House Prioritizes Israel Over Funding U.S. Government; Seinfeld Commencement Debacle Fuels Antisemitism Panic; PLUS: China and Hungary's Close Ties Explained
TIMESTAMPS:
Intro (0:00)
House Prioritized Israel Over U.S. (5:50)
Media Meltdown (37:59)
Hungary and China Strengthen Ties (47:21)
Outro (1:06:38)
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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, one of the most remarkable aspects of U.S.
politics in the post-October 7th world is watching how vital and central Israel is to so many U.S.
politicians in both political parties.
Ever since Mike Johnson proclaimed immediately upon being elected House Speaker that the very first thing he would do in his new speakership is pass a bill to help, quote, our dear friend Israel, it is hard to deny that D.C.
officials have devoted more time, more energy, and more passion to defending the interests of this one foreign country in Tel Aviv than they have devoted to any other issue, including ones that actually affect the lives of American citizens.
Seemingly, every week brings new ways of elevating Israel and its interest over the U.S.
and the lives of American citizens, but the House, led by both political parties, really outdid itself this week.
Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York today announced his support for a bill, and I'm not kidding, that would cut off funding for various operations in the U.S.
Pentagon, the U.S.
Department of State, and other American agencies, unless The Biden administration announces a reversal of its decision to temporarily suspend the transfer of some weapons to Israel.
In other words, the Congress, both political parties, is prepared to proclaim that a condition for funding our own government and our own country's defenses is that President Biden first must vow that he will give everything Israel wants and demands without any conditions at all.
Now, I know this is hard to believe.
I actually read the bill and I thought I was reading it wrong.
So we will show you the bill and the statements in Congress supporting it, the obvious clarity that this bill will be enacted and approved on a overwhelming bipartisan basis.
And we'll examine how this illustrates the broader bizarre climate of Washington when it comes to prioritizing the needs and desires of this foreign government above our own government and the people our own government nominally represents.
Then, over the weekend, dozens of students at Duke University protested and walked out on the speech delivered by the commencement speaker, Jerry Seinfeld.
Many fanatic Israel supporters, eager to continue their moral panic that the U.S.
is facing an anti-Semitism crisis, insisted that this episode constituted further proof of anti-Semitism, despite the fact That the reason these students were protesting is because Jerry Seinfeld and his wife have been vocal defenders of the Israeli war in Gaza and have even financed the pro-Israel counter-protest at UCLA which turned violent when attacking pro-Palestinian protesters, not because he's Jewish.
We will examine this endless attempt to create a victimhood narrative for American Jews in the United States by absurdly claiming to find bigotry where it so plainly does not exist.
And then finally, Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban has become somewhat of a folk hero among the populist wing of the American right as well as populists around the Western world.
For that reason, it has been somewhat disorienting and confusing for many of them to see that Viktor Orban is continuously strengthening Hungary's relationship with China.
Both financial, cultural, and even political.
And he continues to insist, the Prime Minister of Hungary does, that doing so, even further, building even further stronger relations with China is vital to Hungary's interest.
And it's worth examining why this is and what it says about how the U.S., through its policies, is doing more than anyone to help China's ascension in the world.
Before we get to all of that, a few programming notes.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
Oftentimes the most enforced and strident taboos are the ideas that are not only most true, but most relevant.
And the idea that there are a huge number of people in Washington who are extremely and passionately devoted to the foreign government of Israel for all sorts of religious and cultural reasons as well as political reasons is one of those taboos you're not allowed to talk about and it is so obviously true.
For months Israel, which has over decades received far more funding and financing from the United States than any other country by far.
It's a country that we're bound to give $4 billion to every year for its military, on top of the billions and billions that are always authorized every time it has a new war.
sits at the top, the pinnacle of the list of concerns of the U.S.
Congress, certainly when it comes to foreign policy.
And since October 7th, it clearly has become the number one issue in Congress.
They are far more concerned about Israel and protests against Israel in the United States and ways to shut down those protests to protect Israel and enacting free speech bills that are designed to impose censorship to shield the Netanyahu government from criticism than they are almost any other single issue.
Whether it be crime or the border or addiction and drugs or economic suffering or inflation, the U.S.
Congress seems to be laser-focused on this foreign country in a way that I think sometimes is difficult to realize because it's something that just sort of happens day after day and becomes normalized like so many things.
And yet, even though, for those of us who have been seeing this for many years, who know that Washington is bizarrely devoted to the State of Israel, sometimes the Congress does things, takes certain steps to elevate the State of Israel over their own country, their own government, their own citizens, that it goes so far, that it's so transparent, that it actually becomes somewhat Jarring.
And that is the case for a bill that has now been introduced in the House of Representatives this week by a Republican member of the House, but it is supported by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
And not just supported, but he's considering making it a requirement for the Democratic Caucus to vote for it in unanimity.
That would basically defund key parts of the Pentagon, the American Pentagon, the American State Department, other American industries, unless Joe Biden vows to give Israel all the weapons it wants when it wants them without conditions.
In other words, It will condition having our own country's security apparatus funded on Joe Biden first promising to give Israel the weapons that it wants for this war.
I know it sounds shocking.
It probably seems like I'm exaggerating, like I'm inflating what this bill really does.
And so we're about to show you what the bill itself does.
I want you to see for yourself what the language is.
But before we get to that, here's the politics behind it.
Here is Politico earlier today, quote, on Israel.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a Democrat from New York, and his leadership team will have to decide how hard they want to enforce party discipline on the latest Israel-related bill headed to the floor, likely on Thursday.
The Israel Security Assistance Support Act, which, yes, is binding, would effectively prevent Biden from freezing aid to Israel, as he threatened to do last week.
So the purpose of the bill is to force Joe Biden to reverse his announcement.
