← The Joy Reid Show
Loading summary
Transcript170 lines
- [00:00]
Joy Reid
This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Selling your car should feel like one
- [00:04]
less thing on your list, not one more. With Carvana, it is just go to
- [00:09]
Carvana.com Enter your license plate or VIN
- [00:11]
and get a real offer. Down to the penny.
- [00:13]
No back and forth, no surprises. Just an experience you can trust. Like your offer, accept it, schedule pickup and we'll come to you with a check in hand. Your car, your timeline, your terms. Visit Carvana.com to sell your car today.
- [00:27]
Jake
Carvana pick up.
- [00:29]
Joy Reid
Fees may apply.
- [00:32]
Hey. Okay. Hello everyone and welcome to the Joy Reid show. Big up to the chats and to everybody who's listening and watching on YouTube on Substack Facebook, our wonderful twitchies on Twitch as well as those on listening on audio podcast platforms, Apple, Spotify, all the things our LinkedIn fam. Thanks to everybody who's watching. I want to make sure that you guys be sure to hit that like and share button. Help us with this algorithm, y'.
- [01:10]
Jason Green
All.
- [01:10]
Joy Reid
We're also trying to climb our way to 500,000 followers on YouTube by our one year birthday, our anniversary, which is June 9th. So if you know five people who are not yet subscribed or not yet listening, not yet paying attention to this program, please go ahead and invite them to be part of the family. So go ahead and send that. You can use the share button to do that. You can do the little notification thingy so that you can always be notified when we go live. Did I say hi to the substack people? Hopefully I said hi to substack people as well. So thanks to all to tune for tuning in. We have a really big show tonight or today. Tonight you can see that we're in the New York location, so be patient with a little bit of a sort of change in the way we do things because when we're in New York it's slightly different. But thank you for tuning in wherever you are. I want to make sure I get that thanks in. So let's get right to the headline. So once again, the luckiest boy in the world. America's big boy. Everybody's very, very lucky boy. Donald Trump got another break. He seems to constantly catch breaks no matter how stupid his behavior. America's luckiest boy once again was saved from his own foolish shenanigans as the grown ups entered the room and got him out of his latest hair brained scheme. This time it was Pakistan to the rescue. They brokered a climb down ceasefire deal. Two week ceasefire for Donald Trump that may or may not include Israel. Halting its assault on Lebanon. Israel is disputing the fact that that is part of the deal. But I want to show y', all, here's how the headlines looked in the wee hours of this morning when I was up very, very, very early pulling headlines. And you can see that like the headlines are not screaming success. The headlines generally said ceasefire happens but ceasefire happens however at a very high cost. New York Times is saying ceasefire happens but the US has been revealed to be weaker than people thought. Ceasefire happens but Lebanon's still in jeopardy. You can see that's sort of the tone of the ceasefire headlines. And I want to note that CNN headlines saying that Iran is actually claiming victory, saying that it is they who forced Donald Trump to accept a 10 point plan. Let me read a little bit from that CNN report that you can see on your screen. Iran says it has achieved a great victory and forced the United States to accept in principle its 10 point plan according to a statement from Iran's Supreme National Security Council reported by Iranian state media. As part of the plan, the US has in principle agreed to lift all primary and secondary sanctions against Iran and withdraw US Combat forces from from all bases in the region, per the Iranian Council. That's what they said on Iranian state media reading more from this CNN headline. The Council also said the US has recognized its continued control over the Strait of Hormuz. The Council said that they control that passage through the waterway and the control of that passage would be carried out in coordination with Iran's armed forces, according to the statement reported by state media. Iranian officials have released multiple statements, CNN says, following the breakthrough announcement of a two week ceasefire with the United States. An English version of the statement was obtained by CNN from Iranian officials and versions of the statement were reported by reported on by multiple Iranian state media outlets. The Farsi version of the statement that has been widely distributed by Iranian state media includes includes the US Acceptance of nuclear enrichment by Iran. That does not sound like a win. That sounds like a complete walk back of everything that the Trump regime said they were doing. Let me read just a little bit more. CNN says they've reached out to U.S. officials for comment and we'll have to follow up to see if they get comment. This is the quote, the enemy in its unfair, unlawful and criminal war against the Iranian nation has suffered an undeniable, historic and crushing defeat. The Council statement reported by state media read, our hands remain on the trigger and the slightest mistake by the enemy. If at the slightest mistake by the enemy, a full force response will be delivered. This is what the Iranian state media is reporting. And CNN is reporting that Trump, of course, went just batshit bananas on his social media, raging at CNN for the reporting. I just read. Now, this comes after his latest just absolutely insane posts threatening to literally end Iranian civilization. That was Donald Trump's latest post that preceded this complete walk back. A whole civilization will die tonight. Threatening, I guess a war crime. He claims that they have total regime change and essentially threatens to wipe out Iran. What does wipe out Iran even mean? How would you do that, Donald Trump? How do you think you're going to do that, say 4,000-year-old civilization in Iran? You're going to wipe it out with what? It sounds low key, like a nuclear threat, but that threat was literally subjected to mockery by Iran, including the Iranian embassy in Zimbabwe. The Iranian embassy in Zimbabwe clowned Trump by reposting his threat, saying that by 8pm if they didn't reopen the Strait of Hormuz 8pm yesterday, that he was going to wipe out Iranian civilization. He had an 8pm deadline. Donald Trump gave us all a deadline. World War 3, end of civilization in Iran by 8pm The Iranian embassy in Zimbabwe, in Africa. Can you put that back up again, Jason? I just want to read it one more time. I just want to post it. Read it one more time. It says 8pm is not that good. Could you change it to between 1 and 2pm or if possible, 1 and 2am thank you for your attention to this important matter. Ieasy. I mean, he's getting clowned by the Iranian embassy in Zimbabwe. And of course after the 8pm deadline came and went, Donald Trump completely tacoed. Tacoed hours after the supposed break. You will not be surprised that the calls for the 25th Amendment are growing, including J.B. pritzker, governor of Illinois saying he needs to go. Various congress members saying yeah, it's time for Donald Trump to get 25th Amendment did. It's not surprised because the way Donald Trump has sounded. Take a listen to one of the insane things he said before his supposed end Iranian civilization deadline. This is a four.
- [08:03]
You said Iranians would be mad if
- [08:05]
you stop these attacks, but why would they want you to blow up their
- [08:09]
infrastructure to cut off their power?
- [08:11]
Wouldn't that be punishing Iranians for the actions of the regime?
- [08:14]
Jake
They would be willing to. They would be. And it's suffering.
- [08:17]
Jason Green
They would be willing to suffer that
- [08:19]
Jake
in order to have freedom. The Iranians have.
- [08:23]
Jason Green
We've had numerous intercepts.
- [08:26]
Jake
Please keep bombing bombs that are dropping near their homes. Please keep bombing. Do it.
- [08:33]
Jason Green
And these are people that are living
- [08:35]
Jake
where the bombs are exploding. And when we leave and we're not hitting those areas, they're saying, please come back, come back, come back. These are the people.
- [08:45]
Jason Green
I don't know what they do. All I can tell you is they want freedom.
- [08:49]
Jake
They have lived in a world that you know nothing about. It's a violent, horrible world where if
- [08:56]
Jason Green
you protest, you are shot.
- [09:01]
Joy Reid
Donald Trump saying that the people of Iran, who he knows nothing about, want the US to keep bombing them so they can have freedom. Where is he getting this idea? Who is, who is telling Donald Trump this? Who is telling Donald Trump that? What? The people of Iran, really, They're just waiting. Any moment now, whatever neocons are in Donald Trump's ear and in his, inside of his rotting brain are telling him that the people of Iran actually want this. This is us being greeted as liberators. US bombing multiple universities, including Iran's version of mit, bombing apartment complexes, bombing a football stadium, soccer football stadium, bombing civilian infrastructure, threatening to wipe out all of their bridges and all of their civilian infrastructure, which would be a war crime. And he's saying, no, no, this is what they want because this is what they're. They're just waiting for this opportunity to rise up if we just keep bombing them. This is the president who revealed that we were secretly arming, using the CIA arming Kurdish protesters to be in the midst of those protests, which is what Iran accused us of. So he's, yeah, we did do that. This is the madman that's running our country who at the end had to climb all the way down.
- [10:19]
Jason Green
Donald Trump.
