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Oct. 19, 2024 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald
01:14:48
Kara Swisher's Lies On CNN About Big Tech Censorship; UK's Escalating Punishment Of Israel Critics

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Good evening.
It's Friday, October 18th.
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...
There are many things I truly detest about the American corporate media.
I'm not sure if I've mentioned that before or not, but it's actually true.
The reasons for this contempt are numerous, but if I had to choose the single most significant grounds for this odium, it would be how they constantly prance around just the most self-serving way, insisting that they and they alone are capable of combating, quote, disinformation, even though they are the ones the U.S. corporate media are by far...
The most aggressive and prolific disseminators of disinformation.
Earlier today, the fanatically anti-Trump and obsessively muscating tech reporter Kara Swisher was on CNN, where she lied blatantly and continuously about a topic we have often covered, one that the CNN host announced that only Kara Swisher could speak on, namely big tech censorship of the New York Post reporting right before the 2020 election about Joe Biden.
The most ironic and illustrative part was that CNN host Abby Phillips demanded that everyone be quiet.
Nobody dissent from anything Kara Swisher was saying because only she understood the truth.
Only she had done enough to understand what happened.
Only for them, the CNN audience, to the extent they exist, listened to Kara Swisher spending significant time simply lying.
And inventing claims that were the opposite of the truth over those events.
Because this happens so frequently in this sector of corporate media, this combination of sanctimonious lectures about the importance of facts combined with outright lying and deceiving for blatantly politicized ends.
We're going to take a look at this episode and the whole phenomenon it represents.
Then, as the 2024 presidential election approaches and liberals become increasingly perplexed, and they really are perplexed, why the election is even close, they are becoming more and more emotionally unhinged.
The stench of the desperation is palpable.
First was the unsuccessful attempt to have Trump imprisoned and convicted of major felonies before the election, something they admitted they were doing in order to prevent Trump from winning.
Then we got Obama's chiding of black men who refused to obey and vote Democrat by implying or actually calling them misogynists.
And today we were gifted a new article in The Atlantic by the supreme neocon warmonger Ann Applebaum that accuses Trump of being like, quote, Hitler, like Stalin, and like Mussolini, all at the same time.
She then went on to compare him to Pol Pot and every other villain she could think of.
These people are really falling apart.
One liberal pundit on Morning Joe said that his life would be effectively over in terms of pursuing joy or fulfilling his kids' dreams if Trump wins.
And it's really both pathetic and pity-inducing.
And then finally, we have frequently covered over the last year the intensifying authoritarianism and censorship throughout the West, all imposed to protect Israel and to punish and even criminalize its critics.
Yet again, we have a brand new escalation in this mounting campaign against free speech in the West.
As long-time British journalist, Aza Winsteadley, had his door banged on by British police who seized all of his electronic equipment, clearly as retaliation for his emphatic reporting that is highly critical of Israel's war in Gaza and now in Lebanon.
The founder and director of the outlet, where Winston Lee reports, Ali Abunima of the Electronic Intifada, will be here with us tonight to discuss the latest in this obvious persecution of this journalist, as well as similar incidents designed to bar or even criminalize Israel criticism from the West, as well as the latest events surrounding that war.
Before we get to all that, we have a few programming notes.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update starting right now.
System Update.
I don't think there's really any debate about the fact that the greatest amount of disinformation by far comes not from Facebook pages or all sorts of corners of the internet that are supposedly extremist or uncensored or where unfettered communication is allowed to thrive.
It doesn't come from QAnon groups or any of those other villains that often get blamed.
There may be disinformation in all those places, but by far the most effective, the most powerful, the most consequential, and the most prolific disinformation comes from the very corporate media outlets that claim that they and only they are competent to combat disinformation to the point where they really believe...
That any type of platform where free speech thrives without their control should be censored because only they can decide what people ought to hear.
It's really what they believe.
Now, that would be sanctimonious enough, self-righteous enough, self-loving enough if it were just a belief.
But the fact of the matter is that as they constantly promote that self-image, they are the ones who lie constantly and deliberately to All of the time, continuously, to the point where even if you document to them, here's the proof that you lied, they will never retract it because lying is not just something that they're willing to do, it's actually a required function of it.
The more you lie in corporate media, as long as you're lying for the right reasons, the more quickly you'll get promoted.
We've demonstrated that many times by looking at the trajectory of people like Jeffrey Goldberg.
Who probably did more than any other journalist in the United States to promote the false conspiracy theory that Saddam Hussein was in a secret alliance with Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden in order to convince Americans that we should invade Iraq.
There needed to be a 9-11 link, so he invented one.
While at New Yorker Magazine, he's advanced up the ladder in journalism because of those lies to become the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic.
Where he then turned the Atlantic into ground zero for every sort of Russiagate fraud that you can think of.
And The Atlantic, of course, is founded by or funded by Lorene Powell Jobs, who uses her billions of dollars overtly now to support entirely liberal and Democratic Party causes.
And one of the star reporters of The Atlantic became that, Natasha Bertrand, because she lied constantly in spreading every false story about RussiGate as well.
She was behind almost every one.
She was the first quote-unquote reporter to claim that Intelligence officials had determined, as she put it, that the Hunter Biden laptop was the byproduct of Russian disinformation.
She just has flown up the ladder and she too is now at CNN, which is where most pathological liars go.
That's one of the requirements for the job.
It's why they have so many people employed previously by the CIA and the FBI at the top ranks of all those U.S. security agencies because they are career liars and therefore they fit perfectly within CNN. And CNN is probably the most...
Just hectoring network about the evils of disinformation and the importance of fact checking and verified facts, and yet they lie constantly.
Earlier today, this morning, Keira Swisher, who built a reputation as being this kind of adversarial tech reporter willing to take on anybody, was on CNN.
She's turned into now just a standard anti-Trump liberal.
She has a particular obsession for Elon Musk.
She talks about him endlessly and constantly all of the time with a great deal of anger and rage and contempt.
It's basically just a standard liberal pundit now.
And she was on CNN earlier this morning, and they were discussing the big tech censorship in 2020.
And the CNN host demanded that everybody be quiet because only Keira Swisher is qualified to speak on this.
And when they demanded that everyone be silent and then she spoke, she proceeded to expel one verifiable policy.
blatant, deliberate lie after the next.
Let's watch this.
There is no proof that tech companies colluded to do this.
This is nonsense, and he knows it.
No, I'm sorry.
There was a major institutional effort to suppress that story.
Listen, I have been one of the biggest critics of tech.
This is nonsense.
Absolutely nonsense.
And when he just sort of discounts all the court cases, dozens and dozens of them.