And that announcement was just like a little trivial symbolic announcement that they're going to temporarily hold a few weapons that the Israelis already have in great stock and abundance because the United States has spent months giving it to them because they have to do something.
Joe Biden said it was a red line for the Israelis to invade Rafah.
The refugee camp there, and now Israel ignored that and did it.
And if you are a country that wants to maintain any credibility, your president declares a red line.
And if other countries ignore that and run roughshod over it, of course you have to do something.
Most countries would do something more than just trivial and symbolic, but because this is Israel, that's all the Biden administration could get away with.
And even that trivial symbolic act is something that both parties in Congress cannot abide.
Because it seems as though the singularly most important cause for the two parties in Washington is to shield and protect Israel at all costs.
Obviously there are a lot of people for religious reasons, I don't just mean American Jews, though them too, but also evangelicals, who are taught from birth that it is their utmost personal duty to devote themselves to the State of Israel.
There are people who have extremely strong cultural ties to Israel and therefore regard it as their upstanding and primary duty to make sure that foreign government is financed by the United States, armed by the United States, protected by the United States.
And then there are also people who continue to want the U.S.
to rule the Middle East and see Israel as this sort of important arm of the U.S.
military.
For that reason, combined with the very important fact That the pro-Israel lobby is one of the most well-financed lobbies on the planet.
They spread enormous amounts of money around to both political parties and if anyone steps out of line...
They will fund a primary challenge to those people or remove them from Congress.
They just did that through a successful primary challenge to an incumbent Republican in Indiana who had resisted various bills to finance Israel.
He's a nationalist.
He doesn't believe the United States should be funding other countries.
They're doing that with Thomas Massey, the Republican from Kentucky, who has often raised doubts about why the U.S.
should be supporting Israeli wars.
They've done it to people in the Democratic Party as well.
And so they have a great enforcement mechanism.
And so what we see is bill after bill and law after law and announcement and policy, one after the next, that obligates the United States, American citizens to finance Israel, to arm its wars, to isolate ourselves on the world stage, to diplomatically shield Israel from any sort of recriminations or accountability for what they're doing.
And the bill this week that Politico says will be voted on Thursday, that will easily pass the House, You have to read it to believe it, so let's do that.
It's called the House Bill Israel Security Assistance Support Act, and it's dated May 10, 2024.
And the summary of its purpose is, quote, to provide for the expeditious delivery of defense articles and defense services for Israel and other matters.
Now, here is the start of the bill where it describes what the foundational views of the bill are.
Section one, short title, quote, the act may be cited as the Israel Security Assistance Support Act.
Paragraph 3.
Under the terms of a 2016 Memorandum of Understanding, the United States provides Israel with $3.8 billion per year in security assistance and missile defense funding from fiscal years 2019 through 2028, which is subject to the approval of Congress.
That was the 10-year security guarantee that President Obama, next to Vice President Biden, Negotiated with Benjamin Netanyahu.
So you ask pro-Israel loyalists what they think of Obama, and they'll say, oh, Obama hated Israel.
He was anti-Semitic.
He sided with Iran over Israel.
One of the last things that the Obama administration did on the way out the door in 2016 was they signed an agreement, a 10-year agreement, to obligate the United States to give Israel $3.8 billion a year in military aid.
Now, a good portion of that, but by no means all, Israel has to spend on buying weapons from American companies.
So it helps Israel and it helps the U.S.
arms industry.
But there's a big chunk of it that Israel does not have to spend inside the U.S.
It's just aid that we give them.
But that's not all we give to Israel, as paragraph 4 says, quote, Thus far in fiscal year 2024, Congress has enacted regular and supplemental legislation appropriating, quote, $12.5 billion in security assistance and missile defense for Israel without any additional conditions.
In other words, on top of the $4 billion we're obligated to give to them under that 10-year deal Obama signed with Netanyahu, every time they have a new war, Congress rushes to appropriate billions to pay for that new war.
This bill goes on, quote, in May of 2024, it was reported that President Biden ordered a pause on certain defense articles ready for imminent delivery to Israel without having consulted with Congress.
Paragraph seven, on May 8th, 2024, President Biden stated regarding Israel, quote, we're not going to supply the weapons and artillery shells.
Now here's Congress explaining what they think of all those things.
Quote, Congress with number one condemns the Biden administration's decision to pause certain arms transfers to Israel as Israel faces unprecedented threats from Iran and its proxies including Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.
Now I can't remember the last time the president's own party sponsored and pushed A not just a resolution, but a binding law condemning the administration.
But Democrats are more than happy and eager to do that when it comes to Israel, even though you won't see them doing that anywhere else.
Congress, in paragraph two, quote, calls on the Biden administration to allow all previously approved armed transfers to Israel to proceed quickly to ensure that Israel can defend itself and defeat threats from Iran and its proxies, including Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.
Section 4 is entitled Prohibition.
So it's not just one of those resolution Congress passes where they say it's the sense of Congress that.
It's an actually binding law.
It has this prohibition in it.
And here's one of the prohibitions, quote, none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available under any act that appropriated funds for the U.S.
Department of Defense or the U.S.
Department of State For fiscal year 2024 or any prior years may be available 1.
To withhold, halt, reverse, or cancel the delivery of defense actions or defense articles or defense services from the United States to Israel or 2.
Pay the salary or expenses of any officer or employee of the Department of State or Department of Defense who takes any action to support or further the withholding, halting, reversal, or cancellation of the delivery of such defense articles or services.
Now what they're doing there is they're defunding any parts of the Pentagon or any parts of the State Department or any other U.S.
agency that Joe Biden would need to execute his decision to withhold a small number of weapons transfers to Israel In a response to Israel going into Rafah despite the fact that the United States insisted it should not do so because of the damage it would do to U.S.
security.
They're prioritizing Israeli security over U.S.
security and in the process defunding parts of our own Pentagon, our own State Department, our own security apparatus to ensure that the Israelis get everything they want.