- [10:19]
Joy Reid
This is probably the most accurate headline here. Trump desperate for an off ramp. The Guardian reports that Donald Trump walked so far to the brink threatening to wipe out Iranian civilization. And he was desperate for some way, some way to walk it back, some way to get an off ramp so that he could not be completely humiliated. When at 8:00pm, when at 8:01pm Iran still existed. At 8:01pm Iran would have still completely existed. He will not have wiped out their civilization bombing them. Alexander the Great bombed them. I mean, has invaded them. They have survived multiple invasions and attempts to conquer Iran when they were Persia. And they've repelled every empire that's attempted to take them down. I was listening to a YouTube sort of piece the other day that talked about the fact that Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires, when in reality, Persia is the graveyard of empires. Because they have been multiple times there have been attempts to invade them. I mean, we're talking about some of the most violent attempts to suppress this. It'll never happen. Donald Trump thinks 250 year old America was going to wipe out their civilization by 8pm Tuesday night. That's a walk back you can't climb down from other than the nuclear option, either the United States or Israel. And so Donald Trump having walked himself all the way to the brink with these just absolutely crazy posts, including on Easter his praise be to Allah post where he threatens to wipe out all the bridges and wipe out all of civilization, all of these escalatory posts. Donald Trump finally has to go hat in hand to Pakistan for help. He had to turn for an off ramp to the one Muslim country that just happens to also have nukes and that also happens to be in the region. If we could throw up a six. I always love to put up a map because it's important to remember where Iran is. Iran sits opposite the Gulf states that are America's military base factory. We have military bases all over those Gulf states that are right across the Persian Gulf. And it's called the Persian Gulf for a reason, because they are Persia. But look where else, what else is in the neighborhood? Do you see up to the upper left hand corner of your screen? That's Europe. And it's important to remember that Europe is not a continent. They play like a continent. They get given they're sort of styled as a continent, but they're really not a continent. The continent is actually called Eurasia because Europe is physically attached to Asia. And what Europeans dubbed the Middle east, they dubbed it because they were talking about its distance from Europe. The Middle east as a nomenclature is all about Europe's centering itself and then saying everything to the east is either the Far east or the Middle East. It was all in relation to them, to Europe because Europe is physically connected to Asia. It is Eurasia. And at the top of Eurasia is Russia, which is spans both Europe and Asia. Below, just to the right of Europe, you see Turkey. And then you walk a little bit over to Azarbaijan, you got Armenia in there. And then you get to Iran. And then if you keep going east from Iran, you get to the stands, you get to Afghanistan, you get to Pakistan. You see where I'm going with this? Then you get to India on the other side and then China. So that is the, the Far East. That's what they call the Far east in Asia. The middle is the Middle east and this is what Europe said. But the problem for Europe and the Reason that Europeans are like not interested in helping Donald Trump get this climb down that he wants and going put their ships into that Persian Gulf to try to free up the Strait of Hormuz, which you can see is the little bump in the Persian Gulf. The reason they don't want to do it is they're in the neighborhood. We are not. It's them that would be at greater risk if Iran in fact does have longer range missiles. And the other thing is that they've also got a friend in the neighborhood that like Israel has nuclear weapons and it's called Pakistan. I went in a deep wormhole today on when Pakistan got their nuclear weapons. They started with really in the 50s, but built up this nuclear weapons program because India, who is their big rival in the region, they got nukes with the help of us, with the help of the West. The west preferred India. The Hindu nation gets to have it. And they were like, well, if the Hindu nation can have it and the Jewish nation can have it and the Communists can have it and the Americans can have it. Remember AQ Con, that whole thing that happened? The guy who delivered that, the sort of father of the nuclear industry in Pakistan, they got nukes too, because they said, well, India threatens us. We've been at war with India, the west is preferring India. Israel's fooled up with India, we're getting them too. It's the same logic of why Iran likely was at some point considering maybe getting nuclear weapons because there's an expansionist government in their neighborhood called Israel that keeps invading its neighbors and keeps threatening to bomb its neighbors, actually bombs its neighbors and is now actually at war with Iran and Lebanon. And so Donald Trump has to go then to the one other nuclear entity in the region, the one other nuclear power, Pakistan, which also has a deterrent capability. If you think Pakistan would have been INERT had the U.S. or Israel decided to use nukes against Iran, then you're really not thinking it through. The threat is on the table, in theory, that Pakistan has its own ability to respond to a nuclear threat against Iran, its neighbor. You're starting to see how the geopolitics is working and why so many countries are at least thinking about getting the bomb because they live in a neighborhood with an expansionist Western backed nuclear power. And if you're Pakistan, you also live next door to another nuclear power, India, which got nukes as well. So Donald Trump now, in launching this insanely stupid war, has really elevated other countries to a kind of global equality with the United States to a powerful position. Pakistan, a nuclear power, is actually a pretty important country. It turns out Iran, which is not a nuclear power, and whose former Ayatollah, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, did a fatwa saying, don't ever get nukes, but they still have the scientific capability. Even though we've destroyed the universities, you can see that they are now an important power that Donald Trump has elevated, elevated to a position of importance because he decided to partner with Israel and launch a war against them. What Donald Trump has accomplished, if you want to call it an accomplishment in doing this absolutely ridiculous, needless war, is to effectively end even the perception of American power, and particularly American power in the region. And he's elevated other countries, other. Other powers to a position where they are allowed and have the ability to negotiate with the United States on roughly an even footing. In many ways, Iran controls the straight. They controlled it before. They control it now. Donald Trump has done nothing to change that. It's actually kind of sad, weird to watch the American empire fall, but when history looks back at why it fell, they're gonna. They're gonna blame one person primarily, and that person is going to be Donald Trump. We have a great guest to discuss all of this, and I. I don't know if she's ready to go on, but let's go ahead and see if Representative Pramila Jayapal, a great state of Washington is ready to go. Okay, we'll give her. We'll give her a couple more minutes before we invite her onto the stage. We. We are in a. In a. In a problem as a country. When you have a president so reckless that he effectively wastes away the US Empire on a follied war, that makes literally no sense. There's Representative Pramila. Jay Paul, thank you so much for being here. Congresswoman, good morning, Joy.
- [19:18]
It's great to be with you.
- [19:23]
Can you hear me? The congresswoman is frozen. Okay, let's. Let's pull off stage for just one moment and see if we can get her unfrozen. Oh, okay. Okay. We can go ahead and bring Representative Jay Paul right back on stage. All right, let's see if I can hear you. There you are. You're unfrozen for me. Yes. How are you, Congresswoman? It's always good to see you.
- [19:49]
Oh, it's always good to see you
- [19:51]
are good to go.
- [19:51]
What's happening?
- [19:52]
So, you know, what do you make of all this? This climb down with the help of Pakistan. As a member of Congress, what are you being told about what the Situation is now between us and Iran.
- [20:07]
Well, first of all, we're not being told anything and we haven't been told anything really since the beginning of the been no hearings. The so called classified briefings told us nothing beyond what was already public. We've had no responses to our questions on how much the war is costing. And obviously there was no authorization for this war. I think now what the American people have to ask themselves is two things. One, how do we feel about a, an authoritarian madman that is sitting in the White House declaring that he's going to kill an entire civilization as a negotiating ploy that cannot be forgotten even though we, you know, there was a, there was a back down last night. But I think that this is a guy who needs to be impeached, removed, have the 25th amendment invoked. He should not be in the White House. The second thing is the American people have to say, are we better off for going to war, for losing at least 13 service members that we know of killing, you know, thousands of Iranian civilians, Lebanese? And the answer is no, we're not better off.
- [21:33]
So yeah, We now know that the NAACP has even jumped in on the calls for the 25th Amendment. And the NAACP has never done that before. They've never called for a president to be removed using the clause saying that he is essentially mentally unfit to serve as president. But is that a realistic call? I mean, we know who this cabinet is. This is a cabinet of fools. These are talk show hosts, you know, RFK Jr. Sort of a weird, sort of wellness weird guru, anti vax guru. You know, there's no one there that you could say is sort of a very respectable member. I mean Marco Rubio is just an old neocons. I'm sure he's enjoying the war. Like who in the cabinet would initiate such a thing?
- [22:27]
Well, I think it's not realistic in the sense that the people that are there right now don't seem to be calling for anything different. But I do think we have to let the American people know that these are the ways in which a president can be removed. And we have to have people call out the Republicans for refusing to do any of this. I mean, even impeachment is not necessarily realistic in that sense because you still need Republicans to pass it in the House and to convict in the Senate. And so. But I don't think that means that we shouldn't call for it because I think that it is important that people understand the gravity of the situation and that we really push people to push Republicans to stand up for our republic.
- [23:23]
And you know, the challenge is we've just seen no evidence that they have any concern. I mean, I half expect Speaker Johnson, you know, to come out with a, you know, a bill proposing to rename the United States as the United States of Trump, you know, or approve his arc to Trump. They just seem to be, you know, working completely on their knees. They're not interested in anything other than pleasing him. So, you know, what hope do we have? I mean, I feel, it feels like we can't wait for November to have something done about this madman. He has taken us to the brink of what he seemed to be threatening was a nuclear annihilation of Iran.
- [24:02]
Yeah, I think the hope we have is that the polling is showing that more and more people, including former Trump supporters, are with us on this. They don't like what's happening. And I think that we have to continue to push and be strong and be clear about the gravity of the situation. I do think, you know, there was one Republican yesterday who came out on voting for the War Powers Resolution. There have been a few Republican senators who have sort of indicated that they would vote for War Powers Resolution. That's the next big vote. We need to have joy, we need to have a vote on a war powers resolution to prohibit the President from going to war. Because remember, this is only a two week ceasefire and we don't really even know what the details of that are. But I do think it's critical that we immediately have a War Powers resolution vote and send a very clear message with Republicans and Democrats that this president cannot do what he is doing.
- [25:15]
I mean, in addition to, and I think that is important that we, there needs to be a war powers vote. Hopefully, you know, even Republicans, their base is even not in interested in this, in this war. You know, no one, I haven't heard anyone say they're excited to send their sons and daughters off to the, you know, they said the PDX that lets daughter still serve to die for this, for Iran and Israel's adventure misadventure with Donald Trump. But Donald Trump, you know, some of the language even, you know, it, it feels genocidal. Congresswoman. I mean calling the Iranian people animals or I guess he's saying the leadership are animals. When he was asked how would it not be a war crime to destroy all of their infrastructure and he says, well they're animals, you know, refer. I mean the language is getting very Netanyahu like,
- [26:03]
no question. You know, I think that that tweet, I mean all of his tweets shock us. But there some level of, oh, this is what he does that I think is dangerous sometimes, honestly. But this most recent set of tweets and language where he threatens the annihilation of an entire civilization, it is genocidal. It is completely unhinged. And that's why I think that even though the immediacy of the moment where we thought we might be entering World War Three this morning is, Is not the case, thank goodness, we can't let this go. And I guess that's why I think it's so important that we continue to push very hard against this language and for accountability and force Republicans to stand up. And, you know, if they, if they want to continue to support the president, they should do that, but we have to force them to take a position.
- [27:18]
In addition to what's happening in the war, which is bad enough, there's also domestic challenges. We know that Department of Homeland Security Republicans have refused to accept the deal that even the United States Senate seems to be okay with, which is funding everything except ice. They are demanding that ICE gets fully funded. They've got a new DHS leader, Mark Wayne Mullen. Let me let you hear what he had to say about sanctuary cities that he feels should be punished in a very, very strange way. Take a listen.
- [27:57]
Jake
Your state as safe as my state.
- [27:58]
Jason Green
But, Mr. Secretary, you know, the issue here is that you have states and cities that are sanctuary states and cities. And that's part of the issue. It's part of the problem. We saw it in Minnesota.
- [28:09]
Jake
How do you get around that? Well, I believe sanctuary cities is not lawful. I don't. I don't think they're able to do that. And so we're going to take a hard look at this. Just one area we may take a hard look at is some of these. Some of these cities have international airports. If they're a sanctuary city, should they really be processing customs into their city? Seriously, if they're a sanctuary city and they're receiving international flights and we're asking them to partner with us at the airport, but once they walk out of the airport, they're not going to force immigration policy. Maybe we need to have a really hard look at that because we need to focus on cities that want to work with us.
- [28:52]
Jason Green
So you're saying that big cities that are sanctuary cities that have a big airport, they might lose their customs?
- [28:58]
Jake
Well, I'm saying we're going to have to start prioritizing things at some point right now. Remember, the Democrats are wanting to defund customer Border Patrol well, who, who, who processes those individuals and they walk off the plane. So I'm going to have to be forced to make hard decisions. Who's willing to work, work with us and partner with us? Once again, I'm not going outside the policies that Congress passed for me and we're not trying to push those, but we're saying you got to partner with
- [29:21]
Jason Green
some of the criticism is that Congresswoman
- [29:25]
Joy Reid
just going through our wonderful interns pulled just a list of some of the states that the federal government designates as sanctuary states. California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, district of Columbia, D.C. obviously Illinois, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and also counties, Baltimore County, Cook County, Illinois, where Chicago has two airports. I could go on New Mexico, Philadelphia, Rochester, New York, Chicago. Is, is Mark Wayne Mullen seriously saying that there would be no customs agents at major airports? Does he think that the cities run customs in the airports? I do not understand what he's talking about. Do you?
