Judge Orders Hearing on Columbia Student Deportation Case; Is the Ukraine Ceasefire Plan Serious? Trump Attacks Thomas Massie for His Budget Vote
Glenn discusses what's next for Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia grad who faces deportation because of his pro-Palestinian activism. Then: is the US-proposed Ukraine ceasefire deal going to finally end the fighting? Finally: Trump attacks Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie for opposing the Republicans' proposed funding bill, threatening to oust the fiercely independent-minded representative.
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight...
A federal judge in New York held a hearing today on the attempted deportation of Columbia grad student and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil for the crime of protesting against Israel's wars.
Among other things, the judge ordered that US immigration officials allow him to speak with his lawyers and also set a date for a hearing to examine the constitutional and free speech rights at issue.
The judge had previously prevented the US government from deporting him until a hearing We'll examine that, and we'll also show you part of the debate I was able to participate in on Israel and free speech earlier today on Fox News on Will Kane's show.
Then, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky agreed to a 30-day ceasefire requested by the Trump administration.
As a result, the White House announced that it was lifting its one-day suspension on intelligence sharing and other assistance to Ukraine.
Trump officials are now waiting to hear whether Russia will agree to those terms as well.
So it leads to the question, is this really a serious step toward a diplomatic end to this horrific war?
Or is this just a ploy by the Ukraine supporters surrounding Trump in the White House and the administration to convince him that the real problem is not Zelensky but Putin and thus ensure the ongoing flow of U.S. financing of that war?
I think that's an important question.
I don't think it's an easy one to answer, so we'll do our best to delve into it.
And then finally, Republican Congressman Tom and Massey of Kentucky on Tuesday did what he often does.
He followed his principles and conscience rather than the mandates of political expediency by being the sole Republican in the House to vote against what is called a continuing resolution, essentially a mechanism to keep the government operating, even though none of the various budgetary and debt issues have been resolved.
It basically gives the government more time, many more months, to try and get a budget deal done without having to shut down the government.
In response, Trump attacked Massey explicitly.
And on two occasions by comparing him to Liz Cheney.
And urging that Congressman Massey be removed from Congress via a primary challenge.
We'll tell you about that and analyze all of its implications.
Before getting to all of that, a few program notes.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
If you talk to any committed civil libertarian or First Amendment lawyer or free speech activist, I mean, people who really do that for a living, who have made people who really do that for a living, who have made those values central to their life's work, you will hear the same thing all the time, which is that most people, by no means all, but most people embrace a cause of
But most people embrace a cause of free speech whenever they're out of power, their side is out of power, or when the views that they like or their political allies are the target of censorship.
Those people will love free speech advocates, They'll support them.
They'll applaud them.
But the minute there's a change of power or the type of speech that is targeted with censorship changes, the allies of a civil libertarian are a free speech advocate.
as well as their opponents or enemies will instantly change on a dime and it's something that everybody who works on these issues is extremely accustomed to and it's not just that it can switch on a dime based on who's being censored this time as opposed to before it's that the exact arguments that had been previously used by one side to justify censorship to the great dismay and anger of the other side suddenly start becoming the exact arguments The new censorship
side starts embracing, and you watch it, and you watch it happen, and you're hearing the exact same arguments from the people who had spent years claiming they opposed censorship.
And it's hard to believe that they don't realize that what they're saying is exactly what they had spent years before, insisting that they opposed.
And that is exactly what has been happening.
Not just since Donald Trump's election, but since really October 7th and even before that, but really in earnest in October 7th, we have had a series of very serious escalations in attempts to sanction and limit and control and punish political speech in the name of protecting Israel.
We've had legislation designed to expand the definition of anti-Semitism in the educational context to include all sorts of Common criticisms of this foreign state so that in educational law now you're allowed to say the United States is a racist entity.
You're allowed to say that China's racist.
You're allowed to say that Peru is racist.
You're allowed to say that Indonesia is a racist and colonial power.
But what you're not allowed to do is say that Israel- Is a racist or colonial project because that is considered anti-Semitism.
And there are all sorts of other instances like that where special censorship rules have been created solely to protect this one foreign state where there are things you cannot say about this foreign government that you're totally free to say about your own government or any other government in the world.
Perhaps the gravest and most serious censorship measure that arose from this attempt to shield Israel from criticism.
And out of concern to stem the tide of declining support for Israel and the United States was the law that was passed by a bipartisan majority in both the House and the Senate and signed into law by President Biden that forced a sale and divestment of TikTok or the banning of that app, something that Trump for the moment has stopped, but which even sponsors of that bill said.
Very openly and very explicitly that the reason they finally got the votes they needed to ban TikTok was because after October 7th, there was a perception that young people were turning against Israel.
It was urgent to stop them from doing that.
And the two things they blamed for that were college campuses and TikTok.
And that's why college campuses and TikTok had become two of the main targets of censorship, because there was an effort to try and ensure that People who were turning against Israel would no longer be able to hear criticisms of US support for Israel, US financing of Israel, the Israeli war in Gaza.
And the Trump campaign, Donald Trump was very open in the campaign about his intentions to punish students on college campuses who had been protesting.
The Biden administration's support for Israel, who have been protesting the Israeli destruction of Gaza.
And as is true for most of Trump's campaign promises, he is now making good on that.
His administration is making good on that.
His administration is filled with loyalists of Israel.
Of course, one of his biggest donors was the Israeli-American donor, Miriam Adelson, who gave $100 million, and by Trump's own admission...
Said that in return for those donations that she and her now deceased husband Sheldon Adelson had been making to the Republican Party, they would constantly come and ask for things and demand things from the U.S. government in order to serve the interests of Israel, and they would often get it as a result of their status of big donors.
So all of this has a very broad, clear, and longstanding context out of which these censorship controversies are now emerging.
But I don't think...
I really expected something quite as severe and as much of a deviation from the American tradition to happen so early in the Trump administration as is now happening with the attempt to deport the Columbia grad student Mahmoud Khalil, who is married to an American citizen.
His American wife is eight months pregnant.
They're about to have a baby.
American citizens have the right to marry foreign nationals, and when they do marry foreign nationals, they have the right to bring those foreign nationals to live with them in the United States.
They get green cards, and they ultimately are on the path to citizenship.
Donald Trump twice did that with two different foreign women whom he married, one of whom is now the first lady, Melania Trump, and she was able to get citizenship based on that.
And there was never, ever this notion that Green card holders in the United States are somehow barred from expressing controversial political views or criticizing the policies of the US government or engaging in political activism or political protest.
And that's what makes the decision to target Mahmoud Khalil as opposed to any of the other Columbia students who were- Who are only in the United States on a student visa, maybe for a couple of years.
It would have been, I think, less controversial.
That's what makes the decision to target him in particular.
Extra chilling, the fact that someone who's a green card holder, who's supposed to have the status of a permanent resident in the United States, I'm not suggesting that green card holders can never lose their status.
They can and they have on rare occasions if they commit violent crimes, but having green card holders.
