Congress, in Chaos, Can’t Even Get an Israel Bill Passed. Dems Strip Border Security from Ukraine-Israel Aid Package. New Evidence of Israeli Atrocities
TIMESTAMPS:
Intro (0:00)
Israel Funding Bill Fails (7:41)
More Money for War (40:08)
Gaza Destroyed (46:12)
Ending (59:50)
- - -
Watch full episodes on Rumble, streamed LIVE 7pm ET: https://rumble.com/c/GGreenwald
Become part of our Locals community: https://greenwald.locals.com/
- - -
Follow Glenn:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ggreenwald
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glenn.11.greenwald/
Follow System Update:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SystemUpdate_
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/systemupdate__/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@systemupdate__
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/systemupdate.tv/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/systemupdate/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Congress considered a bill to send billions of dollars to Israel, $17 billion to be exact, on top of the $4 billion it already gets and all the weapons the U.S.
has sent there since October 7th.
But the Congress failed to get the votes necessary to approve this transfer of U.S.
resources to Tel Aviv.
All of this happened because, as we reported last night, a bipartisan bill that was negotiated by Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, whose real goal, his top goal, was to send $60 billion to Ukraine and another $14 billion to Israel, And then threw in some very mild border security spending to pretend to Americans that they were also concerned about them.
That bill was pronounced dead on arrival by the GOP House leadership in large part because Donald Trump viewed the border security packages woefully inadequate.
After a huge uproar from the GOP base about that border bill, almost entirely against, Many Republican Senators who were eager to vote for that bill, even some who helped negotiate it, then announced they would vote no, including Mitch McConnell, leaving all of the provisions of this bill, border security, aid to Ukraine, and aid to Israel, without any path to approval.
From that chaos, all the key players in Washington began showing their real priorities, forced for once to drop their masks by the failure of this omnibus compromise bill.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, whose first priority upon becoming Speaker, he said, was to pass a bill not to help Americans, but rather to help, quote, our good friend Israel, Immediately introduced standalone legislation to simply send $17 billion to our good friend Israel.
It did not even contain the budget cuts to offset this new spending that he promised would be the hallmark of his speakership.
That's the bill that failed last night in the GOP House by a pretty decent margin.
Meanwhile, what Democrats are most desperate to get, which again is not anything for the American people, it's $60 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion or $17 billion to Israel, became their only legislative goal.
They stopped pretending to care at all about the American border and announced that they would have a standalone bill just for Ukraine and Israel.
With some also funds for Gaza, some to fund the war in Yemen, some for more aggression in Asia.
And Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate Majority Leader, confidently predicted that he'd have enough votes, including Republican votes, to get that passed through the Senate, even though there is still ample opposition among the House Republicans to sending more money to Ukraine.
Either because they oppose that on principle, Or because they want spending cuts to zero out the spending increase, or because they won't send money to Ukraine without money first for the American border.
Now, in all of this you see that many people in the power positions of Washington, in both parties, have very intense and steadfast priorities.
They really believe in these.
And these priorities, the vast majority of them, have absolutely nothing to do with the welfare of, or even the lives of, the American citizens they ostensibly represent.
And few events, like the ones over the last 48 hours in Congress, more vividly demonstrate that.
So we're going to break that down and tell you Exactly what happened and what it shows finally new evidence has emerged of the true nature of the destruction of Gaza by Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces by no means confined to military targets instead overwhelmingly aimed at destroying civilian life and Civilian infrastructure in a way that has barely been seen in modern warfare at least since World War two
On top of that, it has been confirmed that the IDF was behind a truly gruesome telegram channel that glorified the extreme torture and mutilation of Palestinian civilians, while IDF soldiers continue to post social media videos on TikTok and elsewhere, mocking and humiliating the Palestinians and their lives that they are destroying.
It's incredibly sadistic.
Not like a well-disciplined army or even a moral one.
The U.S.
is paying for all of this, remember?
Providing the weapons for Gaza's destruction, and the whole world knows it.
And whatever you think about this war, the cost to American citizens has already been quite high from financing Israel's war, from defending it diplomatically, from providing the weapon, and those costs are sure to grow even higher.
Now, maybe you want to support Israel and finance Israel's war anyway, but at the very least, you should know about these costs.
Before we get to our show, a few program notes.
First of all, we're encouraging our viewers to download the Rumble app, which not only works better, in my view, on the app than it does on the internet browser, but it also enables you to follow the shows that you most love to watch on Rumble.
Now, it doesn't have to be sad that that means the number one show that you would pick would be System Update, but the good thing is there are also other shows on Rumble.
Like the Russell Brand Show, many others that I hope that you're watching.
If you download the app, you can follow those.
If you turn on notifications, as we hope you will, it means that the minute any of those shows that you follow begin broadcasting live on the air, you'll be immediately notified by text or by email or by phone, however you want, want so that you don't have to wait around when those other shows are recklessly and irresponsibly a little bit late beyond the time that they say they start.
Sometimes I hear they start a few minutes late.
It's terrible, but this fixes it because you just click on the app.
Soon as they go live, you don't have to wait around and it really helps spread the visibility of the Rumble platform as well because it increases the Stop sneezing on air.
It's always difficult, but you just have to go ahead and do it and forget that it happened.
If you do that as well, it helps increase the live viewer numbers on Rumble, which really helps spread the word of the platform as well.
As another reminder, System Update is also available in podcast form.
You can follow every episode or listen to every episode 12 hours after the first broadcast live here on Rumble, on Spotify, Apple, and all other major podcasting platforms.
If you rate, review, and follow the show, it really helps spread the visibility of the program.
