Was Kamala's VP Pick Driven By Antisemitism? Nuclear War Dangers Forgotten Amid Escalating Conflicts; DNC-Left Forgets About "Genocide" To Cheer On Harris
TIMESTAMPS:
Intro (0:00)
Why Walz Over Shapiro (5:28)
Interview with Professor Nina Tannenwald (31:00)
What’s a Little Genocide Between Dems (1:04:02)
Outro (1:30:49)
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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, Kamala Harris, who is the Democratic presidential nominee, who became that somehow without a single vote being cast, announced her choice today for her vice presidential running mate.
He is the current governor of Minnesota and a former House member, Tim Walz.
By all accounts, Harris was strongly considering the governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, but chose Walt at the last minute instead.
The dominant Republican response to this choice, one that even some Democrats and their media allies are echoing, is that Harris's rejection of Shapiro was driven by, or at least intended to appease, anti-Semitism.
On the ground that Shapiro is Jewish and Waltz is not.
In other words, since the left wing of the Democratic Party was championing Waltz over Shapiro and were doing so, so goes this dreary narrative, simply due to their anti-Semitism, Harris' choice is being cast as a capitulation to anti-Semitism.
Is there any validity to this bigotry and racism narrative, this time coming from Republicans?
No, there's not.
But we'll take a look at why that is.
Today is the 79th anniversary of one of the darkest moments in human history, even if you support it as the right decision.
On August 6, 1945, the U.S.
dropped the first-ever nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, killing and incinerating immediately an estimated 450,000 people and leaving generations sick from radiological poisoning.
With the Middle East on the brink of a new war that involves at least two nuclear powers for now, Israel and the United States, as well as the ongoing war in Ukraine involving Russia on one side, the largest nuclear power on the planet, and multiple other nuclear states on the other, including the United States, it is very worth looking at how the risks of nuclear war have been largely forgotten, perhaps deliberately so.
To help explore this, we will speak to Nina Tannenwald, who is a professor and senior lecturer in political science at Brown University.
She has a book entitled The Nuclear Taboo, The United States and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons Since 1945, which traces the reasons why, not necessarily inevitably, there was no further use of nuclear weapons after the date 79 years ago and whether we can continue that trend.
Finally, Much of the self-identified American left, the DNC left, has spent the last 10 months flamboyantly and self-servingly screaming genocide as a way to express their opposition to the U.S.-funded and armed Israeli war in Gaza, and more to the point, as a way of branding themselves as moralistic radicals.
Though many of them alluded to the possibility that they would refuse to vote for the Democratic candidate in the 2024 election, due to their deep and extremely passionate objection to what was being done to the people of Gaza, it was always so obvious, so inevitable, as many of us have pointed out many times, that they were never going to refrain from voting Democrat.
They were instead going to do exactly what they are now doing, not only vowing to vote for the Democratic ticket, but doing so with extreme excitement and glee.
All while what they call this genocide in Gaza continues unabated.
Both Kamala Harris and Tim Walton's views on Israel are indistinguishable, not only from the vast majority of Democratic parties, but also to Joe Biden's or even Josh Shapiro's.
But nobody in the DNC left really cares about, quote, genocide any longer.
That's all done and forgotten.
There's an election coming.
And they will tell you that it's absolutely crucial that Americans do everything we can to keep in power those who funded, armed, and defended this genocide.
Something you would say only if you are a complete partisan fraud who never believed any of what you were saying in the first place.
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.
System Update By all accounts, Kamala Harris' choice or shortlist of vice presidential running mates had been narrowed in the last week to two or at most three choices.
The governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, the governor of Pennsylvania, who is Josh Shapiro, and the governor of Kentucky, who is Andy Brashear.
There was also some talk at some point that the Senator from Arizona, Mark Kelly, might be chosen, but he, by all accounts, was pretty much eliminated earlier than those last three.
And there was a lot of push and pull within the Democratic Party and the various factions within it.
A lot of Democratic operatives and mainstream types and funders really wanted Josh Shapiro.
Progressives, the DNC left, really wanted Harris to choose Tim Walz and not Josh Shapiro, in part because they said Josh Shapiro had too much loyalty to the state of Israel.
He had served in a volunteer community that went to Israel, I believe in his last year of high school, ended up working on, or at least part of, an IDF base.
He has a long history, including college essays, of saying some extremely pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian sentiments, which he has Dismissed as sort of the byproduct of his youth.
I don't know anyone who could survive having their essays when they're 20 years old scrutinized to this extent.
But since then he has pretty much become a fairly standard member of the Democratic Party, a party in which he obviously has great ambitions to rise within.
There was no real difference between Josh Shapiro on the one hand and Tim Walz on the other when it came to Israel, although there were some differences, including the fact that Shapiro just seemed more passionate about Israel, not because he's Jewish and Walz isn't, but because he's repeatedly had praise on Benjamin Netanyahu long after the Democratic Party ceased to do so, including during the Obama years.
Also, The record of Josh Shapiro is very radically pro-Israel.
Now, the same is true for Tim Waltz.
What you could basically say is that the difference was tonal or stylistic when it comes to Israel, that Waltz seems a little bit less focused on this issue, a little bit more flexible rhetorically on it.
That's about it.
But if you're a Democratic Party voter and you really prioritize support for Israel and the war in Gaza as your first or top choice, those differences can justify preferring Tim Walz to Josh Shapiro.
And yet the narrative that has arisen, largely from the Republican Party, but also from a lot of Democrats within the Democratic Party, is that the fact that the left preferred Tim Walz to Josh Shapiro and the fact that now Kamala Harris has chosen Walz over Shapiro reflects a pervasive anti-Semitism, especially among American progressives, that is now being mollified by Kamala Harris's candidacy by rejecting Josh Shapiro, who is a Jewish supporter of Israel.
Now if this sounds a lot like the standard liberal script when it comes to criticizing conservatives as being racist for opposing Barack Obama or Kamala Harris or being misogynistic for opposing Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris, that's because it is.
The minute the conservatives oppose a Democratic Party candidate who is black or who is female, or if Pete Buttigieg one day is the nominee, people who oppose him will be accused of being homophobic.
This is the dreary identity politics framework that Republicans and conservatives have spent a decade vehemently denouncing.
And yet, as we've gone over many times since October 7th, screaming anti-Semite, everybody who disagrees with them has become the tactic of choice among those very conservatives as well.
And we're seeing that at work now, where they're trying to suggest that anyone who prefers the non-Jewish candidate over the Jewish candidate, that that is somehow proof of anti-Semitism.
Just like, say, in 2016, people who preferred Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton were accused of being Inherently misogynistic.
People who oppose Barack Obama were accused of being racist.
There's no difference between the tactics at all.
And yet this really is the dominant strain today.
Here from the New York Times.
No Republican outlet, they.
Harris' choice of Walz over Shapiro mollifies the left, but misses a chance to reassure Jews.
Mrs. Harris' selection of Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota likely avoided fueling the Gaza demonstrations, but it could come at the expense of reassuring the center, and it may well have created a new point of friction with Jewish voters leery of a lurch to the left from the Democratic Party.
Was her decision to sidestep Mr. Shapiro some wonder overly deferential to progressive activists who many Jews believe have veered past anti-Israel fervor and into anti-Jewish bigotry?
Not since Al Gore, named then Senator Joseph I. Lieberman to his ticket in 2000 as a Jew, been as close to the Vice Presidency as Mr. Harris appeared to be until Mrs. Harris' announcement Tuesday.
But unlike in 2000, the movement is fraught for American Jewry.
Israel is at war with Hamas in Gaza.
Much of the world has turned against the Israeli government, and a war that began with the slaughter of Israelis on October 7th now threatens to engulf the wider Middle East.
Many Jewish organizations on Tuesday rallied around Mrs. Harris' selection of Mr. Walz.
J Street, a liberal Jewish group that has criticized Israel, wished Mr. Walz its congratulations, saying, quote, mazel tov, Tim Walz.
Democratic Majority for Israel, a political action committee that has worked to unseat Democratic critics of Israel, also praised the choice.
Now, I think in there are a lot of important and revealing sentiments.
Number one is that you actually see that the difference between Tim Waltz and Josh Shapiro is not very significant when it comes to Israel or much of anything else, but particularly when it comes to Israel.