Especially ones married to American citizens, lose the right to stay in the United States and get arrested by immigration authorities and put into deportation as a result of their political views or their political activism is something that is extremely rare in American political history.
And yet that's what the Trump administration is doing in its second month in office, obviously as a means of shielding Israel from criticism and protest.
And even if you're somebody who somehow thinks that this is justified, there's no question that it raises serious constitutional questions.
Because nobody honest can possibly deny that there's a very strong political component to all of this, that there's a very strong motivation that is based in the viewpoints that are expressed by Mohammed Khalil that led to his Activism.
If he had been protesting in favor of Israel, if he had been protesting in support of Donald Trump, if he had been protesting against the governments of Iran or Russia or China, there wouldn't be any conservatives who would be demanding his deportation or justifying his deportation.
A major component of this controversy, and I would argue by far the most significant, It's not that he was engaged in political activism and protests, but specifically was protesting U.S. support for Israel's war in Gaza and the Israeli war in Gaza itself.
And any time the state takes action against somebody inside the United States as retribution for or in response to their political views, that necessarily raises serious First Amendment questions.
And that's exactly what a federal judge...
Earlier today, essentially acknowledged he didn't rule in Khalil's favor, but he had previously imposed an injunction against his deportation pending a hearing on the constitutional and other legal issues.
And today he set a hearing for that and also ordered the lawyers for Khalil to have access to be able to speak with him because thus far that access to speak with him has been severely restricted.
Here from CBS News.
There you see the title.
Former Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil to remain detained in Louisiana for now.
Judge Jesse Fuhrman said he would grant a request by Khalil's lawyers, allowing them to have privileged phone calls with Khalil at least twice, today and tomorrow.
Khalil was arrested by Federal Immigration Authority Saturday night at his university-owned department.
Lawyers said in court Wednesday he was first brought to a detention center in New Jersey before being flown to another site in Louisiana.
Khalil's attorney said they have been unable to have privileged communications with him since they said the detention facility holding Khalil wouldn't allow that type of A couple of things to note about this.
Khalil is living in the New York area.
He is a grad student at Columbia.
There are plenty of detention facilities.
in that area why did ICE take him and bring him to Louisiana a state he has no association with not even sure he's ever visited there the reason is is because oftentimes what the government will do is try and purposely take you to a place where they know the judges are more likely to rule in favor of the government and against the person they're trying to punish and they think Louisiana is a much more hospitable It's not a legal environment for
them to try and deport a Palestinian critic of Israel than, say, New York.
So they're not content to just allow the legal system to take its course.
They're purposely trying to put him in a place where they can get a favorable judge.
Now, the other aspect of this is that the judge that they actually have, Judge Furman, is a little bit difficult for Israel supporters to try and demonize.
Because Judge Furman is not only Jewish, he's a practicing Orthodox religious Jew.
Now that hasn't stopped a lot of conservatives from trying to demonize him the minute he issued this order temporarily barring the US government from deporting Khalil so that he could at least have the opportunity to have his claims heard.
This is very common for courts to do if there's If something's going to happen that prevents you from having your legal rights determined once he's deported, it means that it's very, very difficult for him to get back to the United States.
The only real opportunity he has to raise the constitutional issues he intends to raise is if he's still physically president of the United States.
So the court simply said, pending a hearing, you cannot remove the United States.
That caused a lot of Israel supporters to attack Judge Furman, notwithstanding the fact that he himself is a practicing religious Jew.
Now, this case, I think, has provoked so much media attention, so much controversy, precisely because it's such a blunt attack on the right of speech and the right of protest.
And the Trump administration has made explicitly clear That this is by no means the only such case they intend to bring.
They intend to bring a lot of these cases and deport a lot of people, not who have committed violent crimes, not who have been charged with any criminality.
Mahmoud Khalia was never charged with a crime.
He still has never been charged with a crime.
He's not accused of assaulting anybody or using violence or doing anything else other than, as Marco Rubio put it, Expressing views that the United States government considers somehow dangerous to the foreign policy of the United States.
And there are a lot of people on college campuses now who have expressed opposition to the Israeli war in Gaza and or to the Biden administration's financing and arming of that war who are extremely worried, extremely scared.
I think it's one of the really important things to note about censorship, which is that oftentimes the purpose of the state acting against a particular individual with a particular view is not so much to get rid of that particular person.
Mahmoud Khalil is not instrumental in the protest movement against the Israeli war.
That's not why they've chosen him.
They need a test case.
In order to create a climate of fear, that's often what the government wants with censorship is it wants anybody in the future who thinks about criticizing Israel, questioning U.S. support for Israel, and most of all protesting against Israeli violence to be too scared to actually do it, to really think, wow, if they could do this to Muhammad Khalil, who has a green card and is married to an American citizen.
What would that mean if I, somebody here on a student visa or a work visa, or even if I'm a U.S. citizen, what does it mean for me if I also do that?
The Trump administration has vowed not just to deport foreigners who are on a student visa or on other visas if they participate in these protests against Israel.
They've also said that people who have done so in a way that they consider criminal will be imprisoned.
And so this climate of fear is very much part of the goal here, as it often is with censorship, as it usually is with censorship.
And we have heard from people at Columbia, people we've spoken with before, people we know, we've interviewed off the record or otherwise, who have made very clear that they have real fears about what their past activism means and believe that they aren't able to engage in the kind of expression and protests that typically The United States has promised people it's one of the reasons people come to the United States is because they believe they have the political liberty to speak their mind to denounce the things they
find objectionable.
And that's what this is all about, is polls showing declining support for Israel and the United States and therefore an attempt to attack what they regard as the causes of that declining support, namely free speech.
Social media platforms like TikTok, and especially college campuses, which have traditionally, for many decades, been the venue for all sorts of protests, at least as disruptive as the protests against the Israeli war in Gaza, and often more so.
Protests against the Vietnam War, the locus was college campuses.
The apartheid regime in South Africa that helped bring down the regime, the locus for that were American campuses, is a long tradition.
That's because people who are young in their early 20s and their mid-20s are typically more aggressive in their political activism.
They get very wrapped up in these political causes.
And so this kind of protest movements on American college campuses is part of, you can even say an iconic part.
Of the history of American academic institutions, but because this particular protest is directed at one of the most sacred issues in American public life, which is the foreign country of Israel, you're seeing a response from the state that is really quite extreme.
Now, I'm not saying there haven't been extreme responses to other kind of protests.
There was the notorious...
Incident at Kent State where protesters against the Vietnam War were actually killed.
Four of them were shot and killed by government agents.
We've had a lot of attempts to crack down on protests in the United States.
But the tradition of protesting on American college campuses is a very long and I think noble one.
And that is very much part of what is being attacked.
And that's the reason why there's been so much outpouring of anger.
about what's being done to Khalil and support for him and his constitutional rights as well.
A very large number of people gathered outside the courthouse where that hearing was held, and his lawyer ended up addressing the crowd, and this is part of what he had to say.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, everyone.
As we try to make clear in court today, what happened to Mahmoud Khalil is nothing short of extraordinary and shocking and outrageous.