Was the New York Post thrown off Twitter?
They were, and then they...
Scott, let me try again to explain to you what actually happened.
They made a mistake.
I know, and I lived through it, too.
They threw the New York Post and the story off Twitter.
Scott, let's look at her first, because she's actually done...
I mean, she's done the work...
So it's really hard to deal with you.
Okay, so first of all, the context here is that whenever J.D. Vance is asked whether Trump actually lost the 2020 election, he typically responds by saying there was a lot of things done that were inappropriate and that very well may have manipulated the outcome of the election, including big tech censorship that he typically responds by saying there was a lot of things done that were inappropriate and that very well may have manipulated the
In an extremely close election like 2020 was, you have no idea whether or not that censorship, could have affected the outcome of the election.
We'll never know that counterfactual.
What we do know for sure is that two of the biggest political platforms, Twitter and Facebook, both aggressively suppressed the story and Twitter in particular locked the account of the New York Post, one of the few conservative media outlets that actually is reporting that did the Hunter Biden reporting because they one of the few conservative media outlets that actually is reporting that did the Hunter Biden reporting because they wouldn't let them All the links to their reporting that were from the Hunter Biden laptop.
And because the New York Post, of course, refused to do that, they were not let back onto Twitter.
Their account was locked for more than two weeks and only let back on until about two or three days before the election.
So that is what the conservative on the panel is saying.
I think his name is Scott Jennings.
As they start arguing, the host, Abby Phillips, says, no, let's let Kara Swisher speak because she's the one who did the work.
She knows what actually happened here.
And then listen to what she proceeds to say.
Let's look at her first, because she's actually done, so it's really hard to deal with you.
You want to insult me?
Go ahead.
No, I'm not insulting you.
I don't know why you keep repeating things that aren't true.
Did they get thrown off Twitter?
They did, and then they said that we made a mistake, and they put them right back on, just like CNN does.
Okay, that was what she just said.
I'm going to show you the rest of this.
She said the New York Post did get locked out of Twitter, their account was locked up, and then they right away admitted they made a mistake and put them right back on.
That is an absolute total complete provable lie from the person who CNN says is the only one who really did the work to understand the facts.
Let's listen to the rest of this.
It's like the New York Times.
It wasn't after the election.
It was during the time.
And they switched Jack Dorsey's switch.
So I think what the issue is, is you think Twitter is the government.
You think Twitter is running things.
And there is not this wide collusion.
And J.D. Vance knows that because he's worked in tech.
He knows there is no such thing as big tech.
There are big tech companies.
They do not collude on this issue.
Okay, so...
The whole issue of collusion is irrelevant.
If they all get together and impose the same censorship for the same politicized reasons, whether they're doing it in collusion or simply for the same incentives doesn't make a difference in terms of the impact of the censorship.
And remember that all of big tech has depersoned people from the beginning.
It's how they started with Alex Jones and then moved to Mylonopolis.
And each time, every tech company was just disappearing them.
And of course, the argument that some of us made, but that most people didn't want to hear, was that you can cheer all you want because you hate Mylonopolis and Alex Jones, and that's fine.
But the precedent you're setting is going to be used to expand outward toward the mainstream more and more.
until big tech basically runs our discourse.
And then on top of that, you have the fact that, as we saw from the Twitter files, although Twitter isn't the government, the government was the entire time pressuring big tech companies to censor dissent from the internet.
And we'll show you in a second how Mark Zuckerberg says what the FBI did to Facebook that caused them, not just Twitter, but caused Facebook to suppress this story through the end of this election.
But the claim that Kara Swisher made there as to try and minimize what happened was that the only censorship that was done was by Twitter and they only locked the account of the New York Post and then immediately reinstated their account.
Here from Forbes, October 19, 2020, so this was right around the time when both Twitter and Facebook, it wasn't just Twitter, arguably the much more consequential one was Facebook, Both suppress this story, but Twitter went even further because they not only locked out the New York Post, but for a few days banned anyone from even posting links, even in direct messages, private messages to one another, and especially on the platform.
That they did reverse after a few days.
But the New York Post Twitter account was locked out until right before the election, more than two weeks.
Here was Forbes describing what happened.
Quote, Twitter won't let the New York Post tweet until it agrees to behave itself.
That's how authoritarian liberal digital outlets have become.
You would think any outlet that describes itself as journalistic in any way would instinctively side with the newspaper whose reporting had been censored, blocked, and whose account had been locked.
Regardless of what their reporting...
Could have had an impact in doing in terms of which side it helped and hurt, but that's not what happened.
They framed it as the New York Post wasn't behaving itself.
What was the New York Post doing that constituted misbehavior?
They were importing authentic documents that were obviously authentic from the beginning, as we've explained many times.
And the only thing about it that disturbed anybody in power was that it made Joe Biden look poor because it Revealed how his family, his son and his brother, and he himself were pursuing all sorts of very profitable business deals, both in Ukraine and China, two countries where he had immense influence.
And obviously, everyone knew he was going to run for president in 2020, and there was a good chance that he would win.
And so they were occurring favor by trading on Joe Biden's name and influence.
He was running Ukraine.
Under the Biden administration, he was responsible for it, he was micromanaging it to the point of saying, I want these prosecutors removed, I want these put in.
constantly threatening to withhold aid from them unless they did what they were told.
And then you have Hunter Biden going to Ukraine and getting a huge deal from Burisma, but also pursuing all kinds of other business opportunities, both in Ukraine and China and the New York Post printed evidence, authentic evidence that Joe Biden was to be a participant, a profit authentic evidence that Joe Biden was to be a participant, a profit participant in And yet the liberal media almost all entirely sided with Twitter and said, yes, this information should be centered
And Forbes framed it as they're not behaving themselves and they won't get back onto Twitter unless they agree to behave itself.
Quote, Twitter blocked sharing of the New York Post story and said the piece violated several of its rules, including a prohibition on sharing personal information and hacked materials.
Facebook also reduced distribution of the Post report.
But the brunt of conservative displeasure over the social media sites limiting access to the Post story fell on Twitter.
Following the outcry, Twitter said that in the future it would no longer block tweets sharing hacked materials.
It would instead append warning labels to them.
And then it said it would allow the post's story to be shared because the personal information had been circulated widely online and it would no longer be considered private.
However, the post still can't reach its 1.8 million followers on Twitter.
Why?
That's a little complicated.
When Twitter is now allowing the story to be traded around, the post says Twitter won't unlock its account.
Until it deletes tweets from Thursday, a period in time when the story was breaking Twitter's rules.
Quote, we don't change enforcement retroactively, the company told The Post.
So, just think about what happened here.
