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June 19, 2025 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald
01:33:32
Ted Cruz with Tucker: a Microcosm of DC's Rotted Wars and Foreign Policy

Glenn breaks down Tucker Carlson's interview with Sen. Ted Cruz and what it reveals about U.S. foreign policy dogma and the U.S. relationship with Israel.  ---------------------------------- Watch full episodes on Rumble, streamed LIVE 7pm ET. Become part of our Locals community Follow System Update:  Twitter Instagram TikTok Facebook LinkedIn  

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Good evening, it's Wednesday, June 18th.
Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m. Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight we have a great show for you, courtesy of Republican Senator Ted Cruz.
The core value of an adversarial press, arguably its only real value, is to force political leaders to account to the public For the decisions that they make, especially the most consequential ones, the lack of such an adversarial media, conversely, which is what we have, means that the population never really hears any real explanations for or challenges to their policies.
Few things illustrate that contrast or illustrates the rot at the heart of America's decades-long bipartisan foreign policy failures, quite like the two-hour interview that Tucker Carlson, notably now an independent journalist, conducted this week.
of GOP Senator Ted Cruz from Texas, who, among other revealing statements in that interview, told Tucker that, quote, I came into Congress 13 years ago, he said, with the stated intention of being the leading defender of Israel in the United States.
And I've worked very hard every day to do that.
That's what Ted Cruz admitted to Tucker Carlson for some reason.
Many of the clips from that interview published in full just earlier today But that Cruz couldn't answer,
even with a rough estimate, let alone a precise number, was, hey, Senator, You want to go and bomb Iran.
You want to invade Iran with some sort of military assets.
You want to change the country's regime.
You want to do a regime change war.
You're not just advocating that we bomb their nuclear facilities.
You barely said you want the war to end in regime change.
So something you should probably know before urging that country to be bombed and that military force to be used to replace its government is how many people live in that country?
Are you able to give me that answer?
And Cruz just couldn't even give a rough answer.
The more of Cruz's ignorance was revealed through questions like that, the more sputtering, offended, and irrational he became.
And while that, of course, is entertaining to watch, and it is entertaining, the real purpose of examining it tonight is to highlight the twisted brew of ignorance, hubris, and godlike complexes Ted Cruz is far from alone.
He's just a microcosm of that vast majority of members of the U.S. Congress and bulk parties who demand new wars, the way most people change their socks or even sneeze, like a reflex, basically.
And that's been the story of U.S. foreign policy for decades and continues to be.
Then, what will become of Tulsi Gabbard?
Mocking and attacking Donald Trump in his first term for wanting to go to war with Iran instead of reinstating the Iran deal that he withdrew from or renegotiating something similar to it.
Her statement as Trump's director of national intelligence to the Senate just three months ago in March, where she said that the consensus of the intelligence community is that Iran was not seeking nuclear weapons, was not only ignored by Trump, But mocked by him, he said he, quote, didn't care what Tulsi Gabbard says.
She has also been excluded from key war planning meetings leading up to the decision to join or support Israel's war in Iran.
Is there any way for Tulsi Gabbard, someone who I know personally to be a person of integrity and especially personal pride to cling to this position in light of all of this?
And if there is a way for her to, should she?
Before we get to all that, a couple of programming notes.
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As another reminder, system update is also available in podcast form.
You can listen to every episode 12 hours after the first broadcast live here on Rumble on Spotify, Apple, and all the major podcasting platforms where if you rate, review, and follow our program, it really does help spread the visibility the show for now welcome to a new episode of system update starting right now I've long been a vociferous critic of the corporate part of the U.S. media, which long was its mainstream faction.
It increasingly no longer is the mainstream part, but it's still corporatized and still yields a lot of influence.
And people often argue whether the media has a liberal bias or a conservative bias, something I never found helpful as a metric for understanding the real role of the corporate media, the real failure of the corporate media.
Obviously, being people who graduate from East Coast colleges, especially the national media, The leading institutions that helped
sell the war in Iraq.
They've long been crucial to propaganda about the Cold War, working hand-in-hand with the CIA and the U.S. government, and they continue to do that.
They're really servants of the U.S. intelligence community, of the U.S. security state.
They help sell wars.
And as a result, whenever it's time to advocate for a new war, the U.S. corporate media becomes even more compliant, even more subservient in the face of especially national politicians who are advocating wars.
They're treated like.
That's what the media thinks its job is, not to become extra skeptical and extra scrutinizing as they should whenever something as consequential as a war is about to be foisted yet again on the American people.
