3589 - FBI’s War on Trans People; Trump’s Pro-Israel Enforcer w/ Ken Klippenstein, Connor Echols

Summary

Majority Report with Sam Seder

Episode 3589 – FBI’s War on Trans People; Trump’s Pro-Israel Enforcer

Date: September 25, 2025
Host: Emma Vigeland (in for Sam Seder)
Guests: Ken Klippenstein (investigative journalist), Connor Echols (Responsible Statecraft)

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Episode Overview

The Majority Report dives deep into two uniquely pressing stories: the Trump administration and FBI’s crackdown on trans people and leftists under the banner of “nihilistic violent extremism” (with insights from journalist Ken Klippenstein), and the behind-the-scenes role of David Milstein, an obscure State Department adviser shaping Trump’s Israel policy (covered by Connor Echols).

The show also unpacks recent headlines (from Trump’s dramatic “triple sabotage” claims at the United Nations, to labor news, international crises, and tech developments), laced with the panel’s characteristic humor and irreverent political skepticism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Satirical Rundown of the News Cycle & Trump’s UN “Triple Sabotage”

• Panel riffs on Trump’s claim that the UN escalator “sabotage” incident was a targeted attack, mocking right-wing media’s breathless coverage.
• Vigeland, Binder, and the crew lampoon the idea of Melania’s alleged heroism and the outsized reaction from Fox’s Maria Bartiromo.
  • “He descended down the escalator to announce his candidacy, and now he cannot ascend. Is there a metaphor there?” (Emma, 08:40)
  • “Imagine if Trump got sucked into the gears of an escalator?” (Matt Binder, 14:38)
• Repeated jabs at Trump’s paranoia: “Trump declares he’s been triple sabotaged after an escalator broke at the UN and demands an investigation into that darned antifa escalator.” (Emma, 03:54)
• Discussion of how the right uses low-information moments as “low-hanging fruit for hogs to feed on,” distracting from substantive issues (Matt Binder, 17:26).

Notable Quote

“Trump embarrasses America in front of the entire world, but there’s a low common denominator thing people can, like, engage with in this discussion…”
– Matt Binder (17:26)

2. FBI’s Targeting of Trans People and the “Nihilistic Violent Extremist” Category

Guest: Ken Klippenstein
Segment Begins: [26:07]

The New Threat Category

• Klippenstein reports the Trump administration and FBI are labeling trans people and leftists as “nihilistic violent extremists”, especially after the “Charlie Kirk shooting.”
  • “What you’re doing is trying to obscure the data produced at the end of each year, because you have to testify before Congress and say: here’s the breakdown…” (Ken, 28:54)
• Manipulation of crime data: By tucking “trans-motivated” incidents into a vague threat category, administration can overstate the threat and justify surveillance or suppression.

How the Kirk Shooting Became a Pretext

• Media/DOJ falsely linked the shooting to “trans ideology” – even when gun casings marked “TRN” were simply the manufacturer mark.
• Attempts to draw links between the shooter and trans people based on thin relationship evidence, painting the broader trans community as a terrorist threat.

Ideological Confusion & Weaponized Rhetoric

• Klippenstein describes the administration’s merging of anti-terror and war-on-drugs frameworks for internal political gain:
  • “The global war on terror has been declared over…these agencies are in need of a purpose and Trump comes along and says: ‘actually, maybe cartels are terrorists, maybe antifa terrorists’…” (Ken, 35:31)
• Executive designations like labeling Antifa a domestic terror organization are more about bureaucracy and “incentivizing” agencies to prioritize certain cases than they are about actual legal changes.
  • “Administratively… they can still treat things as terrorism. That just means you can’t bring up terrorism charges against them under that law.” (Ken, 38:35)

Concerns Over Priorities and Manufactured Evidence

• Resources are shifted away from genuine threats (e.g., human trafficking) towards political boogeymen (Emma, 39:26).
• Skepticism over “anti-ICE” shell casings and evidence publicized by Trump allies (Kash Patel).
  • “If it was somebody on the left, I would guess it would be saying f- ICE or whatever; anti-ICE sounds like you’re trying to connect it to antifa.” (Emma, 41:59)
  • Klippenstein relays interviews with shooter’s friends, revealing a nihilistic, trollish mentality disconnected from traditional left/right politics: “This guy was a troll. This guy was an ironist… a huge 4chan guy.” (Ken, 43:05)
• Broader discussion about the rootlessness and online radicalization underlying recent violence, with panelists urging caution against simplistic moral panics (video games, etc.).

Memorable Quotes

“They even have a word for it—they call it ‘Trantifa.’ They are convinced… I thought it was rhetoric at first, but…they actually believe these guys are working together.”
– Ken Klippenstein (33:20)

“You can be trans—like Caitlyn Jenner is infamously a trans woman who is a die-hard Republican. The idea that they’re drawing this link says a lot about what they’re trying to manufacture…”
– Emma Vigeland (31:55)

“The violence… is committed against them. Overwhelmingly, they’re the recipients of acts of violence and even politically motivated violence…”
– Ken Klippenstein (32:45)

3. The Trump State Department’s Shadowy Israel Policy Enforcer

Guest: Connor Echols (Responsible Statecraft) Segment Begins: [51:23]

Who is David Milstein?

• Senior adviser to US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee; stepson of right wing commentator Mark Levin.
• Formerly affiliated with prominent GOP/Pro-Israel circles (Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis).
• Functions as a “pro-Israel enforcer,” filtering and editing diplomatic cables, scrubbing critical content, inserting right-wing talking points, and shaping press statements.
  • “Since there’s no separate embassy to the Palestinians, all of the cables… have to go through the US Embassy to Israel,” allowing Milstein to intercept or rewrite reporting (51:48–53:26).

Concrete Examples of Influence

• Blocked and replaced cables on famine in Gaza with pro-Israel “ads” for aid groups linked to Israeli/US control (Gaza Humanitarian Foundation).
• Heavily edited the State Department’s human rights report on Israel/Palestine: “It went from 103 pages down to nine, and basically entirely emptied of criticism of Israel.” (Connor, 60:31)
• Pushed to officially use settlement language (“Judea and Samaria”) and advocated policies aligning with the far right settler movement.
• Allegedly engineered the firing of staff, including over disagreement on whether to oppose forced displacement of Gazans.

Comparison to Biden Administration & Institutional Dynamics

• Whereas under Biden at least limited independence returned to Palestinian Affairs Unit (allowing limited cables), Milstein's culling of criticism represents a step further.
• Both Trump and Biden administrations frequently sidelined career State officials in favor of maximalist public relations or political considerations (Connor, 66:59).

Standout Quotes

“He’s trying to insert controversial terms, remove criticism of Israel—and on one occasion even appears to have gotten someone fired.”
– Connor Echols (52:05)

“Milstein… sees [isolating the Palestinian Authority] as a goal… He’s not someone that’s interested in a two-state solution—that’s totally clear.”
– Connor Echols (62:20)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [02:22] – News overview, Trump “triple sabotage,” national/international updates
• [26:07] – Ken Klippenstein on FBI, "nihilistic violent extremists," and Trump admin's new threat categories
• [51:23] – Connor Echols on David Milstein, the Trump State Dept., and US Israel policy

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Memorable Moments & Running Gags

• Escalator “Metaphor” – Panel jokes about Trump’s loss of dignity/stature, riffing on his famous escalator moment vs. “can’t ascend.”
• “Triple Sabotage” – Repeatedly mocked as absurd paranoia (“antifa escalator”).
• Disbelief at Boomer Propaganda – Comparisons of clumsy evidence planting to “bumper sticker propaganda” and clumsy Russian disinfo (Ken, 42:38).
• “Low-Info Pranks” & Media Critique – The right’s ability to feed their base simple narratives, ignoring policy substance.

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Tone & Panel Dynamic

• Irreverent, deeply skeptical of authority and mainstream narratives
• Blends humor with incisive critique
• Encourages nuanced, evidence-driven understanding of radicalization and government overreach
• Guest segments provide grounded, original reportage that illuminates behind-the-scenes trends missed by most media outlets

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Final Takeaways

• The FBI and Trump administration are using vague, manipulative classifications to justify expanded surveillance and crackdowns against marginalized groups, notably trans people, with little actual evidence.
• Right-wing media and administration figures distract from embarrassing or dangerous policy moves by stoking sensational, easy-to-digest outrage stories (“triple sabotage,” leftist terrorism).
• US foreign policy, especially regarding Israel/Palestine, is being increasingly shaped by little-known ideologues capable of scrubbing dissent and steering the machinery of state to fit a maximalist, hard-right agenda.
• Panelists and guests urge vigilance, skepticism, and solidarity, particularly with communities under threat—as well as an awareness of the role of atomization and propaganda in radicalizing actors on all sides.