It should outrage anybody who believes that speech should be free in the United States of America.
Mr Khalil is a lawful president.
He was coming home with his U.S. citizen wife.
He was eight months pregnant.
And he was taken by U.S. government agents in retaliation essentially for exercising his First Amendment rights, for speaking up in defense of Palestinians in Gaza and beyond, for being critical of the U.S. government and of the Israeli government.
Those are the reasons why he was targeted.
Those are the reasons why he was detained.
And that's the reason why the government also moved him to Louisiana for the retaliation for the fact that on the night of his arrest at home, he filed a habeas purpose petition in this court, which he also had a constitutional right to do.
And so every day that Mahmoud spends in detention in Louisiana is a day too long.
We and he fully intend to vindicate not just his First Amendment rights, but those of all Americans, frankly, and all lawful permanent residents and anybody who wants to speak out.
It simply cannot be the case that you can be disappeared at night off the streets of New York City simply because the current U.S. government, the current...
I'm not sure why that cut out there in the middle of the sentence, but he is essentially making that argument that historically, constitutionally, under very well established jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, not just American citizens, but people here legally in the country, have every but people here legally in the country, have every right to express their political views, to criticize the U.S. government, to engage in political activism and protest.
And one of the points I've tried to make previously for people who keep denying this, who keep saying, oh, the Constitution only protects U.S. citizens despite this 200-year history of Supreme Court jurisprudence that says otherwise, is that all you have to do is imagine what the United States would be like if it were really true.
That only U.S. citizens have constitutional rights on U.S. soil, and nobody else does, even if they're here in the United States legally.
And one example that I've used is that Jordan Peterson, a very popular commentator among American conservatives, is often in the United States.
I believe he lives in the United States, or if he doesn't, he's in the United States all the time.
He's not an American citizen.
He's a citizen of Canada, meaning he's a foreigner every bit as much as Mahmoud Khalil, although I don't even know if Jordan Peterson has a green card.
I don't know his legal status, but I do know he's a foreigner.
And Jordan Peterson frequently participates in political actions, speaks at political protests, denounces the policies and actions and statements of the U.S. government.
So imagine if the Biden administration, when Joe Biden was president, had said, Tired of this foreigner, Jordan Peterson, coming to our country and criticizing our country and our government.
If he doesn't like our country, he should leave and we've arrested him and we're going to deport him as a result of his constant criticisms of our administration.
Would anybody have difficulty understanding the constitutional problems there?
I think nobody would.
Precisely because everyone understands that legal residents of the United States, people in the United States on work visas or student visas, have the same Bill of Rights protections as American citizens because the Bill of Rights is ultimately a document designed to constrain and restrict what the US government can do on US soil.
Now, here is Khalil's wife, who is an American citizen.
And actually, I'm sorry, this is his legal team who is delivering to the crowd a statement from Khalil's American wife.
And here's what she had to say.
I am a staff attorney with the Clear Project and one of Mahmoud Khalil's attorneys.
And I will be reading a statement on behalf of Mahmoud Khalil's wife, who does not wish to be named.
I mean, just think about that.
She does not wish to be named.
She has not appeared in public, even though she is an American citizen.
ICE came to her house and by several reports was actually quite intimidating towards her as well, almost treating her like she's some sort of criminal or ate her in a batter of her husband's criminality.
And she's obviously afraid to come forward.
Because she understands the danger that would put her in in this climate that has been deliberately fostered, where fear is being constructed against anybody who might protest the Israeli war in Gaza.
Here's the rest of what she had to say.
My husband was kidnapped from our home and it's shameful that the United States government continues to hold him because he stood for the rights and lives of his people.
I demand his immediate release and return to our family.
His disappearance has devastated our lives.
Every day without him is filled with uncertainty.
Not just for me, but for our entire family and community.
Our loved ones are struggling with the pain and fear of his sudden absence.
And yet, we are not alone.
So many who know and love Mahmoud have come together refusing to stay silent.
Their support is a testament to his character and to the deep injustice of what is being done to him.
Thank you.
Now, earlier today I was on Fox News, and I've of course been on Fox News many, many times, especially in the Trump era.
And I've been on Fox News many, many times to talk about free speech and to denounce censorship efforts on the internet, in American life, and especially on college campuses.
There's nothing new about that.
I go on Fox News and have gone on Fox News many times.
They've called me to come and denounce censorship, which I've been happy to do.
In almost all cases, there are a couple exceptions when Tucker Carlson was on Fox News where this wasn't true, but in almost all cases, the censorship I was there to talk about was censorship that was coming from the Democratic Party or from American liberals or from the academic left.
And although I've talked many, many times and have reported on many, many times, especially since October 7th, the censorship efforts that have often come from Many conservatives or the Republican Party, often in conjunction with the Democratic Party, but emanating with the Republican Party in order to protect Israel, I've never once been asked to go on Fox News and talk about censorship or free speech as it pertains to Israel.
That changed today when Will Cain, who is a host I have a lot of respect for, He has, I think it's the 4 o'clock show, if I'm not mistaken now, and it's become actually one of the most highly rated shows on Fox, asked me to come on and debate the issue of this Columbia grad student's deportation and the free speech and censorship issues that it raises.
And it was quite a good debate.
He really did a good job.
The person whom I was debating, a very fervent Israel supporter named Brooke Goldstein, is somebody I had previously encountered.
I was on Piers Morgan's show once with her, and it was part of the reason why I vowed never to do a panel appearance of any kind because Piers Morgan had a great deal of difficulty in trying to get her to stop talking.
Some of the things she was saying were...
Quite unhinged.
But this was a much more controlled and constructive debate, I think, thanks to Will Kane, who on a couple occasions really did what he needed to do to get her to focus on the issue at hand and to sort of not filibuster.
And I'm going to break down the entire debate in our after show, on our local's after show, because, like I said, it's the first time I've been able to talk about Israel and the free speech issues involving.
The right to protest Israel and U.S. support for Israel and the United States on Fox News, other than a couple times, again, on Tucker Carlson's show where I've been able to allude to it, but never really focused there on it either.
So I think it's really worth breaking down.
I think it was a very illustrative debate about what the discourse is all about, but I just want to show you on this part of the show one part in particular that I felt it was very important to make, because in the lead-up to this segment, Will Kane had said that some on the far left,
such as Rashida Tlaib, believe or are arguing that it's not just U.S. citizens who have free speech rights, but also legal residents, making it seem like it was this fringe idea that only the far left believes in.
Obviously, Rashida Tlaib is one of the Fox boogie men, one of the people that you name and associate her with an idea that's a signal to the audience that they're immediately supposed to believe that it was wrong.
And I was able to talk in general about the principles that I think are at play to the Fox audience, but particularly address that issue, which I thought was so important to address because of that misconception that, oh, if he's not an American citizen, of course, you can punish him the minute he opens his mouth because he has no rights of any kind, even if he's a legal resident here.
So here's part of that exchange.