And that's what made Tucker Carlson's interview this week that's practically two hours long.
Of Republican Senator Ted Cruz so notable, so revealing, is that Tucker not only went in with an extremely adversarial interview, he's been very clear about the fact that he opposes Ted Cruz's foreign policy.
Ted Cruz has been a major vocal supporter of financing the war in Ukraine.
Obviously, Doug Carlson was so vocal in opposition to that, that that's what got him fired from Fox News, despite being the most watched program in the crucial 8 o 'clock primetime hour.
Tucker was going to be oppositional and adversarial in his questioning.
After all, Tucker has also become a leading opponent of having the U.S. and Donald Trump get the United States involved in Israel's war in Iran, whereas Ted Cruz is not only a proponent of having the U.S. help Israel destroy its nuclear facilities, but also Ted Cruz wants it to be a regime change war.
He wants the goal of this war to be the ultimate goal, to be changing the regime of Iran like we did in 1953.
When the CIA engineered a coup of their democratically elected leader and installed a monarch, he became a repressive, brutal dictator, the Shah of Iran, who ruled over that country for 26 years.
And he was so hated that that's what provoked the Iranian revolution, the Islamic revolution of 1979.
Of course, those people who overthrew that dictator knew the United States was the one who engineered the imposition of the dictatorship, who propped it up, who financed it, who supported it with intelligence and military weapons that the jails were built.
With American money for dissidents, the weapons used that by their secret police came from the United States.
And so, of course, the revolution was ushered in with a lot of animosity toward the United States.
That's when they took hostages at the U.S. Embassy because they saw the United States, rightfully so, as their enemy.
That's who had imposed this dictatorship for 26 years.
And then that spawned decades of anger and animosity and hatred emanating from...
It's very basic human nature.
If you attack another country, they're going to dislike you and want to attack back.
So the idea of once again doing regime change in Iran after the 1953 regime change effort by the CIA was what led to so much anti-American aid.
They actually want to reinstall the Shah of Iran.
They want to install the Shah of Iran's idiot son, who basically has made himself into a Loyalists to Israel and the United States, knowing that's how his father kept power as well.
He has no connection to Iran.
He hasn't lived there for decades.
He's been educated in the West.
He's been enriched by the West.
There's pictures of him in a yarmulke at the Western Wall in Israel, constantly making defenses of Israel in the United States.
That's who, ultimately, the Ted Cruz's and Lindsey Graham's and Netanyahu's of the world want to reinstall as the leader of this.
Very important country, very important in terms of oil resources, geopolitics, its proximity to the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, all sorts of vital geopolitical and economic resources that currently Iran controls, but that the United States wants to control through Israel.
So it's a massively consequential and an extremely risky proposal, to put that very mildly.
To advocate, as Ted Cruz is, another regime change war, after all the ones we fought in Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria and Libya and Vietnam have all been utterly disastrous on every level, not just for the countries where we fought them, but especially for the United States and American citizens as well.
And so Chuck Carlson went to this interview with the intention of really getting questions about Ted Cruz's view about why it's in America's interest to go and fight for Iran or whether really fighting for Israel
You would think you would at least know a pretty good amount about a country if you feel confident to say, we're going to go in and we're going to change that government and good things are going to happen.
You should know like a pretty good amount about that country.
Like who lives there, what the composition of the people are, what their views are, what the factions are, how many people live there, what the size of the You would think a United States senator proposing a major war, especially a regime-change war, would know that.
So Tucker Carlson wanted to see how much Ted Cruz understood.
What was his understanding about this country, Iran, a very complex country with a very long and rich history?
I'm talking about the Persian Empire.
How much he actually knows about Iran and how that knowledge integrates into his desire to go have the U.S. fight a regime change war.
And here was the outcome of Tucker Carlson seeking that understanding.
How many people live in Iran, by the way?
I don't know the population.
At all?
No, I don't know the population.
You don't know the population of the country you seek to topple?
How many people live in Iran?
92 million.
Okay.
How could you not know that?
I don't sit around memorizing population tables.
Well, it's kind of relevant because you're calling for the overthrow of the government.
Why is it relevant whether it's 90 million or 80 million or 100 million?
Why is that relevant?
Because if you don't know anything about the country, Okay, what's the ethnic mix of Iran?
All right, before we move on to the ethnic critics of Iran, a lot of people have been saying defenders of Ted Cruz, or really defenders of...
That's really what's at the root of this, as you're about to see.