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This summary covers all major content, analysis, and humor of Majority Report #3589. For further reporting, see Ken Klippenstein at Clip News (Substack) and Connor Echols at Responsible Statecraft.

Transcript

[Emma Vigeland]

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[Connor Echols]

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.

[Emma Vigeland]

It is Thursday, September 25, 2025. My name is Emma Vigeland in for Sam Cedar and this is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus County Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Ken Klippenstein will be with us to talk about the FBI targeting trans people and leftists and also Kash Patel's supposed evidence about the shooting at an ice facility in Dallas and Later in the show, Connor Echols will be with us to talk about the State Department adviser calling the shots behind the scenes on Israel policy for the Trump administration. Also on the program, a gunman yesterday shot into a Dallas ice facility, killing a detainee and themselves. And once again, the federal government rushes to blame the left without evidence. Trump is pushing his hand picked prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia to press charges against James Comey because the statute of limitations is about to expire. Jimmy Kimmel's return episode quadrupled his average nightly audience with over 6 million viewers. Fake news, fake news. Even with 20% of ABC affiliates not.

[Matt Binder]

Airing it for no talent.

[Emma Vigeland]

Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. You know how they mess up those numbers, but not for me. Democrat Grialva wins Arizona's special election, handily sending her to Congress to serve the remainder of her father's term. And a key vote in the Epstein files which could help send it to a floor vote. Trump declares he's been triple sabotaged after an escalator broke at the UN and demands an investigation into that darned antifa escalator. Trump threatens mass firings of government officials if Senate Democrats don't agree to a government funding package that they were shut out of. Elon Musk's Xai, the one polluting Memphis, signs a deal with the government to integrate its AI into federal agencies. Meanwhile, the IDF pushes further into Gaza City, killing at least 40 Palestinians with bombs since dawn. Macron says Trump assured him that west bank annexation is a red line. But it's Trump. So Italy and Spain deploy military ships to protect the aid flotilla as Israel continues to threaten to bomb them. Drone strikes from Yemen injure At least 22 people in Southern Israel. And lastly, Starbucks to lay off 900 workers as its workers unionization campaign grows. By the way, Starbucks had its largest the the largest CEO to worker pay gap in 2024. All this and more on today's majority report, also known as M. Majority Report. Welcome to the show everybody. Say hello to Matt, say hello to Brian. Happy to be back, God. Karu writes in Please tell us you sang Pink Pony Club at full volume at the show the other night. Yes, I did. Yes I did. Longtime viewers of the show may remember when I found out on air that I was supposed to be Chapel see Chapel Roan that night and she canceled this festival devastated.

[Ken Klippenstein]

You know, I don't care if I die at all.

[Emma Vigeland]

It was a national tragedy. At the very least a podcast tragedy. In fact, I think I was triple sabotaged by that. But I ended up finally Getting able to see. Was able to see her live. And my friend and I, we were dancing a lot, and I think we may have pissed off the people right next to us. So, yes, I had a very good time and sang at the top of my lungs. I hope none of that was caught on video, because I'm sure it was shrill. I'll say that. I'll be misogynistic against myself. Only I can do it. All right, let's start here. So I can't get over the story. I know we have meteor things to talk about, but it's just a new level of whininess. And I keep thinking that we can't go any further with Donald Trump victimizing himself until we get a story like this, because yesterday, I'm not sure if you heard about this absolute national tragedy, but that in front of a gaggle of reporters at the United nations, an escalator broke. And if you haven't been paying attention to this story, it's time to check your privilege.

[Brian]

It could have been really bad for Melania.

[Emma Vigeland]

Exactly. That's who I thought of first, you know, I mean, she is responsible for keeping him upright. And it's quite difficult if you're going up the stairs and you have to walk well.

[Matt Binder]

Also, Trump thinks you only have a finite amount of sort of vigorous activity in your life, and having to climb stairs clearly takes years off your life.

[Emma Vigeland]

I mean, for all of his talk of cities and urban crime, how, like, in total, how many city blocks, like, on the city streets, do you think he's walked since the 1990s? Probably 20 blocks in total. Oh, I'm being too generous.

[Matt Binder]

Just going straight from the front door.

[Emma Vigeland]

To the car, from the limo to the. To the SUV to the back entrance.

[Matt Binder]

He does one cement. He does one sort of segment of.

[Brian]

Sidewalk which they put carpet on.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Connor Echols]

It's padded.

[Emma Vigeland]

When do you think the last time he ever entered a subway station was?

[Matt Binder]

What do you think the longest amount of distance he's walked in one sort of like, go has been like, quarter mile.

[Brian]

I wouldn't be surprised if he's never ridden the subway ever.

[Emma Vigeland]

I would not be surprised either. I mean, and in fairness to him, at this point in his life, it's quite difficult to walk with cankles that he, you know, that kind of swelling that he's experiencing. Shout out to Jennifer Welch and her nickname for him, Kanks. But trigger warning. There's some footage here. We'll start with Maria Bartiromo, who's on the case. She shows some footage of the broken escalator. And it may be hard for you to see a senior citizen getting so confused by something like this, but we have the footage here. And he descended down the escalator to announce his candidacy, and now he cannot ascend. Is there a metaphor there? Or is that. Did he descend to hell? And then that's heaven at the very top? And he would have to walk there and do the work to get up to the top, but he's not capable of doing it anyway. I could write a poem about this, but Maria Bartiromo's got it covered.

[Brian]

This is like the Zapruder film for them.

[Matt Binder]

Well, it also takes no analysis. Like, you need to know nothing about politics to talk about.

[Maria Bartiromo]

A broken escalator happened this week at the UN I want to get your take on this because President Trump says the Secret Service is investigating what he is calling triple sabotage after his time at the United nations on Tuesday. The president wants answers after the escalator stopped as soon as he and the first lady stepped on it. Look how great Melania was. She is unfazed. She walks on it. It stops. She turns around to the president, and she just leads the president up and walks. So she was unfazed by it, but this was. This could have been a massive, massive issue.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right, pause it for a second.

[Maria Bartiromo]

President being frozen.

[Emma Vigeland]

So for the podcast audience that, you know, isn't seeing this horrifying footage, do they not see that there is a second escalator next to them that appears to also be going upward, that is functioning?

[Brian]

Oh, wow.

[Emma Vigeland]

See, that's going on. There was a talk about the Zapruder film.

[Matt Binder]

It is right. As Trump steps on it.

[Emma Vigeland]

Okay. It breaks. Walk back. Can he just not walk backwards? It's undignified to go to the other escalator. Or was the other escalator not secured?

[Brian]

Yeah, it can't handle his weight.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. This got.

[Brian]

Imagine what it sounds like with him huffing and puffing by.

[Emma Vigeland]

Okay.

[Matt Binder]

It's only 20 stores, I guess.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Oh.

[Emma Vigeland]

I mean, they must be treating this like some. Some real problem, too, because he's in such poor health that that might actually cause an issue for him.

[Matt Binder]

I mean, I wonder what his heart rate did.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. Just curious and just want to know for. Yeah. Future reference.

[Maria Bartiromo]

Keep going up in this week at the UN I want to get your take on this because President Trump says the Secret Service is investigating what he is calling triple sabotage after his time at the United nations on Tuesday. The president wants answers after the escalator stopped as soon as he and The first lady stepped on it. Look how great Melania was. She is unfazed. She walks on it.

[Emma Vigeland]

It stops me how great she is.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Great.

[Matt Binder]

She is. Leads unfazed by.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Handled it with grace.

[Matt Binder]

I mean, when I seen escalator.

[Maria Bartiromo]

Massive, massive issue.

[Matt Binder]

When I see an escalator out, I start tearing all my clothes off and screaming, foaming at the mouth.

[Emma Vigeland]

She handled it much better than that the other day.

[Matt Binder]

She's from the Mitch Hedberg school of dealing with escalators that are out.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes, yes.

[Maria Bartiromo]

And you know, the president being frozen there in one place makes him vulnerable. Later the same morning, the telephone in the middle of his speeches, and then, you know, in the middle of his address, rather. And then the President also said that the sound was off during his remarks and only the people with internal interpreters speaking into earpieces could actually hear his address. The UN reports that they've had. They ordered a thorough investigation and are, quote, ready to cooperate in full transparency with relevant US Authorities. Congressman, do you know if we're going to get answers on this?