Where I stand here today, Glenn, but I know you look at this and you think many on the right have all of a sudden abandoned their defense of free speech.
There's no question that they have.
I mean, this is what happens when you're actually a principled free speech advocate instead of one who only objects to censorship when it's your political allies who are being targeted, which is that- A lot of people say they believe in free speech, except when it comes to the ideas they most hate, which they want silence.
I just want to make one crucial point, which is you had said people on the far route like Rashida Tlaib.
Believe that legal residents in the United States have the right to free speech.
That is an indisputable proposition that the Supreme Court has for 200 years affirmed.
And just imagine if that weren't the case.
It would mean that if, say, like, Jordan Peterson, who's not an American citizen but is always in the United States, were to go and denounce the Biden White House, the Biden White House could arrest him and deport him, and nobody could object on constitutional grounds because he's a foreigner.
Of course people legally in the United States have the right.
I appreciate you saying that and correcting me on the long-standing policy on the So he was very gracious about
that and said, you know, actually, you're right about that.
That is a longstanding.
It's not a policy.
It's a constitutional doctrine.
The ability to go on Fox and speak to that audience, and Will promoted it as well on Twitter, which brought more attention to it, was something that I was really appreciative of.
And I think the debate itself, which, as I said, was about seven minutes long, and I'm going to break it down on the locals' part of the after show, is really worth seeing how these issues have been playing out, especially in places where criticism of Israel is essentially forbidden, Fox News being one of those places.
Now, just to conclude, My discussion of this issue until we go into the after show where I'll talk about it more.
Marco Rubio, who as the Secretary of State is the official in the Trump administration who unilaterally nullified Khalil's green card, just decreed that his green card is immediately null and void, which is why He then became subject to deportation, which is what enabled ICE to go and arrest him.
One second, he was a permanent resident of the United States, and then by a stroke of a pen, Marco Rubio, with no due process, no accusations of any kind, just simply nullified his green card despite his being married to an American citizen.
And a reporter today asked Rubio about the seeming contradiction.
That so much of American conservatism in the Trump campaign was based on this veneration of free speech and this idea that people shouldn't be punished or censored because the government or others dislike the content of their political activism or their political protest, and here's what Rubio had to say.
President Trump appealed to a lot of Americans during his campaign on free speech arguments and not suppressing speech, especially from the government.
But your revocation of the green card to many is seen as one of the most anti-speech actions a secretary can take with his powers.
How do you respond?
This is an important point, and I'm glad you asked this question.
When you come to the United States as a visitor, which is what a visa is, which is how this individual entered this country, as a visitor's visa, you are here as a visitor.
We can deny you that visa.
We can deny you that.
If you tell us, when you apply, hi, I'm trying to get into the United States on a student visa, I am a big supporter of Hamas, a murderous, barbaric group that kidnaps children, that rapes teenage girls, that takes hostages, that allows them to die in captivity, that returns more bodies than live hostages.
If you tell us that you are in favor of a group like this, and if you tell us when you apply for your visa, and by the way, I intend to come to your country as a student and rile up all kinds of anti-Jewish student, anti-Semitic activities.
I intend to shut down your universities.
If you told us all these things when you applied for a visa, we would deny your visa.
I hope we would.
If you actually end up doing that once you're in this country on such a visa, we will revoke it.
And if you end up having a green card, not citizenship, but a green card as a result of that visa while you're here and those actually Okay, I just, there's so many things I have to say about that, but I just want to focus on two things in particular.
So much is being said about Khalil by people who are trying to justify his deportation for the crime of protesting Israel that has absolutely no basis in fact of any kind.
They're just making things up about him.
And the reason they're getting away with it in some factions is because a stereotype of a Palestinian or an Arab who protests Israel aligns with the things they're claiming is true about him.
Even though there's zero evidence to justify any of these accusations, including the accusations that Marco Rubio just voiced about him.
I have asked So many times, though, for someone to show me any evidence that Khalil supports Hamas or is a supporter of terrorism.
Now, I realize that there are people, Marco Rubio is probably one, and certainly a lot of conservatives cheering all of this, there are a lot of them as well, who believe That any criticism of Israel, any protest against Israel, any opposition to the Israeli war in Gaza automatically makes you a Hamas supporter.
They don't recognize the possibility that someone might think, oh, I think the Israeli war in Gaza is a war crime.
I think it's been carried out in a way completely indifferent to the value of human life.
They've been extinguishing.
Human life killing thousands and thousands of children in a way that has violated every principle of war, that you can believe that and say that without supporting Hamas or supporting October 7th.
So I know there are a lot of people who believe the instant you say that you're opposed to the Israeli war in Gaza, it somehow automatically means you're a Hamas supporter.
But beyond that, what has Khalil ever said or ever done?
That indicates support for Hamas or a hatred of Jews or a support for terrorism in general.
Nothing.
Nothing.
There are interviews with him.
In fact, he was on CNN as part of the participation in the protest where he talked about the importance of peaceful coexistence between Israeli Jews and Palestinians.
As we've...
Demonstrated many times.
We've interviewed students who participated in these protests, including at Columbia.
The Columbia protest movement, the encampment, was filled with Jewish students.
In fact, there were so many Jewish students participating in the protest movement against the Israeli war in Gaza that inside the encampment, they had a Sabbath dinner every Friday night.
There are Jewish students who worked alongside Khalil.
There is no one, nothing, That exists in this world that suggests that he has ever expressed anti-Semitic thoughts, anti-Semitic views, violence against Jews, let alone support for Hamas for October 7th.
The movement was not about that.
This movement was about a protest against the U.S. financing of the Israeli war in Gaza and protest against the Israeli war itself.
Now, were there people in these protest movements who Expressed support for Hamas?
Yes, there absolutely were.
Were there people inside the protest movements who said it was justified for Palestinians, even Hamas, to use violence, violent resistance against Israeli occupation and Israeli blockade?
Yes, there were.
There is no evidence that Khalil is one of those people.
You can go online and watch interviews with him.
You can go online, listen to people who know him.
This is completely fabricated.
They are just absolutely making it up that he's a Hamas supporter, he supports terrorism, because that's the only way under the statute that you can justify his deportation.
So it's completely fabricated.
But the other issue is that even if you believe that the law permits a revocation of a visa because of political views, and that somehow the political views he expressed are the kind that ought to justify the revocation of a visa, It's important to note, A, how extraordinarily rare something like this is, how extreme it is in the American tradition, but also how it's been done with absolutely no due process.
There's not even been an attempt to present evidence of any wrongdoing on his part, any support for terrorism, any support for Hamas.
These things are being completely fabricated.
They're things that are just being asserted with no evidence.
Because they're trying to play on people's biases and prejudices toward Palestinians, especially Palestinian critics of Israel, that somehow these are all terrorists.
In fact, functionally, the word terrorist has come to mean someone who is Arab or Muslim and opposes Israel.
In a lot of ways, that's what people mean by terrorism.
