Biden & Trump Split on New TikTok Ban. PLUS: Briahna Joy Gray on Israel-Gaza, Dems 2024, and More
TIMESTAMPS:
Intro (0:00)
Trump and Biden Split on Tiktok Ban (6:48)
Interview with Briahna Joy Gray (34:07)
Ending (59:11)
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, For years now, Joe Biden and his White House have been advocating that the social media app TikTok be banned in the United States, arguing that the app is a tool of the Chinese government to spy on and propagandize American citizens, especially American youth.
This push to ban TikTok originated with the U.S.
security state agencies led by the CIA, the FBI, and the Pentagon, and now has the support of a majority of both political parties in Washington.
This week, a bill unanimously passed a House committee that would require TikTok to separately divest from any Chinese ownership in a set period of time or face being banned.
In other words, Apple and other platforms would be required to remove TikTok from their store, a measure the company and experts say would amount to a full-on ban since it would be close to impossible to spin it off within the allotted period of time.
When asked if he supports and would sign the bill if it passed Congress, Biden, consistent with his longstanding opposition to TikTok, unequivocally said that he would absolutely sign such a bill the minute it hits his desk.
Meanwhile, the almost certain Republican nominee, Donald Trump, had a much different reaction.
He warned of the dangers of this bill.
On his Truth Social site, Trump warned that banning TikTok will, by design, drive millions of Americans into using Facebook and Google, especially Facebook, which he blames for having, quote, cheated in the last election.
No, we have frequently reviewed why the arguments in favor of banning TikTok by the United States government are largely fraudulent and deceitful.
The last time we covered this issue was back in November, where we examined and deconstructed every claim made by Washington advocates for banning TikTok, many of which rely on fear-mongering about Chinese control and other claims that are simply not true.
We won't repeat all of those arguments here.
Suffice to say, Tens of millions of Americans voluntarily choose to use that social media app as their primary means of political and social expression.
It is the only major app among the big tech behemoths whose censorship demands and decisions are not fully captured by the United States government, meaning a ban on TikTok which would result in tens of millions of Americans being forced onto social media platforms such as Google and Facebook, platforms which, as we know from ample reporting, The U.S.
security state can and does coerce into censoring on their behalf.
In many ways, China is to conservative politics what Russia is to liberal politics.
An all-purpose foreign boogeyman that can be used to explain away everything in the United States, scapegoat everything onto it, and justify every new assertion of government power by invoking fear around it.
We know that many of you in our audience think that when Biden signs into law a ban on TikTok, it will constitute some major blow against the interests of Beijing.
But as we have tried to argue previously, whenever the U.S.
government and Washington's ruling class unites and seeks to dictate which platforms American citizens can use and how they can use them and who must control them, ample amounts of skepticism, at the very least, are required in response.
That is almost certainly true for this latest Biden-supported bipartisan bill, and we will review the key aspects of it tonight.
Then, Breonna Joy Gray is the former press secretary of the 2020 Bernie Sanders campaign, though she has become an ardent critic of Bernie Sanders.
She's my former colleague at The Intercept.
She's the co-host of Hill TV's news program, Rising, the host of our own podcast, Bad Faith, and she is definitely one of the sharpest and most incisive critics of the Biden administration.
She will join us tonight to talk about last night's State of the Union speech by Joe Biden, his recent moves, including some that he announced last night on Israel and Gaza.
The likelihood that left-wing voters will abstain in significant numbers from supporting Biden in 2024 and much more.
Brianna is always one of our favorite people to talk to.
She is unfailingly honest and independent-minded, and we are excited to hear from her tonight.
Before we get to that, a few programming notes.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
One of the observations we have most frequently made about the Trump era is the way in which the Trump candidacy, the Trump presidency, the Trump effort now to return to the Oval Office has scrambled almost completely and in every sense what had been longstanding and quite predictable ideological categories.
One of the examples that illustrates the way in which this is being scrambled is the two-year attempt by the Biden White House—it has emanated from the executive branch, from the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, and then into the Biden White House—an attempt to urge that the social media platform TikTok be banned in the United States despite the fact, or really because of the fact, that it is so wildly popular among
Young American citizens, tens of millions of American citizens create their social bonds, find expression politically and socially, obtain their news and their information, form their political ideas on that app.
It's the place that they go to find community.
They spend hours and hours and hours on it every day.
It's almost certainly among young people, at least the most influential social media platform in the country.
And there's an attempt, obviously, when there's a social media platform that powerful, that influential, where so many young people are, obviously power centers want to reach them.
They don't want to allow this platform to go uncontrolled and unmonitored and ungoverned.
That's too dangerous.
You can't allow young Americans to be consuming information without the U.S.
government influencing and shaping and dictating what it is that they consume.
And that's the real reason why there's a move in Washington To ban TikTok, and of course they can't admit that, so they need a pretext, and the pretext is that TikTok has a connection to Chinese people, and that then is used to claim that the Chinese Communist Party is the platform controlling TikTok, and that the Chinese Communist Party uses TikTok to spy on our precious young American youth, as well as to propagandize them.
Now, as I said before, we have covered in depth on at least two programs.
Which we will direct you to if you want to review the arguments that this is a fear-mongering claim that has emanated from the U.S.
security state, gone to the Biden administration, and then to the establishment wings of both political parties to commandeer a social media platform that they cannot yet control and that yet allows a lot of free flow of information because they want to grab that and take it and be able to use it for their own ends.
Just this week, there was a major advancement in the attempt to ban the social media platform that is incredibly popular among American citizens.