But there was a sense, certainly on the part of a lot of people who are focused on Israel on the left, that Josh Shapiro's history made it clear that he was more fixated on Israel.
He was more of a vocal supporter of Netanyahu, enough of a difference to justify, to make rational a preference for Waltz over Shapiro, Certainly in a way that should prevent people from hurling the anti-semitism accusation at those who preferred Waltz or Harris for choosing him without further evidence of anti-semitism.
And yet that's exactly what's happening, not just from the Republicans, but from many Israel fanatics in the Democratic Party as well.
Before the choice is even made, here is Congressman Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat of Florida, on August 1st, who has made repeatedly clear that supporting for Israel is his top priority, or one of his top priorities, along with those in his district.
"These progressives don't want a Jew.
Let's say it out loud.
Imagine if moderate Democrats said they didn't want a certain minority.
The condemnations would be deafening, yet we now hear much silence." Now all that he was doing there was tweeting an article from The Hill that simply said "Progressives sound the alarm on Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro." They didn't say they didn't want a Jew on the ticket.
What's also so notable is that the same faction being accused of anti-Semitism for opposing Josh Shapiro did everything in their power in 2016 and 2020 to elect Bernie Sanders, who would have been the first American Jewish president in American history.
I think it's kind of difficult to accuse people whose main political cause over the last eight years have been electing a Jewish senator to the presidency of being anti-semitic simply because they oppose a particular Jewish politician.
Again it's like saying if you oppose Nikki Haley over Donald Trump it's because you are misogynistic and yet here was Nikki Haley today who responded to Harris's choice this way, quote, Democrats are going to have to explain this movement toward deeper anti-Semitism.
We are seeing it in the protests, in the rhetoric by the squad, and members of Congress, and now in the VP pick.
They can't talk this away as coincidence.
It's concerning.
Now, as the New York Times said, many Jewish groups have already come out and heap praise on Tim Walz for being what he actually is, which is a very reliable, long-time, and vocal supporter of Israel and of U.S. policy, of financing Israel, of funding Israel, and vocal supporter of Israel and of U.S. policy, of financing Israel, of funding Israel, of arming Israel, and doing everything possible to ensure that
He's never once in his life gone off script in terms of the Democratic Party, either as a House member or as a governor, with respect to his support for Israel.
And as we're going to show you a little bit later in the show, he's as loyally pro-Israel as Joe Biden was, as Kamala Harris is, as Josh Shapiro is, as the entire Democratic Party is.
But I still think that opposing Josh Shapiro cannot possibly be cast as anti-Semitism unless you believe that to oppose a Jewish politician automatically means that you're operating from bigotry.
And yet that's exactly what the people who have screamed the most about the injustice of this tactic are now doing.
Here is Ben Shapiro.
Who has mocked every claim of racism and misogyny and transphobia and Islamophobia when it's come from the left and from American liberals using exactly this tactic today.
The first he says on a kind of policy level, quote, Kamala is diehard anti-fracking, going to be a nuclear issue in Pennsylvania.
Shapiro could have probably taken that state off the table.
Now it's going to be in the biggest battleground in 2044, all because he was a Jew.
That's something that Ben Shapiro retreated.
Actually, it was a tweet by the New York Post's John Levine.
So according to them, there's just no plausible reason why you would not want Josh Shapiro on the ticket unless you hate Jews and don't want Jews on the ticket.
That is madness.
I could actually make an easy case.
In fact, if I were advising the Kamala Harris campaign and actually wanted them to win, and they asked me who I think they should have chosen as vice president, I probably would have picked Tim Walz.
He seems a much more likable politician to me than Josh Shapiro.
He doesn't reek of kind of political manipulation and ambition, even though he probably has that.
He comes off as folksy.
He was in the military.
He's from the Midwest.
He's like a Midwestern dad.
It's going to be very, very, very difficult, I think, to convince Midwesterners that he's some sort of strident communist radical.
So just on strategy alone, I think Kamala Harris made a correct choice from her perspective.
But I certainly don't think that the Democrats care at all about appeasing progressives or appeasing the left wing of the Democratic Party, because as we've gone over before, nobody has shown more steadfast, unconditional, and unwavering loyalty to any party than they.
They will vote for Democrats even if Democrats spit on them and give speeches every day talking about how much they hate them.
Nobody's interested in appeasing that group.
My belief is that Kamala Harris chose Tim Walton, not Josh Shapiro, in part because she had a better rapport than he, and most of all because her campaign assessed that he would be a better asset in winning the key battleground states that will determine the 2024 election.
But Ben Shapiro can't accept that.
Any opposition to a Jewish politician makes you an anti-Semite.
Unless it's Bernie Sanders or someone he doesn't like.
Here he said today, quote, "Picking Walt is a massive gift to the Republicans.
He's a radical leftist from a non-swing state with a long history of insane statements who presided over the burning down of his state in 2000.
Kamala picked him because he's not a Jew and she's too online." Now I, again, think that if you're going to accuse people of anti-Semitism, you need something more than they oppose a Jewish Democratic politician to.
Just like to accuse somebody of racism, you need something more than that person doesn't like Barack Obama.
Or to accuse them of misogyny, you need something more than that person opposed Hillary Clinton.
That has been what conservatives have been saying forever, that you use this identity politics framework.
is corrupting and just a way of destroying your opponent's character.
But as we've seen since October 7, nobody uses that tactic more than certainly the pro-Israel right.
Now, it wasn't just pundits or members of the Democratic Party, but J.D.
Vance also gave an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show earlier today, responded to the choice of Tim Walz by Kamala Harris, and he essentially raised this anti-Semitism framework as well.
Here it is.
Well, look, if it's not John Shapiro, I agree with you.
I think that they will have not picked Shapiro, frankly, out of anti-Semitism in their own caucus and in their own party.
I think it's disgraceful the Democrats have gotten to this point where it's even an open conversation.
And it is an open conversation.
So one of the people that was considered a very strong leading candidate to be Trump's vice president was Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.
Were the people who were advocating for J.D.
Vance and not Tim Scott showing their racism by virtue of their opposition to Tim Scott?
Was Trump's choice of a white man, J.D.
Vance, rather than a black man, Tim Scott, evidence of Trump's appeasing or catering to white nationalism because he didn't want a black person on the ticket with him?
Would conservatives accept that accusation if that were voiced?
Of course not.
They would say, this is the kind of trivializing of racism accusations that are ruining our discourse.
And they would have been right.
And how can they not see that they're doing exactly the same thing?
It just, it genuinely astounds me.
Van Jones, who is supposedly CNN's left-wing voice, also went on that network today and voiced very similar views as J.D.
Vance and Ben Shapiro and a lot of other people.
Here's what he had to say.
Do you think it was a little risky, though, Van, that she didn't go with Shapiro to kind of lock down Pennsylvania?
I mean, yes, David Challenger was saying earlier, just because you pick him as your running mate doesn't mean you automatically win Pennsylvania.
But I've got to think it would have helped just a little bit.
Hey, listen, the conservatives, the right wing, the Republicans, they were chewing their fingernails down to the knuckle because they were afraid of a Josh Shapiro.
They were afraid of a Mark Kelly.
They're not as afraid of this new governor because they think they can define him.
So here's the challenge you've got in this party.
People don't want to talk about it, but we've got to talk about it.
On the one hand, you have a lot of young people who are concerned about Gaza.
You have a lot of Muslims and Arabs and others.
They have not felt seen by the Biden administration.
You start hearing that genocide joke, that was building, that was building.
And so those folks needed to have a candidate that they could feel comfortable with.
This helps them in that regard.
But you also have anti-Semitism that has gotten marbled into this party.
You can be for the Palestinians without being an anti-Jewish bigot, but there are some anti-Jewish bigots out there.
And there's some disquiet now, and there has to be.
How much of what just happened is caving into some of these darker parts in the party?
So that's going to have to get worked out.
It's going to have to get talked through.
No, I think having Van Jones say that is completely understandable and predictable.
That is how he sees the world.
He likely would have thought that Trump's choice of J.D.
Vance over Tim Scott reflects racism in the Republican Party and the Conservative Party.
He sees everything through that lens.
That's how Van Jones sees the world.
He's just being consistent.
He's saying, oh, there are a lot of people in the Democratic Party.
Who aren't just anti-Israel, they're anti-Semitic.
