The House (Finally) Has a Speaker: Mike Johnson, United Nations vs. Israel, & Establishment Exploits War for Massive Power Grab | SYSTEM UPDATE #170
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live daily show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, the House of Representatives today elected a new Speaker of the House, the nation's 56th Speaker.
He is Republican Congressman Mike Johnson of Louisiana, and he may be one of the least well-known members of Congress to be elected to the Speakership in years, if not in history.
Which to me is already a point in his favor given the utter failure that has come from electing those deemed next in line or those who have squirmed their way up the establishment ladder, all of whom by definition are craven partisan hacks who have mastered the art of backroom deals and horse trading so thoroughly that there's rarely anything left besides that.
Back in July, we interviewed Congressman, now House Speaker, Johnson after he had spent the day grilling FBI Director Christopher Wray about the role the FBI had played in pressuring Big Tech to censor the internet, the political speech of American citizens.
Both from that hearing and then the interview we conducted with him after, I walked away, as I said at the time, quite impressed.
A constitutional lawyer by training, Johnson's harsh critiques and relentless questioning of the FBI director were very well informed, very clever, and clearly based in genuinely held convictions, something rare in Washington, genuinely held convictions about the massive abuses of power perpetrated by the U.S.
security state, especially when it came to interference in our domestic politics.
But it goes without saying there's a lot more to being a speaker than just being able to flourish on a handful of issues.
Mike Johnson has just become the most powerful person in the Congress, the third in line to the presidency.
And so what Mike Johnson thinks about matters of war and peace, especially now, is of the utmost importance, as are his views on the role of government and the U.S.
security state generally.
We'll tell you what we know and what can be gleaned from his history of voting and advocacy and activism and his role in Congress.
Then the war between Israel and Gaza, waged almost entirely in Gaza, continues to escalate, and in its wake, it seems to be unleashing and spreading intense hatreds and tribal vitriol of the kind we have not really seen for quite some time.
Far away from Israel and virtually every country in the West, but most definitely the United States, Intense passions and anger and rage are driving not only the debate over Israel and Gaza, but are also provoking all new debates about what the limits of free speech should be here in the United States, even though the United States wasn't attacked.
This vitriol spilled over today in a very unusual way at the United Nations, where Israel announced that it will henceforth refuse to grant visas to UN officials after Israel reacted with rage over a speech by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, which included some extremely mild and barely noticeable, very indirect criticisms of Israel.
We'll report on this conflict and the consequences of what happened at the UN.
And then finally, Even though, once again, the United States was not attacked by Hamas, the United States was not attacked by Hamas, calls for the federal government, including the FBI and Justice Department, to wield more power in the name of fighting Hamas and fighting terrorism and the sentiments driving it continued to grow.
Yesterday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ordered the University of South Florida to immediately ban the campus group called Students for Justice in Palestine, with the governor alleging that it is providing material support for Hamas, for terrorism.
All of that is very redolent of what happened after 9-11, with the very obvious and vital difference being that our own country, the United States, was actually attacked 22 years ago, but this time it was not.
Back then, as now, barely a day went by when prominent political and media figures argued for new powers to be vested in the U.S.
security state in the name of stopping domestic terrorism and domestic extremism.
As we demonstrated on our Friday night special episode about the post 9-11 abuses, those new powers rarely did anything to stop terrorism, but they were invariably abused in all sorts of ways, including for domestic political advantage.
Especially after we just went through 20 years of vesting the U.S.
security state with more and more power in the name of stopping terrorism, we should be very wary, very suspicious of those who are exploiting this new war that isn't even ours to argue for still greater expansions of state power.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
There are a few things that the corporate media in the United States loves more than palace intrigue, stories of infighting over power within the royal court in Washington For one thing, it's a very easy kind of reporting.
It's basically a kind of gossip that you can easily quote-unquote report on simply by talking to a few of your friends inside the Capitol or staffers.
But it also helps distract from the actual issues that matter, who wields real power in the United States, for what ends they're using it.
It's the sort of thing that the media loves to obsess on because it draws everyone's attention from the things that actually matter.
Now, It does actually matter who is the Speaker of the House, but it's not nearly as vital as our press makes it out to seem.
In fact, when Matt Gaetz and other House Republicans succeeded in removing Kevin McCarthy as Speaker, you would have thought that the entire Republic had come crashing down.
People who normally hate Kevin McCarthy and would only have nothing but insults to unleash on him were acting as though he was the linchpin of American prosperity.
Oh my god, how can we withstand two weeks or three weeks of instability without Kevin McCarthy in the speakership?
Just like they did when Matt Gaetz and allies extracted a series of important concessions that benefits everybody, members of the House and the public they represent, by decentralizing power, which was a condition to electing Kevin McCarthy in the first place.
So somehow the nation survived two and a half weeks without Kevin McCarthy, two and a half weeks without having a House Speaker.
And as was obvious would happen, House Republicans today banded together and elected a new speaker.
Here you see from the New York Times today the headline, House Elects Mike Johnson as Speaker, Embracing a Hard-Right Conservative.
There you see the graphic.
He is, of course, a hard-right conservative.
Now, just to state the obvious, I don't think there's a single member of Congress, either in the House or the Senate, Who the United States would not call a far-right or hard-right.
It's even worse.
Hard-right.
No flexibility.
This guy is a hard-right.
A hard-right conservative.
There's nobody to whom they would not apply that label except maybe Mitt Romney and like Linda, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins and that's about it.
Everybody else is hard-right.
Anybody who got elected to this speakership would be called that by the New York Times because they're obviously trying to spread the image that the Republican Party is irrevocably an extremist party because they want the Democrats to win.
That goes without saying.
Usually what they mean by hard right though is somebody who refuses to play ball with the establishment.
So just like the fact that Mike Johnson is very unknown to most Americans, he's not unknown to viewers of our show since we've talked about him and interviewed him just very recently, but he is unknown to people.
Just like that is a feather in his cap, a point in his favor, so too is the fact that the New York Times is already calling him hard right.
So here's what they say in their news article, trying to get the nation to think about Mike Johnson.
Republicans turned to a little-known Louisiana lawmaker who led congressional efforts to overturn the 2020 election, ending a weeks-long deadlock that paralyzed the House.
Here's a totally separate article.
They have two articles, the New York Times does, on Mike Johnson elevation to the speakership.
This one, the headline is, the far right gets its man of the house.
So he's hard right and far right.
Quote, the new speaker, Mike Johnson, is virtually unknown to most Americans, but he can be expected to press a hard right social and fiscal agenda.
So they worked in hard right there as well.
Here's one of the other news articles.
House elects Mike Johnson as speaker, ending three weeks of chaos and paralysis, quote, after a tumultuous struggle that put their divisions on display.
And by the way, it is true that Republicans have internal divisions in the party.
There's ideological divisions and philosophical divisions.
You have a significant portion of the House Republican Caucus, which supports Joe Biden's policy in funding war in Ukraine endlessly, and then you have a significant part of the House Republican Caucus that opposes that.