Remember, no one forces any American to use it.
Every American who uses it, uses it voluntarily.
And when they post their ideas or their views to TikTok, it's because they choose to.
And nobody tells them what they have to say.
They express the views that they believe in.
That's the nature of the app.
Here from CNN, however, yesterday, House panel unanimously approves a bill that could ban TikTok.
It's not a Republican initiative.
It's not a Democratic initiative.
It is now fully bipartisan.
The effort to take an app that tens of millions of Americans are using, wrestle control away from its current owners, and in the highly likely event that it can't be done within the time period allotted, mandate, require that Apple and Google and other platforms kick them out of the store and do not allow further updates or further downloads.
Exactly what was done to destroy Parler.
The free speech platform in 2021 that became the most popular and most downloaded app in all of the United States, only for Democrats to pressure.
Apple and Google to remove it from its store, which they did, and then to pressure Amazon Web Services to stop hosting Parler and to destroy Parler overnight.
That's the same playbook being used here.
Quote, New Jersey Congressman Frank Pallone, its ranking Democrat, this committee's ranking Democrat, compared the bill to prior efforts to regulate the U.S.
airwave, citing testimony from national security officials from a closed door hearing Thursday.
Quote, I take the concerns raised by the intelligence community this morning very seriously.
Now let me just emphasize where these warnings are coming from.
These are concerns raised by the intelligence community.
The intelligence community means the CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security, and in here too, The way in which this bill emerged is a result of testimony from national security officials from a closed-door hearing on Thursday.
Now, if I know anything about right-wing politics in the United States in the era of Trump, it is that almost everybody on the right, practically by definition, has expressed serious concern about the way in which the national security state is trying to control the content and the flow of information over the Internet.
That's what the Twitter files were about.
That's what all of the rage and anger was about when it came to censoring dissent on COVID and on the war in Ukraine in the 2020 election.
That was what the court rulings were about that we reported on first at a district court level and then an appellate court level that found that the attempts by the Biden executive branch and various agencies within it, including the CIA and the FBI and the CDC, Have been coercing and threatening big tech to remove content that they dislike that they regard as false or dangerous.
A program that the four judges in the federal system that have reviewed it have said was is as profound an attack on the First Amendment guarantee of free speech as any in decades.
How is it that anyone who has been thinking that anyone who has been saying that over the past five years or seven years can now turn around and applaud When the CIA and the FBI in closed-door meetings convinces Congress to seize control of one of the most popular social media apps, and if they can't, to ban it from existing in the United States, to ban American citizens who want to use it from being able to use it.
It's such an inherently extreme and extremist measure.
And they're counting on the fact that a lot of people fear China the way liberals fear Russia.
And all they have to do is invoke the scary specter of China for everyone to stand up and applaud the government and Joe Biden and the bipartisan Congress for seizing control of this app.
This is what's really happening here.
Now just to continue.
And conclude the CNN article, quote, they have asked Congress, meaning the intelligence community has asked Congress to give them more authority to act in these narrowly defined situations.
And I believe this bill will do that.
Now, the last time there was a bill that was presented whenever when the last time when there was this kind of hysteria created over TikTok when the CEO of TikTok testified back in early 2023.
The bill that was presented that they told people was designed to allow Joe Biden and the government to ban TikTok if they wanted, in fact, vested far more powers in the government than just that.
It allowed them to basically ban any social media app that has foreign ownership that they decree to be dangerous.
Now, here is, I just want to, in light of that, highlight what he's saying here.
He's saying they, namely, The intelligence community, they have asked Congress to give them more authority to act in these narrowly defined situations, meaning when they perceive that a social media app is being threatening to their interest by allowing certain speech to flow, the CIA and the FBI and Homeland Security are demanding from Congress in closed door hearings the power to stop that and control that.
How can anybody be satisfied with that?
Especially those of you who have been raising grievances about the attempt by the U.S.
security state to control the flow of information over the internet.
What is this, if not that?
Now, the way the bill is structured is designed to, again, create this perception that it's really about curbing Chinese control.
It essentially requires that the parent company of TikTok, ByteDance, which is a China-based company, ...spin off TikTok within a very short amount of time, basically six months, and that if they don't, they will then be banned from the United States.
Now, spinning off a company the size of TikTok is a massive undertaking.
And this amount of time is almost certainly constructed in order to fail.
And that is exactly what TikTok's response is to this bill.
Here's what TikTok says, quote, our statement on today's committee vote, quote, this legislation has a predetermined outcome, a total ban of TikTok in the United States.
The government is attempting to strip 170 million Americans Of their constitutional right to free expression.
This will damage millions of businesses, deny artists an audience, and destroy the livelihoods of countless creators across the country.
Now, back in 2020, Donald Trump also got behind a threat to ban TikTok.
But in response to that threat, he was able to extract concessions, including ensuring that TikTok has a primarily American management, which they now do.
TikTok agreed to place control over the data it receives from American users inside the United States under the control of an American company.
And it has increasingly turned over responsibility for so-called content moderation decisions to the United States security state.
So a lot of these concerns were assuaged by putting under American control Both control over the data and control over content moderation decisions.
And in fact, what TikTok has been doing is hiring a slew of former content moderators from Facebook and Google who, as we've reported many times before, have extensive ties to the U.S.
security state.
Precisely because they want to prove to the United States that they're willing to play ball when it comes to censorship.
The problem is that the control over TikTok is not as great by the United States government as it is control over Facebook and Google.