Now, it goes on even further.
Prompt delivery of direct commercial sales.
Quote, the Secretary of State shall ensure prompt approval and delivery of all direct commercial sales of defense articles and services for Israel, which are expected to be delivered in fiscal years 2024 and 2025, including those for the Ministry of Public Security.
Now, I'm going to get to the most extremist paragraph yet, but just to underscore the point here, aside from the fact that I can't remember the last time a President's party in Congress passed a bill to denounce his foreign policy and to reverse it.
You almost never, ever see Congress interfering in the president's foreign policy this way.
In fact, the American right and conservatives have long said that foreign policy is in the exclusive domain of the president and that you can't have 435 or 535 different commanders-in-chief in the congressional branch.
That is for the president to decide.
And yet, as usual, all principles, all values, all beliefs get suspended and abandoned the minute it comes to this one foreign policy country that so many people harbor reverence and worship for.
The bill goes on, quote, C, prompt delivery of withheld items.
Any defense article and defense services described in subsection A or B of this section that were already withheld from delivery as of the date of the enactment of this act shall be delivered to Israel no later than 15 days after the date of the enactment of this act.
So it's reversing the Biden administration's announced policy of saying we're going to whip all these 2,000 pound bombs to Israel because we're concerned they're going to use them in bombing the civilian population in Rafa, killing tens of thousands more civilians and that will reflect poorly on the United States and harm our interests.
They're reversing that Biden policy and ordering him to give Israel everything it wants and needs.
Now here's the punishment for what happens if Biden doesn't agree to do that, does not immediately do that.
Section six, withholding of funds.
A, withholding of Department of Defense funds.
This is one of the things that Congress says it will do if Israel doesn't get everything that it wants from the Biden administration.
They will withhold funding of the Department of Defense.
Quote, none of the unobligated balances of funds made available by prior acts making appropriations for the Department of Defense under the heading operations and maintenance defense-wide for the immediate office of the Secretary of Defense that are available as of the date of this enactment of the bill, this act, may be obligated or expended, so they're saying money that we've previously appropriated for the Defense Department, the Pentagon, under prior appropriations acts,
None of those can be expended or used until the Secretary of Defense certifies and reports to the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate that the requirements of Section 5C have been met.
is the provision that requires that all weapons that the Biden White House said it would withhold get to Israel immediately.
And until that happens, until the Department of Defense, the Secretary of Defense comes to the Congress and certifies that Israel has everything it asked for and everything it should get, that there's no withholding of weapons, Then Congress will not allow the Department of Defense of the United States to be funded.
Now, not only that, but here in paragraph B, another prohibition, withholding of Department of State funds.
And it basically uses the same language.
It says, any funds made available by prior acts for appropriations for the Department of State, foreign operations, and related programs That none of those shall be expended or obligated until the Secretary of State certifies and reports to the committee the same exact thing, namely that we're no longer suspending or withholding any arms to Israel.
The Congress is willing to defund our own government security apparatus.
In order to ensure that Israel gets everything that it wants.
Now, here is the same exact paragraph, C, withholding of financial services and general government funds that use the same exact language for many other agencies of the government.
Now, you can believe That the United States should, in its own interests, be funding Israel and its wars and doing so unconditionally.
Meaning, even if the Israelis do things with our weapons that we believe harms our national security, we still are not allowed to stop arms transfers.
We have to give everything Israel wants to it, even if it means sacrificing or harming our own interests, our own standing in the world, to do so.
You can believe that the United States should do that, but to Tell the White House and the Biden Administration that they cannot fund our own State Department or our own Defense Department or other agencies of the U.S.
government unless and until Israel gets everything that it wants in terms of weapons is obviously a rather warped priority scheme for the United States Congress.
I genuinely do not believe there is any other parliamentary body of any country in the world That would be willing to cut off funds for its own security apparatus, for its own country's diplomatic corps, for its own government's operational services, unless some other foreign country got everything it wanted from that country first.
In fact, I can't think of any country for whom the US Congress would do that either, except for Israel.
Now, I want to make a point here about Just how extreme this is, because it is the case that one of the powers Congress has is the control over the purse strings.
And sometimes Congress threatens to use the power of the purse to interfere in the President's foreign policy.
For example, if the Congress is against a war, one of the ways it can end the war is it can cut off funds for that war.
It can't tell the president what to do in foreign policy, but it can refuse to fund the war.
That would obviously lead to the ending of the war.
But that is considered such an extreme act, I don't believe it's ever been done.
In 2006, the midterm election of 2006, in the middle of George Bush and Dick Cheney's second term in office, when the Iraq war was at the peak of its unpopularity, The Democrats ran in the midterm election based on a promise that if they get the majority of the House or Senate, they will cut off funds for the Iraq war.
That was the promise they continuously made.
If you vote for us, we will stop the war in Iraq.
The Democrats win the midterm election.
Their House leader is Nancy Pelosi.
That is the first time she ascends to become Speaker of the House.
And before she was even inaugurated, in December of 2006, here you see from NBC News, Nancy Pelosi announces, quote, we will not cut off funding for Iraq.
By saying, quote, we will not cut off funding for the Iraq war, is there a danger that Nancy Pelosi will disappoint voters who have just elected the new Congress, expecting it would take steps to end the war?
You know why they expected?
That the Democrats would take steps to end the war if they won because Democrats told them that they would do so.
Vote for us and we'll end the war.
Quote, we will not cut off funding for the troops, Pelosi said.
Absolutely not, she said.
A reporter had asked Pelosi if the new Democratic-controlled Congress would vote to end the funding of the war if Democrats were unable to persuade President Bush to change his Iraq strategy.
Quote, let me remove all doubt in anyone's mind.
As long as our troops are in harm's way, Democrats will be there to support them.
But we will have oversight over that funding.
