With Biden Out, U.S. Finally Admits Harms of His Israel / Gaza Policy; Biden Pays Homage To George W. Bush; Insane Women’s Tennis Scandal: An “Abusive” Coach
Now that the 2024 election is over and Joe Biden is on his way out, even solidly pro-Israel outlets like 60 Minutes are documenting what a complete disaster Biden’s Israel/Gaza policy has been. Plus: Biden pays homage to George W. Bush by naming an aircraft carrier after him. Finally: a scandal in the tennis world reveals liberals' bizarrely paternalistic attitude toward women athletes.
-------
Watch full episodes on Rumble, streamed LIVE 7pm ET.
Become part of our Locals community
Follow Glenn:
Twitter
Instagram
Follow System Update:
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Facebook
LinkedIn
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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's been a lot of focus, understandably so, on the morality and wisdom of Israel's utter destruction of civilian life in Gaza over the past 15 months.
There has been far less attention in the West paid to the fact that it is the United States government under Joe Biden, which has paid for that destruction, armed Israel with the bombs they use and isolated itself from the rest of the world to diplomatically protect Israeli violence.
It is not just the billions of dollars that the U.S. gives to Israel every year and then billions more whenever it's time for Israel to have a new war, which is quite often.
There are far deeper costs, broader costs to the United States and to Americans for always tying itself to the hip of Israel and all of its wars.
It has long been pointed out by top American generals, even though they've often been forced to apologize after they point it out, that a key reason why there's so much anger and hatred and hostility toward the United States and Americans in general among people in the Middle East is not because, I'm sorry to break this to you, they hate us for our freedoms.
But instead because they see that Israel uses American bombs and American resources from the American taxpayer to bomb and kill Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, and others in their part of the world.
Now that the 2024 election is over and Joe Biden is on his way out, it's becoming acceptable in previously silenced sectors of the media to document what a complete disaster Biden's Israel-Gaza policy really has been, not just for Gaza, but for the United States.
60 Minutes, which has been solidly pro-Israel for many years, presented a decent segment on Sunday night detailing just how disastrous this has been and how it's an open secret in Washington that the Israelis are acting both criminally and adversarily to the United States and its interests.
We'll show you this important sea change.
Then Kamala Harris spent her campaign heralding Dick Cheney as a noble patriot.
Liberals in general have elevated his daughter Liz, who has supported all of her dad's beliefs to this very day, as a heroine and a symbol of American integrity and patriotism.
And today Joe Biden announced that he was christening a new American nuclear-powered aircraft carrier as the George W. Bush aircraft carrier.
and aircraft carriers where George W. Bush gave his notorious speech in which he declared mission accomplished about a month into the Iraq war.
These are all the same people.
George Bush, Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney, whom Democrats just a couple of decades ago, really even just a decade ago, were calling all the things they now call Trump a fascist, a Nazi, a war criminal, etc., etc., and how they constantly make these same people the symbol of their party now.
It is not just morally twisted.
But very illuminating about the character and ideology of the modern-day Democrats.
Finally, there's an absolutely bizarre yet revealing tennis in the world of women's professional tennis.
I know this seems like sort of the sort of thing that we would not normally cover, and it isn't.
This is not exactly a sports show.
But the whole thing is really indicative of a certain kind of liberal cultural identitarianism that ends up patronizing women and treating them like fragile children in the name of protecting them.
So we want to tell you about This scandal, it's a really fascinating one to see the dynamics at play.
And these dynamics that shape so much of our current cultural discourse.
Before we get to all that, a few quick programming notes.
We are encouraging our viewers to download the Rumble app.
If you do so, it works on your smart TV, your telephone, and your Xbox, many other devices as well.
And then if you do that, you can activate notifications, which we hope you will, which means the minute any of those programs begin broadcasting live on the platform, you'll be notified by link to your email, text, however you want.
You can just click on the link, begin watching these shows only when they actually We're good to go.
Where if you rate, review, and follow our show, it really helps spread the visibility of our program.
Finally, 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.
We take your questions, respond to your critiques and feedback, hear your suggestions for future shows.
Those aftershows are available solely for members of our local community.
So if you'd like to join, it gives you access to those twice a week aftershows, multiple interactive features we have on the platform.
We have a lot of exclusive original content, video content we publish there.
It is the place where we publish written, professionalized transcripts of every program we broadcast here.
We publish those there the next day.
And most of all, it is the community on which we really do rely to support the independent journalism that we do here every night.
Simply click the Join button right below the video player on the Rumble page, and we'll take you directly to that community.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
There's a big sea change with a lot of different issues and how they're being discussed in mainstream American discourse.
Now that the election is over, there's no more need to work so hard to try and defeat Donald Trump or to help push two lame candidates, Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris, over the finish line.
A lot that could have been said and should have been said previously prior to the election but couldn't be.
Because in the eyes of that sector of the media, it might help Donald Trump win, which was the primary priority to avoid, is now being said among them just how destructive to the United States and to American citizens Joe Biden's support for Israel and its destruction of Gaza has actually been and how many people inside the government have been warning of exactly what has been going on.
Now, before we get to that, because there's been some amazing It looks as though, and this has happened before, but it looks as though far more likely than previously there may actually be a ceasefire deal in the works that is starting to emerge, not coincidentally, shortly before Donald Trump is about to assume the presidency.
First of all, from Haritz today, emerging Israel-Hamas deal.
In the first phase, 33 hostages are to be returned, Palestinians to return to northern Gaza.
16 days after an agreement is signed, negotiations over the release of remaining hostages in a second phase will begin.
Quote, according to the deal, the IDF is not expected to withdraw from Gaza until all hostages are returned, but will allow movement of residents from southern Gaza to the north of the Strip.
16 days after the agreement is signed, discussions on the second phase are set to begin, ultimately leading to the release of the remaining hostages.
A senior Hamas source told Qatari channel Arabi al-Jadid that a meeting to discuss a draft hostage deal agreement is planned for Monday evening.
Quote, if there is no harm to the critical points important to our people, our response will be positive, the Hamas source said.
Knowing that a...
Peace deal seems imminent, and certainly in the Israeli media, they're talking as though it is.
They're talking as though the Israeli government is headed toward this deal that would end hostilities and create a ceasefire in Gaza finally after 15 months of absolute destruction.
And according to Israeli media, knowing that it's Donald Trump who's insisting on that, that he wants this conflict to come to an end, as well as any fighting in Syria and Lebanon prior to his assuming the presidency, that he can focus on...
Netanyahu and the Israelis are killing as many people as they can and wreaking as much destruction as they can while they're still able.
From the Middle East Monitor yesterday, 70 children killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza in the last five days, civil defense says.
And you can look at the images and hear the videos, watch the videos, hear the firsthand reports.
It's all the sorts of things that we've heard so many times before.
Do we have the Israeli television report, the video of it?
Right before we went on air, There was an Israeli television segment in which a very close ally of Benjamin Netanyahu went on to the main mainstream Israeli television network and was enraged about the fact that, according to him, it's Donald Trump who has forced Israel and Netanyahu to accept this deal.
Their argument is this deal is a terrible one for Israel.
It forces them to stop blowing up Gaza without achieving their goals of annexing northern Gaza, of cutting off humanitarian aid, of forcing all Arabs and Palestinians out of northern Gaza forever.
