Trump & Bibi's Iran Holy War Has Already FAILED | The Joy Reid Show LIVE!

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Joy Reid Show Episode: Trump & Bibi's Iran Holy War Has Already FAILED | The Joy Reid Show LIVE! Date: March 19, 2026 Host: Joy-Ann Reid

Overview of Main Theme

This episode delivers sharp, timely analysis of the current geopolitical crisis involving the U.S., Israel, and Iran. Joy Reid leads a dynamic discussion that connects historical context (from the Suez Crisis to today), explores the apparent breakdown of American power and global alliances, and tracks the efforts of the Trump and Netanyahu (“Bibi”) administrations to engage Iran militarily—with increasingly disastrous results. Alongside this, Reid hosts a monthly panel on white Christian nationalism and highlights current threats to democracy, women's rights, and global stability, all through the lens of policy, history, and media criticism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. U.S. Primary, Legislative, and Internal News (00:42–10:49)

• Brief wrap-up of Illinois primaries: Juliana Stratton (likely to become one of the few Black women U.S. senators) wins the Democratic race for Dick Durbin’s seat; progressive support helped by her stance on AIPAC money.
• House Democrats launch a discharge petition to force a vote on TSA and FEMA funding, illustrating dysfunction and brinksmanship in Congress.
• Senator Rand Paul confronts Markwayne Mullin over political violence (the “caning” of Charles Sumner); Mullin’s past threats and comments scrutinized.
  • “Sometimes people just need to be punched in the face...” —Markwayne Mullin (07:09)
• Paul accuses Mullin of justifying historic political violence and supporting violence against politicians.

2. National Security & Iran Crisis: Historical Context and Present Dangers (14:25–28:18)

• Joy gives an in-depth, engaging history of the Suez Crisis and its importance as a declining moment for European colonial powers, ties to Israel’s regional adventurism, and relevance to today’s U.S.-Israeli policy in the Middle East.
  • “The Suez Crisis is considered a key point in the demise of the British and French empires and the official rise of the bipolar world... It also shows how Israel effectively operates as an extension of the Western colonial powers in the region.” —Joy Reid (16:03)
• Strait of Hormuz Crisis: Iran blocks the Strait, paralyzing global oil flows. U.S. struggles to rally European or Asian allies, who refuse military support—underscoring U.S. isolation and Trump’s diminishing power.
• Allies fear Trump is being dragged into a prolonged war, risking electoral disaster and further American decline.
• Joe Kent (deputy NSA director, ex-CIA), resigns, blaming Israeli influence and AIPAC for dragging the U.S. into war. While Kent is no progressive hero, his arguments are resonating in the MAGA-aligned base.
  • “They decide how long we're involved and if we put boots on the ground. It doesn't seem to me that there's a way around that if we want to save face.” —Quoted source close to White House (22:19)
• Kent warns (from past interviews) that war with Iran would backfire, further entangle the U.S., rally Iranians around their regime, and, crucially, play into China’s interests.
  • “If we get deeply entangled with Iran, we are playing right into China’s hands. … It’s absolute insanity. It’s opening Pandora’s box. And again, for what gained the American people?” —Joe Kent (26:29)

3. Expert Interview: Daniel Levy on U.S./Israel/Iran Dynamics (28:36–43:13)

• Daniel Levy, Middle East expert and ex-Israeli negotiator, joins to break down Bibi Netanyahu’s unprecedented power over U.S. foreign policy.
• Netanyahu has “carried America into a war,” openly owning U.S. decision-making; U.S. right-wing media and lobbyists reinforce Israeli interests even as public opinion shifts.
  • “This is the first time that [Netanyahu] has owned it in this way. Seven meetings with Trump in the first 13 months … they’re now speaking every day. … I’m asking myself, why would you do something so reckless?” —Daniel Levy (29:14)
• Suggests Netanyahu is exploiting waning American primacy (“use it or lose it”), driving the U.S. into reckless conflict before it’s too weak to intervene for Israeli aims.
• War’s real aim: Israeli regional hegemony, collapse or chaos in Iran, and disabling U.S./allied competitors—at the expense of global security.
• Europe and Asian allies are increasingly unwilling to indulge Trump due to loss of trust in American leadership and fears over “dismantling empire.”

4. Client States, Cuba, and U.S. Hegemony (45:38–56:32)

• Joy, with political analyst Fernand Amandi, pivots to U.S. rhetoric about “taking” Cuba: the Trump administration’s push for regime change is superficial, aimed at resource control, not fostering democracy.
• The risk is Cuba becoming a “client state”—an exploited resource colony, not a free society.
  • “Rather than being a liberator, the United States under this approach is seen as a predator. Which is exactly what the Cuban people don’t want.” —Fernand Amandi (53:11)
• Discussion highlights hypocrisy: U.S. cutting off aid/leverage unless countries (including Cuba, Zambia) hand over resources, not for genuine democratic reform.

5. White Christian Nationalism, Abuse, and the GOP (75:56–103:14)

• Dr. Robert P. Jones and Katherine Stewart join for the “Countering White Christian Nationalism” monthly segment:
  • Structural issues in evangelical/Christian nationalist power: patriarchal, authoritarian hierarchies breed abuse and cover-ups—paralleling authoritarian movements worldwide.
  • Major leaders/megachurches, often close Trump advisors, have histories of abuse scandals while claiming to “protect family values.” Churches use legal tactics to shield predators.
    • “You have a movement whose goal supposedly is to redeem…women and protect them...and yet the rape and abuse is happening inside the churches.” —Joy Reid (79:58)
  • Christian nationalism equates social hierarchy with “divinely ordained” order, fueling not only anti-democratic politics but a willingness to support foreign militarism.
  • GOP’s demographic collapse: party is almost two-thirds white Christian in a nation that is only 40% so; attempts to hold power increasingly anti-democratic (voter suppression, Save America Act targeting women’s votes).
    • “They really are going to have to resort to some non-democratic means, because the numbers increasingly just aren't going to be there.” —Dr. Robert P. Jones (88:27)
  • Persistent right-wing propaganda siloes ensure base remains unmoved even by evidence of sexual abuse within their own ranks or in their favored politicians.

6. Elections, DHS, and the Erosion of Trust (56:56–62:54)

• Markwayne Mullin grilled on whether he accepts Biden’s 2020 win, federal authority over elections, and suggestions that ICE/military might be placed at polling places. Democrats express alarm over threats to free and fair elections.
  • “If we ever get to the point where you are being asked to put armed ICE officers at polling locations, we have lost the plot as a country.” —Senator Elaine Slotkin (59:38)

7. Closing: Administrative Ineptitude & Geopolitical Decline (106:02–end)

• Extensive reading from reporting about Markwayne Mullin’s unclassified “classified” trips—exposing the incompetence now at the helm of critical U.S. national security departments.
  • “You don’t know when something is classified or when it’s just an NDA... But we’re supposed to give you the trillion-dollar budget?” —Joy Reid (115:00)
• Viral mockery from Chinese content creators underlines U.S. decline in global perception.
• Joy’s recurring refrain: the Trump/Bibi alliance has overreached, hastening the U.S. empire’s fall, isolating America even from historical allies, while domestic culture wars and authoritarianism erode democracy at home.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We may not do that.” —Joy’s recurring use of Jamaican patois at the end (118:18+), mocking U.S. alliance requests rebuffed by European nations.
• “[Netanyahu] has transparently carried America into a war. When Rubio let the mask slip...the imminent threat was Israel attacking Iran and there would be blowback for the US...” —Daniel Levy (29:14)
• “You can be a reprehensible character and get some things right. A broken clock is still right twice a day.” —Daniel Levy re: Joe Kent (29:14)
• “They want to suppress that vote… Paul Weyrich said, ‘Our power in elections goes up when voting goes down.’” —Katherine Stewart on long-term strategies of the Christian Right (84:49)
• “Rather than being a liberator, the United States under this approach is seen as a predator. … The Cuban people don’t want [that].” —Fernand Amandi (53:11)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:42–03:50 — Illinois Primary Results; House Dems on TSA/FEMA Funding
• 05:34–10:49 — Senate Committee on Homeland Security; Markwayne Mullin & Rand Paul Clash
• 14:25–16:03 — Suez Crisis Historical Context
• 21:57–28:18 — Strait of Hormuz, War with Iran Analysis; Joe Kent Resignation & Interview
• 28:36–43:13 — Daniel Levy in Depth: U.S.-Israel-Iran
• 45:38–56:32 — Cuba & “Client State” Analysis with Fernand Amandi
• 62:54–75:56 — White Christian Nationalism Panel: Abuses & Political Ambition
• 75:56–101:08 — Interview: Dr. Robert P. Jones & Katherine Stewart on Christian Nationalism
• 106:02–115:00 — Mullin’s “Classified” Trips Debunked; Senate Skepticism
• 117:37-end — Chinese Satire & Joy’s Closing Remarks

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Tone & Language

• Joy’s tone is sharply satirical, relentless in criticism of authoritarianism, and deeply informed. She mixes historical narration, policy analysis, and biting humor, using cultural references and a populist edge (“the ghetto America”). Guest analysts provide context with scholarly, journalistic authority.

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Conclusion

The episode is a comprehensive critique of U.S. decline on the global stage, unpacking how reckless foreign policy, internal authoritarian drift, and white Christian nationalism are mutually reinforcing trends that endanger democracy, peace, and America’s international standing. Joy and her guests connect the dots from historic crises to today’s headlines, challenging listeners to recognize not just the failures of the Trump-Bibi alliance, but the perilous direction of U.S. politics, culture, and society.

Transcript

[Joy Reid]

Fox News is now streaming live on Fox 1. When it matters most, turn to the voices you trust. We go beyond the headlines, bringing you the stories you won't hear anywhere else. Live coverage, sharp analysis, real perspective at home or on the go. Stay connected when it counts. Stream Fox News on Fox 1 download today.

[Daniel Levy]

Hey,

[Archive/News Clip Narrator]

okay.

[Joy Reid]

Hey, hey, hey, everybody. Happy Wednesday. Welcome to the Joy Reid Show. Big up to everybody who's tuning in on YouTube. I can see the lemon heads are already here and everybody's waving already. Well, waving back. Back to you there on YouTube if you're on substack. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you to our stackers, our Facebook friends. I think y' all are about 600,000 strong now over in the Facebook world. Our fabulous Twitchies, a small and mighty army on Twitch, as well as our LinkedIn friends. Appreciate everybody who's tuning in. Also, if you're listening to this as an audio podcast, I hope my voice is great for radio today because for you, this is radio. So thanks for tuning in. We appreciate you, Apple, Spotify, everybody. So please be sure to hit that like and subscribe button to make sure that you are joining the family officially. Big ups to our team, TJRS members and our readers. Big ups to all of you guys. You are almost your week and two days away from the Insiders subscriber only chat that is taking place a week from the day after tomorrow, week from Friday. So next Friday, that's when that chat is going to take place. All right, let's get to the headlines. We want to be quick and efficient. We have a lot going on. We have a lot of great guests. Don't forget that today. Hazel lemonades. I see the little lemons. Today is our monthly countering white Christian nationalism Wednesday. So that's going to be in the next hour, but we've got a lot to talk about this hour. Last night was primary night in Illinois. We're going to hit these headlines and the big headlines out of that was the victory for the sitting lieutenant governor Juliana Stratton in the Democratic primary for the seat being vacated by Dick Durbin, who is retiring from the United States Senate. You can see there, those are the results now, Stratton's victory over Raja Krishnamoorthy, who you saw on this show on Monday, And Congresswoman Robin Kelly sets up a rematch of sorts between Darren Bailey, who's the Republican victor last night, and Pritzker, because Darren Bailey is who ran against Pritzker for governor last time and Pritzker beat him by about 13 points in 2022. So the presumption is that we're going to soon have maybe only, what, the fourth or fifth black woman to be a United States senator. It's likely she'll win it. Is Illinois barring something else? One of the things that I think helped Stratton stand out is that she switched her position on taking APAC money. And short of calling what's happening in Gaza a genocide, she tracked as more progressive. So people who were progressives watching the race preferred her and the way that she talked about things. Also, as we kind of heard when we interviewed Raja Krishnamurthy, who's a very nice guy, always available, always available to talk to those of us in the media. But he does have some connections to big business and AI, and I think that kind of hurt him. So that's how that happened. Meanwhile, I want you all to take a look at this press conference, a little bit of it by House Democrats today who are vowing to push a discharge petition to to fund TSA agents who are now missing paychecks because of DHS defunding, as well as to fund FEMA while keeping the funding for the overall Department of Homeland Security on hold.