But the reality is that if you look at what the words actually mean, there is no evidence of him doing any of the things Marco Rubio, and other campus censors are trying to claim that he has actually done and again the reason for this is that they purposely picked him out because of how extreme and rare of a case this is to signal to everybody else that if we can do this to him a green card holder married to an American
citizen who's eight months pregnant then all of you ought to know That any attempt to protest Israel, to speak out against Israel on college campuses or anywhere else can subject you to equal or even worse attacks using the power of the state.
And anyone who has claimed to believe in free speech over the last decade or who has attempted to posture as an opponent of censorship, who isn't deeply concerned by all of this...
Is proving inherently that all of that prior posturing as a free speech advocate or a censorship opponent was entirely fraudulent.
It was just a byproduct of concerns that your political allies or views that you agree with are being targeted and not in any way associated with any actual genuine or principled belief in the virtues of free speech and the evils of political censorship.
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I'd argue, the defining aspect of the first Donald Trump presidential term was that he surrounded himself with people who not only Didn't share his agenda, but often were actively opposed to it.
And while Trump constructed his team for the second term, I often pointed out that I had been told many times, I had come to also believe that a lot of people close to Donald Trump were well aware that that was one of the major failings of the first Trump term, and they were determined not to allow that to happen again.
And as Trump selected people who have long been Advocates of the D.C. bipartisan foreign policy consensus in Washington about war and militarism, people like Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor and Elise Stefanik at the U.N., who's a clone of Nikki Haley and Liz Cheney.
I'd long been saying, look, these people certainly have had a history of advocacy of the foreign policy that Trump says he opposes, but I believe that Trump is choosing people based on who will be personally loyal to his agenda and who will carry it out.
And one of the areas where this was most glaring was on Ukraine, where Trump had repeatedly said during the campaign and for years, in fact, that he thought that the Biden administration's policy of financing the war in Ukraine was a mistake and that he intended to end the war.
And yet his top national security officials, like Marco Rubio, like...
Former Congressman Mike Waltz now is now a security advisor.
We're very hard-line supporters of Ukraine and Zelensky.
And how that tension would be reconciled was one of the open questions of the second Trump administration.
And we've seen Rubio and Mike Waltz and others be very publicly supportive not of their prior views but of Trump's views including in those instances where they differ.
The question is whether There will be an attempt in the second Trump administration for people like that to start subtly and in a manipulative way once Trump starts paying less attention to pursue their foreign policy rather than the foreign policy that Donald Trump says he supports.
And I think the first test of that is going to be what ends up happening with the U.S. relationship to Ukraine and Russia and the war that Donald Trump has vowed to end.
Earlier this week, the Trump administration announced that it had proposed to Ukraine a 30-day ceasefire where hostilities would stop essentially along the front lines while a peace deal was going to be worked out.
And lo and behold, President Zelensky not only agreed to it, but said all the things that Donald Trump said that he had wanted to hear from Zelensky.
And as a result, Of Zelensky's agreeing to what the United States had proposed, the Trump administration's suspension of intelligence sharing with Ukraine, the provision of certain arms to Ukraine, was instantly lifted.
There was this sense that, oh, look, Zelensky is now showing that he does want a peace deal, that he does want to work with the United States, that he is grateful for our support and is willing to do what we want.
Here's Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz announcing This agreement and you can get a sense for how it is that they're depicting it.
Today we've made an offer that the Ukrainians have accepted, which is to enter into a ceasefire and into immediate negotiations to end this conflict in a way that's enduring and sustainable, and accounts for their interests, their security, their ability to prosper as a nation.
I want to personally thank, we both want to thank the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, His Majesty, for hosting us, for making this possible.
They've been instrumental in this process, and we're very grateful to them for hosting us here today, and hopefully we'll take this offer now to the Russians.
And we hope that they'll say yes, that they'll say yes to peace.
The ball's now in their court.
But again, the president's objective here is, number one, above everything else, he wants the war to end.
And I think today Ukraine has taken a concrete step in that regard.
We hope the Russians will reciprocate.
Now, you heard there that phrase, the ball's in Russia's court.
And it's hard to overstate how many mouths that exact phrase came out of.
Not just inside the Trump administration, but...
All throughout Western Europe, including all the warmongers in Brussels who actually don't want the war to end.
So the idea here is now, oh look, Zelensky did the right thing.
He's the one who now is showing that he's the man of peace.
And the question is, is Putin someone who really wants the war to end and shares Trump's desire to make that happen?
Or is the real problem Putin?
And that will be determined by whether Putin...
Just accepts exactly what is given to him by the United States that Zelensky has already agreed to.
Here's Zelensky, who clearly now is trying to re-ingratiate himself into the good graces of the Trump administration, announcing this as well.
He's speaking here in Ukrainian, so I'm going to read the subtitles.
We are ready to take this step to an act of 30-day ceasefire.
The United States must convince Russia to do it.
That is, we agree, and if the Russians agree, the ceasefire will start at that very moment.
So, you see the framework that's being created here, which is when Zelensky was in the Oval Office for that notoriously confrontational debate or disagreement with Trump and J.D. Vance and others, one of the criticisms that Trump made of Zelensky during that It seemed like he had no interest in negotiating a peace deal.
So this is Zelensky with the help of Marco Rubio saying, oh, look, actually, no, Zelensky does want a peace deal.
In fact, he agreed to the 30-day ceasefire that we offered him, and now the only real question is, is Russia and Vladimir Putin also Really, actually, genuinely interested in the way Zelensky just proved that he was in a peace deal, and that will be determined by one thing and one thing only, and that is whether Russia simply accepts the terms of this deal.
Here's a statement.
issued by the Office of the President of Ukraine, which is a joint statement of the Ukrainian-American delegations following their meeting in Saudi Arabia.
Quote, Ukraine expressed readiness to accept the U.S. proposal to enact an immediate interim 30-day ceasefire, which can be extended by mutual agreement of the parties and which is subject to acceptance and concurrent implementation by the Russian Federation.
The United States will immediately lift the pause on intelligence sharing and resume security assistance to Ukraine.
Lastly, both countries' presidents agreed to conclude, as soon as possible, a comprehensive agreement for Ukraine's critical mineral resources to expand Ukraine's economy and guarantee Ukraine's long-term prosperity and security.
So in other words, it's not just that they created a framework where even the Europeans are saying, ah, does Putin want an end to this war?
And this, as they keep saying, the ball isn't out of his court.
But also it resulted in the resumption.
Of what is called U.S. security assistance to Ukraine and intelligence sharing, meaning all the military and other forms of support that the United States had been given to Ukraine under the Biden administration that Trump suspended for a very short period of time, but that now has been reinstated.
In addition to all of that, here from the New York Post.
On Monday, you see the headline, Zelensky apologized to Trump in a letter last week over the Oval Office blow-up Special Envoy Wyckoff claims.
So clearly you see here that there's an attempt by the Ukrainians and apparently by certain officials inside the Trump administration, including the ones who have previously been very vocal and vehement supporters of Ukraine and the war in Ukraine, to...