They want Facebook and Google to remain these powerful behemoths in which all power is centralized because that's what they can control more.
Now, here is Joe Biden.
is going on some sort of victory lap after his State of the Union address where he didn't fall down, where his teeth didn't fall out, where he didn't start having saliva come out of his mouth, and he is getting ready to leave for Philadelphia to go to a campaign event and he was asked about this issue with TikTok and here's what he said.
Let's see if we can play this video.
I just saw a little bit on television.
She's a very talented woman.
I didn't quite understand the connection she was making.
So the question was, do you still support banning TikTok?
Will you sign this bill?
And here was Biden's answer.
If they pass it, I'll sign it.
All right, so there you have it.
And that's not a surprise.
Joe Biden has been supporting a ban of TikTok for a long time now.
Now, do we have Trump's reply here?
Okay, we just have it in a Rand Paul tweet, but Earlier today on his true social media platform, Donald Trump also addressed this bill, and he had a much different response than Joe Biden.
Donald Trump said the following, If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook, and Zuckerschmuck, it will double their business.
I don't want Facebook, who cheated in the last election, doing better.
They are a true enemy of the people.
And then Rand Paul put that into his own language, and he said the following.
This is Senator Rand Paul, the Republican from Kentucky.
Quote, if Congress bans TikTok, they will be acting just like the Chinese communists, who have also banned TikTok.
Why not just defend the First Amendment?
So, ordinarily, right-wing media loves to convince its audience that Joe Biden is weak on national security, he's weak on Russia, he's weak on Israel, he's weak on China, and yet here you have Joe Biden with a very aggressive foreign policy of fueling a war against Russia, of paying for and supporting Israel's war in Gaza, of bombing Yemen,
Continuously, without congressional approval, bombing sites that he claims are backed by Iranian militias in Iraq and Syria.
He has militarily encircled China by putting military bases all around them in almost every direction.
And now here is Joe Biden saying that he supports a ban of TikTok on the grounds that it's controlled by the Chinese, while Donald Trump saying the only thing this will do is drive more and more people into Facebook.
And if you're a conservative, why would you want to do that given how much you know about the government's ability to control the flow of information on Facebook and their ability to censor Facebook?
Now, another Republican congressman, Thomas Massey, Who is one of the more independent minded and freedom oriented people in the Congress said this quote, next week, the House will vote to give Biden the power to decide which apps you can run on your phone based on whether he deems them to be owned by a foreign adversary.
I've never used TikTok, but I'm not voting to give the president new powers to ban it and other apps.
How is that not the view of every single conservative and every single person who's not a conservative who has expressed serious concerns about the ability and the desire and the success of the American U.S.
security state to control the flow of information on the internet?
Here is Congresswoman Cathy McMorris, a Democrat from the state of Washington, very typical pro-national security state Democrat, who went on CNBC today and you'll hear her rationale.
She invokes China over and over, tries to raise fear about what China is doing on this app in a way that makes no sense.
Listen to what it is she said.
Congresswoman, it's hard to decide what to do.
Everybody wants to allow corporations.
I think I said Democrat.
I meant she's a Republican from Washington, but a very entrenched Republican in the pro-national security state.
I think I said, did I say Democrat?
Anyway, she's a Republican from the state of Washington.
Even if they're not U.S., you know, we don't want to, like, ban corporations.
We don't want to ban free speech.
And TikTok very effectively has reached me with their ads now.
They've got like a this cute little nun that's doing a bunch of good works that she needs TikTok to do that.
Have you seen that?
She's got there's another one we were talking about, a neurosurgeon who lost his son in a drunk driving accident.
And he's been able to reach people so that it trying to make it.
I mean, they're very smooth and sort of I don't know if it's conniving, but is this the CCP tugging on my heartstrings to allow TikTok to remain, you know, so that we don't do anything about it?
Well, just because they say it doesn't make it true.
And.
They collect enormous amounts of data about their users.
70 million users that are on TikTok.
This is how China operates.
This is how the CCP operates.
And they are using...
Okay, this is how the CCP operates.
They collect enormous amounts of data about their users.
Now, just let's stop for a second and examine this.
Obviously, this is how the U.S. goes.
government operates as well.
The U.S.
government collects enormous amounts of data about American citizens every single day.
Not only that, this is the reason why this argument has never made any sense that the Chinese needed to invest in a new social media app, invest billions of dollars in it, build it up over years, promote it, build it into this very popular app in order to spy on the American public with regard to how they use their computers when we all know But not only do Facebook and Google and the other big tech American-based giants collect all that, it's also then sold on the open market.
The Chinese don't need to create a social media app to lure Americans to use it to spy on them.
They can go buy all of this data about our browsing history and everything else that we do online on the open market.
In fact, here's NBC News in a report that we covered in July of 2023, quote, U.S.
government buys data on Americans with little oversight, report finds.
The report published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence offers fresh insight into how U.S.
intelligence agencies have capitalized on the widespread availability of for-purchase data about Americans.
We reported on this and what the U.S.
security state was doing was buying, and is buying, enormous amounts of invasive data about the online behavior of American citizens that they would be prohibited constitutionally from collecting on their own.
Absentee search warrant.
In other words, anybody can go and buy this data, including the Chinese.
Why would they need a social media app in order to go do it?
The reality is that the U.S.
government wants this data.
It wants to force all Americans onto the apps where it can spy and where it can control the flow of information.
Here's the rest of what she said.
China operates this is how the the CCP operates and they are using this to to surveil to target and manipulate data.