Not that that's a surprise, but it's going to come out of Ted Cruz's mouth very explicitly in ways that will shock you.
Not to learn that it's true, but just because it's going to be shocking that someone gets so flustered that they admit that at the heart of their politics and their service as a U.S. senator is not the interest of the United States, but the interest of Israel, as you're about to hear.
Again, there's nothing surprising about that.
Everyone knows that.
It's just very unusual to hear someone say it.
So a lot of defenders of Ted Cruz were saying, oh, so he doesn't know the exact, precise population of Iran.
He didn't know if it was 93 million or 95. No, he didn't know at all.
He didn't know anything.
He couldn't even venture a guess.
Could not even enter the range of universes.
He didn't know if they had 5 million people or 20 million people or 80 million or 130.
I mean, okay.
I just want to say, you know, as somebody who does this for a living, even though I'm not vested with the responsibility and the power as a U.S. senator that the Constitution bestows on Ted Cruz to approve or disapprove of wars or to call for them as he's doing or to exercise oversight over them, This is somebody who does work as a journalist, who's covered foreign policy for a long time.
I cannot tell you how many times over the last 15 to 20 years when Iran has been discussed.
When I started writing about politics, it was in 2005, by which point everyone knew the war in Iraq was a failure, but neocons were still pushing for the U.S. to move from overthrowing Saddam Hussein in Baghdad to going to Tehran to do the same.
That has been the Netanyahu-Israel-U.S.
neocon project for many years.
And the amount of times that I have talked about the population size of Iran, and I'm not special in any way.
You cannot...
And probably just in the last year alone, or let's say the last six months alone, as this idea of a war with Iran became more and more vocally expressed, I honestly could not count the number of times I have pointed out that Iran has more than three times the population size of Iraq.
When we went to war with it, we went to war with Iraq in 2003.
Their population was 26 million.
So if you multiply that by three, you get 78 million.
And I've often emphasized the population of Iran is larger than three times larger than the population of Iraq.
So if you said to me, what is the exact number?
I wouldn't be able to give you the exact number, but I certainly knew.
It was somewhere between 85 and 95 million people.
I probably would have said 90 million.
That was my understanding.
I'm not inventing that.
I'm not pretending that.
I can show you an endless number of clips where I've talked about that on this show, in interviews.
It's just so basic.
How do you not know that?
If you're just a person who pays minimal attention to the Middle East and questions of foreign policy, how do you not know the relative size of Iran?
To other countries in the Middle East, especially how do you not know if you're advocating a regime change war in Iran the way Ted Cruz is?
You would think, you would study the last major regime change war that the United States engaged in, which was Iraq.
We've done other ones in Syria and Libya.
But Iraq is in that neighborhood.
It's the border and country with Iran.
They've gone to war with each other.
You would think you would have some very basic understanding of the country.
Like the crudest, I'm not even talking yet about the geography of Iran or the complexities of their history or the religious strife or the various minorities they have there ethnically and religiously.
Obviously I'm talking about the population size, not to the number, just the general size relative to other countries.
He has no idea.
Ted Cruz has no If he did, he would have ventured a guess.
And had he said, you know, 75 million or 80 million, nobody would have...
He had no idea.
No idea.
None.
It wasn't that he was off by a couple million.
A couple hundred million.
A couple million.
He had no clue.
And yet, this is one of the leading senators who goes on, meet the press, and face the nation, and Fox News every night, and is presented as the expert because he's supposed to be an expert.
If you're one of 100 U.S. senators who has a duty to vote on war, you're supposed to be an expert.
He's presented as an expert, and then he goes on and talks about the reason why we must go to war with Iran, why we must engineer regime change there.
He's been doing that for years.
But look at the ignorance about the country he not only wants to bomb, but the country whose government he wants to change.
I mean, just in terms of the regime change alone, obviously, if you want to Go and change the government of a regime, of a country.
Take out the government that's there and replace it with one that you prefer, the Shavaran son, idiot son, or whoever.
Obviously, you have to figure out, like, is regime change feasible?
What type of resources, military or economic, would be needed to ensure that it happens in a way that is effective, that is similar to the way you want?
But you'd also want to be able to assess what might be the Unanticipated negative consequences of smashing a country to smithereens, of destroying its central government, with the idea of replacing it with someone else.
You might want to look at the last time that we did that, which was Iraq, and the utter and complete destruction and power vacuum that that created, or the times when we did it in Syria and Libya that created massive refugee and migrant crises and waves of huge numbers of immigrants to Germany and to the rest of Europe.