And it really, obviously, if there's a ceasefire deal before Trump takes office, means that they will not have achieved what they said was their main goal, which was the eradication of Hamas.
In fact, there was just an article in the Wall Street Journal about how Hamas is not only reconstituting, but able to recruit a lot of new people for the obvious reason that there's a whole young sector of Palestinian men who are disgusted and arraged by Israel but able to recruit a lot of new people for the obvious reason that there's a whole young sector of Palestinian men who are disgusted and arraged by Israel for what they've done to these people over the last 15 months and want to join the most radical group as they can to resist and oppose Israel, which was incredibly predictable and
And it would be incredibly notable, ironic, if Joe Biden goes through 15 months of this war Can't exercise any leverage, doesn't try to exercise any leverage, continues to feed the Israeli money and weapons and diplomatic cover.
And that war would have gone on with no end in sight had Kamala Harris won as well, who would have continued Joe Biden's policy.
If this deal actually happens, and again, the Israelis are, quote, crediting slash blaming Trump for forcing the deal, it will mean that Donald Trump will have That Joe Biden and Kamala Harris couldn't achieve for 15 months.
And I really want to see what the left is going to say if it's Trump that actually brings about an end to this war.
Either they'll try and deny that he deserves credit, even though the Israelis are saying that.
They'll say that AOC or Bernie Sanders accomplished it.
Or they'll start...
Opposing the end of hostilities in Gaza, because what they cannot do is decredit Trump.
Here is the segment.
It's actually in Hebrew.
There's an Israeli reporter who translated it.
I'm just going to show you a little bit of it.
He's a very close Netanyahu ally.
He's speaking on Channel 11. And there's been several translations of what he said.
And essentially what he's saying is that this is a terrible deal for Israel, but we have to take it because Trump is forcing it on us.
And he's doing so prior to Israel achieving its goals of cleansing northern Gaza.
Here is exactly what he said in this clip.
Quote, we are the first, he said, to pay a price for Trump's election.
The deal is being forced upon us.
We thought we'd take control of northern Gaza, that they'd let us impede humanitarian aid.
So he's saying we have to end this war because Trump is making us before our real goals of ethnically cleansing northern Gaza and annexing it, seizing control for Israel, and denying humanitarian aid to enter the country.
He's angry.
That they can't deny humanitarian aid or ethnically cleanse, he says, because Trump is forcing a deal.
Now, over the last several days, 60 Minutes, which, as I said, has been steadfastly pro-Israel in the past.
They have several correspondents who are outspoken Zionists and defenders of the Israeli state, including Leslie Stahl.
She always has been.
She's covered Israel many times in 60 Minutes, and it's always very favorable to Israel.
This report was about...
Two things at CBS that 60 Minutes aired on Sunday night.
One was how much U.S. weaponry, the key role it has played in the destruction of Gaza.
And then number two, how many people deep inside the government at very high levels have been vehemently opposed to the U.S. arming and funding.
Israel pointing out not just that it's morally wrong, but that it's extremely destructive, harmful, and subversive to American national interests.
Here from CBS News yesterday, you see the headline, Former State Department Officials Concerned About the U.S. Role in Israel's War in Gaza.
Here is a former U.S. diplomat, Hala Rarit, telling CBS News about how she was tasked with monitoring and tracking the heinous acts and war crimes that the Israelis were carrying out in Gaza.
And the resistance she experienced inside the U.S. government as she tried to document them.
What is happening in Gaza would not be able to happen without U.S. arms.
That's without a doubt.
Hala Rarit was an American diplomat who spent nearly two decades posted in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, where she worked on human rights and counterterrorism.
She was stationed in Dubai on October 7th, where part of her job was to monitor Arab press and social media to document how America's role in the war was perceived in the Middle East.
We've obtained daily reports Rarit sent to senior leadership in Washington containing gruesome images and her warnings.
I would show the complicity that was indisputable.
Fragments of U.S. bombs next to massacres of mostly children, and that's the devastation.
It's been overwhelmingly children.
When you tried to speak out, vocalize what you saw happening in Gaza, you feel like you were told to shut up?
Yes.
I would show images of children that were starved to death.
In one incident, I was...
Basically berated, don't put that image in there.
We don't want to see it.
We don't want to see that the children are starving to death.
Who told you that?
A colleague.
A superior?
Yeah.
I was told the contrary by others.
Keep them in.
We need to see it.
Three months into the war, Robert says she was told her reports were no longer needed.
She resigned last April.
I don't think we are anywhere close to understanding the full scope of what has been done to Gaza.
I've talked about this before.
There was just a study released by Lancet, which I realize has undermined its credibility during the COVID pandemic in ways that we've covered many times.
Nonetheless, it doesn't mean that every study that makes its way to Lancet is fabricated or false.
And there's one that is highly documented that...
It provides evidence that the death toll in Gaza from Israeli violence is at least 50% higher than the health officials in Gaza are claiming.
The official death toll is 46,000.
The Lancet article estimates that just from Israeli violence it's about 65,000.
There's been all sorts of reasons to believe, despite the U.S. media and Joe Biden's attempt to impugn these death numbers as coming from the, quote, Hamas-run health department in Gaza and therefore unreliable.
In the past, the official death count from Israeli bombing that came from these agencies is always undercounted because they simply count the number of bodies that go through the morgue.
And so many of these bodies are under rubble or blown up to bits and never end up making it to the morgue.
And that's to say nothing of all the people who have died from starvation or untreatable diseases.
They were unable to get treated because of the lack of medication and the destruction of most hospitals in Gaza.
And We've seen enough to know how hideous this war is that the United States is absolutely responsible for, but the true extent of it, to say nothing of the utter horrors, the morally twisted, demented behavior of the Israeli...
of Israeli soldiers inside their detention camps.
They've rounded up huge numbers of Palestinians and put them in dungeons with no charges.
People have just been disappeared.
There's widespread, well-documented reports of sexual abuse and rape inside these detention facilities.
We've seen video of Israeli soldiers from mass raping Palestinian detainees and then protests in defense.
Of the soldiers who did that when the Israeli government was forced to try and discipline them, all of this is going to come out and emerge over the next several months and years once this war finally ends in a way that I think is going to be shocking.
Back in April, NPR reported on the resignation of that State Department Diplomat, the one that was just interviewed by 60 Minutes.
There you see the headline, State Department Diplomat Resigns in Protest of U.S. Policy in Gaza.
Quote, I've been a diplomat for 18 years, really my entire adult life.
But the policy really became unacceptable.
I was holding out, hoping to try to change things from the inside, until I realized at one point that this policy was undermining U.S. interest.
It was destabilizing the Middle East.
And it was indeed a failed policy.
And with that, I decided that I could no longer be part of the department and decided to submit my resignation.
I wrote daily reports back to this department initially after the conflict for months, explaining and reporting and documenting how the U.S. was being seen on Pan-Arab media.
How our favorability was plummeting.
How we were demonized as child killers.
I did this formally.
I did this informally.
Again, I was stopped from doing this, but I kept on doing it.
It became abundantly clear that no matter what I did, no matter what other diplomats did, the policy was the policy.
The idea that U.S. support for Israel, steadfast, unstinting, unconditional, limitless support for Israel.
Is part of the reason, in fact, one of the main drivers for why there's so much anti-American anger and hatred and animus in that region?
Has been a known secret in Washington for many years.