We saw a real-time example yesterday when we were in the middle of this hearing and markup where users on TikTok were blocked from being able to get onto the app app until they called their representative and told them to not support this legislation.
That is just that was one real time example of how they can manipulate Americans for their own purposes.
What TikTok did is what all companies did, which is use its platform to advocate against laws they perceive against their interests, such as a bill to ban TikTok from the US.
And they gave people the information and said, call your member of Congress and tell them what you think about this bill to ban TikTok.
And obviously most TikTok users don't want TikTok banned.
That's why they choose to use it.
This is what Facebook and Google do all the time.
They put ads all over their sites when they want to lobby for laws, not just in the United States, but in every part of the world or lobby against it.
The only difference between TikTok On the one hand, and Google and Facebook on the other, is that TikTok still has a little bit of independence from the US government.
Not a lot.
Because as I said, one of the things Trump was able to do was extract a lot of concessions.
We've talked about before how we had two examples of where our segments got banned by TikTok.
And both had nothing to do with China.
They were very much critical of the U.S. security state.
One where we criticized U.S. and NATO narratives about Ukraine, and that got taken down and then reinstated.
And another was about a report about the CIA efforts to interfere in the Brazilian election in 2022.
And that went viral because we put it on TikTok with Portuguese subtitles, and then that got banned.
Obviously, China has no interest in banning content that is critical of the U.S. security state.
It's the U.S. government that has an interest in having that happen.
And that's exactly what they have been doing through these threats to ban China.
TikTok has already unveiled several measures aimed at appeasing the U.S.
Reuters exclusive, TikTok steps up efforts to clinch US security deal.
They've been doing everything possible to accommodate the concerns of US security state, including agreeing to turn over more and more control of the platform over to them.
Quote, TikTok has already unveiled several measures aimed at appeasing the US government, including an agreement for the Oracle Corporation to store the data of the apps users in the United States and the United States data security division to oversee data protection and content moderation decisions.
So here's what TikTok already agreed to do, which is they agreed to have this United States Data Security Division, which is part of, it's a vendor that works with the U.S.
government that oversees data protection and content moderation decisions.
Which is what TikTok has been saying to the U.S.
We don't care about censoring, which material is censored.
We're not here to propagandize Americans.
We're here to make money.
We're capitalists.
That's what they are.
That's who runs TikTok.
We went over the biography of the founder of TikTok, the CEO of TikTok, and they're perfectly happy to turn over, quote, content moderation decisions to the U.S.
government, which is exactly what they've been doing increasingly.
Quote, TikTok has spent $1.5 billion on hiring and organization costs to build up that unit, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Now, just to underscore this case, here is TikTok's announcement of what it calls its About Project Texas.
And the whole point of this, there you see TikTok's commitment to U.S.
national security Is to turn over more and more control of TikTok to the U.S.
National Security State to control what information and opinion are allowed on TikTok as a way of staying in the United States.
Quote, Put simply, Project Texas is an unprecedented initiative dedicated to making every American on TikTok feel safe, with confidence that their data is secured and that the platform is free from outside influence.
Our content moderation systems and processes, both machine and human, will be subject to outside review to ensure that moderation is taking place only in accordance with our published community guidelines.
The USDS, the United States Data Service, will implement these rules.
And the TTP, the American-based trusted technology provider, will have full visibility, guaranteeing that there are no unexpected changes to our system.
All promotion decisions will be transparent and audible to the third-party monitors and our U.S. Content Advisory Council.
Whatever else is true, this is a case where the United States government is intervening and saying, we will dictate how one of the most popular social media apps in the country runs that tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, Americans voluntarily choose to use.
And if we don't like the ownership of this company who's controlling it, we will force Google and Apple So you have the legalization of the model that was used to destroy Parler by exploiting the monopolistic power of Apple and Google to destroy whatever social media sites don't fully submit to the United States government.
to cease any hosting services as well.
So you have the legalization of the model that was used to destroy Parler by exploiting the monopolistic power of Apple and Google to destroy whatever social media sites don't fully submit to the United States government.
How is it possible to have expressed concern for years over the increasing control of the internet by the U.S. government government, and at the same time cheer because they've gotten you afraid enough of China and this narrative that China's coming to spy on you and propagandize your children through this app when none of it makes sense, that you're gonna now cheer when the United States government does that, exactly that, in the most significant way possible.
As I said, at the very least, if the government is coming for the internet, as they're doing here, Before you give into your fears, exercise skepticism about whether these arguments make sense.
We are here on this Rumble platform primarily because it is a genuine free speech platform devoted to resisting all forms of censorship control, and people often ask, how is it that we can support this platform if I was watching your show or watching other Rumble shows?
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There's a media effort to drive away sponsors, and so those who are here, the more you stand by them, the more you reward them.
The more you make it clear that people can sponsor on Rumble and it'll be good for their companies and good for their products.
And another thing that is happening is that Rumble is now starting to be involved with their own products that you can also directly support.
And RumbleCloud is the next new and exciting creation that's brought to you by the team That brought you Rumble.com.
Essentially what it is, is it is a service that allows you to store and to use its cloud services in a way that is far more cost effective than almost every other major provider of cloud services.
And the most important part is that unlike other providers like, say, Amazon Web Services, that has proven that it will submit to censorship orders by removing from their cloud service websites that contain opinions and information that mainstream outlets dislike and want that has proven that it will submit to censorship orders by removing from their cloud service websites that contain opinions and information that mainstream outlets dislike and want to be gone, Rumble obviously has proven that if there's one thing they do, it is resist those censorship Rumble obviously has proven that if there's
They are not actually launching the product so far.