As a final reminder, every Tuesday and Thursday night, once we're done with our live show here on Rumble, we move to Locals for our live interactive aftershow where it's designed to take your questions and respond to your feedback and critiques and to hear your suggestions for future guests and shows.
Also, we always have at least two And sometimes three canine co-hosts, various dogs of mine, that help host the show.
And they often provide even more entertainment than I'm capable of doing, as many viewers of that show will tell you.
If you want to be able to watch that show, it's available solely for subscribers to our Locals community.
And if you want to join the Locals platform, which not only entitles you to watch those twice a week after shows, but also to get the daily transcripts of every program that we publish here on Rumble.
As well as to enjoy the interactive features where I respond to critiques and comments throughout the week as many as I can.
It's the place we publish our original journalism and it's really the place, the community, on which we rely to support the independent journalism that we're trying to do here.
Simply click the join button right below the video player on the Rumble page and it will take you directly to the Locals community.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
One of the main purposes of this show that we do every night is, of course, to report on the news, One of the main purposes of this show that we do every night is, of course, to report on the news, try and do so in a way that we focus on events that a lot of other major media outlets aren't covering and to provide perspective and analysis and information and reporting about those events that you wouldn't get elsewhere.
And sometimes it's difficult to pick exactly which topics we want to cover.
Usually there are more in one day than we would like to.
And what we try and do is pick the ones that are most informative, that are most illustrative, that will leave you with the most amount of insight and information and thought.
Because the good thing about our show is we don't purport to be a comprehensive newscast.
We don't purport to cover every major or mildly significant news event of the day.
We don't cover 18 topics like a cable news show does.
We're able to do two or three and really dive deeply into them.
And occasionally you get a news event that, beyond the importance of it unto itself, is so illustrative of how Washington works that You can really just take those 48 hours of events and break them down and really understand what is happening here.
As we talked about last night, what bipartisan Washington decided to do was that the number one priority of the Biden White House was to get $60 billion more to Ukraine on top of the $120 billion the United States has already sent to Ukraine to keep that war going.
The Europeans just sent $50 billion.
So the idea is just to destroy Ukraine, to kill as many Ukrainians as possible.
To keep that war going.
And then at the end, when Ukraine is destroyed, they're never going to guess who's going to sweep in and pay for its reconstruction.
It's going to be the United States government.
And the people who are going to profit are Wall Street banks and hedge funds like BlackRock and JP Morgan.
They're going to do all kinds of investments for reconstruction.
The American government's going to pay for it.
They're going to profit from it.
They're going to use some of that profit to finance the bold political parties in Washington.
That's how it works.
Just this money is constantly being laundered.
And so the idea is to keep this war going for as long as possible.
Thankfully there is some political realignment and it's only the Republican Party on this issue that has been listening to American voters who have increasingly been saying, we don't actually want to keep sending our money to Ukraine.
Next week we're going to be traveling, so we've been doing some interviews this week.
And I think I mentioned yesterday that one of the interviews we taped this week to show you next week when I'm traveling is with Senator Rand Paul.
It was a very in-depth interview.
I think we're going to show it to you Monday night or Tuesday night.
We'll figure that out.
But one of the things that he said, and he's obviously been a vehement opponent of funding the war in Ukraine as well as foreign aid to places like Israel.
Give Israel the money to destroy Gaza and then we pay to reconstruct Gaza or to provide basic humanitarian aid to prevent them from dying at the hands of our weapons?
Is that all of this money that we're constantly doling out that you're hearing about, oh $60 billion here for Ukraine and $17 billion here for Israel and this new war and that new war, it doesn't even come really from the American taxpayer.
The American taxpayer, the revenue to the U.S.
government is nowhere near sufficient to cover all these wars and all this foreign aid.
It just about covers entitlement programs that keep Americans afloat once they retire.
Things like Social Security and Medicare.
Most of this money is money that we borrow from China.
That's where all of this debt comes from.
We borrow this money from China.
And it's so bizarre that there are a lot of Republicans who like to say China is our existential enemy.
The most important thing we can do is weaken China, and yet they advocate wars constantly, like the war in Ukraine, like financing the war in Israel, that just puts the United States more and more into debt to China.
That debt's going to have to be paid off eventually.
By whom?
By future generations of Americans.
And they're going to be told, we can't afford Social Security any longer, you're going to be on your own when you retire, even though you've been paying into it your whole life.
Or give up Medicare?
Who knows how you're going to get doctors and medication when you're too old to work and you're sick?
So that's where everything is headed.
And the American public knows this as well, that nobody in Washington has their interests in mind.
That's why Donald Trump stood up in a 2016 convention speech and he said, I'm here to speak for the forgotten person.
That's what he meant.
Maybe that's only rhetoric.
Maybe it's not.
Whatever.
It was rhetoric that worked because it resonated with people.
Because people who don't follow politics and these day-to-day events understand the basics of it.
And what they understand more than anything is that people in Washington don't care about them.
We've shown you this before.
Here was Mike Johnson when he was elected Speaker of the House.
And as I said before, I actually have respect for Mike Johnson.
Right before he was elected new speaker in October, I think like two or three months before he was on my show, where we talked about the hearings that he had participated in to denounce the FBI and CIA for interfering in our politics, for trying to censor the internet.
He's a constitutional lawyer.
I think he's very smart.
I think he's very well spoken, very presentable.
I think he's actually a good representative for the Republican Party.
But he has an obsession, a personal obsession with Israel.
Maybe it's for religious reasons, maybe it's for personal reasons, maybe it's for ideological reasons, maybe he believes the geostrategic needs of the United States are best served by sending huge amounts of money to Israel.