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

I surely hope so. And if the Secret Service has opened.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Up an investigation and the UN is doing an investigation, obviously all of those things could not be a coincidence. And thankfully.

[Emma Vigeland]

What do you mean could not be there?

[Matt Binder]

A coincidence with the President states making a big fucking deal about it?

[Brian]

I mean, if Matt and I were in charge of it, all these three things would have happened.

[Matt Binder]

Is it sabotage whenever we can't flush the toilet in this?

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, it's sabotage when the phones don't work. Triple sabotage. Occasionally, yes. And then sometimes the camera gets blurry. That's the triple set.

[Matt Binder]

Trump spoke for over an hour at the UN people were comparing it to Castro's speech in the 60s, and the only takeaway they have of is all of the stuff surrounding it. I think that kind of shows how they feel about his performance there, which is to tell the entire world they're going to hell. Oh, by the way, not. You have your molay, who's destroyed his economy with libertarianism. We're gonna give you $20 billion of a back backstop. But everyone else, you guys are. You guys suck. And actually, we're the hottest country in the world. Yeah, it's. It's great.

[Emma Vigeland]

And here is Trump's truth about this. That initially expressed his outrage. A real disgrace took place at the United nations yesterday. Not one, but not two, but three very sinister events. I mean, these things come in threes. First, the escalator going to the main speaking floor came to a screeching halt. It stopped on the dime. It's amazing that Melania and I didn't fall forward onto the.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

Shh.

[Matt Binder]

I mean, those escalators are going 25 miles an hour.

[Brian]

He cuts his head off.

[Matt Binder]

Can you imagine if Trump got sucked into the gears of an escalator?

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

And that's how he died.

[Emma Vigeland]

His long. His long time.

[Matt Binder]

Oh, no. That's how he started his campaign and actually gets ground up in the gear.

[Emma Vigeland]

I never. Okay. I've been on escalators that have stopped working before. I don't know if he's ever been to a mall or anything. But when it stops.

[Brian]

I build malls.

[Emma Vigeland]

I don't shop.

[Brian]

Right.

[Emma Vigeland]

It stops very slowly. The idea that the force of would make you fall forward is amazing. Melania wasn't having an issue. Melania went right ahead.

[Matt Binder]

He does a speech in a neck brace.

[Brian]

Seriously, it's a slip and fall lawsuit.

[Emma Vigeland]

Then he finally have some pretext to sue people. He should have faked it. Like, you know, anybody trying to do an insurance scam. It was only that we were each holding the handrail tightly or it would have been a disaster. This was too much information.

[Matt Binder]

I get why you didn't fall.

[Emma Vigeland]

The play by play. The London Times said the UN workers joked about turning off an escalator. Sure. Then people that did it should be arrested. Okay.

[Matt Binder]

20 years.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, lock them up.

[Brian]

For each step a year.

[Emma Vigeland]

I mean, that's how many. Probably each step took a month off of his life. I mean, wait, we could only hope again, we want him to die of natural causes and nothing horrible to happen to him.

[Brian]

I don't want him turned to sausage by an escalator.

[Emma Vigeland]

It wouldn't be funny.

[Matt Binder]

Then, as I stood before a television crowd, capitalized television of millions of people all over the world.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Okay, relax.

[Matt Binder]

And important leaders in the hall. My teleprompter didn't work. It was stone cold dark. I immediately thought to myself, wow, first the escalator event, now the bad teleprompter. What kind of a place is this? I then proceeded to make a speech capitalized without a teleprompter, which kicked in about 15 minutes later. The good news is the speech has gotten fantastic reviews.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, good. Even though they couldn't hear you, according.

[Matt Binder]

To you, maybe they appreciated the fact that very few people could have done what I did. And third, and after making the speech, I was told the sound was completely off in the auditorium where the speech was made, that world leaders, unless they use the interpreter's earpiece, couldn't hear a thing. The first Person I saw at the conclusion of the speech was Melania was sitting right up front. I said, how did. How did I do? And she said, I couldn't hear a word of you. Well, I think she's probably not listening.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right, whatever. What I mean, like, I could not believe that this went on longer than the first slide. I thought it was just one thing.

[Brian]

This is longer than his post about the government shutdown.

[Matt Binder]

But again, this is like. This is Trump at his sort of best, because it's like this huge thing happens where actually Trump embarrasses America in front of the entire world. But there is a low common denominator thing people can, like, engage with in this discussion, which is it takes no information about the UN to know about. You don't even know about, like, what a veto is at the UN or anything like that, or what the Security Council is. You can know that. Did someone do a rude prank on the President of the United States with the escalator and the sound, and then, you know, hogs have a way to feed on it.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. And, you know, we were talking about locking up, obviously, the escalator technicians or the people at the UN responsible for this outrage. But Jesse Waters thinks we should go a step further.

[Connor Echols]

Corey, what's going on with the escalator?

[Ken Klippenstein]

What do you think?

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

Yeah. They sabotaged him.

[Connor Echols]

Yeah.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

And they could have hurt the first lady.

[Connor Echols]

Yeah.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

Trump would have fallen and would have gotten back up, but, you know, they would have rhetoric.

[Brian]

The idea that.

[Emma Vigeland]

Pause it.

[Brian]

The idea that Melania is more vulnerable than Trump for a fall is insane.

[Emma Vigeland]

Insane and such obvious, like, truly state propaganda that you would see, like, the leader is not sick. Why is Melania around all the time right now? This is just something to note. When Trump was absent for a week and totally didn't have a severe health issue, suddenly Melania was seen in D.C. suddenly she's by his side all the time. Suddenly she's walking with him when he's having trouble keeping a straight line. Like sometimes when you're a wife, an estranged wife, and someone's coming to the end, you want to secure that bag. Might want to spend a little extra time with that husband that you kind of hate.

[Matt Binder]

Speaking of wives, a bit Rich, I.

[Brian]

Love you so much.

[Matt Binder]

Maybe.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes. I've seen the light.

[Matt Binder]

Bit Rich. Of Jesse Waters, who met his wife by sneaking into the parking garage and letting the air out of her tires. So she needed a ride to talk about putting women in danger.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

Yeah. They sabotaged them.

[Connor Echols]

Yeah.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

And they could have hurt the first Lady.

[Connor Echols]

Yeah.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

Trump would have fallen and would have gotten back up, but, you know, they.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Would have blamed it on his rhetoric.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

And then they sabotaged the teleprompter.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Yeah, I mean, this is a.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

This is an insurrection. And what we need to do is either leave the UN or we need to bomb is in New York though, right? Yeah, could be some fallout there.

[Ken Klippenstein]

All right.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. It's using the same logic that like ultra Zionists say when or even. Actually, it's not even ultra Zionist. It's like the liberal Zionists in Israel will be like, we can't nuke Gaza because we're too close to the radioactive waste.

[Matt Binder]

Katara though.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. I mean, this overgrown frat boy says anything for attention. It is interesting to see him, I don't know, try to do this edgy thing, like in the veins of Tucker Carlson, whose time slot he took over while Tucker's going in an entirely different direction.

[Matt Binder]

Yeah, I mean, he's a hog. Just for folks who do want something substantial out of this, the Finland's president, Alexander Stubb, calls for reform at the un. He doesn't call for bombing it or the US Leaving it, but an actual reform which would make the body better, which is there shouldn't be any veto. The United States shouldn't be allowed to veto stuff on behalf of Israel. Russia shouldn't be allowed to veto stuff. These countries, China, whatever, whoever, but mainly America, to be completely frank, shouldn't be allowed to veto things like, let's like, condemn Israel's genocide, holocaust that they're conducting right in front of our faces. That's a real reform that should happen. And the US Is already making a joke, has already made a joke for decades out of the U.N. i mean, bombing it would just make that more formally recognizable.