That's a vibrant internal debate within the Republican Party, the kind that the Democrats simply don't have any of.
On the war in Ukraine, for example, essentially every single Democrat, not essentially, every single Democrat unanimously wants more funding for the war in Ukraine.
Joe Biden just submitted a $105 billion new spending package to the Congress, $60 billion of which is for the war in Ukraine, on top of the $115 billion we've already spent on this war.
Another $10 billion is for Israel, on top of the $4 billion that we give them each year as part of a deal that President Obama signed with President Netanyahu on the way out in 2016.
There's another $10 billion for humanitarian aid divided between Ukraine, Israel, and Gaza.
And then there's a little leftover, basically pocket change a few billion for border security.
So $105 billion emergency spending package, almost none of which is going to programs for Americans or the American citizenry.
It's all going to support foreign wars.
So there are divisions within the Republican Party.
Quote, after a tumultuous struggle that put their divisions on display, Republicans turned to a little-known social conservative from Louisiana who led congressional efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana won election on Wednesday as the 56th Speaker of the House, putting an end to three weeks of chaos that left the chamber without a leader and put Republican divisions on display.
Republicans elevated Mr. Johnson, a little-known and deeply conservative lawmaker, deeply conservative, after a tumultuous fight.
It began after the hard right ousted Kevin McCarthy.
be Do you think before this happened, the New York Times would have in any way implied that Kevin McCarthy was some sort of moderate?
But now that he's gone, just like the way once George Bush was, when George Bush was in power, he was the new Hitler, and now George Bush is gone, so now George Bush is a fantastic man, somebody who maybe we didn't agree with, but loved democracy, was a decent human being, When Mitt Romney ran for president, they endlessly depicted him as a misogynist, somebody who kept a binder of women.
Remember that phrase that he used?
It was a little bit awkward of a phrase, and they used it for weeks to suggest that there was something creepy about him.
And now they worship Mitt Romney.
Once Republicans are no longer in power, the New York Times starts rehabilitating them and contrasting them with the people who are.
Whoever is the last Republican is always the hard right.
So now here you have the hard right ousting Kevin McCarthy, enraged on as the divided House Republicans nominated and then quickly discarded three other candidates to succeed him.
The elevation of Mr. Johnson, 51, an architect of the effort to overturn the 2020 election, and a religious conservative opposed to abortion rights, homosexuality, and gay marriage, further cemented the Republican Party's lurch to the right.
It came after a historic fight that began when the hard right These are like liberal ad libs to scare liberal America.
It came after a historic fight that began when the hard right ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy on October 3rd and raged on as the divided House GOP nominated and quickly discarded three other candidates to succeed him.
Exhausted from the feuding, which unleashed a barrage of recriminations and violent threats against lawmakers, both the right wing and mainstream Republicans, Finally united to elect Mr. Johnson, 51 in a 220 to 209 vote.
Worn down by a brutal stretch of infighting, they finally decided to elect him, it says.
Now, the interesting dynamic here is that Mike Johnson is somebody who isn't very well known, but he is somebody who has developed a Clear record on a variety of important issues.
So right now the two most significant issues facing the Congress, not necessarily because they are the two most important issues facing the United States, but it's the ones that Congress has decided are their priorities, that the White House has made their priorities, are the war in Ukraine and then the war that Israel has with Gaza.
Two words that have almost nothing to do with American citizens, but these are the two issues dominating the congressional agenda in Congress.
And here from The Hill today, they try and summarize what Mike Johnson's positions are on both Ukraine and Israel.
Quote, Johnson made a strong statement in support of Ukraine and its effort to fight back against Russia in the wake of the invasion in February 2022.
He said, quote, we should impose debilitating sanctions on Russia's economic interest.
He posted to Twitter, quote, we should return to robust American energy production to provide greater stability and security here and for our European allies.
We should exclude Russia from global commerce and international institutions.
Even though the best time to take these actions has passed, we must act decisively.
And then in April 2022, he voted for the Ukrainian Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022, a bill that aimed to ease the process for the U.S.
to send military aid to Ukraine, which was later signed by President Biden.
However, in recent times, he has taken a skeptical stance toward aid for Ukraine.
He voted against two different appropriations bills that provided aid to Ukraine, one in 2022 and another last month.
Quote, American taxpayers have sent over 100 billion dollars in aid to Ukraine in the last year.
Johnson said in a Twitter post in February, quote, they deserve to know if the Ukrainian government is being entirely forthcoming and transparent about the use of the massive sum of taxpayer resources.
Now, when we had him on our show, I asked him about Ukraine and he kind of paid some lip service to the fact that it's important that Russia not win, but he was also starting to get skeptical of how much money we were sending there, which already is something that the establishment hates.
The establishment's top priority right now are Israel and Ukraine in equal measure.
That's why President Biden is trying to tie the two together.
He knows that the public has turned against funding for Ukraine, that there are not the votes in Congress for billions and billions more in Ukraine, and their only hope is to tie Israel spending to Ukraine spending so that Republicans can't possibly vote no on Israel spending, otherwise the White House will accuse them of abandoning Israel.
But right now, the Speaker of the House is somebody who has clearly made, staked his position that he thinks there's too much money flowing to Ukraine.
I don't know if his view is there should be no more, if it should slow down, that remains to be seen.
But he clearly is, like the people who helped remove Kevin McCarthy, somebody who's become increasingly skeptical about the U.S.
war in Ukraine, as he should.
We have spent tens of billions of dollars.
The front line has barely moved, if anything, right now with the winter coming.
Hopes for a Ukrainian counteroffensive are gone.
The Russians, in fact, are the ones often launching offensives.
So we'll see what happens there.
But when we interviewed Mike Johnson in July, it was the day that Christopher Wray, the FBI director, appeared before the Congress.
And one of the main focuses of that hearing were the Twitter files, the evidence that Matt Taibbi and other journalists who were given access to Twitter's files by Elon Musk had unearthed, showing that the FBI was badgering and pressuring and coercing Twitter and other social media platforms to remove political speech the FBI disliked.
And remember, in the court ruling, which first a district court judge issued and then an appellate court upheld, that found that the Biden administration had launched one of the most egregious and gravest breaches on the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech by pressuring big tech to censor, The FBI was part of that.
The appellate court concluded the FBI was one of the agencies under Christopher Wray that had violated the First Amendment.
I just want to pause and remember how serious that is.
That four federal judges now, one at the district court level, three at the appellate court level, have ruled that the FBI violated the free speech rights of Americans in a systematic and pervasive way by trying to censor the internet to adhere to government policy.
The U.S.
Supreme Court this week agreed to take up the case.
Let me show you a little bit of that hearing.
the FBI and the Biden White House from continuing to communicate with the with big tech platform but they agreed to take the case we'll see where that goes but that was the context in which we had Mike Johnson on and we reported on the House hearing and specifically the role that he played in grilling Christopher Wray over these issues and others so let me show you a little bit of that hearing this is from July 26th of this year Secretary Mayorkas we had the frustrating responsibility on this committee so
Sorry, so let me just actually go back and correct myself that at this hearing, this particular hearing, he was questioning the Homeland Security Secretary, Senator Mayorkas, about various issues regarding the U.S.
security state's involvement in the free speech rights, but also in various other issues as well.