But when he was elected, he followed this American tradition when new speakers are elected.
It's only happened 46 times in our country.
It's a pretty rare and significant event.
And the speaker ascends up to the tribunal for the first time where they're going to preside over the house.
And they give a speech where they lay out their priorities for their speakership.
And usually they say, we're going to introduce as the very first bill of my speakership, a bill that will help you in your lives this way.
Here is Mike Johnson, what he said was gonna be his first bill after being elected speaker.
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- Okay, so the first bill that he's going to bring to this floor- Will be in support of our dear friend- I, and I think Americans are wondering, okay, we have a new speaker.
So what is going to be the first bill he's going to do to help us?
Is it going to be like to stop the flow of fentanyl in our communities that are killing our kids?
Is it going to be to fortify the American border so that huge numbers of migrants aren't arriving in our towns and cities and we don't have the resources to help them?
What are you going to do?
What's this first bill that's going to define your speakership?
And here's what he said.
Can we go back a little bit here?
What's going to be the first bill?
We'll be in support of our dear friend Israel, and we're overdue in getting that done.
That's quite a bipartisan standing ovation he got there.
I think a lot of Democrats sat down, but a huge number stood up because the Israel lobby in the United States is very bipartisan.
And so he told you what his first priority was.
Now, after this broad bill that Democrats wanted to send $60 billion to Ukraine, and mostly the Republicans in the House, I think to their credit, said, look, we're not voting for $60 billion more for Ukraine.
We won't even consider it unless we first secure our own border.
Why would we give $60 million to Ukraine to fortify its border against Russia when our own border is being invaded and attacked and we have no means to keep people out that the law says have to be kept out, that even Democratic mayors and governors are admitting they cannot accommodate?
And so there was a negotiation to try and show the American public On whose behalf only these House Republicans were speaking, saying, we're not going to send $60 billion of our money to Ukraine when our own government gets nothing, our own country gets nothing.
So Mitch McConnell and his allies negotiated a bipartisan bill with Chuck Schumer that was designed to pretend that in exchange for sending $60 billion to Ukraine and $17 billion to Israel and $10 billion to Gaza and $4 billion more for Yemen, just sending money all over the place to all these wars, They would at least spend a small percentage of it, $20 billion on fortifying the border.
And it's true that the Border Patrol Union, that's generally considered pretty right-wing when it comes to immigration, supported this bill.
But that's because there's a lot of money going to the Border Patrol.
It increases their salaries.
They get to hire and buy more resources and more things.
So they're doing what they should do, defending their workers.
But it doesn't mean that it's actually a good bill for dealing with the problem at the border.
And Republicans took one look at this bill.
And by Republicans, I really mean like the rank and file, along with Donald Trump.
And they said, this bill is woefully inadequate.
This is not a real border security bill.
And we're not going to send $60 billion to Ukraine in order to In exchange for something that we don't think is real help to the United States.
And once Trump said this bill was inadequate and the Republican base rose up in indignation over it, the House Republican leadership came out and said that this bill has no chance to pass the House.
It's dead on arrival.
Don't even bother to have a vote in the Senate.
They had a vote in the Senate anyway, and it failed.
This is a bill that Mitch McConnell negotiated.
And yet only four Republicans, Mitt Romney, a couple others, voted yes.
Even Mitch McConnell ended up voting no on this bill that he himself championed once he saw that it was going to fail, once he saw the anger over it.
And now the problem for the Biden White House and Mitch McConnell, who have the same top priority, which is getting money to Ukraine, is, well, how do we get money to Ukraine now?
First, the Republicans in the House told us they won't consider an aid package to Ukraine unless it is accompanied by border security, but we gave the most we're willing to give on border security and they still won't vote for it.
And there are a lot of Republicans who are saying, "We won't vote for any money to more to Ukraine." And then there are some House Republicans saying, "We won't vote for Ukraine unless there's offsetting costs that ensure the debt and the deficit doesn't increase by virtue of financing the war in Ukraine." Cut $60 billion from the IRS budget if you want to send $60 billion to the IRS.
They tried all that.
It failed.
And now the Biden White House is desperate to get money to Ukraine, as we're going to show you in a second.
But Mike Johnson seems quite desperate to get money to Israel now.
And he can't figure out how to do it.
So what he said was, I'm just going to introduce a bill in the House.
That'll just be a standalone bill to send money to Israel.
He knew we needed Democratic votes to get that.
And so we just removed the parts where they would have cut spending to offset it.
When Mike Johnson was elected Speaker, he said, I'm not going to approve any new spending unless there's offsetting cuts to our spending to balance it out.
He abandoned that principle, that principle for Israel.
He knew he needed a Democratic vote, so he took it out.
If it weren't there, we'd have no chance of getting Democratic votes.
And nonetheless, the way he brought it to the floor was like an emergency measure.
It needed two-thirds to pass, and it failed overwhelmingly.
Here's Politico yesterday.
Quote, House fails to pass a standalone Israel aid bill.
Now, if you've been watching politics for any amount of time, you know that one of the least likely things is that a bill that does nothing but send money to Israel would ever be treated in any way other than with great reverence.
And yet the politics around financing other countries wars and the war in Israel itself have really changed and the bill failed.
Quote, it's just a political stunt by the Republicans and the Speaker said Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, summing up Democrats feeling on the measure.
In other words, the Democrats don't want to send money to Israel because they know if they do, they're going to lose the leverage over Republicans to get them to agree to send money to Ukraine, which is the only thing they really care about.
Because the Republicans cannot hold up money to Israel because they rely too much on Jewish voters, on the pro-Israel lobby, and they cannot be in a position where they look like they're the only ones obstructing money to Israel.