And we have to confront that.
He suggested there's like Muslim and Arab voters the Democrats need and they couldn't have put a Jewish candidate on the ticket for that.
That's how Jim Van Jones and people like him see the world.
They don't look at people as individuals.
Everybody is a representative of their demographic group.
And if you oppose somebody in a demographic group, they will use that to say that you dislike all people in the demographic group, not just as one politician.
And so having him consistently apply that view to say, oh, if you dislike Josh Shapiro, if you're opposed to Josh Shapiro, if you wanted Tim Walz instead, that means that you are an anti-Semite.
It makes perfect sense coming from Van Jones.
That's how he sees the world.
That's how he talks about everybody.
Everyone's a racist, a misogynist, a homophobic, anti-Semitic for not supporting certain politicians who are from those groups.
But for the Republican Party and for conservatives who have been infuriated and enraged by this tactic, who have denounced it repeatedly, to now embrace it and adopt it and use the exact same tactic against the Democratic Party.
Oh, you're against Josh Shapiro, therefore you hate Jews.
Oh, she didn't choose Josh Shapiro because they hate Jews.
It's pathetic to watch, but we've been seeing that, as I said, from the beginning of October 7th, where if you raise questions about why the U.S.
should be funding and arming the war in Israel, you're automatically an anti-Semite.
For the people who claim and have built careers on opposing identity politics and bigotry accusations, few people use it more readily and more casually and more frequently than they.
Ben Shapiro wakes up every day and calls people anti-Semites for any number of reasons.
And then he'll turn around if someone calls him a racist and say, it's completely unfair to call me a racist.
This is how the left works.
If you don't like black people, a black politician, you get called a racist.
And this is exactly what...
Not just the Republican Party and conservatives, although they are, but also the pro-Israeli and the Democratic Party and their media allies are doing.
Now, I want to just remind you of the long history in the Democratic Party for these kind of tactics.
I think people have forgotten a lot about the 2008 primary in the Democratic Party that was between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
As in 2016, everyone just assumed Hillary Clinton was going to waltz into the nomination.
The Clintons were by far the most powerful faction in the Democratic Party.
They controlled the donors, they controlled the establishment, they controlled the party machines, they controlled everything.
Nobody imagined that Hillary Clinton could ever be beaten by anyone, let alone A first-term black senator from Illinois, the name Barack Hussein Obama.
And no one thought that was possible.
And yet it turned into a gigantic war.
And black voters in the Democratic Party originally were backing Hillary because they're very pragmatic.
They just want to win.
And it took them a long time to believe that Obama could actually win.
And only once they believed that, did they actually migrate away from Hillary.
But that war was one of the ugliest political fights I've seen.
Way worse than the 2016 fight between Bernie and Hillary.
And I remember it quite well.
I never involved myself on one side or the other, but I watched it very carefully.
I was around it all the time.
And the main tactic that drove the Democratic primary was that Hillary Clinton supporters constantly were accusing Obama supporters of being misogynistic because they hated Hillary and that could only be due to misogyny.
And Obama supporters and the Obama campaign were constantly implying that Hillary Clinton and her supporters were racist.
That's basically pretty much what the primary was, at least in large part.
Way before there were, quote, Bernie Bros, a term coined by Largely female feminist writers in the Democratic Party who supported Hillary to suggest that Bernie Sanders supporters were misogynistic because they refused to support Hillary Clinton, even though for some reason they weren't anti-Semitic because they refused to vote for Bernie Sanders.
Somehow it doesn't go in both directions.
Long before that, back in 2008, here was Rebecca Traister, who at the time was the feminist writer at Salon, and here you see the headline of her article, Hey Obama Boys, Back Off Already!
So you see, if you supported Barack Obama, you were a boy, an Obama boy, kind of like a Bernie bro.
And it was time to back off already.
She said, quote, young women are growing increasingly frustrated with the fanatical support of Barack and gleeful bashing of Hillary.
And then in 2016, Mashable, the liberal outlet, in January 2016 had an article headlined, the bros who love Bernie Sanders have become a sexist mob.
And then here in Politico in January 2008, racial tensions roiled Democratic race.
Quote, a series of comments from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband and her supporters are spurring a racial backlash and adding to the divisive edge of the presidential primary as the candidates head south to heavily African-American South Carolina.
The comments, which rain from the New York Senator appearing to diminish the role of Martin Luther King Jr.
in the civil rights movement, an aide later said she misspoke.
To Bill Clinton dismissing Senator Barack Obama's image in the media as a, quote, fairy tale, generated outrage on black radio, black blogs, and cable television.
And now they've drawn the attention of prominent African American politicians.
Quote, a cross section of voters are alarmed at the tenor of some of these statements, said Obama spokeswoman Candace Tolliver, who said that Clinton would have to decide whether she owed anyone an apology.
Quote, there's a groundswell of reaction to these comments.
And not just these latest comments, but really a pattern or a series of comments that we've heard for several months.
Quote, folks are beginning to wonder, is this really an isolated situation or is there something bigger behind all of this?
That is Democratic Party politics.
If you oppose their candidate and their candidate is a woman, is a black person, is gay, is Muslim, whatever, they will not believe that your reason for opposing that candidate is that you disagree with their policy.
Even if You support a wide range of other politicians from that exact same demographic group.
This is how liberals think.
This is how they see the world.
This is how they reason.
So to watch Republicans, and again it wasn't just now, it's been since October 7th, immediately scream anti-Semitism simply because some people didn't like Josh Shapiro, didn't like his demeanor, didn't like his personality, didn't like his policies.
Progressives perceive that Tim Walz was somewhat to the left of Josh Shapiro on things like legalizing marijuana, providing family leave, and free food in schools, and antitrust legislation, all of which he presided over as Minnesota governor.
These are perfectly rational, reasonable apology objections to have to somebody.
But the emergence of this narrative that all of this shows anti-Semitism, if you oppose Josh Shapiro, is exactly the same sort of narrative that our politics have been corrupted by and contaminated by and poisoned by and drowning in.
Where immediately, without any evidence, simply by virtue of your opposition to a certain candidate or politician of a specific race or gender or sexual orientation, you immediately get accused of bigotry for no other reason than that you oppose that candidate.
And that is exactly what the Republican and conservative reaction to Kamala Harris's choice of Tim Walts and not Josh Shapiro is all about.
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Today is the 79th anniversary of the first ever use of atomic weapons.
When the U.S.
dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and one on Nagasaki, Japan, killing an estimated 450,000 people at once.
Much of the next 45 years of the Cold War was centrally focused on the question, of how the US and the Soviet Union and other nuclear powers could avoid the risk of repetition, the risk of nuclear war in the future, especially as those bombs became more and more destructive.
Fear of nuclear war was embedded in the American psyche.
Children learned how to hide in bomb shelters in their school, and news was often dominated by discussion of nuclear war dogma and nuclear war agreements.
Yet even as the U.S.
is now involved in multiple dangerous conflicts around the world involving nuclear-armed states, a war with Russia and Ukraine, war in the Middle East, constant provocative acts toward China, obviously nuclear power, it seems that the fear of nuclear war has sometimes almost completely eroded
In fact, at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many media articles explicitly insisted that the risk of nuclear war with Russia was vastly overblown and that we must not let our fears of nuclear weapons and nuclear war paralyze us from pursuing war when necessary.
Some even tried to argue that nuclear war could be manageable or even come at an acceptable cost.
Professor Nina Tannenwald is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science and a Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Political Science at Brown University.
Her research has focused on the role of international institutions, norms, and ideas in global security issues, including efforts to control weapons of mass destruction and human rights and the law of war.
She's the author of a very relevant book, Thank you so much for joining us tonight.
the United States and the non-use of nuclear weapons since 1945, which examines why the world has not used nuclear weapons since 1945 and how we can continue to avoid it again.
Professor Tannenwald, thank you so much for joining us tonight.
I'm really excited to speak with you.
Thank you for having me.
Yeah, absolutely.
So here we are in the 79th anniversary of the first and only use of nuclear weapons when the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan.
And one of the primary topics that you try to assess in your book is why it is that the world has not used nuclear weapons since then, even though there are now more nuclear powers And even though, as you say, sometimes it might even have been rational or strategically in the interest of a country to have used nuclear weapons, none of them have.