Top generals have pointed it out and then been attacked as anti-Semites and forced to apologize when doing so.
Here was Haritz in March of 2010. There you see the headline.
Headline, U.S. General, Israeli-Palestinian conflict foments anti-U.S. sentiment.
General David Petraeus said, conflict presents direct challenges to our ability to advance U.S. interest in the region.
And then he was forced to apologize very shortly thereafter from the Jerusalem Post in March of 2010. Quote, I didn't say Israel was intransigent.
Petraeus phones the IDF chief to reassure him his comments were spun out of context.
It's extremely obvious if the entire Arab region, if the entire Middle East, the populations of Jordan and Egypt and Saudi Arabia and the Arab Emirates and Bahrain and everyone in that region.
Is watching the same video that you're watching, but even more so on Al Jazeera and other Arab outlets that actually show it all day long, of course they're going to see not just that Israel is slaughtering huge numbers of Palestinians, but that there's no way for them to have done so and do so without the direct support of the Biden administration that provides all those weapons that they use.
60 Minutes actually documented That one of the worst bombings Israel carried out that killed a huge number of civilians had American markings all over the weapons they used.
This is the scene filmed in May by CBS News in Gaza.
Children on top of rubble playing with ammunition casings.
The same casings used to prop up these tense cities.
A close look reveals where they come from.
Printed on the side, USA, DOD for Department of Defense.
Across this now decimated 25-mile-long strip of land, America's stamp is everywhere.
And you can just see, just look at that picture right there for anyone who wants to claim that this has been some sort of discriminating, targeted...
Bombing campaign on the part of Israel.
You look at Gaza, every part of it, and it's just fully in rubble.
Block after block after block.
Been flattened.
Indiscriminately.
Residential buildings, hospitals, schools, all of it.
Mosques.
All of it has been bombed.
There's barely anything left standing.
And there's 2.3 million people living in this densely packed area with their entire civilian infrastructure.
Destroyed for a long, long time.
Here was the same 60 Minutes segment last night that shows one specific war crime for sure, which was the use of a 2,000 pound American bomb, several of them in fact, which even the United States has stopped using in urban areas because of the impossibility of avoiding not just quote-unquote collateral damage, but massive, massive Killing of children and all sorts of civilians.
Here's what 60 Minutes documented.
Among the weapons Israel requested from the United States, 2,000 pound bombs, one of the most powerful in the U.S. arsenal, typically used to destroy large targets like weapons depots.
Nearly three weeks after the October 7th attacks, the Israeli military posted a video on social media of an airstrike in Gaza City, saying it targeted a Hamas tunnel.
More than 100 people were also killed, including 81 women and children, according to Air Wars, a British non-profit that monitors civilian harm in conflict.
This is what the neighborhood looked like before the strike, and this is the aftermath.
Here is what, prior to October 7th, for those of you who want to claim or anyone who wants to claim that the Israelis have been targeted, they've been careful, the most mortal army in the world is the idea.
Here is what this strip of land of this neighborhood looked like prior to Israelis, U.S.-funded and armed bombing campaign in Gaza.
You see...
Blocks of structures or residential structures and businesses standing in this very same area.
It's all gone.
It's just not there anymore.
It's just obliterated.
It's flattened.
Turned into a parking lot, essentially.
So if you want to defend the Israelis, make those arguments, but don't lie to anybody and say that this has been a targeted, careful bombing campaign.
When everyone can see with their own eyes that it's false to the point that even 60 Minutes now has to run an entire segment on how harmful this has been to the United States, here's the rest of that.
The aftermath.
Several sources we spoke to say Israel likely used multiple 2,000-pound American bombs.
Two months later, President Biden warned that Israel was losing support for what he called indiscriminate bombing.
Last May, he halted a shipment of the 2,000-pound bombs.
Just to be clear, he halted that shipment for about a week or two.
And when he halted it, the Israelis already had all the bombs that they needed.
And there's no reason to be using 2,000-pound bombs in densely packed urban areas.
No reason whatsoever, unless your goal is to completely obliterate the place that you're bombing.
While, according to Israeli media and Netanyahu's allies, Donald Trump is pressuring the Israelis to...
Agree to a ceasefire with Hamas.
Here's a P just last week on what Joe Biden is doing.
Quote, Congress is notified by the Biden administration of a planned $8 billion weapons sale to Israel.
Quote, the United States paused a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel in May over concerns about civilian casualties if the bombs were to be used during an assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
But in November, citing some limited progress that declined to limit arms transfers as it threatened to do if the situation did not approve.
Here is Andrew Miller, who was once the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestine Affairs.
And I can...
Not only is Andrew Miller Jewish, you don't get to be the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestine Affairs and American politics unless you have a long-demonstrated vocal history of support for Israel and for Zionism.
And that's exactly what he has.
And nonetheless, as he watched the...
War unfold in the U.S. support for it and the refusal of the Biden government to impose even the slightest limitations, even in order to protect U.S. interests.
This is the sort of thing that he began observing and saying.
The Israelis were using those bombs in some instances to target one or two individuals in densely packed areas.
And in enough instances, we saw that was in question how Israel was using it and those weapons were suspended.
Andrew Miller was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs.
He resigned last June, not in protest, but because he said he wanted to spend more time with his family.
Miller has since become the highest-ranking Biden administration official to go public with his concerns about the U.S. role in the war.
Did the U.S. ever say to Israel, we support you, but these are our red lines.
We are not going to support certain things.
There were conversations from the earliest days about U.S. The United States has supplied billions of dollars in weapons to Israel.
You're saying the government did that without setting any red lines as to how those weapons would be used?
I'm unaware of any red lines being imposed beyond the normal language about complying with international law, international humanitarian law, the law of armed conflict.
What's the message that you...
By the way, just as a reminder, it's not quite true what he said.
There was a red line that Joe Biden decreed, which was the Israelis had bombed so many places inside Gaza that nothing was safe, nowhere was safe.
So 90% of the population became internally...
And most of them went to a refugee camp in Rafa, which is where the Israelis told them to go.
And then it became apparent that Netanyahu wanted to bomb massively inside Rafa.
And Joe Biden said, you are not going to go into Rafa.
That's a red line for me.
Meaning, in presidential speak, if you do that, we will not only consider it wrong, but intolerable, and we will act against it.
And Netanyahu immediately made it clear.
That he didn't care what Biden's red lines were, even though we were paying for their war, we were arming their war, and we were diplomatically enabling it.
He went into Rafa, he destroyed Rafa, and Biden did nothing.
Nothing.
Even though Netanyahu humiliated him in the world once he said, this is our red line, and Netanyahu laughed at the red line.
And here is Christopher Miller describing that the U.S. would communicate to Israel privately, we'd like you to stop doing this and we would like you to stop doing that and that because it's harming our interest or we think it's immoral.
But because there was no threat attached to it, there was no ultimatum attached to it, there was no leverage applied, the Israelis understood very well that they could just ignore it.
And that's exactly what they did.
And that's the reason the Biden administration didn't attach ultimatums, because they wanted to be able to say they were telling the Israelis their concerns, but knowing...
That the Israelis could ignore them because the Biden administration would do nothing.
It was a public relations game they were playing at best.
Here's the rest of what, Christopher, of what Andrew Miller has to say.
U.S. has sent to the Netanyahu government.
I believe the message that Prime Minister Netanyahu received is that he was the one in the driver's seat, and he was controlling this, and U.S. support was going to be there, and he could take it for granted.