[House Democrat (Unnamed)]

Republican leaders have refused to bring legislation to the floor that would pay TSA agents, support FEMA, and fund the Coast Guard, which is why we have launched this discharge petition effort today. And all we need are a handful of House Republicans to break with their extremism and join us in just a few moments when we go to the House floor to sign the discharge petition. Now, some cynics on the other side have said this is just for show. House Democrats aren't show horses. We're workhorses. This ain't for show. This is for the American people. And we've now launched three successful discharge petition efforts. Let's check the record. Three successful discharge petition efforts, most recently to extend the Affordable Care act tax credits for three years so that everyday Americans can afford to go see a doctor when they need one. Discharge petitions are difficult. Some say impossible. But for us, difficult takes a day, impossible takes a week. And we're on the verge of, once again, for a fourth time, doing the impossible on behalf of the American people to pay TSA rain and ice and focus on, on what matters for the American people, which is driving down their high cost of living and pushing back against the extremism of Donald Trump and the Republican.

[Joy Reid]

So a discharge petition, as you know, is a way to get around the speaker of the House when he refuses to put a bill on the floor. It is true Democrats did put a discharge petition successfully through the House to try to force a vote on those subsidies for Obamacare. It died in the Senate, so it didn't help. But if they can get a discharge petition on funding just the TSA agents so we can have less chaos at the airports. Because if you've been traveling lately, as I. As have I, it's a mess. And also they're not getting paid and they deserve to get paid as well as fema, which if there's a storm, you're going to need fema. So we'll see. I don't know that passing that discharge petition in the House, if they can get the votes, they need like four Democrat Republicans to go along with them, what that does in the Senate, because in the Senate, they're also waiting on John Thune to put something on the floor to just fund tsa. So we'll see how that turns out. Other news, Rand Paul, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, there were two big hearings today. He got into it during their hearing, which was the confirmation hearing for Kristi Noem's nominated replacement, Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Molino.

[Senator Rand Paul]

Hiding as a resolution for political differences. A good example for the men and women of ICE and Border Patrol.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

As you can notice, over my shoulder here is my good friend Sean o'.

[Joy Reid]

Brien.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

Both of us have had conversations, both of us have shaken hands and both of us agreed we could have done things different. Shawn is someone that has become a close friend. We talk all the time. I've been on his podcast. We've talked through this. That's how you handle your differences. Not like this chairman.

[Senator Rand Paul]

I'm glad you guys are friends now and that you've reconciled, but really, it doesn't get to the real point whether or not you think violence is the way we settle things. In the days after the fight, you said, and I quote, sometimes people just need to be punched in the face. Is that still your opinion, that political disputes can sometimes and often only be resolved by violence?

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

No, I don't always agree with that. I don't believe in political violence. I've made that very clear. But sometimes people do need, theoretically speaking, that's. Sir, I get it. It's about character assassination for you. That's the way this game is played. I understand it. And you are making this about you, which is fine, but that doesn't keep me as safe.

[Joy Reid]

Character assassination.

[Senator Rand Paul]

When you were the one lauding the assault, who do you think started that character assassination? I'm just repeating what you have done in Character assassination. I'm repeating your support for the assault. So that's somehow something I started.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

No, sir. What I'm saying is you're adding a lot to it.

[Archive/News Clip Narrator]

Yeah.

[Senator Rand Paul]

In the days after the fight, you did many interviews in which you justified the violence as historically justified by precedents such as caning and dueling. Is it today your opinion that the caning of Charles Sumner was not only justified, but argues still for resolving our political differences with violence?

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

What I was simply pointing out is some of the rules that still apply to this body. For instance, dueling with two consenting adults is still there. I was pointing out what is still

[Senator Rand Paul]

legal for 170 years. There's no precedent for legal dueling. Even then, they fled the country. Do you realize that the man that beat Charles Sumner with a cane, he beat him till he was unconscious. You know why no senators intervened? Because his friend held a gun on the other senators and he kept beating him and beating him until he crushed his skull. That's what you're insinuating is the President of the Senate, and that's what you live by. That is a very, very dangerous sentiment.

[Joy Reid]

And by the way, that caning was about slavery and whether slavery should be continued. And yeah, the caning of Charles Sumner, that is like a historical fact, and it's true. It is not legal to have duels. Mark Wayne, he thinks that's still legal. And what he was talking about was that he had threatened Sean o', Brien, who's the president of the Teamsters, to fist fight him in a past hearing when he was sitting on the other side as United States Senator. Mark Wayne is a. Is a strange character. We've got a very interesting Mark Wayne story at the very end of the show, which we will hold that for you. That's a tease, because there's a whole lot more. Mark Wayne is quite a character. So Rand Paul is still angry, by the way, over Mullins seeming to high five the man who assaulted rand Paul in 2017 when Paul was, like, doing work in his yard in Bowling Crean, Kentucky. Now, the attacker, who is Paul's neighbor, Rene Boucher, who you can see here in this picture, he wound up being sentenced to six months home confinement, with another eight months in prison added in 2020 for the attack, which left Paul with broken ribs, bouts of pneumonia, apparently in a lot of pain. Plus, he was required to pay rand Paul about $580,000 restitution. And while the dispute was not political like Rand Paul did make this about himself, he went back and forth with him about Mark Wayne saying he could understand why, why this man beat up Rand Paul. And he was implying because that man hated Donald Trump. That's not what it was about. It was actually a dispute over, like, grounds maintenance. Like, Rand Paul was like, stacking brush in his yard in a way that the neighbor didn't like. So. But he made it about that. He's definitely not going to vote for him. Let's just be clear. The other big hearing today, which brought. Other big hearing today brought the regime's national security establishment, including Tulsi Gabard, to the Hill. And here's how that went.

[Interviewer]

Just want to point out something that was released about six days ago. This is a fundraising email from the President. From the President of the United States. And in this email here, where there's multiple links to donate money, it says, as a national security briefing member, you'll receive my private national security briefings. Director Gabbard or Director Radcliffe, do you think the public should be able to. Supporters of the president should be able to pay and receive his private national security briefings. I assume these are briefings, Director Radcliffe, that you provide to the President that is now going to be provided to somebody who makes a.

[Joy Reid]

Regardless of what that. I don't know that document is, but

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

regardless of what it says, it didn't happen.

[Joy Reid]

Oh, no.

[Interviewer]

This was new.

[Joy Reid]

But what I'm telling you is that

the Hatch act would prevent me in

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

a political role from engaging in that.

[Joy Reid]

I'm not aware that anything like that happened.

[Interviewer]

This says unfiltered updates. So, Director Gabbard, do you have any comment on whether unfiltered updates of private national security briefings should be made to individuals that donate to the President?

[Katherine Stewart]

I'm not. I'm not familiar with that document.

[Joy Reid]

And it's.

[Interviewer]

It's been made very public six days ago. We'll get you a copy here because I agree with you, Director, Director Ratcliffe, that the Hatch act should prohibit this type of conduct. Thank you.

[Joy Reid]

Radcliffe. Is the director of the CIA giving briefings to the people who donate to Donald Trump? Donate. Give me some money and you can get a free briefing from my national security establishment. Weird. After a quick break, we're going to the news that Tulsi's deputy made this week. But first, let us acknowledge one of our amazing sponsors. The Joy Read show is brought to you by our [e-mail] Since 2020, bookshop.org has raised more than $40 million for local bookstores. They are unapologetically anti Amazon, as should we all be they believe that local bookstores are essential community hubs and foster culture, curiosity and a love of reading. And they're committed to helping them survive and thrive. They are a certified B Corp and have been named Best for the World by B Labs. You can read much more about them. We're going to put a link in the chat or in not in the chat, but in the description of the show. Now where you shop for books actually matters. When you purchase from bookshop.org, you are supporting more than 2,500 local independent bookstores across the country like Mahogany Books. We love Baldwin Books in New Orleans. Those are two of my favorites. Independent bookstores do more than just sell books. They help take care of and poor pour back into their communities, creating safe spaces that foster culture, curiosity and of course our favorite thing, people just loving to read. So whether you're searching for an incisive history that helps you make sense of this moment, I'm reading two about the Dulles Brothers right now. A novel that sweeps you away or the perfect gift for a loved one. Bookshop.org has you covered and you you can participate in your love of reading just by supporting what they're doing. And every time you shop, you feel good about it because you're helping local bookstores. If you'd like to give it a shot, you can head to bookshop.org, use the code JOY at checkout to get 10% off your next order. So go to bookshop.org and use the code JOY at checkout for 10% off. Okay, so if you've been following me a while, you know how much I love an old timey video. So please enjoy this little mashup of newsreel clips from the year 1956 at

[Archive/News Clip Narrator]

the Portsmouth Naval Base. Britain prepares for the worst in the Suez crisis. Part of her mothball fleet, idle since World War II, is hastily made ready for action. President Nasser continues to defy the Western powers on his seizure of the Canal and seeks the support of Russia and the Arab League countries. The aircraft carrier Theseus is the first to leave for the Mediterranean, to be quickly followed by the carriers Bulwark and Ocean. Preparations are also made to ferry 20,000 reservists to the area if necessary. Meanwhile, a French fleet sails from Toulon as diplomats desperately seek a conference that will head off war. At his weekly press conference, President Eisenhower decries the use of force and hopes for a peaceful settlement on Suez.

[Joy Reid]

Good morning.

[Archive/News Clip Narrator]

We'll go right to questions. President Louis Castle of the United Press, would you tell Us sir, how you feel about the use or threat of military force from the Suez dispute? Well, I can't answer that question quite as abruptly and directly as you ask it. The United States has every hope that this very serious difficulty will be settled by peaceful means. We have stood by the conference method, not only in the solution of this problem, but in all similar ones. I can't conceive of military force being a good solution, certainly under conditions as we know them now. And in view of our hopes that things are going to be settled peacefully.

[Joy Reid]