Which continues to have massive impact to this day.
How could you possibly advocate a regime change of our country?
And not just having voted on it in the background, volunteer to be one of the leading voices advocating for the media and not be able to answer that question in even a general way.
It is shocking.
It is horrifying.
These are the kind of people who have been running U.S. foreign policy.
These were exactly the people who assured you in 2002 and 2003 That they were going to go and remove Saddam Hussein.
The whole country was going to unify very quickly because they all hated Saddam Hussein.
They were going to welcome us as liberators.
They were going to unite across sectarian lines.
Form a Jeffersonian democracy.
None of that happened.
None of it.
Even close because these people have no concept of the foreign countries that they want to transform, that they want to invade, that they want to bomb, that they want to destroy.
They don't understand anything about these cultures, anything about these countries.
And if you need any proof, Look at that exchange with Ted Cruz.
Ted Cruz is a smart person.
He went to the best schools.
He debates well.
I mean, for the U.S. Senate, maybe he's as good as it gets.
And he's a complete imbecile when it comes to, and so irresponsible, when it comes to what has now become his primary Which is urging the U.S. government not just to bomb Iran, eliminate their nuclear facilities, but also to change the regime.
It is, in one sense, it's shocking to watch, but in another, I say it's so illustrative because it is extremely common.
You could drag a hundred senators like him, or however many are advocating for regime change, maybe some of them would know the general population, but they wouldn't know much more.
Let's listen to the rest of this one.
Tucker Carlson is, okay, you have no idea how many people live there, but let's talk about what kind of people live there.
Think mix of Iran.
Think mix of Iran.
About the country.
I didn't say I don't know anything about them.
Okay, what's the ethnic mix of Iran?
They are Persians and predominantly Shia.
Okay, this is cute.
You don't know anything about Iran.
Okay, I am not the Tucker Carlson expert on Iran.
You're a senator who's calling for the overthrow of the government and you don't know anything about the country.
No, you don't know anything about the country.
You're the one who claims they're not trying to murder Donald Trump.
You're the one who can't figure out if it was a good idea.
The ethnic and religious composition of a country is absolutely vital to understanding what a country might look like, what might actually happen inside that country.
If you go and destroy and remove and shatter the central government that has run that country for the last 45 years, which is what Ted Cruz wants to do.
Yeah, the example of Yugoslavia, which was ruled with an iron fist during the Cold War by its dictator, Marshal Tito, and when he died.
The entire country disintegrated.
It was the only thing holding it together.
And it led to absolutely horrific atrocities and massive civil wars between the various religious factions, the provinces, the Serbs and the Muslims and the Bosnians, and Kosovo and the rest of the country.
that had fell apart.
And it led to I don't know what they thought they were defending.
They certainly, Yugoslavia was no threat to Europe.
That's a whole propagandistic narrative for another day.
But obviously you would want to understand, like, what would happen, what would likely happen to a country if you destroy the government that has been running over 45 years?
Would it unify?
Is there, like, an overwhelming religious faction or ethnic faction?
Does that cross lines?
What percentage of each group composes that country?
This is not, you know, very esoteric stuff.
I mean, if you were Destiny, the YouTuber, you would at least, like, before an interview like this, go read a Wikipedia page and then pretend to be an expert.
The answer is that's how simple and primitive these questions are.
You could actually have the level of knowledge that someone like Destiny has by reading a Wikipedia page.
He doesn't even have that Ted Cruz.
He's like, yeah, they're Persian, they're Shia.
Has no idea what percentage of each, let alone other groups in the country.
Here's how he now tries to turn the table, knowing that his extreme ignorance got exposed.
I want to say again, this is not some trivia quiz.
It's not a gotcha question, the way a lot of idiots who are defending Ted Cruz are claiming.
These are things you have to know about a country, really any major country in the world.
Like, do you think there are senators, I'm sure there are, that don't know the relative populations of the top, say, five most populous countries, of China, of India, of Indonesia, of the United States, of Brazil?
Do you think there are?
Ones who don't know that, I'm sure there are tons of them.
But at the very least, if you're going to go and volunteer to be an advocate for a war in a new country, you have to have an understanding, the most basic understanding of what that country is and what the people who live there are, and he does not have that.
And I promise you he's not unique.
Here's the rest of this.
No, I'm not saying that.
You're the one who can't figure out if it was a good idea to kill General Soleimani and you said it was bad.