Listen to what he did.
We have the frustrating responsibility on this committee of providing oversight of your agency, but I have to be honest and tell you, I'm not sure exactly what you do at the Department of Homeland Security other than great harm.
On your watch, the data is pretty clear.
We've had record levels of illegal immigration, a rapid decline in deportations, skyrocketing fentanyl deaths across our country, and the Secret Service, which is a DHS component, can't determine who left cocaine at the White House.
In the middle of all this, you created the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, CISA, which is a division of DHS, and it's one of the Biden administration agencies that colluded with and coerced the social media companies to censor Americans' protected free speech online.
That's specifically detailed in a 155-page court opinion that came out of the federal court in Louisiana in the landmark litigation of Missouri v. Biden.
Have you read that court opinion?
Okay, so let me just set the context here because there are two different hearings that we talked about Mike Johnson with regard to.
So let me just back up for a second.
This is when the Homeland Security Secretary was appearing before the committee.
It was days after the federal court had issued this scathing ruling, really a historic ruling in the history of the First Amendment, Where they said that several executive branch agencies, including Homeland Security and the FBI, had gravely violated the First Amendment free speech right.
The appellate court ended up saying that it was one of the gravest assaults on free speech in the history of the judiciary.
And so when the head of one of those agencies, Secretary Mayorkas, went before the committee And when we had Congressman Johnson on our show, he was saying he thought this court ruling should be headline news everywhere, which is what we had already said, that the consequences of this court ruling were so immense, and yet it barely got any coverage.
Because, for obvious reasons.
It was incriminating to the Biden administration, but also it condemned a censorship regime which the corporate media had spent years cheering and championing and helping to build.
So of course they weren't going to report much on this finding that they had all colluded to violate the Constitution, that the corporate media in the United States that calls themselves journalists were championing a First Amendment violation.
So Congressman Johnson was one of the few people, when Mayorkas went before the committee, to say, you're head of an agency that just got caught Violating the First Amendment.
What do you have to say about yourself?
And the more he evaded, the more relentless he became.
Watch.
And it's one of the Biden administration agencies that colluded with and coerced the social media companies to censor Americans' protected free speech online.
That's specifically detailed in 155 page court opinion that came out of the federal court in Louisiana in the landmark litigation of Missouri v. Biden.
Have you read that court opinion?
Congressman, I have not, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency does not censor speech.
Okay, well, the court found otherwise, and it's really curious to me, actually it's quite alarming that you haven't read the opinion, because your agency is listed in this opinion, the federal court looked at volumes of evidence over months of litigation, And they determined, among other things, that if the allegations made by the plaintiffs, the states in this case are true, and hold on, the preliminary injunction was granted against your agency, sir.
No, hold on.
and other Biden administration agencies, including the DOJ and FBI, the court said it involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States history.
And you're telling me this opinion issued July 4th has not reached your desk?
No one's briefed you on it?
Oh, I have been briefed on the Missouri litigation.
Okay, but you haven't taken the time to read it yet.
Congressman -- No, hold on.
Have you read it or not?
I have read parts of it, Congressman.
Oh, parts of it.
Did you read the parts where it said that this is Orwellian and dystopian and that your agency is involved in a massive cover-up of specifically conservatives' free speech online?
Congressman, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is not involved in such conduct.
Okay, well the court found otherwise and you stand here under oath and you give us these answers that we know were not true because this is demonstrably untrue.
I'm suggesting to you that you're saying things to us under oath that are proven by the record to be untrue.
Let me ask you about this specifically.
Now, one of the things I have to say is that a lot of times in these congressional hearings, a lot of members of Congress in both parties use them to hog the camera, to make spectacles of themselves, very desperately trying to produce viral moments.
And so often they're just vapid, performative theater designed to feed the base and try and get attention from themselves that has no real substance.
And what this is, is the opposite.
He's being very self-spoken, very precise in his language.
It's based on an obvious familiarity with the court ruling, which you would expect from a trained constitutional lawyer who worked in constitutional law in defense of people's religious freedom and litigating the Constitution.
He understands it at an expert level, and it shows.
And the questions are very respectful, but they're also very Adversarial.
They're demanding an answer and pointing out when he's lying and demonstrably so.
And that's what I found impressive about it.
That he's a serious person who's clearly smart and came very prepared to this hearing because this is an issue of utmost importance to him as it should be.
And he was one of the very few people in Congress to truly comprehend the magnitude and gravity of this ruling.
Let's watch the rest.
CISA was created to, we call it the Misinformation and Disinformation Subcommittee of CISA.
Are you familiar with that?
The MDM Subcommittee?
Are you familiar with that?
Congressman, I am very well aware of the threat of disinformation emanating from adverse nations.
Are you familiar with the subcommittee?
Just answer the question.
I am.
Okay.
Does it still exist?
Congressman, are you speaking of the... Does the MDM subcommittee still exist?
I would have to get back to you on that.
Okay.
Alright.
Kind of a big deal in your agency.
I'm kind of shocked that you don't know the answer to that.
Can you define what misinformation is?
Congressman, misinformation is false information that is disseminated to... Excellent.
Who determines what is false?
Congressman, our focus No, who determines what is false in your agency?
If you're going to pull something off the internet and collude with a social media platform to make sure Americans don't see it, who determines what's false?
If I were on this committee and I had one question to ask, this is the question I would ask over and over.
You keep saying that the role of the federal government now somehow is to make sure Americans are safe from disinformation.
You want to censor the internet to remove things that are described as disinformation.
First he asked, what is your definition of disinformation?
He said things that are false.
And then this is the question at the heart of all of this.
Who determines falsity?
Who determines truth and falsehood?
And the fact that that's where he was leading the whole time, this is the heart of the matter, the crux of this entire attempt by the federal government to seize control of the exact thing that the First Amendment was designed to protect from ever being interfered with by the federal government.
Which is political speech.
And this is what happened when he tried to get to the answer.
Congressman, we don't do that.
That's not true.
That is not true.
That is not what the court has found.
This is not a Republican talking point.
This is what the documents show.
We've had people testify under oath that say, and you just defined the term, you're telling me that you don't know who determines what is false?
Congressman, what we do at CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is identify the tactics that adverse nation-states use to weaponize disinformation Okay, what is disinformation?
What is disinformation?
Disinformation is inaccurate information.
Who determines what's inaccurate?
Who determines what's false?
Do you understand the problem here?
The reason the framers of our Constitution did not create an exception for quote-unquote false information from the First Amendment is because they didn't trust the government to determine what it is.
And you have whole committees of people in your agency trying to determine what they determined, they define as false or misinformation.
That is not true.
Then what is true?
Please enlighten us.
No, sir.
No, sir.
The court found specifically it's a finding of fact that is not disputed by the government defendants.
The Biden administration, your agency, the FBI, or DHS.