And the hope of the Democrats is to say, we know you're so desperate to send money to Israel that you're going to say yes to our main priority, which is sending $60 billion to Ukraine.
Again, nowhere in here is anything about the American people, the priorities that they really care about.
In fact, last night we showed you the quote where Mitch McConnell said, And it was reported in the New York Times that he doesn't really care about the border security as much as he cares about getting $60 billion to Ukraine.
So of course the bill Mitch McConnell negotiated ended up being very weak on border security because he doesn't care about that.
He admitted that.
He only cares about getting $60 billion to Ukraine and he knew he couldn't do that unless he pretended that the bill also contained some things to help the American people, the people who elected him and he's supposed to represent.
Here's what happened.
The House failed to pass a claimed $17.6 billion Israel aid bill on Tuesday as Congress struggles to find some vehicle that could clear critical money for foreign allies.
Why is Politico editorializing that way and calling it critical money for foreign allies?
Quote, the measure to aid the U.S.
ally in its war against Hamas went down 250 to 180 and was considered under an expedited procedure requiring two-thirds support.
Nearly four dozen Democrats voted yes, while more than a dozen Republicans opposed the measure.
Quote, there's no time for hesitation, said Speaker Mike Johnson, alongside Amir Ohana, the Speaker of the Israeli Knesset on Tuesday.
Quote, history beckons us to act boldly and decisively to defend Israel and our own citizens.
I really have no idea what he's talking about there.
Some of the hostages, a few of them, that Hamas took from Israel are American citizens because there are a lot of Americans who go to Israel to enlist in the Israeli military.
And obviously Hamas was taking people without having any idea what their nationality was.
There were a lot of hostages who were of Thai nationality as well.
Thailand didn't consider it their duty to treat that war as their own because Hamas had Thai citizens, just like Israel often kills Americans.
Just killed an American teenager in the West Bank.
Last year killed an American journalist in Gaza?
Lied about it?
Said it was an accident?
Their own investigation revealed it was deliberate?
Or that the Israelis did it?
The United States doesn't consider us at war with Israel just because Israel kills American citizens.
Just like we're not at war with Ukraine even though Ukraine just allowed Gonzalo Lira to die in prison and he's an American citizen who was only in prison for criticizing Zelensky.
Sending $17 billion to Israel benefits Israelis, not Americans.
But that is, apparently, Mike Johnson's primary objective.
Now, this screen is not working.
So I just have to indicate which ones I want.
Here's an article from Axios that Basically it's designed to show that more U.S.
aid to Israel has been given than to any other country over decades by a pretty decent amount.
We give $4 billion to Israel whether or not they're at war or not.
That was a deal negotiated between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu right as Obama and Biden were leaving office.
They reached a record-setting deal with Israel to give Israel $4 billion over 10 years, a $40 billion deal basically.
Some of that money has to be spent buying weapons from American arms dealers.
Which enriches arms dealer executives but doesn't do much for the American people.
So we give money to the Israelis so they can buy weapons from Raytheon and General Dynamics.
But they spend about 25% of whatever they want, including their own companies.
And here's the graph from Axios that shows U.S.
economic and military aid to Israel from 1951 to 2020.
from 1951 to 2020.
And you can see that in the 1950s and the 1960s, the amounts are very low.
Israel was not really a priority either for the US government or for American Jews in the 50s and 60s.
And then suddenly in 1970 with the Yom Kippur War, in the other words, Israel fought in the early 1970s, including 1967 war, under first President Nixon, it went up during those wars.
And then it just basically stayed at this $5 to $10 billion level.
And then here in 2020 is Biden's increase, $14.3 billion, that jumps up.
No country gets anywhere near the spending.
I mean, some years we get more to a country where trying to help Afghanistan or Ukraine to sustain a war.
But in general, over the years, Israel has received far more financial aid, military aid from the United States than any other country.
Here's what Axios says about this.
And maybe on the break we can fix the screen.
As part of an agreement reached under the Obama administration, Israel receives $3.8 billion annually for its military and missile defense systems.
Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign military financing, which has represented around 15% of the country's defense budget in recent years.
Most U.S. assistance comes in form of weapon grants, and more than 80% of Israel's weapons imports come from the U.S., came from the U.S. between 1950 and 2020.
Now, The remarkable thing about how much money we give to Israel and how much more money Biden and Mike Johnson and most Republicans and Democrats want to send to Israel now is that millions of Israelis have a better standard of living than millions of Americans.
And yet those Americans are told, even though Israelis have a better standard of living than you, you have to work so that we can send your money to finance Israel's military and their wars.
Here's the Jerusalem Post on January 5th of 2023 celebrating a very impressive achievement from Israel.
Quote, Israel is among the top 10 countries with the longest life expectancies.
Israel boasts one of the highest life expectancies in the world while managing to maintain low health care costs.
Congratulations to Israel.
That's incredibly impressive.
That's such a Vibrant and effective and low-cost health care system that their citizens live very, very long lives?
That's fantastic!
Congratulations!
Quote, Israel has the 10th highest life expectancy in the world, according to research conducted by NICE-Rx, which says Israelis have a life expectancy of 83.49 years.
83.49 years, 81.98 years for men and 84.91 years for women.
Taking the number one spot on the list is Hong Kong, followed by Japan, Switzerland, Singapore, Italy, Spain, Australia, Iceland, and South Korea.
You'll notice one country that is not, in fact, in front of Israel when it comes to life expectancy, and that's the United States.
The United States is actually well behind Israel in terms of the amount of years that a citizen of the United States can expect to live versus a citizen of Israel.