You don't believe they're trying to murder Trump.
Yes, I do.
Because you're not calling for military strikes against them in retaliation.
We're carrying out military strikes today.
You said Israel was.
Right.
With our help.
I said we.
Israel is leading them, but we're supporting them.
Well, you're breaking news here because the U.S. government last night denied, the National Security Council spokesman Alex Pfeiffer denied on behalf of Trump that we were acting on...
We're not bombing them.
Israel's bombing them.
You just said we were.
We are supporting Israel.
You're a senator.
If you're saying the United States government is at war with Iran right now, people are listening.
I mean, you know, that part speaks for itself.
Let me just address this.
It is kind of amazing.
Like, they can't even keep their lies straight.
It's only five days into the war.
Remember when the war started, Mark Rubio came out and said, this is totally unilateral.
This is Israel's unilateral war.
It was obviously a lie from the start.
They pretended they were negotiating with Iran, that Israel ruined it, but somehow nobody was upset with Israel for having done that.
And within like six seconds, it was revealed that we were centrally involved in all their operations, that Trump in the morning, when he saw Fox News celebrating his success, came forth and stopped talking about Israel and talked about it as my war.
We did this.
We did that.
The whole propagandistic edifice fell apart very quickly to the point where Ted Cruz can't even keep it straight.
But you know, this other thing about Iran tried to kill President Trump.
Let's remember that we know a little bit about the person who was caught on Trump's golf course in the second assassination attempt.
He was an American citizen.
He was obsessed with Ukraine.
He spent a lot of time in Ukraine.
He was hating anybody who opposed military to Ukraine like Trump.
He was ingratiated in various militias and military forces of the Ukrainians.
And then he comes back and he's armed to the teeth.
And he wants to, he goes to a golf course where President Trump is playing it.
Maybe one or two holes ahead is waiting to blow his head off.
And simply because the Secret Service, by luck, happened to see the gun sticking out, did they apprehend him?
So we know that doesn't have anything to do with Iran.
That assassination attempt, the only country, I'm not saying they're involved, but the only country that's meaningfully connected to that assassin that would be assassinated is Ukraine.
And we know shockingly little, basically nothing, about the person who actually did fire shots and came like a millimeter ahead from entering Trump's brain had he not turned his head at the last second.
No one suggested he has any connection to Iran.
He's just like almost this.
Out of the matrix figure who never implanted a single footprint of any kind in this world where we're all surveilled, we all use the internet, no footprint at all.
It's like this mystery figure.
It's the kind of person who just emerged from the heavens, came down, shot Trump, and then just disappeared, dispersed.
And we know nothing about him, but there's certainly no evidence Iran was involved in that.
And of course, during the campaign, there started to be these anonymous reports that the Iranians were trying to murder Trump.
So obvious, so obvious what the motive of that was.
I mean, if you want Trump to go to a war with the country, what is the thing that you do?
You tell him that they're trying to kill him.
There was a prosecutorial indictment presented, which, of course, people want to presume is true now.
The same people who called every prosecutorial report of Russiagate lies, who pick and choose when they want to believe prosecutorial allegations.
Certainly no meaningful evidence of that.
But Ted Cruz is now resorting to the fact that, oh, we have to go fight this war because Iran tried to kill Trump.
First of all, it shows you how complete of a replication of the 2002-2003 Iraq War script this is, because some of you probably don't recall.
But during the build-up to the Iraq War, George W. Bush claimed that Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, tried to kill George Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, who led the war.
against Iraq in Kuwait.
And I remember the interview very well, or this press conference very well, when they were asking Bush about why it was necessary to go and take out Saddam.
And one of the things he said was, well, he tried to kill my dad.
He tried to kill my dad.
It's very like Oedipal narrative.
Like he was going to go avenge the, We have to have, like, every part of that.
Play, that theater that was presented to convince people to go join that war now has to be presented for this one too, including, oh, he tried to kill Trump.
But as Tucker said, if we really believed, if we really believe that there was a genuine, meaningful effort on the part of the Iranian government to assassinate Donald Trump, presumably they would have gotten into office and immediately said, we're going to bomb Iran.
We're going to bomb their leadership.
And we wouldn't have had to rely on this whole pretext about their nuclear program and negotiating with them.
If that's the reason, if that's part of what is the motive, why didn't we have to wait for Israel to go bomb Iran under the pretext that we weren't involved and they were doing it because of the nuclear facilities after a failed negotiation?