Can you touch upon some of the reasons why you think nobody has?
Yes, so this is a really interesting puzzle in the history of international relations, because typically when a new weapon is invented, it spreads around and then everybody uses it.
And in this case, the U.S.
used atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and as you noted in your opening comments, People, you know, military and political leaders after the end of World War II and much of the public fully expected that these weapons would be used again.
And they haven't been.
And this 79-year tradition of non-use of nuclear weapons is the single most important feature of the nuclear age.
Now, why has this happened?
So, I think there's several pieces to the explanation.
One is clearly deterrence, that these are such incredibly destructive weapons that, as we've seen, mutually nuclear-armed states become very cautious.
They're deterred from getting into a direct conflict or risking escalation to the use of nuclear weapons.
But that's not all of the explanations because, of course, nuclear weapons have not been used against non-nuclear states.
And so I began to look into this puzzle because it seemed to me that there was a disconnect between kind of academic theories of deterrence, which are kind of cool, calculating and rational.
And what you see in the historic record from the Cold War, which is leaders, and I looked especially at US leaders, how they thought about using nuclear weapons in a crisis.
And a lot of them raised normative and moral concerns and, like, wondered how many people will be killed if we use nuclear weapons.
And so there was this disconnect.
And so I began to really research this.
And my argument is that, you know, in addition to deterrence, I would argue that what I call a nuclear taboo, a kind of normative inhibition, a norm of non-use has arisen and it has helped to reinforce the practice of non-use.
And this nuclear taboo is a, you know, it's a It arises from the widespread revulsion people feel at the prospect of the kind of destruction that nuclear weapons would bring.
So it's sort of a normative opprobrium.
And so this taboo was kind of developed during the Cold War and after, and now we have this 79-year tradition of non-use.
Where did this come from?
It's partly, there was a, partly due to public opinion and a global grassroots anti-nuclear movement that emerged in the 1950s over the prospect of nuclear testing, but then expanded in the 1980s.
Again, there was a very large anti-nuclear movement that protested the Reagan administration's war fighting rhetoric.
And the effect of the anti-nuclear movement, which has been grassroots in many countries, but also used the UN and non-nuclear states, has been to stigmatize nuclear weapons, to stigmatize them as unacceptable weapons of mass destruction, that they're inhumane weapons.
And so the grassroots anti-nuclear movement has not been successful in achieving disarmament, which was its goal.
But what it has been successful at is making it impossible to think about nuclear weapons as just another weapon.
And that is the single most important legacy of global grassroots anti-nuclear activity.
So I think the sources of the taboo lie both in strategic concerns and self-interest, that is, deterrence, but also in normative and moral concerns.
And these two things can go together.
So, like most Americans, I was steeped with the indoctrination when I was, you know, a student that the American use of nuclear weapons was not only strategically justified, but extremely moral as well.
And as you know, the argument goes that had we not used nuclear weapons, we would have ended up killing a lot more people in Japan.
A lot more Americans would have died.
Just on total, there would have been a much bigger loss of life as a result of the non-use of nuclear weapons than there was of the use of nuclear weapons.
Now, since then, I've understood that there's a much more nuanced debate about that topic in the United States and around the world.
But I guess my question to you is, if that is true, you know, if like, let's say, a country is certain that it can use nuclear weapons and kill fewer people than a vast war would end up killing without nuclear weapons.
What is the moral or ethical consideration that you're alluding to that would deter somebody from using them anyway?
So first, it's a great question.
First on the debate over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I think that is a debate among historians about how much difference nuclear weapons, the use of atomic weapons by the United States, contributed to Japan's decision to surrender.
So some argue yes, some argue no, that wasn't the key factor in the Japanese decision to surrender, but in any case, and then there's debates over how many American lives were saved by the US use of atomic weapons.
In any case, what's important is what US leaders believed at the time.
So, for example, what President Truman believed at the time.
And at the time, they did believe that the use of atomic weapons would save a lot of American lives.
No, it's the risk of nuclear weapons is that they are not just conventional weapons.
And there's a risk of escalation and a nuclear exchange that would lead to much, much more destruction.
than even a war with conventional weapons.
And so, right, there's this kind of Pandora's box, this kind of a red line.
Once you open that box or you cross that red line to a use of nuclear weapons, you don't know where it will end.
So could Russia use a tactical nuclear weapon in the war in Ukraine and it wouldn't escalate to a much larger war?
It's possible, but nobody knows the answer to that.
And so once you cross that red line, then all bets are off, and you're potentially looking at a war that could have, you know, end life on the planet as we know it.
So that's the, you know, the nuclear weapons are qualitatively different kinds of weapons than conventional weapons, right?
And they have, you know, Much different kinds of effects.
Radiation, and long-term radioactivity, and blast effects, and firewall effects, and so on.
And so, potentially, if you even engage in what you think is going to be a small nuclear war, you have no ability to control that fundamentally.
You have no ability to know for sure that it won't escalate to something very, very large.
So that's the problem.
Sorry about that.
I do want to focus on sort of where we are now with how nuclear weapons are perceived and the risk of nuclear war, but I just want to ask one last question about the decision by President Truman in the United States to use nuclear weapons to end the war.
It seems like there have been documents that emerged that they were actually having those moral and ethical debates, not just the strategic debates, inside the government.
I think there's evidence that President Trump himself and a lot of his top aides were very concerned about, I guess you could sort of say, the legacy effect of being the first ever leaders to use a bomb of this kind.
They were insistent on getting real estimates about how many people it would kill.
Do you think that those kind of ethical and moral considerations played a significant role in Truman's decision or the United States government's decision to use nuclear weapons 79 years ago?
So, no and yes.
No in the sense that there was a lot of momentum toward using the bomb.
So the bomb was invented, developed to use on Germany.
And when Germany, you know, the war against Germany ended in April, there was this, in April 1945, then there was this kind of just sort of automatic switch to the possibility of using it on Japan.
Truman had just come into office.
He was a very inexperienced president.
The Manhattan Project already had this momentum that he really didn't control.
And so there was this kind of automaticity to it.
There had been a set of internal debates about what the target should be in Japan, and the Secretary of State at the time raised concerns about dropping a bomb on Kyoto because he'd been there and had a lot of cultural sites, and so he wanted to preserve it.
Truman got kind of caught up in this momentum of the Manhattan Project that was already underway.
What we do know is that once the two atomic bombs were dropped and they saw what the consequences were, Truman was very upset about this and basically said there will not be any third bomb dropped.
The U.S.
would not drop a third weapon, which was in the ready to be dropped.
And then Truman later wrote about his moral concerns about this and his kind of agonies over how many people might have been killed.
It's not clear he fully understood some of the targets people were talking about, but it's clear that he was concerned about how many people were killed by this.
in Japan and then did not want a third bomb dropped.
So, but on balance, I would say the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki basically was the continuation of immense destruction of civilians caused by conventional weapons and the fire bombings of Tokyo, for example, I would say the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki immense destruction of civilians caused by conventional weapons and the fire bombings of Tokyo, for example, and in Germany.
So it sort of continued the level of a kind of destruction that was already well underway by the time, you know, we got to August 1945.
I want to look at this issue that you mentioned about deterrence because it's obviously central to nuclear dogma and doctrine.
It's clearly been a major reason, as you said, why there hasn't been a further war, namely that the United States and then the Soviet Union, now Russia, can easily destroy one another and would do so the minute nuclear weapons were in the air.
But there's also this other aspect to this deterrence idea, which is namely that countries see that if you have nuclear weapons, it serves as a deterrent against countries attacking you.
And if you don't have nuclear weapons, it makes you far more likely to be attacked.
We've seen that over and over.
I mean, the United States could have attacked Pakistan after 9-11, which I think clearly had more of a relationship to 9/11 than Iraq did, but Pakistan has nuclear weapons and Iraq doesn't.
It was much more easier to invade Iraq.
We see the same thing with Russia and Ukraine.
Ukraine has no nuclear weapons.
If they had nuclear weapons, it would likely change that calculus.
Significantly, nobody messes with North Korea because they have a stockpile of nuclear weapons that people genuinely fear.
So do you think that this deterrence, while on the one hand kind of keeping the peace, is on the other incentivizing every rational country because they're thinking, well, if you don't have nuclear weapons, we're the countries that get attacked.
You see that now with Israel and Iran.