Not in the litigation.
They determined you made, you and all of your cohorts, made no distinction between domestic speech and foreign speech.
So don't stand there and tell me under oath that you only focused on adverse, you know, adversaries around the world.
Foreign actors.
That's not true.
Congressman, the Missouri case, the litigation to which you refer, is the subject of continuing litigation.
But the facts were not disputed, and I so, so regret that I'm out of time.
I hope I get some more yielded.
Okay, that was three months ago.
That was July 26.
And if you had told me three months ago about July 26, that that person right there in that video of five minutes, who did such an expert job of constructing those questions, you came incredibly prepared, but more so was obviously so passionate.
I mean, if you listen to that and you're not enraged, then I don't understand what you think America is supposed to be about.
The reason he was enraged, and the rage was very controlled, it was very focused, it was very substantive, was because Mayorkas was saying over and over, we are here to protect the country from disinformation and then he refused to say who defines we are here to protect the country from disinformation and then he refused to say who defines what disinformation is because We, the government, are defining what is true and false which is as grave a violation of the First Amendment as you can get.
Maybe it's just being a constitutional lawyer and that's just so reflexive and instinctive But if you had told me three months ago that that person was going to be Speaker of the House in three months, the person who just did that, I would have said, please tell me the directions of the parallel universe in which you're residing so I can move there.
Because whatever else is true about this person who we're going to now show you, and we're going to have disagreements with him, obviously, the fact that he's able to do that, and not just able to do that, but felt that, believes that, is obviously a gigantic advancement over Kevin McCarthy which granted is a low bar but it is clearly an advancement with nothing else to be seen.
Now let me show you another exchange that I had.
We had him on the show and about this hearing and I want to show you the exchange we had with him.
This was July 12th so I believe this was actually the day that We interviewed him after he had questioned FBI Director Wray, as I had said.
This is July 12th, so watch the exchange I had with him about these issues.
I was really struck by what seemed to be the contempt that Director Wray had for... Yeah, so this was the day that FBI Director Wray appeared.
It was just a couple of weeks before that hearing with Mayorkas.
It would seem to be the contempt that Director Wray had for those of you on the committee who wanted to ask him questions.
He's obviously a very smart person, and yet the ignorance he was feigning about so many issues was so striking.
And, of course, if he's expressing contempt for you, it means he's expressing contempt for your constituents and ultimately for the constitutional order.
I wanted to ask about one specific issue on you which you focused, and I was glad you did, which was this extraordinary courtroom that came out from a judge in your state in Louisiana.
The magnitude of this ruling seems so enormous to me, especially when set next to the virtual lack of media attention it has been given.
Not just because of the order itself, but because of the findings.
Why did you decide that judicial ruling was so significant that you wanted to spend a good part of the five minutes you had with the director today?
Look, I encourage my colleagues to use their five minutes on it as well.
I think this ought to be the headline in every newspaper and every news organization in the country.
I mean, this judge wrote 155 pages to issue a preliminary injunction.
That's rare.
I used to be a federal court litigator.
I litigated constitutional law cases.
This is not done often.
And the reason Judge Doty did that is because he wanted to methodically lay out here exactly what the evidence has showed in his courtroom.
And the evidence and what it has shown is stunning.
And he uses words that sound like it's political talking points from us.
This is a federal judge who says that arguably this is the most massive attack on the First Amendment freedom and the right to free speech in United States history.
And he is not overstating it.
The implications of the of this are gigantic.
The court lays out the facts how the FBI was regularly meeting with the social media platforms and basically coercing them under threat of negative consequence to take down voices they disagreed with.
And it wasn't foreign malign actors as Director Wray of fame there.
He knows what was going on.
This was American citizens.
It was conservatives online talking about their concerns over election security, over, you know, vaccine mandates and the effectiveness of the vaccine itself.
And, you know, even parody about the president, jokes about President Biden, negative content about the economy.
The FBI had agents meeting with the social media platforms And basically ordering them to take this stuff down.
Now, this is in the record of the case.
They sent Agent Chan to go and testify.
Elvis Chan, who's now an infamous figure, because he was in charge of this.
He works in the San Francisco district office of the FBI, the field office, because that's the head where all the social media companies are headquartered.
And he was meeting with him regularly and having this great success because he testified under oath in the litigation.
That he had a 50% success rate.
When he brought a concern and said, these conservative voices need to be silenced, censored, taken offline, it was done at their behest.
Of course, if you're the social media platforms, this is the FBI, you're not going to mess with them.
So they did their bidding.
And the effect of it is profound.
I mean, the court pointed out, just by one way of example, he said millions of free speech postings of American citizens were never seen because the FBI had them taken down.
And one effect was that, for example, the court notes millions of Americans never heard about the Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the November 2020 election.
We know now, post-election polling says that had they known of that, It might well have affected many, many votes.
And we'll never know.
We can never unwind history to know what an effect that had.
That's just one example of so many.
Okay, I mean, I don't really need to add much to that except to say that there's no conceivable way that Kevin McCarthy would be capable of mustering that level of passion and conviction, let alone the knowledge and competence required to articulate it in the way that Congressman Johnson just did there and has done on many other occasions.
Let me show you one more exchange because, again, when I interviewed Congressman Johnson I did so in part because he was so, I thought he was one of the top two or three best members of Congress on these issues of free speech and the abuses of the U.S.
security state, the CIA, the FBI, things that are central to our politics.
I kind of was amazed that someone like that was even in Congress, someone willing to do all this.
And now he's Speaker of the House.
He wasn't a member of the House leadership.
He was really not, he wasn't a backbencher exactly, but he was kind of in that mid-range of the House Republican caucus.
Someone who was never talked about to be Speaker of the House until about six hours ago, when his name emerged as, you know, the seventh candidate.
And people just kind of, I think he's inoffensive to most people.
Or, meaning to the people who wouldn't have chosen him, and then the people who wanted to choose him had the advantage that people were ready for this to be over, and now he's Speaker.
Here's one more exchange that we had with him about these issues that I found very telling.
Something I wanted to ask you about.
My own history is growing up and kind of coming of age in the 80s and 90s where criticism of and skepticism of the FBI, the CIA, the NSA was a staple of left liberal politics, of Democratic Party politics for decades coming out of the Cold War.
There's also been a kind of right-wing strain that's been concerned about that as well.
If you look at polling data now, Overwhelmingly, people who identify as Democrats no longer have skepticism of these agencies.
They regard them with almost a kind of reverence, and there was anger that you weren't even daring to question the FBI.
Is this something, as a member of Congress since 2016, you've been noticing, and what do you make of that?
How do you explain it?
Now, what I meant there, by the way, That was the day when Christopher Wray went to this committee.
And on this committee, it's the House Oversight Committee.
You have a bunch of Democrats who they put on there who they knew would defend the Democratic Party.
You have Adam Schiff and Dan Goldman, the billionaire heir from Levi Strauss, who now represents Manhattan.
And you had AOC.
And they were enraged.