That of course was Dwight David Eisenhower, President of the United States. And the Suez Canal was one of those artifacts of colonialism that became a source of inter colonizer disputes during the infamous Dulles era when the Dulles brothers ran the State Department and the CIA during the Eisenhower administration. So here's a picture of what the Suez Canal looks like. You can see that from a satellite image. And what the canal is, is an artificial sea level waterway inside of Egypt that connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the isthmus of the Suez. It's hard to do that with my invisaligns. And it physically divides Africa from Asia, right? And by extension the Sinai Peninsula from the rest of Egypt. It's why Egypt, even though the Sinai is part of it, is physically divided by water. It's basically the border between Africa and Asia. And the 193 kilometer, aka 120.1 mile long canal is a key trade route between Europe and Asia. Without it, and now check out this map here. Without it, cargo ships would have to cross the entire enormous, this humongous African continent to take their goods from the east to the west. And I mean Africa's probably even bigger than that in real life. It's huge. You have to go all the way around without the Suez Canal. And so the canal, which is again key to the development of 19th and 20th century trade. Right? 20th century trade. It began construction in the 19th century, in 1858, pre US Civil War, when France and Great Britain were still empires. Now in 1858, a French diplomat named Ferdinand de Lesseps formed something called the Compagnie du Suez for the purpose of building the canal. It took until 1869 to complete it and it officially opened for business on November 17, 1869. The canal was the property of Egypt, of the Egyptian government, full stop. But European shareholders, mostly British and French shareholders, owned the company that operated the canal up until July of 1956, when the Colonial era monarchy in Egypt was overthrown and the new President of a liberated Egypt, a man named Gamal Abdel Nasser, nationalized the Canal. You've heard this story before. There was a trend of people in the Middle east who were colonized by Europe getting liberation, getting liberated and then saying the things that are here, even if they were built under the auspices of our colonial masters, they're ours now. Happened in Iran, happened in lots of countries. And you know how it generally went when someone did that. Okay, so the act of nationalizing the Canal, the Egyptian nationalist president nationalizing the Suez Canal is what triggered what's called the Suez Crisis of October and November of 1956, which is what that video was about. When Nasser announced that he was nationalizing the Canal that July, Britain and France threatened to use military force to maintain their control over the Canal. Britain even threatened to use nukes against Egypt. They said, we're going to war about this canal. Nasser was like, etu colonizer f you, we're no longer your colony. And that is when the Eisenhower administration stepped in. They were worried that the newly formed NATO risked being dragged into a Third World War and that the Soviet Union, which still existed back then, might step in and back Egypt. So they did the unthinkable, right? The US did the unthinkable. Eisenhower took Egypt's side and threatened to unleash massive economic sanctions against Britain and France if they did not stand down. That what made this even messier was the involvement of another country, Israel. This very young country, right, which had only been formed in 1948, sent troops into the Sinai Peninsula, basically invaded the Sinai to back up the British and the French claims, who held secret consultations with this very young government which regarded Nasser as a threat to Israeli security. The invasion of Egypt by Israel took place in October of 1956, and their troops advanced to within 10 miles of the Suez Canal. And Britain and France landed troops of their own a few days later under the pretext of preventing the Israelis and the Egyptians from fighting a war. It's a mess. But the sanctions got Britain and France to back down and eventually the Israelis withdrew as well. All withdrew as well, although Egypt did close the Canal again at the beginning of the Six Day War between Israel and its neighbors, all its Arab neighbors, in June of 1967. And they kept it closed for eight long years, reopening it on the 5th of June 1975. So that's some history. And I give you that history because the Suez Crisis is considered a key point in the demise of the British and French empires. And it's part of the official rise of the bipolar world that we live in now with just two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. It also shows how Israel effectively operates as an extension of the Western colonial powers in the region. Something to keep in mind when you think about why US Politicians so wholeheartedly support that country today. Which brings us to the other canal in the Middle east that matters to people who do business by sea, namely the Strait of Hormuz. Here is a map of that. You can see all the countries near it. Right. Well, things aren't working out so well in the strait these days. Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz to all but ship traffic that they approve, meaning that shipping can't get through without the express permission of Iran and the risk of being set on fire if you disobey. And Trump, for all his bullying of our NATO allies of the Europeans and his attempted bullying and goading of China, cannot get Europe or China to help out now. Here's no less a pro Trump ragging than the Daily Mail pulling from reporting in Politico that states that Iran holds all the cards. Let me quote Donald Trump's inner circle is growing increasingly alarmed that he may be losing control of the Iran war after allied countries flatly rejected his plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Trump has demanded US Allies deploy warships to reopen the critical oil passageway. But France, Japan, Australia and the United Kingdom have all declined to help to protect commercial shipping from Iranian attack. Gas prices have surged to an average of 380A gallon. It's much higher here from 280 before the conflict began three weeks ago with the narrow strait through which a fifth of the world's oil flows remains blocked by the threat of Iranian mines and missiles. Israel claimed it killed two high ranking Iranian commanders. Thirteen troops have been killed in the conflict. This is just in the last 48 hours. More than 200 allegedly are injured among seven countries. And here's a quote. We clearly just kicked Iran's ass in the field. But to a large extent they hold the cards now, a source close to the White House told Politico. They decide how long we're involved and they decide if we put boots on the ground. And it doesn't seem to me that there's a way around that if we want to save face. Some allies fear that Donald Trump is being dragged into an open ended conflict just as the midterm elections are nearing. So could this be the end of the US Empire? The number two man to head the National Security Agency under Tulsi Gabbard, the very strange former backbench Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, her deputy is a former CIA paramilitary officer and Iraq war veteran named Joe Kent. He resigned yesterday releasing a statement on X Twitter, which I have here in my hand, in which Kent alleged in this letter that the US Went to war with Iran due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby and that Trump had been duped by a misinformation campaign. Now, before you start thinking that Joe Kent is some sort of good guy, I want you guys to read a joint hear a joint statement that was released by Representative Bennie Thompson, who's the Democratic ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee and the Homeland Security Committee, and Seth Magaziner, who's the ranking member on the subcommittee on Counterterrorism and intelligence. When he got nominated by Trump, who praised him last year, they said Joe Kent has twice been rejected from public office by the people of southwest Washington because of his extremism. Someone who is employed, a proud boy affiliated with a far right leader whose rallies led to violence in Portland and gave an interview to a Nazi sympathizer, is unfit to lead the nation's primary organization that processes terrorism and counterterrorism intelligence. He's been described as a white nationalist that I'm talking about by Adam Kinzinger, the conservative former Illinois congressman. Okay, let me very quickly play before we get to our guest, a little bit of Joe Kent trying to claim that January 6th was an inside job,

[Interviewer]

was intentionally organized or directed.

[Joe Kent]

Still under investigation, we're looking into whether elements of the government could have enhanced the criminal acuity of some of the rioters that day.

[Interviewer]

So you've said on Twitter that the FBI and the intelligence community were involved in planning and directing the riot, Is that correct?

[Joe Kent]

Sounds like something I said.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, it sounds like I'd say. Yeah. And here is him last year on Tucker Carlson's show talking specifically about Iran. You referred to what a war with Iran would do to the United States. And I don't know that a lot of people in this country fully understand

[Daniel Levy]

what Iran is as a nation state.

[Katherine Stewart]

It's, it's not Afghanistan.

[Joy Reid]

What do you think the immediate and then longer term effects of a war with Iran would be on the United States

[Joe Kent]

immediately. It would be very bloody. I have no doubt that we could probably defeat some of their air defense and go in there and have another shock and awe campaign. But again, like, we saw how the shock and awe campaign in Iraq really didn't actually work in the long run. So I Have no doubt that we'd have some immediate results that people would cheer about here in the United States.

[Joy Reid]

But.

[Joe Kent]

But Iran, Persia has always been an empire. It's been around longer than any of the other players in the modern Middle east right now, and they are not going anywhere. And right now, Iran has a lot of internal problem. They have a lot of internal strife with the ayatollah. And that that government's only been in power since 1979. But again, if we start conducting strikes in Iran, everyone in Iran will rally around their leader and they will become even more revolutionary. And then we will have Iranian proxies throughout the entire region that will be conducting attacks just like we had in Jordan. And really, in the long term, Tucker, the axis that has been built really since Putin invaded Russia, and we decided that since Putin invaded Ukraine, and we decided we were going to throw this massive sanctions package at them, China has come in as a major player, and we are deeply compromised by China. They control a lot of our economy. They control global manufacturing. They're deeply embedded in Wall street, and they've also made deals with the Iranians. They want access to Iranian petro. Not to mention the fact that Biden killed off US Energy independence and now he's going after lng. And the world's biggest LNG exporters are Iran, Russia, and Qatar. So this axis would become very powerful if we get deeply involved and deeply entangled with Iran. We are. We are playing right into China's hands because China would like nothing more than for us to be committing our military industrial base to a war in Eastern Europe, in Ukraine, and then to be committing our conventional military power, our blood and our treasure back in the Middle East. That will make the Pacific, our actual border, extremely vulnerable to Chinese aggression. Or China will simply just watch us bleed out economically as we bleed out on the battlefield on these couple different theaters. It's absolute insanity. It's opening up Pandora's box. And again, for what gained the American people.

[Joy Reid]

Broken clocks, baby. Broken clocks. Joining me now is Daniel Levy, political commentator and President of the U.S. middle East President Project. He's a former Israeli negotiator with the Palestinians at Taba under Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and also Oslo B under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Daniel, it's always good to see you.

[Daniel Levy]

Likewise. I was. That was a brilliant monologue, Joy.

[Joy Reid]

Oh, well, thank you very much. That means a lot coming to me, coming from you, who's such an expert in this field. And I wanted to open with Suez because it is a thing where the Middle east is, has the resources we want and the roots we need in the West. Right. But the way that they can, they can exercise leverage is to say you may not use them. What do you make of Joe Kent's resignation and his argument that our attempt to pressure Iran is a terrible and insane idea that Israel inspired.

[Daniel Levy]

So, as you have very helpfully walked us towards, you can be a reprehensible character and get some things right. A broken clock is still right twice a day. That's what I always used to say when I found myself somehow agreeing with Tom Friedman. There's more going on than that. There is obviously a wing of MAGA that is has us recoiling a certain percentage of the time and nodding another percentage of the time. And I just think that is part of the contemporary reality of your politics. More than that, what I think is relevant about Joe Kent's resignation letter is he wasn't speaking in a vacuum. He was speaking to a message that is already there. It resonates, and it resonates for a reason. It resonates because the Israeli Prime Minister has done something unprecedented. He has transparently carried America into a war. When Rubio let the mask slip and told us what the imminent threat was, the imminent threat was Israel attacking Iran and there would be blowback for the US and therefore, as Rubio put it, there was no choice. And Trump kind of repeated it the other day when he made this strange comment about maybe we're doing this out of habit. And there was Israel. So this is uncharted territory. We know that Israel can influence American politics. Netanyahu was caught on camera almost a quarter century ago in a brief interregnum where he wasn't prime minister, saying America is an easy thing to lead. But this is the first time that he has owned it in this way. Seven meetings with Trump in the second term's first 13 months, two meetings in the eight weeks leading up to this war. According to Netanyahu, they're now speaking every day. Israel waits till the USS Gerald Ford is off its coast and then launches this war. I am therefore asking myself, why would you do something so reckless? You can. You already know that American public opinion is moving against you. Sure, maybe you tell yourself, we can still manage American politics. We got independent expenditure campaigns. AIPAC still has more money than brain in how it operates. Our friends the Ellisons and others are buying up legacy media and new media, from TikTok to CBS. And shills like Barry Weiss. Now CNN, Warner Brothers discovery. We can have Jonathan Greenblatt from the adl. Go on to Jake Tapper and tell us, oh, you accuse Israel of starting this war. It's anti Semitism. Who causes most anti Semitism in America today? Idiots like that. But I'm still struggling because for me, the stakes are so high for Netanyahu to want to own this. I think it's appalling for the Jewish community the irresponsible way that Israel weaponizes antisemitism in ways that people just know are not real. So I have other thoughts as to maybe why Netanyahu is doing this.

[Joy Reid]

Sure. Say more. I mean, because the Occam's Razor answer feels like he simply wants to remove. It's the rival that is probably closest to being the next one who would be able to get a nuclear weapon, because he wants Israel to be the only nuclear power and to be the hegemon in the region. And so that means you have to neuter him. And it doesn't really hurt on him if it's from his point of view that all of the Gulf states get hurt, too, because it just leaves them all decimated and leaves Israel the only one standing. That's sort of the Occam's Razor answer. There's also these stories that you've seen about Jared Kushner personally profiting from his relationship with Saudi Arabia that apparently also wanted to see Iran set down. You know, that. That it's all just about making sure Israel stands alone and that Jared makes some money.

[Daniel Levy]

So agree. And let's carry that forward a couple of steps, if I can. I think what's going on here to, as part of what we've been discussing, and you just said, is that, look, maybe Netanyahu thinks he's got this. Maybe, you know, it's election year in Israel. The guy's still in court, he's trailing in the polls. Maybe this is simply the most expensive election campaign in history that everyone's paying at the petrol pumps for. But maybe it's more than that. Maybe Netanyahu, and he's been in this game a long time, is a step ahead of others. Maybe his assessment is, you know what? Maybe despite the Ellisons and everything, we. We're not gonna win back the position we used to hold in America. And going back to your Suez analogy of how that was the definitive tanking of British and French empire and power, maybe he's also seeing what the rest of us are seeing but many aren't willing to acknowledge, which is the decline of America. We're no longer in a period of American primacy and preponderance. And maybe, therefore, what Netanyahu is doing is saying, you know what? Use it or lose it, while we still have an America that will do our bidding. And in particular, we. While we have a president who's not just easy to lead like all the others. The others all ran cover, aided and abetted Israel's constant criminality, entrenchment of occupation and apartheid against the Palestinians. Biden ran cover for the genocide, but this guy's the first guy I can walk into the big war. So use it or lose it. This will accelerate American decline, but it will serve my interest as Israel. So whose hand is at the driving? Whose hands at the wheel here? Netanyahu's. I don't want to pretend there's no American agency. I don't want to pretend there's not been decades of failed American policy in the region. And regarding Iran and regarding Israel, I don't want to pretend there's not a cohort of neoconservatives who wanted this war not just for Israel first reasons, but Israel has a strategy, and that strategy is use American power so that we can cement Israeli regional domination. They don't care about weakening the Gulf states. In fact, they might feel a bit uncomfortable that Trump has these close relations. Let's bring them down a peg or two. They knew exactly what would happen, and each time they doubled down. Look what's happened just in the last hours. Joy with the. Israel knew that if it escalated against the Iranian gas fields in Pars, Iran would do what it is now done against Qatar. So this is premeditated, what Israel is doing. It's trying to be a hard power hegemon. Only if it has that level of domination can it complete its eradicationist agenda against the Palestinians. I think the potential blowback could be enormous. But what you have is a president in the White House who is apparently ready to double down on such a

[Joy Reid]

huge

[Daniel Levy]

acceleration of American decline. And I mean, you look at every day now, he is ratcheting up his verbal, rhetorical, abusive attacks. On who? On America's closest allies. He's dismantling empire. So maybe there's a silver lining.