It is a pre-launch only for people who are really supporters of Rumble.
It's called a pre-launch discount for our loyal Rumble friends from Rumble.com.
What they do is they offer a wide range of cloud services.
It is different to what already exists in two ways.
It is highly transparent.
The fair pricing policy is very clear and most importantly of all their rigid commitment to free speech that they've repeatedly demonstrated to make sure that nothing will happen to your site like what was done to Parler.
If you want to take advantage of this pre-launch Moment, which is available only for kind of insiders and supporters of Rumble.
You can scan the QR code that is on the screen with your telephone.
It will take you to that site, or you can go directly to friends.rumble.cloud.
That's friends.rumble.cloud to get 30% off of your first three months of service.
The minute the service is live, there really is no better way to support Rumble than being at least very open to the Products that are willing to stand by Rumble and to sponsor it despite the pressure they get and especially for the products that Rumble offers, especially ones that are so fully aligned with the free speech ethos and mission and cause that they have repeatedly demonstrated they are devoted to protecting.
So that is friends.rumble.cloud.
Brianna Joy Gray is so many things.
She is the former press secretary for the 2020 Bernie Sanders campaign.
She is my former colleague at The Intercept where she did amazing reporting and analysis.
She has become, despite that position with the Bernie Sanders campaign, a vocal critic of Bernie Sanders as well as of Joe Biden.
She's the co-host of Hill TV's Rising News program that appears on YouTube and other places every day.
She is the host as well of her own podcast called Bad Faith.
There's so many things that Brie has in terms of accolades and accomplishments that I would have to spend all night reciting them all and I'm tired of doing that already so I'm going to go ahead and dispense with that and just say welcome back to System Update, Brianna.
It's great to see you as always.
Thanks for being here.
Thank you, Glenn.
You're way too generous, but I appreciate it.
I totally agree.
That's what everyone says to me all the time.
You're way too generous, and I am working on it, which is why I cut myself off.
All right.
Let's start with this speech that I think all of us can agree was very moving, was very emotionally inspiring, which was Joe Biden's State of the Union address.
He stood on his feet for over an hour without falling over.
He didn't drool all that often.
He was able to read those lines with some degree of acuity in a way that really excited the Liberal pundits and Democratic Party operatives in our media, they're very excited now about the fact that he seems to have dispelled these concerns about cognitive decline.
Now, I don't want to spend a lot of time in the theater of this State of the Union dress, although maybe the theatrical part is the most important part.
So let me just ask you one question about that.
What did you make of the performance itself?
I mean, you joke, obviously, you're being sarcastic, but I saw a lot of liberal coverage that said exactly that, that were kind of unironically applauding his performance, saying it was one of the best State of the Union's they've ever seen.
And if you, like me, watched on C-SPAN because you have cut the cable cord and don't have access to some of the cable news coverage, you heard him have these conversations On the House floor, and a lot of people came up to him, a lot of Congress members came up to him and said exactly that, that my mom called from home and said it was the best day to the union ever.
And I don't know that I'm, if I'm in the twilight zone, I kind of feel like I'm the girl on that episode who looks normal and everyone else looks like a pig and they tell her she's the ugly one.
But I had a very different reaction and maybe it's because for me the bar wasn't on the ground and I was less invested in whether or not he could kind of competently limp through reading a script as what the message The actual address was and I thought it was a really odd and perhaps disastrous choice to open talking about Ukraine
At a time when there's so many Americans who feel like he has been flagging on domestic issues in particular, there is a huge America First community, not just on the right, but also in the populist left, who were looking for him to come out and immediately address the ongoing concerns about inflation in the economy and to spend so much time on foreign policy and on a foreign policy adventure that is increasingly unpopular, just seemed very odd.
And I'm sure we'll get into this more, but not to mention the kind of, um, uh, Hand-waving at the tragedy and the horror of the situation in Gaza without offering any meaningful course change from the basically rubber stamping of Netanyahu's agenda in the Gaza Strip.
You know, you can ask questions about Ukraine and extract different answers in polling data that have a pretty wide range in terms of whether people want to keep sending money, whether they want to support Ukraine and stand with them against Russia.
But there's no question, as you said, that support has declined.
But I think the more important thing is I can't imagine any person outside of the think tank world and the American pundit class That when they think about politics and the things that they want it to do for them, that anywhere near the top of their list is who governs various provinces in eastern Ukraine.
I just can't imagine that that's true.
And for him to start the State of the Union Address so fanatical about this as though it's going to rally Americans to his side who have doubts about him is something that I agree was an extremely strange choice.
I think one of the things that I perceive in the discourse today about this kind of celebratory spirit that a lot of these people have who are desperate for him to win is this notion that the reason why people perceive Biden as being incapacitated and, you know, basically someone with the old dementia riddle, melting brain, They think that the reason for that is because the media keeps telling them that, and that Republicans tell them that.
It's like this very patronizing view of how American citizens form their opinions, that they're incapable of forming their own opinions based on what they see.
Now, maybe there are some topics that are very complex, maybe the economy even, although I think even there people judge on their own personal experience.
But when it comes to judging whether an old person is with it, We all have experiences in that, or most of us do, and we're all capable of trusting our own opinions on this.
And for over two or three years, Americans have seen and believe strongly in this decline.
Do you think it's even remotely possible that because he got jacked up for a speech for an hour and didn't fall on his face, literally, that they're now suddenly going to change their deeply entrenched view of how he's an old man who cannot perform the duties of his office?