[Emma Vigeland]

In a moment, we're going to be speaking to Ken Klippenstein. But first, a word from our sponsors. Delete Me is one of our favorite sponsors. It makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online. At a time where surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable, it's easier than ever to find personal information about people online. Having your address, phone number, and family members names hanging out on the Internet can have actual consequences in the real world and makes everyone vulnerable. More and more online partisans and nefarious actors will find this data and use it to target political rivals, civil servants, and even outspoken citizens posting their opinions online. Or if you're, say, a host of a online YouTube show, podcast show. Without Delete me, I don't know what I would do. Delete me has protected me, I believe, from a lot of some of the harassment that has come my way when I've said things that some of the right, you know, finds controversial and and I was recommended Deleteme before I even started here at the Majority Report. So when I found out that they were a sponsor, I was already using the service. It's quite easy for me to endorse Deleteme. With Deleteme, you can protect your personal privacy or the privacy of your business from doxing attacks before sensitive information can be exploited. The New York Times Wirecutter has named Deleteme their top pick for data removal services. Thanks to Deleteme for sponsoring the Majority Report. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Deleteme now with a special discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your delete me plan when you go to JoinDeleteMe.com Majority and use promo code Majority at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to JoinDeleteMe.com Majority and enter code Majority at checkout. That's JoinDeleteMe.com Majority code Majority link down below in the video description and episode description and at Majority fm. And lastly, givewell the massive cuts to foreign aid are in the news a lot right now, but it's hard to know what's actually happening or how to help given the fact that our government is not being exactly transparent about what they're doing to the rest of the world with these cuts. GiveWell does not claim to have the answers, but over the past 18 years, the nonprofit research organization has helped guide more than 130,000 donors and $2.5 billion to highly cost effective aid. GiveWell's researchers are analyzing the impact of the cuts to USAID in real time and sharing what they're learning with everyone for free through research updates, grant write ups and candid podcast conversations. GiveWell has already committed tens of millions of dollars in response to this year's cuts and their researchers are working to forecast, find and fund other new cost effective needs. GiveWell I really love in part because so much of like when there are charities and things like that that are asking for money, you don't know how much is going to overhead and all this stuff, you don't know how much it creates certain like, I don't know, strings attached for the recipients of it. GiveWell makes sure that you know, you know where your money is going and you know that you're able to get it directly to people for trusted evidence backed insights into this evolving situation and information about how you can help. Follow [e-mail] USAID again, that's givewell.org USAID and we will put a link to this down below in the podcast and YouTube descriptions. Again, follow [e-mail] USAID Quick Break and when we come back, we'll be joined by Ken Klippenstein.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

It.

[Emma Vigeland]

We are back and we are joined once again by friend of the show, Ken Klippenstein, investigative reporter, formerly of the Intercept and publisher of the of Clip News on Substack. Ken, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Hey, good to be back.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, great to see you. And I mean, it's been busy for you. You've been all over the place reporting on the Trump administration and particularly the FBI and some of their efforts to create a new threat category, looping trans people into it. And it's under this subsection called Nihilistic violent extremists. Can you take us through how this began and how the Charlie Kirk shooting was used as a pretext for this new classification?

[Ken Klippenstein]

Yeah. So the Trump administration, this second administration, anyways, as soon as they came in, they started removing from certain federal agencies, see websites and materials reference to trans and lgbt, they just drop the T and just say LGB in some cases LGB plus. And I reported yesterday that that has spread to the national security, state agencies, the FBI, the local law enforcement, that kind of thing. So they've been working on this pretty much since the beginning is when you saw this change from the Biden administration. But what the murder of Charlie Kirk did, was it supercharged?

[Emma Vigeland]

Trump administration you meant, right?

[Ken Klippenstein]

Yes. Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, change from. Sorry about that.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Go on. So the Kirk murder supercharged this effort. And my sense from talking to senior officials, particularly in the Justice Department, is that they feel as though they have a broader hand to do this kind of stuff and push it farther than they had in the past. Where initially maybe it was focused on some of the language stuff that I was describing for lgbt. Now, when you talk about designating trans suspects as extremists, you're basically saying that this phenomena should be viewed when a person is either motivated by what the administration calls trans ideology or as a trans person himself, you're saying that that is an act of terrorism. And so when they're trying to slot that under nihilistic violent extremist, which is another new Trump category that they introduced a couple of months ago, what you're doing is you're trying to Obscure the data that's going to end up being produced at the end of each year or at the end of every six months, because you have to testify before Congress and say, here's the breakdown of what we did. And if you're able to hide that under nihilistic, violent extremist, then it's harder to ascertain, you know, this crackdown on the trans community, or at least conceiving of violence as terrorist and trans driven in nature. And so that's what I'm trying to draw attention to, because they're so good at this kind of thing. Not just the Trump administration, but the FBI generally. Kash Patel, the FBI director, just testified to Congress last week, and the testimony was really revealing because he said there has been a huge increase, I think it was like 300% increase in their domestic terrorism caseload. So they're dropping the hammer on what they perceive to be terrorism. And when the subject of nihilistic violent extremists came up, he revealed that that is a, quote, large chunk of what they're focused on. So the question is, what are these nihilist violent extremists? Because the majority of these cases have not been made public yet. They get made public when they're brought to court. So we still don't have a good sense of what the breakdown is.

[Emma Vigeland]

And I am still struggling to understand how they are able to use the shooting of Charlie Kirk, this pretext, because initially they were sending information, they were leaking information to the Wall Street Journal claiming that trans ideology was on the casings. And then it was discovered seeming like Steven Crowder was behind this at one point. But it was discovered that, no, that's just like TR something. It was like the name of the manufacturer of a bullet, a trn. And then, okay, the bullets are not. The shooter's not trans. The bullets aren't pro trans. Oh, I guess the. The shooter had a relationship with somebody who is trans. And now they are using that to categorize this kind of attack as a part of this nihilistic violent extremism. It's not even a trans person that did the shooting. It's someone who was associated with trans.

[Matt Binder]

People that came from a deeply gun culture also.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, that's what they're trying to obscure. Exactly.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Yeah. And when I talked to the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson's friends, it quickly became clear to me that in small town Utah, politics does not reflect the kind of Republican, Democrat divide that we see in maybe major media or national media, if it does anywhere. Because things have A very libertarian strain. There are people that are pro gun. There are, as I'm told, Robinson was in his personal life, who also are pro lgbt, as Robinson was described to me. But what the administration has basically taken from that is they've said, okay, so he had a trans lover, which I was able to confirm talking to his friends. And in addition to that, you know, cares is pro trans rights and didn't like what Charlie Kirk had to say about trans. He obviously had very, you know, negative rhetoric about trans. They've taken that and they've said, oh, clearly this is some left wing ideologue. And that just doesn't match the facts at all. Like, you can care about trans and not necessarily be engaged in other aspects of politics or even have a coherent political worldview.

[Emma Vigeland]

You can be trans. You can be trans. Like Caitlyn Jenner is infamously a trans woman who is a die hard Republican. It's really. That's it. The idea that they're drawing this link says a lot about what they're trying to manufacture here.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Exactly. And it's like they don't even care because Sebastian Gorka, who is the senior director of counterterrorism in the White House, basically in charge of the entire counterterrorism portfolio, he has been tweeting about all these acts of violence involving trans people and suggesting that there's some kind of contagion that's happening and it's spreading and they're all inspiring each other. And you go back and look through the data, like, there definitely are several cases that he points to that are real. But it's like the idea that that represents any significant, you know, statistically significant percentage of the trans community is outrageous. There's just no truth to it. And the reality is the violence, if you're looking at the question of violence, the violence is committed against them. Overwhelmingly. They're. They're the recipients of acts of violence and even politically motivated violence more than any other member of the LGBT community. So there's a kind of sad irony to all of this. But, yeah, the Trump administration is its foot down on the gas pedal. You saw Vice President JD Vance yesterday give a speech about the left wing terrorism. Trump just designated antifa, a domestic terrorist organization. First time ever that that term has been used ordinarily. You have to apply that to foreign terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda and isis. And then after this most recent shooting, the ICE facility, Trump announced that he's gonna have another terrorism designation. And so one of the hardest parts reporting on this is teasing out this Kind of like miasma of boogeymen that they've created and they think are all working together. Antifa and trans. They even have a word for it, they call it trantifa. And you know, the radical left, the far left, and it's like they are convinced. It's kind of scary. I thought it was rhetoric at first, but as I started interviewing people in the FBI, DOJ became clear to me. They actually believe that these guys are working together and they're getting funded by foreigners and just all this crazy stuff you hear, they really, internally at least how they're running the agencies, they really are acting on that. And it seems like they believe it.