- [30:08]
No, no. The simple answer is no, I don't understand. Seattle is an international airport. We have major traffic that comes through here. You know, he's wrong on all counts. And this is the thing about Mark Wayne Mullen. He is not an expert in these matters. He was picked to do this very quickly and he has a nice soft demeanor with some of his Senate colleagues. I guess that, you know, that they, that some of them were saying nice things about him. But he doesn't know anything about this. And sanctuary city laws have been upheld over and over again in the courts because it's not lawful for the United States government to threaten to withhold funding in one area because of something that they are trying to do, get us to do in another area that is not our local state jurisdiction. And so the idea that you would shut down customs makes zero sense, not only for the economy of this country. I mean, can you imagine if you shut down customs privileges and all the major airports in the country and force people to only go through one or two Republican states? It's just, it's not logical, it doesn't make any sense. And it just shows that he's out of his depths, frankly, and still listening to Stephen Miller and the right wing folks that were advising Kristi Noem and led to her failure. So this has to be, you know, look, I think we're still going to have problems with Mark Wayne Mullen and dhs. And it's exactly why Democrats have held very strong in saying we're not going to fund ICE and CBP because we don't see the reforms that really need to be made to hold this sprawling, unaccountable, lawless agency accountable for shooting Americans in the streets, for detaining and kidnapping people, for deporting the spouse of a service member when she goes in for her check in. I mean, this is outrageous cruelty. And I think Mark Wayne Mullen, unfortunately is going to learn the hard way that he's going to have to stand up and assert himself against the Stephen Millers. I'm not holding my breath for that to happen.
- [32:33]
I think no one is. I mean, Mark Twain Mullen, I mean, maybe he's a perfectly lovely human being, but Lord have mercy, we don't have not a great candle wattage in this administration. I'll just say it that way. I'll make that my comment and not yours. Congresswoman Pramila J. Paul, thank you so much. I really appreciate you being here. Thank you. And have a great rest of your day. Thank you, Joy. Thank you. All right, you all, I'm going to, I'm going to throw on my, my headphones here. So we're going to just do it. We're going to do a real time switch up to just get my headphones on. It is, it is absolutely bananas what we have running this country. And it's, it's embarrassing and actually quite sad. But what's not sad and it was actually makes me quite happy is our wonderful sponsors. And let me let you all know that the Joy Read show is brought to you by our friends at Remy. So we all know that getting a good night's sleep is hard enough without issues like teeth grinding. You know, the grinding your teeth can like, literally not only make you uncomfortable, but it's actually unhealthy for your oral health and it can also keep you awake. Teeth clenching, grinding, it's all so difficult to deal with. Well, that is why I trust Remy to protect my teeth. Using their custom night guard, which is being used by more than 350,000Americans. Remy night guards are clinically tested and FDA cleared to prevent teeth damage from grinding, to reduce jaw tension and facial muscle strain, and also to improve your sleep quality. Because we, we all need better sleep now. You get the same professional quality and comfort as a night guard from a dentist for 80% less of the cost by taking your own impressions from the convenience of your home. Here's how it works. After you purchase from Remy, your impression kit comes straight to your door. You just follow Remy's easy step by step instructions to get your perfect impression. Remy then crafts and ships your custom fit night guard you get your night guard right back and you can start protecting your teeth. And this is a game changer, not just for oral health, but also for your sleep health, which is super important. So listen, if you want to protect your teeth with Remy, simply use code Joy to get 50% off your new night guard. That's 50% off and you can find it at shop Remy.com that's shop R M I dot com Joy with the code Joy. Thank you so much, Remy, for sponsoring this episode. So let's get into some election news. This one was sort of a bad news, good news sorts of thing, right? So Donald Trump's preferred candidate won the seat that is currently held by Marjorie Taylor Greene. She's leaving Congress, as we know. She will be gone as of January 5th. She's going to serve out the rest of her term and the fight to replace her. It felt like an opportunity for Democrats to maybe get a pickup, but in fact, in the end, the Trump picked guy won. But it was not a win. That was completely without good news for Democrats. Here's what happened. The Republicans definitely held the seat. But if you go county by county, what you saw were between 20 and 30 percentage shifts in the vote toward the Democrats. And so again, Democrats did not pick up a seat. It was a, you know, we had the Democratic candidate on this very show to talk about running for that seat. But this is the reason it's important for people to at least try and run, Right? You've got to try for every seat because even if you don't win it outright, that movement in the vote represents potential votes that can also be picked up in statewide races down the road. And we know that John Osof is running for reelection. And so having that shift even in a very red, deeply, deeply ready district. And we know that Marjorie Taylor Greene's desk is like, you know, it's like R+20 or something. It's very, very red. It might be more than that. Having that shift happen is actually a pretty big deal because it means that there are electoral opportunities that Democrats may not have considered. But also there's work that can be done to pick those votes up again when it comes to the statewide races, there's a governor's race and a Senate race coming up in November. All right. Well, joining me now to discuss all the things is Jason Green, former associate White House counsel and national voter registration director for the Obama campaign and associate White House counsel. He's got a new book out which is called Too Precious to Lose. We're going to talk about that book as well. It's available in the Joy Reid shop. Jason Green, welcome to the show.
- [37:48]
Jason Green
Joy, good to see you. Thank you for having me.
- [37:51]
Joy Reid
Thank you for being here. So let's talk about this. I mean, when you worked on, obviously, the Obama campaign, I worked on in a very small way, the first one. And people saw him as such an unlikely win because of his race, because of his name, all those things. But the race was really about sort of making the impossible possible by just doing the work on the ground and picking up votes. What do you make of the Democrats real sweep of many of these special elections this year and the shift that we saw in Marjorie Taylor Greene's district?
- [38:26]
Jason Green
I think you're absolutely right. And you played a large role, Joy, don't discount the role that you played on that in the election. I think you're absolutely right. One of the things the Democrats have to continue to make sure that they're doing at the same time that we're thinking about some of the process issues, the democracy level issues, the constitutional issues, we need to keep bringing this back to what's happening in people's pocketbooks and pocketbook issues. And you'll remember when we were running that campaign, which feels so long ago, in 2007 and 2008, people didn't know Barack Obama. We had to humanize him. We had to make him very personal, both he and Michelle.
- [39:01]
Joy Reid
Right.
- [39:01]
Jason Green
That's why we talked about Barack and Michelle, to bring them into people's living rooms so they could just feel connected, connected to them, but they could also feel like he was prepared to serve them. He was willing to potentially lose an election to bring forward issues that were going to make a difference in people's lives. Health care being, you know, primary example of that. I think that's what's so important. So people need to hear when we talk about this anti Trump rhetoric that exists, that those are very good fundamentals for the midterms, but that doesn't transition into votes unless people are actually able to turn that into these. The pocketbook issues are actually going to
- [39:33]
Joy Reid
take people to the polls, right? Exactly. And everyone seems to think that just saying the word affordability is doing that. You know, we've seen, you know, Hakeem Jeffries sort of do that. We've seen Chuck Schumer do it. And it's filtered down to the caucuses. It's more than just saying the word affordability. Right. I mean, Barack Obama, Senator Obama at the time, he wasn't just saying sort of vaguely, I'm Going to give you health care. He was making specific promises of what he would implement and also, you know, demonstrating a passion to actually do it, that it wasn't just rhetoric. So what do you make of this sort of, you know, trying to sort of mamdani themselves on the Democratic side?
- [40:18]
Jason Green
Yeah. In the book Too Precious to Lose, one of the stories that we talk about, Joy, is my grandmother, right? So I go and I spend some time with my grandmother and we would. She reminded me that we used to go to the hospital to sit with people late in life. And as a five year old kid, with my grandmother about to go into these rooms, Joy, I would express concern. I'd say, what can I do? I can't help them. I'm only five years old. And my grandmother would say, we are here to serve somebody, not save somebody. And what that meant is that we were there to manifest love and to offer the services that we could provide to meet that person where they are and move them in their station of life. And I think that's the same orientation that we need out of our elected leaders right now. Those that are aspiring to be elected leaders, you know, call me old fashioned, I think that service is a manifestation of love. But it's the point that you're making. If you love enough to want to improve someone's lot, then you have to demonstrate how we're actually going to effectuate that. What are we going to do? Show the innovation, show the ideas and then to your point, show the capacity to actually execute that from a governing perspective. How do you actually bring that into existence? How are we going to meet people at their concerns about rent, about health care, about child care? These are very significant concerns in people's life, in my life. And how are we going to bring policies to the four that are going to move that forward and make them believe that we can actually bring that, get those things done.
- [41:41]
Joy Reid
You jumped ahead and talked about the book. I want to talk about it a little bit. You tell the story of a town called Quince Orchard in Maryland. Talk a little bit about Quint's Orchard. And what will people learn from this book that can teach us how to get out of the mess that I think we all feel we're in today.
- [42:01]
Jason Green
So the book Too Precious to Lose, it starts with me sort of responding to Dr. King's question from 1967. He asked, where do we go from here? Chaos or community? Which I think is such a prophetic question in 1967 and such a relevant question today. And to your point, I Go back to Quinch. I leave the Obama White House. I was there for four years. I go back to my grandmother's hospital room, the same place used to take me when I was five years old, and introduced me to this idea of service. And I go and I sit at the knee. I sit with the elders and learn the stories. And she takes me back in time to this place of Quince Orchard, which is where she grew up, which was a small rural community segregated by law, but. But interdependent economically. And I was moved, Joy, by two stories, one of which how my ancestors helped found that community three years after emancipation, and the other a hundred years later, when my grandmother helped the black church that my great, great, great grandparents founded in 1868. Well, in 1968, she helped that church merge with two white congregations themselves segregated over the issue of slavery. She helped those churches come together in the wake of Dr. King's assassination. And to your point, about what do we learn today as we feel that these are chaotic times? We feel unmoored, and as the ground is moving beneath us, I sense that there's a tendency to reach for control. How can I control my little section of the world? But what history has taught us is that that doesn't serve our purposes, to isolate and seek for control. What my grandmother would say is, in these moments, in response to chaos, we need to find those elements of connection. How do we bridge, how do we build alliances, how do we be stronger together that can help us through these really difficult times.
- [43:49]
Joy Reid
Well, it's difficult to do that. I think when people see how, frankly, insane Donald Trump seems, how racist his administration is literally trying to. To drum black leaders out of the Pentagon, erase the history of black heroes and indigenous heroes, the code talkers, anyone who's lgbtq, just wipe their name off of buildings and off of ships and just return the Confederate statues to a place of prominence at West Point. It all feels so. So absolutely insane. And I think people look at somebody who would vote for that and think, well, there's no community with them. You worked for a sane president. You worked for President Obama. When you look at this, do you even recognize the presidency in Donald Trump?