They have universal health care, access to extremely effective and low-cost health care.
Their citizens aren't drowning in medical debt, aren't worried about having to go to the ER as their primary care physician.
It's a great country with a very high standard of living.
Higher, in fact, than a lot of Americans, millions of Americans, who watch their government send enormous sums of money over to Israel.
Money that could obviously help the lives of American citizens instead.
Here from the OECD report in April of 2016, that's the OECD Health Policy Overview That's the organization that tracks these health statistics.
Quote, Israel has built a universal health system at relatively low cost.
Health spending was 7.5% of GOP in 2013, below the OECD average of 8.9%, although the health spending share of GDP has been increasing rapidly, particularly in recent years.
Israel has developed a sophisticated program to monitor quality of primary care.
While the Israeli population enjoys good health outcomes and the health system performs fairly well, there are specifics, health workers and hospital care in particular, where policy attention is needed.
Now, as everyone who lives in the United States knows, there is no system of universal health care in the United States.
People have to rely on their ability to pay private health insurance costs and then medical costs because oftentimes the insurance doesn't cover it.
They're very large deductibles.
You know the whole situation.
And a lot of people have no health care insurance or real access to medical treatment at all.
But in Israel they do.
They have universal health care.
It's a very impressive achievement as well.
Here from the International Trade Administration on October of 2023, so just the day before actually, October 6, 2023, the day before the attack on Hamas, on Israel by Hamas, here is the report on Israel.
Quote, Israel's health care system is advanced by international standards.
Israel provides universal health care coverage to Israeli citizens and permanent residents via four independent health management organizations, HMOs, and a network of mandated benefit packages including hospital, primary specialty, mental health, and maternity care, as well as prescription drugs and other services.
Israeli health facilities are modern and receptive to innovative technologies and procedures.
Really, it sounds like a fantastic place to get sick.
There are American Jews who send their kids to Israel because education is cheaper there, but also of higher quality often.
There are all sorts of benefits that Israeli citizens have that American citizens do not.
It's very odd to watch many billions of dollars go from the American Treasury into the Israeli Treasury, given that this is the case.
I don't know if we have the next... Yeah, we do.
Okay, so let's look at the United States, the country that sends all these billions of dollars to Israel.
The situation is quite different in the United States.
Here from NPR on March 25th of 2023, quote, live free and die, the sad state of US life expectancy.
Life expectancy continues to decline in the US as it rebounds in other countries.
Sad state of affairs for life expectancy in the United States.
Here from NPR, you can see United States life expectancy versus comparable other countries.
Remember, it was 81 years for Israeli men, 84 years for Israeli women in the United States in 2021.
It was 70 6.1 years now obviously that was low in part because of COVID although not much lower but you can see in the years before that it was 78 years old 77 years old it had been increasing slightly but nowhere near Other advanced democracies are nowhere near Israel.
Remember, Israel is way up here at 81 to 84.
It's significantly higher than where the United States is at.
So again, it seems like an odd situation that we are sending billions of dollars to them If you would think that if the priority were actually the American people, that would not be the case, at least until Americans have the same standard of living as Israel.
We would probably tell Israel, you should pay for your own wars and your own military, especially if you want to keep expanding your land and occupying places like the West Bank, where we tell you we don't want you there because it harms our national security when the whole world says that it's illegal.
If you want to really do that, go ahead, but we can't pay for your wars that happen as a result for your expansion.
into territory and your conquering of territory and your destruction of land that the entire world says is not yours to destroy or to occupy.
And if you choose to do that, we can't finance your decision to do that.
We can't ask our population who's living seven or eight years less, who's dying seven or eight years sooner than your population, to pay for your military and for your wars.
and yet that's exactly what's happening.
Just like we're sending $60 billion to Ukraine on top of the $120 billion that we already sent, even though we know for certain that a lot of that money is being stolen by a country that has been notorious for being the most corrupt in Europe for many, many years.
Here from the Texas Tribune in June of 2022, in stark contrast to the system of healthcare that Israelis enjoy, quote, a hundred million people in America, that's one third, are saddled with Medicare debt, medical debt.
The U.S.
health system now produces debt on a mass scale, a new investigation show.
Patients across the country face gut-wrenching sacrifices.
Now you would think with life expectancy declining in the United States, with people drowning in medical debt that can't get health insurance, they can't get health access to the healthcare system, where every advanced democracy, literally every advanced democracy has universal healthcare coverage except for the United States and yet we spend far more on our medical system than any of those other countries.
That it would be a national emergency to figure out why.
Why are Americans dying in such record numbers?
Why are so many taking fentanyl?
Why are there so many drug overdoses?
Why are Americans suffering from so much debt, so much depression, so much addiction, so much suicide?
Do you think the American Congress ever thinks about that?
Do you see what their priorities are instead?
They had a bill to pretend, to pull the wool over the eyes of the American public, to pretend that they were getting something for this $120 billion bill.
The vast majority of which was going to other countries to finance other countries' wars and militaries.
And they threw in a token $20 billion, a lot of which had nothing to do with border security.
And it was a small percentage.
And when it didn't pass, They stopped pretending that that was their priority.
They stopped pretending they cared about that at all.
Mitch McConnell said his priority is not border security for the United States, but border security for Ukraine.
He's the leader of the Republican Party.
Because the interest that he serves are the interests of his donors, the same donors that fund both parties.
It's the same priority of the Biden White House.
Mike Johnson's priority is sending money to Israel, even if it means we go further into debt and our deficit increases, both of which Republican politicians endlessly claim they're so worried about.