The push is if the U.S. stops supplying these weapons to its ally, that our own adversaries would not only go after that ally, it would make the region significantly less safe.
There is a danger that if the U.S. was not providing support to Israel, Hezbollah, Hamas...
However, we could have said, we are taking this step because we believe this class of weapons is being used inappropriately.
But if you use this moment to accelerate your attacks against Israel, then we are going to immediately lift our prohibition.
In May, the State Department issued a report saying it is reasonable to assess that Israel may have used American weapons in violation of international law.
But it also said it could not definitively connect American weapons to specific cases.
Now just to be clear, there's already a law in place that prohibits the provision of weapons to any country that intends to use American weapons to commit war crimes or in violation of international law.
The State Department internally It was saying there's very strong reason to believe that the Israelis are indeed violating international law.
Yet, of course, the State Department was too afraid politically and probably ideologically to cut off arms to Israel.
And so they had to concoct reasons why U.S. law didn't require them to cease sending weapons.
And one of the arguments was, well, we can't prove with certainty that the 10 worst bombings attacks.
We're actually done with American weapons, even though 60 Minutes said that they in May documented that the use of 2,000-pound bombs in heavily densely packed areas that killed huge numbers of civilians had the markings of the United States government on them.
Here's the rest of this segment.
Andrew Miller said the investigation relied heavily on Israel for answers.
It is difficult to acquire that information in an active combat zone.
But I would also say we didn't exactly work very hard to try to acquire the information.
Does Israel get the benefit of the doubt from the United States when other allies might not?
Yes, I think it's fair to say Israel does get the benefit of the doubt.
There is a deference to Israeli accounts of what's taking place.
A deference.
Israel's in the driver's seat.
They get the benefit of doubt that no other allies get.
There's a deference to what they say.
Do you think the reason might be because anybody who doesn't show that deference to Israel in American politics is instantly destroyed with $15 to $20 million of AIPAC money pouring into their district to remove them from Congress or having their reputation smeared forever?
Do you think that might be the reason why Israel gets deference and is in the driver's seat in a way that no other ally is?
I showed you before the U.S. generals, Milley was another one, including David Petraeus, who said, admitted that our unconditional blind support for Israel really undermines our interest in the region.
It makes it impossible for our operators in there.
It ruins alliances that we might pursue.
It creates immense threats to our people who are in that region, to our assets and interests that are in that region.
Here was Christopher Wray.
In that 60 Minutes report testifying before Congress that because of U.S. support for the destruction of Gaza, the terrorism threat inside the United States has never been higher.
The director of the FBI told Congress the war in Gaza has raised the threat of a terror attack at home.
We've seen the threat from foreign terrorists rise to a whole other level after October 7th.
The acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Brett Holmgren, told 60 Minutes that anti-American sentiment driven by the war in Gaza is at a level not seen since the Iraq War, and that groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS are recruiting on that sentiment, issuing the most specific calls for attacks on America in years.
Now, you can say, if you want, that we don't care.
We're willing to take, to accept increased risk of terrorist attacks on American service members in the Middle East, on American assets in the Middle East, on our homeland, because devotion to Israel is so important that we're willing to sacrifice our own interests in order to do it.
I heard that constantly throughout the war on terror, when you would point out, oh, this war of terror is supposed to be to reduce the threat of terrorism, and yet going around using drones and killing huge numbers of civilians, bombing wedding parties.
Putting people into torture chambers in Iraq and Abu Ghraib or in Guantanamo or in Bagram or in CIA black sites unleashes this anger and hatred and rage that drives terrorism, that strengthens ISIS and al-Qaeda, that serves as their recruitment.
It's completely counterproductive to what we say we're trying to do and ultimately Israel is a foreign country in the United States and its elected leaders are there to serve the interests of the American people, not the Israelis.
And it almost seems like If you say that, you're saying something taboo, even though it's supposed to be so basic.
We may already be seeing how these threats materialize.
According to the New York Post, on January 4th, the Gaza war may have been what pushed the New Orleans terrorist toward radicalization.
Experts say the one who plowed down as many people as he could, killing 15 people on New Year's morning in New Orleans.
Pledging allegiance to ISIS but also what drove him to that radicalization was watching how many Muslim and Arab children the United States is killing through its ally Israel.
The Intercept in March of last year had this title, quote, FBI warns that the Gaza war will stoke domestic radicalization, quote, for years to come.
The FBI is investigating thousands of threats related to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Quote, though FBI Director Christopher Wray cites Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, and ISIS as making new threats against America, he said that the Bureau is actually more focused on, quote, homegrown terrorist Americans as the primary current threat.
Quote, our most immediate concern has been that individuals or small groups will draw twisted inspiration from the events in the Middle East to carry out attacks here at home, he said at West Point.
I spent years reporting on these.
Terror attacks that took place in 2008 and 10 and 12 and 14 inside the United States.
People trying to blow up planes or Times Square.
Attacking Fort Hood.
Every single time.
Every single time.
When the perpetrators were detained and they were asked, why did you try and kill Americans?
Why did you try and attack the United States with a terrorist attack?
They said, because you're attacking our women and children and innocent people with your drones and your bombs.
And the only way we can get you to stop is if you taste violence as well.
Every single instance of a terrorist attack was motivated by seeing that violence unleashed in the Middle East.
That's just basic human nature.
If there were a country attacking Americans and killing Americans constantly, and there was another country behind them enabling that, a bigger country, China or Russia or whoever, by providing them arms to do that, by paying for their attacks, by Jack Lew is
the current ambassador to Israel for the United States.
He's an Orthodox Jew.
He is a long-time, very vocal supporter of Israel.
Goes without saying, you don't get to become U.S. ambassador to Israel unless that's true.
And he gave an interview at the Times of Israel on his way out of office in which he was surprisingly but sharply critical of Israel and its effects on the United States.
Here was the title, The Ambassador's Firewall Warning.
Warning, you can't ignore the impact of this war on future U.S. policymakers.
Quote, Ambassador Jack Lew lamented Israel's failure to provide real-time responses to unfolding events in Gaza, saying he and others have urged their Israeli counterparts in vain, quote, on many, many, many occasions, often in the middle of the night.
If you want to frame this story, get information out there more quickly because you know there's going to be a report out there that you think is inaccurate.
Quote, Public opinion in America, he claimed, quote, is still largely pro-Israel, but, quote, what I've told people here that they have to worry about when this war is over is that generational memory doesn't go back to the founding of the state or the Six-Day War or the Yom Kippur War or to the Intifada even.
It starts with this war.
And you can't ignore the impact of this war on future policymakers, not the people making the decisions today, but the people who are 25, 35, 45 today and who will be the leaders for the next 30 years, 40 years.
Warming to that theme, Lou pointed out, quote, that Joe Biden is the last president of his generation whose memories and knowledge and passion to support Israel go back to the founding story.
We are probably the only country in the world now.
We're the only country in the world that gives Israel the benefit of the doubt.
I think this war has been seen through a different lens around the world than it's been seen in Israel.
Watching the news in Israel, you don't see what's happening in Gaza.
A lot of focus on casualties in the IDF, but not on the other side of the equation.
But you go to the international space, it's reversed.
All you see is the civilian impact in Gaza.
You don't see reminders that it started on October 7th with a brutal attack that is ongoing because hostages are being kept in abysmal conditions.