Now, the reality is, the reason, one reason why Nancy Pelosi didn't want to cut off funding for the Iraq War is because it was so unpopular and she wanted it to continue so that Democrats in the 2008 presidential election could run on opposition to the Iraq War, which is exactly what President Obama did.
In other words, Nancy Pelosi was willing to send more Americans to their deaths, kill more Iraqis, keep that war going for two years to politically benefit the Democratic Party in the 2008 election.
But it was also because the idea of defunding the security apparatus, the Defense Department, the Pentagon, the State Department, in order to oppose a president's war, even though Nancy Pelosi ran on a platform of doing that, along with Democrats, was considered so extreme that the minute Nancy Pelosi won that election, she said, of course we're not going to defund the war in Iraq.
We would never do that.
In 2011, President Obama was persuaded by people like Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power and Susan Rice inside his administration to do something he was very reluctant to do, which was join the NATO war that was mostly demanded by France and the UK to engage in regime change against Libya.
And at the start of the war, President Obama gave a speech.
Where he said, I promise you this is not a regime change war.
We've learned our lesson from Iraq.
We're not going to change the regime.
We're not there to do that.
We're simply there to create a no-fly zone to protect the people of Benghazi because Gaddafi has threatened to attack them by air.
Immediately became a regime change war because the whole point of the war, the reason why France and the UK wanted that war in Libya, was because Gaddafi had said we're going to cease using our oil to sell to Western interests, and we're going to sell our oil and use the proceeds ourselves to benefit the lives of the Libyan people.
And the type of crude that Libya had was oil on which France and the UK were dependent, and they urged President Obama To have the United States join them in that war.
And at the time, a lot of Republicans were against that war.
In fact, when the House went to vote on whether they approved the authorization of military force to join the war in Libya, the House voted against it.
They said, no, we don't authorize the use of force in Libya.
Here is CBS News, January 2011.
House rejects the measure.
Backing the Libya war quote the house on Friday overwhelmingly rejected a measure giving President Barack Obama the authority To continue the US military operation against Libya a major repudiation of the commander-in-chief The vote was 295 to 123 with Obama losing the support of 70 of his Democrats One day after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had made a last-minute plea for the mission Now
What happened was the House voted against authorizing U.S.
involvement in the war in Libya.
President Obama ignored that.
He went ahead and participated in that war anyway, as history shows.
The United States was there bombing the crap out of Libya, decimating it.
And then once we were done, once Gaddafi was murdered on the streets of Tripoli, that was when Hillary Clinton cackled.
She said, we came.
We saw he died.
And then she cackled, this sadistic, sociopathic cackling, when the 60 Minutes reporter who was interviewing her notified her that there were reports that Gaddafi was killed.
So the United States participated in any way.
Obama broke the law.
He just ignored the fact that Congress voted no.
And then it was up to Congress to enforce its own vote.
And the way that they would have done that was by voting to defund the war in Libya.
But there is such a taboo against defunding the security operations of the United States government, of overriding the President's foreign policy decisions by defunding it, that even in that extreme case, when Obama was clearly violating the law and the constitutional assignment of powers, the Constitution assigns Congress the power to declare war, and the Congress not only refused to do that, but they voted no to authorize military force.
Obama went ahead and did it anyway.
The obvious solution that the House should have embraced That's how extreme it is.
And that's what the United States Congress is about to do in defense of Israel.
when Obama violated the law by prosecuting a war that Congress voted no on allowing, they still did not defund parts of the US government to stop it.
That's how extreme it is.
And that's what the United States Congress is about to do in defense of Israel, because there is nothing too extreme when it comes to serving and advancing Israeli interests.
Now, the motivation for this bill, of course, is President Biden's announcement last week that he would suspend, very temporarily, a handful of weapons systems and not transfer them to Israel, because he said he was concerned that Israel would use them in slaughtering more civilians in Gaza, and he didn't want the United States to be responsible for that, and there needed to be some consequence for Israel ignoring the, quote, red line of President Biden.
Now, the reality was that this suspension of weapons was extremely trivial.
The weapons that the United States suspended were ones the Israelis already had an abundance of because the U.S.
gave it to them.
The announcement from President Biden made clear it was just very temporary, the suspension, not permanent.
And then the White House began sending out signals saying, oh, don't worry.
Of course, we're going to stand by Israel.
Of course, we're going to give Israel everything it wants.
To the point that today, the Democratic Congressman from Manhattan and the billionaire heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, Dan Goldman, who also served on the Mueller team, and is one of the most devoted Israel loyalists in all of Congress.
He is obsessed with demanding that Israel's interests be served.
He says he went to the Biden White House today.
And here's a report from Michael Tracy on this.
Representative Dan Goldman, Democrat from New York, says he received assurance from the White House that no, quote, aid to Israel is actually being withheld.
But the shell game continues.
The Republicans denounce Biden for imposing an arms embargo on Israel, while progressive Democrats pretend he's really putting his foot down.
So they're trying to play it both ways.
They're trying to pretend that they're suspending arms transfers to Israel to satisfy their younger voter base and their Muslim voters.
Like, hey, we're standing up for Israel.
But at the same time, they're telling their pro-Israel voters and donors that they need.
No, of course we're not going to really transfer arms.
And that's what Dan Goldman said.
Look, I looked into it.
They've assured me that there's no consequence of this symbolic act.
Here's Dan Goldman's statement.
Today, quote, Since the horrific terror attack on Israel on October 7th, President Biden has demonstrated an ironclad commitment to Israel's right to defend itself, the vital need to defeat Hamas, the importance of ensuring the release of all those illegally and brutally taken hostage on October 7th, including Americans, and the requirement of providing humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza.
After speaking with senior White House officials over the weekend, I am grateful that National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan Reiterated yesterday the president's unwavering commitment to the long-term peace and security of our lone democratic ally in the Middle East.