First of all, the idea that only conservatives were angry about this, I think, I don't think only conservatives were, but certainly a majority of conservatives were, and that's because American liberalism now firmly believes in, not just tolerates, but affirmatively and aggressively believes in the need to censor material off the internet that is harmful to their political interests and their political leaders.
And not only did they not object, But they actually demanded more from big tech companies, more censorship like this.
They defended it overtly, often by lying.
As Forbes just did there, the excuse that Twitter uses was, we have a ban on linking to material that is hacked.
But this material was not hacked.
No one believed it was hacked.
Everyone knew where it came from, from Hunter Biden's laptop that was in the possession of the FBI that they got because he left it at a repair shop and then never returned and went back to get it.
And it made its way into the hands of the FBI and the store owner who gave it over to Rudy Giuliani and others.
So it was never even blocked in the first place.
And so Twitter said, we're not unlocking their account unless they agree to delete these tweets.
Even though the tweets are now considered acceptable, they can't retroactively become acceptable.
At the time that the New York Post posted it, it violated our rules.
And so, of course, the New York Post is saying, I'm not going to take down our own reporting as a condition to get back on.
And so Twitter was locked out basically all the way until the election.
Now, the only time they got back on was not immediately or the next day, as Kara Swisher-Lydon claimed.
It was more than two weeks later, about two or three days before the 2020 election.
Hear from the New York Post itself on October 30th, 2022.
Quote, how tweet it is.
Twitter backs down and unlocks the New York Post account.
Remember, this was October 30th.
More than two weeks since they had been locked out, just a couple of days before the 2020 election.
Quote, Here's the Wall Street Journal's version of events on October 30th.
Quote, Twitter unlocks the New York Post account after a two-week standoff.
Kara Swisher said today, no, they immediately realized they made a mistake.
They reversed it immediately and left the Post back onto Twitter.
Because Scott Jennings comes after her, but was the New York Post locked out of Twitter?
She was like, yeah, for like a day.
It was a two-week lockout and they only allowed them to get back on just a couple days before the election, after which a huge majority of people had already voted through mail-in ballots and early voting.
It was the year of COVID when they changed all the voting rules.
Quote, social media company reverses policy that previously required newspaper to delete old tweets before being able to tweet again.
Quote, Twitter Inc.
on Friday unlocked the New York Post's Twitter account, ending a stalemate between the social media company and the newspaper stemming from the latter's publication of stories it said were based on documents obtained from the laptop of Hunter Biden.
The Post had been unable to tweet to its 1.9 million Twitter followers since October 14th.
Two weeks earlier, more than two weeks earlier, 16 days earlier, the data began publishing a series of stories based on the alleged Hunter Biden material.
Twitter initially said that linking to the post's stories violated the social media company's policies against posting material that contains personal information and is obtained via hacking.
As the story broke, Twitter began preventing users from tweeting the stories, and it locked the post's account, saying it would be unlocked only after it deleted earlier tweets that linked to the stories.
So that is actually what happened.
Exactly what Scott Jennings was claiming happened.
But they all announced, no, let's let Kara tell us what happened.
Kara Swisher, she's the unbiased reporter who really understands big tech.
She's the one who's going to tell us what happened.
And then she just proceeded to blatantly lie.
Now, as for the question of whether Democrats were or the government was behind any of this, here was the former ambassador, Tom Udall, who was actually at the time a senator from New Mexico, a Democratic senator from New Mexico.
And we've shown you many times, many Democratic senators like Ed Markey and other members of the House saying, after they summoned big tech executives to the Congress, they said, either you start censoring more disinformation, meaning things we don't want heard, or we're going to consider legislation or regulation to punish or we're going to consider legislation or regulation to punish you.
They said that out in the open.
Never mind all the FBI and CIA and CDC communications to big tech, actoring them and battering them to pull information down.
They don't want the American people to be heard.
So here's Tom Udall, Senator Tom Udall, on November 1, 2020, when he is speaking to Mark Zuckerberg in a video testimony before the United States Senate that they summoned various tech executives to.
And this was November 1, so just two days before the election.
The day after...
The New York Post has let back on to its account by Twitter.
We also know that the Russian strategy this time around is going after Hunter Biden.
So I recognize that the details of how to handle misinformation on the Internet are tough.
But I think the companies like Twitter and Facebook that took action to not be a part of a suspected Russian election interference operation were doing the right thing.
It's very dangerous for President Trump, Justice Thomas, So, everything he said there is a lie.
This was not a Russian disinformation campaign.
Russia had absolutely nothing to do with any of this reporting.
The U.S. government admits that now.
There was nothing disinformation about it.
These documents were absolutely accurate.
The New York Post, the idea that the New York Post or other media outlets should decide not to publish relevant information before an election about one of the two major candidates because of where they think its provenance was, It's a violation of everything journalism is supposed to be about, as we've talked about many times.
The only questions journalists ask are, are these documents authenticated?
And are they in the public interest to know?
And if the answers to those two questions are yes, you publish, regardless of what source gave it to you, where it came from, what their motives were, it doesn't make the slightest difference.
But this is the Democratic Party at the highest levels in the U.S. Senate talking to Mark Zuckerberg and saying that you were absolutely right to suppress this reporting.
They were cheering it openly.
It wasn't just Twitter.
It was much more consequently Facebook that did it with far less accountability and transparency but far more impact.
Here's the rest of this exchange.
Fortunately, we've been able to build partnerships across the industry, both with the companies here today and with law enforcement and the intelligence community, to be able to share signals to identify these threats sooner.
So as far as collusion is concerned, she says they didn't collude at all.
There's no such thing.
They don't even talk to each other.
They're just totally off separately doing the same things, doing their decisions totally separately.
And it's just a gigantic coincidence that they always ban people at the same time.
Remember, they banned the sitting president.
All of these big tech companies did.
Donald Trump, before he left office, they just banned him speaking on their platforms.
And it wasn't just one.
It was every one of them.
That was what led Trump to create Truth Social, was to ensure that he could have a platform where he could always speak and reach whoever wanted to hear him, and big tech couldn't stop him.
But listen to what Mark Zuckerberg also said.
He said that we, not just Facebook, but the other companies in this industry, big tech companies, have a partnership amongst ourselves and with the FBI and with the U.S. security state.
For them to tell us what material they don't want us to publish because it would be too harmful or too damaging, and that's what we do.
If that isn't collusion, both among big tech itself and big tech with the government, which Kara Swisher adamantly and angrily denied occurs, I don't know what is.
Mark Zuckerberg, what he's describing happened is the exact definition of how big tech collusion would happen both amongst themselves and with the U.S. government to decide what gets censored.