[Joy Reid]

No, I think the more I think about it, particularly since, if you remember Netanyahu's last campaign, he had two big billboards up that were all over the place in Jerusalem and in Haifa. One was him shaking hands with Trump, and one was him shaking hands with Vladimir Putin. And if you think about. If you're just doing a big geopolitical chessboard, Putin has now gotten their flunky Trump to let them sell oil again, unsanctioned. So they're making money on this war. During the hearings today on the Homeland Security, the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the National Security for people, were asked point blank and couldn't answer, is Russia helping Iran? Is Russia helping Iran by giving them technical assistance, financial assistance, because they've been friendly before? China sits back and watches all of this and says, not a bad idea if the US Gets dragged into a ground war, which is the only way they can probably save face and really make a dent in Iran's current leadership. Right. You'd have to put boots on the ground just to save face and look like we're doing a war. So China's like, yo, if you all get bogged down like Russia did in Afghanistan, kind of works for us. It kind of works for everyone. And then for Europe, they seem to now have found the strength to do what the Republicans in the US can't do, which is to tell Trump to sod off. The Republicans had all these chances to take Trump down. The Europeans are like, let him fail. If you want to have a war in the Middle east, we're not going to join you. So it does feel like, I don't know, if you, if you, if you have the conspiracy theory that Trump's real purpose is to destroy America, it kind of feels like he and Bibi are doing it.

[Katherine Stewart]

Yeah.

[Daniel Levy]

And look, I mean, on the European front, for instance, where I'm sitting, so, you know, this has probably been the best week in power for the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, because he stood up to Trump. But Europe has a problem because much as they are saying no now, they are not yet able to conceptualize and then operationalize. What would it mean to have a post US Dependency security strategy for Europe? Look at the Gulf on the horns of an appalling dilemma. Hosting American bases has now been proven to be a source of insecurity. Why? Because America listens to Israel. It has not given a damn about core national security interests of these countries. But they are also struggling to conceptualize and then operationalize what a different security strategy would look like. The US Is now going after and heaping blame on its top tier allies in Asia. Japan and South Korea are now bearing the brunt also of his barbs. So for China, it's more than this. China is looking at this, by the way. It's also looking at this. And as with anyone, you or I probably don't have fantastic satellite imagery capacities that we can Deploy. But China and others do, and they are seeing a fantastic display. This is exactly how America fights a war in the second quarter of the 21st century, deploys its weaponry. So this. You see Thaad missiles being moved from South Korea to the Middle East. You know, your government put out a national security strategy just months ago in which the Middle East, West, Asia was radically deprioritized. And yet everyone has seen how easily you were dragged back into this. It's easy to understand from the perspective of Netanyahu. Netanyahu is looking at this and saying, I think we have a world and a region in a period of great flux and fluidity before things resettle down, before there's a new order which eventually will emerge. It won't be one of American unipolarity. We'll see how far your president crashes this, actually. But before this settles down, how much of our Greater Israel project, how much of our hard power regional hegemon project can we put in place? And then we might not need America anymore More, by the way, I think it's a hugely reckless, irresponsible thing for Israel to do, but that's what they're trying to do. How far can Israel's dominion stretch? And I think, therefore Israel's goal in Iran is not some naive fantasy story of regime change. It's regime collapse, state implosion and chaos, as we have seen elsewhere in the region. Then you bring down Iran, you, you create dependency for others on Israel. The spillover from Iran would be something else they have to deal with. And I think the American president was sold the idea that you can get a Venezuela 2.0, sir. You can do a change where you get a stable supplicant, whereas Israel knows what it's doing is smashing this to smithereens. And the stable supplicant was never likely if there were any possibility of it. Israel has been burning that exit ramp with the people it's been assassinating. You had Trump say things like, all they have to do is defect, is turn themselves in. Defect to who? What are you talking about? So when you have an incoherent and incompetent administration flailing from one absence of strategy to another, then even if the power relationship between it and Israel is, is significantly in America's favor, if it doesn't have a coherent strategy and Israel does, even if that strategy is super over ambitious and a little bit crazy itself, it's Israel that is, that is making the weather here.

[Joy Reid]

Daniel Levy, one of my favorite people to talk to ever, ever, ever And I appreciate you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being here.

[Daniel Levy]

Thank you.

[Joy Reid]

We'll have you back very soon. I have so many more questions. Thank you.

[Daniel Levy]

Take care.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you. And I will note and we won't even use the element. But it's so bad that our ambassador to the Middle east was appearing in proof of life video clips with Bibi Netanyahu to make sure that we, the junior partner, ensured the world that he wasn't killed. What a world we're living in. Let's talk about one of our other fabulous sponsors. The Joy Reid show tonight is also brought to you by our friends at Helix. Now, how are y' all preparing for spring cleaning season? Upgrading your home perhaps? Or maybe your bedroom? What about upgrading your sleep? Well, here's an idea how to get all three done. Helix. Helix is the world's most awarded mattress. Brand. Tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. Helix makes buying a mattress super easy. You take the Helix Sleep quiz, which I did. You can. It'll match you with the perfect mattress based on your personal preferences. How you sleep. Are you a side sleeper? Do your arm go numb because you're sleeping on your side? You sleep on your back, sleep on your stomach. However, it asks you those questions and then it, it, you know, recommends a perfect mattress for you. Once you get your mattress, you have this incredible Helix guarantee which gives you a risk free customer first experience designed to make sure that you're super happy, completely satisfied with your new mattress so you can rest easy. Sleep helix offers a 120 night, 120 night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty. Now last weekend was spring cleaning weekend over here at the Reed house and we did get in that garage and for good reason because we are clearing the space, clearing our souls, clearing the house so we can make room for our new fabulous Helix mattress. So excited about it. If you'd like to join in our Helix journey, go to helix sleep.com join for 20% off site wide, that is helixsleep.com joy for 20% off site wide do make sure that you enter our show name at checkout so that they know who sent you. Helixsleep.com thanks to everybody in the chats who are letting y' all know which of our sponsor products you've tried that you've loved. Keep giving us that feedback. We love it. And we'll let the folks at those sponsors know. Okay, take a look real quick at your president. And we're giving him to you, not me. And his new favorite regime change pet Talking about their next imperialist adventure. I do believe I'll be the honor of having the honor of taking Cuba. That'd be a good honor. That's a big honor.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

Taking Cuba.

[Joy Reid]

Taking Cuba in some form. Yeah, taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I could do anything I want with it. You want to know the truth?

[Senator Rand Paul]

They're very weakened nation right now. Cuba right now is in very bad shape.

[Joy Reid]

They're talking to Marco and we'll be

[Senator Rand Paul]

doing something with Cuba very soon.

[Joy Reid]

We're really focused on this, but we're dealing with Cuba. Marco, do you want to say a

[Katherine Stewart]

couple of words about it?

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

Yeah.

[Joy Reid]

I mean, Cuba has an economy that

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

doesn't work in a political and governmental system.

[Joy Reid]

They can't fix it.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

So they have to change dramatically. What they announced yesterday is not dramatic enough.

[Joe Kent]

It's not going to fix it.

[Joy Reid]

So they've got some big decisions to make over there.

[Fernand Amandi]

But Secretary Rubio, do you support, and I know this is up to Congress, but do you support easing the Cuban,

[Joy Reid]

the trade embargo if you get more cooperation from Havana?

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

Well, I'm not going to discuss what we would talk about or not. Suffice it to say that the embargo is tied to political change on the island. The law has been, the embargo is codified, but the bottom line is their economy doesn't work. It's a non functional economy. It's an economy that has survived that revolution. It's not even a revolution. That thing they have has survived on subsidies from the Soviet Union and now from Venezuela, they don't get subsidies anymore. So they're in a lot of trouble. And the people in charge, they don't know how to fix it.

[Joy Reid]

So they have to get new people in charge, new people like Marco Rubio. Joining me now, he's political analyst and friend, the fam, Fernanda Mondi. Fernand. I feel like if I'm in Cuba, personally, if I'm waiting on my liberation to be Marco Rubio, I think I'm just going to give up because we haven't been able to figure out how to do anything right in this region or any other. Should the people of Cuba be waiting for their liberation from Marco, little Marco?

[Fernand Amandi]

The answer is no. Joy. I think just like the people in Venezuela who were also suffering under a corrupt dictatorial regime and were expecting liberation day, which hasn't come yet now, two and a half months since Maduro was removed. I think there's a great concern that you could see a repeat, a redo if you will, of course, of that in Cuba with even the New York Times, the Miami Herald Axios reporting that there are conversations right now with the communist Cuban regime. And the idea, Joy, is, is that right now on the table, the idea is that the Castro regime, which is a vile, authoritarian, dictatorial rule, is one that could very well stay in place, emerged in spite of this taking of Cuba that Trump and Marx and others have talked about.

[Joy Reid]

Right. And if you go by the Venezuela model and even what is being hinted at, what Donald Trump would accept in Iran is that they don't particularly care if what they get after doing a quote, unquote regime change is a new liberal administration that cares about its people. What they care about is getting somebody who'll play ball. So in Venezuela, you still have the same regime. So they just lopped off the president and his wife broke her hip and the vice president who's running the same operation, same secret police, same terrorizing of the community, same suppression of dissent. No difference. It's just the top guy is gone and the underboss was like, okay, I'll play ball. And including play ball on resources. So if you take that to Cuba, which was depending on Venezuela for oil, it's dark there right now. They're having a hard time because Venezuela is, is playing ball and hurting Cuba to make Cuba's regime fall over. They'll just probably keep the same people and put in like an oil magnate or somebody that'll hand over the resources.

[Fernand Amandi]

Well, you know, Joy, the term that's being bandied about is client state. In essence, where Cuba becomes almost a client state resource colony of the United States. Now, let me be very clear. I am, I am the son of Cuban American exiles who fled that regime to make a life in this country. And thanks to democratic presidents, by the way, President Kennedy and then Johnson allowed my family into this country, gained legal status and became citizens. You know, we, we love the United States. We would love to see that regime fall in Cuba, but we would not like it to become another, if you will, dictatorial, almost China esque situation where you have a communist regime running the country, exploiting the population, but this time with a different master. That is not what any Cuban American wants. And that's why right now, South Florida, where I'm calling you from, Joy, is on fire because there has been a hard right dialogue about what's going to happen in Cuba here for, for decades. And now you see the Trump administration speaking a very, very different language with a lot of these Republican members of Congress. From the area have said down here, they've always said, no, no, Cuba will be liberated and have a quick transition to free elections that will be supervised. It's going to require tremendous amount of aid. And that is not, by all appearances, what the Trump administration seems to be signing up for down here.

[Joy Reid]

Exactly. They don't believe in foreign aid. As a matter of fact, they don't even believe in speaking to the people of oppressed countries. Voice of America was gutted by Carrie Lake. A U.S. district Court judge just said, no, no, no, you cannot do that. Judge Joyce C. Lamberti last month ruled that Lake had unlawfully taken and taken almost all of the powers of the chief executive of the network's federal parent, which is the US Agency for Global Media. And therefore, her actions since joining as senior advisor to the agency were invalid. She had fired thousands of a thousand people. 1042 employees had been turned out the door. They've now been ordered to go back to work. So if they're not even willing to fund Voice of America, which is supposed to be our way of getting over the heads of regimes like the ones in Cuba, and speak to the people, they gutted that, so they're not for that. So there's no evidence that the United States under this regime, has any interest in anything but a client state.

[Fernand Amandi]

Not only that, Joy, there is the specter from a lot of folks down here. They're saying, wait a minute, hold on. Is the idea to, quote, remove the regime in Cuba so that it's somewhat under US Auspices, so then they could begin the process of repatriating back all of the Cubans that have come.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Fernand Amandi]

United States, over the last several decades. And people are looking around saying, whoa, we did not sign up for this, ladies and gentlemen.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And by the way, you told your story. Marco Rubio used to tell the same story. It just wasn't true. Remember, he used to claim that his family came over as exiles running from the Castro regime. Turned out, nope. They flew fear under Batista and were not exiled at all. So he doesn't seem to care. But his. He has become conscripted as the faceman for this new hegemony. Right. So I'll give you the example in Zambia, a country on the African continent, the United States, through pepfar. One good thing that George W. Bush did was this entity that gives money to countries that have high rates of HIV AIDS. We were giving all this money. 1.3 million people in Zambia depended on it. They're essentially, now the regime is saying, we will cut that money and those 1.3 million will be floated out to sea. They'll get nothing unless Zambia gives over mineral rights. That's the kind of deal, quote unquote, that Marco is going around the world. That's like a hostage situation. That's the kind of thing they're doing with these countries.