Create a framework where Zelensky is now basically someone who is showing that he's grateful to the United States and grateful to President Trump and willing to do what Trump wants to end the war and isolating Putin and forcing him to either accept what has been presented to him or be declared the actual real problem.
Hoping that then Trump will view Putin as the problem, will side with Ukraine, and continue to provide support for Ukraine in a way that a lot of the people in his administration clearly hope will happen.
Now, let me just say I don't want to be too absolute about any of this because it is the case that if Donald Trump wants to end the war in Ukraine, and I believe he does, I think that is something that He will pride himself on.
He will consider it an important accomplishment.
I hope he's able to succeed in that.
I hope that the war in Ukraine ends.
I do think Trump will deserve a lot of credit if he facilitates an end to this war, as he promised during the campaign he would.
If you're going to do that, you do have to put pressure on Putin as well and can't just put pressure on Zelensky because it's not clear that Putin will Make any sort of concessions that you might need him to make in order to reach a diplomatic agreement to the war.
I was in Moscow where I conducted several interviews, including the one we showed you with Professor Dugan.
And one of the things I heard from not just him but from many other people in Moscow is that despite this cartoon And caricature that we often hear of Putin that he's like some sort of totalitarian dictator, kind of like Kim Jong-un, where nobody can question the absolute leader.
The reality is that Russia is a very complex country and always has been.
There are competing factions.
I'm not denying that Russia is authoritarian, not in any way suggesting there's open free speech and free debate, but there is a lot of...
And a lot of influential factions who have a very strong view on the war in Ukraine and how it should or should not end.
And Russians have been asked to make a great deal of sacrifice for this war.
They have been isolated from the world.
They have suffered tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of deaths.
There have been.
Huge numbers of young Russian men sent to a very difficult war.
And this war has now gone on for three years.
The Russians had to endure a lot in terms of sanctions and all sorts of other attempts to undermine and sabotage their economy.
And they believe they're winning.
And the front line is moving not toward Russia, westward, where Russian troops are being expelled, but slowly moving eastward so that Russia now...
occupies something like 23 or 24 percent of Ukrainian soil, including Crimea, which they annexed in 2014. So having spent three years making a huge amount of sacrifice for this war, even if Putin wants to end the war by making a lot of concessions, there's a lot of political opposition and a lot of political tension that is very real and very substantial.
That will limit his ability to make the sort of concessions that he might want to make, because if there's a perception that he gave away too much to the West or too much to Ukraine after everything Russia invested in this war, and you can imagine all the war propaganda that the Russians have heard and how convinced they are of the importance of this war existentially to the national security, just like any country that's in a war does.
Those currents are going to be important, and they're things Putin has to overcome.
And so if you're Donald Trump and the Trump administration, you do need to find ways to pressure Putin and pressure the Russian government in order to make some concessions, because they don't really necessarily have an inherent or obvious incentive to do so.
So I'm not suggesting this is all a ploy.
Just to put Trump back on Zelensky's side and continue the war and continue U.S. support for it, I think that's a possibility.
I do recognize that last week and the week before, the Trump administration was pressuring Zelensky, was beating up Zelensky, and maybe they think now there's a need to isolate Putin and kind of gain some sentiment that The United States is blaming Russia and blaming Putin and might continue to arm the Ukrainians in order to put more pressure on Putin to come to the negotiating table, which is a perfectly valid way of trying to end a war.
That's something that the Trump administration would almost have to do if it's going to succeed in ending the war.
I just think people need to be very careful here, especially given the things that are being said about the possibility that what this really is about is trying to...
depict Zelensky as carrying out Trump's will and Putin as the one who's resisting it in order to get Trump back on Ukraine's side and willing to fund the war as if none of all of this had actually happened.
There have been times where Putin had signaled his willingness to accept a ceasefire as long as it meant a freezing of the front lines, meaning that the Russians would essentially continue to occupy the parts of eastern Ukraine, the provinces of the Donbas, where there are a lot of ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking people who the Russian government believes needs protection.
Here, for example, from Reuters in May of 2024, you see the headline, I don't think the West is going to be willing to accept that because,
as we know, NATO and the US from the beginning defined victory.
As expelling every Russian troop from every inch of Ukrainian soil, including Crimea, and even though that was never realistic, if the West agrees to some sort of deal that even tacitly recognizes Russia's right to continue to occupy the parts of Ukraine that they're now occupying and leave Ukraine with what Professor Mearsheimer on our show several times has referred to as a rump state.
It's kind of like the part of eastern Ukraine.
Of Western Ukraine, rather, that where Kiev is and where the more pro-Ukrainian, anti-Russian population is, that would obviously be a victory for Russia and a defeat for the United States and for NATO. Now, one of the reasons to be suspicious of this ceasefire that Ukraine has agreed to is that some of the worst people in Europe...
Are also applauding it and are embracing the framework that Marco Rubio and Zelensky and others are pushing.
Here, for example, is the unelected leader of the EU, Ursula von der Leyen, who is one of the most fanatical militarists in the world right now.
She's the one who's been demanding that Europe massively rearm, that the war in Ukraine continue.
Even without the United States.
And here's what she says, quote, The ball is now in Russia's court.
I'm telling you, they all said that.
It's clearly part of the script.
The EU is ready to play its full part together with its partners in the upcoming peace negotiations.
Here's one of the people who might be one of the very few people even more extreme than Ursula von der Leyen.
It's Kaja Kallis, the former prime minister of Estonia, who's now the foreign affairs minister of the EU. And she...
Is openly talking about how we have to defeat Russia in order to then prove to China that we can also beat them in a war and how if we are too scared to go to war with Russia then the Chinese would see we're too willing or too scared to go to war with them as well.
That's the kind of thing she's been saying, and here's what she said about this peace deal.
Quote, Here's the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has talked about wanting to send British troops to Ukraine.
Even as he acknowledges that he can't do so without U.S. support, Now,
the issue is that Russia is fighting this war for reasons that it perceives as important.
And the idea that they're just going to agree to an end to the war without securing...
The objectives that they have fought for three years to achieve seem very unlikely, even as a temporary ceasefire.
But this is obviously something that these Europeans see and other supporters of the war in Ukraine see as an attempt to make Trump believe that the problem is not Ukraine, but instead is Russia.
Here's what Trump said when asked about this in the White House.
I just want to, before I show this, just talk about Independent of my criticism of the Trump administration or the praise I have for the Trump administration, both of which I've expressed, it is really remarkable.
I don't think I can think of a president in my lifetime for whom this has been true, how constant and available Trump is to questions from the media.
He's essentially, every day, explaining what his government is doing, what his objectives are, what his thinking is.
The contrast with Joe Biden, who could barely put together a sentence, is obvious.
But even prior presidents didn't constantly have the media in the Oval Office, where they were just available for questions, seemingly on a daily basis, about every issue that the media wants to talk about.
But that is what Trump has been doing.
Here is what Trump had to say on this ceasefire deal.
You said earlier that it was now up to Russia in terms of the ceasefire.
Is there anything you can do in terms of pressuring Russia or in terms of sanctions?
We can, but I hope it's not going to be necessary.