Iran clearly feels obligated to attack back, but they're petrified that they don't have nuclear weapons and Israel does.
And I think the calculus would be much different if Iran did on both sides.
So how do you see that kind of warped motivation that nuclear weapons are creating?
Sure.
I mean, I think that, you know, some countries look at Ukraine's situation and say, well, if Ukraine had nuclear weapons, it wouldn't be in the position that it's in.
For a bunch of reasons, which I won't go into, it would have been impossible for Ukraine to keep its nuclear weapons.
But I think the larger issue here is You know, what are the advantages and disadvantages or the risks and costs of deterrence?
So, deterrence does work, right?
At some level, deterrence does work and it, you know, it, it probably where it works best is preventing an attack on your homeland if you have nuclear weapons.
But it won't always work.
And the costs, the risks and costs of deterrence are very high.
And again, we just have to look at the Ukraine war, where deterrence does seem to be working on both sides.
So, you know, the West and the U.S. have deterred from more aggressive support of Ukraine.
And Russia so far is deterred from expanding the war to other NATO countries, say Poland and Romania.
But what happens is...
If Russia decides to kind of take a little nip into Poland, you know, the little nickel-and-dime kind of actions, how do you respond to that?
And as these kinds of little nickel-and-dime aggressions ratchet up, at what point do you risk getting into nuclear war through miscalculation or misperception, which is probably the most likely way we would get into nuclear war?
You know, I do think deterrence works at a minimal level, but I think the costs and risks of it are extremely high.
And it's unlikely to work forever.
There's going to be a moment when it doesn't work.
And then what happens?
And that's why I think we need to be moving over time to reducing the role of nuclear weapons and moving toward a world of many fewer nuclear weapons.
Ultimately, perhaps some disarmed world or something close to that.
But even with nuclear deterrence, especially at the beginning of the Ukraine war, people were not sleeping well at night, even under the nuclear umbrella, because it doesn't guarantee that Russia won't attack another NATO country in some way.
And I think it's the costs.
Nuclear deterrence is useful for a very small number of things with very significant risks and costs.
I want to ask you, I will say proudly that I'm not old enough to have lived through the kind of peak of the Cold War, where nuclear, fears of nuclear war were at their peak.
But, you know, I've certainly read about those times.
My parents often talked about them.
I mean, there really was, it was like front and center, the fear of nuclear war was dominant in the culture.
It was dominant in the politics, as I alluded to.
Children lived in, you know, would practice in bomb shelters, and obviously that generation remembers the use of nuclear weapons.
They lived through the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Obviously, since we're at the 79th anniversary, most Americans now have not.
And at the same time, you know, it's none of that we don't really talk about nuclear war much anymore.
But as I alluded to, at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, I mean, there were articles in journals like The Atlantic and other sort of Brookings Institution, articles explicitly talking about whether fears of nuclear war are overblown, whether they're...
I mean, that kind of thing seems like unimaginable to me that would have been talked about openly in the 50s and 60s.
Like, yeah, who cares?
Like, we can manage a nuclear war or we're being too concerned about it.
Do you think there has been this kind of erosion, unhealthy erosion of fear of nuclear weapons and in a dangerous way?
Absolutely.
I mean, I think there's a kind of a what I would call a nuclear forgetting that we have a kind of collective amnesia about the consequences and risks of nuclear war.
So the fall of September 2022, so after the Ukraine war had begun and Russia was making a lot of nuclear threats like every other day, I mean, that was the first moment in my entire professional career of thinking and writing about nuclear weapons that I actually thought a nuclear weapon might get used.
And I've never felt that before.
And that now that immediate sort of that sense of immediate risk like we're not you know we're one or two or three decisions away from a use of nuclear weapons that subsided somewhat.
But now we have.
I think we are today in the most dangerous period of nuclear a period of nuclear danger than we have been in since the Probably the early 1980s.
So we have the Russia-Ukraine conflict and, you know, all the nuclear threats that Russia has been making.
And we have the complete dismantlement of the arms control framework, the U.S.-Russia arms control framework, which has helped to stabilize the nuclear relationship, provide channels of communication, and establish shared understanding.
So what we have left is You know, in 2018, Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal.
In 2019, the U.S.
pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which prohibited the kind of medium-range missiles in Europe because they have such a short flight time, so they're very Destabilizing.
And then in 2020, the US and Russia both pulled out of what's called the Open Skies Treaty, which was a surveillance treaty.
All we have left now is one treaty.
It's the New START Treaty.
And when it expires in 2026, I doubt there will be a replacement negotiated.
And which means that for the first time since 1972, there will be no restrictions That is an unbelievable situation.
And now, to add to that, we now have You know, Russia running war games using non-strategic or what are called tactical nuclear weapons for the first time.
These are the smaller nuclear weapons.
So in May it ran these war games with non-strategic nuclear weapons.
You know, this is sort of rehearsing for some use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine or against NATO.
And all the nuclear-armed states are modernizing their nuclear arsenals.
The United States will spend $756 billion over the next 10 years to modernize our nuclear arsenal.
All of the nine nuclear-armed states are doing this.
And so we have this situation of the pursuit of nuclear excess.
At the same time, all the arms control agreements, the restraints, are being thrown off.
And you have sort of Changing some states are changing their new nuclear doctrines that would suggest that they're lowering the threshold for nuclear use.
And as you know, then people are saying, well, you know.
We don't have to worry about a use of a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, Putin is bluffing, and I view those, you know, those statements as quite cavalier, because I think the risks, again, most likely through escalation or miscalculation, but you know, you can't rule out that if Putin was really pushed into a corner, he might, you know, actively, affirmatively decide to use a nuclear weapon.
So, this is a moment of really great nuclear danger, and I think we need a lot more education among the American public about the consequences of nuclear weapons and their use.
Yeah, one of the reasons we asked you on was because I find it actually shocking how little discussion there is of these kinds of issues, given that, as you say, and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists say, We're actually closer to the risk of nuclear catastrophe than at any point since 1945, including the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
I just have a couple other questions for you.
I don't want to delve into like the politics of Russiagate or the validity of it or whatever, but one of the things that I was concerned about with the emergence of Russiagate and the kind of narrative that Russia interfered in our 2016 election and kind of meddled in our democracy and the like.
And especially this idea that kind of any contacts between the US and the Russians or American officials and Russian officials were inherently suspicious in some way.
That it kind of contaminated the ability of the United States and Russia to do what they've always done, which is maintain an open line of communication in order to prevent the kind of miscommunication and misperception that might inadvertently trigger a nuclear war, as happened in 1962.
Does that concern you?
Do you agree that one of the outcomes of Russiagate, again, regardless of the political validity or journalistic validity of it, was that it kind of poisoned relations between the two countries to the point where there's not nearly enough communication between the two?
Yeah, I think it's bigger than Russiagate though.
I mean, relations between the U.S.
and Russia took a dive in 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea.
And Putin and Obama really disliked each other.
And so I would date that, you know, I would date that as the really the starting point of the real decline in U.S.-Russia relations.
I mean, you know, Putin is really difficult to deal with.
I mean, this is not just a U.S.
problem, but Putin is You know, unbelievably difficult to deal with right now.
And the Ukraine war has really, you know, basically put an end to US-Russia arms control discussions.
I mean, those are just not happening.
And, you know, in 2023, Russia essentially pulled out of the I mean, Russia says it's still adhering to the limits on warheads, but it is not going to engage in the communications channels, which are regular meetings where the two sides got together and talked about their arsenals and their deployments and their tests and so on.
So, these communications channels are incredibly important.
And so, Russia, after the Ukraine war, Russia shut that down.
And the US and Russia have not held any strategic stability dialogues.
So, it's not just Russiagate, it's really a broader deterioration of what used to be A cooperative relationship in the nuclear area.
Remember after the end of the Cold War, the Pentagon provided a lot of funding to employ Russian scientists and to help Russia deal with the problem of loose nukes.
So there was a lot of collaboration there.
That has of course all come to an end.
And now we have really very few contacts, very little discussion.
No, I think as long as Putin is in office, this is going to be very, very difficult.
So one of the focal points of your work and your scholarship is this idea that we need to be a lot more steeped in the history of what happened with nuclear weapons and kind of focus a lot more on the danger.