- [44:47]
Jason Green
Oh, it's such a good question, Joy. When I think about the time that I spent in the White House Counsel's office, and part of my job was to. To protect the name, the image, the likeness of the president, the first family, the White House itself, all of our insignia and symbols, and so obviously had a deep appreciation for all of that, but developed an even deeper Appreciation for that. And in the book, one of the things I talk about is how hurt I was to see those signals and symbols used as political props. All that you're talking about sort of trying to erase and break down everything that the Obama administration, the Biden administration, and other administrations before were able to build. And so what we talk about in the book isn't necessarily to go off and hold hands with the folks that are supporting this administration and Singh Kumbaya, but it is about how do you recognize that we are in these existential moments, which is what you're describing. Right. And how do you. What those churches had to face was that they were at the extinction. I think that's step one is to realize the dire moment that we're actually in and to address it. The second step is then to realize what relationships are valuable, to actually move this conversation forward. What happened in 1968 is they realized that they had some assets, they had some liabilities, they needed support, and they were able to find a strong partner in that work. And then to make it successful, they were able to put that objective beyond sort of personal ego. There are a lot of folks who were in line to be the next preacher or the next head of the women's or the youth or the church group, and they had to put that on the back burner in pursuit of the overall objective. And so I think that's part of what we need in these moments. Donald Trump's efforts to sow chaos are just that chaotic and distracting. And so we can't allow ourselves to be fully distracted from the need to recognize that dire components of this moment and put together a plan that allows us to be successful coming out of these moments of despair.
- [46:51]
Joy Reid
I have to ask you a personal question. What did you feel when you saw the East Wing destroyed? Oh, I think, I think we had an Internet gremlin. Are we gonna get Jason Green back?
- [47:15]
Let's see.
- [47:16]
Oh, I think he's back. We got you. I think we got you back. Hold on. Yes, we got you back.
- [47:25]
Jason Green
Yeah, sorry about that.
- [47:26]
Joy Reid
I know that I, I, I, I. It almost was physically painful watching the East Wing, just having been there a few times, you know, for the, for the Christmas parties where the press gets to come and greet the first family and be. Having taken family members. There are kids there. Seeing that building destroyed was painful, I think, for a lot of Americans. What, what, what did you make of it? Beyond painful.
- [47:52]
Jason Green
One of the scenes that I paint in the, in the book, Too Precious to Lose, is that I would get to work early and enter on the East Wing of the building and walk through the East Wing, underneath the building, watch it wake up in the morning. The trials and tribulations of working in the White House Counsel's office were many. But that morning, walking into the East Wing, watching that building come alive, mingling with some of the tourists that just had this awe on their face, to be in the People's House, that made it worthwhile. And the same, when I would depart the building at the end of the day and go out the north, the North Portico and watch people strewn upon the fences looking up at that building because they believe that it stood for democracy and peace and trying to make the American people better. When I see these actions of demolition, both physical, could there be a better manifestation of that than the tearing down the East Wing? But when we're trying to erode these democratic principles and norms, that's where my heart. There's such a belief amongst the American people and then around the world that look at this building, this country, our institutions, as shining beacons of hope, democracy and light. And that's part of our responsibility. When I think back to what happened in 2007 and 2008, when we were a part of that Obama administration, he attracted thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people to be a part of a movement of service, to be at service to our fellow citizens of this country, to be proud of serving in this government, to try and dream that it might be bigger and better than our ancestors ever thought it might be. And to see that eroded breaks my heart every day.
- [49:31]
Joy Reid
Were you shocked at how severely the Obama two term presidency seems to have triggered Donald Trump? I mean, it seems that he, you know, Barack Obama lives in his head 247 and, you know, he ripped up the Iran nuclear deal just because Obama did it. I guess because he wanted to also go to war with Iran. He seems to have been inspired to run for president by the White House correspondence skit that was done by President Obama in which he embarrassed Donald Trump while Donald Trump was sitting there. It seems that much of his presidency is a response to President Obama taking, trying to rip up the Affordable Care Act. You could name, you know, any dozen things he's done that seem specifically focused on erasing the presidency of the man you worked for.
- [50:26]
Jason Green
This feels like an opportunity for Key and Peele to do a new sketch where President Obama could say one thing and Donald Trump will do the exact opposite. Maybe we could get some real progress done. I think that there is an opportunity for that. I know that our old boss would think about living to your point in Donald Trump's head. I think about like the save Act. I think about these ideas and discussions around, quote, unquote, trying to achieve election integrity. When this is a man who rose to political prominence on the back of the birther ism scandal, he brought that into existence. And even after we died, demonstrated and showed the president's birth certificate, you know, that wasn't enough to satiate because obviously that was never the issue and never the concern. And so I truly think that we need to have a little bit of opposite day. We can get the president saying President Obama saying some things that President Trump will react to. I think he's that transparent. We could actually move some policy forward in the way that we would like to see.
- [51:27]
Joy Reid
Are we going to see President Obama or the Obamas on your book tour, man? Are we, are we. Can we expect to see, see you hanging out?
- [51:33]
Jason Green
I'm trying very hard to see, to have them join. They do have the book, so I'm hopeful that, that we get to see them participate. And it's, I'm looking forward to being in Chicago for the opening of the Presidential center and hopefully we can do some collaboration around that in June.
- [51:49]
Joy Reid
Yeah, I am hoping to get to that, too. Jason Green, congratulations on the book It's Too Precious to Lose, A Memoir of Family, community and Public possibility. And y', all, you can pick it up in the shop. Please support this brother. Thank you very much. And it's, it's good to meet you online.
- [52:05]
Jason Green
Good to see you online. Thank you, Joy. Such a pleasure.
- [52:07]
Joy Reid
Thank you so much. Take care. All right. Well, there you go. Jason Green, a veteran of the last. Well, this. Well, we had two decent presidents. We can give, we can give Biden somewhat of a break other than the, the Middle east policy was pretty trashy, but yeah. So there we have it. There we have it. Let me give you guys a couple of, a couple of other headlines before we catch a little ad break. Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, has designated unto himself the power to declare any group that he wants to be terrorists, domestic or foreign terrorist organizations, and to expel state university students who support those organizations. I think you can guess which organizations he has in mind. And you can just presume that they are pro Palestinian organizations. And to be able to expel students from school if he doesn't like the organizations they're a part of. Florida is a truly, truly scary place. So there's that. The other thing. Oh, and I should have asked this Question on Jason to Jason Green. I should have asked him about this. But if you're in the state of Virginia, I want to remind you all one more time that Barack Obama's name and likeness are being misused to try to convince you to vote no on this gerrymandering amendment that would temporarily gerrymander Virginia to give it a 10 to 1 Democratic congressional majority in response to the fact that Donald Trump got Texas to gerrymander that state and to steal five seats from Democrats, mainly black Democrats and brown Democrats. And so the response from states like California and other states has been to gerrymander back. This is to prevent Donald Trump and Republicans from rigging the November elections using gerrymandering. I think a lot of people feel that it's been a bit too quiet. Abigail Spanberger has not been very vocal about this. Hopefully she will become more vocal about it. But I want to just implore anyone who's in the state of Virginia to please make sure that you vote yes on that amendment. Do not be fooled by this sort of pretend Obama endorsement of voting no, because he has not not weighed in and said not to vote for that bill. They're misusing him. He should probably take some legal action to tell them to take his face and name out of their mouths because they're trying to use an old quote where he previously opposed gerrymandering. And of course he is against gerrymandering. Most Democrats are against gerrymandering and they're trying to use that to try to fool people into believing that he would be a poor opposed to this, this measure. And he's not. So let's stop misusing Obama. It's interesting how the right will use Obama to try to use Obama for their purposes when they can't stand Barack Obama and wanted at the time to lie to the American people and say he wasn't even eligible to be president because they claimed he wasn't a citizen. All right, we have another wonderful sponsor that we want to thank for their support of this independent media enterprise. And we actually have news from our sponsor, MSI Reproductive Choices. Their 2025 impact report is out. And through innovation and a really disciplined approach to health care service delivery and accountability, they have reduced the cost for a year of contraception to just $5. 5 bucks. That means that every dollar you give has even more impact. For just $30, you could change the lives of six women. You could help a girl stay in school, a mom space out her pregnancies, a woman support her family. They specialize in Reaching adolescents, women living in poverty, and in places where there is literally no other option for family planning services. In 36 countries around the world, 94% of donations go to program services, not overhead. And they have great ratings from charity evaluators like Candid. They don't get any money from the US Government, as you can imagine. So to help them out, go to MSI United States.org that's M for modern, S for safe, I for informed. Msiunitedstates.org or just text my name, read, that's Reid to 511511. So text read to 511511 or go to MSI United States.org to start changing lives. Text read to 511511. You can also learn more about them and see that impact report at MSI United States.org so if you do text read to 511-511 just know text fees may apply or just head over to the website MSI United States.org today. So I want to welcome you all to hour two of the Joy Read show. Do be sure to hit that like and subscribe button. Also hit share because again, we are trying to get to 500,000 subscribers on YouTube. Also, we have far surpassed now 210,000 subscribers on substack. And we actually went over 300 on Twitch. I'm very proud of that. And we are climbing as well on Facebook and all the other platforms, but we're just growing the TJRS nation. And we just appreciate each and every one of you all. And so we want to make sure that you guys send out that link to five friends. We want to get five friends on board because I'm telling you, I still run into people in the airports and other places like, oh my God, I miss you on msnbc, which they do still call it msnbc. And I have to inform them, no, we've got a podcast. And so I'm still letting people know. Not everybody knows that the podcast is out here. We didn't pay for a bunch of advertising or do like a bunch of that kind of thing. We're just organically growing. We're growing based on our own hard work and, and pluck. And our little team is just chugging right along. All right, so, so Bibi, Bibi is at it again. Here. He is talking about the utter devastation that, that his military, that the Israeli military and the US Military are collectively meeting out on Iran and Le.
- [59:13]
Jason Green
And if this regime of terror has
- [59:14]
Jake
nuclear weapons, they will threaten all of humanity.
- [59:18]
Joy Reid
Therefore, we went out to push away this danger, too. First of all, from ourselves, from us.
- [59:23]
Jason Green
But we are acting here together with
- [59:25]
Joy Reid
the United States in the name of
- [59:27]
Jake
and for the sake of all humanity.
- [59:30]
Joy Reid
I draw immense strength from the resilience
- [59:32]
Jake
of our citizens, from the heroism of
- [59:34]
Jason Green
our soldiers and commanders.
- [59:37]
Jake
We read in this week's Torah portion,
- [59:39]
Jason Green
remember what Amalek did to you.
- [59:43]
Joy Reid
We remember and we act. Now, if that sounds familiar, this remember the Amalak business. You will recall that it was used before by BB Nex and Yahoo back in October of 2023. Take a listen. Let's remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember. And we are fighting our brave troops and combatants who are now in Gaza.
- [60:17]
Jake
Now go and smite Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.