So he's warning the Israelis.
Really not critical of Israel per se, just warning them that they should be aware of how the entire world has turned against them and inside the United States as well.
all.
Although AIPAC still maintains a pro-Israel consensus, the public opinion has severely eroded when it comes to Israel precisely because people's memories begin with their own experiences.
And there's a lot of people who didn't live through all those events that shaped older leaders like Joe Biden to become so pro-Israel.
The first thing many millions of Americans are seeing about Israel is what they've done in Gaza.
And that would sicken any decent person.
Now, it is so notable how so much of what 60 Minutes said should have been and could have been said prior to the election.
They had that May footage of a huge, massive bombing attack that had American insignia all over the weapons.
Why did they wait until now in order to Broadcast that.
The journalist Sana Saeed watched a Chris Hayes segment on MSNBC where the MSNBC host says President Joe Biden is, quote, leaving a disgraceful legacy by ignoring Israel's human rights abuses in Gaza.
Quote, a liberal president doing untold damage to the liberal international order, said Chris Hayes.
He was very proud of that.
He circulated all over the place.
Look at me.
I'm speaking out against the Democratic president.
And she said, Ah, Chris Hayes, never on time with his moralizing because of political expediency, etc., etc., and still manages to miss the mark.
How loud was Chris Hayes about Biden's, quote, untold damage to the liberal international order at any point during the last 15 months?
And that's so true of so many people who are now suddenly finding their voice and finding their bravery because they no longer need to protect Joe Biden.
Just to really underscore the point of how The willingness to sacrifice American interests to do so for political and ideological reasons, for reasons of self-preservation, for religious reasons.
Both for Jews and evangelical Christians.
Here is the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, who was asked today about whether the Congress is going to provide aid to California as it tries to cope with the massive losses in life, in homes, in property damage, whether the U.S. government will help the American state filled with American citizens called California.
and here's what he said. - Are you the public providing aid to talk about without any conditions at all? - I think we've got to have a serious conversation Obviously, there's been water resources management, forest management mistakes, all sorts of problems.
And it does come down to leadership and it appears to us that state and local leaders were derelict in their duty in many respects.
So that's something that has to be factored in.
I think there should probably be conditions on that date.
That's my personal view.
We'll see what the consensus is.
I haven't had a chance to socialize that with any of the members over the weekend because we've all been very busy, but it'll be part of the discussion for sure.
What about the debt limit increase?
What about tying the debt limit increase?
So according to Mac Johnson, aid to American citizens, to the people of California should be conditioned.
It should only...
Be received, only be given if there are certain conditions met by the leaders of California, the local and state leaders.
Which, okay, that's reasonable if you want to think that way.
Except, the very same Mike Johnson wants to give billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars of American taxpayer money to Ukraine with no conditions.
And will become vehemently enraged, as will most Republicans and Democrats in Washington, if you even suggest.
That aid to Israel should be conditioned.
Do you see the priority scheme here of the people in Washington?
Aid to California should be conditioned, but it's outrageous to suggest that aid to Israel or Ukraine should be conditioned.
Because the people of those foreign countries and the need to fuel their war is always a higher priority, a more pressing priority, than the welfare and interest of the American people.
And if that doesn't illustrate that point very well, I don't know what does.
As horrifying and grim as all of this is, whenever you talk about the true nature of this war, it is encouraging that the historical narrative, the historic record, the journalistic recognition of just how criminal this war has been and how crucial Did
you resolve to get healthier this year as part of your New Year's resolution in 2025?
If you did, great.
If you didn't, you should think about it.
So then the question is, how are you going to do it?
With supplements?
Okay, that's good.
Some green fruit and vegetable drink?
Fine.
But then ask yourself, do any of these promise better health?
They do not.
What's the point of green drinks and health supplements if you aren't 100% confident that they'll improve your health?
The field of greens better health promise makes it radically different.
Listen to this.
Enjoy a delicious field of green drinks each day and at your next checkup, your doctor will notice your improved health.
Or you get your money back.
How in the world can Field of Greens promise better health?
Because each fruit and vegetable was doctor selected for a very specific health benefit for some part of your body, some vital organ.
There's a heart health group, lungs and kidney groups, metabolism, even healthy weight.
One day a drink is all it takes.
You'll look and feel healthier with more energy fast and your doctor will notice your improved health.
Or you get your money back at 20% off your first order with the code GLEN at fieldofgreens.com.
That's code GLEN at fieldofgreens.com.
Fieldofgreens.com.
As any viewers of this show undoubtedly know, Kamala Harris spent the last many weeks of her campaign believing apparently that the way she would win the election is by hugging and touting the noble patriotism of Dick and Liz Cheney.
In her presidential debate, which is where millions of Americans got their first look at Kamala Harris, she very excitedly touted the fact that she was so proud that she had the endorsement of former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney.
She then took Liz Cheney around with her as though it were her running mate to all sorts of places in the Midwest that have been de-industrialized as a result of NAFTA and free trade and the corporatism of Bush and Cheney, who everybody remembers lied the country into war.
Somehow they thought that holding up Liz Cheney as the standard bearer of Democratic Party politics would be electorally beneficial, including in Michigan.
Where one of their big problems was that huge numbers of Arab and Muslim voters were refusing to vote for them because of their support for violence in the Middle East and somehow their solution was, oh, let's show them Liz Cheney.
Liberal outlets have made Liz Cheney their hero.
Have he praised on Dick Cheney?
And it's hard to overstate for people who didn't live through it, who don't remember it, who weren't paying attention back then, how...
Intense and absolute was the Democratic Party hatred, the liberal hatred for Dick Cheney.
And Liz Cheney is, she owes our entire political order to Dick Cheney, not because that's her dad only, although obviously that's a big part of it, but also because she supported every single one of his signature policies and still does, from the war in Iraq to torture and Guantanamo and rendition and CIA black sites.
In 2020, she tried to block Donald Trump from withdrawing from Afghanistan.
She has all those same ideologies, and yet the Democratic Party has decided that they love Liz Cheney.
And if you don't believe that, and of course Democrats will deny that, liberals will deny that, no, it's not that we love Liz Cheney.
We just formed an alliance with her because she opposed Trump.
But the reality is that even Liz Cheney said the reason she and her dad supported Kamala Harris wasn't just because of January 6th and Trump's refusal to accept the result of the 2020 election, but also because she said that Kamala Harris and the Democrats' foreign policy is far closer to the Cheney family than the Trump-led but also because she said that Kamala Harris and the Democrats' foreign policy is And she's absolutely right about that.
That's why neocons in general are integrated into the Democratic Party now.
That is their ideology.
It's kind of a mesh of establishment dogma between the two parties over the years that has all consolidated behind the Democratic Party and away from Donald Trump.
And in case you think that's an exaggeration, in case you think that I'm exaggerating, we showed you a couple weeks ago Joe Biden hanging from Liz Cheney's neck, not a noose, not
But a medal, the second highest possible medal that an American citizen can get from the president, and all those Biden staffers and liberals and Democrats filling that room stood up and screeched the way teenagers would if they see Taylor Swift.
I mean, it was like the most sustained ovation, a standing ovation, but just it was so visceral.
They love Liz Cheney.
They just, they cannot express their reverence for her enough.
The president at the time was George W. Bush.