And there was this massive, gigantic film about You know, the Manhattan Project and the like, Oppenheimer, which I would bet educated people, not necessarily well or poorly, but just, you know, my guess is that people, 80% or 90% of people who know about the Manhattan Project know it because of that film.
Their understanding of the development of nuclear weapons and the reason they were used come from that film.
As a scholar in this field, did you consider that film, like, reasonably accurate and do you think it's gigantic success was helpful in the cause of having people think more constructively about this problem?
Yes.
I do think it was a good film and I think it was reasonably accurate in terms of the historical figures, the characters, the people in the movie.
I mean, there were aspects of Oppenheimer's personal life maybe that were played up a bit for the romantic drama part.
But in terms of the physics, the science and the politics, it was largely accurate.
So I think, you know, I think that movie It was an excellent way to educate the public.
I'm glad it got a lot of attention.
I'm glad a lot of people saw it, and I hope more people will see it.
We need more of that kind of thing.
All right, last question.
I've heard Donald Trump many times say, while he was in office and since, and he's sort of, you know, a figure who just like blurts things out that other people wouldn't necessarily blurt out, and sometimes it misleads people, and other times it kind of inadvertently enlightens, and he talks a lot about classified briefings he's had about the development and evolution of nuclear weapons and how they're in like kind of a different universe of destruction than even Nagasaki and Hiroshima, which I guess stands to reason that over 75 years the science would get better,
And he talks about it with what I think is a sort of fear.
It's hard to read him when he's authentic or theatrical, but it seems like the fear is real in the sense that he saw things in these classified briefings that really alarmed him about what these weapons can do.
What is your understanding of how different the weapons are that we have now in our stockpile that China has, that the Russians have, as compared to the ones that were unleashed 79 years ago?
Well, so many weapons are much smaller than the biggest weapons we ever had.
I mean, the peak of the arms race was in the 1970s, early 1980s.
And, you know, we, you know, in the 1950s, we had these city busters, many, you know, megaton city busters.
We've moved much toward smaller weapons and more precise weapons, and the so-called tactical nuclear weapons we have are, most of them are what's called dial-a-yield, so you can actually change the explosive power that they release.
And some of this is like, you know, three tenths of a kiloton.
Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons.
So we have smaller weapons than that.
We also have bigger weapons than Hiroshima.
So we have some of both.
That's the, you know, we have the big strategic weapons, and then we have these smaller so-called tactical nuclear weapons.
So we have this mix.
I do think that the U.S.
military over the years has been guided in part by a sense that nuclear weapons are incredibly destructive, and if we could make them less destructive, they would help make deterrence more credible, right?
The threat to destroy everything in sight is not a very credible threat, but if you could make the weapons less destructive, then your deterrence threat would be more credible.
The irony here, or the paradox here, is that if you make your weapons less destructive, then they become more usable.
And then you're more likely to reach for them, and that would undermine, that would violate the nuclear taboo and, you know, this sort of non-use norm.
So, you know, there are these ethical trade-offs that make it difficult.
Do you want city busters because, you know, you'll never use them?
Or do you want weapons that are more credible but then makes it more likely you'll use them, you know, easier to reach for?
So that's the issue.
You know, I think if Trump did become the next president, I think he really has very little understanding of non-proliferation, of deterrence, of our alliance relationships.
I think that he would just, you know, engage in a, you know, an all-out nuclear weapons buildup.
I think he wouldn't care at all about any kind of nuclear restraints or arms control agreements.
Uh, you know, we know from some journalists who've written about him that he, you know, in 2017 he he kept Talking about wanting to use a nuclear weapon on North Korea.
And his plan was we would use a nuclear weapon on North Korea, but we would blame it on another country.
And apparently he was not at all concerned about arguments that using a nuclear weapon would kill a lot of people.
So, you know, I worry very much about what will happen to the nuclear, the global nuclear order if Trump becomes president.
Yeah, I understand that.
I mean, we do have four years, though, at the same time of him being president and You know, I think we can take a look at that as well.
Well, I'm so glad you came on.
I think this issue is of immense importance.
It's also a fascinating topic, as you said, some of these trade-offs about usability and destructiveness.
And you mentioned this phrase, the nuclear taboo, in your last answer, which happens to be the title of your book, which I really enjoyed and encourage everybody to read.
It kind of delves into this history.
Not only of why nuclear weapons haven't been used in the last 79 years since we dropped them on Japan, but also why some of those deterrent factors might be eroding.
And I really appreciate your coming and on our show, taking the time to talk to us about it on this anniversary of the first use of nuclear weapons.
Thank you.
This is not exactly a new topic, but with the pick of Tim Walz by Kamala Harris, we are seeing even more so a topic I've talked about before, which is the sectors of the left wing of the Democratic Party, which has spent 10 months, pretty much
With their top focus being not only opposing the Israeli bombing of Gaza and the U.S.
support for the Israeli bombing of Gaza as their primary focus, but repeatedly insisting that we have to refer to that as a genocide, which I think arguably, maybe even inarguably, is the worst crime human beings can commit.
It's a crime against humanity.
It's an attempt to eradicate an entire population of people based on ethnicity or nationality And the left wing of the Democratic Party has been accusing Joe Biden and the Biden administration and the U.S.
Congress on a bipartisan level of funding that genocide, of arming that genocide, of doing everything the United States can, including isolating ourselves from the rest of the world to diplomatically shield Israel's war in Gaza from any sort of constraint.
And if you actually believe that, if you actually believe that Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are guilty of Funding and enabling and empowering a genocide, the single worst crime that human beings can commit.
I do not understand how you can then turn around and start cheering for those same people that you have spent 10 months accusing of genocide.
And because that is such an obvious paradox, such an obvious contradiction, Many of these people have been saying for 10 months that it's very possible that this is a line too far for them, that they never thought there'd be a line or a condition that would cause them not to vote for the Democratic Party.
But the defense of genocide, the support for genocide, is one of them.
And there was all kind of talk in December and January when the election was still very far away.
When there were still a lot of benefits to people's brand and their online traffic and their positioning in the media ecosystem to pose as a radical opponent of the Democratic Party because you're so humanistic and moral that you just cannot stomach what is being done to Gaza and you can never in good faith vote for the people who have done it, let alone cheer for them.
And it was always so obvious that those people were frauds, that they didn't mean a word that they said, that either the war was going to end before the election and they were going to use that to justify why they're now voting Democrat, that people forgot about or they were just going to have even have the war continue which it's done and just find some excuse some rationalization some deceitful theory about why it's now okay
not only for them to vote for the democratic party but to urge others with great enthusiasm to do so and as we've gone over one of the strangest parts about kamala harris's assent to the nominee for the democratic party is that usually when a person becomes the nominee a presidential nominee of their party it's because they've spent months or years engaged in debates engaged in interviews having to account for what their views are on all the controversies united states faces and
And Kamala Harris has been able to get into this position and not just get into it but spend a month now in it without having to express a single view about anything.
No one cares.
No one's interested in what she thinks about the Middle East war or immigration or whether the US should continue to support and arm Israel.
And you would think You would think that the people who have spent 10 months profiting greatly, building an audience, branding themselves, getting in media shows, because they're calling this a genocide, it's sickening, it's immoral, and it's disgusting, would at least want to know whether Kamala Harris supported Joe Biden's conduct when it came to this war, whether she would change any of that policy, whether she would cut off arms and
money to Israel if she got elected or whether she would, they don't have the slightest concern.
They don't care.
None of them are worried about that or in any way interested.
In fact, I've seen a lot of them making up, inventing, fabricating claims that somehow she signaled with her voice that she's more pro-Palestinian than Jill Biden, even though nothing she's ever said or done in her entire life suggests that.
And everything she said and done in Israel suggests the opposite.
That she's a standard Democrat completely in line with Biden and all other pro-Israel sectors of the Democratic Party when it comes to the Israeli war in Gaza, when it comes to U.S.
support for Israel in general.
And somehow the people who have been calling this a genocide for 10 months don't care in the slightest.
That the person they're cheering for is a supporter of what they've been calling a genocide.
And you can see that we're already basically admitting, oh, because it's now Biden and now it's Kamala, wow, you can vote for her.
Why?
Why would that make a difference to you if she has the same views as Biden?
She was part of that government.
She never opened a peep of her mouth in even rhetorical deviation from that policy.