[Emma Vigeland]

I guess it doesn't even truly matter if they believe it or not. Right. Like, they also see it as a way to further their political agenda. There's also of course the usage of drone strikes in our own backyard, claiming things like terrorism, using that designation. And yes, this is more traditional in that it's technically people, you know, folks from Venezuela or whatever other groups in Latin America that they're saying are responsible for this so called terrorism. But is it is the merging of the like war on drugs, militant militarism with the mostly Middle Eastern focused anti terrorism activities of our government that has been responsible for the largest and most expansive rollback of our civil liberties in the 21st century, bar none. And that should be extremely scary to people that they are turning that language inward, let alone the fact that it's targeting one of the most marginalized groups in our society without evidence, who are a minimal percentage of the kinds of shooters that do mass shootings.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Yeah, it's really frightening. I mean, the global war on terror has basically been declared over in the sense of a lot of the authorities that they're deploying in the Middle east and conflict that they're prosecuting. And so what happens is these agencies are in need of a purpose and Trump comes along and says, oh look, actually maybe cartels are terrorists, maybe antifa terrorists. And so they have an entirely new reason for being. So I think on some level the bureaucracy is okay with having this new job where they, where they might have faced being out of work. And then in addition to that, a lot of the principal figures in the Trump administration, from Hegseth to FBI Director Cash Patel and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gambard, they all came up during the war on terrorism. And so they have this framework of we're going to map out the networks and find out who's funding Al Qaeda and where they're working, and maybe that worked in the Middle east in terms of understanding how ISIS operates, how Al Qaeda operates. But to then apply that, you know, as you and I know, to like, protesters or quote, unquote, antifa is ridiculous. Like, as. As we know, like, a lot of these guys are just sincere people that, like, believe whatever they believe. And you can agree with them, disagree with them, but the idea that they're on some payroll is just ridiculous. But that's how you would see the world. If you've been trained to look at everything as though it's isis, what do.

[Emma Vigeland]

These designations mean in practice? And secondly, Trump's executive order on Antifa being a domestic terrorist organization. I've seen some conflicting reports on how much teeth it actually has or if he has the authority to do it. A lot of these executive orders are like, seems like, you know, scratching some itch for him where he gets to feel important, and then it's not necessarily enacted later. I'm more. I'm hopeful that perhaps that's the case here. But do you see this having an impact in practice?

[Ken Klippenstein]

It's about authorities and resources. So when you have something like that, it says to the agencies, now you can prioritize this. Every agency has a list of intelligence collection priorities, targeting priorities, that kind of thing. Something like this is going to tell senior principals, who, of course, you know, are being led by political appointees, hey, guys, we got to start making cases around this. The way you're going to get promoted is are you making or do you have a caseload that's reflective of the priority list? And this is just one priority. There will be other ones. But suddenly there's more of an incentive for the bureaucracy to create counterterrorism cases and investigations and deploy things. I think a lot of this has been pretty misreported because national security is very complicated. And so they look at this and they say, oh, actually, you can only designate foreign organization, foreign terrorist organizations. So that's true that under the law, there's only a law for foreign terrorist organizations. But at the same time, administratively, within the agencies, they can still treat things as terrorism. That just means you can't bring up terrorism charges against them under that law, if that makes sense. So it's a subtle distinction where there's something to what you're saying about that Trump is not going to get everything he wants here, and they're not going to be able to treat this the same way that they would say when they're going after Al Qaeda, but they're going to, but, but just like any business, when the CEO says something, the executive management, management across countries go look at that, say, okay, well to get ahead, I've got to really create stuff that's going to look like I'm taking this seriously and that means something. It's hard to know with specifics what it will mean, but it will mean something. And I think it's a mistake to Just as you know, I saw story after story when I was warning initially when he started saying I'm going to designate antifa. Washington Post had some story where he's like, well actually you can't do that because there's no law. And I'm like trying to explain, it's like, okay, yes, you can't prosecute them on that basis. However, the way these, they already treat things as domestic terrorism all the time, we know this, it just means that's how they approach it. That's the framework they're using to go after them and look at them. It just means that in front of a court of law, maybe that's not how they're going to frame it.

[Emma Vigeland]

And in terms of the question of priorities, I mean we've already seen it reported that they're diverting all of these resources away from human trafficking. Shocked that this administration isn't prioritizing human trafficking. I mean, I'm being sarcastic, but it's just insane to have them run on that over and over again and gin up, you know, it's not even conspiracies, but using the issue of Epstein, for example, for electoral gain and then turn around and do the COVID up, but also gut the ability to go after the kinds of people that are acting like Jeffrey Epstein in practice. I mean, it really makes you think in terms of a question of priorities. So Kash Patel here, he tweeted this out and you wrote about this, I guess it was either yesterday or this morning. Where you also like the Charlie Kirk shooter. You were able to speak to some of the friends of the shooter here at the Dallas ICE facility who shot into the facility, killed one detainee, and then also, I guess himself. Now Kash Patel has this long thing here. We don't even need to read it fully, but I want to get to the photo he posted. So this is his claim. His claim is that this is what was found on the scene. These, I don't know. Can someone who's better at ammunition tell me exactly what that is?

[Ken Klippenstein]

Those are like shell casings. So it's like two, two, three rounds, right?

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, shell casings. And anti ice is written on them. And Kash Patel, who, you know, like a good law enforcement officer, tweets out evidence before presenting it in a court of law, you know, to get ahead of stories. The anti Ice thing is so fishy to me because of what we just talked about. The antifa domestic terrorist organization.

[Matt Binder]

It looks ludicrous. I'm sorry. It does.

[Emma Vigeland]

Like if you were to. If we. It was a real. We have a joke on the show. Left is best is our little, you know, kind of saying. And that was taken from a right winger who did a bunch of false.

[Matt Binder]

Who broke into a playground in the middle of the night and started spray painting stuff like, I think like killed Trump and left his best right. It was a right winger.

[Emma Vigeland]

It was a right winger trying to blame the left for the rhetoric. And anti ice seems very much like left is best.

[Matt Binder]

Like they maybe started writing antifa.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. And it would be. If it was somebody on like the left, I would guess it would be saying f ice, you know, like, like screw ice or whatever. Anti Ice sounds like you're trying to connect it to antifa. I mean, just your put an anti.

[Matt Binder]

Ace message on there. I'm sorry, I don't mean to be conspiratorial, but I'm just saying it looks ridiculous.

[Emma Vigeland]

It would be insane not to be conspiratorial about Cash Patel at the end.

[Matt Binder]

The COVID up FBI.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ken Klippenstein]

It's a little like that Boomer that spray painted black's rule on his.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes.

[Ken Klippenstein]

On his garage door. Yeah, I don't think that's how people talk to you.

[Brian]

When I said put an anti Ice message, I didn't mean literally.

[Connor Echols]

Right.

[Brian]

Anti FBI agents.

[Ken Klippenstein]

It's like when the Russians, they did some obvious propaganda thing where they were trying to frame up the Ukrainians and so they laid out like a Nazi flag and like, oh, this is really over the top stuff. And then they put a box of video games for like the Sims. Like the game.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes.

[Ken Klippenstein]

And clearly some guy told them to put in SIM cards to look like they had stolen SIM cards. The Sims, the game. So this is the level that leaders all over the world operate on. That's what I would stress is the. Is the amount of incompetence. But I think the skepticism is well taken, certainly around Kash Patel. I absolutely think that the photo and the bullets are real. And so did all of his friends. I asked them about this specifically, but they had an interesting take on it. They said it actually seems like something he would do. Not in terms of him being anti ice, but as a joke that would precipitate exactly the response we're seeing now where everybody's like, what the hell? That can't be real. Because what every friend told me, they disagreed on some things, but the, the, the, the, the thing they all agreed on was that this guy was a troll. This guy was an ironist. This guy was a huge 4chan guy who's into just like edgy jokes, triggering people, just causing mayhem. And they were like, that is exactly the kind of thing that he would do. They don't have any inside knowledge about the plot or anything like that. But, but it was the same response from all three of them that I talked to. And I asked for evidence of that because I just thought, you know, if you're gonna make a claim like that, what. So they sent me posts that he had done making rape jokes and just the stuff that you would expect, just like edgelord humor. And they were like, that's what this is. He's trying to get a rise out of people and knows that there's all this political tension in the wake of Charlie Kirk. And it was reported this morning that they pulled from forensics in his phone that he was looking up Charlie Kirk. That doesn't mean he was inspired by whatever politics that's. His friends would say that that's him looking for what is the most sensitive issue that I can get the biggest response out of people from.

[Emma Vigeland]

But, but when I hear edgelord and 4chan and stuff like that, like, I mean, I understand that there's a level of nihilism that can be somewhat apolitical, but it's quite concentrated in young right wing circles. Like some of this. I'm not trying to ascribe, say he was right wing explicitly, but I mean, I'm just wondering about your take on some of the incoherent ideology of some of these people. How they're getting radicalized is pretty scary. And it seems like a new crop or new chapter in this never ending saga of our country having way too many weapons and you know, us being in a very desperate time. And that increases the likelihood of these kinds of events because our economy's falling apart, for example, and people, it leads to this level of isolation and mental illness and things. But how would you describe this ideology to people that are just like maybe viewing this through a traditional right left spectrum?