In particular, I am pleased that the administration committed to providing all appropriate aid to Israel and will continue to engage with the Israeli government to craft a comprehensive military and political strategy to defeat Hamas and plan for the aftermath of such a defeat in Gaza.
In other words, he was saying, look, he was, he was very concerned by the Biden administration's announcement.
Like a lot of pro-Israel Democrats were.
But now he's saying, I went and talked to them, I heard from Jake Sullivan, I heard Jake Sullivan speak publicly, and there's no suspension of arms.
They're gonna give Israel everything that they need.
It was just a symbolic statement for political reasons, and to kind of express a protest over Israel, but of course the United States stands fully behind Israel and will do everything it says.
And sure enough, the Wall Street Journal, just a couple of hours ago, Reported this quote Joe Biden is moving forward on 1 billion dollars in new arms for Israel So we've heard all these claims over the last week Joe Biden is abandoning Israel Joe Biden is leaving Israel in the lurch as though this top obligation and duty of an American president is to fund Israel and But it's completely untrue.
Joe Biden is now giving another $1 billion in arms for Israel.
The administration notified Congress of a large arms package after withholding shipment of bombs last week.
The Biden administration notified Congress on Tuesday that it was moving forward with more than $1 billion in new weapon deals for Israel, U.S.
and congressional officials said.
A massive arms package Less than a week after the White House paused a shipment of bombs over a planned Israeli assault on Rafa, the latest weapons package includes the potential transfer of $700 million in tank ammunition, $500 million in tactical vehicles, and $60 million in murder rounds, the officials said.
Now, you may remember that just two years ago, two and a half years ago, When Russia invaded Ukraine, we were told that the mission to defeat Russia and expel Russia from Ukrainian soil was of the greatest importance to U.S.
security, and that we would do everything we could to ensure that happens.
There are now more and more reports every day of the Russians running over the Ukrainian front lines, of pushing them back, of taking over new cities.
The Ukrainians are making clear that things are dire, that their front lines are collapsing, in part because we don't have the artillery or other weaponry to give to Ukraine what they need, in part because we're giving so much of it to Israel.
The willingness of Washington to take this foreign country and place it up here, while the interests of the American people are down here,
It's something that has been quite obvious for some time, but when you see a bill that explicitly says we're going to defund our own country's Defense Department and State Department and other executive branch agencies if the Biden administration continues to withhold any weapons that Israel wants, and the only way we will fund our own government is that the Biden administration promises and certifies before Congress that they're giving Israel everything it needs.
What else can the House do?
What else can Washington officials do on a bipartisan basis to tell you exactly what their real priority scheme is?
As we have covered frequently on this show, there has been an attempt over the last several months, really since October 7th, to convince American citizens that the United States is drowning in racism and bigotry against one particular to convince American citizens that the United States is drowning in racism and bigotry against one particular minority They have tried to convince these same people, American Jews, that the United States is not safe for them.
They can't walk outside.
They can't send their kids to school.
They can't send their kids to college.
There are roving bands of Jew haters all over the place ready to maul and violently attack American Jews, even though none of that has happened.
Even though essentially every encampment of pro-Palestinian protesters at colleges has been peaceful.
Not overwhelmingly peaceful in the sense that CNN described the Black Lives Matter movement as being, while in the background there were buildings burning, but actually entirely peaceful.
There have been no incidents of Jewish students being physically assaulted or violently attacked, let alone killed.
The only real violence in any of these protest movements came from the pro-Israel counter-protesters, most of whom did not even go to school there, who showed up at the UCLA and began violently attacking pro-Palestinian protesters, including old women and all kinds of people, throwing metal fences at them, bringing sticks there, fighting them physically for hours.
And a big part of the funding for those pro-Israel protesters came from Jerry Seinfeld's wife.
While Jerry Seinfeld has long been one of the country's most vocal supporters of Israel and since October 7th has repeatedly defended the Israeli war in Gaza, condemned pro-Palestinian protesters, talked about how heroic he finds Barry Weiss.
He went to one of Barry Weiss's events about the importance of combating anti-Semitism in the United States and about the need to support Israel and its war.
Jerry Seinfeld was selected to be the commencement speaker at the graduation ceremony for Duke University over the weekend, where he also received an honorary degree.
And as CBS News reported yesterday, quote, Duke University graduates walked out ahead of Jerry Seinfeld's commencement address.
And there were actually a lot of booing.
Quote, Duke University President Vincent Price's introduction to Seinfeld was drowned out by some people chanting, quote, free Palestine, while others shouted, Jerry, Jerry, the 70-year-old Seinfeld, who has supported Israel since the October 7th attack by Hamas militants, recently sparked controversy over his comments on what remains acceptable fodder for comedy today.
Here is a video of some of the students Not attacking Jerry Seinfeld, not violently attacking anybody, but using their free speech rights to protest and chant as they walked out of the speech.
They didn't try and disrupt it.
They didn't try and stop it.
They didn't scream over it.
They just left in protest of Jerry Seinfeld's position on Israel.
Jerry is also serving as our commencement speaker.
There you can see students walking out carrying a Palestinian flag.
They're just filing out peacefully while the students who wanted to remain remained.
It was just a very peaceful, tranquil protest that didn't infringe on anybody's rights and that is the kind of protest that the United States has long had, that the Constitution is designed to protect.
And yet, one of the tactics that Israel's most devoted loyalists have been using is trying to claim that any criticism of Israel or its war is really motivated by racism and bigotry.
They scream and screech, racist and bigot and anti-Semite, anyone who disagrees with them.
They try to get people fired from their jobs and have succeeded in media and academia and elsewhere for criticizing Israel.
They want censorship on college campuses and in the United States to protect this one minority group by claiming they're not safe.
That the speech that people are expressing about Israel is actually a form of violence that makes Jewish people feel unsafe and attacked.