She's not said a word on the Israeli war in Gaza since she became the Democratic nominee.
Care at all!
And the people who pretended to be so morally disgusted and so passionately offended by this genocide and the horrific destruction of Gaza and the innocent people in there, they forgot about this and disappeared from the discourse because there's an election Approaching.
And what they are, above all else, are Democrats.
And I always knew that.
I've said that all along.
There was no chance that anyone other than a small number of people were actually going to refrain from voting for the Democratic Party.
Certainly not these frauds in the media who always have to declare their loyalty to the Democratic Party to stay in whatever conversation they think they need to stay into.
And now, when Kamala Harris has chosen Tim Walz instead of Josh Shapiro, they're trying to, again, pretend That somehow this is a signal from Kamala Harris that she loves the left, that Josh Shapiro didn't get chosen because he was too pro-Israel, even though there's not a single peep of a
Of a word, not a single piece of evidence that suggests that Tim Walz is any more pro-Palestinian or any less anti-Israel than Joe Biden, than Kamala Harris, than Josh Shapiro, than everyone else in the Democratic Party.
And in fact, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that he's as pro-Israel as all of them.
And we're talking about this in the first segment.
I think there's enough of a difference between Tim Walz and Josh Shapiro to be able to prefer one to the other without being accused of anti-Semitism.
But there's certainly not enough of a difference to actually convince people or convince yourself that they're somehow opposed to what you've been calling a genocide, sufficient to not only clear you to vote for them, but to urge and cheer others with great excitement to do so.
And that's exactly what most of them are doing.
Here's Hasan Piker, the most watched political streamer on the left, who has pretty much spent the last 10 months every day with a Attracting a lot of audience, as he's done it.
Accusing Israel of being genocidal.
Accusing Biden of being genocidal.
The Democratic Party of being genocidal.
Now he's as giddy as Rachel Maddow or AOC for the Democratic Party ticket to vote for them.
Here's what he said today, quote, incredible pick for VP.
Incredible.
He's a teacher, a man who knows how to use a slim majority in this state to get so much done for Minnesota.
The Democratic Party is making strange choices that make me feel like they actually want to win!
How do you say that about people that you've been accusing of being genocide supporters for the last 10 months with such unrestrained glee if you actually believed anything that you were saying over the last 10 months?
Here from Jacobin, the left-wing magazine, August 6, Tim Walz has a record as governor with plenty to please the left, from putting in place free universal school meals and paid family and medical leave to establishing a form of tuition-free public college and beefing up worker protections, all of which is true, all of which I Describe earlier in the first segment, he does have a record of having done all that.
And I understand why the left would be encouraged by that.
But what about the whole genocide thing?
Remember that?
The whole thing about supporting a genocide, arming a genocide, the genocidal state of Israel that the U.S.
is arming?
Anyone remember that?
Anyone care about that?
Does that weigh into the calculus at all?
Even if not determining how you'll vote, like how much subservient admiration you're going to express for the Democratic ticket that actually does support that entirely.
Unsurprisingly, AOC also is giggly with glee.
She was kind of forced to call this a genocide by protesters accosting her on the street, and then she did so just to keep up her left-wing credentials.
But of course, she was somebody who was demanding that Joe Biden not be forced out.
She wanted Joe Biden to be the candidate.
Joe Biden, the person who was actually presiding over this genocide, she said, was taking place in Gaza.
She didn't care at all.
She was so eager to cheer for Joe Biden.
And now that Kamala Harris has chosen Tim Walz, she issued a statement today.
Vice President Harris made an excellent decision in Governor Walz as her running mate.
Together they will govern effectively, inclusively, and boldly for the American people.
They won't back down under tight odds either from healthcare to school lunch.
Let's do this!
With a brown muscle arm signaling her willingness and eagerness to fight.
Has she even raised the issue?
Or said, like, hey, Vice President Harris, could you, like, say what you think about that thing I've been calling a genocide?
Could you tell us if you actually support it?
If you intend to finance it?
Like, you would think anyone who called it a genocide, if they meant that, would want to know!
Are the people they're now clapping for, like trained SEALs, and cheering for, and heaping praise on?
Are those people who actually support or oppose the quote-unquote genocide?
Now, I don't know why I watch them do this with Kamala Harris to pretend that she somehow is, through secret signals, somehow more pro-Palestinian or less steadfastly pro-Israel than Biden or Josh Shapiro.
They just invented that.
And they're doing the same thing with Tim Walz.
I guess they just assume that because he supports some more progressive policies like legalizing marijuana or family leave, that he must be less inclined to support the State of Israel, even though everything Tim Walz has done in his life and in his career proves exactly the opposite.
And again, they're not even, you would think they could at least say, you know, before we give you our vote, we need you to come out and say what you think on the war in Israel.
They're not doing that because they don't care about that.
They don't care about that at all, at all.
It's been great content for their YouTube shows and their Twitter feeds and their credibility as like leftist critics of the Democratic Party.
They've exploited the people of Gaza.
Without having the slightest concern for them.
It's been great for their careers.
They felt so good about pretending to care.
So moralistic.
Oh, we're going to call it a genocide because that's radical.
We're going to suggest we vote for the Democratic Party.
You see how little they care.
They're not even interested.
They're not even demanding that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz express a view on this genocide as they see it.
And a lot of Israel supporters are thrilled with Tim Walz.
Here's Yenim Cohen.
Who is an official with the Israeli government and he said, quote, It's been an honor to work with Governor Walz on deepening the Israel-Minnesota partnership.
Thank you, Governor Tim Walz, for standing with Israel during our darkest hour on October 7th.
The U.S.-Israel strategic alliance is strong and enduring.
And there you see the Israeli flag sitting next to the U.S.
flag.
Now, one of the things that Kamala Harris first did when she got to the U.S.
Senate in 2017 is she co-sponsored a resolution to condemn the Obama administration, or more so to condemn the U.S.
Security Council resolution that Obama allowed to pass, not by refusing to veto it, instead abstaining.
It was sort of his middle finger up in the air at Netanyahu on his way out.
He allowed a U.N.
resolution to be passed.
that declared Israeli settlements illegal and that was only allowed to pass because Obama abstained.
And one of the first things Kamala Harris did when she got to the Senate is signed on to a resolution condemning that UN resolution in defense of Israel.
And Tim Walz also did the same.
He condemned the UN for declaring Israeli settlements illegal.
Here in 2017 is the roll call vote, the vote on agreeing to the resolution to object If we can bring the highlighter up to...
This resolution was to object to the UN Security Council Resolution 2334 as an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace and for other purposes.
Needless to say, this pro-Israel resolution passed by an overwhelming massive bipartisan majority, as all these pro-Israel resolutions always do, and it was 342 to 80.
And it was 342 to 80, four people voted president, seven voted not voting.
It wasn't just Kamala Harris who sponsored the Senate resolution, but at the time, Tim Waltz was in the House.
He was a Democratic House member representing the state of Minnesota, and he also voted yes on this resolution.
Here you see the vote.
He voted alongside Debbie Wasserman Schultz, one of the most vocal Israel supporters in all of Congress, she and Tim Walz.
Both voted yes, and you see the kind of more leftist members of the House, like Maxine Waters, the Democrat from California, who voted no.
Everything we know about Tim Walz's record suggests that he's every bit as pro-Israel as Joe Biden.
Where is this claim coming from?
It's coming from nowhere.
And you know why it's coming from nowhere and they're still saying it?
Because they don't care about Gaza.
They never did.
All of this was all about their own self-interest.
Here's the Senate resolution that was introduced by Marco Rubio.
It was also the same resolution to object to the UN Security Council Resolution 2334 that Obama let pass.
It was co-sponsored by Marco Rubio.
And there you see one of the people who co-sponsored it, along with Amy Klobuchar and Ted Cruz, was Kamala Harris.
So anyone who was saying That Kamala Harris or Tim Walz is less pro-Israel or more pro-Palestinian than Joe Biden or even Josh Shapiro is lying to you.
They have no basis for making that claim.
The reason they're lying is because they have to justify to you, to their viewership, whomever, to themselves.
How it is that they could have spent 10 months screaming genocide, threatening not to vote for the Democrats, turning around and doing what everyone knew what they were going to do, which is not only support the Democratic Party ticket, but giddy and gleefully giggle in support, wave their banners, talk about how great the Democrats are, even though they don't have a single shred of evidence.