Partnerships across the industry, both of the companies here today and with law enforcement and the intelligence community, to be able to share signals to identify these threats sooner.
And along the lines of what you mentioned earlier, you know, one of the threats that the FBI has alerted our companies and the public to was the possibility of a hack-and-leak operation in the days or weeks leading up to this election.
So you had both the public testimony from the FBI and in private meetings, alerts that were given to at least our company, I assume the others as well, that suggested that we be on high alert and sensitivity that if a trove of documents appeared, that we should view that with suspicion that it might be part of a foreign manipulation attempt.
So that's...
That's what we're seeing, and I'm happy to go into more detail as well if that's helpful.
So, what he said there is so consequential.
I don't think we've ever fully come to terms with how many lines were crossed, red lines were crossed, in what happened in this incident.
And I'm happy that Kara Swisher raised it again or responded to it again on CNN this morning because it just shows the extent to which they have to lie about what happened because what happened was actually so egregious, such a major threat to our elections, the integrity of them, to every democratic value.
Mark Zuckerberg said that Big Tech created a partnership to decide what materials should be removed, political information should be removed both during the campaign and any other time.
And that partnership was with the U.S. government, with the FBI and the U.S. security state.
And he was explaining that the reason Facebook decided to suppress reporting about Joe Biden's activities in Ukraine and China was because the FBI had warned Facebook in advance that if there was a pile of documents that emerged, it likely would come from a foreign source and would be disinformation and therefore Facebook ought to Ban it or suppress it.
And that's exactly what Facebook did because the FBI told them to do it.
What the FBI told them was a complete lie.
None of this information was hacked.
None of it came from a foreign source.
But the FBI played a vital role in pressuring and lying to and manipulating all these big tech companies to censor that story that they likely knew was coming by lying to them about what the origins were.
And so the extent that, oh, Twitter and Facebook aren't the government, they were taking orders from the government.
They were listening to the FBI. They trusted the FBI about what they should have removed.
Here's the rest of this Democratic Senator, Mark Udall, Not only encouraging and praising Facebook for having done this, but demanding that they continue to do more of it.
Thank you very much.
Will you continue to push back against this kind of foreign interference, even if powerful Republicans threaten to take official action against your companies?
Mr.
Zuckerberg, why don't we start with you and work the other way back?
Senator, absolutely.
This is incredibly important for our democracy, and we're committed to doing this work.
Senator, absolutely.
Protecting our civic and democratic process is fundamental to what we do, and we will do everything we can.
Yes, and we will continue to work and push back on any manipulation of the platform.
So there was the CEO of Google and the CEO and founder of Twitter at the time, Jack Dorsey, along with Mark Zuckerberg, promising the government, the U.S. Senate, controlled by Democrats, that they would...
In fact, continue to suppress stories as the U.S. government told them to.
Now, the way in which the Facebook suppression of the election, and we'll see if we can get this tweet.
It's the one where Facebook announced that they were going to be suppressing this story indefinitely pending a third-party fact-check.
That never came.
I've written to them many times.
I've asked them about it, including the person who announced it, that Facebook was going to suppress this story.
And he said basically, like, this story disgusts me.
I don't even want to have to mention it.
This is what the Facebook official announcing Facebook's decision to suppress this reporting before the 2020 election said, and his name is Andy Stone, and if you look at his bio that he himself publishes on Twitter, which is where he made this announcement, There you see it says communications from Meta.
And then if you look at the places where he previously worked, which are also in his bio, you see there that he used to work at the House Majority PAC, which is a PAC designed to make sure that Democrats remain the majority party in the House.
He used to work for Senator Barbara Boxer, the Democrat of...
California, he used to work for the DCCC, which is the organization that is designed to keep a majority Senate Of Democrats.
And he worked for Representative McInerney, who was a former House member of the Democratic Party.
He's a lifelong Democratic Party operative.
That's the person they chose to come out and announce that Facebook would be suppressing the story.
And Facebook suppressed the story, prevented it from being seen, prevented it from spreading all of this reporting from the New York Post.
Through the election, they never reversed themselves, they never apologized, they never said they were changing their minds about it.
And they refused to answer questions about for how long they suppressed it, how long they suppressed it, but they most certainly did as well.
And again, Mark Zuckerberg said the reason they made that decision was because the FBI basically told them to.
And that's why they in Twitter, in this consortium with the government, decided to do so based on these lies that the FBI told them.
Now, here's the tweet itself, just to show you what Facebook said about it at the time.
While I will intentionally not link to the New York Post, meaning I don't even want to link to that thing I have to talk about.
It's disgusting me, but I won't even link to it.
I want to be clear that this story is eligible to be fact-checked by Facebook's third-party fact-checking partners.
In the meantime, we are reducing its distribution on our platform.
Now I've asked him and Facebook many times, where is this third party fact check that you said was going to happen?
Because if there had been a real fact check, the fact check would have said, this information did not come from Russia, it's not disinformation, it wasn't hacked, everything the FBI told you was a lie, so it should be permitted.
My guess is there was no third-party fact-check, or if there was, it was a liberal group that affirmed what the FBI was saying, and Facebook just won't answer questions about what they did.
So even in Kara Swisher's defense in an attempt to minimize it, omitting the actions of Facebook itself is lying by omission.
But the lie she told about the specific incident of the New York Post being locked out of their account when she said it was just a day and they immediately reversed it is also an absolute lie.
Now, I just want to show you how often CNN lies and how even if you prove it to them and you bring it to their attention, they won't do anything about it.
Right around the time in June that Julian Assange signed his plea agreement where he was forced to plead guilty to a felony of doing journalism and in exchange finally let out of prison and went back to Australia.
Caitlin Collins, who hosts a CNN program, decided of all people that the person who should come on to talk about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was the disgraced Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI. So, of course, when wanting to have the public understand what happened with WikiLeaks,
she decides to get the former deputy director of the FBI, a senior member of the security state who ended up disgraced and being forced to resign to Because he lied to investigators about the role that he played in concocting the Russiagate frauds.
So he wasn't just the deputy director, but a completely disgraced one, forced to resign for lying.
Imagine how immoral you have to be to get fired from the FBI for lying and covering up.
So Caitlin Collins had him on, and he spoke uninterrupted, uncorrected, and told several obvious lies about WikiLeaks when describing what WikiLeaks was and why Assange was in prison.
It's notable to hear you say that.
Obviously, his team argued that he should be protected by the same laws the journalists are, that he was releasing sensitive information but in the public's interest.
And so he's been alternatively celebrated by some and reviled by others.