[Fernand Amandi]

Well, I mean, look, they see these countries as resources, whether they be natural or physical resources, to in essence, be taken as to use the word that Trump himself used in the clip you play. Taken and then leveraged for whatever interests they have. But in this case, if the United States is using us, using them almost as extortion tactics in exchange for what used to be the benevolent forms of aid that you described, that changes the dynamic completely. Because rather than being a liberator, the United States under this approach is seen as a predator. Joy. Which is exactly what the Cuban people don't want. They want to be freed from the predatory communist practices of the Castro regime and transition, like any other society, to a free, democratic society. As you've said, we've a seen hostility to that concept when it comes to this administration. They are not the defenders of democracy and free rights and human rights, quite the contrary. And that's why I think a lot of people are saying, what are we signing up for here? We would love to see Cuba liberated. We would love to see Cuba become a free, democratic society operating under the rule of law. Something that hasn't happened there in over 80 years because Cuba has struggled with dictators. It's a funny thing when you think about our Cuban American voters who put Donald Trump into office. You think they would have seen someone in that mold. Clearly not. But what they certainly don't want is for their homeland to stay under a different type of engagement that has the Castro's or Castro progeny continuing to be in charge, because that's what's on the table right now. Joy.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, I mean, Donald Trump speaks wistfully of the Batista era, which wasn't a great time to be an ordinary Cuban citizen once you were really, really rich or a gambling magnate in the United States. He's trying to do that, like have our own personal dictator, our Venezuelan Americans and Cuban Americans in, particularly in Miami and in South Florida. Have they changed their minds about Trump, given the fact that he is mass deporting Venezuelans, who generally in this country, Venezuelan Americans tend to be Republicans?

[Fernand Amandi]

You know, I would say not yet, Joy. Let's take the Venezuelan community first. You know, there is still very much of a honeymoon phase. If you Will under the idea that, you know, they did remove Maduro and Maduro, like the Castros, not a good guy, a bad actor in every way, shape or form, also hostile to democracy. But the idea was, okay, well, are we going to call for free elections? Well, that changed when he quickly said a no to Maria Karina Machado, who was, if you will, the kind of leader in waiting that had been on the ticket that had won that election in Venezuela that was disputed then by the Maduro government. So there is a sense of, well, what's going to happen? I think in Cuba, you have this just built up sense joy now almost 70 years. There's just a desperation to see any kind of change that they still haven't turned. That is only going to happen if some deal is cut and they start to see that like that old song by the who meet the new boss, same as the old boss. If it's still a Castro or a communist government in charge of Cuba, that's when I think you'll see the souring on Trump. But it has not happened yet, if I'm being totally honest with you.

[Joy Reid]

No, I mean, it's very hard to admit that you've been duped. Usually people ride along right to the bitter end. One last thing I want to talk to you about, and this is pivoting back to our elections. Mark Wayne Mullen, who's supposed to be the new Department of Homeland Security, head of Homeland Security replacing Christy Dunlap, play a little bit of his exchange with Senator Elaine Slotkin this afternoon about elections in this country.

[Senator Elaine Slotkin]

Homeland Security has the mandate since the Obama era for securing our election infrastructure. That's an important job and you'll be secretary. The president has continued to say that he won the 2020 election even though there's been 60 court cases saying the opposite. He has said he wants to federalize the elections. He has said name check cities, including Detroit. He has said voting machines are inaccurate. He has said in the State of the Union, I was on the Senate floor, paraphrase that if his side doesn't win in November, then the elections were rigged. Which is exactly what he said eight months before the 2020 election. You have your own history. You did not certify the 2020 election. There are people at the Department of Homeland Security, three people specifically, who are well known election deniers now running election security functions. Who won the 2020 election?

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

Ma', am, we know that President Joe Biden was sworn into office. He was a president for the last four years. But I do believe one I believe my job as Department of Homeland Security secretary will be to make sure that we assure that the elections are fair and people can trust them.

[Senator Elaine Slotkin]

Does the federal government run the elections process or do states.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

It's very clear in the Constitution that the states control state elections, and then there is some federal oversight that's on it. But the federal government can set some standards. So if you're talking about the Save American act requiring you, which is within the Constitution, by the way, requiring individuals to be citizens of the United States, I don't think it's too much to ask somebody to prove they're a citizen of the United States.

[Senator Elaine Slotkin]

That's not what we're talking about. I'm talking about administering the elections. If you are Secretary of Homeland Security, do you feel you have the authority to put uniformed officers at polling locations in 2026?

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

Ma', am, we, we said why my officers would be there if there was a specific. They're not for intimidation. And I.

[Senator Elaine Slotkin]

Even though we don't need it During World War II, we didn't need it during Vietnam or the War on Terror. We never had to put uniform military there. Now, you feel that there's going to be a reason, that there's going to be an armed threat to the United

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

States that you said, I can't sit there and guarantee hypothetically what threat would be and not. Not. I'm not putting military. That's not within my uniform.

[Senator Elaine Slotkin]

Sorry, uniformed officers.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

But if there is a threat, a specific threat, say it's in a Jewish community and there is a threat that's specific to that, to that polling area, then we will work with local law enforcement. There'll be. There'll be a reason for us to be there, and it'll be known why we're there.

[Senator Elaine Slotkin]

I think the reason you're here and not Kristi Noem is because Americans trust their local law enforcement now way more than they trust ice. So I would just say, if we ever get to the point where you are being asked to put armed ICE officers at polling locations, we have lost the plot as a country. We have fundamentally lost it. And until I hear someone tell me that, that this man, President Trump, will actually allow us to have a free and fair election, there is zero trust here. And I cannot trust that he won't try and steal it again.

[Joy Reid]

I don't agree with Senator Slocking on a lot, but. But I think she's. I think she's. She's smart to say that. And it's interesting that he brought up Jewish Americans. Might be Threatened. She's Jewish, so I think he was trying to, he's trying to kiss up to her a little bit.

[Fernand Amandi]

Your thoughts, Joy, should we be honest with your audience? I mean, we always have. Go back to your old platforms. You know this, this is the, the classic thing that you and I have been saying. Not for the last year, for the last three years, for the last 10 years, Joy, it's been 10 years. 10, 10Ds and espanol. Okay. And the way the story always ends, the way the movie always ends. I hate to be that guy. Dear audience of the Joy Reid show, my favorite broadcaster out there by far is that the people hostile to democracy, the wannabe dictators, the wannabe totalerians, do not allow elections to happen. So I'm glad that Senator Slotkin and others are sounding an alarm that you and I were sounding 10 years ago. Remember we were called hyperbolic over the top Trump arrangement syndrome. Yet every step of the way they are following the dictators playbook. And unless we are absolutely vigilant and go into November thinking with the working assumption not let's hope they're doing the right thing, but they are going to try to and prevent these elections from happening. I don't think we're taking that threat seriously enough. But that is what they're doing. They've made it very clear, Joy, to Trump's credit, I got to give him credit. You may, you may not like this. He's never lied about this. He's never hid his attention. I say too, every step of the way, even before the election. Remember Joy, last time when he said no, I plan on being a dictator, he repeated it several times. He wasn't kidding. It wasn't a joke.

[Joy Reid]

Trump is notoriously cheap, yet his organizations have already printed up Trump 2028 hats like he wouldn't spend money on something he wasn't going to do. I mean, Donald Trump is very transparent. I'm with you. I say it all the time. I will give him credit for that. He's very transparent. He may not just be clever enough to lie, but he just tells you what he's going to do. We're not going to overturn the dictatorships in Venezuela or Cuba. We are Venezuela and Cuba, Joy.

[Fernand Amandi]

And you know how it is also especially someone like him who clearly is suffering from some sort of cognitive thing. But at that age there is no filter. What they are telling you is what they believe. He's not modulating, you know, playing for the audience. He is telling you what he is going to do and his Minions are saying, yeah, we're gonna help him do that.

[Joy Reid]

Correct. Fernand Amandi, one of my absolute favorite people to talk to ever, ever. I appreciate you, my friend. And we're just gonna keep telling them, and then we'll try to refrain from saying, I told you so when the bad things happen. We'll try hard.

[Fernand Amandi]

Thank you, Joy. Love to the family. Love the show. Congratulations on the platform. It's extraordinary as I knew it would be. Thank you for having me.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you, my friend. Thank you. And love to your family as well as your family. Is my family. Thank you very much. Fernanda is. We've been friends for so long, I feel like we've. We were young together. Now we're growing old together in this, saying the same things every year, and no one listens. And then the bad things happen and we go. We try to tell you. Anyway, welcome to hour two of the Joy Reid Show. Reminder that while we have grown to. And I'm looking at this, more than 431,000 subscribers. Every time I say this, the number is higher and higher and higher on YouTube. Bucket up on 210,000, 210,000 on substack, more than 500,000 on Facebook. We are growing and growing and growing. Our little Twitch Tribe is growing. All the different groups are growing. Our LinkedIn fam is growing. But it is still the case that the majority of people who watch this show are not subscribers. They'll watch it, they're interested in it, they may even share it, but they're not subscribers. I would so appreciate. Jason would so appreciate. We would so appreciate, and our team would so appreciate you all if you could just hit that subscribe button now. It would be amazing. These. These. These platforms all have an algorithm, and the algorithm responds to engagement if you're engaging, if you're in the chat. So we love seeing you all in the chats. And we. They also respond to people who, like, subscribe and share. So we just appreciate that it helps us grow. So thank you all very much for tuning in. We so appreciate you. We also appreciate the incredible people who have stepped forward to sponsor the show. I used to be in talk radio. It's very similar. The way that these platforms survive and are able to. To give you the great information that we do and we try to give you. And the history we try to give you is our sponsors that really help us and we love them. And one of the things that we do is we don't just say, hey, buy this thing. We try this thing. We try the thing. Before we say you should buy the thing or we try the thing with you because we want to be on the journey with you so that we're not telling you to do something that we wouldn't do ourselves. And one of those incredible sponsors is Fast Growing Trees. Now this is one that I was actually pre obsessed with and then they became a sponsor and I was like, goody. This is so amazing. So if you have never heard of them, Fast Growing Trees is America's largest and most trusted online nursery. So they have thousands of trees and plants. They have more than 2 million happy customers, including the reeds. They have plants for your yard, for your home. Fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs, houseplants. You know, those like privacy plants that people like festoon around their yard to try to make sure that they can have some privacy. They have those and they're all grown with care and guaranteed to arrive beautiful and healthy. 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So if you are ready to get on this green journey because plants are healthy, they give you oxygen, they're beautiful. We ordered a couple of fabulous trees that we're going to be able to just look out at and just get peace just by looking at them and seeing that beautiful green growth. That's just something that we're doing for our, you know, our psychological health. And you guys can do the same thing. You do not need a big yard or a lot of space. You can grow a lemon tree, a little avocado tree, a little olive tree, whatever, whatever, whatever you need right now. Bask Growing Trees has great deals on spring planting essentials, up to half off on select plants. And listeners to this show get 20% off their first purchase when using the code. Joy at checkout. That's an additional 20% off. Better plans and better growing at fast growingtrees.com using the code JOY at checkout fast growingtrees.com code JOY easy to remember. Now's the perfect time to plant it's springs. Let's grow together. Use Joy to save today. Offers valid for limited time Terms and conditions may apply. So get on in there. All right. So last October, before I get to that we actually Jason, we weren't able to use a couple of things that I want to go back to before I get to that. I'm going to go back. I'm going to roll back just a little bit. Hold on, let me get you the number. Let me get you the number because I think it's important for us to sort of go back and a couple of things we weren't able to get to. So let me scroll back. I'm just going to go ahead and try to see if I can find the number for it. Yes, if you could please find B10 whenever you can get a chance. Just let me know when you have it. Just put a thumb up or something and let me know when you have it. Because while we were talking about what we're doing in Iran, I want to go back just a moment. While we were talking about what they're doing in Cuba and what they want to do in Iran, the Joe Ken thing, there was one other clip that I didn't have time to play that I would love to play for you because the right is trying to use this as an own to say Joe Kent is lying. Again, I didn't say he was a good guy. He seems to me to be a horrible person. I do feel bad for him that he lost his 35 year old wife who died being deployed in Syria. So he has certain feelings about the idea of deploying troops. But he said something in 2024 that people are trying to use to make it look like he's lying about Iran and trying to hide the fact that Iran really is a threat to. Let me play that clip. This is B10. Go for Jason.

[Joe Kent]

Americans aren't aware of it. Our troops in Iraq and Syria have been attacked 150 plus times by Iranian proxies. And when we say Iranian proxies we got to be clear on what that is. That's the Iraqi government that we pay because after the Iraqi military we spent 2 trillion on surrendered to ISIS. We had to go back in there in very short order and stand a military back up again. And guess who filled the breach. The Shia militias controlled by Iran did. And the Iraqi government's controlled by Iran. So these Iranian proxies that are attacking our troops are 100% funded by the United States of America. We're funding the guys that are attacking our troops. And so it's like, well, then why do we leave our troops there? And that's always been my question. I think we should have had them out a long time ago. We can get into it when talking about my late wife, but she should have been out of Syria because Trump gave the order to get those guys out of there.