[Ken Klippenstein]

It's tough because there's definitely like right wing strains in it, no question. But that almost gives it too much credit to call it right wing because it's just not internally consistent. So much of it is driven by, I get the impression that he wanted to feel something and the only way he could feel anything is by making people angry or making people shocked or making people upset. And, you know, is our, you know, aspects of right wing politics a vehicle for that? Absolutely. But it's almost giving him too much credit because I don't think he cared. That was almost the most chilling thing about all this, is the extent to which he didn't seem to care about anything.

[Emma Vigeland]

But then how does that get you to the point where you do something like that? I guess if nothing matters, then you're, then you might as well do the ultimate provocation. But I'm not, I'm trying to shy away from like moral panics. I'm not trying to do the video games make people violent argument 20 years later about the Internet. But there is something about these communities that is creating some sort of like, I don't know, disassociation or psychosis that, I don't know, makes these kinds of events easier for people to commit.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Yeah, there's no question that isolation was a huge driving factor in this because the story I heard from all three people that was the same was, you know, we all used to talk to him and then four or five years ago he starts pulling back, withdrawing, spending lots of time on the computer and then we start hearing him talk about this 4chan stuff and he sort of became difficult to tolerate. And it was kind of interesting because it was a range of opinions. Like some of his friends were like, oh, I couldn't stand how he was becoming. Other friend was more sympathetic, was kind of like, yeah, you know, he's like a little eccentric, but I didn't think too much of it. And then he just. The same story from everybody was, you're not going to find anyone who knew him in the last few years because he was completely withdrawn from all of society. He was just completely locked away playing games. And again, I asked for evidence of this and I was sent pictures of his discord which I was able to confirm, showing individual games like 6000 hours that he was playing things. And I want to be nuanced about this because I don't want people to. I think one of the dumbest responses we could have to this is just have another video game moral panic. But, but the question is what, what is compelling somebody to. That's a lot of time to spend alone on anything, not just games. Like if you're spending that much time reading or anything that's a little bit weird, you know, so, yeah, so I look at the numbers and I was just shocked. And it. And it mapped with his friend saying that he lost all social contact with basically everybody. And at that point you have no ties to anyone. You have no skin in the game in terms of society. And so sadly, when I talked to his friends, they didn't seem that surprised that something like this happened. Like, maybe surprised by like the political environment which took place and the reaction, everything. But they didn't seem shocked that some kind of denouement to all of this ended up happening. Because I guess as was described to me, he enrolled in college and things to be okay. You know, he's always sort of polarizing figure in high school, they said. But then once he dropped out of college, then that was when he sort of spiraled and he started spend. Spending more time online. And it sounds to me like he lost his community by no longer. Because, you know, in college you have your roommates and your friends and everything. I mean, it's impossible to. It's really hard to be socially isolated in college. And so I guess he didn't really know what to do after that. And then he just fell in touch with everyone.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, it just, you know, it speaks. We've been talking a little bit about community on this show or why, like, cities are such a threat to Republicans. And it's because you have a lot of opportunities to be involved in your community or to be in close proximity to other people who may be of different background and those kinds of things. And like, not to be corny, but connection is like the best antidote to this stuff. And our society and capitalism makes it really, really difficult, really difficult to connect. And I think Covid kind of supercharged some of those methods of isolation. And maybe that's part of what we're seeing. But of course, it's the guns. It's the guns too.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Yeah. I tend to see gaming as, like, not if he didn't have that. The strong impression I get is not that he would find something better. The impression I get is he'd find something worse.

[Emma Vigeland]

Mm.

[Ken Klippenstein]

It's not like that's the only way that you can, you know, remove yourself from society and become a shut in.

[Emma Vigeland]

Exactly. Well, I wanted to read you this. I am. Before we let you go from Molotov burrito saying, hard to put the importance of Ken's work into words, thank you so much for all. You do have to echo that. You're, you know, a muckraker in the traditional sense. Ken, keep up the great work. And, you know, speaking truth to power. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Thanks for having me again. Emma, nice seeing you again.

[Emma Vigeland]

Great to see you. All right, quick break, folks. And when we come back, we'll be joined by Connor Echols to talk about his peace and responsible statecraft on this little known State Department aide who is hijacking, according to the reporting or at the very least, putting his finger on the scales of Trump's Israel policy. Be right back. We are back. And we are joined now by Connor Echols, reporter at Responsible Statecraft with Quincy Institute, whose piece is entitled How a Little Known Embassy Aide Hijacked US Israel Policy. Connor, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for coming on.

[Connor Echols]

Thank you for having me on, Emma.

[Emma Vigeland]

Absolutely. So you spoke to some State Department staffers who told you a bit about this man named David Milstein who you describe in your pieces something of a pro Israel enforcer in the State Department. Tell us a little bit about who David Milstein is and what his role is in the State Department.

[Connor Echols]

Right. So David Milstein is a very interesting figure. His official title is a senior advisor to the US Ambassador to Israel, which is, of course, Mike Huckabee, who is a former governor and a prominent sort of pro Israel member of the Republican Party. And Milstein's influence is interesting. He's also the stepson of conservative commentator Mark Levin. He used to work for Ted Cruz. He used to work with Ron DeSantis on a campaign. So he's very well plugged in to the world of pro Israel politics. And he's taken on this really interesting sort of position as an advisor to an ambassador, but who's constantly sort of reaching back, trying to influence the types of press statements that are being put out by the State Department, trying to insert controversial terms, trying to remove criticism of Israel, and on one occasion even appears to have gotten someone fired. The thing that I lead the piece with and that I think is one of the most striking things that he has done sort of in his time in the State Department is that since there's no separate embassy to the Palestinians, all of the cables that come from diplomats over there have to go through the US Embassy to Israel. And so there's often some political sensitivities. Some of the people that work on Palestinian issues were trying a couple months ago to send back cables about, you know, the growing famine in Gaza. And Melstein stopped those. And in its place, he sent one that one official told me sounded like an advertisement for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation And I'm sure your listeners don't need too much of an explanation of why that's not ideal.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. I mean, we're seeing reports of really, I mean, explicitly like Islamophobic kind of far right volunteers almost heading over in the Gaza Humanitarian foundation enjoying the very fact that they can shoot at Palestinians who are hungry for aid. I mean, that's direct US complicity in this genocide in addition to, of course, our support for Israel. So I mean, can you actually expand a little bit on the state of the Gaza Humanitarian foundation, if you don't mind, because people may need a refresher. This is the consult, the BCG consultancy backed like mercenary led supposed aid distribution facility in Gaza. But they've been responsible for killing all these Palestinians waiting for food.

[Connor Echols]

Right? So, yeah, I mean, there's questions, you know, from a legal point of view about who's actually pulling the trigger in terms of these things. But the broad thing is that the Gaza Humanitarian foundation is of course the organization that's been set up with support from the United States and from Israel to provide aid, in theory, to the Palestinians in Gaza. They've got, they've been widely condemned by humanitarian aid groups for a few reasons. One is that one of the core principles of humanitarianism is independence, independence from either side of the fighting. And that's not like a woo woo thing. That's not just because they care about this or that. It's because it gets people killed. Right. When you are associated with one side or the other, it just encourages fighting around aid distribution points. And that's what we've seen, right? We've seen a bunch of Palestinians being sort of shoved towards these aid distribution points, given 15 minutes of, of actual aid distribution and getting hurt, getting shot at by the Israeli military that's on standby nearby or even, you know, hit with tank shells, things like that. It's, it's continued to be just a series of, I think you can call the massacres around these sites and those continue to this day. And that remains really the main group that Israel and the United States are allowing to distribute aid within Gaza. So it sets up a very bleak situation. But it's actually interesting too someone. So Milstein is the subject of this piece and he's a very important figure. People should know more about him. But another person who's interesting, that came up sort of in passing, sort of played Milstein's role in the first Trump administration. A guy named Aryeh, let me find his name. A guy named Aryeh Goldstone, I believe, and he and the Lightstone.

[Emma Vigeland]

I have for you.