Because the actual priority system of Both parties in Congress could not be clearer.
they're telling you what it is in the bills that they are now being forced to pursue and the way that they're being forced to pursue it.
We are always very proud that one of our sponsors is the Wellness Company because their business model is built on a very disturbing fact.
Which is that 90% of life-saving medications that Americans use when they're sick, when they have an infection, are produced outside the United States, often in China, relies on the supply chain that goes through multiple other countries, which means that in the event of an emergency, a war, or a trade war, or an epidemic, or a pandemic, Your access to medication could be genuinely jeopardized.
I've told this story before that at the beginning, very beginning of COVID, not in 2020, but even at the end of 2019, when it was really confined to China, not a lot of people were talking about it.
It was starting to spread into Iran and then a little bit into Italy and Spain.
Those were the first countries you probably remember were Hit by COVID before the United States was.
I remember an expert in global economic policy and trade warning me that it is very possible, depending on how fatal this pandemic ends up being, Then it's going to empty out American pharmacies and American grocery stores because our supply chain is so dependent on other countries.
So the idea of The Wellness Company is they have a medical emergency kit that you can get now that they help you get the prescription for that contains eight different life-saving medications that every American should have at home to protect your family.
It contains medications like tamoxicillin, which is an antibiotic used for all sorts of Very treatable infections that if you don't have antibiotics for it can be easily come fatal.
Ivermectin, Z-Pak, and a 22-page guidebook with complete instructions on its safe use.
You go to TWC, which is the wellness company, TWC.health.
And if you use the promo code Glenn, it will entitle you to 10% off at checkout.
What this really is is just it gives you a peace of mind that you have these medications in your home.
They're all kinds of things we stock up on to make sure that our family has them, especially when we think it might be jeopardized by a storm or by weather or by other things.
It makes complete sense to do this.
And you can not only obtain these medications there, but also prescriptions for them at twc.health.
Now, speaking of the war in Israel, which is again something that the United States has not only been funding and actively arming, but is a war that the House Republicans are very eager to continue to fund, as is the Biden White House,
There is definitely bipartisan push behind financing the war in Israel in an ongoing way.
It means that this war is your war.
If you're an American citizen, you are absolutely responsible for this war.
This is not just a war that is happening on the other side of the world that the United States is diplomatically cheering or anything else like that.
It is a war that the United States is actually funding.
Now, What is going on here is that, as we told you, they have dropped the pretense about the border deal and now House Republicans and Democrats are scrambling, along with the Senate, to how they can get even more money to Israel and Ukraine.
Here from the New York Times today is the headline, quote, border deal fails in the Senate.
And as a result, Democrats will offer Republicans, can we put that headline on the screen?
Democrats will offer Republicans another chance to pass on emergency funding for Ukraine and Israel.
A second measure drops the border security measures the party had demanded.
Quote, Democrats quickly move to salvage the aid, meaning to Ukraine and Israel.
With Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, pivoting to advance a standalone foreign aid bill stripped of the immigration deal.
A vote on the alternative was expected later today on Wednesday.
"Republicans have said they can't pass Ukraine without border.
Now they say they can't pass Ukraine with border bill.
Today I'm giving them a choice," Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor before the votes.
"I urge Republicans to take yes for an answer." Earlier in the day, Schumer expressed confidence that what's now being called the national security package, they don't have to call it the border bill anymore, even though before the border bill was only a small amount, now the border bill is gone.
There's no money for the American border.
Now they're calling it the National Security Package.
Schumer predicted that the National Security Package detached from border provisions would have enough support to advance to the House.
He predicted that he could get the 10 Republican votes needed to vote yes, just on that package.
$60 billion to Ukraine, $17 billion to Israel, and the rest.
In the House, where Republicans failed on Thursday night, Tuesday night, to push through a $17.6 billion bill to send military assistance only to Israel, Speaker Mike Johnson would not say whether he would take up Mr. Schumer's Plan B. Quote, we'll see what the Senate does.
We're allowing the process to play out, Mr. Johnson told reporters Wednesday morning.
And the New York Times is absolutely right when they say, quote, that was a striking difference in tone to the Speaker's stance on the border and Ukraine package, which he had repeatedly called, quote, dead on arrival in the House.
So Mike Johnson is now leaving open the possibility that he would consider bringing a bill to the floor that doesn't have a single penny for the border, that has no cuts in the budget to offset the spending increases.
And would do nothing but send money to other countries.
He's obviously open to that.
He wants that money going both to Ukraine and to Israel.
Mr. Johnson, however, is facing immense pressure on his right to reject the national security package.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, has threatened to oust him from the speakership if he brings to the floor any bill that includes funding for Ukraine.
Now...
Again, you're seeing their true priorities.
Now, here's what the Democrats are really trying to do from the Financial Times.
Today, quote, Democrats seek to salvage Ukraine aid after Senate vote fails.
The last gas proposal for pared-down bills would need to pass the Republican-controlled House.
Quote, its failure sparked a salvage effort by Democrats, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer proposing a plan B to keep funding for Kiev intact.
Raising hopes that further U.S.
backing for Ukraine could yet be agreed to.
Schumer's new proposal cuts out border measures but leaves in place $60 billion of funding for Ukraine as well as support for Israel and Taiwan and billions of dollars in humanitarian aid for Gaza and other areas of the world.
Schumer's pared-back version of the bill could be more likely to garner support from enough Republicans to reach the necessary threshold of 60 senators in the 100-seat chamber.
The vote is due Wednesday.
Quote, it would be an embarrassment for our country and an absolute nightmare for the Republican Party if they reject national security funding twice in one day, Schumer said.
Now, I don't know if that vote has already happened.