We could have just said on January 21st, look, we're going to go bomb Iran because they tried to murder President Trump.
That was an act of war against our country.
They didn't say that.
They waited until the war happened.
They're like, hey, by the way, if you're not convinced yet, We should go to war with Iran.
Here's another reason to believe it.
They tried to kill Trump.
That's what Tucker was saying.
Well, if that were true, it obviously isn't, because if it were, you would not be waiting until all this happened to throw that in as a pretext.
All right, so that was just one clip.
An amazing clip.
Not amazing in the sense that it's shocking, amazing in the sense of how clearly laid out it was, because I don't remember any journalists in the last 25 years, broadcast journalists.
Asking a senator who wants to go and invade a country or change the government of a country or bomb that country or overthrow their leaders or whatever.
And it happens all the time.
Hey, by the way, just tell me a few things you know about the country.
How big is it?
I wonder if Ted Cruz could even place Iran on a map.
There's always been this sort of saying that Americans learn where countries are on a map whenever their government decides and announces if they're going to go bomb that country or go to war with that country.
And we're all like, oh, what's this country?
What do you see on the map?
Where is it?
Oh, Ukraine?
Oh, okay.
I see where Ukraine is.
I doubt, honestly, whether Ted Cruz could place Iran on a map after hearing all that.
That's some of the most alarming stuff I've heard.
These are the decision makers.
These are the people in Trump's ear.
They have no idea what they're talking about.
None.
Zero.
Here is, just in case you're confused about Ted Cruz's position, this was, I believe, yesterday.
This is June 17th.
What's today?
June 17th?
June 18th?
All right.
Breaking news.
I got the date.
Today is June 18th.
So this is June 17th.
This is yesterday.
He was on Fox News with Maria Bartiroma and Bartiroma.
I could say all these people's names and tell them in front of a camera.
I'm like, wait, what is that name?
She's a Fox host.
And she asked him, Mike, are you content with just having Iran, having the U.S. bomb and Israel bomb Iran's nuclear facilities?
Do you actually want to have regime change there?
And here's what he said.
Language is clear as it gets.
Do you want to see regime change?
Do you think that happens soon?
And what would the future look like in that regard?
I think it is very much in the interest of America to see regime change.
I don't think there's any redeeming the Ayatollah.
He is filled with hatred.
You know, I'll tell you a story that's a little bit amazing.
The former head of the Iranian nuclear program, a man who many say was sent to meet his maker by the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence forces.
He had written in his last will and testament that he wanted the following words written on his tombstone Here lies a man who sought to annihilate Israel Maria, think of the level of bilious hate.
When that's the only thing you want to be remembered for, is I am such a bigot, such an anti-Semite, filled with so much hate that the entire purpose of my life is to murder as many Jews as possible.
That's what we're dealing with, religious fanatics.
So it is unquestionably in America's interest to see a secular regime.
You know, before the revolution, Iran was a secular country that was an ally of America.
I think the people want to go back to that.
I don't know how many there are, what their religion is, what they think, what they feel, but he knows.
He's speaking for them.
He knows what they want.
What they want is for the United States and Israel to unite and use their military to bomb the crap out of Iran, kill huge numbers of their fellow citizens, destroy their civilian infrastructure.
Destroy their central government and then choose which government they're going to have.
This time they're going to get a secular government that the United States and Israel likes, like the Shah of Iran.
The brutal, savage tyrant they overthrew in 1979.
Ted Cruz is here to tell you he knows nothing about the people of Iran, how many people there are, or anything else about the country, but he's speaking for them and he's saying, look, the Iranian people want us to do this.
They're cheering for us.
They're welcoming us as liberators.
Is it amazing how identical the script is to 2003?
One of the reasons that war in Iraq went so wrong was because of extraordinary ignorance by our political leaders about the most basic facts of the country.
Starting with George W. Bush himself.
Why would George W. Bush know anything about Iraq?
He just presided over a regime change war there, an invasion, but why would he know about it?
He wasn't connected to the Muslim world.
He didn't speak Arabic.
He didn't study anything about the Middle East.
He was eight months into his presidency after being Texas governor, where he got elected because his dad was the president and extremely wealthy and connected to very rich people in Texas.
But here in Rolling Stone, he gave an interview in August of 2006, and they wrote about it after.
The title was Bush's Islamic Ignorance.
Quote, a year after his, quote, axis of evil speech before the U.S. Congress, which was written by liberal hero David Frum, by the way.
President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became post-war Iraq's first representative to the United States.