[Connor Echols]

Thank you. Arye Lightstone. And Arye Lightstone basically has in the second administration been working with the peace ambassador, whatever you want to call Steve Witkoff, and has been sort of serving as a go between between the GHF and trying to convince the UN that the GHF's work is legitimate. Hasn't been very successful this time, but worth noting.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, especially because you have whistleblowers coming out and explicitly saying what the GHF is doing here. How is Milstein kind of intercepting these cables and filtering them through a pro Israel kind of perspective? How is that unique when you compare it to the Biden administration? Because I know that there was reports reporting about Jack Lew, who was recently interviewed by Isaac Chotner of the New Yorker, revealing many things he probably didn't want out there. Like that it's okay to, you know, bomb Hamas members if their children are in there. He alluded to also he was saying things like accidentally admitting that they wanted the Netanyahu government to stay in power, which was very revealing. But he also was, I believe, blocking some of his staff from reporting things that are critical of Israel. But according to your reporting, this is a step further.

[Connor Echols]

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. God bless anyone with the confidence to talk to Isaac Shatner. I do not have that confidence. Yes, but very good reporter, obviously. But no. So the one thing that's interesting. So I talked to Mike Casey. There are quotes from him in the piece. He worked in sort of the Palestinian affairs section of the US embassy in Jerusalem from 2000 to 2024. So he saw. Or 2020 to 2024, rather. So he saw a lot of the ways in which this developed. What's interesting is that basically, when Trump moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, there used to be a separate consulate in Jerusalem that sort of acted as the pseudo embassy to the Palestinians. They had their own ability to send reports back to Washington. But then once that was combined and once it was made into one facility, that group was no longer able to send its own cables without consulting with the US Ambassador to Israel. Now, under Biden, they ended up actually giving some of that independence back, and they renamed, I think it was the Palestinian Affairs Unit. They made it the Palestinian Affairs Office. Sounds boring, but these are the things that make a difference in a bureaucracy like the State Department. And essentially what changed there was that you had a group that could send cables specifically about the Palestinians right during that period. But the trick there is that Jack Lew, in his role as the US Ambassador to Israel was still able to block reporting related to Israel, for example, reporting on potential war crimes committed by Israeli forces. Right. So those types of things are not the remit of the Palestinian section. They are only the remit of. Of the Israeli section. So he was still able to keep a pretty tight lid on information that could be explosive for potential arms deals.

[Emma Vigeland]

And so there's also this story you highlight in the piece about when Ireland was trying to take action against settlements in the west bank and it pissed off some people in Europe. But talk a little bit about that incident.

[Connor Echols]

Yeah, for sure. So this one's interesting. This one I'm relying on reporting from the Washington Post. So credit to John Hudson for this part as well over there. He does very good reporting on these issues. But so basically, Milstein wanted to draft a. Or did draft a statement just condemning Ireland sort of flatly for even considering this type of move. But then winds got to some American officials in Europe and they were like, hey, what the hell is this? Right? We don't usually just condemn our allies or condemn our partners for things that they haven't even done. This is the type of thing we usually talk about them behind closed doors with. Right. And in the end, they were actually able to stop him from releasing that statement. So that's an interesting example of, of where something was sort of so outrageous that other members of the administration were able to step in and say, like, hey, we, we really can't do this. But there's a lot of other cases where it didn't go that way. Right. You've got the case of he sort of took the State Department human rights report for Israel, Palestine, and he cut all of the criticism that had already been approved by the Biden administration that had already been filled out by career officials. And then, you know, Milstein sort of takes. It takes a really long time to return it. And when it comes back, it went from 103 pages long, full of all types of criticisms in the year before, down to nine pages long and basically entirely emptied of criticism of Israel. So you can see those concrete effects.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right? And I mean, even the other part, like, he wants to have the United States recognize the west bank as Judea and Samaria. Now it seems like he has that in common with Bill Clinton, who was sent by the Harris campaign to D.C. to echo the. I mean, to Michigan. Sorry to echo the. Those comments, but we don't need to bring up the election just, just yet because it just pisses me off still. But, like, that's extreme. I mean, Moving the embassy to Jerusalem is a huge reason that October 7 even happened because Palestinians felt like all diplomatic channels to their kind of self determination were being cut off. And Hamas committed that, you know, killed, killed so many people in part to kind of jolt Israel into engaging with them again. And of course we've seen the genocide since then. But like when you're talking about Judea and Samaria in an official context with the United States, you are admitting openly and foreclosing the possibility of the US Being involved really in brokering peace talks. This is just, this is him endorsing a one Jewish state from the river to see essentially, for sure, for sure.

[Connor Echols]

And he, you know, he's just a big, he likes to battle with the Palestinian Authority. I mean, I don't think anyone here is a huge fan of the Palestinian Authority either. Right. That's obviously a corrupt institution. But he sort of sees it as a goal to sort of isolate them and not deal with them. He's not someone that's interested in a two state solution. I think that's totally clear. And even, yeah, like, like you said, the term Judea and Samaria, especially when it's used in English, is used by people who want to annex the west bank for Israel. I don't think that they're, I don't think that there's too much question about that. So he's continuing to really exercise a pernicious influence. And you see, I mean it really, it's such an interesting example of what happens when an administration sort of waffles on policy issues and it's often sort of unclear in interesting ways and it allows these factions to fight with each other. And he's kind of won internally because you've got these MAGA people that don't have particularly strong sympathies for Israel, but they've sort of lost out. Trump doesn't seem particularly interested in this. And yeah, like one concrete example on that is that Milstein allegedly got one of his colleagues, Shahed Qureshi, fired over disagreement over whether the administration opposed the forced displacement of Gazans. Trump and Wyckoff have not really said that much concretely about that. They've gestured in directions, but, you know, that was something where there was clear possibility for debate within the administration, but that was not enough. Milstein, you know, according to Shahid, went ahead and called up Marco Rubio's office and got him fired.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, Trump is now apparently giving assurances to Arab leaders and to Macron that he's not going to allow for west bank annexation so that, I mean, can't trust him at his word. But like, that's a pretty direct contradiction also to the reporting we saw about Miriam Adelson's role in Trump's reelection, the amount of money that she donated to actually achieve west bank annexation. You mentioned him being the stepson of Mark Levin. Many of our viewers are probably familiar with Mark Levin, although I guess he would have to be a longtime viewer because he is. He's been around the block for a while. He's a Republican commentator in the vein of like, you know, he's a Fox News old school pro Israel guy. You know, he's not the Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens isolationist version. The fact that he's his stepson is crazy. But Levin might be the biggest Israel hawk on the right in media.

[Connor Echols]

Yeah, I think that's basically true. I mean, the thing, if people want to go back and see sort of the ways in which Levin tries to make his influence felt, a lot of it was over the debate earlier this year over war with Iran. You really saw him coming out very strongly and saying, you know, we need to bomb the hell out of Iran. We need to destroy these nuclear sites, really throwing caution to the wind on potential escalation on a new forever war for Americans in the Middle East. He's really just a guy who, yeah, he's a really emphatic supporter of Israel. He wants the US to go along with not just like Israel and principle, but with specifically the policies of sort of the further right governments in Israel with Netanyahu, with, with some of his further right ministers. So, you know, you're seeing just again, the pernicious influence of some of these different parts of the conservative movement. And it's interesting to see, you know, you've gotten the response from the more MAGA types responding to my article online a little bit and talking about, you know, well, this is the Levin influence. You see the fighting happening outside, but this is happening inside the administration as well in interesting ways. It's just that, you know, the pro Israel side is pretty decisively winning.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. And I guess lastly here, what is your view on the State Department's role in the administration more broadly? There was some reporting under Biden that especially towards the end, the State Department was largely sidelined in favor of some of the, like the direct White House national security and foreign policy consultants that, you know, are, that has grown as the DC Blob has grown in terms of like, the importance of some of these people that are outside of traditional foreign policy and diplomatic structures is that a consistency from the, from the Biden administration that perhaps this, the State Department is more sidelined, or is it too soon to say?

[Connor Echols]

I mean, it's hard to say if the entire department is, I mean the career officials are sidelined. They're thoroughly sidelined. Right. That, that is the thing that you hear consistently. People who have been working for a long time, I mean it super depends on the issue. Right. I know that they have brought in technical teams for like some issues related to Russia, Ukraine at times, things like that. So there are some people with experience. But by and large it's, it's the political appointees at the highest levels that are really making these decisions. And, and when it comes to Israel and when it comes to sort of these issues that are particularly politically salient, that's where the political decision makers are. The ones are the ones that are actually in the room. And yeah, I mean, you know, when I was talking to people for the story, they said obviously, I mean, that's when it comes to Israel, that's not dissimilar from the Biden administration. Like you said, that was down to maybe a handful of people by the end that were actually making all the decisions and that were sort of hanging their hat on a lot of these controversial moves. But in the Trump administration, you're seeing a repetition of that in many ways.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, thank you so much for coming on. Connor Echols, reporter at Responsible Statecraft. You can read his latest piece on this very topic entitled How a Little Known Embassy Aid Hijacked US Israel Policy. And we will put a link to that down below wherever people are listening to or watching this. Connor, thanks so much for your time today.