- [60:32]
Joy Reid
That is the verse in Deuteronomy. That is the commandment of God in the Old Testament to slay all of this group called the Amalek. And Bibi Netanyahu has used that repeatedly to justify the genocide in Gaza, and he's now using it again when he's talking about Iran. And by the way, that, remember, the Amalek language was used when South Africa took Israel to the International Court of Justice to charge them with genocide. That language was part of their successful case to show that Israel is committing genocide still, because it's not over. The attacks on Palestinians in Gaza and increasing attacks in the west bank by settlers, that is not over. And now they've extended that to Lebanon and to Iran and still using the same language that was used in the South African case for genocide. And you can see how effective that language when put into practice was. If you just take a look at this, take a look at these satellite images of Gaza before the genocide and after, just to see how effective Israel has been in effectively wiping out the physical livelihoods, the homes, the farms, the schools, the hospitals, everything that makes life possible in Gaza, they have wiped out the infrastructure. There are now, I believe, no functioning hospitals. The hospitals are all in rubble. They were deliberately targeted. There are almost no places to live. They've wiped out refugee camps where people were essentially pushed out of the west bank and sent to Gaza. This is a complete and total disaster. And if that disaster looks, you know, familiar to you, it's because these kinds of patterns, repeat, this is the way that the indigenous were wiped off the map in our country. They had, you know, they were present all across this continent until they were violently removed. And what Bibi Netanyahu has made clear is that he is determined to violently remove every Palestinian, to remove them so that his settlers, settlers from mainly Europe and the United States, Russia, all over the world, can come and take that land for themselves, including in southern Lebanon. He's made that clear. But it's not just Bibi that is doing this genocidal talk. His favorite podcasters are also getting in on the game, trying to convince the MAGA base to support this war in Iran and turning to this same kind of biblical language. I want you all to listen to one of the more prominent of the right wing podcasters, Ben Shapiro, and what he is telling his audience. When the President says that he thinks that God supports the United States, when we take out tyrannical dictators, when we kill Ayatollah Khamenei, a mass murderer, when we try to destroy the forward function of terror groups, he is correct about this. See, here's the thing. You're seeing a lot of people who have, shall we say, a casual acquaintance with scripture, like, who admit that they had not fully read through the Bible until two to three years ago, where suddenly it turns out, bishops in their church. It's amazing how quickly they have learned biblical literacy. You know, these are the same people who will sit across from guests who tell them that the Bible is actually socialist and anti capitalist, these characters. Well, it turns out that for those of us who have spent a lot of time engaging with the scriptures, and here I'm talking specifically about the original
- [64:41]
Jason Green
Hebrew scriptures, it turns out that the
- [64:43]
Joy Reid
Psalms, for example, are filled with calls to crush oppressors and deliver the weak and needy from the hands of the wicked and to break the arm of the evildoer. Literally zero things in scripture suggest that Western civilization has some sort of a duty to uphold the rule of wicked Islamist theocrats who murder their own people
- [65:03]
Jason Green
en masse, spread terrorism throughout the region,
- [65:05]
Joy Reid
desire the defenestration of Christianity. Yes, ask the Shia leaders of Iran what they think about Christianity and threaten the west directly. Nothing in scripture suggests that going along with those plans is somehow scripturally mandated. First of all, it is interesting to hear this person talking about Christianity. He is not a Christian. And yet, just like Bibi Netanyahu, he is attempting to use Christian sort of theocracy to try to convince Christian MAGA people to go along with a war that they mainly oppose. The Bible has nothing to do with the West. It is not a handbook for we for the West. It isn't about the West. So that's a weird way of putting it. The Bible does not tell the story of quote unquote, Western civilization. The Romans, who ultimately adopted Christianity, you know, Paul and others were writing letters back and forth to the way the church should function, not the way that Western states should function. That's one thing. The second thing is Christians generally believe that the New Testament was the fulfillment of what was in the Old Testament. Americans, American Christians, or your Western Christians don't live by the Old Testament. Other than a few sects that are sort of Old Testament loving sects, they, they go by the New Testament because that's where Jesus is. They go by the New Testament where Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophecies and promises in the Old Testament. He leaves that out. And Jesus is the guy who was overturning the, the money changers tables and rebuking the rich, whom he said could not, could more go through the eye of a needle than get into the kingdom of heaven calling on people to serve and feed the poor and the sick. He was the person that was hanging with lepers and poor people and recalcitrant women and people who would have been considered infidels and pagans and saying that they all could be redeemed. He's the person that was feeding little children. What are you talking about? Ben Shapiro knows nothing about Christianity. There's nothing about modern day Christianity that says that you're allowed to mass slaughter people in a war of choice. And it's not just him. Let's listen to another right wing podcaster, Mark Levin, who's one of the most aggressive voices pushing this war.
- [68:02]
Jake
That to me is very key.
- [68:03]
Jason Green
I've been talking about that in multiple appearances here and on radio. We have to arm the people because if we're not going to do regime change, they need to have the ability to do it. Reagan did it in Afghanistan, he did
- [68:17]
Jake
it in Nicaragua, he did it in
- [68:19]
Jason Green
Honduras, he did it in Angola. Donald Trump can do exactly the same thing.
- [68:25]
Jake
Somehow, somewhere way those people need to
- [68:27]
Jason Green
be able to get armed and need to take their future into their own hands. And I think they will.
- [68:35]
Joy Reid
What? I don't think that any of those situations. Nicaragua, that's your model, dude. Are you serious? We're going to make this work out like it worked out for the contrast.
- [68:45]
Jason Green
Who?
- [68:45]
Joy Reid
Lord. Joining us now is Jane Keeger, who is the CEO and founder of TYT and host of the Young Turks, the first partner channel on YouTube and also co founder of the Justice Democrats. And I will note that this man has a verified global audience of more than 200 million views a month. 200 million, y'. All. This is what we aspire to. And 31 billion total video views. It's the number one engaged news and politics network. And I am very pleased to finally get a chance to have you on. Dang. Thanks so much for being here.
- [69:18]
Jake
Thanks for having me, Joy. And that was a hilarious line about our models. Nicaragua. That's what we're shooting for.
- [69:25]
Joy Reid
That's the best case scenario. Like, seriously, like, maybe we should try for like the Angola upright. What are we doing? I would love to get your comment on this because I have noticed that the right wing podcast world, which you pay a lot of attention to, I know that you've also talked about this amalek business that BB's been throwing out there, and I've watched it on your show. The use the twisting of Christianity to justify a war against a country that didn't attack us. What do you make of it?
- [69:59]
Jake
Yeah. So look, you really have to go back one step because all of this is propaganda. And so then the question is, where does the propaganda come from? That when you get to the realization that it's propaganda, it just becomes so crystal clear. I mean, like you just did, breaking down the propaganda is actually super easy. Right. Oh, we should turn Iran into Nicaragua or Angola. Okay, thanks. Right. Things like, oh, Christians really are, you know, have this Judeo Christian heritage where you hate Muslims. Wait, why? Is that part of the heritage? No. Right. And I had a rabbi tell me, you know, we really could have used that Judeo Christian heritage in the 1940s. Right. So, like, it's just totally made up. Right. And I, I wish it existed in a sense. Right. I certainly wish it existed in the 1940s. Right. But they, Israel is a special ally. What does that mean? Canada is a special ally, but we didn't give them $300 billion. We didn't attack their neighbors. Right? So when you get to Christianity, it is for them, it is super important for the Israel first crowd that they get the Christians to hate the Muslims. So there's about 2 billion Christians and about 2 billion Muslims. And so if they're not hating each other and they're not going to war against one another, well, maybe they unite. Maybe they have a lot of power then. Right. But if they're tearing each other apart, well, that is to Israel's benefit and mainly because Israel lives in a place surrounded by Muslims. So it is really, really important for their political goals that the West, America and Europe Hate Muslims. And so they need to have the Christians on their side. So they do a series of preposterous propaganda pretending that, oh, the Christian thing to do would be to do war. I think Jesus was the Prince of peace. Correct me if I'm wrong. Right. So, like all the things they say. But look, and it goes further than just war, which, you know, you and I have pointed out about the Ben Shapiroes of the world a million times. Jesus is for tax cuts for the rich. Is he? Is he Right? So it's the prosperity gospel and the Christian Zionism are nothing but propaganda done to pervert Christianity. And you know, so that that's clear. And a lot of us on the left have known that for a long, long time. Right. But to your point about me talking to the right wing, etc, I gotta say it is refreshing to see some of our right wing brothers and sisters wake up to it and go, oh, Muslims are not the enemy. And that is a turn I even, I didn't expect.
- [72:41]
Joy Reid
Yeah, it's. And I don't know how sincere it is sometimes. Right. I mean, there are some things that I think make it seem that, yes, this is definitely outraging them in a real way. I mean, apparently Amalek includes a Christian Maronite priest who was killed by the Israeli military when they bombed southern Lebanon. So they're bombing Christians in Lebanon. They bombed Christian churches, I believe, killing a nun in Gaza. And they had no quarter for Christians. If you were brown and Palestinian, you were dead. And they just, you know, they're killing children, which cannot be seen as anything Christians would welcome. And so when you see the Candace Owens and the Tucker Carlson's be outraged about that, that feels sincere. Right? I mean, anybody with a heart would say that. No, there's nothing about Judaism or Christianity or any religion that would say kill all of these people. They treat them as Amalek. But some of it, I wonder on the right, I don't know how much of it is sincere, to be honest with you. I can't tell. Can you?
- [73:48]
Jake
Yeah, yeah. So in order to talk about the right versus left, you really, again, you have to go backwards to media. And because the change in media led to the change in politics. So there's two wings in the Republican Party these days. In the right wing, right, there's the, the Tucker Carlson wing, loosely defined, and the cat turd wing. Okay? So if you don't know cat turd out there, he is a guy online who is a Trump loyalist. And Trump could, you know, come in and have sex with his wife. And he'd say, bravo, what a genius, and thank God he did it, and et cetera. Right. And then get a hallelujah crowd going, oh, please come take my wife, et cetera. Right. So those guys are the cult that people often talk about. Do they exist? They most definitely exist. Right. Are they all of Trump's voters? No. Trump's voting base has been decimated. Right. So that I don't know if it's a third, a half, but that's a significant number. They're never going to move and we should never try to get them. Like the whole idea of Chuck Schumer, let's get the Republicans in the suburbs. No, that's a different thing. Now you're talking about, I think, in a lot of ways the cat turd crowd. That is not gettable. Right. Then there's the independents who voted for Trump, and they are very gettable. A lot of them were interested in Bernie Sanders, and really they've been misled by media and what they're looking for, they're politically homeless and they're looking for a place of any politician who's going to be honest and serve the American people. So that's another contingent. And then you get to the Tucker contingent. Right. The Tucker contingent is real right wingers, and we're going to have real issues with them when it comes to LGBTQ issues, sexism issues, et cetera. Right. But is their turn on war, Israel and Islam real? Yes, it's as far as I can tell. And I, and I study it and analyze it, and I've gone on their shows, I've talked to them, and if it's not real, I'm very happy to call out their bs. Right, but, but look, when I go to Muslim American events now, they, they, you know, say, thank God Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene flipped. Right, because they're convincing millions of right wingers that Muslims are not the enemy. And that is a huge, huge deal. You know, people talk about, yeah, but what's in his heart, really, I don't care that much about that. What I care about is him telling millions of right wingers, Muslims are not the enemy. Right. And so when you get into that specific crowd, I was goading them, Joy, like, you know, right from the beginning of the war, like, they're killing all these kids. What happened to pro life? You know, and normally what we do there on the left is we go, haha, you're not really pro life. And we proved it. And then they do their hypocrisy and we move on. But something super strange happened, right? Tom Massey, I think, was the first one go. Yeah, you're right, that is not a pro life position. And he's like, no, the pro life position is don't kill children. And I was like, did he just say that? Because we're not used to that. We've been doing this for 20, 30 years. We are not at all used to that. Right. Then Marjorie Taylor Greene, then Tucker Carlson, all saying this is not the pro life position. Killing 20 to 30,000 children is most definitely not pro life. Right. So I think they're sincere about that. I think that part of it is, of course, because they, they're furious at Israel's control over our government. They care deeply about American sovereignty and America first. So that bothers them greatly. And that goes to the core of, of their ideology. And, and so I, I'll take it. And so as a guy, you know, my family's Muslim, I'm atheist now, but I, you know, grow up as a Muslim kid in America. And, and I, you know that clip you played a Ben Shapiro, where he's talking about the Islamist terrorist? I mean, I've heard that from mainstream media my whole life. And they always stick Islamist, Islam, Muslim in front of it. If you did the same thing with Jewish people, you know, the Jewish terrorists, the Jewish radicals, the Jewish this, the Jewish that, you'd get your head taken off. Right? So, but, you know, you do it about Muslims 24, 7. No one cares. The fact that they now care and are swinging people in both the right and the left, that's beautiful. So it is a shocking development that I'm happy to receive.