The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
During their conversation with the president, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites.
Peter Galbraith reports that the three of them spent some time explaining to Bush that there are two different sects in Islam, to which the president allegedly responded, quote, I thought the Iraqis were Muslims.
Now, you can doubt that story if you want, but if you listened to George Bush at the time, if you listen to the people who surrounded George Bush, if you look at what the predictions were about how the country would react, how the people would react, how they would unite, Either people were lying on purpose about what that country was,
or they were extremely ignorant, and probably in some cases both, probably feeding to George Bush, very simplistic good versus evil narratives that appealed to him as a religious convert, as a recovered alcoholic who thought he was on a mission from God.
And I'm not surprised at all that he was unfamiliar with The various sects of Islam and the differences between them and the very intransigent conflict that has long existed.
Why would George W. Bush know that?
And yet that was the person that we decided ought to go in and preside over the restructuring of Iraq.
Bill Kristol is one of the leading experts, the architects of the Iraq War.
He advocated it for years, well before September 11th, the 1990s.
obviously a supreme loyalist of Israel, but that has nothing to do with it.
He was urging the invasion of Iraq because he thought And here is one of the claims he made to the American people about what would happen.
Bill Kristol, April 4, 2003, in the Weekly Standard, quote, There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America.
That the Shia can't get along with the Sunni, and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime.
There's almost no evidence of that at all.
Iraq's always been very secular.
As soon as we moved to Saddam Hussein, there was a gigantic civil war between the Sunnis, focused in the Sunni triangle, with the Iraqi Shia militias that were far more loyal to Iran, because they're Shia.
And that was why the removal of Saddam Hussein benefited primarily Iran by making them far stronger in Iraq.
But obviously if you don't understand the difference between the Shia and Sunni, if you don't understand the difference exists or what it means or how central it is to people who identify as Muslim, how that specifically expresses itself in the country of Iraq, you have no idea that any of that would happen.
And again, either people were lying or were really that ignorant about Telling the American people what would happen when we remove Saddam Hussein because this ignorance prevailed.
And look at the results.
And that's what's going to happen again.
Here from the Iraq Study Group report, which was a bipartisan commission led by former Bush 41 Secretary of State Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton, the Democrat who also was the co-chair of the 9-11 Commission, sort of the two wise old men of Washington from each party.
It was designed to sort of evaluate what was wrong in Iraq.
And here's part of what they concluded.
Quote, the challenges in Iraq are complex.
Sectarian conflict is the principal challenge to stability.
Remember, Bill Kristol said, oh, you idiots, you pop sociologists, you think the Shia and Sunni can't get along?
They're barely Sunni and Shia.
They're basically all secular.
They said, quote, sectarian conflict is the principal challenge to stability.
Many Iraqis are embracing sectarian identities.
Sectarian violence, particularly in and around Baghdad, has become the principal challenge to civility.
Sectarian violence causes the largest numbers of Iraqi civilian casualties.
Iraq is in the grip of a deadly cycle.
Sunni insurgents attack.
Attacks spark large-scale Shia reprisals and vice versa.
Groups of Iraqis are often found bound and executed, their bodies dumped in rivers or fields.
The perception of unchecked violence emboldens militia, shakes confidence in the government and leads Iraqis to flee to places where their sect is the majority and where they feel they are in less danger.
In some parts of Iraq, notably in Baghdad, sectarian cleansing is taking place.
However, most of Iraq's cities have a sectarian mix and are plagued by persistent violence.
So everything we were told by our leaders about what would happen after the fall of Saddam Hussein didn't come true because they had no conception of how Iraqis thought or functioned and yet decided, like Ted Cruz did, to stand up and tell us what Iraqis would want and what they would do once Saddam Hussein was removed.
I bet you George W. Bush roughly knew the population of Iraq before he invaded and maybe Iran, I think he did.
Ted Cruz doesn't even bother to learn that.
All right.
Let's look at a different clip.
I could sit here and show you the entire two hours and just break down every amazing part of these exchanges.
But I forced myself, my colleagues here forced me so I don't go on forever to just pick three or four of the most amazing ones.
And I struggled so much about what I had to leave out.
It was very hard.
Maybe tomorrow we'll go over some more.
But these really are so revealing.
Again, not of Ted Cruz, but of Washington.
Here is Ted Cruz explaining why he is so single-mindedly focused on making sure that the United States pays for finances, arms, and does everything possible to serve and advance the Israeli government and its interests.
And here was his explanation.