Also, that non-voting delegate who calls herself a congresswoman even though she's not, Stacey Plaskett, they spent the whole day enraged that Republicans would dare imply that maybe the FBI shouldn't be trusted, even though the whole point of these committees is to have oversight over the FBI and the CIA, which requires not trusting them, but demanding evidence from them, insisting on proof for what they're saying.
And demanding they not exceed the bounds of their abuse and of the bounds of their authority.
But when House Republicans discharged their oversight responsibility, the Democrats basically said it is unpatriotic and destructive and toxic to our country to question the FBI.
That was the Democratic Party's view.
It still is their view.
They explicitly defend Things like having the FBI and the CIA control our political speech.
Well, that's what I was asking about.
That was what I watched the entire day at this hearing.
Here's what he said.
It is a radical change.
I have the same memories of the 80s and 90s as well.
But I think this radical change is easily explained.
Certainly, the elected Democrats in the House Judiciary Committee understand full well that the FBI has been co-opted by the executive branch.
They've been co-opted by the Biden administration.
This began in the Obama administration.
I think the seeds of this were sown and then it's taken to its full fruition right now.
And so it's effectively a political arm in so many ways of the White House.
The DOJ that is supposed to be administering and enforcing the law blindly, where everyone has equal justice under the law, that used to be the way this worked, it doesn't work that way anymore.
Under Merrick Garland as the Attorney General, under Director Wray on his watch, We've seen the Biden administration use the DOJ to do its bidding.
And so they're censoring and silencing, not all Americans, conservative viewpoints, specific Americans.
They're raiding the homes of political opponents.
They're labeling concerned parents at school board meetings as terrorists.
Everybody knows the laundry list.
It's piled up so high now.
And there's no other conclusion you can draw but that it's a political operative operation.
Now the one thing I would just amend there that I would add there and quibble with is that it's not really only directed at conservatives.
The FBI and the DOJ are weaponized against any anti-establishment voices.
The case that we covered of far leftists who are African-American and socialists who are now being accused of being agents of the Russian government because they are active opponents of the war in Ukraine is a good example.
One of the things that we're about to show you is that there are a lot of calls now coming from conservatives.
We showed you over the last week calls from conservatives demanding more censorship because of this war in Israel, demanding the ban on pro-Palestinian protest groups and protest themselves and the like.
But there's also now calls for the FBI to start Using its powers to investigate and prosecute domestic dissent, people who are too critical of Israel or too supportive of the Palestinians who now are going to get accused of being on the other side and traitors, just like happened after 9-11.
And for anyone who thinks that's a good idea, listen to what Mike Johnson just said there, which is that the FBI is now completely politicized.
It's a political arm of the Democratic Party, which is exactly what it is.
What conservative in their right mind, or leftist, would trust the FBI to start investigating Americans for domestic dissent, given what they've become?
It's not their role in any instance, but especially now.
Now, with all that good news that I presented to you, I'm going to have to counterbalance this with What Mike Johnson said, his first speech that he delivered upon assuming the speakership, because what he did was he unveiled what his first priority was going to be, the very first thing he wanted to do as House Speaker, that he intends to do as House Speaker, and you might wonder what it is.
Is it to improve the fentanyl overdoses in the United States?
Is it to address the fact that the number one cause of death for Americans under 45 is suicide?
Is it to help Americans with inflation or with lack of health care?
Or the fact that Social Security and Medicare are being threatened for cuts.
There's a huge array of problems the United States faces.
Most people in both parties want there to be a more secure border, to do something about immigration that's uncontrolled.
Even Democratic members, mayors are calling for that now that it's actually affecting their communities.
So which one of these things that is so crucial to help the American people and to help the United States with this vast array of problems Is the new speakership under Mike Johnson going to first address what's going to be the first thing that he's going to do for the American people?
Let's listen.
Extraordinary crisis right now and the world needs us to be strong.
They need us to remember our creed and our admonition.
Turmoil and violence have rocked the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
We all know it.
Intentions continue to build in the Indo-Pacific.
The country demands strong leadership of this body, and we must not waver.
Our nation's greatest ally in the Middle East is under attack.
The first bill that I'm going to bring to this floor in just a little while will be in support of our dear friend Israel.
And we're overdue in getting that done.
There you go.
That's the first thing that they're going to do.
Now that they have the speaker back in.
Thank you.
Nothing to do with the American people, they're going to help our dear friend Israel.
Now, if I wanted to make excuses for Mike Johnson, which I don't, because that's not what I'm here to do, you could say, look, the political reality in the United States is that
If you go into the 2024 election with any vulnerabilities on showing that you are going to do everything possible for this foreign country because of how important it is to American Jewish voters and evangelical voters, of whom he's one, and the national security state, which is support for Israel, then you're going to get slaughtered in the election.
That's why Joe Biden is so afraid to show any kind of Weakness on that issue, even when the left wing of his party like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and others growing number now are criticizing Joe Biden for being too unflinchingly supportive of Israel, not even trying to restrain them in their seemingly seeming indifference to the lives of Palestinians, including innocent Palestinians in Gaza.
That is one issue that you're now actually starting to see some Democratic infighting of the kind I said earlier generally doesn't happen in the Democratic Party.
But the reason is the same political reality that has just caused Mike Johnson to go up onto that podium to ascend to this speakership and say, guess what Americans?
Gather together.
I know you have a lot of problems.
The first thing we're going to do is a bill to help Israel.
I think it gives you a sense for the Congress and where it's at.
Here's the rest of what he said.
Not only Israel but the entire world that the barbarism of Hamas that we have all seen play out on our television screens is wretched and wrong and we're going to stand for the good in that conflict.
All right, so like I said, I didn't have any expectations, obviously, from someone who's going to be the GOP House Speaker on that issue.
Kevin McCarthy would be saying, in fact, is saying the exact same thing.
Jim Jordan would be saying exactly the same thing.
Every single person who is possibly going to ascend to the Speakership under the Republican Party, or the Democratic Party for that matter, that sounds exactly like what Nancy Pelosi is saying, what Hakeem Jeffries is saying.
Because fanatical support for Israel is, and has long been, and probably will long continue to be, a centerpiece of bipartisan foreign policy.
So, certainly that's not what I wanted to hear.
I doubt that's what most Americans were hoping a Speaker of the House would get up and immediately say somewhere, but not most.
But, if you're going to insist on that and dismiss him out of hand because of that, you're not going to be happy with any Speaker.
But, Oftentimes what someone is before they get into a position of high power is different than what they end up being.
So I can't vouch for him.
I don't know what he's going to be like in this position.
Barack Obama was a constitutional lawyer who excited me about a lot of the things that he was saying and the way that he was saying them in 2005 and six and seven and eight.
And then I saw when he got into the presidency, a much different Barack Obama materialized almost immediately.
But all you can do is judge by what you see.
What I've seen of Mike Johnson and it's true.
He's a social conservative on abortion and LGBT issues and all of that the issues that we don't focus much on this show because I don't think they're really central to The Distribution of power in American political life, which doesn't mean they're unimportant But I don't think it's gonna change much.
