics is you and I talking. It's the fact that you and I are hopefully talking to a lot of people that might be on the fence about some of these things and might get off the fence as well, and that they tell their friends and family about this too. Politics is and can be much more democratic than we sometimes treat it. And I understand how frustrating it is and how easy it is to just kind of fixate on the fact that God like these people, if they just did something a little differently, it would be so much better off. Well, if they're not, and if, if you think it's true that they would be better off, then it's clear that they don't care. They don't care about what you have to say. They don't care about the fact that it's morally better, even just cynically self interestedly politically better if they moved on the issue and followed the law and cared more about taking care of people here rather than ruining other people's lives somewhere else. At some point we have to have our own line where we say, enough. I'm going to do everything in my power to not just waste my time yelling at these people, but to make them have to get a new job.
- [38:00]
B
Are you worried about a bad actor filling this void?
- [38:05]
A
I think, yeah, to your point, it's totally possible because the void is so big. And I don't necessarily understate the fact there are certain Democratic members of Congress who are definitely leading on this issue. Obviously Chris Van Hollen, Rashid Tlaib, you can go down the list. But still, that's, that's the movement which is obviously much bigger than just a Tucker Carlson or Marjorie Taylor Greene who, maybe they're genuine issue, maybe they're not. But there's many other issues for which, you know, I personally do not agree with them on. But nevertheless, you know, I think there's of course this also structural dynamic where someone on the right gets way more credit for being right on something than someone on the left. Because if someone really was about it, it. And they were so interested in truth tellers. Like I said, there are I think, at least two very clear examples of people who are really doing it. Rashid Tlaib and Chris Van Hollen, two people for whom Chris Van Hollen I think has certainly actually come into this issue over time. But now he's leading on it. He's gone to the west bank and witnessed these crimes himself. He has been advocating in a way that almost very few members of Congress are. He is actively in Congress now and is doing what other people hope Tucker Carlson would do. And I'm not saying, you know, everyone fall behind Chris Van Holen now, but like, we need to understand that there's these other dynamics at play where you shouldn't just give someone more credit because they're conservative. It's great if they change their minds. And that's good because again, it's all about building the movement. Build. And encouraging more people to change their minds, too. I'm all about that. But we don't need to necessarily overcompensate either, you know, because that's also kind of condescending in a way too. We're like, oh, look at you, you, you dumb little, you know, conservative. You changed your mind. That's so nice. Like, no, no, it's great. But we should treat each other with dignity to know that this is awesome, whether it's Tucker or someone that just watches Tucker, that's awesome. That's great. Now come over here. It's not just about us chasing someone else. You got to have that self respect.
- [40:00]
B
I think it would be a great if the Democratic Party were a true opposition party that wasn't beholden to corporate interest. Apac to be able to message right now.
- [40:10]
A
Yeah.
- [40:11]
B
This issue is so black and white that even Tucker and Marjorie Taylor Greene agree with.
- [40:15]
A
Yes. Yeah.
- [40:16]
B
What powerful messaging that would be.
- [40:18]
A
Absolutely. And by the way, this actually gets to a good point, which is whether or not Tucker Carlson runs. He could. I was talking to Hassan Piker and he made this point as well a few weeks ago in a profile I did of him where he said he could bless someone like J.D. vance. He could give his credence to someone like J.D. vance. And something I'm thinking about is that J.D. vance, of course, is kind of positioning himself as kind of having always been against this war. You know, he's the anti war, hardscrabble guy. He's trying to lean back into that, even though he said some things that have clearly been publicly in support of the war. But he's been, you know, it seems like he or people around him are leaking things to the press. You know, he's been the voice of restraint in the room, the voice of reason. The thing that people need to understand, whether it's Tucker Carlson or J.D. vance or what have you, who become the Republican nominee in 2028 and try to run on the sense that they're dovish. The military industrial complex and these military interests and these interests, these pro Israel interests, are intertwined with so many other interests. Such as corporate interests, where even if you pretend that you're a dove, if you're also someone who supports, you know, corporate interests, if you are totally down with the military industrial complex or the AI complex, we've seen how much AI companies are leading the charge in all this violence. You're not anti war, you're not anti war. You cannot pick one or the other. Those have to be in harmony. And that's why again, it's great. If someone, whether genuinely or not, expresses sympathy for Palestinian people, that's amazing. Or criticism, rightful criticism of the way the Israeli government acts, that's awesome. But if that's it, and if they're not harmonizing that with the rest of their worldview about how the world can be a much more harmonious, peaceful, blessed place, then it's just words.