- [78:15]
Joy Reid
You know, I think also there's a, there's a lack of sort of media, media literacy around geography and around culture. Right. So I think for a lot of people, they were surprised to find out that Bethlehem is full of brown Christians and Muslims. Right. And then. Or that there were so many Christians living in the Muslim world at all. There are a lot of Lebanese Christians, lots of Christians in Palestine. And I think they just, the media doesn't talk about them and so they just don't know that they're there. And they're living right cheek to jowl with Muslims. I think that, and we don't talk about Islam at all. Like, we don't, people don't know that, like Muslims also believe Jesus was a holy man and probably have more stories about Jesus in the Quran than there are in the Bible. Like, they fill in a bunch of his life in the Quran, and you don't get those stories, but that these religions are all related and, and you know, not to say people aren't, you know, smarter. It's just that people aren't told anything about other religions. You're just told about your own.
- [79:21]
Jake
Yeah, so two things about that. So you're so right about all, all that. First of all, yeah, Israel did bomb churches in Gaza, and in fact, they just bombed a synagogue in Iran. Because Israel isn't about religion. And so the Israel first crowd constantly tries to make it about religion. Oh, you hate Jews or you're an anti Semite? No, brother, I mean, oh, it's the only Jewish state. Well, I can argue that Turkey is the only Turkish state. And that doesn't make you an anti Turkish racist if you criticize the Turkish government. The Turkish government does a lot of things that are wrong. Right. And so it's a dirty trick to make it about religion. And in fact, it is super counterproductive, but it increases antisemitism. When you say, hey, in order to be, you know, not anti Semitic, you have to love a genocide. Then people go, well, I don't love a genocide, so I guess I'm anti Semitic, right? Like, no, no, no, no, no, don't go in that direction. That's crazy. But Israel is about nationalism. And so fascism is a thing that goes around the globe. It has nothing to do with race or religion. It has to do with power dynamics. Power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. Right. So what we did in giving Israel Iron Dome, and I was in favor of it, I thought it'll protect civilian lives. And as a person on the left, I'm for 100% for peace and for protecting every civilian life. Right. But it wound up having an ironic problem, which is that it made Israel feel invincible. And so it gave them what felt like absolute power. They have nukes, they have a bigger military than the rest of the Middle east combined. And then they had Iron Dome. So when you have that kind of power and you have religious zealots inside your country, which right now Israel's filled with religious zealots. Ben Gavir, Smote, Rich, etc, they all genuinely believe in Greater Israel. And Greater Israel stretches all the way into Turkey and into Saudi Arabia. And so they're trying to. And in fact, Naftali Bennett, the leading candidate in the next election for Israel, said, after Iran, we're going into Turkey. Turkey is a NATO country. That is an absolutely mental thing to say. Right.
- [81:27]
Joy Reid
Oh, by the way, it includes part of Egypt too. It Stretches all the way to the river. Now, like they're talking about eating up parts of about five countries. I mean, and I'm so glad that you said that, that where, you know, in mainstream media, back in my old job, like, we, we just don't really talk about Israel this way. We sort of treat it as a, like a holy thing. It's just a country. It's a country like every other country. It's a country that actually its first presidents were members of designated terrorist organizations, Irgun and Stern Gang. The US and the UK designated Iroquoin and Stern Gang to be terrorist outfits exactly like they do Hamas today. And yet we recognized both, you know, the first two prime ministers of Israel who came from those organizations as legitimate presidents. Right. And so, but we, we talk about Israel in a way to sort of sanctify it. And I do believe that trying to equate Israel with Jewish people all around the world, it does feed anti Semitism because Jewish people aren't all even pro Israel. Even there are Jewish people in Israel that are against Zionism. Zionism is a political ideology and a lot of Jews oppose it. Why do you think the media is so precious when it comes to this one country?
- [82:39]
Jake
Yeah, I'll go much further, Joy. And that's the core what I was getting to with all of these comments, which is that the reason why some of the right is shifting and, and the country is now. Frank Luntz just featured a poll from Pew Research. Now 60% of the country has an unfavorable view of Israel. And when you go talk about under 50 year olds, 84% of Democrats have an unfavorable view. And now a majority, 57% of Republicans have an unfavorable view. And that's because they stop watching television. Television is the great propaganda machine. And you know, you and I both worked in it, so it is what it is. But, but we've got onto what I hope are greener pastures and certainly more honest place. And so when you get to online media, you have to directly appeal to the audience. There's no more, hey, I'm going to make the advertisers happy, I'm going to make this happy. That happy? No, you just got to appeal to the audience. And when you do that, then you're freed of the mainstream media propaganda. Right. So has mainstream media done overwhelming propaganda on behalf of Israel? Absolutely. Everything they've ever said about Israel is preposterous, absurd, flat out lies. So let's start all the way in 1948 In 1948, the Palestinians called the Nakba. Okay, so that is the catastrophe. And so why? Because 750,000 Palestinians, at a bare minimum, were driven from their homes. Now the our media paints it as Israel was attacked in 1948. Preposterous. Not remotely true. They did a massive ethnic cleansing campaign where they murdered Palestinians and dragged their bodies through the streets. Do you think 750,000 people went out for a picnic and decided never to come back to their homes? No, they were driven through tremendous violence. You're absolutely right. All of Israel's original prime ministers were originally terrorists and Sturringan, Irgun, Haganah. And so there's no question they did terrorism. If you ask a mainstream media reporter, they'll begrudgingly kind of agree that it's true because you can't deny it. But then they'll call you an anti Semite. Right? And I'm so mad at our educational system and our media because I was taught that 1948, poor little Israel was attacked. They never told us about the genocide they did in 48. And then in 67 they said that Israel was attacked again. That's just not remotely true. Israel did a surprise attack on all their neighbors, wiped out their air forces, and then what did they do? They grabbed land. West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, Sinai Peninsula. So they have been the aggressors. And if you're, they're basically a settler colony. And when you're a settler colony, you really don't have a choice in order to actually gate gain land. When you don't have enough people in the beginning, you have to kill people and move them off that land. And that's what Israel's been doing since 1948. And our media has been lying to us through and through and pretending they're the victims and they're doing self defense when it is the exact opposite. Look, if you're not sure because you grew up on television, I did too. I'm 56 years old. I grew up with that propaganda and I was brainwashed by it and I'm super angry about it. So look, you can tell with your own eyes, are the Palestinians the one that have a state and are denying Israel the state? No, Israel exists. Palestine doesn't exist. But every time somebody goes on television, the anchor says, does Israel have a right to exist? All the democratic politicians like Josh Shapiro are going around going, does Israel have a right to exist? What are you talking about, man? They exist. They have a higher tone. They have nukes. Palestine doesn't exist. I mean, look at how overwhelming that propaganda is. So who's the aggressor? Well, are the Palestinians taking more and more Israeli land? No, the Israelis are taking more and more Palestinian Arab land. Right now they're in the middle of ethnically cleansing southern Lebanon and they're destroying whole villages at a time. And I mean, Mark Levin was talking about nuclear annihilation of Iran for the guy who was pretending that he was doing this for the Iranian people.
- [86:54]
Joy Reid
Right.
- [86:55]
Jake
There's a million Christians in Iran. There's 35,000 Jews in Iran.
- [87:02]
Joy Reid
Yeah. Get some water. And I do believe that the Jewish population in Iran is one of the largest Jewish. Jewish population other than Israel and the United States. I mean, it's a huge population that is now also, you know, living under bombs. You know, it's, it's this. It. The thing about it too is that you're right. I think the US media has propagandized the public to a great degree. But that lobby apac, which has, you know, bedeviled presidents going all the way back to Kennedy, maybe even Eisenhower, they've been very effective, actually Eisenhower, they've been very effective at cowing politicians in both parties as well. I mean, there's very few politicians. You're right. I want to make sure. Okay. I don't, I don't want to be like responsible for sending things to the hospital and then Joy killed Jake. It's her fault. Forgive me. Are you okay?
- [88:03]
Jake
Yeah, I'm sick, but I, that's why I'm coughing and stuff. But I'm totally fine. I, I could talk about Israel all day long.
- [88:11]
Joy Reid
Same here. I, you know, I'm fascinated by the subject because, you know, I grew up in a home with a south. A father that lived in South Africa. He wasn't. South Africa was Congolese and, and a mother that was very pro Palestinian. And so she just always would say there's just something wrong with this. You know, she just, she just felt there was something wrong with what was happening to the Palestinians. But so we just grew up with just empathy for them, you know, and you can just see the difference. These people who have, who live as second class citizens in the countries where they've lived for hundreds of years. I think it's insane for Americans to believe that someone should be able to get off a plane from New Jersey, drive out to the west bank, put a gun in the face of some farmer and say, this farm is mine because God gave it to me. But I guess as Americans, that's how America was built too Right. I mean, America was built the same way.
- [89:02]
Jake
Yeah, it was, but that was a long time ago. Right. So now these settlers are religious zealots. Right? They are totally, utterly radical, every one of them. They believe that it is God gave them the land and that murdering Palestinians and taking their land is what God wants. And so that gets you to what you were talking about. Amalek. Amalek is a section of the Old Testament where God commands the Israelis, the Israelites, to murder their opponents. Man, woman, child, animals. Kill them all. And so now, you remember Rashida Talib got in trouble because from the river to the sea. Now, the liars in mainstream media don't tell you that the rest of that phrase is from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. So Palestine being free, they say such outrageous things as, that's anti Semitic. The freedom of other human beings is somehow anti Semitic. God don't say things like that, because that makes it sound like there's something deeply wrong with Judaism, that if they're not oppressing others, they don't feel free. Right. So I don't believe that at all. But that's the kind of message that that mainstream media is unwittingly putting out there. Right? So. And what's wrong with Palestinian freedom? Oh, that means that they're going to kill all the Jews. That's just not true. It doesn't mean that at all. It just means that they are going to be free. Now, meanwhile, even if you say, okay, but I jank Norway, from the river to the sea means genocide, and it's disgusting and unacceptable, and you have to condemn it. Good, because Netanyahu said From the river to the sea.