And so it is striking for me to hear you, given your former position as a deputy FBI director, to say you think this is the right call.
I do think it's the right call.
And don't get me wrong, I think Julian Assange did the wrong thing.
Julian Assange hurt the United States government.
He put the lives of our troops in danger.
He put the lives, particularly of Iraqi citizens who had helped our effort in the war in Iraq, in danger.
So this guy did a lot of bad things.
But what he did, some of what he did, was very similar to the way that journalists conduct their business.
Of course, in other ways, very different, right?
There wasn't any of those conversations prior to publication that journalists typically have when they're going to reveal classified and sensitive information to find out what, you know, reach out to the government entity involved to find, let them seek comment.
Look at that stupid grin she has on her face.
She's just, who, what kind of journalist would allow an invite on by himself to talk about the WikiLeaks prosecution?
Which led to Julian Assange's imprisonment because he exposed the lies and secrets of the U.S. security state, of which Andrew McCabe was a central part, somebody who has proven already that he's willing to lie, and just let him spew lie after lie, which I'm about to detail, while she just sits there grinning, grinning.
And everything he's saying, of course he's a trained liar.
He hates WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.
He was happy that they forced Julian Assange to plead guilty.
And finally let him out after he was physically and psychologically destroyed.
He said he supported Joe Biden's decision because he didn't want to criticize Joe Biden.
But so much of what he's saying here is completely false, provably false.
And look at that face she has on her while he does it.
Be involved to find, let him seek comment and then have a conversation.
Give the government an opportunity to say, hey, typically have when they're going to reveal.
I got to just have you hear this, what he's saying here about why Julian Assange isn't like other journalists.
business.
Of course, in other ways, very different, right?
There wasn't any of those conversations prior to publication that journalists typically have when they're going to reveal classified and sensitive information to find out what, you know, reach out to the government entity involved to find, let them seek comment and then have a conversation, give the government an opportunity to say, hey, please don't do this because these give the government an opportunity to say, hey, please don't do this because these people might So very big differences there.
Okay.
So he made two claims there.
One is the claim they always make about any reporting that they hate, which is, oh, he put the lives of troops and informants in harm's way and has blood on his hands.
This is completely false.
In fact, the government admits, if you ask them, is there any harm you can point to from WikiLeaks' disclosures, they will say, no, nobody was harmed.
But the bigger point and the more provable lie here is that what distinguishes WikiLeaks from other journalists, he said, is that WikiLeaks does not try to call the government and ask the government before publishing to give its input on what types of information should be withheld to protect innocent people.
WikiLeaks, especially in this 2010 prosecution that caused Assange's prosecution and imprisonment, Did exactly that.
They repeatedly contacted Hillary Clinton's State Department before publishing and said, we'd like you to give us your input on what information should be redacted so we're not harming any innocent people.
So everything she allowed Andrew McCabe there to say with no comment, no fact-checking, no pushback, was an absolute lie, an improvable lie, especially that loud part.
And so I wrote her this note.
She follows me on Twitter, and therefore I could send her a DM, and I didn't.
It was that same day.
And this is what I wrote to her.
Quote, hi, Caitlin.
In the interview you aired yesterday with Andrew McCabe about WikiLeaks, he said that what differentiates Assange from real journalists is that Assange never contacted the U.S. government prior to publishing classified information in order to give them the opportunity to identify possible dangers from publication.
This is completely and provably false.
Before the 2010 publications that are at the heart of Assange's indictment, both the media partners with whom Assange worked as well as WikiLeaks itself repeatedly contacted the U.S. government to ask for its input on which documents might endanger people's lives.
Here's a foreign policy article from 2010, and there are many more detailing all the efforts Assange and WikiLeaks' media partners made in doing this and how the Clinton State Department explicitly refused to engage in WikiLeaks to provide this guidance.
Though they did provide that guidance with WikiLeaks' media partners like the New York Times and the Guardian, and WikiLeaks itself redacted significant amounts of information in order to avoid harming innocent people.
And then I attached just that article that I referenced from Foreign Policy, the title of which was State Department Refuses to Negotiate with WikiLeaks.
And I know she's seen this.
I know she's seen tweets about it.
So you say, like, hey, maybe you don't know this case at all, which is probably a good reason not to participate in a discussion of it, or at least learn about it before you do, so you can push back if you're going to have a former senior member of the U.S. security state on talk about it, but probably you didn't know, but now you do.
Here's the evidence that you allowed him to lie in an unfettered way.
You should correct that.
You should go on the air and say, hey, by the way, we had Andrew McCabe on, and he said things that evidently were false.
But of course she has no interest in doing that because their function is to lie for the right reasons.
And this is what CNN did this morning with Keira Swisher.
It's what they did in that other incident.
It's what they do all the time.
Lying is not an incidental mistake or something that's tolerated.
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One of the topics on which we have most focused over the last year or so is the rising authoritarianism in all Western countries, including the United States, in the name of protecting and defending the including the United States, in the name of protecting and defending the state of Israel from criticism, from journalism, from activism that might in some way reflect poorly on Israel or undermine their
One of the sites that does that most effectively is the Electronic Intifada, and that outlet has a reporter, Aza Winsternley, who frequently reports in a very effective way, very critical way on Israel.
It's war in Gaza and the war in Lebanon.
And recently, this last week, in fact, this week, earlier this week, he had British police show up at his door, pound on the door, and then come in and seize all of his electronic equipment, telling him that they were investigating whether or not he was in violation of something called the Terrorism Act of 2000.
And there's been other types of censorship, other attempts to criminalize journalism and activism and reporting that's aimed at criticizing Israel throughout the West.
And the founder and the director of the Electronic Intifada, who is Ali Abdimdimah, who is a good friend of mine and a friend of the show, Thank you so much for taking the time to come on tonight.
Thank you.
Thank you, Glenn.
It's my pleasure.
So let's talk about Aza.
First of all, the reporter who works at the Electronic Intifada for a long time, is a very well-respected long-time British journalist whose journalistic methods are very common, very solid and reliable.
I've cited his work a long time.
For those who aren't familiar with him, just tell us a little bit about his background and then what specifically happened earlier this week with the British police.
Yeah, Acehwin Stanley is a fantastic investigative journalist.
He's one of the most important investigative journalists working today, and so we're very proud that he's our colleague at the Electronic Intifada.
Among his many important pieces of journalism is his book, Weaponizing Antisemitism, How the Israel Lobby Help to bring down Jeremy Corbyn, which documents how the Israel lobby and the British deep state,
for want of a better word, colluded to fabricate an anti-Semitism crisis in the UK in order to smear Jeremy Corbyn, an independent-minded, moderately left-wing political Leader who rose to become, by popular acclaim, huge landslide popular votes, the leader of the main opposition, as it was at the time, Labour Party.