- [42:09]
B
I wish that that were true, but I agree with you fundamentally on principle. But Donald Trump said he was an anti war president and 77 million people voted for him. And the Republican Party and Maga Party is party, they're bullshitters, trickle down economics. And sadly, there's such a intellectual and moral, moral rot in some of the American culture that words are just, it's fine for them. It gives them like, oh, he said he wasn't going to start wars. I'm going to vote for him. And that's, it's really sad. I wish that there were a higher bar for politicians. I read this whole New York Times focus group and the nine out of 12 were buyers remorse on voting for Trump. The statement that I read over and over and over again, prem that was like, oh my God, was I thought that he had learned his lesson. And then you go down to another person, the focus group, I thought for sure he had learned his lesson. And I thought, my God, are we genuinely like grade school? You better learn your lesson and do better next year. In fifth grade, yeah, that's the bar for a US President to learn your lesson. And so outside of all of these things with maga, with Tucker, with the Democrats, with progressive Democrats, there is a, a intellectual deficit, moral deficit with a lot of our public. And that's why I think these spaces and us talking about this and unpackaging things in a way where we can learn more and get different perspectives is so important because I think one positive out of the fascist takeover that I'm experiencing, and I'm sure you're experiencing it too, they're attacking universities, they're attacking science, they're attacking expertise, they're attacking facts. Well, when you live in a Superpower and you know, your, everything's fine, you don't have to worry about those things if somebody's taking care to make sure all of those things are valued now that Trump is dismantling those actively and flagrantly. I have seen the electorate thirsty for knowledge. I want to know what the is Hamas, what is Hezbollah, what is, what is a settler? That sounds nice. What are these things? And so there is a desire of the American public now to learn more and to educate themselves more. And that's one. There's like an awakening, an intellectual awakening, underground intellectual awakening that I think is happening right now. And that's a super positive thing. And that's why I thank you so much for coming on, because it's a gift for so many Americans to be able, and we have international viewers too, to log in and learn more in an open minded, objective way.
- [44:49]
A
No, I completely agree. I mean, I think to learn is one of the best gifts we have. I mean, I've learned so much from people throughout my whole time on this planet. That's your north. Yeah, yeah. But no, it's truly been such a gift for me. And I think one thing I think about so much as kind of a travesty of these times is like, like all the different things that the administration has crushed and destroyed, from education to science to, you name it. I think it's okay for people to want to make sure that things are credulous and we're not unconditionally defending things, but the way in which that they have just totally obliterated all of it makes me so sad because in a very fundamental way, we are the descendants of so many people who have spent their lives trying to find answers to, to things, who have spent their lives trying to make our life better than theirs was. And the idea that someone can just come in with so much ego and destroy it all and destroy the lives of people who are right now trying to carry that torch forward is so deeply offensive to me. And so the idea now that there's so many people who are, to your point, kind of stirring in this maybe, I don't know, movement to re educate and to educate each other and to build those things back in a way that's even stronger and then more resilient, I think is so beautiful. And I don't think the first act of him is not our only act. And I think right now we're seeing this follow up of people who, despite the fact that he rose to power and some of us, the royal us, helped him do that. I think there's more of us and even maybe those who have buyer's remorse that understand that maybe there could be something better. And I think there's hope in that.
- [46:35]
B
I agree. Prem Tucker, thank you for coming to New York. Thank you for being my guest. Please tell my listeners and viewers how they can follow you and read your articles.
- [46:46]
A
Yeah. So they can find us@zateo.com where you can find all of our reporting. Please do support us. We're trying our best to do deliver the news coverage that you all deserve. And your support helps us do that. You can find me on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter. Just look for prem p r e m t h a k k e r and hopefully you'll find me there. And don't be a stranger. But thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
- [47:09]
B
Yeah. Thank you. What would you do if your online store converted 36% more shoppers? You could take 36% more vacation.
- [47:26]
A
Another pina colada.
- [47:27]
B
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- [47:34]
A
You're hired. And you're hired.
- [47:36]
B
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