Sure, we can pressure.
We can do that with Russia.
Remember this.
Russia took Georgia from Bush, right?
They took Crimea from a man named Obama, Barack Hussein Obama, right?
They tried to take the whole thing from Biden.
They're going for the whole ball of wax.
Who is the only one that never took anything from Trump?
Now, it's a little hard to understand what he's saying there, but he, again, is definitely of the view that pressuring Russia might be necessary.
But he obviously has positive believes Putin respects him, and so I'm not necessarily sounding The panic, pressing the panic button on this in the sense that, oh, this is really a ploy to get Trump back on Zelensky's side.
I do think that's what a lot of people are hoping will happen, which is why these EU leaders are saying what they're saying.
But I also believe that Trump is sufficiently determined to get this deal done.
And I don't necessarily think he's just going to overnight start viewing Putin as the problem in saying, oh, we have to get behind Zelensky and get behind the war effort.
But it is something to look out for.
Now, there are a couple people, of course, who are angry about this ceasefire, who think that even just the ceasefire itself is already too much of a concession to Russia.
One of them is CNN's favorite foreign affairs analyst, John Bolton, who a lot of liberals have come to love as well because of his criticism of Donald Trump.
Here he is on the CBC. When asked about his view of the ceasefire, here's what he had to say.
So now, for more on all of this, we've reached John Bolton.
He's a former U.S. National Security Advisor and a former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Welcome.
Thank you for making time for us.
Glad to be with you.
Now, neither President Zelensky nor President Trump will attend the talks between the Ukrainian and U.S. delegations that are scheduled for tomorrow.
So will peace be attainable if one side has to make all the concessions here?
Well, I think the best that could come out of these meetings in Saudi Arabia is to try and get U.S.-Ukrainian relations back on track.
I expect that this Mineral's deal will be signed.
I don't think that will have much impact on anything, frankly, but it's important to Trump, and he can declare victory, and that might pacify him for a while.
But I think the real question is not specifically what this meeting will accomplish, but how Ukraine and the rest of NATO will deal with Trump's essentially 180-degree reversal of position.
Basically, to be supporting Moscow, which has dismayed many people in the United States, as it has throughout the alliance.
And then here is Democratic Senator Chris Murphy, who, as we've shown you before, not only was part of the effort in 2014 with Victoria Nuland and John McCain, the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID, to go to Ukraine and encourage the anti-government protesters.
Who eventually forcibly removed the democratically elected president, but he boasted about the fact that the United States played a critical role in driving out the elected leader of Ukraine.
Here is what he had to say.
to say he's still a very vocal and vehement supporter, like almost all Democrats are, of US support for the war in Ukraine.
He said this, quote, "Let's be clear what happened.
Trump cut off arms and intelligence sharing, putting Ukraine on the brink of defeat in order to get Zelensky to support a Russia that designed, quote, ceasefire that essentially hands Russia huge amounts of Ukrainian territory with no Russian concessions." Now, none of that makes sense.
There has been no ceasefire.
The Russians haven't agreed to one.
The idea that this is what they wanted seems preposterous.
There's obviously going to be an attempt, if Trump ends up facilitating an end to the war and a peace deal in Ukraine, as he campaigned on doing, and the American people ratified that in the election, if that ends up happening,
I'm telling you now what's going to be the narrative, which is that even though it's the case that there's no chance that the Ukrainians could win this war, certainly not as NATO defined it, defined victory, or even from any kind of perspective, the Russians are going to continue to occupy more of their country if the war goes on.
More Ukrainians are going to be killed.
More of the country is going to be destroyed.
Even though that's the case, if Trump ends up succeeding in facilitating a peace deal in Ukraine, the narrative is going to be that Trump essentially parachuted in, prevented the Ukrainians from winning.
and handed Russia everything that It wanted and that Russia won the war not because it was winning anyway and would have won inevitably, which is true, but only because Trump being enamored to Putin or being a Russian agent or a traitor or whatever ended up giving everything to the Russians.
I think the good thing about Trump is he no longer cares about those kinds of claims.
He seems genuinely committed to me to trying to end the war.
I think he is less naive and less easily manipulated.
Now that he was in his first term, but there are still a lot of smart people in the Trump administration, around Donald Trump, whom Trump trusts, who I do not think share Trump's view of foreign policy in general or the war in Ukraine in particular.
And there still are doubts, in my mind at least, about whether they will again succeed in sabotaging Trump's objectives, even though they're...
Oath and their duty is supposed to be to carry out the policy of the elected president, and I think that's the real interesting aspect of what is going on with this 30-day ceasefire.
Maybe it's an important step toward diplomatically ending the war, or maybe it's an attempt to derail those efforts and to try and keep the war and U.S. support for it going.
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There is a dust-up, or you might say even an attack, that came from Donald Trump on a good friend of our show, someone who we admire a lot, even though we don't always that came from Donald Trump on a good friend of our show, someone I think he's one of the most principled and honest people in All of Washington, and that is Republican Congressman Thomas Massey of Kentucky.
I just wanted to briefly talk about the episode because it involves Congressman Massey, who, as I said, I find very admirable.
But I also think it illustrates something important about the Trump administration, but also the MAGA movement.
So there is a budget vote that It took place in the House, and typically House Republicans would oppose these kinds of votes, these continuing resolutions, which are designed to just kick the can down the road in order to keep the government running, but continue government spending at its current levels, not cutting government spending, not reducing the debt in any way.
It's just basically a temporary measure that Washington constantly uses to avoid dealing with the hard issues of spending and spending programs and debt and deficits.
And oftentimes, conservative Republicans, especially those in the Freedom Caucus or more libertarians, are opposed to approving these.
They've often had votes where many House Republicans have voted no, even at the risk of shutting down the government.
This time, Donald Trump took the position, and I understand why, that he wanted all House Republicans to vote yes on the continuing resolution.
House Republicans can't afford to lose any members because their margin is very slim.
They can basically afford to lose one.
And Trump wanted a unanimous Republican Vote in support of this continuing resolution.
I think it was important to him because he doesn't want the government shutting down.
He wants to pursue a lot of goals that he has, and that always ends up distracting from all of those goals.
It ends up becoming the main issue that everybody talks about.
He wanted to avoid that.
But I think he also feels like with six more months or so, he can get a budgetary deal that's more in alignment with his ideology or his goals for The U.S. budget.
So I understand why he wanted the yes vote.
But Thomas Massey is someone who is deeply, passionately, and genuinely opposed to massive debt to deficit spending and on principle just won't vote for budgets that continue to contribute to the deficit or to the debt.
And so every single House Republican abided by Trump's request slash decree That they all vote yes.
It ended up narrowly passing as a result.
One Democrat voted yes.
The rest voted no.
And one Republican voted no, and that was Thomas Massey.
And as a result of that defiance, even though it ended up passing, Donald Trump went to Truth Social and launched this missive against Congressman Massey.
He wrote, quote, Congressman Thomas Massey of beautiful Kentucky is an automatic no vote on just about everything despite the fact that he has always voted for continuing resolutions in
the past.