The whole familiar script that the American right has spent a decade mocking and denouncing when coming from every other group is now emanating from Israel's most devoted loyalists.
And one of the tactics they attempted to promote was to claim that the reason Duke students protested Jerry Seinfeld and walked out is because Jerry Seinfeld is Jewish.
And they're just anti-Semites, and that's the proof.
Here's the same Congressman Daniel Goldman from Manhattan, the billionaire heir to the Levi Strauss fortune, on May 12th who said the following, quote, Jerry Seinfeld is a Jewish American who has nothing at all to do with Israel's foreign policy or military defense.
Holding an American Jew responsible for the actions of the Israeli government is quintessential anti-Semitism.
And there are all kinds of claims like that.
Now, the lie of this claim is manifest.
And the reason I think it's important to examine is because this is the fraud that has been going on in the United States for many months.
Obviously, the protesters were not protesting Jerry Seinfeld because he's Jewish.
Within these protest movements, there are many Jews who are regarded as the comrades of the protest movement because they share it, they help organize it, they help lead it.
There's an exhibit within the Columbia encampment about the evils and dangers of anti-Semitism.
The reason they protested Jerry Seinfeld is because Jerry Seinfeld is one of the most vocal supporters of the Israeli war in Gaza, which is what this protest movement is designed to denounce.
Dan Goldman absolutely lied when he said, oh, Jerry Seinfeld is just some random American Jew, has nothing to do with Israel or the war.
He's been vocally supporting it, and his wife, Using Jerry Seinfeld's money, financed pro-Israel activities all over the country, including helping dox pro-Palestinian students and financing the pro-Israel counter-protesters showed up at UCLA and violently attacked the pro-Palestinian protesters.
But the tactic of Israel supporters is and always has been to scream racist and anti-Semite at anybody who disagrees with them about Israel and anyone who criticized Israel.
And so that became the tactic.
Now, just to illustrate the point, protesters, pro-Palestinian protesters, have been outside of the home of Nancy Pelosi Almost every day since October 7th, here from the local Fox affiliate in San Francisco, quote, protestors gather outside the home of Nancy Pelosi to raise awareness about violence in Gaza.
I'm quite certain Nancy Pelosi's not Jewish.
The reason they're protesting Nancy Pelosi is the same reason they're protesting Jerry Seinfeld.
It's because they're supporters of the war that these protestors are denouncing.
These protesters have been following Joe Biden around and disrupting and protesting every one of his events for seven months.
And I'm also quite certain that Joe Biden is not Jewish, but what he has in common with Jerry Seinfeld and Nancy Pelosi is that he is a vehement supporter of and enabler of the Israeli war in Gaza.
Here's the LA Times on October 19th.
Quote, no war crimes in our name, Jewish protesters say outside Kamala Harris's LA home.
So there you have Jewish protesters going to Kamala Harris' home, a supporter of the Israeli war in Gaza, and protesting at her home.
I'm pretty sure she's not Jewish either.
Do you see the fraudulent narrative that's being perpetrated here over and over and over by Israel, the U.S., and the United States trying to claim that anybody who questions this foreign government, who opposes U.S.
financing of this foreign government, is an anti-Semite, even though It doesn't take much effort at all to see that the reason they're protesting people like Jerry Seinfeld and Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris and Joe Biden is not because of their ethnic background or their race or their religion, but because of their stance on the Israeli war in Gaza.
I think false racism accusations, false bigotry accusations, moral panics, trying to convince American Jews that they're unsafe in the United States, All as a means of demeaning and banning and rendering evil and taboo criticism of this foreign government are always things that need to be opposed.
And I have rarely seen such a transparent fraud of perpetrating a narrative of racism in the United States for alternative and ulterior means, as I've seen since October 7th in the United States.
There's a very interesting geopolitical trend taking place all over the world that has been going on for at least the last several years, which is that more and more countries are pursuing a financial partnership and geopolitical cooperation with China.
More and more countries are seeking to join the block, the alternative block, called BRICS, in which China is obviously the most powerful and most important country, along with India, and then Brazil, Russia, and South Africa.
More and more countries are applying for membership in the BRICS alliance.
One of the countries that is pursuing stronger and stronger ties and cooperation with China is Hungary.
And the reason that's so worth noting is because the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, has become a hero of the American right, at least the populist wing of the American right, the populist right of the Western world.
He's become a favorite of the populist right, and yet he is continuously moving away from the West, and pivoting toward China, toward a partnership, a strategic cooperation, greater and greater relations of every kind with China.
And he's talking about China, Prime Minister Urban is, as crucial and central and vital to future Hungarian prosperity.
And given that the American right largely views China as the world's greatest evil, even though they have not fought a war since the And that was a one month war about a border dispute with Vietnam.
One month.
Obviously, since 1979, the US has fought dozens of wars, has spent trillions of dollars on wars.
That is one of the reasons why so many countries are pursuing more and more strategic cooperation with China, along with the financial benefits that it brings.
Here from AP News, the Associated Press, earlier this week, May 9th, quote, Hungary and China sign a strategic cooperation agreement during visit by Chinese President Xi.
Quote, during a brief press briefing following the talks, Viktor Orban praised the quote, continuous uninterrupted friendship between Hungary and China since his tenure began in 2010 and promised that Hungary would continue to host further Chinese investments.
Beijing has invested billions in Hungary and sees the EU member as an important foothold inside the 27-member trading bloc.
Hungary is also hosting several Chinese EV battery plans and hopes to become a global hub of lithium-ion battery manufacturing and has undertaken a railway project Part of Xi's Belt and Road Initiative to connect the country with the Chinese-controlled port of Piraeus in Greece as an entry port for Chinese goods to Central and Eastern Europe.
Quote, looking back at the world economy and commerce of 20 years ago, it doesn't resemble at all what we're living in today, Orban said.