I think it was scheduled for a little bit ago, so we'll check on whether or not the Senate I actually passed this bill for standalone money to all these other countries.
But clearly, again, what it shows is these rats were willing to pretend to give some money, throw a little bone to the American people when that didn't work.
Now they want to just get this money to these other countries without even the pretense that they care about American citizens at all.
Speaking of this war.
I wanted to see if there was a vote in the Senate.
There's no vote yet, apparently, so it was scheduled for a couple hours ago.
It has not yet happened in the Senate on that standalone bill, so presumably that means there's a lot of difficulty in trying to get enough votes to get it passed.
The New York Times now says democratic push to salvage aid for Ukraine and Israel is continuing, and apparently there's been no vote thus far.
Okay, speaking of this war, the one in Israel, not the one in Ukraine.
We've covered that quite extensively.
Again, I think that whether you want the United States to continue to shovel billions of dollars to Israel to fuel this war, to fuel the destruction of Gaza, it is our responsibility to tell you about what actually is taking place in Gaza so you can decide whether or not you're in support of it.
I mean, informing you about a war that you support or that you oppose is fundamental to a journalist, so that's what we're going to do.
First of all, hear from the New York Times on February 6th, and I'd like to remind you that the New York Times editorially supports the Israeli war in Gaza.
They think the Israelis are justified in light of October 7th, from having invaded Gaza, from having bombed Gaza.
The New York Times is pro-Israel.
It has always been a pro-Israel newspaper.
Everyone believes the media is biased against their own view.
So hardcore Israel supporters will tell you, oh, the New York Times hates Israel.
Really?
Why is it then that the editors of the New York Times, the owners of the New York Times, which is the Sulzberger family, the editors of the New York Times, which have generally been, not always now, but for most of its history, Jewish editors who are pro-Israel, have editorially always supported Israel, supported U.S.
aid to Israel, and supported the Israeli wars, including the war currently taking place in Gaza.
That's the official editorial position of the New York Times.
They publish editorials supporting that.
That's the truth.
That's the undeniable fact.
And what they published yesterday was this, quote, what Israel soldiers videos reveal, cheering destruction and mocking Gazans.
I've seen a lot of these videos myself.
You see them every day on TikTok and they circulate on Twitter and elsewhere of Israeli soldiers going into little stores, little gift shops in Gaza and mocking them and destroying them, stealing things, and then blowing them up.
Blowing up schools, blowing up universities, blowing up little stores, blowing up homes, and laughing and mocking the Palestinians whose civilian life they're destroying as they do it.
Quote, an analysis of social media videos found Israeli soldiers filming themselves in Gaza and destroying what appears to be civilian property.
The footage provides a rare and unsanctioned window into the war.
Quote, since Israel's invasion in October, soldiers have shared videos from Gaza on social media offering a rare unsanctioned look at operations on the ground.
Some have been viewed by a small circle of people, others have reached tens of thousands.
The New York Times reviewed hundreds of these videos.
Some show unremarkable parts of a soldier's life, but others show soldiers vandalizing local shops and school classrooms, making derogatory comments about Palestinians, bulldozing what appear to be civilian areas, and calling for the building of Israeli settlements in Gaza.
An inflammatory idea that is promoted by some far-right Israeli politicians, including ones that are high officials in the cabinet of Benjamin Netanyahu.
With Israel's war in Gaza under intense scrutiny, many of the soldiers' videos shot in Gaza have fueled criticism.
One was screened and five others were also cited as evidence in the case South Africa brought to the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide, a charge Israel has categorically denied.
In a video filmed on the outskirts of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza in early January, combat engineering soldiers can be seen smoking hookah pipes before explosions take down residential buildings in the background.
They then raise glasses to toast each other.
Here's one of the videos that the New York Times obtained of the Israeli soldiers performing theatrically for social media voted videos that they then posted to social media as they proceed to not only destroy civilian infrastructure and civilian life in Gaza, but celebrate and mock the Palestinians as they do it.
Now again, those weapons that they used to blow up these civilian buildings that the entire Muslim world watches are weapons provided by the United States, by you, by American citizens.
Here's another video of Israeli soldiers acting like disc jockeys and playing music as they destroy things in Gaza.
Here is what the New York Times says about their study of these videos.
Quote, in some of the Combat Engineers videos, Israeli soldiers mock Palestinians as they destroy structures and property.
In other shared widely on social media, soldiers dedicate the destruction of belongings to the victims of the October 7th attacks and to family members.
In one TikTok video, soldiers dedicate the bulldozing of a building to Eyal Golan, an Israeli singer who has called for the complete destruction of Gaza.
South Africa cited this video as evidence of what a quote called genocidal speech by soldiers in its case against Israel at the ICJ.
Here's a third video of the kind the New York Times was describing.
And again, watch these and make up your own mind.
El Yagolan, our dear brother, we love you.
Team 271, Gaza.
Khan Yonis, this house is for you.
For the joy that you gave us, the nation of Israel lies.
And as the New York Times said, they were dedicating that to an Israeli singer who had called for Gaza to be turned into a parking lot to be completely destroyed.
So you can see the mentality of at least some Israeli soldiers in what they're doing.
They're using American weapons paid for by American taxpayers or American loans from China.
And everyone in the entire world knows that when they watch what Israel is doing in Gaza, in their minds, everyone understands, everyone in the world, that it's not just an Israeli war but an American war as well.
From the London review of books, There's an essay that examines all of the data about the level and magnitude of destruction that takes place in Gaza and tries to put into words the remarkable extent of just how much civilian life in Gaza has been irreparably destroyed.