- [90:44]
Joy Reid
By the way, it's not just that the Likud Party, which is his political party, their slogan is that Israel will exist from the river to the sea. It's their little slogan.
- [90:57]
Jake
Yeah, and in their case, it's not about Israel being free. They're already free. It's about Israel taking more land and more ethnic cleansing and more genocide. So Netanyahu said it and is doing it, and our media goes, nope, I'm only going to blame the Muslims. I'm never going to blame Netanyahu. I'm never going to blame Israel. Right. And then on top of that, then Netanyahu referenced Amalek. So he's saying it. He's. Look, this is that. The reason why I said fascism is. It's unmitigated fascism. This is what fascists say, that we're going to murder everyone in your race. Ben GVIR just two days ago on Israeli television was talking about using nuclear weapons on Israel. I'm sorry, on Iran. Mark Levin referenced using nuclear weapons on Iran. That's not a genocide. Genocide is killing a race or religion in whole or in part. Right. A holocaust is killing, trying to kill the entire race or religion. Right. So now we've moved from genocide to potential holocaust from the people who said never again. So I believe that there are tons and tons of Jewish Americans who really mean never again, and they mean it for everyone. Right, but are there a group of Israel first people in this country who mean, no? No, we mean for us. But when it comes to Muslims, Christians, whoever else, even Jews in Tehran or wherever, we don't care. We're going to kill them all and we're going to take their land because God told us they're Amalek and our job is to murder them and take their land. The. And we're funding these terrorists. We're. I mean, look, lifetime giving to Israel is over $320 billion. That is at a bare minimum for America. Then the mainstream media and the Israel first crowd says, oh, no, no, us giving Israel $300 billion helps us more. Oh, is that right? Great. Then Israel should give us the 300 billion back and that'll help them. Right? That's your logic. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're not giving it back. What happened? I thought giving the money was so helpful. So it's all obvious, obvious propaganda. But even worse, Joy, we spent $8 trillion on the global war on terror. And if you look at the map, it wasn't global at all. It was the global war on Israel's neighbors. That's all that was. We spent $8 trillion destroying all of Israel's neighbors so that they could have what Netanyahu just said a couple of days ago, that they could be a regional superpower and that Israel could even be a global superpower. He said, why are we spending $8 trillion to make Israel a global superpower? That's insanity.
- [93:38]
Joy Reid
Yeah. And paying for their health care and for them to have more access to health care than we do in this country. So let's talk about this in terms of the politics of inside of the United States, because it definitely seems like, as you said, there's an Israel first part of MAGA and there is an America first part of maga, and they are of various types. We can agree with or disagree with their politics. Which side do you think is winning? Because it does feel like the America Firsters have in a sense been sidelined by like a bunch of old neocons.
- [94:11]
Jake
Yeah. So if you're talking about politically, Israel first is crushing. They're, they're dominating. Right. Until literally yesterday. Right. So we'll see what happens with what happened yesterday. But they were, they won every single political battle. Right. But to like. But the. Israel first has always won every single political battle of my entire life. Not just the Republican Party, but also in the Democratic Party. Right. So for the first time ever, America first has at least got its boots on. And so I say for us on the left, I frame it as Americans First, Voters first, not donors First. Right. They frame it as America First, Whatever. Right. As long as we're actually serving the average American and not some other country or not a corporation.
- [94:59]
Jason Green
Right.
- [95:00]
Jake
So. But the America first crowd has won the crowd though. They've won the audience. So now Megyn Kelly's flipped and at this point Ben Shapiro has almost no audience left. Mark Levin never had an audience to begin with and so now they're kind of a laughingstock. I remember the days when Ben Shapiro's had like this little army online and they'd all do these memes and they talk about how Ben Shapiro destroyed everybody in debates and etc.
- [95:29]
Joy Reid
Some of those were, Ben Shapiro. Isn't he notoriously the one who used to pretend to be his own fans and like use like burner accounts?
- [95:38]
Jake
Totally. And, and even if it's not a burner account, their op media operation, like did that professionally. Like they'd hire people to pretend to be Ben Shapiro fans going, oh my God, Ben Shapiro roasted you, etc. But now all that facade is gone. And like the cool kids online in the right hate Ben Shapiro and Mark Levin and Israel First. And if you go around saying, oh, we should serve Israel, you're seen as kind of a traitor and, and, and kind of pathetic. And most people assume that either you're biased in favor of Israel or you're literally being paid by Israel. Which by the way, is true. Those are the only people left who are supporting Israel.
- [96:20]
Joy Reid
Yeah. So how is it that APAC still has so much control not just over Republicans, but over Democrat? It seems to, to me that I can't imagine. I ask every candidate that comes on this show, are you taking APAC money? And to the date they've all now started saying no. It used to be they would equivocate. Now they say, oh no. Right. I can't imagine a Democrat even getting the presidential nomination in 28. If they are taking APAC money. Why do you think they still have so much currency if it seems that they've lost the crowd?
- [96:51]
Jake
Yeah. So first of all, why has this. Let's break it down to the past and today, right? So when you talk about the past, AIPAC had 100% control over our Congress. So again, this is hilarious mainstream media propaganda. They, in the last election cycle, AIPAC gave $100 million. It was the number one donor class to members of Congress. And our media says that has no effect on the politicians because they're so amazing and honorable that they would never care about millions of dollars that they've got. Have you met a politician? Okay, come on, come on. Overall, the course of the all these years, APAC has given billions of dollars to politicians and they've given to 94% of Congress. And so I hate to break your heart if you're out there and you still believe in like some of the corporate Democrats and stuff, but look, guys, they just, they'll do whatever the donors want them to do. And it isn't just about Israel. Israel is the symptom. Israel is the tip of the iceberg. We can't negotiate drug prices. That's insane. And even when Democrats are in charge, we still can't negotiate drug prices. Right? That's like why it's supposed to be a free market. This is insane. We give $35 billion a year out of our pockets to oil companies in subsidies. They're among the most profitable companies in the world. Why wouldn't we end that immediately? Why wouldn't we do a massive campaign going, look at these guys, robbing us, robbing us of our money. Right? And that would be incredibly effective. But the Democrats don't do that because they're controlled by the donor class. Not all of them, but a lot of them. Okay, so. And of course, The Republicans are 99% controlled. That's just a given right now. I used to say 100%, but now we have Massey, so it's not 99%. Right? So, okay, so in terms of today. So before they had complete control and that 94 and 82% of Congress has taken over $125,000 from the Israeli lobby in the last cycle, that the people who on average took over $125,000 vote with Israel 100% of the time. And our media says that's a coincidence. Come on, come on. Okay, so now you go to today. AIPAC realizes they've become toxic, so they're now spreading it out to other groups.
- [99:16]
Joy Reid
Right?
- [99:17]
Jake
And they're inventing names. It's hilarious. It's like if you see a pack that's like trying to save the children and rainbows, that's Israel putting nonsense pack for kittens and puppies. No, that's Israel. Okay? And so, and I guarantee you here, I'll do a prediction and you'll see it with your own eyes. Soon mainstream media will be saying, these are just Jewish donors who are Americans and you guys are being anti Semites. Right. And they'll charge everyone with being anti Semites. AIPAC is already telling their donors, disperse. Still do the same thing. Right. But we're going to pretend that we're not a lobby and we're going to pretend that we're not for Israel, but we're for puppies and rainbows. But if anyone defies Israel, we're going to crush them and we're going to ruin their careers and their lives. Here I'll give you one example because it's so amazing. There are beautiful, wonderful, honest Democrats. One of them was Marie Newman. She was a congresswoman from Illinois. She was a just Democrat. She had this wonderful upset victory in Illinois. Goes in honest. Her. She, you know, back then, everybody's funding everything for Israel. She goes along with all that. It is what it is. And. But they get to a point where they're asking for another 800 million or, you know, you should have Iran to get the full story told. Exactly right. But some big number for like batteries or something. She's like 800 million for batteries. No. Right. And she votes no on this one little specific thing she said four other Democrats came up to her and said, we're going to ruin you. We're going to take away all your money and we're going to make sure that we spend millions to defeat you. And they did. The Israeli lobby spent 4 million against her and as you know, later, you know, 18 million against Jamal Bowman, some similar number against Cori Bush. So anyone who defies Israel gets eliminated by the Israeli lobby. And that's how you have a Congress that serves Israel and not us.
- [101:20]
Joy Reid
Do you believe, I mean, there's a lot of conspiracy theorizing that it's not just spending money and doing, you know, financial things to try to stop people from walking away. But there's a lot of conspiracy theorizing around Charlie Kirk's murder and the Candace Owens is of the world. They're not saying it outright, but they're implying that they believe that his death may have been connected. Even Joe Kent, like, said some very murky things when he was on Tucker Carlson's podcast where he was sort of implying that there may have been a connection between his going to Trump directly and saying, don't go to war with Iran, and maybe starting to walk away from some of, you know, the pro Israel positions he had before. What do you make of all of that talk?
- [102:07]
Jake
Yeah, I think it's probably true. So if you had asked me a couple of years ago about conspiracy theories like that, or what we call conspiracy theories, I would have said, no, it's absurd. And. And why, Again, I grew up on television, right. So I'm exhibit A for how the, you know, propaganda works and how effective it is. And so then the Epstein files came out. Like, half the conspiracies were totally. Right.
- [102:35]
Joy Reid
True. I'm like, wait a minute. Blowing my mind that, like, Q. And I was on to something. It's insane.
- [102:41]
Jake
Yeah. It turns out pizza did mean kids.
- [102:43]
Joy Reid
Yes.
- [102:43]
Jake
Right. It turns out, like, I mean, in one of the stories, a very credible, definite victim talks about how she had a baby and they took the baby away. She never saw the baby again. What in the world is going on? Right. So. And then you see what the emails that drop Site News got. And. And there's no question Epstein was working on behalf of Israel. Yeah, no question at all. He procures cyber weapons for them. He does deals with Russia, Mongolia, African countries, etc, and every single deal he does is on behalf of Israel.
- [103:20]
Joy Reid
Yeah. And then again, the media father was a Mossad agent. Like, yeah.
- [103:23]
Jake
G. Maxwell's father was not only a Mossad agent, he was the most legendary Mossad agent of all time. He's the one who stole our nuclear secrets. And by the way, he stole our nuclear secrets. And we didn't even arrest them.
- [103:35]
Joy Reid
That's right.
- [103:36]
Jake
And. And I looked into it and I said, what in the world? Why didn't we arrest him? They said it would cause an international incident and embarrass our allies.
- [103:44]
Joy Reid
Yeah.