It's still that same house but the fact that he is prioritizing things like free speech and putting limits on the FBI and the CIA and is saying there's too much money flying with no supervision to Ukraine are obviously all positive things.
We will continue to report on the speakership of Mike Johnson, but thankfully the huge and heavy national nightmare of being without Kevin McCarthy, being without a speaker of the house has finally come to an end.
and I'm happy to report tonight.
The situation in Gaza continues to worsen by the day, And honestly, I will say that I don't remember being as horrified from a humanitarian level as I am having to watch what's going on there.
I have to watch in the sense that it's my job.
I have to watch in the sense that my government and yours, if you're an American citizen or even if you're a member of the West, is playing a crucial role in what's happening there.
Where the bombs that are being used to bomb buildings and residential buildings and houses and mosques and, yes, hospitals, independent of that one, and refugee camps are American bombs.
They're paid for with American money.
The EU supports Israel and its military in every way possible.
And so even if you don't want to pay attention to it, it's something you have a responsibility because your government is heavily involved in.
But also, it's a very dangerous war.
I think, if I had to bet, the likelihood of escalation at some point of involving other regional actors is more likely than not.
And from a humanitarian perspective, The amount of bombing that Israel is doing with incredibly potent bombs in a tiny little densely packed strip of land where 2.2 million people live, the majority of whom are children under the 18, the majority of Palestinians in Gaza are under the age of 18.
And at the same time that these gigantic bombs are falling, people in Gaza are terrorized.
Who wouldn't be?
I don't know how you even recover mentally from this.
You look at any account of a Palestinian, which I hope you will, of someone in Gaza, and it's just all around them.
There's gigantic bombs falling at all times.
They don't know whether the next bomb is going to fall on their head.
They go to sleep at night not knowing if they're going to wake up.
And at the same time all that's happening, Israel has deliberately and explicitly imposed a policy of blockading anything from going into Gaza, including food and medication and clean drinking water.
Surgeons in Gaza are operating on children without anesthesia, without painkillers.
It is one of the most horrific things I've ever seen, regardless of your views on the war I'm just talking about as a humanitarian issue.
And if you want to say every single portion of the blame belongs with Hamas because they started it or because they use Palestinian civilians as human shields as though every single time there's a bomb it's because there's some Hamas agent behind it and that You and Israel are totally absolved of all responsibility even though it's those bombs that Israel is the one dropping those bombs.
You can say that.
All I'm saying is the effect on the ground is one of the gravest humanitarian crises we've seen in at least since the war in Yemen when millions of children were on the brink of mass famine and many died from hunger, the worst way to die.
Here from the United Nations today is this report, Israel-Palestine, Gaza buckles under fuel shortage, healthcare in crisis.
Quote, the bombardment of Gaza has taken a devastating toll on its children, said the UN Children's Fund UNICEF on Tuesday, where they reported 2,363.
That amounts to 400 children reportedly either killed or injured daily.
and 64 injuries suffered.
That amounts to 400 children reportedly either killed or injured daily.
400 children reportedly either killed or injured daily in Gaza.
Additionally, more than 30 Israeli children have reportedly lost their lives and dozens remain in captivity within the Gaza Strip.
The 18-day period is the deadliest escalation of hostilities in the Gaza Strip in Israel since the UN has witnessed since 2006.
Doctors have been performing surgeries without anesthesia or other basic surgical supplies, the UN World Health Organization said in an update, noting that fuel has become the most vital commodity in Gaza.
Without it, quote, trucks can't move and generators can't produce electricity for hospitals, bakeries, and water desalinization plants, said Tamara Alefl, spokesman person for the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees.
To date, fuel has been absent from the aid convoys allowed in so far.
The World Health Organization highlighted the extreme gravity of the health situation in the Gaza Strip under Israeli bombardment for over two weeks.
One in three hospitals and two in three clinics are not functioning, and health facilities and workers were overwhelmed with a massive load of trauma cases, many of them complex injuries due to explosions.
Dr. Brennan cited the example of Al Sharif Hospital in Gaza City, which has 1.5 patients for each bed.
1.5 patients for each bed.
With 1.4 million displaced people across the territory, overcrowding was a major challenge to the health system.
Now, one of the things I've been hearing is, well, you can't trust the World Health Organization.
You can't trust the UN.
But then I also hear, well, you can't trust reporters inside Gaza because any reporter inside Gaza is by definition a Hamas agent.
Otherwise they wouldn't be able to be in the Gaza if they were reporting truthfully.
So apparently you can't trust anybody.
And then we showed you last night Fox personalities, Jeanine Pirro, Jesse Watters, explicitly advocating that there's no such thing as a Palestinian civilian because they elected Hamas and they're all just the same.
So conveniently, there are no sources that you should listen to about the devastation and death happening inside Gaza.
But I'll just leave it to you, to your imagination then, if you believe that, which I do not, to just imagine what would happen if the United States, or rather if Israel, dropped more bombs in one week in an extremely densely populated strip of land with 2.2 million people inside of it.
More bombs dropped on that population.
Then the United States dropped in an entire year on Afghanistan, which is what happened in that first week.
And it's only escalated since then.
I don't think you have to rely on the UN or the World Health Organization to know that there is massacre and slaughter and bloodshed and unbearably horrific humanitarian suffering with children.
And the situation is hard to watch, honestly.
And you can follow the accounts of ordinary Gazans who have been around forever and they video what their lives are like and talk about what their lives are like and you can dismiss all of them too, but no matter what, this is what the world is supposed to come together to object to and denounce.
These are crimes against humanity.
It's collective punishment.
It's deliberately imposing suffering and death on the Palestinian population in order to punish Hamas.
That is the definition of collective punishment.
And I saw some people saying today, look, war is ugly.
There's no limits in war.
That had always been true.
But after World War II, when the world suffered through two Atrocious world wars that kill tens of millions of people in the most unimaginably terrible ways.
The world got together at the Nuremberg Trials and the United Nations and decided that we know wars are going to happen, but we're going to create a law of war.
And crucial and central to that is the protection of civilians.
Things you can and can't do to civilians or to helpless detainees.
And part of that The goal in creating that system of law was to prevent things like the Holocaust and the rest of the abuses that were done in World War II.
If we pay so much attention to the Holocaust, go and look what happened to European Jews after the world was over and they were liberated by the Allies.
A lot of the Jews were saying then that life for them barely changed from the time of the Holocaust to the way they were kept in cages as homeless immigrants, stateless immigrants by the Allied powers.
Nobody wanted to take the Jews.
They were kept in immigration camps.
That's the reason the French and the British decided to take Palestinian land and just put the Jews there because they didn't want them in Europe.
Nobody wanted them.
There was this cruelty and displacement.
Just inhumane barbarism of the worst kind.
That's the reason we created a post-World War II order.
And it would be ironic in the extreme if it was Israel of all countries that caused its unraveling by essentially announcing that it no longer applied.
Israel has exempted itself from all kinds of international conventions as the United States.
They won't sign on to the Hague the way the United States and Russia won't.