[Connor Echols]

Thanks for having me, Emma.

[Emma Vigeland]

Of course. With that, folks, we're going to wrap up the free part of the show and head into the fun half where we will read your IMs, we will take your calls, we will have some fun. Matt, what's happening on Left Reckoning?

[Matt Binder]

Left Reckoning. We'll have a Sunday show for you this Sunday. Patreon.com LeftReckoning Also on Tuesday, we talk with Devin O' Shea about Vineland, which is the book that the I think coming out tonight or tomorrow.

[Emma Vigeland]

Tonight. Tonight.

[Matt Binder]

One battle after another. The new Paul Thomas Anderson movie is based on. So we went for 45 minutes. I was a little bit indulgent, made it, made Left Reckoning into literary hangover for a week. But yeah, go check that conversation out if you or maybe after you watch the movie.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'm going to do it after I watch the Movie I'm going on Saturday. I'm trying not to get spoiled, but I did see some right wingers are already freaking out about it.

[Brian]

Well, I'll be doing stand up in Nashville this weekend at Zany's Five shows. If you guys. I never plug anything.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes, yes.

[Brian]

I want to out. I'm opening for my friend Kyle, and I want to outdraw him, everyone.

[Emma Vigeland]

So, meaning you want all your. All the people listening to leave when Kyle comes on stage?

[Brian]

Yes. Stand up and walk out like they did when Trump was talking at the Charlie Kirk Memorial.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yes.

[Matt Binder]

You said Zany's in Nashville?

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Brian]

All right, tell me if you came from the majority part.

[Matt Binder]

After Tennessee gang show up, you should have, like, a little special signal that they can say, like a little type of clap or something.

[Brian]

Yell I suck when I want to say, yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right, Check Brian out in Nashville. When is that? This weekend?

[Brian]

Yeah, Friday, Saturday, two shows each night.

[Emma Vigeland]

Amazing. Awesome stuff. Brian's funny. Not sure if you guys have noticed that yet.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

Hey, it might be hard to tell.

[Emma Vigeland]

But if you dig a little bit deep, Brian, you gotta listen really hard. But Brian's pretty funny.

[Brandon]

It's rare.

[Emma Vigeland]

Brandon. Hello.

[Ken Klippenstein]

Hello.

[Brandon]

I'm not very funny. I try not to be. I think it's a sign of weakness, no offense.

[Emma Vigeland]

To make other people laugh.

[Brandon]

It's a sign of weakness. The need to make other people laugh. It's a sign of spiritual dullness.

[Brian]

If I. I agree 100%.

[Emma Vigeland]

Brian's like, I'm dead inside.

[Brian]

It's a pathetic no.

[Ken Klippenstein]

No.

[Brandon]

But I wish I was in Nashville. That hot chicken man.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, what's hot chicken?

[Matt Binder]

Nashville, Hot chicken. I don't know. I've never been there, but I've heard of Nashville.

[Brian]

It's just a spicy chicken sandwich. It's really good.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, really good. I've been to Nashville, but I have not indulged. So that sounds good to me. I love anything. Any spicy chicken thing. I put a lot of hot sauce, too, on my eggs, and I am struggling because of my acid reflux, but I love it so goddamn much. I don't know what I'm gonna do if I have to really give up spicy things and acidic things. Like, do I have any reason to live?

[Brian]

You're like, 10 years younger than me. How are you dealing with this?

[Emma Vigeland]

I don't know. It's concerning. Should I see a doctor? Maybe? Brandon, what's happening, though, on the discourse?

[Brandon]

We've been digging into the right wing's Charlie Kirk assassination conspiracies for the past few Days Candace has been on a tear, so it's been really fun watching her perform for her audience of, like, conspiracy addled right wingers. So we've been digging into that. You know, we've been digging into, like, tunnel theory, thick neck discourse. It's a whole. It's a whole lot of stuff.

[Brian]

The neck thing is.

[Brandon]

So you check it out.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, my God. Right? Right. Thick neck discourse.

[Brandon]

Thick neck discourse.

[Emma Vigeland]

Hey, Matt Bender, what's happening on your end?

[Ken Klippenstein]

Sure. Hey, how are you tonight? YouTube.com mattbinder Leftist mafia. Check us out and subscribe to the channel. Subscribe to the [e-mail] and yeah, looking forward to having a show with you guys right now.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right, we will see you in the fun half and we will open up the phone lines on the other side. Bye. Bye.

[Connor Echols]

Okay, Emma, please.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, I just. I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the Majority report.

[Connor Echols]

Wait, whoa.

[Brian]

Look, Sam is unpopular.

[Ken Klippenstein]

I do deserve a vacation at Disney World.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

So. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure.

[Ken Klippenstein]

To welcome Emma to the show.

[Emma Vigeland]

It is Thursday.

[Connor Echols]

I think you need to take over for Sam.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

Guess what is some.

[Emma Vigeland]

No, no, no. I'm. I'm.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

I'm gonna pause you right there.

[Emma Vigeland]

Wait, what?

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

You can't encourage Emma to live like this, and I'll tell you why. Who was offered a tour? Sushi and poker with the boys? Tour, sushi and poker with the boys. Who was offered a tour?

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

Sushi and poker with boys.

[Emma Vigeland]

What?

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

Tour, sushi and poker.

[Emma Vigeland]

Tim's upset.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

Tour, sushi and poker with Turbos. He was offered a tourist sushi, and that's what we call biz. Twerk, sushi and bulker with pinpoint.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

Twerk sushi.

[Emma Vigeland]

We're gonna get demonetized.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

I just think that what you did to Tim pool was mean.

[Emma Vigeland]

Free speech.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about it. I think you're responsible.

[Emma Vigeland]

I probably am in a certain way. But let's get to the meltdown here.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

Sushi and poker with the boys. Oh, my God. Wow. Sushi. Sorry, I'm losing my mind. Someone's offered with twerk, sushi and poker with the boys.

[Brian]

Logic.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

Twerk, sushi and poker with the boys. I think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a kid. Twerk. I think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a little kid. Had this debate 7,000 times. A little care. Think I'm like a little care. Little care. Think I'm like a dick. I'm losing my mind. So I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but, like, I absolutely think the US should be providing me with a wife and kids.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's not what we're talking about here, all right?

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

It's not a fun job. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. Real thing. Willy wonk. That's a real thing. That's real thing. That's a real thing. That's real thing. That's a real thing. That's real thing offered. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rogan has done it again. That's a real thing. Oh, I think he might be blowing.

[Connor Echols]

It out of proportion.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

Real thing. That's got poker with the boys. That's a real thing. Let's go, Joey. Sushi and poker with the boy. Take it easy. Sushi and poker. Things have really gotten out of hand. Sushi and poker with boys. Delusional twerk Sushi. You don't have a clue. Newest of what's going on live YouTube. The weight of the world on his shoulders.

[Emma Vigeland]

Want to do this show anymore?

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

Anymore?

[Emma Vigeland]

It was so much easier when the majority report was just you.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

Let's change the subject, Rangers. And Nick's feeling great now.

[Connor Echols]

Shut up.

[Emma Vigeland]

Don't want people saying reckless things on your program.

[Brian]

That's one of the most difficult parts about this show.

[Emma Vigeland]

This is a pro killing podcast.

[Ken Klippenstein]

I'm thinking maybe it's time for we bury the hatchet.

[Emma Vigeland]

Left his best violet twerk.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

Don't be foolish and don't tweet at me.

[Brian]

And don't the way has cucked all.

[Emma Vigeland]

Of these people love it. That's where my heart is. So I wrote my honors thesis about it.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

She wrote an honest thesis.

[Brian]

I guess I should hand the main.

[Brandon]

Mic to you now.

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

You are to the right of the unforeign policy.

[Emma Vigeland]

We already fund Israel. Dude. Are you against us?

[Guest or Panelist (possibly Sam Cedar or another co-host)]

That's a tough an answer to.

[Brian]

Incredible theme song.

[Emma Vigeland]

Hi, bumbler.

[Brian]

Emma Viglin. Absolutely one of my favorite people, actually. Not just in the game like.