I think he convinced the liberal pundit class who desperately needed a win, but no one else.
I mean, I kept watching, again on C-SPAN, to some of the call-in segment, and the calls fell along two lines.
There were people who were more conservative-leaning, who had critiques of the economy, or maybe just didn't like him.
That's fine, whatever.
But there were also a lot of people who called in saying, I'm frustrated with your position on Gaza.
Neither of those was addressed, right?
So the idea that it's a victory lap because he stood up in red, I think convinces no one.
And I think you're right.
I have talked to so many people who are frankly pro-Biden and are embedded in the Democratic Party, who are lobbyists and who have worked for Democratic campaigns, who are not just angry leftists like myself, who behind closed doors articulate concern about his age and mental fitness.
Even if lost as recline, you're experiencing a real problem.
And as I'm sure you're aware, he did a week or so ago, this whole viral essay that a lot of liberals were upset about saying that, hey, maybe Biden has the competency to actually be president because of all of the support that a president has.
But does he have the stamina to actually run for president?
Does he have the stamina to do events, to even compete in a general election debate?
We all know that he shut down a Democratic primary and has done fewer press interviews than any other president in the recent historical memory.
But it seems to be evidence of the fact that, no, he does not have the ability to campaign.
So how are they planning to get him across the finish line, even if they can get him through an hour-long speech?
You know, it's amazing.
I remember in 2019, when people were talking about the primary as it was beginning, once it got down to Joe Biden versus Bernie Sanders, and you were obviously with the Sanders campaign at the time, anybody who raised the issue of whether Joe Biden was cognitively capable of handling a general election, and we all know he got saved by COVID and he didn't have to do much.
but at the time nobody knew that, was told that they were being disgusting, that they were being immoral for even raising it.
And what was driving me crazy was I remember, and I documented this once in an article, that throughout 2018 and 2019, which is now five or six years ago, the people who were raising this concern and sounding that alarm were Democratic Party insiders saying, look, we're really worried that Joe Biden's going to get the nomination simply by virtue we're really worried that Joe Biden's going to get the nomination simply by virtue of the fact that it's his turn, that he was Obama's vice president, he's been around forever because people don't understand that he's so cognitively impaired that he's not
And as soon as that was their only candidate against Bernie Sanders, they wanted to make it morally off limits to even mention it.
Now here we are six years later, and obviously that's gotten worse.
All right, let me ask you about the substance.
One of the things that Biden announced last night that was signaled that he would, was that the United States is going to spend a lot of money and deploy its military into creating a new maritime channel that will allow essentially a pier to be built so that the U.S.
Navy and other navies can deliver aid by sea into Gaza because obviously Our good partner Israel, whose word we're funding and paying for, won't let us physically into Gaza with trucks, the easiest way to get in, to deliver humanitarian aid to a starving population.
At the same time, these airdrops have been continuing of a tiny number of baskets of food, maybe 10, 20, 30,000 a day for a population of 2 billion, including a few that killed people today when it dropped on them and the parachute didn't open.
Do you think that there are people who are angry with Biden on the left, the people you were just referring to, who are being persuaded in any way by these kinds of gestures?
Absolutely not.
And I got to give a lot of credit to the Uncommitted Campaign and Code Pink and other grassroots efforts to really be clear about the messaging of this issue, Jewish Voice for Peace, and all the rest.
I was worried that, frankly, the tone shift the administration obviously felt the need to take right before the Michigan primary vote, where Joe Biden now famously stood there licking an ice cream cone and contemplating how much genocide he was going to let our allies do and said, well, maybe we should where Joe Biden now famously stood there licking an ice cream cone and contemplating how much genocide he was going
And then later, slow launched, soft launched Kamala Harris with this speech where she very boldly and valiantly declared that we must have a ceasefire, then took an almost comedic beat before saying for about six weeks.
I think that people are not being fooled by it.
Again, as evidenced by the commentary that you've seen from people not just on the left, I should point out, but regular kind of normie Democrats, Normal people see on their timeline, on TikTok, which I really appreciated the segment that you just did, and elsewhere on social media, what the carnage is like in Gaza.
And normal people can't countenance hearing about things like the flower massacre last week, where Over 100 Palestinians are shot with bullets, NATO bullets, because they were starving and crowding around a truck that was so infrequent in northern Gaza that there's a sense of desperation and the response from the IDF is to start shooting people in the head and elsewhere.
Normal people see that and say, we need to do something about it.
But our government sees that and people's reaction to it and says, we've got to ban TikTok and we've got to come up with a new messaging campaign to keep people on board this Democratic train wreck until the general election.
And the uncommitted vote, when you look at the trajectory over the primaries that we've seen so far, They didn't stop and start in Michigan.
There was all of this rhetoric about how, okay, fine, Michigan, it didn't look good.
There were 100,000 uncommitted votes when all they were going for was 10,000.
But hey, look, this is the largest concentration of Arab Americans and Muslim Americans in the country.
It's not going to be like that elsewhere.
Well, how do you explain, what was it, 13% in North Carolina?
How do you explain 30% of the vote, almost 30% of the vote, the primary vote in Hawaii was uncommitted voters?
This is a campaign that is growing, not shrinking, and it's growing in proportion to the tragedy that is ongoing in Gaza.
And unless Biden has a real plan to stop that tragedy, there's going to be significant consequences.
Just one last thing I'll say about this is that I did a radar on rising, which is what we call our monologues.
on Thursday, where I make the case that this problem is going to get worse toward the election and not better.