[Joy Reid]

Now, most people are posting a slightly different start time for that clip. But do you notice what he said there? Because I've been saying this since 2004, that if you attack Iraq, what is Iraq? Without the joke I used to tell, which isn't funny, but this is the joke I used to tell, you know, my sort of dark joke that I used to tell at work when I was working in NBC local, was what do you call Iraq without Saddam Hussein? The answer is Iran. The answer is Iran. Iraq, despite being a country that was run by somebody who was part of a small sect of the Sunni faith, not a proper Sunni, but he was an Alawite, which is a sect of the Sunni faith. The majority of the country are actually Shiites. They're Shia like Iranians. They actually revere the same mullahs that were the mullahs of Iran. They're the majority. They were just being suppressed by Saddam Hussein. So when you overturn Saddam Hussein, what you did is, is you turned Iraq into a tributary of Iran. That's just something I want to note. So that is not an own. He's saying our forces are getting attacked by forces Iran controls. Yeah. Because our forces are there. And I think the last bit of what he said that again, broken clocks, is true. If our forces weren't there, they wouldn't be getting attacked. They're not getting attacked in Detroit. They're not getting attacked in D.C. they're getting attacked where we are in their region, trying to control their resources and their oil and their space. One last thing before we get to our we got some really great guests coming up this hour. Jason, if you have B11, the other thing that I wanted to just very quickly touch on is the fact that we've had all of these rumors online that Bibi Netanyahu was killed by an Iranian missile strike, to the point where he had to do all of these videos doing a proof of life. He went to a coffee shop in Israel to show that he's still alive. So these proof of life videos are like a thing that he's having to do now because the Iranians are targeting him. Of course. I mean, he, they killed the, the Israelis killed their leader. They're targeting back. I want you all to look at a white Christian nationalist who works for the United States government, Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas who took himself. He's the ambassador to Israel, Trump's ambassador to Israel. He made it his business to film a pro proof of life video with Bibi Netanyahu. Here it is.

Mr.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

I wanted you to know the president asked me to come and make sure you were okay.

[Archive/News Clip Narrator]

Yes, Mike, Yes, I'm alive.

[Joy Reid]

I checked that.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

And I'm happy to see that. But he wanted to make sure because, you know, you guys get along too well.

[Joy Reid]

I know.

[Archive/News Clip Narrator]

And we shake hands with five centers in each hand, you know, But I have to tell you, I, I'm alive. But I have this card and. Yeah, don't read it. So it's a punch card. Today I erased two names on the punch cards and you see how many more to go on this batch.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

You know what the good news is? My name is not on the punch card.

[Archive/News Clip Narrator]

Your name is on the list of the good, good guys.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

Thank you.

[Archive/News Clip Narrator]

And, and what, what the president, the US Forces are doing is incredible. We're very proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with him and getting rid of these lunatics who'd like to develop nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to every American city after wiping out Israel, they ain't going to do that. We're wiping them out.

[Joy Reid]

I love it.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister.

[Joy Reid]

Good to see you. A white Christian nationalist, an evangelical pastor who is the ambassador to Israel, standing with the Israeli prime minister, an accused criminal fraudster whose wife is also accused of being a fraudster, who continually quotes the Bible, not the Torah, but the Bible, in order to convince people like Mike Huckabee to fight what he openly declares is a religious war against whoever the government of Israel declares to be the enemies, not just of Israel and as a secular state, but of Judaism, of Jewish people around the world, and of the United States as a Christian nation. I just want to note that, as I also tell you that last October, as we try to fight our way out of this white Christian nationalist hegemony in the United States, as it marries itself to the hegemonic impulses of Bibi Netanyahu, again, continually quotes the Bible to manipulate the American Christian public to going along with whatever it is Israel wants to do in the moment. Last October, a major religious leader on the evangelical far right, a guy named Pastor Robert Morris, the Texas megachurch pastor who built Gateway Church into one of the largest congregations in the United States. Last year, that guy pleaded guilty to charges that he sexually abused a girl in the 1980s. Morris, who was 64 years old at the time, entered the plea before Judge Cindy Pickerel, admitting to five felony counts of lewd and indecent acts with a child. Under a negotiated plea agreement, he was given a 10 year sentence but is going to serve only six months in the county jail. He must also register as a sex offender and pay 250,000 restitution. Now, we know that registering as a sex offender didn't stop Jeffrey Epstein, but there you are. As NBC News reported at the time, Cindy Clemensire, the woman who accused Morris of molesting her at age 12, sat in the courtroom surrounded by family as Morris accepted responsibility, a moment she sought for decades. The plea represents a remarkable fall for Morris, NBC News wrote, founded Gateway in 2000 in South Lake, Texas, and grew it into a mega church with thousands, tens of thousands of weekly attendees. His sermons were broadcast to audiences around the world. His books became bestsellers in evangelical circles. And this is important. He served as a faith advisor to President Donald Trump. Take a look at this video, if you would.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

Are themselves on the verge of becoming friends of pedophiles.

[Joy Reid]

And this is the thing they're going to be five years from now, friends

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

of pedophiles as pedophiles, I'm a friend of pedophiles. As a preacher of the gospel, that

[Joy Reid]

will bring them out of that grotesque sin, Right.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

So I'm a friend to pedophiles because

[Joy Reid]

Christ was a friend to sinners, Right.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

But the thing I'd return to the friends are pedophiles.

[Joy Reid]

That doesn't sound like a church growth mantra. According to a law firm called Leaf, Cabrazer, Hyman and Bernstein, which has offices in New York, San Francisco, Nashville, Tennessee and munich, Germany, nearly 400 Southern Baptist leaders, from youth pastors to top ministers have pleaded guilty or been convicted of sex crimes against more than 700 victims since 1998, according to a recent investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express News superstar pastors like Bill Hybels and Andy Savage have been forced to resign over allegations of misconduct. The New York Times published a recent expose on the sexual abuse crisis at evangelical churches. It mirrors all of the stories we heard about the Catholic Church starting in the 1980s. And while some churches have apologized for the abuse. Few victims have seen any restitution or justice. What's more, many churches work to protect themselves against the interests of their parishioners. And those victims who do seek justice or even just protection find themselves faced with aggressive legal maneuvering from the churches, many of whom use written membership agreements to enforce silence and prohibit any public investigation. This particular law firm focuses itself on the Southern Baptist churches, and it is there that they have found what feels like a huge pattern of abuse. It's a strange situation that's taking place at the same time that the Dominionist far right is imposing white Christian nationalism on the US Government and on the American people, led in part by Pastor Doug Wilson, who plays pastor for Pete Hegseth from time to time and at the Pentagon on occasion, and who became somewhat notorious for his statements about being friends of pedophiles. Join me now for our monthly installment of our series, Countering White Christian nationalism. Our Dr. Robert P. Robbie Jones, founder and chief demographer of the Public Religion Research Institute. His latest book is Backslide Reclaiming a Faith and a Nation after the Christian Turn Against Democracy. Okay, we're going to wait for his camera to bounce back in. Also joining us is Katherine Stewart, whose work has covered American politics, religion and society for the New York Times, the New Republic and more. Her New York Times bestselling book, Money Lies in God Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, which was published in 2025, was named one of the best books of 2025 by Foreign Affairs. Her previous book, the Power Worshipers Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, which was published in 2020, won multiple awards and formed the basis of the documentary feature God and Country, produced by the wonderful late Rob and Michelle Reiner. Katherine, I'm going to start with you because we are waiting for the I guess the demons have decided to come for Robbie Jones's camera. So, Katherine, you're up first. Let's talk about this dichotomy where you have a movement whose goal supposedly is to redeem American women and protect them both from the workplace, the stresses of having careers, but also they say, from predatory immigrants who would rape and abuse them. And yet it seems that the rape and abuse is happening inside the churches. Yeah.

[Katherine Stewart]

You know, there's a temptation to say, well, like every other organization or movement, they have their bad apples. But I think that's letting them off far too lightly. We're talking about barrels of rotten apples, and we have to ask, why do so many bad apples accumulate in one place? And I think the first clue is the fact that these leaders are routinely covering up for criminals and abusers in their midst. Because these organizations are incredibly hierarchical and authoritarian, and they tend to close ranks around the privileged members of their groups. And this happens over and over again. But a second point is that these are extraordinarily patriarchal institutions and cultures. That means that women have to be subordinate, children have no rights. And this is not remotely unique to Christian nationalism. Throughout history and around the world, male supremacy has really supplied the backbone of authoritarian movements. Fascist parties always glorify the virtues of manliness. Right. By which they seem to mean some kind of brutality, and they seem to despise the weakness of what they see as womanliness. Or that's how they interpret empathy and moderation and compromise.

[Joy Reid]

Right? And at the same time, and Robbie, welcome. We're glad that we'll be at that. The demons released your camera and we were. Rebuke those demons in the name of Jesus. You know, you see somebody like a Mike Huckabee high fiving with Bibi Netanyahu about killing people. Okay, let's just be clear. That list that he was talking about was a list of people that they wanted to kill who were in Iran. And they justify this by saying, well, Iran suppresses women. Iran oppresses. Oppresses women, and we need to free the women of Iran. And they're making that part of the justification. So. But their own theology says they would like to oppress women.

Well, I mean, let's just sharpen it right up. And I apologize if I missed this, but, you know, you mentioned Doug Wilson and Doug Wilson, Pete Hegseth, right, The man with his finger on the trigger at the Department of Defense and heading up this war, has called Doug Wilson his spiritual mentor, right? He sent his children to a school affiliated with Doug Wilson's church. He goes to a church that's affiliated there. He invited Doug Wilson to the Pentagon to preach there, you know, and give this Christian dominion sermon at the Pentagon as we're going to war. And there is just this sense of. It is all about a kind of a hierarchy. I think that's the key here. It's a hierarchy on multiple axes, right? So it is a absolutely. A gender hierarchy. Men are absolutely above women in this. In this hierarchy. Doug Wilson is on record saying he doesn't think women should vote, that we should repeal the 19th amendment, go back to, or go to what he calls household voting, where male heads of households vote on behalf of their entire household. Like, that's the vision. Here it is A racial hierarchy where white and people of European descent are over everyone else. And it's a religious hierarchy where only Christianity is the ascendant religion. Doug Wilson, like, just this week, was on a podcast saying that, you know, if he had his way in America, there would be only Christian church bells ringing in the public square, right? That there would be not even. And they had to be Protestant. There couldn't even be Catholic processions with the Virgin Mary, no Muslim calls to prayer on the. Because. Because he said the public space belongs to Christ. That's the vision, right? That's here. And when you get that kind of hierarchy there and there's white Christian men at the top of it, and no one can question their authority, this is absolutely just a system ripe for abuse, because his unchecked power right from the

top to the bottom, I mean, it's the Handmaid's Tale. I mean, in every way, it's almost like they saw the Handmaid's Tale as like an inspiration. And, you know, Catherine, there is a. You know, these people are not that sophisticated in terms of. They just kind of tell you what they're going to do. I look at this Save America act, and the big tell in that Save America act is that it would force married women to have to re register to vote and prove their identity based on their name change. Now, they're not going to ask John Donald Hamel, who we know as J.D. vance, who's changed his name four times. I'm sure he's not going to have to produce proof of citizenship and proof of his identity. But married women would be, I mean, would have the right to vote destroyed by the Save America act because you would then have to prove that your birth name, which if you change your name and you got married, is literally not the same name. They would then question whether you're a citizen and whether you can vote. And so that, to me, is a tell. They really would prefer that married women simply cede their vote to their husbands.

[Katherine Stewart]

That's absolutely true. And they don't want everybody to vote. They know that women tend to vote Democrat for the Democratic Party far more than men, and so they want to suppress that vote. This idea of not wanting everybody to vote is a long feature of this movement. Paul Weyrich, who was a leader of the old New Right back in the late 1970s, early 1980s, which in some ways set the stage for the current religious right that we're seeing today, the sort of Christian nationalist movement, he said, I don't want everybody to vote. Our Power in elections. Our influence in elections goes up when voting goes down. I'm sort of paraphrasing here, but let's not forget they've pursued a lot of voter suppression tactics, race based gerrymandering, voter suppression tactics. And now I think that Trump has become so unpopular, his numbers are really way down. He's very concerned about the midterm elections. And they're already setting up the, setting the stage for a lie of a stolen midterms. There was a recently a gathering at the Gold Institute, which is a Trump affiliated institute. Mike Flynn was heading up this sort of, they called it an election Integrity Summit. They're basically setting up justifications for saying that the midterm elections were stolen. They're doing it in the way that they did in the run up to, to January 6th.

[Joy Reid]

And I mean, I think that is clear the fact that the Save America act would also require every state to turn over its voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security, meaning to Mark Wayne Mullen, who will soon be in charge of that. Also a tell and Robby, do they have reason to be worried when you look at the data, your latest data about everyone other than obviously far right Christians who are kind of on an island now, do they have reason to be concerned? Is the war on Iran on top of the tariffs, on top of the war on Venezuela on top of, on top of, on top of, is it, should it be ringing alarm bells for Donald Trump and Republicans?