And if you can go back and hear liberals talking about George W. Bush, you will quickly realize that nothing they're saying now about Donald Trump is new.
And yet the Biden White House today, presumably from Joe Biden, in the name of Joe Biden, he announced this.
Statement from President Biden announcing the names of CVN-82 and CVN-83.
Those are new aircraft carriers.
I am proud to announce that the next two Gerald R. Ford-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers will be named for two former presidents, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
When I personally delivered the news to Bill and George, they were deeply humbled.
Each knows firsthand the weight of the responsibilities that come with being Commander-in-Chief.
May God protect all who sail aboard USS William J. Clinton, USS George W. Bush, and every other ship in our fleet.
Leave aside all the commentary about Bill Clinton, the fact that he's been incredibly accused of sexually harassing women, of lying about it, even of raping them, a party that claims to take so seriously these kinds of accusations and yet has every four years invited Bill Clinton to speak in primetime at their convention and stood on their feet and cheered for him,
when a tiny fraction And the irony of naming an aircraft carrier after George W. Bush is that George W. Bush's most notorious moment came in April of 2023 when he did this absurd stunt of political theater when he flew a
fighter jet.
Onto an aircraft carrier, and they unveiled that sign called Mission Accomplished, pretending that the Iraq War was over and had been won a month into the war, even though weapons of mass destruction had not been found.
And obviously over the course of the next several months and the next several years, the entire country exploded.
Thousands of American soldiers were killed.
The war went on forever.
Nothing was accomplished.
So any kind of homage that's paid to George W. Bush by the Democratic Party shows just how completely craven they are.
To name an aircraft carrier, the SS George W. Bush, USS George W. Bush, just has that touch of irony that you could not invent.
And I think it's so interesting to listen to the Democratic Party talk about how much they love Dick Cheney, how grateful they are to Liz Cheney, to constantly herald...
Neocons like Bill Kristol and Ann Applebaum and David Frum as the most brilliant foreign policy thinkers and writers and now to pay homage to George W. Bush.
And then they have the audacity to turn around and say to people like me or to others, you've changed.
Why have you changed?
You're the ones keeping praise on George Bush and Dick Cheney and all their progeny.
And all of those neocons who...
Light the country into war who have massive amount of blood on their hands that are dripping and will be until they go to their grave and long after are now the people who are your thought leaders, who are your favorite pundits, whose books you buy, and you have the audacity to turn around and say to others, how have you changed?
The Democratic Party is now the party of the Bushes and the Cheneys.
That's why George Bush's and Dick Cheney's formal spokeswoman, Nicole Wallace, is the most beloved liberal Pundit on MSNBC after Rachel Maddow.
That whole gang are Democrats.
And they're not just Democrats following the Democratic Party.
They're leading it.
There's a merger because their ideology is the same.
The Democratic Party was always fine with George Bush and Dick Cheney in reality, in private.
Nancy Pelosi's daughter made a film in which she talked about how even though they used to accuse each other of all sorts of things, George W. Bush and Nancy Pelosi loved each other and were extremely close personally to the point where she considered Nancy Pelosi's daughter did George W. Bush to be a member of the family.
But at least there was some public pretense of vitriol and disagreement.
Now that's gone because they're absolutely on the same side.
They've completely merged.
I despise Dick Cheney every bit as much today as I did 20 years ago.
It's the Democrats who are heralding his greatness and naming aircraft carriers after George W. Bush, not me.
All right, I want to talk to you about a tennis controversy, a controversy that is bubbling through the world of women's professional tennis, which seems like a topic that would be the last sort of thing that I would talk about on this show.
Now, in part, I do follow tennis very closely.
I play tennis.
I've followed tennis for a long time very closely.
Men and women's tennis.
So, in part, I know what's going on for that reason.
But I also decided to talk about it, not as a tennis controversy, but just because it so illustrates how our discourse and our mentality about men and women and the cultural discourse surrounding them have, I guess you could say, evolved.
I would say degraded.
We're so often the people who claim that they believe in the ability of women to be equal, to participate fully in our political life, in our social life, are actually people who see women in a very patronizing way.
I see them as very weak and fragile.
People who constantly need to be chivalrously protected and white knighted while they pretend that they are allies of women and sticking up for women.
In fact, they're just...
They're revealing that they have a view of women as being incapable of their own autonomy or of confronting the same sorts of criticisms or given the same sorts of liberties as anybody else.
So I just want to tell you this story.
I'm going to just walk you through it not too long, just a little bit quickly, and then you'll see how...
Bizarre and insane this scandal is, but how reflective it is of modern-day mores about how we think of women, especially those people who like to think that they are the ones who protect the little ladies from the things that might hurt them.
All of this centers around a tennis player named Elena Rabakina, who is actually Russian.
She was born in Russia.
She grew up in Moscow.
But she plays now for Kazakhstan simply because Kazakhstan offers money to Russian players to play for them, for their country.
And in 2022, July of 2022, Elena Rabakina won Wimbledon, one of the two most important tennis tournaments along with the U.S. Open.
She won Wimbledon.
She became a top player and continues to this day to be one of the top three or four women's players.
And there's a little irony here because 2022, July of 2022, was just a few months after the Russian invasion and the UK decided that all of its sporting events inside the UK would have to ban Russian and Belarusian players.
And Wimbledon alone actually banned Russian and Belarusian players.
And so the person who ended up winning Wimbledon was Elena Rabakina, who in fact is Russian.
She just didn't get included in the ban because she technically plays for Kazakhstan.
And Princess Catherine had to hand her the trophy to a Russian player, even though the whole point was that those were supposed to be advanced.
So she had an Askerus round that win.
A lot of the best players weren't there because of how pathetic the British are.
But in any event, she rose to the top of her sport.
She won Wimbledon.
She was 23 at the time that she won.
So she really did become a top player.
Now, the way she became a top player was that at the age of 17, When she was very unknown, she wasn't really a prodigy.
She wasn't really expected to rise to the top of the game.
She was lingering in the lower ranks of tennis, not even 200 in the world.
She hired a coach at the age of 17 whose name is Stefano Vukiv, who is from Croatia, and he became her coach over several years, and she skyrocketed to the top of the rankings to the point where she was in the top ten and then won Wimbledon.
And usually, women's players in particular fire their coaches every six months or a year.
There's very few that are long-lasting relationships.
But this was her coach for, from the time she was 17 until late last year, many, many years.
It was an extremely successful coach-player relationship, obviously.
And yet, for some reason, several people in the world of tennis, coaches, former players, commentators, journalists, decided, That they didn't like the relationship.
They didn't like the way in which those two interacted.
They didn't like, in particular, the way Elena Rebecca and his coach spoke to her, tried to motivate her.
They thought it was kind of disrespectful and even abusive.
One of those former players, Pam Shriver, who is also now an ESPN commentator, she's also a coach, went onto Twitter in January 2023. As she watched Elayna Rabakina go to the finals of the Australian Open, made another final of a major, and she just decided to say this on Twitter, quote, as I watch Rabakina try to win her second major in seven months, I hope she finds a coach who speaks and treats her with respect at all times and does not accept anything less.
Pam Shriver had never talked to Elayna Rabakina.
She had never talked to her coach.
She knew nothing about it.
She just decided, I don't like this relationship, but I'm going to publicly imply that the coach is abusive.
And someone on Twitter responded and said, not sure, but it seems that she is quite happy with him, despite these antics.