Quote, then we lived in a single polar world, and now we live in a multipolar world order.
And one of the main columns of this new world order is China.
He added that Hungary would seek to expand economic cooperation with China to the field of nuclear energy.
Hungary is currently working with Russia on adding a new reactor to its park's nuclear facility, which is expected to go online by the end of the decade.
So it isn't just that they signed a trade agreement.
This has been going on for many years.
Hungary sees China as central and crucial to its future prosperity, its future growth, its future geostrategic security.
Here, all the way back in 2015, is the Global Construction Review that reported this, quote, Hungary is the first European country to sign up to China's Silk Road vision.
Hungary has become the first European country to sign a cooperation agreement for China's Silk Road initiative to develop trade and transport infrastructure connecting Asia to Europe.
The country's foreign minister signed a memorandum of understanding for what China calls its One Belt, One Road vision in Budapest, according to a statement on the Chinese foreign military website.
China's foreign minister said China would work together with Hungary to modernize the railway between Belgrade and Serbia and Budapest and Hungary and to build a quote China Europe land sea express line and other major infrastructure.
So I think it's very important to know in the United States we are constantly bombarded with a narrative That says China is the most evil country on Earth.
China is the most threatening country on Earth.
China is the most militarily aggressive country on Earth.
They're the most antagonistic country on the planet.
They're the gravest threat to world peace, to world stability.
Aside from the fact that China, again, has not fought a war since 1979, 45 years ago, and that China actually mocked the United States once we left Afghanistan after 20 years.
Mock the United States for having spent trillions of dollars on foreign wars again that achieved nothing.
The Taliban just marched right back into power as if it was 2001.
They contrasted the trillions of dollars spent by the United States on all of these wars over the last 20 years in the name of the war on terror.
With the 800 billion dollar rapid rail system that the Chinese built that connected all of their cities including their rural areas to one another.
So the United States doesn't have anything close to in terms of high speed infrastructure.
Because they were implying they spend their money on building and modernizing and technological advancement while the United States spend its money on either bombing other countries or paying for other countries like Ukraine and Israel to bomb other countries as well.
That's just the reality.
And while Americans believe that China is this grave evil, the rest of the world just doesn't see it that way.
Which is why you see so much migration from allegiance to Western institutions to allegiance to Chinese-led institutions or to China itself.
They've made extraordinary inroads in places where the United States or the West, Western Europe, have long dominated in South America, in Africa, and in Asia, and now even in Central Europe.
I think it's worth asking why.
Why are we constantly told that China is this evil country that wants to militarily attack and dominate when we have military bases all around China?
They don't have military bases all around the United States?
And you see all these countries that obviously perceive China vastly different than the way we're told to see China.
Here from Reuters in April of 2021, quote, Hungary blocks an EU statement criticizing China over Hong Kong, diplomats say.
Quote, Hungary's argument was that the EU already has too many issues with China, a senior EU diplomat told Reuters.
A second senior diplomat confirmed the blockage in Hungary's position.
An EU official said the statement had been withdrawn from the EU's approval process.
Budapest reluctantly supported the EU sanctions last month, calling them pointless.
And then hosted China's defense minister for an official visit days after the EU sanctions decision.
Hungary is a large recipient of Chinese investment in the past, both Hungary and Greece.
Where China's Costco shipping has a majority stake in Greece's largest port have blocked EU statements on China.
Beijing's top representative in Hong Kong this week warned foreign powers that they would be taught a lesson if they tried to interfere in China's management of the global financial hub as tensions escalated between China and Western governments over the city.
Here's a statement by Larry Summers, who has been embedded in the U.S.
establishment as much as anybody.
He was president of Harvard.
He was Bill Clinton's chief financial advisor, a top financial architect that led to the collapse and the financial crisis of 2008.
He's the consummate establishment insider.
Then he monetized all that, he went to investment banks, got extremely rich.
Here's what he said in April, just last month.
Quote, I do think in many ways the most profound question for American foreign policy, and it's one that very much implicates economic policy, is that as right and just as we feel we are, there are just a larger number of countries that are not aligned with us or that are only weakly aligned with us.
I heard a comment from somebody in a developing country who said, quote, look, I like your values better than I like China's.
But the truth is, when we're engaged with the Chinese, we get an airport.
And when we're engaged with you guys, we get a lecture.
And this has been something that's been said many times.
Larry Summers claimed that he just heard that.
But you can go back years and find officials in Africa saying, when China visits, we get a new hospital or a new building.
When the US visits, we get a lecture.
Fiona Hill is also an extremely integrated into the establishment official.
She's a massive hawk on Russia and China.
She is the protege of John Bolton.
She worked with John Bolton inside the Trump administration.
She's a major advocate and proponent of U.S.
aggression in the world, U.S.
imperialism in the world.
And yet she gave a speech in May of, I believe it was in 2022, we've covered this before, at a conference of Western elites, Western policymaking elites.
And the main point of her speech was to try and get Western elites to see that international perceptions about China and the West have changed dramatically.
That there are huge parts of the world now that prefer to be part of a world where China is exerting more power, or at least is a multipolar world, rather than having the U.S.
rule the world through homogenous superior force or through a unipolar world.
And one of the points that she made, and remember this is not a leftist, this is a Marco Rubio, John Bolton kind of advocate for American aggression and militarism.
But she said that one of the things that the United States has done by going around the world and fighting wars and initiating wars and financing wars like the one in Ukraine is it has created a ton of resentment all over the world.
There's so many countries on every continent on the planet that has been negatively affected in some way by U.S.
aggression, by U.S.
interference, coups against democratically elected governments, imposition of Dictators attempt to force a sanctions regime on these countries to force them to not do business with other countries that they have no problem with.
They see the war in Ukraine as an American project, as an American attempt to have interfered in the diplomatic resolution that likely would have taken place between Ukraine and Russia that the Americans and the British stopped for their own interests.