And Corbyn was also, of course, a lifelong campaigner for Palestinian rights.
So that's one of Ace's great achievements, is completely busting this fraud and hoax of of a crisis of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.
His most recent article for the Electronic Intifada, published on October 7th this year, the anniversary of the Palestinian resistance operation in the beginning of the Israeli genocide, Is it the Electronic Intifada?
And it's headlined, How Israel Killed Hundreds of Its Own People on 7 October.
And it shows with meticulous documentation based on our reporting for a year.
And this is all based on...
Israeli sources how Israel applied the so-called Hannibal Doctrine on October 7th, which is a military directive that allows Israeli forces to kill their own people, soldiers and civilians, in order to prevent them being taken captive.
And that was responsible for hundreds of the deaths on October 7th.
A fact Not really contested in Israel, but which is totally absent from Western narratives and mainstream media.
So that's the type of journalism that Asa does.
And by the way, we've covered that here as well.
Just last week, Barack Obama said, today we commemorate the 1,400 people who were killed by Hamas on October 7th.
Abigail Kyle Schreier, who works at Barry Weiss at the Free Press, said one year ago, 1,400 Israeli civilians were killed by Hamas.
And of course, the death toll was reduced and reduced.
It's now about 1,100 people, 350 of whom were active duty IDF soldiers.
So at most, there's about 650, 700 actual civilians who were killed that day.
And as you say, a not...
A non-trivial portion of them were actually killed by the IDF in applying this doctrine that says it's better to kill our own citizens than permit them to be kidnapped.
And there's almost nobody in the United States who even knows this.
Now, I want to talk about what happened specifically at Issa's house, what the police did and what they said in response to perhaps that reporting that you just mentioned or the body of work that he's been doing.
Can you walk us through that?
Yeah, so this happened on Thursday, October 17th.
Asa got a knock on his door just before 6 a.m.
London time.
He lives in London.
And there were 10 officers from the counter-terrorism division of the Metropolitan Police.
That's the main police force in the UK. And they served him with two search warrants, one for his house and one for his vehicle, to seize all electronic devices connected with his journalism and any notes or documents connected with his journalism that they wanted to take.
And that's exactly what they did.
And they told him that This investigation has been going on for a year, and that it was connected with his social media posts.
Now that raises an immediate question, is if it's about his social media posts, which we can talk about how absurd it is that...
It's a criminal offence to say things online in the UK, to hold certain opinions and to express them online.
Well, if it's about his social media posts, why do they need to seize all his electronic devices when they can just read his Twitter feed?
But they did seize all his electronic devices, including the devices he uses for his journalism, and that may well contain You know, information about sources and other privileged material that would be typically in the possession of a journalist.
They now have all of that equipment.
They have seized it after raiding his home under these search warrants.
We've seen a lot of examples in the UK in particular, but other countries as well, where police show up in people's homes to interrogate them about social media posts.
They've expressed about a whole wide range of issues, but it's intensified a great deal over the last year, specifically by targeting critics of Israel.
But what really caught my attention about This story was the use of the Terrorism Act of 2000 to say that that was a potential law that he may have violated.
And as you, I think, recall, I have a lot of personal experience with that because during the Snowden reporting, when my husband was working on this reporting with me and came back home through Heathrow, he was detained under that Terrorism Act of 2000 for 11 hours, was constantly threatened with prosecution for terrorism, and we were all, you know, very confounded about how a terrorism card charge could be Invoked or even investigation when he was working on the Snowden reporting, which multiple media outlets were around the world and ultimately won the Pulitzer Prize for public service.
And we sued, and although the court said that they had the right to detain him under British law, British law was in conflict with the EU law because the Terrorism Act can't be used for journalists.
Now, I think that's a different provision because that was for airport detention than probably they used for ASIS Homebook.
Let me just say, if I'm understanding correctly, what they're essentially saying And actually, Ron DeSantis used this rationale in order to order all student groups for justice in Palestine shut down and through the University of Florida system, was that if you start criticizing Israel,
reporting on Israel, in a way that crosses some imaginary line in the head of government officials, you cross the line and you actually start, quote-unquote, encouraging terrorism, even though you're only speaking and expressing your views, and then that becomes a crime.
You're saying...
You know, you're criticizing Israel so much that you're basically helping Hamas or Hezbollah through what it is that you're saying.
It's basically a way that the government can just sort of secretly, on their own, decide that a particular view can be criminalized as terrorism.
Is this what it seems like they're doing in this case?
Yeah, just to clarify something, the UK has multiple terrorism acts.
There is the Terrorism Act of 2000, and there is the Terrorism Act of 2006.
And in the documents that the police served on Asa when they raided his home, they cite the Terrorism Act of 2006, not the Terrorism Act of 2000.
Right, and David was detained under the 2001.
Right.
Right.
And they both do contain some similar provisions.
But in the specific case of Asa, they are citing provisions of the Terrorism Act of 2006.
And they actually gave him a copy of this document.
of this part of the Terrorism Act of 2006, sections one and two, which purport to criminalize something called encouragement of terrorism.
And if you look at what legal authorities and human rights groups That focus on this say, they say that this provision of encouragement of terrorism is extremely broad and basically criminalizes any kind of speech the government doesn't like.
Human Rights Watch has actually called for this provision of the Terrorism Act 2006 to be repealed because it basically infringes on any notion or any obligation to uphold free speech.
And the way the British authorities have been using the These kinds of provisions, including the Terrorism Act 2000 and the 2006 Act, is to outlaw things like saying that you support the right of Palestinians to resist Israeli military occupation using armed struggle, which, by the way, is a right enshrined in international law.
Which is exactly what you said earlier, just a little bit ago.
And it seems like in the UK, if you said that, that could easily be criminalized.
That's correct.
And people have been criminalized for the signs they've held at rallies protesting the genocide in Gaza.
They are being criminalized and prosecuted for things they say online, exactly as appears to be the case, or at least the investigation.
Asa, I should clarify, was not arrested.
And was not detained.
His house was searched and his devices were seized.
But, of course, he could be arrested at any time.
And this has happened because just in the past couple of months, in August, the freelance journalist Richard Medhurst, who is British, was returning to the UK and was detained at Heathrow Airport and arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000. was returning to the UK and was detained at Heathrow Yeah, we had him on our show to talk about that.
that.
Right.
So you know about that case.
And then just less than two weeks later, a well-known activist with a large social media following Sarah Wilkinson also had her home raided and a similar kind of, you know, just abusive process, again for social media just abusive process, again for social media posts that had to do with Gaza and Palestine and critical of Israel.