- [103:45]
Jake
If our allies steal our nuclear secrets, embarrassing is the least we could do. Right. And are they really our allies if they're stealing our nuclear secrets? And I think they are by far the most dangerous nuclear country. It's not even close.
- [103:57]
Joy Reid
Most aggressive, expansionist. They are what we say Russia is, and Russia is that Russia is an expansionist nuclear power, but so is Israel, 100%.
- [104:09]
Jake
And they're like, oh, Russia is interfering in our elections. How about Israel interfering in our elections? Israel's, like, completely controlled our elections for the last 40, 50 years. So look again here. Let's take My home country, Turkey, where I was born and I lived there till I was eight. So if you're in Turkey, do you know that the Turkish government does conspiracies? Yeah. Everyone in the country knows it. Right? And every once in a while, a tape will leak, right? It'll be a blackmail tape. It'll be some guy who's an opponent of Erdogan, the president, and he'll be having some sort of inappropriate sex. So that's where the guy didn't listen to the blackmail and they released it, right? And then you got the foreign minister on tape saying, yeah, let's attack our own base in Syria and then pretend the Syrians did it. So it gives us an excuse to go into Northern Syria. So now, when. And by the way, the secret. The intelligence services of Turkey tortured one of my cousins, right, because they thought he was a communist back in the 1970s, right? Probably was. But anyway, so doesn't mean you should torture them. So anyways, so if you say, like, the intelligence agencies and the government of Turkey or Syria, or. Name any country, right? Bolivia, Tajikistan does terrible things. Everybody goes, of course. Russia, China, of course, right? When you get to Israel, they're like, how dare you, you anti Semite. What? So the Israelis are the only angels in the world, and they're not trying to gain an advantage for their own country, and they're not doing any dirty tricks in intelligence. Come on, you'd have to be the dumbest person in America or a mainstream media reporter to believe that, right? So, of course, like. So then you come back all the way to Charlie Kirk. So I look on, I only talk about the things I know and the things I don't know, right? So they tell me that this brother disassembled the rifle on the roof and then reassembled it and left it for the authorities in the woods. And he wrote out whole messages. I am a liberal. I am definitely on the left. I acted alone and not with Israel or whatever.
- [106:16]
Joy Reid
This trans person is my friend. I am with the trans people. See, I'm with all of the left wing memes.
- [106:22]
Jake
Yeah, yeah, totally. And then do you talk over. This is what I. They jumped the shark. They asked him. Wait, the shooter and. And Tyler Robinson seem to have different clothes. He's like, yeah, yeah, they changed in the middle of the shooting. Is that right? Like on the roof. He's like, you know what? I'm gonna go shower a little bit, you know, and black.
- [106:45]
Joy Reid
It's not giving. It's not giving. Let me put on something that Will give.
- [106:49]
Jake
Yeah. So I don't know what happened, but I do know that the official story is super weird. And by the way, again, I'm not a gun expert. A lot of guys on the right are. But those guys on the right are like that weapon he used, that grandpa's rifle would blow the neck straight off of someone. The idea that that weapon gets stuck in your neck and then when they ask the authorities how come his head didn't get blown off by that giant rifle. Right. That the guy used, and they're like, oh, Charlie had a really strong neck. Come on, come on. So I don't know what happened. I do know that the, the official story has a million holes here. I'll give you one last one. Like again, back in the day, questioning 911 was unthinkable. Right? But. And I don't know what happened to the North Tower and South tower, and I don't know the details of it, but there is one thing I do know. World Trade Center 7 was a controlled implosion. There is no question about it. Not only is it when you watch the tape, it collapses in just like every implosion. Absolutely. Okay. But beyond that, forget that. Larry Silverstein, who owned the buildings is on tape saying, yeah, the fire department told us that we had to take it down. So in the middle of the day we took it down. So he admitted it, that it was a controlled implosion. By the way, in order to implode a building that size, you'd have to set it up for at least days, maybe weeks. You couldn't do it in the middle of the day of 9 11, go and put the explosives in, in the corners, et cetera. So World Trade Center 7 was definitely a controlled implosion. So what in the world happened on 9 11? So if you say, the mainstream media has told us, think about it, they said that if you question the government, you're a conspiracy theorist. Wait a minute. Aren't journalists supposed to question the government? Isn't that the core of their job?
- [108:44]
Joy Reid
Welcome to my nightmare. I mean, we were not allowed to ask what I think are basic journalistic questions about the assassination attempt of Donald Trump. We just were supposed to accept what we were told and we just were not allowed to even be curious about sort of basic things like where's his medical reports? And we just wanted some basic information as magical information ear. They grew back after being blown off or whatever. It just. There's a lot that we're told not to ask and I think it's one of the things that makes me very grateful that my ex dumped me and separated me out into. Into independent media so that I could ask questions, because that is our job. Jank Uger, it is such a pleasure. I hope you'll come back. I know our schedules don't align because you normally live now, but when we're on. But you're great, so thank you very much. I appreciate you taking the time. I hope you feel better.
- [109:36]
Jake
Oh, yeah, no, I'll be fine.
- [109:38]
Joy Reid
You.
- [109:38]
Jake
It's hard to knock me out.
- [109:40]
Joy Reid
Conspiracy theorists are so after me. They will blame me. If you get. If you're really sick, so get better soon because I'm gonna take the blame. I don't want to be blamed.
- [109:51]
Jake
Yeah, no, Joy, it's good. It's good to be on the same side again. It's good to, you know, be in the. Be free and be able to speak our minds and. And to. To, you know, fight for the average voter, the average American, and to try to do some good in the world. So look, 2028 is going to be everything. So let's get ready for that. We got to win it. No ands, ifs, or buts. And this time we're not. Don't pick a corporate Democrat. Pick someone who is true. Pick someone who is true.
- [110:23]
Joy Reid
I like being on the same side. We are stronger together. I like our army. I think our army looks like. Looks pretty damn good. Jake, you're really great. Thank you, sir. Appreciate you. And also thank you for leading the way on this independent media thing because, you know, we all needed a template of, you know, how to do this, and people like you have been out here doing the damn thing. So we appreciate you.
- [110:43]
Jake
Thank you so much, Joy. Really appreciate you.
- [110:45]
Joy Reid
Thank you. Thank you. All right, Jake, please make sure that you follow the Young Turks. You probably already do. I mean, he's got like 40 bazillion followers. So please make sure that you follow the Young Turks. We'll put the link below. Also follow them wherever you get your post podcast. All right, before we head on out of here, I just want to play. Let's see. Let's just pick one thing that we want to throw out here. Jason, can we get C12? I have to enjoy this. I have to let you guys enjoy. This was our runner up for our moment of joy. So J.D. vance, rather than be in the United States trying to stump for the war in Iran, is trying to sort of distance himself literally physically from Donald Trump and this whole quagmire. So he decided instead to go and Try to stump for Orban, for Viktor Orban in Hungary. So he's up for, you know, he's up for reelection. He's behind in the polls. So JD Went out there and he did a, like a rally, you know, sort of a Trump style rally for Victor Orban. And at this rally, JD Decided to like pull like a Dan move. You know, he's like, I'm a call the President of the United States in the middle of this rally. And here's how that went down.
- [112:02]
Jake
Actually had a special guest that asked that I give him a phone call and we'll see. Let's hope he actually answers. This is going to be very embarrassing.
- [112:15]
Joy Reid
All right, I'm sorry. The person you were trying to reach has a voicemail box that has not been set up yet.
- [112:20]
Jake
Okay, try one more time. I get a good signal here. It's ringing. It's progress.
- [112:52]
Joy Reid
You can just see his face. Just sort of fall humiliation is part of the ritual. JD Part of what Donald Trump loves to do is to humiliate people like you. If you think that that man is going to sit back and let you run for President in 2028 and even the idea of someone else replacing him or surpassing him is intolerable to him because he's a malignant narcissist and you think that you're going to be the successor, he's just going to keep humiliating you all the way to 2028. So that's fun. I enjoyed that. Couldn't happen to a bigger asshole. JD Vance is not a good guy, not a nice guy, has been really nasty toward women. Was. And I'm never going to get over him calling Kamala Harris the trash. I'll just never let him. I'll never let that go. So that was our run up for the moment of joy. Now let's get on to our actual moment of joy, which is on a completely different note. Nothing to do with politics. This is from a creator on Instagram called OG A Duke. And he's got a challenge here with a biscuit. Is he that took my biscuits at my nightstand last night is you. No problem.
- [114:08]
Jake
If you want to sleep in my
- [114:10]
Joy Reid
room, we need to make arrangements. We need to have an understanding. First of all, any biscuits that you
- [114:17]
Jake
see or cookies that you see in
- [114:19]
Joy Reid
my room is for me.
- [114:19]
Jake
It's not for you. Secondly, you cannot be snoring other than me that own the room. Your snow is so good.
- [114:27]
Joy Reid
It used to wake me up.
- [114:28]
Jake
Even me that I want. You might not snow like that then.
- [114:31]
Joy Reid
Thirdly, I noticed that anytime I'm using my phone in the middle of the
- [114:33]
Jake
night, used to PPS to see what I'm doing. If you want to sleep in my
- [114:37]
Joy Reid
room, all those things have to stop. Do we have a deal? Oh, yeah. Come out with me. So let's go. Duke was like, I'm gonna listen to this rebuke from my African dad. This is how Africans rebuke you, by the way. They make you feel so deeply guilty. This is like so that's the most African thing in the world. This man rebuked Duke, Duke the dog for eating his biscuits and snoring too loudly. But then in the end, he did give him a hug. So you see, he's a modern. He's a modern African dad because he gave him a hug and he gave him the high five. I love the way Duke just knew right how to do it. We love that. Well, thank you all for tuning in to the Joy Reid show tonight. Please be sure to hit that like and subscribe. Don't forget we are trying to claw our way toward 500000 subscribers. We're trying to get to jank level at some point. He's like at 40 bazillion. But we gonna get to 4 billion eventually. But let's just start. You gotta get a walk before you can run. So we're gonna get to that 500k on YouTube. Let's try to see if we can get to like 250 on on substack and I think we're gonna try to get to like maybe 50 on Facebook. We I have a lot of my personal Facebook. We want to get the the show Facebook up going into and we're excited. Let's try to get to 500 on Twitch. We love Twitch and we just want to grow all of our platforms on the TJRS family universe. We're going to grow our universe. So thank you guys so much for tuning in. Please make sure that you support our authors and that you support our guests and our sponsors. We appreciate everyone and we will see you guys on a Friday for more. And hopefully World War III will have subsided and Donald Trump will still be in his two week window of trying to walk back from the humiliation of having to beg Pakistan to save us from World War iii. See you on the next the Joy Read show Peace.
- [116:37]
Jake
Getting back to the basics grassroots level. Let me dig a little deeper with the shovel. Plenty of can't tell the force from the trees that I'm hard to detect Like a black hole in the dark Injustice anywhere It's a threat to justice everywhere Let me make this clear I got a bone to pick 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 real talk about it for show.