They don't participate in anti-nuclear proliferation treaties because they obtain nuclear weapons and everybody knows that.
So I hope Israel doesn't continue to take the position that there's no limits on what they can do to Palestinian civilians, but right now that is their posture.
And that's why what happened today at the UN is so important.
The Secretary General of the UN today stood up and gave a speech on the situation in the Middle East, which is what he is there to do.
And here's some of what he said.
Here's the official UN Secretary General page.
Quote, And what he's saying there is, by the way, that you have to notice this.
It's not just in Israel and Gaza.
is raging and risk spilling throughout the region.
Divisions are splintering societies.
Tensions threaten to boil over.
And what he's saying there is, by the way, that you have to notice this.
It's not just in Israel and Gaza.
In the United States, the discourse is so hateful, so entrenched with tribal vitriol, to the point where people are eager to get rid of free speech.
They're saying ban basic civil rights for Palestinians, including Palestinian Americans or Palestinian Europeans.
No free speech for them.
No protest for them.
Have the FBI investigate them.
These are savages in our midst trying to kill all Jews.
So it's spilling over and that's what the UN Security General Secretary was saying.
I just hit my monitor and paused.
The graphic on the screen to fall there, it's back.
So that's what he's talking about there when he says divisions are splintering societies, tensions threaten to boil over.
He's talking about the conflict going into Europe and the United States as well.
And then he continues, quote, at a crucial moment like this, it is vital to be clear on principles, starting with the fundamental principle of respecting and protecting civilians.
I have condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented October 7th acts of terror by Hamas in Israel.
And in case you think there's anything ambiguous about what he said, he said, I have condemned unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented attack by Hamas.
Nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring, and kidnapping of civilians, or the launching of rockets against civilian targets.
Does that sound in any way relativistic or ambiguous to you when it comes to condemning what Hamas did?
No, it does not.
It was a condemnation period.
And then he goes on, quote, all hostages must be treated humanely and released immediately and without conditions.
I respectively note the presence among us of members of their families.
And this is what he then went on to say that enraged the Israelis to the point that they're now threatening not to allow anyone from the UN into their country and calling the UN basically anti-semitic spreaders of blood libels.
This is all he said after that passage I just read to you.
Quote, it is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.
The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.
They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence, their economy stifled, their people displaced, and their homes demolished.
Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.
All of which is unquestionably true.
And then he still goes on to say, Knowing that his responsibility is not to say anything to justify what Hamas did, which he does not do, is he then goes on to say, but the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas.
So he said it a second time.
He said, No matter what you think of those grievances, nothing can justify what Hamas did, and those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.
So he's saying what Hamas did is inexcusable no matter what context you consider, but that also doesn't justify collective punishment.
He then went on, Excellencies, even war has rules.
We must demand that all parties uphold and respect their obligations under international humanitarian law, take constant care in the conduct of military operations to spare civilians, and respect and protect hospitals and respect the inviolability of UN facilities which today are sheltering more than 600,000 Palestinians.
600,000 Palestinians.
That's one-fourth of the Palestinian population are in UN refugee camps.
The relentless bombardment of Gaza by Israeli forces, the level of civilian casualties, and the wholesale destruction of neighborhoods continue to mount and are deeply alarming.
The protection of civilians is paramount in any armed conflict.
Protecting civilians can never mean using them as human shields.
Protecting civilians does not mean ordering more than 1 million people to evacuate to the south.
I am deeply concerned about the clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza.
to bomb the South itself.
I am deeply concerned about the clear violations of international humanitarian law that we are witnessing in Gaza.
I regard that speech as perfect.
It tracks more or less the trajectory of what we've been saying on the show, starting off for the first several days and focusing on the Hamas attack, and not just saying as lip service but constructing an argument for why what Hamas did can't be justified just You just can't have a moral standard that allows people to go to a musical festival and gun down civilians, no matter how enraged you are by the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians over decades.
And that's what he said, and that's what the UN chief should say.
But he then went on to say that what is subsequently happening in Gaza is a form of collective punishment and violation of humanitarianism.
And it is.
And no matter how much you love Israel, no matter how much you support Israel, loving and supporting a country does not mean refusing to criticize its government.
I'm sure most of you have criticized the United States government at times.
We just watched the new Speaker of the House accuse the FBI and the CIA of being deeply corrupted and politicized.
That doesn't mean he's anti-American.
It means he's pro-American.
That's the kind of criticism that you launch when you care about your country.
If you care about Israel, even if you don't care about Gaza, you have an interest in insisting that it Not completely lose its soul, that it adhere to humanitarian principles and international law, and in its rage and quest for vengeance, not just exterminate Palestinians without end.
Which is what is happening.
That is what's happening.
Israel heard that speech, that incredibly balanced speech, that I'm sure made Palestinians angry as well, and its supporters.
And this is what happened from AP.
Israel accuses UN chief of justifying terrorism for saying Hamas attack didn't happen in a vacuum.
The speech went out of its way multiple times to say terrorism of the kind Hamas carried out can never be justified under any circumstances.
And yet, quote, Israeli officials were outraged Wednesday over UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres' comment that the deadly Hamas attack on southern Israel, quote, did not happen in a vacuum, calling it justification for terrorism.
This is exactly what happened after 9-11.
You had a few people brave enough willing to stand up, like Ron Paul and Noam Chomsky, and say what happened on 9-11 was horrific, You cannot attack civilians this way, but we should think about, as Americans, what we've been doing in that part of the world that might have caused it.
And they were accused of being pro-terrorist, when in fact they were just trying to get Americans to see the truth about the causal connection between our actions and those, what the CIA calls blowback.
The UN Secretary, of course, has to put this in context.
And call on both sides who are violating humanitarian law in certain ways.
He didn't justify terrorism.
And yet, quote, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen of Israel canceled a scheduled meeting with Gutierrez while Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, said the UN chief, quote, failed the test.
Quote, I will not meet with the UN Secretary General after the October 7th massacre.
There is no place for a balanced approach.
Hamas must be erased off the face of the planet.
Cohen posted Tuesday on social media platform Axe, formerly known as Twitter, quote, we refuse to grant visas to UN representatives.
We have already refused to give one to Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffith.
Erdogan told Army Radio, accusing Guterres of justifying a slaughter.
Quote, it's time to teach them a lesson.
The slaughter of Jews by Hamas on October 7th was genocidal in its intent and immeasurably brutal in its form.
Yad Vashem Chairman Danny Dian said in a statement, he said that it tests the sincerity of world leaders who came to Yad Vashem and pledged, quote, never again.
Quote, those who seek to understand, look for a justifying context, do not condemn the perpetrators and do not call for the unconditional and immediate release of the abducted failed the test.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres failed the test.
Look at how deceitful they are.
Those who do not condemn the perpetrators He condemned Tamas, the perpetrator, in multiple ways in unambiguous and emphatic and unconditional expression.
Those who do not call for the immediate and unconditional release of the abducted, he explicitly did exactly that.