And then back in December, ironically, Asa wrote about this for the Electronic Intifada.
There are two prominent activists in the UK, Tony Greenstein and Mike Napier, who are arrested and charged with offences for stating at rallies, at demonstrations, that they support the right of Palestinians to resist.
In the case of Tony Greenstein, who is an author, he's written a book recently, and he's also contributed articles to the Electronic and Defalda, his bail conditions included being prohibited from posting on Twitter about the conflict in Gaza.
So that's just a taste of it.
Well, it's shocking.
What enrages me the most about all of this is not that these states are doing it.
That doesn't surprise me.
What enrages me is that there is an entire portion of the political right in the United States and throughout Western Europe that has been waving the free speech banner for the last 10 years, claiming, I think, often validly that they are the victim of state big tech censorship, who suddenly, because they disagree so vehemently often validly that they are the victim of state big tech censorship, who suddenly, because they disagree so vehemently with many of the things you just got done saying, either are silent about it and don't want to mention What is happening to you?
Because they finally now confront a view that is being targeted that they dislike with censorship and they just are incapable of applying these principles.
Like, every principle gets waived as soon as the topic is Israel.
Well, you're completely right about that, Glenn, but it's not just the political right.
It's also the sort of mainstream liberals, because to date, there hasn't been a single report in mainstream media about the raid on Asa.
You know, which should be shocking to anyone.
I mean, the liberal principles are supposedly we can disagree, but we should defend one another's right to hold differing opinions.
They don't do that.
We haven't seen any coverage from The Guardian or the BBC. Not a single mainstream journalist has come out.
Not even in the UK. Not even in the UK. I'm talking about the UK. I'm talking about the UK. And so it's just totally absent.
And, you know, this is the UK, but Glenn, I don't know if you also knew that Germany, a couple of months ago, threatened me with prison and fines for making a speech via Zoom to an audience in Germany.
So it's not just the UK, it's across Europe.
It's across the West.
Oh, totally.
Totally.
And it's worse in Germany.
But it's happening in every country, including the United States.
And just to clarify, when I said the political right, what I really meant is the kind of pro-Israel, pro-Zionist part of the right that has just been incredibly hypocritical.
There's been a couple of exceptions of people speaking out against some of the more egregious attempts to impose censorship by law against Israel's critics.
But for the most part, you know, these people have been waving that flag and have no belief in the actual principle of it.
All All right, while I have you, let me ask you about the killing of the Hamas leader, Yaya Sinwar, because there's a lot of suggestions, I think, delusionally, that somehow Netanyahu has an opportunity to end the war as if he wants to.
And I remember, just to set the stage for this, back in 2001, shortly after the 9-11 attack, Bill Maher had a show on ABC News.
And people were calling the 9-11 hijackers cowards for what they did.
And he said, look, you can find what they did reprehensible and despicable, but the one thing you can't say about them is that they're cowards.
They gave up their own life for a cause by hijacking planes, flying them into the building, knowing they were going to die.
Whatever else that is, it's not cowardly.
He got fired for that because no one wanted to hear that, even though it was so blatantly true.
The IDF released this footage of what they said was Sinoir's last moment and it was shocking that they did because it showed him in military fatigues On the front line fighting wars, not hiding in some tunnel as they would try to claim.
And even once he had his arm blown off and was bleeding profusely, he still basically, the last thing he did was throw a wooden stick at an Israeli drone that was trying to track him because they were too afraid to enter the house and confront him directly.
Which seems to me like it's going to have a big impact in that region, not just his assassination, but the way in which he died confronting the Israeli military, even though he had very primitive weapons and they have the most sophisticated ones given by the U.S. What do you think the impact of this will be, first on the Israeli-Gaza conflict, but then in the broader region?
Yeah, you know, there have been these coordinated tweets from the, you know, what should we call them, from the Five Eyes, from, you know, Justin Trudeau, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Keir Starmer and others.
Just celebrating the killing of Yahya Sinwar and demonizing him as this terrible terrorist leader and the world is better off without him.
And they've just been completely ratioed on Twitter.
Nobody is buying that.
And I think that highlights just the galaxy-sized disconnect between how Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and people...
Across much of the world perceive someone like Yahya Sinwar as opposed to how he's portrayed in the West or in Israel.
He is seen as a resistance hero, as someone who gave his life fighting with his people Himself wearing a vest, carrying a gun for the liberation of his people from a Western-backed, a U.S.-armed regime that is perpetrating genocide.
He could not be seen as more legitimate by Palestinians and by the vast population.
You know, by hundreds or billions of people across the world.
And we're seeing that he already had this incredibly high reputation, which has just been, you know, sent into the stratosphere by the way he died.
Courageously fighting with his people, for his people, leading from the front.
And that's the reality of who Yahya Sindwar was.
We talked about the lies and omissions about October 7th.
Of course, the other big one is that on October 7th, Palestinians burned babies and beheaded people and carried out mass rapes.
None of which is true, and that's part of the reporting that I've done and the Electronic Intifada has done and Asu and Stanley has done, showing how this is all complete atrocity propaganda and lies, that they are trying to turn into reality just by repetition.
The other thing, I mean, if you cast your mind back, Glenn, to mere weeks ago when Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, who has arguably even greater status among the people of the region and the world, was killed.
There was all this triumphalism and euphoria in the United States and in Israel in the West, like now Lebanon is ours, Hezbollah will crumble, we're going to remake the region in our image.
And of course, Hezbollah came out fighting, and the Israelis haven't been able to advance even a few hundred meters into Lebanon, let alone have Israelis go back to the settlements in the north that this operation in Lebanon was supposed to enable them to do. let alone have Israelis go back to the settlements in And it will be exactly the same with Hamas.
Israel has assassinated Palestinian leaders and the Zionist movement have assassinated Palestinian other leaders since the 1930s.
And they have assassinated almost every leader of Hamas.
Like, leaders of Hamas don't die natural deaths.
And they assassinated the two leaders of Hezbollah.
Hassan Nasrallah became the leader of Hezbollah in 1992 after Israel assassinated his predecessor.
These assassinations have historically only made these movements stronger and more determined.
That's what will happen here.
So it's utterly delusional to think that Hamas is just going to collapse and go away.
But there is this sort of very shallow orientalist thinking that the people of the region are simply, you know, mules and sheep who follow behind these strongmen and not people dedicated deeply to a cause, the cause of their liberation from U.S.-backed imperialism and colonialism.
All right, so speaking of the role of the U.S., and this will be our last question just for time considerations.