He should be primaried and I will leave the charge against him.
He's just another grandstander who's too much trouble and not worth the fight.
He reminds me of Liz Cheney before her historic record-breaking fall loss.
The people of Kentucky won't stand for it.
Just watch.
Do I have any takers?
Anyway, thank you again to the House Freedom Caucus for your very important vote.
We need to make time in order to make America great again, greater than ever before.
Unite and win.
Now, what I found so interesting about this is that Thomas Massey, precisely because of all the things I just said, this very principled conviction that he has, this unwillingness to do what's politically expedient, he He really is an advocate of America first before that was even a term that Trump used.
He has a gigantic sign on his office door saying, no foreign lobbyists allowed here.
In fact, if I see any of you entering my office to try and influence my vote, I consider you to be in violation of the law.
And he's somebody who comes from the Ron Paul tradition of the Republican Party.
Critic of Israel.
He's more just a person who believes that the United States should use its resources to benefit the lives of American citizens and not pay for and finance other countries.
And in particular, thinks we shouldn't be involved in conflicts around the world, including in the Middle East.
And he doesn't make an exception for Israel.
AIPAC tried to remove him in a primary and failed.
He's very popular in his district.
And one of the people, unsurprisingly, That came out in defense of Thomas Massey against what Trump said was Ron Paul.
Here's what Ron Paul had to say in defense of Massey and Trump's attack on him.
But anyway, he went after, once again, he went after a friend of ours who has earned respect and is probably the most straightforward person in the Congress, except for maybe somebody in the Senate.
He's obviously referring to his son there, Ron Paul, but he clearly believes Thomas Massey is the most principled person in Congress in the way that many people, I think rightly so, consider Ron Paul to be.
Thomas Massey earned the wrath of the president because he said, I don't think anybody's going to give me a lobotomy and erase all my memory.
Before the vote comes up, but there's no way I could vote for this.
You know, and it wasn't hard to figure out why not.
He happened to believe that you're supposed to follow your oath of office.
It's no more complicated than that.
What I'm annoyed about, and maybe Chris is too, is that why would they pick on this, especially that Trump has made overtures to the libertarian group of people in the Republican Party, because that group is silently growing and being instrumental. because that group is silently growing and being instrumental.
And that's reflected on a lot of what they are doing.
There's no doubt about it.
But the easiest thing to do to survive all that is exactly what Thomas does.
He states his position by the way he votes.
Everybody knows it.
And most of them respect him for it.
And to gang up on him and say, well, we've got to get rid of him because he's helping the Democrats.
You know, it's preposterous.
It's so sad to see that.
Now, there is a lot of influence, obviously, that Trump wields in the Republican Party.
And there was a lot of success that he had in targeting for defeat or driving out of the party the people who supported his impeachment or became very steadfast critics of his, people people like Adam Kissinger and Liz Cheney and a bunch of them.
Either lost their primaries or realized, saw the writing on the wall that they couldn't win with Trump so vigorously opposing them.
But Trump doesn't have a 100% success rating.
In doing that, there have been Republicans whom he's opposed, who nonetheless won.
Thomas Massey is very popular in his district, and he's also very popular nationwide.
And there's a lot of attempts to suggest that the MAGA movement is this mindless, brainless cult that follows whatever Trump does.
And yet— The reaction from a lot of prominent conservatives to the attack on Trump was very notable in defending Thomas Massey.
Here was Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire who said, Thomas Massey is a great American and by far and away one of our best congressmen.
He then went back to X many times to defend Massey.
Here's a prominent MAGA count Texas patriot who said Trump just called for Thomas Massey to get primaried.
I do not support this.
So I think This is what's important here.
Obviously, what Trump is going on, and there were a lot of negative reactions as well to the post that Trump put on True Social.
Here's just one, Adam Carter, who says Massey is the only one not bought and paid for by Israel.
All you conservatives who are falling in line with whatever Trump says really need to do research to what Israel is doing to this country.
So there's a lot of support that Massey has.
I don't think Trump could succeed in removing him.
There is a possibility that now that Mitch McConnell is finally retiring, that Thomas Massey wants to try and run for that Senate seat in Kentucky, and perhaps a very aggressive Trump opposition to Massey might harm him there and have that sort of effect there.
Trump has criticized Thomas Massey actually in the past during the first Trump administration for failing to vote the way that Trump wanted, and it didn't really have an effect on Massey's standing.
In fact, he's one of the most popular members of the House in terms of having a huge network of very loyal supporters.
I have no doubt that any serious challenge to Massey would result in a flood of small donor donations to him to make sure that those efforts were Unsuccessful.
So I do find it very interesting that Trump went that ballistic over a single vote that's consistent with what Massey does.
Maybe it's a coincidence, or maybe it isn't, that Trump singled out Massey in such a vocal and aggressive way, didn't just criticize him, but called for his removal from Congress, when clearly Massey, far and away, is the member of the House Republican Caucus most hated by AIPAC. Because of his belief that the United States doesn't have this overarching obligation to finance Israel and support everything that Israel does.
But I think the more interesting part of what happened is how many prominent Trump supporters and members of the MAGA movement said no to Trump.
We're not supporting you with this.
There's absolutely no reason to go after Thomas Massey.
He's one of the good people in Washington.
He's probably more MAGA than Perhaps Donald Trump himself.
And I do think it's very important that the MAGA movement, we saw this and we covered it when Elon Musk wanted to bring in more foreigners to work in the United States with H-1B visas.
And you saw that war that broke out between a lot of the most prominent supporters of Donald Trump on the one hand and Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and other Silicon Valley Trump funders on the other.
And it sort of died down once Trump weighed in in favor of Elon Musk and said he too supports more H-1B visas.
And that was a little bit disturbing in the sense that it seemed like that might signify that at least in the beginning and maybe for the ongoing Trump presidency that most of Trump's MAGA supporters would not be willing to oppose him, even when Trump took positions antithetical to their ideology and how they understand the MAGA movement.
This case, though, kind of rejuvenated my hopes that there are going to be times when even Trump's most loyal supporters push back against him and his attack on Thomas Massie seemed to be a clear case of their willingness to do so, and I think it was definitely reflective as well of the respect people have for Congressman Massie, respect that I definitely share, and the belief that he's somebody who, even if you don't always agree with him, is acting out of conviction and principle, and how rare that is in Washington.
So we definitely thought that was something worth noting.
All right, as I said at the beginning, I'm gonna break down the...
Debate that I had on Fox regarding the Columbia case and the broader issues of the conservative movement's relationship to free speech and censorship now that they're the ones in power and the specific exception, the glaring exception that many of them have to many of their stated principles, not just free speech, but foreign policy as well.
When it comes to Israel, because it is the first time that I was able to speak directly to that issue for quite a while, for six or seven minutes, on Fox News to a Fox audience.
There's a lot of attention being paid to it as well on social media, so I think it was a really good opportunity, but also reflective of what this debate really is and how it's playing out that I want to kind of break down.