And one of the things that I point to is projections of death that are expected to happen in Gaza even if there were a ceasefire tomorrow because of disease and of famine.
And now the Democrats are banking on the idea that 1/6 is the date that's going to be looming large in people's heads, and that they're to come out and vote to save democracy.
My suspicion is that October 7th is going to be looming large in their heads because people are going to be counting the months that have passed and the thousands and thousands of Palestinian deaths that could have been avoided if we weren't complicit in Benjamin Netanyahu's siege on Gaza.
I think the last part is the key.
You know, I think it isn't just that Joe Biden has failed to stop this atrocity.
Joe Biden, from the very beginning, flew to Israel almost immediately, stood by Benjamin Netanyahu, did what he's done his entire career, which is vowed unlimited and unblinking and full-fledged financial and military support to Israel, has made good on that promise to this very day, five months later, continues to support
In every meaningful way possible, meaning not rhetorically, but diplomatically, militarily, and financially, what Israel is doing is just as much of an American war as it is an Israeli war, given how crucial the role the Biden administration and the United States government is playing in enabling it to happen.
I had on my show last night George Galloway, the newly elected member of parliament from the Workers' Party who defeated, actually crushed both major parties in the UK, got more votes than each of them combined in his victory, and ran in part on opposition to UK support for Israel's destruction of Gaza.
And I asked him, as somebody who is somewhat older than you, much, much older than me, and who has seen a lot, I said to him, where in kind of the range of atrocities, of things you've witnessed in your lifetime, do you place what's happening in Gaza in?
And he said, look, of at least of the things I've been able to see, right, I can't speak to the things we didn't see, because it was before social media, or media wasn't there, but of the things I've seen, this is by far the most horrifying.
Where do you place what's happening in Gaza in terms of the atrocities that in your somewhat long lifetime you yourself have gotten to know and seen and written about and reported on?
Yeah, I mean, I think those caveats that you offer are important, that there are tragedies that we're not as aware of because of the kind of bias that social media can create.
I'm very conscious in my own reporting that I haven't been focusing as much as what's going on in the DRC, that things are devolving in Haiti, that there's places all over the world that deserve as much attention and aren't getting it.
with the country in the Congo, even with death tolls, and also in East Africa and Ethiopia.
I mean, I feel very guilty about that.
I'm working on changing that on my own coverage.
But what I do see, I think I completely agree.
There's something about the citizen journalism that's been going on in Gaza, how the journalists themselves have become characters of sorts in this ongoing saga as we see them and their families being allegedly targeted by how the journalists themselves have become characters of sorts in this ongoing It feels very personal in a way that other tragedies haven't felt, rightly or wrongly.
And I think that also has to do with the interrelationship between our own country and Israel and Gaza.
When you see one of the early tragedies of this whole thing was that a former Congress member's family was killed That's Justin Amash, the former Michigan congressman, actually running for the Senate now in the Republican Party.
But yeah, he's a Palestinian Christian and several members of his family were killed while taking refuge in a church in Gaza when Israel bombed it.
Right.
And with Nerea Pete, Nerea Vigil from his former colleagues as a response.
I mean, and when you see the ties between so many Arab Americans and what's going on in Palestine, at least two American teenagers have been killed in the West Bank or ostensibly Yes, it begins to feel very personal in a way that other things haven't.
And now when you see this commitment of the United States to be fueling the crisis with one hand and paying to relieve it with the other in the form of this port that's being built, which of course, and I'm curious what you make of this, arguments that this is really a part of an effort to take advantage of oil resources off the coast of Gaza that haven't been tapped.
And at this port, the investment is really about a lot longer term investment being able to access that as opposed to delivering aid.
All of it just feels like it's America's war in a way that certain other tragedies around the world aren't quite so viscerally.
And it's difficult.
It's difficult to cover.
Obviously, that's the least of it.
I'm safe and comfortable in a privileged position with respect to some of the people who have lost their lives.
Over 100 journalists have lost their lives in Gaza.
But honestly, I haven't seen very much like it.
I think the image of the The people who had been crushed under the wheels of a tank, that's one of the most gruesome images, the unfiltered version of that, that I've ever seen in my life.
And how someone can see that and not want to immediately call for a ceasefire, it's beyond me.
And I think it's beyond most Americans who very much do want to do exactly that.
Those kinds of images are why people are saying, no more, not one day more.
This has to come permanently to an end.
Yeah, you know, I think obviously when our own government is involved in a war, there's a tendency, maybe even a healthy one, to kind of focus on it more since we can actually do something about it more easily.
We can put pressure on our government officials to stop it, whereas foreign wars in which we're not involved are much harder for us to really have an influence, I think, as part of it.
But also, I think, you know, one of the narratives we constantly hear is that the United States and Israel and our allies are part of this kind of advanced democracy, this advanced Western culture.
And with that comes the fact that we have a military that is capable of doing a level of destruction and creating misery and suffering, unlike militaries that aren't quite as sophisticated.
So you can, for example, as Israel has done, go and bomb an area filled with densely packed 2.2 million population, half of whom are children, and destroy 70% of their residential buildings, destroy their entire water supply, destroy all of their sewage system, make it uninhabitable for civilian life destroy all of their sewage system, make it uninhabitable for civilian life to be there, to siege the entire region so that no food gets in, so that you're purposely starving them
And a kind of evil and a kind of moral horror is capable and appears in a way that, say, other regions that are fighting with different kinds of weapons, I think, isn't quite capable of reaching.