And obviously now, with the U.S.
tied at the hip to Israel in a war that has become extremely unpopular around the world, that resentment against the United States has grown even further.
That's why I say we sacrifice a lot to support Israel, just like we're sacrificing a lot to fuel the war in Ukraine.
And what Fiona Hill said is that there's this huge irony at the heart of all of this, which is Washington has continuously said for the last decade or longer That we have to pivot away from the Middle East and focus on Asia.
That China is the most important adversary the United States has.
And yet there is nothing that is strengthening the Chinese.
Nothing that is fortifying their position in the world more than the eagerness of the U.S.
to constantly be involved in more and more wars.
Now, this was before the U.S.
began financing the war in Gaza by arming and funding the Israelis, but it was in the middle of the U.S.
funding of the war in Ukraine.
I'm just going to give you a little taste of what she said, because I think it's so important that we think about China.
We can condemn it morally.
It's obviously a very authoritarian country domestically.
But it doesn't matter really how much how Americans perceive China.
Our media tells us to hate China.
Both political parties tell us to hate China.
Elon Musk, for example, another hero of the right, has enormous amounts of business in China, will never utter a negative word about China.
Because Tesla and other of his companies depend on good relationships with the Chinese.
That's the reality of where China is in the world.
But here's how Fiona Hill described U.S.
policymakers and U.S.
foreign policy and war making in Washington feeding this resentment that helps the Chinese more than anything.
Now, since 1991, the United States has seemingly stood alone as the global superpower, but I would argue that today, after a fraught two-decade period shaped by American-led military interventions and direct engagement in regional wars, The Ukraine war highlights the decline of the United States itself.
Now, this decline is relative, of course, economically and militarily, but it is very serious in terms of U.S.
moral authority.
And again, we've heard quite a lot about that as well.
Unfortunately, just as Osama bin Laden intended, the U.S.' 's own reactions and actions have eroded its position since the devastating terrorist attacks of 9-11.
America fatigue, and we actually heard about that last night on the panel, as you might recall.
I'd already had that in my notes, and then we heard one of our panelists actually say it.
America fatigue and disillusionment with its role as the global hegemon is widespread.
And this, I would argue, also includes in the United States itself, the fact that we frequently see on display in Congress, news outlets, and in think tank debates.
For some, the U.S.
is a flawed international actor with its own domestic problems it should be attending to.
And for others, the U.S.
is still a new form of imperial state that ignores the concerns of others and throws its military weight around.
Well, why am I saying all this?
Because in the near term, this is particularly detrimental for Ukraine.
And I think we've heard a lot about that over the last year.
Because globally, the war in Ukraine is viewed as one in a long series of dramatic events since 2001, driven by the United States.
America's heavy-handed conduct of the war on terror alienated the vast swathe of the Muslim world.
The U.S.
invasion of Iraq in 2003, hot on the heels of Afghanistan, revived the horrors of U.S.
Cold War interventions in Korea and Vietnam.
U.S.
inaction in conflicts like Yemen and selective interventions in Libya and Syria underscored U.S.
foreign policy inconsistency.
I'm relating to you all the things that I've been hearing myself over this last year from all kinds of interlocutors.
No, she went on to say, Fiona Hill did, that she doesn't agree with that perception.
She was an advocate of many of these military interventions.
But what she's saying is that it matters what the rest of the world thinks.
The United States can't dominate the world any longer.
It's a multipolar world.
Not just China, but India and many other countries have risen in power.
And the point she's trying to make, to emphasize to European elites, is that this obsession that the United States has had
With fueling wars, with bombing whatever countries they want, with financing wars, with being perceived as being at the heart of so many wars all over the world, of throwing its military weight around and economic weight around, as she put it, is feeding exactly all the resentments globally that China is now exploiting successfully to induce countries to believe that they would be better off in bed with China.
Now there are other reasons for believing that as well.
We heard the experience of countries say, when China comes we get a new hospital, we get investment in our country, when the United States comes we get lectures about how we should do things and who should rule our country and who shouldn't.
And obviously you're going to prefer the former to the latter.
But the U.S.
obsession on a bipartisan basis, on a uniparty basis, on a war machine basis, of continuously pursuing wars, of fighting wars, of bombing countries, of financing wars, not only has the effect of draining American wealth and saddling generations with massive debt and killing a lot of people and destroying a lot of places, but for those people who believe that the United States has as its main adversary China,
Arguably the most significant consequence of all is that it's strengthening the adversary that we're constantly told we most have to undermine and subvert.
So every time there's a new war that Washington proposes, every time they convince Americans to finance a new war, to become involved in a new war, to bomb another country, those all have consequences all over the world.
We don't see U.S.
government actions the way the rest of the world sees them because even though we don't like to think of ourselves as being propagandized, we very much are.
We constantly get tribal reinforcement that what we're doing is right, that we're the good party, we're the good guys, what we're doing is noble, and of course they do a good job of convincing Americans who want to believe that about their own society that that's true.
But it's very important to understand that the perception that Americans have of their own government is not at all the same perception as what the rest of the world has, and that causes a massive Consequence for the United States, a massive cost to the United States for its standing in the world.
Every time the United States isolates itself at the UN when the entire world is ready to pass resolutions to end the war in Gaza or to denounce Israel or to recognize a Palestinian state and the United States uses its veto power to stand with five countries in the world with Israel and three tiny little Pacific islands like Micronesia.
And the Marshall Islands that we bribed to be on our side, that we're part of the coalition of the willing, and the entire rest of the world is over here.
Of course that undermines Americans standing in the world and soft power in the world, and our ability to continue to persuade other countries that we are actually a force for good in the world.
Many countries have gradually concluded that we are anything but that, and it's hard to say that that perception is entirely invalid.
So that concludes our show for this evening.
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