Oh, I think absolutely. You know, we're seeing in our last polling Donald Trump's favorability rating is down to 36%. It's the lowest we've measured in PRI polling. But more importantly than that is where it's dropping. And I was in one of the places it's dropping is by double digits is among Latino voters. Right. And these were really key for his reelection in this last election. So he's losing Latino voters and he's losing these voters in the Midwest everybody ignores. But white non evangelical Protestant voters. Right. They are a much bigger proportion of the electorate in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, up in the, up in the Midwest. And if he loses those voters, they voted 6 and 10 for him and every time he's been on the ballot. But if he loses those voters, not the evangelicals, but the non evangelical Protestants, it's game over all across the Midwest. So and then if he loses Latino voters, it's game over in a lot of other key places, including perhaps even Texas. Right. And so I think absolutely. And the other thing to remember here is that The Republican Party has become a white Christian nationalist party. Demographically and theologically and ideologically, they are nearly two thirds white and Christian, demographically speaking, in a country that is only 40% white and Christian.

Right.

So it tells you how out of step they are. And so in order to kind of keep that white Christian juggernaut in power, they really are going to have to resort to some non democratic means because the numbers increasingly just aren't going to be there.

But where the numbers are, Catherine, is still among white evangelicals, white Christians, as Robbie's numbers, you know, teach us. Can you just take us inside that world? And I'm talking specifically about white evangelical women. What keeps them on board?

[Katherine Stewart]

Well, it's interesting. I've spent a lot of time researching this movement and the way I do my research is I go to a lot of conferences and strategy gatherings and, and spend time in the movement. I think a lot of the women are sort of raised within this world and don't really know any other way. The movement also claims to defend women even as they're stripping women of their most fundamental rights by, you know, this. A lot of the trans, anti trans stuff is really about the pretense of defending women even as they're taking away our right to abortion or even birth control, right to control our fertility and. But you know, we have to remember that the movement is not just about evangelicals. If you're looking at the leadership, the movement would be nowhere without the involvement of a cadre of ultra conservative Catholic leaders. And the funders, I would have to say, are religiously all over the place. I mean, some of them are evangelical, some are Protestant, some are Catholic, some are Jewish, some are atheistic, I think, and seem to believe in nothing more than their own money and power. But really it's a kind of what they want is at the end of the day, economic policies that are going to increase their plutocratic wealth and also justify it. So there are billions of dollars that have flowed into the infrastructure of the Christian nationalist movement, into its various features. In some ways, you know, the religion is incredibly valuable because it gets the rank and file to vote a certain way. If you can convince people that abortion is the greatest moral issue of our time and you can get them to vote on that single issue, you can control their vote pretty easily. But at the end of the day, this is a movement. Of course it claims to stand for family values, but it's driving support for economic, like for politicians whose economic policies are actually increasing wealth inequality and making it so much harder for so many American families to succeed.

[Joy Reid]

But if that is the case, and we played, you know, something like 400, you know, you know, evangelical, white, evangelical Christian leaders, you know, accused of sexual predation against children. To start with you, Katherine, and then to go to you, Robbie, if you have data on this, why doesn't the Epstein situation move them then? Because if they care so much about the sexual abuse of children, the Epstein file should be a glaring red light that the President of the United States and his party are covering up probably the most aggressive and devious and demonic sexual predator in modern history.

[Katherine Stewart]

Oh, it's horrifying. We have an administration and a government that's committed not to finding out the truth, but about the most appalling pedophilia scandal in our history, most appalling corruption ring, but also to protect and defend the perpetrators. I mean, that in itself is really something. We cannot trust this administration to do anything but hide and perpetuate this appalling injustice. The details are shocking and yet they just continue to lie. And it's hard to explain. The information bubbles, sort of, I would say, propaganda sphere that the movement leaders have, have funded and directed at the rank and file. So many of them have been separated from the facts, which, you know, movement leaders know. If you can get people, you know, separated from the facts and make them afraid, it makes them easier to control. So, you know, you and I are reading credible news, which is fact checked and, you know, credible news sources, but a lot of the folks within this movement are really not getting that kind of news. If you spend your time watching Fox News and newsmax, getting your, your news feed from some kind of, you know, algorithm directed Facebook feed, you might not really be living in reality or understanding what's happening.

[Joy Reid]

And you may not be hearing, Ravi, that the President of the United States was accused of by at least one, well, at least two women that we have paper on of sexually assaulting them when they were 12 or 13 years old. Like the President of the United States is himself accused. And again, he hasn't been convicted, he hasn't been tried for it. But the FBI interviewed women in 2019, the year that Jeffrey Epstein died, who said that not just Jeffrey Epstein, but that Donald Trump himself himself sexually abused them. If that was any other president, this is all the right would talk about, right?

And these are like, as you said, these are FBI, you know, recorded interviews. They're credible accusations. And then of course, you know, we have Donald Trump already being convicted of being a sexual abuser, right? In a court, Court of law. So we, we know that, uh, it's consistent with that. So, you know. Yeah, you're right. This would be, uh. But here's what I think is happening. Catherine's right about that. When we measure on, on public opinion surveys, the power of folks who say I most trust Fox News or I most trucks, one one American News, Newsmax talk radio, their world looks very different even from other Republicans. Like we can measure sometimes a 30 percentage point gap between Republicans who say they trust any other news source and Republicans who trust Fox News or these further to the right news sources. So I think part of it has been, you know, this, this pedophilia. There was a pedophilia conspiracy theory in the QAnon, right, but it was wrapped around Hillary Clinton, right? That was the, that was the conspiracy. So it came through this tribal lens in its original form and it was everywhere in maga, in MAGA circles. I think one of the complicating factors is they were primed to kind of take this conspiracy theory seriously. And then suddenly when the Epstein files, we have actual evidence, right, of pedophilia, but it's coming at them instead of at their enemies. It becomes very challenging for them to psychologically process it because it all came as tribal information, tribally linked facts, right in the first instance. And it's hard to kind of disengage those things for many of them.

To stay with you for a minute, Robbie, because the other thing that we're seeing because of this war in Iran, not just because of it, but I guess in addition to it is this, you know, we are right back in the Islamophobia cavalcade on the right, and it is members of Congress, it is right wing commentators, but there is an interesting split, right? I mean, you have the MAGA base that are very much against this war who are siding with Palestinians and saying that Iran didn't attack us. And it's a weird thing where they seem to be defending these two groups of mainly Muslim people. But then you still have the hardcore people who are for this war, who want this war, and who are using Islamophobia very aggressively and with no response from Republican leadership.

Well, and I think the reason why there's no response is this is actually a concerted effort among Republican leaders to try to find a way to kind of do away with this split on the Iran war in their, in their coalition, right? So we can gen up enough Islamophobia and just make it about that. It kind of papers over the gap, but it's A weird coalition where you've got like basically America Firsters, right, over against the Islamophobes in a weird sort of way. And they're trying to kind of square that, that circle. But this is also very, very old. We got to remember, like there was a whole range of this. You know, it's no coincidence that we're seeing in multiple states legislation miraculously popping up at the same time against Sharia law. Right. Which is like an, an imaginary thing here in the U.S. it's not, it's not a threat. This is just something made up, but it is to kind of get the base riled up. But it's no coincidence that just as opinions about the war in Iran are following, these suddenly kind of accusations of a non existent threat of Sharia law are suddenly popping up. And, and because we know that like in the, in Republican circles and among Christian nationalists there is this anti Islamic thing, you know, so when we poll on this, for example, we ask about whether the values of Islam are at odds with democracy and the American way of life. It's 2/3 of Christian nationalists and Republicans who agree with that statement. Now, the rest of the country does not agree with that statement, but that's where the Republican Party is. So they know they've got a foothold, a strategic foothold to kind of, you know, dig a toe in. But it's a completely manufactured, I think, way of trying to, yeah, keep their coalition together when they've just got a completely incoherent approach here.

And Catherine, so talk a little bit about how where Israel factors in here because it does seem that the Mike Huckabees of the world, you know, the Ted Cruz's of the world, they express a vehement support for Israel, the, you know, Lindsey Graham's of the world, and they use that as the basis for their foreign policy and it's what they're using to try to get people to before the war on Iran. But where does this hyper Zionism play in tandem with white Christian nationalism?

[Katherine Stewart]

Well, these Republican politicians are describing the conflict in ways that involve religion and their theology. And of course, video emerged of religious right leaders praying over the President in the Oval Office. But, you know, it's hard to imagine that Trump himself started this war for explicitly religious reasons. I mean, Hegseth, of course, is another story. And you know, that's, we can get to that another time, but at a higher level, I think we should consider this war in terms of America's internal political dynamics. It's basically meant to serve the political purpose of the Trump administration and the MAGA movement. And this is where the religious nationalist, Christian nationalist messaging plays a role. So, again, even though Trump himself, we know is. Is unlikely to be pursuing an explicitly religious goal, it's clear that he wants and needs to shore up his support among his dwindling base, a disproportionate number, as Robbie's pointed out, of whom are adheres, you know, adherence to Christian nationalism or supporters. So he wants to establish a precedent, or at least an expectation about his unchecked power to use the military force or for that matter, do anything at all, domestically or internationally, without legal sanction, moral sanction, or even coherent explanation. I mean, again, this war has record levels of support among the American public. But MAGA didn't win. Trump didn't win by appealing to a majority of the population. Population. He won by appealing to a disproportionately mobilized minority. And that kind of religious language is meant to shore up the support of that minority of the population.

[Joy Reid]

Catherine, do you spend a lot of time focusing on Turning Point usa? Because it seems to me that the biggest way that they channel that kind of ideology into younger and younger people on college campuses was Turning Points usa. But there's a lot of a schism now, right, among maga, and it seems to me that it's not clear that Turning Point USA has the kind of power that it used to have. Is that true, in your view?

[Katherine Stewart]

There's a big schism over anti Semitism. There's a big schism over a number of issues, a little bit of, you know, power struggle. We're seeing figures like Candace Owen attack Charlie Kirk's widow and things like that. But at the same time, Turning Point USA is continuing to extend, expand its initiatives. They have a new initiative they're calling Club America that they're putting into public high schools in several states. That's become a very kind of robust initiative. And they continue to find and cultivate leadership. So I. I wouldn't write them off just yet.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, and some of that's being put into place with. Oh, sorry. With just tax dollars I should put out.

[Fernand Amandi]

Right.

[Joy Reid]

These are public schools that. That are being forced to open these Club America, Turning Point USA chapters. So even if their internal fundraising may be flagging, they're getting an influx of our tax dollars to set these up.

Right. And therefore. And they're being, as you said, they're being imposed on people who are demanding that it happen. Can you really tell us in the data, do you see this MAGA breach? Do you see it happening in terms of the numbers that you're looking at,

Robbie, you know, I think it's a little too early to see it in the data. You know, we're starting when you hear Joe Rogan and other people, like in different places, it takes a little while for that to percolate out into the data. But, but we, you know, we do see, I mean, even among evangelicals, for example, you know, we've got some new data coming out very soon and we're seeing just some, a little bit of pullback even among evangelicals on ice, even on the brutality of ice. And I really do think that there are ways in which the Trump administration is overplaying its hand even among its own base. Because I think these images of ministers handcuffed and tear gassed on the ground in Chicago, these images of people being shot, Renee Good and Alex Freddy being shot and killed in the streets, I mean, these in many ways are functioning like Emmett Till's photograph function, like the, the dogs and the fire hoses in Birmingham function because they're, they're generating an image of an America that people don't recognize. Right. And say, oh, no, this is not the country we want to live in. And even some people that are leaning that way, I think are, are starting to pull back.

One can only hope. One can only hope. Katherine Stewart, thank you so much. Robbie Jones, appreciate you. We do this every third Wednesday here on the Joy Reid show where we are trying to counter white Christian nationalism. The book One More Time by Robbie Jones. The latest book is called Reclaiming a Faith in a Nation. After the Christian Turn Against Democracy, we're going to make it available in the store. You can also do [e-mail] if you want to buy it from one of your local bookstores. Thank you both, friends. We appreciate you both.

Thanks, Roy.