It doesn't mean that there's not horrors going on in those other parts of the world, but I think with this sophisticated military comes a higher degree of moral responsibility, And not only is it being fulfilled here, the opposite is being done.
That sophistication of a military against a virtually unarmed population.
It's not like two militaries are fighting.
It's an unarmed population virtually against a sophisticated military.
And this one-sided effort with the most powerful weapons in the world just being unleashed day after day.
creates a kind of horror that I think people have a hard time processing.
And yeah, I think it's so interesting that this pier that the United States is now building is exactly what Israel has denied Gaza for 20 years.
The Israelis bombed the only airport in Gaza and said, if you try and rebuild it, we'll bomb that.
If you try and leave by sea or get anything in by sea, we will kill you and murder you, which is what they do when people try and leave by sea.
And now the United States has to use its own money to get aid in the sophisticated way that the Israelis won't allow.
And I think you always have to ask questions about what the ulterior motives are.
Let me ask you, because you only have a little bit of time, I have to go do this interview on this cable network.
I think the Biden White House's view, and I've seen Biden officials more or less saying this, is that they are more worried about alienating the pro-Israel sector of the American electorate is that they are more worried about alienating the pro-Israel sector of the American electorate than
And that they believe that at the end of the day, they will be able to fear monger enough of the American left about Donald Trump to get them to vote for Biden, not because they changed their mind about Biden, but because they just are so afraid of Trump.
And if you look at the history of people who say that they're kind of radical left-wing critics, you can make a pretty good case that there's a valid basis for expecting them to return to the Democratic Party by the time November rolls around.
What do you think is The likelihood that that will happen in large numbers?
Well, first, I'd say to the extent that Biden is afraid that AIPAC or other pro-Israel lobbying groups, you know, moneyed interest will abandon him, that's a reasonable fear.
That's a Completely legitimate fear.
But to the extent that he's afraid he's better off, like he's thinking about the trade-offs coalition-wise, voter-wise, over whether or not he supports a ceasefire or not, that's misplaced.
Because 80% of the Democratic base supports a ceasefire.
There is not a religious group in the country that doesn't overwhelmingly support a ceasefire.
Even among Jewish Americans, more support a ceasefire than don't.
So when I see the language shift around ceasefire, what I'm seeing is an acknowledgment that that is the case and that he risks losing almost no voters by going for a ceasefire.
What he's hoping is that people won't read the fine print on the duration of the ceasefire and that he can make everybody happy.
At once, um, the question about whether or not it is a, uh, it's just a kind of a pipe dream and I'm wishful thinking, wish casting for me to say he's going to have to listen to, uh, the activists, the left activists and the anti-war activists on this because otherwise he's going to, he's going to lose.
Um, because historically people do fall in line.
I think that's a tough argument to make when the margins were so have been so slim.
He is losing significantly, Biden is, in the must-win swing states.
This isn't just about him being a few points behind in general election polls.
So Biden is trying to make the case to the country, to Democrats, that democracy is on the ballot, democracy is at stake.
This is the most consequential election of our lifetime because Donald Trump is a unique evil in all of these things.
We've heard him say ad nauseum.
And I think there's a credibility issue in that pitch.
If you do believe that pitch, as he purports to do, why would the Democratic Party invest in a candidate that's so marginal, that has historically low popularity rates?
They're calling this the election of double haters, people who aren't wild about this matchup.
Most Americans prefer not be a 2020 rematch.
But the difference between Biden and Trump is that despite many Republicans being kind of frustrated with him, he ultimately has a very intense base of people who love him, despite it all.
Biden doesn't have that.
Even back in 2020, the people who voted for him held their nose and voted for him.
It was like 60 percent of people in South Carolina who even voted for him voted for him because Jim Clyburn told him to vote for him.
There was never enthusiasm then, and there certainly isn't enthusiasm now.
So are we going to play this 2016 rehash, this repeat of Hillary Clinton, who also had historically high unfavorability polls, going into an election against someone who has much better favorability and taking bets on whether or not you can turn out enough of your base, including Arab and Muslim voters in Michigan, including disaffected young including Arab and Muslim voters in Michigan, including disaffected young voters, including all of the college graduates who were promised 44 million of them that you were going to cancel their student debt and you didn't.
People who are still talking about stimulus checks that they didn't get.
Are you going to be confident about the fact that you can save democracy by pissing off Any of those constituencies in that base that was so hard to cobble together even back in 2020 when the wind was at your back.
I wouldn't be taking that gamble and I certainly wouldn't be making a pitch about how important democracy is to save, putting Ford out of Canada as weak as Joe Biden.
Absolutely.
I did want to ask you about Adam Schiff and the California Senate race because I think it says a lot about the Democratic Party electorate.
We're going to have to coerce you to come back on the show to do that because we unfortunately are out of time.
But I find the race fascinating that they had the choice between Barbara Lee and Katie Porter and one of the bluest states in the country.
The entire Democratic establishment got behind Adam Schiff.
I think it says a lot about what the Democratic Party's priorities are.
But in any event, we'll have to leave that as a cliffhanger in order to induce you to come back on as a sequel.
Brie, it's always fantastic to talk to you.
It's like a breath of fresh air.
I'm always so happy when you come on my show.
We actually got to speak twice because I was on your show earlier today.
So it's been a good week.
I really appreciate it and have a great evening.
No coercion necessary.
I'm happy to come back.
Thanks, Glenn.
Absolutely.
Bye, Brie.
All right, so that concludes our show for this evening.
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