And then Shriver responded, happy with not being treated respectfully?
Not a good life pattern.
So this created a big controversy that her coach was abusive to her, that he was toxic and disrespectful, that she should fire him, even though she never once even insinuated that she thought that that was the case.
They all decided for her.
That she was being treated unfairly even though she's a very wealthy tennis player.
She makes many millions of dollars a year.
She's surrounded by agents.
She has a lot of power.
And they decided that even though she never complained, this coach should somehow be disciplined or even fired.
And as this controversy grew, she actually went on to Instagram and said, After a great Australian Open where she made the final, I have seen some disturbing comments on social media about the behavior of my coach, Stefano Vukov.
I want to clarify any misinterpretations.
Stefano has believed in me for many years before anyone else did.
We plotted a strategy together on how I could achieve great things, and his method shows in my Grand Slam success so far.
He is a passionate coach with a lot of knowledge about tennis, unlike people that are making these comments.
He has great knowledge about me as a person and as an athlete.
Those who know me well will know that I would never accept a coach that didn't respect me and all our hard work.
I may be quiet on court and in general, but inside me is a competitive athlete that wants to achieve great things, and Stefano has helped me greatly in this way.
way, so please disregard any fake news to the contrary." And she's talking about this often, that he's a very vocal, animated coach, and she is very stoic.
When she went Wimbledon, she barely expressed any emotion.
She's just very quiet and internal, kind of closed.
And so they make a good team, according to her.
And yet people just didn't stop.
Even when she kept defending him and saying, no, this is a very healthy relationship.
It's helped me a lot.
She's never once even implied that she was being treated unfairly.
All of these people in Dennis and in...
Media, and it kept saying, this is really toxic, this relationship is terrible, she's being abused.
Remember, this is not a 15-year-old girl.
She was 22 when she won Wimbledon, she's now 25, 25 years old.
At the end of last year, she briefly announced that he would no longer be part of her team, and there was a lot of gossip that the reason was that he had been suspended from being allowed to be a coach by the Women's Tennis Association, but it was all kind of gossipy.
But then, at the end of last year, at the beginning of this year, she announced that he was coming back and would be her coach again and would travel with her to Australia, where they are now for the Australian Open.
And the sports section of the New York Times, which is The Athletic, which used to be a good sports magazine that the New York Times purchased, and they do a lot of good sports reporting, this is what they revealed on January 2nd.
Quote, Elena Robachna's former coach, Stefano Vukov, has been suspended by the WTA, the Women's Tennis Association.
Under a code of conduct investigation, quote, Vukov is barred from obtaining a WTA credential and Tennis Australia will not issue him accreditation for the first Grand
Slam of the 2025 season.
Vukov has denied breaching the WTA's code and Rabakina, the world number six, has repeatedly stated that Vukov's conduct order has never been abusive.
She has made these statements clear the WTA tore.
According to her representative briefed on the ongoing investigation, the WTA launched the investigation last year.
After complaints were made about his conduct, described as intense and at times harsh by others within the sport.
While other coaches and commentators, including Pam Shriver, a coach of Donna Vekic and an analyst for ESPN, publicly criticized Vukov, Rabakina defended him.
And she was not one of the complainants to contact the WTA tour.
Quote, definitely never abused anyone, Vukov wrote in a text message during his flight to Australia Thursday from Dubai.
But, quote, I mean, isn't this remarkable?
You have this woman adult, this female adult, 25 years old, top of her game, making millions of dollars a year.
She's been with her coach for the last...
Eight years, she's never once hinted or implied that he's treated her with anything but respect.
They've had great success together.
And a bunch of other people who don't even know them have decided that he should be banned from coaching because he treats her improperly, disrespectfully, abusively.
That their relationship is toxic.
Meaning, they know better for her what's good for her better than she does.
When she announced that she was bringing back that coach, Stopped for about only two months.
Pam Schreiber went back onto Twitter on January 1st and said Elena Rabacchina announces that Stefano Vukov is part of her team again.
Quote, hello everyone.
Oh, Elena, this is actually the announcement when she announced that she was...
That she was coming back on the team.
Elena Rabakina announces that Stefano Vukov is part of her team again.
Hello, everyone.
I'm excited to announce that Stefano will be joining the team for the 2025 season.
Thank you for all the support and wishing you a great 2025. And then in response, Pam Schreiber announced on Twitter, quote, It's time for our entire sport to finally stand up to known abuse and cult-like manipulations of players.
This is a very sad situation and my prayers are with Elena Rabakina.
My prayers are with her.
For a couple of years, from 2020 until about 2023, the Women's Tennis Association innovated this new feature where coaches were allowed to go onto the court on changeovers when they changed sides and give coaching to the player.
And in exchange, they would have to wear microphones so that the audience could hear.
So the audience is getting a sort of glimpse into the player-coach relationship, how they admit match, make adjustments, or analysis of strategies.
And that was where a lot of people started deciding.
It was the middle of a match, very intense match, high-level match.
And he would go on to court.
He had about 90 seconds to try and tell her what she was doing wrong, what she needed to do more of.
And this is when people decided that they didn't like how he talked to her.
So here's just a little bit of a glimpse of some of the clips that caused all of that anger.
Go for it in this moment.
You have many times that the ball is, you're too much stuck on this side and you want to repeat some angle that you don't have in space.
You understand?
So when the ball is short, attack the forehand, go forward.
You understand?
It's perfect, because you see that at the end of the day, she's missing from that side.
From the backhand, she's making one million balls.
And either you play, like, really, you have to overheat four, five, six balls to get the points on that side.
And we're playing a little bit too much to the backhand side.
A little bit too much.
Okay?
It's fine when you feel it played, big targets.
Play on the forehand.
But, halo, look at it.
When the ball is short, you don't need to overheat it.
Because sometimes the ball is short and you're swinging so big, okay?
And then you're missing by this much or a little bit long, or you go off the rhythm.
Make yourself space when she's spinning the ball.
When the ball is coming to you, okay, hold the rhythm, it's fine.
But when you see this kind of ball, give yourself a little bit of space.
It's very difficult to play off the bounce with balls.
Eden, come on, let's go this game.
What is it?
I think to find the rhythm, take some time.
No, no, we were indoors for some weeks.
Yeah, so of course.
No, no, no.
I don't want you to slap the balls.
I want you to put pressure on the forehand side to be ready.
When the balls are a little bit short, approach them.
Don't hit them.
Wait and then stay in the same spot.
Remember, the slower the hand, the worst idea.
A little bit wider with the legs, a little bit down.
Extend the hand more forward, because when you try to do a little bit more spin, your follow force is becoming a little bit too short.
So okay, extend into the shot.
All right, so that's some of that.
And then here's a little bit more.
So that's the big offense when he says, Listen to me.
Don't talk, Jesus Christ.
You're always wanting to talk.
You're always complaining.
And she was laughing.
They obviously have a very close relationship.
That's how he motivates her.
This is the relationship that they have, the dynamic that she wants, that has worked very well for her.
And so people looked at all these things and said, this is wrong.
She may not think it's wrong, but it's really wrong.
We can't allow this to happen.
And so they created such a...
This narrative, such a defamation attack on him that he was some kind of an abuser, that he was psychologically manipulating her, that he actually got suspended.