It's a place that's essentially uninhabitable for civilian life, even though 2.2 million people, half of whom are children, continue to actually exist there for now.
And it's labeled, it's entitled Rubble from Bone.
Tom Stevenson writes about Operation Iron Swords.
Quote, Quote, The rate of killing has been higher than in most wars this century, sometimes reaching more than 2,000 deaths a week.
There have been airstrikes on ambulances, airstrikes on bakeries, airstrikes on UN schools serving as shelters.
Israeli forces have killed more than 150 UN staff.
No, we know there's allegations that members of the UN Relief Agency participated in October 7th.
This evidence is extremely sparse and we're going to cover that.
That allegation, we're looking into it, we're talking to a couple of experts that we're going to bring on to the show, but even if you believe that because you want to believe that because Israel said it, This does not justify anything of what we are currently covering.
Quote, Palestinian men and boys between the ages of 12 and 70 are stripped, cuffed, blindfolded, and loaded onto the backs of trucks to be taken for interrogation.
Some have numbers written on their arms.
Hundreds detained in Gaza have been transported to the desert prison of Kaidzot near the border with Egypt, Others have primarily have probably been taken to near my military bases.
Some men who were taken prisoner in Bait Lahiya were stripped and transported to fenced off camps where for days they were tied up beaten and tortured.
Others have disappeared.
The IDF has subsequently said that between 85 and 90 percent of these detainees were civilians.
Let me repeat that.
The IDF.
The Israeli Defense Forces has subsequently said that between 85 and 90% of those detainees, the ones we were just talking about, are civilians.
The UN assessment is that a quarter of the total population is suffering catastrophic famine.
81% of the people worldwide currently in that category.
Gaza has the highest percentage of people facing acute food insecurity ever recorded.
The naval blockade could easily be lifted to allow aid to be shipped in.
Hundreds of trucks of aid and food wait in Egypt, but are effectively prevented from entering.
So all of this ties together.
There is no way to argue, I'm sorry, there is no way to argue cogently or rationally or truthfully.
That paying for the war in Israel, having the entire world know that we're behind it and are arming it, improves the lives of American citizens?
It does the opposite.
There have been multiple warnings from our own government, from the State Department, advisories, saying that it is far more dangerous than ever for American citizens to travel all over the world.
Because the risk of attack, anti-American attack, by people angry that we're paying for the war in Israel, that we're behind the war in Israel, increases the threat to the lives of American citizens, to our physical security.
American troops have been bombed and now killed throughout that region by people angry at the United States for supporting this war in Israel.
We're going further into debt to finance this war.
And why?
Why are American citizens being subjected to greater harm, physical threats, economic harm, having our military bases attacked or soldiers killed, all to finance this war in Israel that is basically at this point doing nothing but wiping out civilian life?
If you claim that you're an America First conservative, that you think the government should be prioritizing the interests and the lives of American citizens first, as pretty much the entire Trump movement does, I just want someone, I've been asking for a long time, somebody come on my show who identifies as America First and explain to me how that can be reconciled with having the United States government finance Israel's war, this war, that's doing all of this.
Especially given the vast difference in the standard of living of millions of Israelis compared to millions of Americans.
The fact that Israelis live five to seven years longer than American citizens do.
I realize that Israel has a lot of intense importance to a lot of Americans for religious, cultural reasons.
And I also realize that a lot of people support Israel because for some reason they've been convinced That the existential threat to the United States is not from the U.S.
security state or from globalist institutions, but somehow are from Muslims until they get happy when they see any country killing Muslims and want to have the United States fund it for their own enjoyment?
That is not, again, anything having to do with the lives of American citizens.
That might have something to do with your psyche, your religious convictions, your cultural attachments to a foreign country.
It has nothing to do with improving the lives of American citizens.
And that's to say nothing of the morality of financing a war That is more geared to destroying civilian life and has succeeded in killing civilians and imposing enormous amounts of suffering on civilians and children and women and innocent men than any war in this century and arguably any war since World War II.
It is an atrocity on every level that the United States government not only funds this war, but is so desperate as such a top priority, along with financing the war in Ukraine.
And again, we've covered the war in Ukraine.
Everything I just said about the war in Gaza and financing Israel applies at least as much, if not more, to financing the war in Ukraine.
And right now, everybody in Congress is focused only on one thing, sending your money not to improve your lives or the lives of your community or to better the country, to make it safer, to make it more prosperous, to increase the standard of living or life expectancy.
Instead, they're all desperately fighting with each other over how they can most easily justify sending enormous amounts of money to multiple foreign countries to finance their wars.
That's the real priority of both political parties in Washington.
All right, so that concludes our show for this evening.
As a reminder, System Update is also available in podcast form, where you can listen to every episode in podcast version on Spotify, Apple, and all other major podcasting platforms.
If you rate, review, and follow the show on those platforms, it really helps spread the visibility of the show.
As a final reminder, every Tuesday and Thursday night, Once we're done with our live show here on Rumble, we move to Locals, which is part of the Rumble platform for our live interactive After Show that's designed to take your questions, respond to your feedback, hear your critiques and suggestions for future shows and guests.
That live show, that After Show, is available solely for subscribers and members of our Locals community, and if you want to become a member of our Locals community, Which gives you access not only to those twice a week aftershows but also to all the interactive features we have on that community where people ask questions and critiques and I try and respond to as many of them as I can.
It's a place where we publish every transcript for every show that we do here on Rumble in highly professionalized transcript form.
It's the place we publish our original journalism and most of all it's the community on which we rely to support the independent journalism that we're trying to do here every night.
Simply click the join button right below the video player on the We hope to see you back tomorrow night and every night at 7 p.m.