Thank you. Thank you very much. All right, have a good evening. And this is where we stand. And I want to dig more into eventually the Turning Point USA situation. We're going to do that on Friday. I also have to talk to you about what's going on in Memphis, Tennessee, where you have legislators there trying to force on the school system a curriculum that would talk about the faith of the founders who had slaves, but not include the slavery part. Justin Pearson, Representative Justin Pearson, one of the great Justins that we talked about. The no, Justin's no peace. Justin Pearson has been fighting it. I had that clip. I did not have it for tonight, but I'm gonna, we're gonna play that on Friday. And talk about that because there's not just, they're not just this fight sort of on a surface level. And thank you for the wonderful compliments. Appreciate that, Tanya. Appreciate it. And we do love our guests. We have the best guests. We have the team that is bringing you all the best guests. We want you guys to hear from knowledgeable people who can help you. Then turn around and tell your friends and family what's on, going, going on in a coherent way with facts that are backed up. But yes, this is a thing that's happening in Tennessee where they're trying to force school children to learn about the faith of the founders. And I probably think they're not even telling them that most of them were deists. You know what a deist is? Deists are people who believe that there is a God but that God is non interactive, that, that, that, that God does not interact with people. So George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, yeah, they believed in God, but they believed that God does not interact with people. They were deists, which is probably how they could justify slavery because they didn't believe that God would like punish them for, you know, raping and beating their slaves because they didn't believe in an interactive God. So they're the opposite of what evangelicals are. They're not like them at all. So if you're going to teach about the faith of the founders, I wonder if they're teaching that. I highly doubt it. Let me play for you all one of the other just sort of strange moments from the hearing earlier today, the confirmation hearing from Mark Wayne Mullen. Mark Wayne, and this is when it came up toward the end of his hearing this question about whether at some point he was engaged in secret missions that are so classified that he can't talk about it at the hearing. And it was not Democrats alone who were challenging him on this. It was, it'd be your own sometimes. It was members of the Republican Party, including his nemesis Rand Paul of the

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

great state of Kentucky, Haitians on this. And so I have, I have zero issue with talking about it. But do it this afternoon. I don't have clearance to talk about this this afternoon. I don't, it's not me to.

[Senator Rand Paul]

Release program is a program that Congress assigned you to.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

Yes, this was within my official duties. Who assigned it to you, sir? That's not for me to talk to you about on this. I'm sorry, this is a classified. This isn't a classified. I'm sorry, I don't, I'm not trying to be ugly. You know how Classified situations.

[Joy Reid]

Which agency.

[Senator Rand Paul]

Which agency classified.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

Was. It wasn't an agency. It was. It was done here. Well, in the House on the time the House classified it, I'm assuming. I don't. I wasn't on. I wasn't on intel.

[Senator Rand Paul]

We're just not really aware of House. How the House classifies.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

I have. I have no idea. I know every time we spoke about this, we had to go to the skiff and visit about it. I know there was a. There was a paper that I had to sign before it even started. And I may be wrong, there may be more than four, but I know there was only. It was only me and three other people that ever discussed so secret that

[Senator Rand Paul]

we can't know about it. I would think that there'd be some paperwork in the skiff that they should show us saying, this is so top secret. And this was made.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

I have no problem. You're welcome to go to the House. This started in 20. 2015. It ended in mid 20, a little late in 2016. I have nothing to hide on this. This is too easy. I would really enjoy sitting there and have a conversation with you because I don't want you to have a question or question my character on this. So that's very simple for me. But I can't make that authorization. You guys know that.

[Senator Rand Paul]

Well, it's a little difficult for us to go ask about a program that has no name and we have nobody that we know to talk to about it. So I don't know how we would begin doing this without your cooperation. But I'm willing to hold the vote tomorrow. But you brought this up, that you were on a super secret mission that can't.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

No, I did not say super secret, sir. I said it was classified.

[Senator Rand Paul]

That only four.

[Mark Wayne Mullen]

Only four people know. Well, I only know if there was four people, there was maybe more people that understood it, but I know there was only three people plus me that was ever in the meeting. And so as far as I'm concerned, only four people was read in on this.

[Senator Rand Paul]

You were on the intel committee.

[Joy Reid]

Behold the meritocracy. The American meritocracy. Let me read the reporting from Lily Boudreau and Jack Fitzpatrick of M. Now that's their name. Now we give a right name. Miz now reports. Before Wednesday's hearing, Senator Mark Wayne Mullen seemed to be on a glide path to confirmation as the new Secretary of Homeland Security. But after some curious claims about supposedly classified trips, Mullen's nomination suddenly appeared to be stuck in a holding pattern. Pressed about past Comments he made about the smell of war. The Oklahoma Republican claimed Wednesday that he has taken, he had taken classified trips abroad in 2015 and 2016. Now Axios is reporting that they were allegedly in the Middle east. Okay. Trips that he couldn't openly discuss with senators in an unclassified setting. That presented two problems for the committee. For one, the trips may not have been classified. Senator James Lankford, Republican also of Oklahoma, who is a key Mullen ally, later said, that's his ally. That's his fellow senator. He's the junior senator from Oklahoma. And the other Oklahoma senator is James Lankford. He said one of the problems is the trips may not have been classified. That's his fellow senator from Oklahoma saying that. The other problem. Mullen never fully explained what he meant. The Democrats when where did you smell war? Senator Gary Peters of Michigan asked at Wednesday's hearing, referring to comments on Fox News in which Mullen described the way people taste it and feel it in your nostrils and hear it, saying it's something you never forget. Those are quotes. Mullen, who has never served in the military and did not disclose any travel abroad to the committee, said his experiences were classified so he couldn't speak specifically about it. That line of defense didn't sit well with Peters or with Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Rand Paul of Kentucky. Paul said he was skeptical Mullen was on a super secret mission, as you just heard. Peters, the top Democrat on the panel, also scoffed at the idea of a top secret effort by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which Mullen traveled with, rather than the intelligence or Armed Services panels. Mullen complained that the pair were treating the issue in a condescending way. Mullen then explained himself, or at least in part to committee members, behind closed doors in a special room where senators got classified briefings, where they get classified briefings. So he went into a. They called a skiff. So he goes into a skiff to explain what these super secret, sorry, classified meanings were. Trips were. But Democrats leaving the classified setting saying they weren't satisfied. And Senator James Lankford, his top ally and fellow Oklahoma senator, told reporters the nominee may have simply signed a non disclosure agreement. I would use more the term of non disclosure than classified, but I get that those are two different things. I think the terms are all being thrown around. I think Mark Wayne wasn't careful in trying to be able to articulate between the two. So this is this, this is what his best ally on the committee, his fellow Oklahoman, Mark Lankford, the one who I think is a doctor, but who said he would go ahead and vote for RFK Jr because RFK Jr promised to give vaccines a chance. And then RFK threw him under the bus. That guy. And I think he also was like, he voted against the border deal that Biden made when he was for that guy. That guy who's supposed to be his friend, said that Mark Wayne, who we're supposed to trust to lead the Department of Homeland Security, which is Border Patrol, ice, okay, the ones who are killing people, fema. But he's supposed to be in charge of all that. We're supposed to put him in charge of all that. He's supposed to be better than Kristi Noem, smarter than Kristi Noem, less corrupt than Kristi Noem, but he don't know the difference between classified and signing a non disclosure agreement. Now I've signed non disclosure agreements. Jason and I do documentary projects. When somebody pitches an idea to us, for instance, and they're like, we want to tell you this idea but before we can share this idea with you because we don't want anyone to steal our idea, we, we need you to sign an NDA, a non disclosure agreement. We sign it, then they're able to tell us their idea. That way they can feel confident giving some producers their idea for a documentary. That's not classified. That is not called. That's not classified, Mark Wayne. That's not classified. There are people who have signed non disclosure agreements for a job that they take working for a firm that makes, makes chips. You go work for intel or you go to work for Coca Cola. You may have to sign an NDA so you don't give out the formula for what's in Coca Cola used to be cocaine. It isn't anymore. But so you won't tell, they'll often have you sign an NDA. Are you telling us, Mark Lankford, that your defense, your defense of Mark Wayne Mullen, the thing that's supposed to excuse what he said is that he don't know the difference between an NDA and classified. He's been a United States Senator for how long? You're a senator. You don't know when something is classified or when it's just an NDA. But we're supposed to give you the how many trillion dollar million multi billion dollar budget you're supposed to be in charge of. Aren't you a business owner? Dude has a plumbing business that got PPP loans in the millions of dollars that you paid for because he didn't have to pay him Back made him very, very rich, even richer. But apparently a guy who figured out how to work the PPP system game, the PPP system so that he could make money for his plumbing business while being a senator. That guy couldn't figure out the difference between classified and an NDA. Oh, yeah, things are going to get so much better now that Kristi Noem has gone home to shoot dogs or whatever. Oh, we in the ghetto America, they don't turn. Y' all let this man back in the White House and turned America into the whole ghetto. They turned America into the gold gilded ghetto. I cannot imagine that you could. Yes, yes. Commenter. They. They managed to find someone even dumber than Kristi. No. Not easy to do. But leave it to the Trump regime to do it. Mark Wayne Mullen going on super secret, probably not classified trips, maybe to the Middle East. To do what? We don't know. Also, did he explain all the investments that he's done that have made his portfolio so much fatter since he became a senator? That's what I wanted to know. Is he a spy? Is he just pretending to be dumb, but in fact, he's like James Bond? Wayne Mullen. I don't know. I just know that he'll probably get confirmed because a lump of poop could get confirmed by this Senate because they're Republicans and he's a Republican and they're Republicans. And even if Rand Paul doesn't vote for him, John Fetterman will. And scene. Let's go to our moment of joy, because at this point, we need it. Yeah, he's too dumb to be a spy. That is true.

[Fernand Amandi]

I mean, here we have more.

[Joy Reid]

Wait, wait, wait. Don't play yet. There's no play yet. Don't play it. Don't play it. Don't play it. Let me set it up. So this moment of joy is a lot of fun. This is a.

[Katherine Stewart]

And.

[Joy Reid]

And, oh, my gosh. I'm gonna have to get the team to go ahead and look up the name of this person. I'm gonna turn on my phone here. This is a hilarious one because while we're talking about China, this is the China century. They've been mocking Donald Trump. Their new hotness is like mocking Donald Trump. They're doing things where they're pretending to pray over each other the way that the evangelicals prayed over Trump. That's like a new hotness. They're putting out videos, which are AI videos of Americans who are, like, sweating and sad over, you know, sitting in, like, factories and crying because Donald Trump has turned them all, you know, brought the factory jobs back. They're also mocking Donald Trump for trying to take over the Middle east. And those videos are going viral. So China is having a good time, but this is kind of their century. They are. They are. They are winning the Game of Thrones right now because we have a. We have an administration that ain't the brightest bulbs in the fixture. They're not the smartest. And so speaking of China, not everything they do is something to emulate. And this content creator who I'm trying to find it, and his name is Mr. Crooks. M y s t a crooks. Mr. Crooks said that there are some things happening in China that while we appreciate their coming hegemony, we're not gonna do. Okay, Jason, you can play here.

[House Democrat (Unnamed)]

We have more extremely optional activities in China. For another episode of Mina. Do this. And honestly, you can't convince me that China doesn't have some kind of, like, culling process going on, you know, because there's easier ways to do this. Normally they'd have at least, like, a railing or something. I'm hoping this is a parachute that she has on and not just, like, you know, her backpack for work. Because, honestly, think about it. If they could make these stairs, they could make this safer. You know, scale of 1 to 10, 10 being menarded, this thousands. Once again,

[Joy Reid]

I like Mr. Crooks because he. He goes through and he tells you the stuff that him not do. Only in Jamaican, he said. And that is that we also. What we may not do is have Homeland Security be run by Mark Wayne Mullen. If we were smart. But we're not. We're not a smart country. We're losers now, y'. All. We are. We are the biggest losers. That should be applied to the Trump regime. Every day, they should think about the things they want to do, and they should just take a step back and say, because this is crack is whack. This is horrific. The things they're doing are so stupid that it's kind of almost hard to believe that we live in this timeline. The Trump regime has probably broken the American empire permanently, and we have stuck ourselves what will likely become a ground war in Mesopotamia against a former empire called Persia, which is now called the Islamic Republic of Iran, which will now unite behind its mullahs, shut the Strait of Hormuz, and cause unending pain to the US And European economies. While Europe looks at Donald Trump when he says, please send ships to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. And Britain, Spain, Ireland, France, Germany, they look at him and they said, may not do that. We will do some things, but may not do that. Send ship to help you When y' all diss me and say me stupid and say NATO mean nothing. You know, like NATO, you don't want to listen to it. You know what, Trump? You want to help in the streets of horror moves. May not do that. May not do that. May not do this. You do it. Do it. Yes, do it. Yeah, I'm not do that. Have a great night, everybody. See y' all Friday. Thank you for listening to the Joy Re Show. Good night. Getting back to the basics Grassroot level

[Daniel Levy]

Let me dig a little deeper with the shovel plenty can't tell the force

[Joy Reid]

from the trees that I'm hard to

[Daniel Levy]

detect Like a black hole in a jar Injustice anywhere it's a threat to justice everywhere Let me make this clear

[Joy Reid]

I got a bomb the pit and I'll never fear the threat of poverty they don't want to talk about it they rap the party so I'm a

[Daniel Levy]

real talk about it for sure.