And once he got suspended and the WTA said, this can't be your coach, we're not going to allow him onto the stadium, we're not going to allow him onto the facilities, pending an investigation, she gave interviews where she repeatedly defended him and expressed an outrage that her autonomy and her judgment were being overridden by other people.
Here is an interview she gave.
Well, I'm working with Goran, and these articles came out.
I mean, I can only say, and I said it already before, that he never mistreated me, or it was never anything like that.
I mean, I'm working with Goran.
I'm happy the way we work now for the couple of weeks.
And as I also said that Stefano is joining my team, rejoining the team, because I know the person for six years and there is a lot of things we can do outside of the court too.
And of course I'm not really happy with the situation.
I'm not happy with the comments which I see, especially from the people who are on the tour.
It's active coaches, commentators.
I don't think that it's fair.
But the only thing I can say is that he never mistreated me.
I have respect to him for everything he did from the very beginning when I was 200, all the way what we did.
I don't know.
You can name me other coaches who had the same success with players who've been 200 and then winning Grand Slam and being in the top.
So no matter how much she keeps saying, this is the coach that I want, he never mistreated me, the way he coaches me is what I need and what I want.
All these people continue to say that she's somehow a victim and just doesn't realize it and they know better even though they don't know her, never met her.
So she went to the Australian Open.
This week, and she gave an interview prior to the tournament beginning, and she was asked about this, and she again had to just emphatically say that these people have no idea what they're talking about.
Talk us through this situation with Stefano and what capacity you'd like him, what role he's going to be playing on your team, what you'd like him to be doing on your team.
How much you've been told about what he'll be able to do moving forward?
Well, first of all, like with the whole situation, I don't want to speak much about what's going to be next, but definitely, as I said before, I don't agree with a lot of things, what WTA do in the sense of my relationship with Stefano, as I said before, that I have never made any complaints or...
Any of these things, and I always said that he never mistreated me, so that's one thing, and since the situation how it is now, I don't really want to speak about this more, and I want to focus on my matches here.
So she said, I don't want to speak about this more, my coach never mistreated me, he's being unfairly accused, and of course they kept asking her about it, and then here's a little bit more of what she said.
Okay, Ben and Courtney.
Ben?
You were mentioning not being happy with the comments that other coaches and commentators were making.
Do you understand why they're making these comments or why they're concerned about the situation?
Well, I get that one of the coaches, I don't know her personally, she never came to me, she never talked with me, but I know her story.
It's sad, but it doesn't mean that other players are facing the same issues.
And since she doesn't know me, I don't know her.
I don't think it's fair to make any comments like that, especially being an active coach and being a commentator, journalist, and so on.
Courtney?
So he's talking about one of the main accusers who never even came and talked to her, doesn't know her.
This accuser, Pam Schreiber...
Had a coach for her entire life, starting when she was 15 until she was 30, her whole playing career.
And she waited until he was 82 years old and he died.
And afterwards, she accused him of having sexually assaulted her from when she was 15. And then she thought she was in love with him.
She stayed in a romantic relationship with him, even though he was married, all the way until he was 30. And I guess she thinks that because it happened to her, it's happening to everybody else.
But no matter how many times this tennis player, Linda Robach, is going to keep saying, I'm not a victim.
People should stop trying to protect me from things I don't need protection from.
They just can't stop because they really believe that she is incapable of deciding for herself and needing protection.
And the reason why I bring this all up is because it's so obvious that if this were a male player and the coach was speaking to her, Not just in the way that he speaks to her, but in even a much more aggressive way, which is very common in sports.
Nobody would be saying anything.
These people who think that they're such allies of women, that they're such feminists, that they're standing up for women against abusive men, are doing so simply because they think that only men can be spoken to that way and not women, that women are too fragile and can't handle it.
Has anybody watched an NFL game, a football game, and seen how coaches and players scream?
Insane vulgarities at each other, threatening each other with physical abuse in the heat of the game.
And nobody ever says, oh, this coach is acting abusively and inappropriately and disrespectfully and this is a toxic relationship.
Just take a little bit.
This is just some random montage of a few clips that happens all the time.
The Giants' right guard was called for a false start.
He has a few things to say to the guys, and then about a minute or two later, he comes back over to the sideline.
Brian Dayball, one of the Coach of the Year candidates going into the second half.
On Russell Williams, Wilson.
Quincy Williams on the wall.
Possession there, and I'll tell you, when Dallas' defense came over to the sideline, they were gassed, and Chris Richard is getting in the faces of his linebackers, urging them.
In week four, and we have a marker down on the field, and Wisenhunt is hot.
Who do you think that's on?
I think that's on Malpia.
I'm really confused, right?
Well, there is a very animated discussion.
But look at this.
Tom Brady and Bill O'Brien, his offensive coordinator, fill in the blanks.
That is a heated conversation.
See, Josh is like, you had the end cut.
He was open.
And Tom's like, you know what?
I know he was open.
You know what?
I know he was open.
I know it.
Just Tom, I just...
I mean, that's what you see all the time.
And you can just apply this.
And the reason why I wanted to talk about this, other than the fact that I do think it's interesting unto itself, is because you see this happening all the time.
If you criticize some high-level government official or some influential media figure, and it's a woman, a lot of people will come and say, you're generating violence and harassment toward women as though women can't be criticized in the same way as men.
A lot of times when women say, I don't feel victimized.
This is not a concern to me.
A lot of other people come and say, oh, she just doesn't know.
She's been acclimated to accept abuse without even realizing that it's abuse.
Imagine just the audacity of overriding some other adult's judgment about what's best for their own life, about what kind of relationship they find fulfilling and they find productive.
And so much of this is based on so much identity politics.
This condescension toward...
Women or to minority groups, it's the same exact dynamic.
This sort of patronizing attitude that people in these minority groups or women are too fragile and too weak to be treated in the same way as other people.
And it really is this sort of sexism or bigotry or just kind of lack of faith in other people that masquerades as enlightenment and liberal chivalry and protection.
And that's why I found this tennis...
Scandal is so interesting because it's a particularly extreme version where this woman is saying and you saw her and you hear her over and over.
None of this ever happened.
These people who are saying this have no idea what they're talking about.
I want him to continue as my coach.
It's been a very fruitful relationship and even though they pretend that they're allies of women, the reality is that they don't really believe that adult women are capable of making their own decisions, of enduring the same sorts of criticism.
Even a tiny fraction of what those male football players endure that nobody would ever think to comment on it.
So it is a really interesting scandal.
It seems like it doesn't have a resolution that they're going to continue to keep this coach banned, notwithstanding the fact that there's no victim, there's no complaining victim, because other people have decided that this little lady needs protection and they know better for her life than she knows what is best for her.
All right, so that concludes 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 their first broadcast live here on Rumble on Spotify, Apple, and all the major podcasting platforms where if you rate, review, and...
Follow our show.
It really helps by the visibility of the program.
Finally, 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.
We take your questions, comment on your feedback and critiques, hear your suggestions for future show and guests.
That After Show is available only for members of our local community.
So if you'd like to join, it gives you access to those After Shows, a whole bunch of other interactive features.
There's exclusive original video content that we publish there.
And most of all, it is really the community on which we rely to support the independent journalism that we do every night to enable the show to continue.
All you have to do is click the Join button right below the video player on the Rumble page, and it will take you directly to that platform.
For those of you who have been watching this show, we are, needless to say, very appreciative.