The people they're cheering and working to empower have any view different than Joe Biden when it comes to the U.S.-Israeli relationship and there's a ton of evidence that they have the same view.
Here from the Jewish Community Relations Council.
And this is, I think, let's get the date on this.
It might be today.
I'll check that.
But yeah, it's today.
This is the statement from the Jewish Community Relations Council in response to Kamala Harris's choice of Tim Walz.
The JCRC applauds Governor Tim Walz's pro-Israel record.
Stalwart friendship with the Jewish community.
Quote, Walt has spoken forcefully in support of Israel and against anti-Semitism.
Quote, Governor Walt has spoken at three of the JCRC's past four annual events.
Most recently at our annual event on June 2nd, 2024, Governor Walt spoke up forcefully in support of Israel and against those who seek to delegitimize it.
He said, quote, I see people debating something that I don't feel is debatable here.
The ability of Jewish people to self-determine themselves is foundational to everything, and the failure to recognize the state of Israel is taking away that self-determination, so it is anti-Semitic, and that is a statement of fact.
It's anti-Semitic to be anti-Zionist.
Governor Walz also spoke about the importance of, quote, moral clarity, of standing in solidarity with Israel against the terrorism of Hamas, both on June 2nd and October 10th, 2023.
Walt said in the video, quote, if you do not find moral clarity on Saturday morning and you find yourself wanting to think about what you needed to say, you need to reevaluate where you're at.
What was evident on this Saturday morning was the absolute lack of humanity, the terrorism, the barbarism.
That's not a geopolitical discussion.
That's murder.
Quote, we appreciate the strong stand that Governor Walt has taken in defense of Jewish students who are grappling with unprecedented anti-Semitism At our June event, the governor stated, quote, we saw your children feeling like they couldn't be safe on college campuses in Minnesota, and that is not only wrong, it breaks my heart.
Now, or that is not only breaks my heart, but it is wrong.
And here's a picture of Tim Walz grinning happily, standing at the side of Benjamin Netanyahu in 2009.
And there's a lot of other evidence as well about attempts to introduce into the Minnesota education curriculum, quote-unquote, education about the importance of Israel.
There is not a single word that Tim Walter-Combler Harris has ever uttered to support this lie from the DNC left that they're willing to vote for them and cheer for them because they're somehow better on Israel.
Here is the vocally pro-Israel congressman from New York, Richie Torres, the Democrat from New York.
For some reason, he represents the single poorest district in all the United States and yet has made his number one issue defense of some foreign country on the other side of the world.
He's obsessed with Israel.
He hates the left for questioning Israel and U.S.
support for it.
He's become, probably wisely for his career, I guess, the leading defender in the Congress of Israel.
And I guess the fact that he's black and Dominican and gay makes him very, very, very valuable to that cause.
He has a very good political future, I predict, for Richie Torres.
And I almost never agree with him.
In fact, he blocked me on Twitter because of criticism I made of him.
But he said something today that I thought was, at least in part, correct.
He actually said this yesterday, right before the announcement of the Vice President was suggested.
He said this, quote, "The anti-Israel activists who've been falsely accusing the Biden-Harris administration of funding, quote, genocide, are suddenly fine with Vice President Harris, as long as she declines to choose Governor Shapiro as a running mate." Never mind that the pro-Israel views of Governor Shapiro are indistinguishable from those of Vice President Harris.
Sorry, but he has that pro-DNC laugh dead to rights there.
He is absolutely 100% accurate that Kamala Harris is every bit as pro-Israel as President Biden, and every bit as pro-Israel as Josh Shapiro, and that the pro-Israel views of Governor Shapiro are indistinguishable from those of Vice President Harris.
That is absolutely completely true.
And he then goes on to say, these hypocrites are full of shit, and their anti-Semitic dog-whistling should be given no veto power over the selection of a presidential running mate.
Now, I spent the first segment explaining why I don't think that last part is true.
I don't think this proves anti-Semitism.
Opposing a Jewish politician is not proof of anti-Semitism.
There are a lot of reasons why the left, rationally and without bigotry, would prefer Tim Walz over Josh Shapiro, but it's absolutely the case.
That if you claim that you're so morally offended by genocide that you could not be cheering for this ticket given how pro-Israel they've been.
Now, we've talked before about how often Kamala Harris herself has expressed vehement support for U.S.
support for Israel.
Here she is in January of this year when she went on The View and here's what she said.
Many say that one of your many strengths as a surrogate is your connection to young people.
I believe that to be true.
Now voters between 18 and 29 years old stand out as disapproving of the way the Biden administration is handling the Israel-Hamas war.
They do not support sending weapons and money to Israel.
They are advocating for a humanitarian ceasefire.
How does the administration respond to the concerns of this very important Part of the Democratic voter base.
So let's start with this.
And you're right, Sunny.
In fact, in the fall, I embarked on what I called a college tour and met with over 15,000 students across the country.
I just have to say I love Gen Z, by the way.
I think it's a spectacular generation.
So, just for the record, she loves Gen Z. They're a spectacular, spectacular generation.
She really loves them.
She loves the young people with all her heart.
And then she goes on to say this.
But all of that to say, you're absolutely right.
I have talked with young people, many around the country, and I've heard them, I see them, and I understand.
I understand.
But I think it's important that while we understand where they're coming from, which I do, that we not lose sight of the context, which is, let's just go back to October 7th.
We can't deny the significance of a vicious, brutal attack that caused the death of 1,200 innocent people, a lot of them young people who are just attending a concert.
Women who were brutally assaulted and raped.
And again, as someone who spent a lot of my career focused on those kinds of crimes, the horror of it.
By the way, there have been a lot of reports over the last two weeks, definitive, confirmed reports, that Palestinian prisoners in detention in Israel, administrative detention, meaning no trial, no due process, have been sexually assaulted, raped, rectally abused, sent to the hospital.
Kamala Harris, who so, so devoted her career to the evil and immorality of sexual assault, hasn't uttered a peep of concern or protest about Israeli sexual assault of detainees.
Even though she's going back many months, or three months at this point, to justify U.S.
support for the war in Israel.
Say Israel has a right to defend itself.
We would.
And how it does matters.
There have been far too many innocent Palestinians that have been killed.
The President and I and many members of our administration have been very clear.
I've been on over, I think, 14, 15 calls that the President has had with Bibi Netanyahu about what Israel must do to protect innocent civilians.
We all want this to end.
As soon as possible.
And how it ends matters.
Which includes that Israel must be secure, that there must be an equal measure of security for the Palestinians, who are entitled to dignity and self-determination.
The hostages must be freed.
And since the first day, I have been very focused, in addition to all we just discussed, on the day after.
I do believe we must be committed to an eventual two-state solution and we have articulated what that looks like and I've met with not only Israeli leaders but Arab leaders about what that can look like if we have a commitment to the day after.
So all of these things are true.
I mean, that's just standard Democratic Party cliches.
Oh, she's for a two-state solution, which is completely impossible as a result of Israeli expansion of settlement in the West Bank, which can never be removed.
That's a complete pipe dream of a solution that's never going to happen.
But she did not indicate in the slightest way that, yeah, we should roll back our funding of Israel.
Do you think that anything she said there indicates in any way that she would do that?
That's the standard Democratic Party script.
Those words could have come out of Joe Biden's mouth and have come out of Joe Biden's mouth many, many times.
I could show you a lot more of those videos, including where she spoke at AIPAC, but you get the point.
So I have to say, I am so repulsed as somebody who spent a long time on the US-Israel relationship, the reasons why the United States government under both parties forces American workers to subsidize and finance the Israeli military in all of its wars, why we're willing to sacrifice our own interests to defend the state of Israel, the grotesque abuse of Palestinians, as somebody who has not just spent nine months
Posing about that, as somebody who's been spending many years talking about it, it disgusts me to my core to watch people Pretend to care about that for their own benefit, and then the minute it suits their interests, when they have to support the Democratic Party, turn around and either forget about it or lie and claim that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are different than Joe Biden when it comes to that question.
It's a complete invention.
It's a complete fabrication coming from people who have zero principle, who are completely craven, who are nothing but partisan loyalists, and who have no fixed values or beliefs of any kind.
Alright, so that concludes our show for this evening.
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