That's who fails the test, they said, and he failed the test.
What really failing the test means is uttering an ounce of criticism of Israel.
That is prohibited.
That is banned.
That cannot be permitted.
That is the framework Israel is attempting to impose on the world.
If you dislike the Holocaust, if you are sincere in your vow that the Holocaust will never happen again, you will refrain from criticizing not only what we've done in the past, but what we're doing in the present.
That is an arrogance that everyone should reject.
Israel is playing not only with fire in its country but in the world.
They are relying on funds and military support from multiple other countries around the world.
world, they do not have the right to turn around and say, we don't accept any criticism of our country.
Now, here is an article from The Guardian about what happened here.
And you see the headline, Israel to refuse visas to UN representatives over Guterres speech on Gaza war.
That's pretty much what we just showed you.
Here is the Israeli, the ambassador to the UN speaking on this.
His speech at the Security Council by saying that Hamas attacks did not happen in a vacuum This is really something that every decent person, it should be unfathomable for each and every one of us.
Mr. Secretary General, the UN was established to prevent atrocities, to prevent such atrocities like the barbaric atrocities that Hamas committed.
But the U.N.
is failing.
The U.N.
is failing.
And you, Mr. Secretary General, have lost all morality and impartiality.
Because when you say those terrible words that these heinous attacks did not happen in a vacuum, you are tolerating terrorism.
And by tolerating terrorism, you are justifying terrorism.
Sorry, that is pathetic.
That is a pathetic attempt to prohibit and place off limits criticism of Israel.
That's why I read so much of the UN Secretary General's speech.
He could not have been more emphatic.
Obviously, he understands the situation.
He knows what the debate is about and what people are going to accuse him of.
And so he went out of his way to do exactly that, which they're now claiming he didn't do.
How is it that you can give a speech saying over and over what Hamas did is inexcusable, it doesn't matter how much criticism you have of Israel, nothing justifies what Hamas did, they must immediately and unconditionally release all these hostages, nothing justifies terrorism, and then have the Israelis turn around and say, he's justifying terrorism, because he also criticized us.
Don't fall for that.
So many people were intimidated by exactly this sort of bullying behavior in the wake of 9-11.
Any peep of protest against the Bush and Cheney administration, any suggestion that the United States has to look inward to understand why its behavior provoked those attacks was deemed to be an apology for terrorism or even being on the side of Al Qaeda.
And so many people were bullied into silence.
And in that silence arose abuses That brought moral shame and immense destruction to our country.
Don't make that same mistake.
I understand not everybody can withstand being called anti-semitic or on the side of terrorism.
We just last night went through all the number of people who are being fired and having their reputations destroyed because of it.
But that's one of the things we intend to do on this show that we're hoping to work hard to help achieve, although obviously we can't do it by ourselves and we want and hope other people are willing to do it too and there are, is being willing to say no, that's not going to happen this time.
We're not going to let free speech be abridged.
We're not going to get ourselves dragged into some war that is unnecessary because the Israelis refuse to accept the fact that they're limited by the same precepts of humanitarianism and international law as everybody else.
We're not going to put our country at risk for Israel.
We had said at the start of the show we wanted to show you all the different ways in which people are now calling for an expansion of FBI power, including calling for the FBI to investigate people who are dissenting on suspicions that maybe they're on the side of terrorists, which is exactly what happened in the wake of 9-11.
Even though it's coming from some of the very same people who have been saying, defund the FBI.
The FBI is fundamentally corrupted.
and they abused their power for political ends.
Just like a lot of people who built their careers waving the free speech banner over the last several years started calling for censorship and cancellation, so too have been the people who objected to the FBI as a fundamentally corrupted institution now suddenly saying, "We want the FBI to investigate domestic dissidents." Josh Hawley said it very early on, "Get the FBI to investigate Hamas supporters, People are calling for the FBI to criminalize the quote providing of moral support for Hamas.
How would you do that by criticizing Israel?
Ron DeSantis banned that pro-Palestine group at the University of South Florida claiming that they are providing material support for terrorism.
So we're going to save that for tomorrow, that segment on all the people who have been doing that, but that's part of what I was just saying.
Don't let that happen.
Let me just play the rest of this video because it's really remarkable what he says.
Hamas, as the minister explained, beheaded babies, burned families, raped women, abducted kids, babies, Holocaust survivors.
And the SG is blaming the victim?
You are blaming Israel?
This is a pure blood libel.
This is a pure blood libel and I think that the Secretary General must resign.
The Secretary General of the UN is not going to resign because they criticize Israel.
That's part of their job.
Israel is not any other, it's like every other country.
You're allowed to criticize Israel.
You're allowed to criticize the Israeli government.
You're allowed to criticize your own government.
You're definitely allowed to criticize the governments of foreign countries.
And U.S.
generals and U.S.
State Department officials have been saying for decades and continue to say But the United States is paying a very heavy price by constantly feeding Israel with weapons and money.
Look at how important Israel is to the American political class.
They elected a new speaker finally after weeks and the first thing he said he's going to do is make sure Israel is taken care of.
So, we already have Israel up on this pedestal and David Petraeus, so many people throughout the years have said, One of the main reasons our troops are in danger in the Middle East, that we may get attacked in the Middle East, that we may get attacked around the world, that there's a travel advisory now for Americans, not just Israelis, Americans.
It's because a lot of people want to attack the United States and U.S.
interests because of how closely tied we are with Israel.
So if you're a taxpayer paying money to the United States government and sending that money to Israel, which it does, you have every right to criticize the Israeli government.
And it doesn't make you a terrorist supporter.
It doesn't mean you're guilty of blood libel.
It doesn't mean that you are soft on the Holocaust.
It doesn't mean any of that.
Those are manipulative tactics to repress dissent.
Dissent is more crucial than ever when your government wants to involve you in a new war, even to the extent that our government wants to involve us in the war in Israel by paying for it, by arming it, by moving our aircraft carrier to the region, by threatening retaliation against Iran and Hezbollah.
Those are serious acts of involvement in this very dangerous war, and accompanying that involvement is your right to criticize the Israeli government without being manipulated or having your reputation destroyed for it.
So we're going to go ahead and show you tomorrow the increasing escalations and calls.
I'm sure there'll be new ones in the next 24 hours for an expansion of state power.
Even after 20 years of expanding state power in the name of fighting terrorism, there are people who want to expand it still further.
As though if we just kill a few more people, not sure how many, how many more people in Gaza do we have to kill?
Israelis have been killing them every year in varying numbers.
How many poor people in Gaza does Israel have to kill?
How much more state power do we have to vest in the federal government to stop terrorism before our problem has finally ended?
Or maybe what we should do instead is ask what it is that we're doing and what Israel is doing that's causing this conflict to continue and whether there's a different path that we can take to finally solve it.
We're not going to murder our way out of it or bomb our way out of it or submit to and acquiesce to authoritarianism in order to get out of it.
And so what is more important than ever is the ability to have that debate freely.
And so much of what is happening is designed to ensure that you can't do that.
So that concludes our show for this evening.
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