One of the things that has amazed me, and there's things that I hate that don't surprise me and things that I hate that do, and I've sort of been drawing this dichotomy a few times when I'm talking to you, but...
There's been a whole sort of horde of left liberal commentators over the last year who have made a lot of money, generated a lot of traffic, drawn a lot of attention to themselves, and fortified their brands as sort of critics of the Democratic Party by constantly calling what's being done in Gaza a genocide, by claiming that Joe Biden and now Kamala Harris are complicit in the genocide and they've been doing this, strutting around doing all this for 10 months.
And then as the election approaches, and then immediately once Kamala Harris is installed, they suddenly forget about all that, and they basically announce that from now on they're going to pledge to do everything to keep empowered the very people who for the last 10 months, to their own benefit, they were accusing of being complicit in a genocide.
Now, I get the idea that elections, sometimes you have to pick the lesser of two evils, but if genocide isn't the line for you, where somebody commits genocide, then it's just so hard to conceive of how anybody has anything other than a rotted soul who's willing to do that.
How do you see the role of the United States government, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, in everything that we've been talking about?
To me, personally, I speak for myself.
The Electronic Intifada doesn't endorse candidates or take positions on elections.
I'm speaking for myself.
You know, for me, if genocide, if a Holocaust, which is what the United States and Israel are perpetrating, Holocaust means burning or burnt offering.
And we just saw...
You know, people being burned alive at the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah on top of all the whole year of atrocities.
If that's not a line for you, nothing is.
If you say, yes, genocide, but what about this?
There is no but with genocide.
That's like saying, yeah, Hitler murdered millions of Jews, but he made the trains run on time.
I mean, it's, to me, morally reprehensible.
And, you know, I have no fondness, I would say I have nothing but contempt for Donald Trump.
And he did terrible things in office, including, you know, continuing the wars in the region that...
That have caused and continue to cause so much devastation.
But they try to fearmonger that, oh, well, Donald Trump will do all these terrible things to you, and he will be even worse to the Palestinians.
The simple fact is that, you know, you have to be unwilling to face facts if you can't say that there is nothing Donald Trump did in his four years in office that is even remotely as horrifying and criminal and murderous as...
This genocide that is fully supported by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris or is as murderous and horrific as the illegal aggression and invasion of Iraq, which killed and displaced and destroyed the lives of millions of people, which was done by Dick Cheney, who is now on Team Joe Biden and Team Kamala Harris.
If you can't see that, you have just no integrity whatsoever.
And I believe that in a democracy, You know, we should have better choices than we have.
We have absolutely reprehensible and terrible choices.
There are third parties.
You've had Jill Stein on your show, and I thought that was an excellent interview.
But we have very few viable choices because the system is so rigged.
But at a certain point, you have to say...
I will not participate.
I will not reward those committing a holocaust.
And I'm willing to pay the price because the well-being and comfort of Americans in general, but particularly the American liberals who browbeat us, that we have to vote for the people who are burning us alive, burning our friends and family alive,
Their comfort is not more important to me than the lives of the people in Gaza being burned to death by the bombs and missiles that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are airlifting around the clock to Israel.
Yeah, and they will continue to if Kamala Harris wins the election.
She's been very clear about that.
And just to sort of add to what you said about the Trump administration, The two wars that Trump inherited, the one that Obama started of aiding Saudi Arabia in its bombing of the Houthis in Yemen, creating a massive catastrophe of humanitarian proportions,
and then also the bombing campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, Everything that Trump did in that regard, as well as the things he most did to help Israel, like moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, those were the things that the Democrats fully supported.
There were very few people criticizing him for that.
The only time the media ever really praised Donald Trump was when he shot missiles at Syria.
Yeah, and bomb Syria.
And so even to the extent that you want to point to these things that Trump did, there's no opposition in the Democratic Party to them.
The wing of the Democratic Party, especially represented by Kamala Harris, is going to serve those same foreign policy interests.
And when I look at it, I see that Donald Trump was the first president in decades not to involve the U.S. in a new war.
He certainly continued the two wars and even escalated them that he inherited from Obama.
Whereas you see under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris these constant involvements of the U.S., including in this horrific massacre in Gaza.
So I'm not making the case for Donald Trump in that regard.
I'm just saying that even to the extent that you want to look at what Trump did and things you don't like, there's no opposition from the Democratic Party.
All right, Ali, I really appreciate your coming on.
I could have...
A lot more things, but I want to be respectful of your time and our audience's time, so we'd love to have you back on to talk about the war itself, sort of how it's evolving both in Gaza and Lebanon.
Probably there's going to be some retaliation with Iran at some point, and so there'll be a lot to talk about just in terms of the substance, but this authoritarian attempt to target and criminalize journalists who are critical of Israel is incredibly disturbing, so I appreciate your coming on and talking about that.
Thank you.
I'd love to come back on, too.
Absolutely.
Have a good evening.
All right, so that concludes our show for this evening.
There was a segment that we intended to do on this sort of disintegrating mental state of liberals and certain things that have happened over the last week or two weeks that have been just unprecedentedly unhinged in terms of how they're melting down.
For time reasons, we're going to go ahead and save that until Monday or Tuesday when we'll be able to have more time to cover that more in depth.
It's just remarkable when...
When you see the extent to which they're going.
But I definitely wanted to give that interview the time that it deserved.
So that will conclude the show for this evening.
As a reminder, System Update is also available in podcast form.
You can listen to every episode 12 hours after the first broadcast live here on Rumble on Spotify, Apple and all the major podcasting platforms.
And if you want to rate, review, and follow our show there, it really helps spread the visibility of our program.
As another reminder, every Tuesday and Thursday night, once we're done with our live show here on Rumble, we move to Locals, where we have our live interactive after show.
That after show is available only for members of our Locals community.
So if you want to join, which gives you access not just to those shows, but to multiple interactive features that we have.
It's where we put a lot of exclusive content, like interviews and segments that we do that we don't get to publish on the show.
It's the place where we publish transcripts, written professionalized transcripts of every show we broadcast here.
We publish transcripts the next day.
And most of all, it is the community on which we most rely to support the independent journalism that we're doing here every night.
Simply click the join button right below the video player on the Rumble page and it will take you directly to that community.
As just one last note, one of the people on our staff who has done such a great job in helping us produce the program over the last year and a half or so, Harry Berger, is leaving to return to the United States and continue his career in journalism.
We wanted to take a moment to thank him for everything that he did for our show.
It was really top quality work and we wish him nothing but the best.
For those who have been watching this show, we are very appreciative and we hope to see you back on Monday night and every night at 7 p.m.
Eastern live exclusively here on Rumble.
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