Growing up in Sunday school, I was taught from the Bible.
Those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed.
And from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of things.
Of those who bless the government of Israel?
Those who bless Israel is what it says.
It doesn't say the government of, it says the nation of Israel.
So, that's in the Bible.
As a Christian, I believe that.
Where is that?
I can find it to you.
I don't have the scripture off the tip of mine.
You pull out the phone and use it.
It's in Genesis.
So you're quoting a Bible phrase.
You don't have context for it.
You don't know where in the Bible it is, but that's like your theology?
I'm confused.
What does that even mean?
Tucker.
I'm a Christian.
I want to know what you're talking about.
Where does my support for Israel come from?
Number one.
because biblically we're commanded to support Israel.
But number two-Hold on.
You're a senator and now you're throwing out theology and I am a Christian and I am allowed to weigh in on this.
We are commanded as Christians to support the government of Israel?
We are commanded to support Israel.
What does that mean, Israel?
We're told those who bless Israel will be blessed.
Hold on.
Define Israel.
This is important.
Are you kidding?
This is a majority Christian country.
Define Israel?
Do you not know what Israel is?
That would be the country you've asked like 49 questions about.
So that's what.
The nation of Israel, yes.
So is that the current borders, the current leadership?
He's talking about the political entity called Israel?
He's talking about the nation of Israel.
Yeah, nations exist, and he's discussing a nation.
A nation was the people of Israel.
Is the nation God's referring to in Genesis, is that the same as the country run by Benjamin Netanyahu right now?
Yes, it is.
And by the way, it's not run by Benjamin Netanyahu as a dictator.
It's a democratic country that elected— He's the prime minister, what?
But just like...
No, actually, the American people elected Donald Trump.
The same principle is there.
This is silly.
I'm talking about the political entity of modern Israel.
Yes, and that is Israel.
You believe that's what God was talking about in Genesis.
I do.
That country's existed since when?
For thousands of years.
Now, there was a time when it didn't exist, and then it was recreated just over 70 years ago.
I'm saying, I think most people understand that line in Genesis.
That's not what it says.
Okay, Israel.
But you don't even know where in the Bible it is.
Okay, I really do have to comment on this, okay?
Because for a long time in the United States, even after Israel was created, the modern state of Israel, by the UN in the late 1940s, as the Zionist movement grew and Europe felt guilty, And felt an obligation to give the Jews their own place to live, but obviously didn't want to give them any of Europe.
Thought about maybe taking some land from Africa.
Ultimately took it from the Palestinians and said, okay, Jews, here's your land.
Created the modern state of Israel.
Obviously much, much smaller than Israel now claims to be.
But in any event, that was the idea.
For two or three decades, American Jews really didn't think much about Israel.
And the U.S. government often internally debated whether or to what extent they should support it, whether they should recognize it.
And Harry Truman and you can hear Richard Nixon talking about how they have a lot of political pressure, not from American Jews, from Jewish groups, global Jewish groups, with a lot of money and a lot of political power pressuring them to do so.
But there wasn't a lot of political Concern about Israel, not like today.
Not from Jews, nor from Christians, even though Christians.
It just wasn't really on the political agenda.
We didn't think about Israel.
It was just a foreign country like any other.
And it is definitely the case that over the last, I don't know, three to four decades, evangelical Christianity has become more politically powerful for a lot of different reasons, complex reasons.
Embedded within it has become this idea that there's a biblical mandate from God.
Saying that people shall be blessed to bless.
Really it was Israel meaning the Israelites and the Jews and curses whoever curses it.
And somehow that morphed into we have an obligation as the United States Senate, the United States Congress, the United States government to finance the Israeli government, to militarize and arm their wars, to go to war to protect them.
And I've been hearing this more and more and more and more over the last decade.
It's not just a lot of people say, oh, there are a lot of Jews in Congress.
Jews exercise a lot of influence in Congress.
The Israeli lobby is very powerful.
Obviously, those are all true.
But a major reason why, especially the Republican Party, is so devoted to serving Israel, and the Democratic Party is, too, for others.
I'm just saying the Republican Party is, is because you have a huge number of members of the Republican Party who believe that their religion, as expressed in the Old Testament, expressed in the Bible, It dictates them to have a foreign policy very loyal to the state of Israel.
And so as somebody who covers this, I'm not a Christian.
That's not my theology.
It's not my religious beliefs.
But as somebody who covers this topic and has done so for quite a long time, I obviously am curious.
I want to understand where this religious belief comes from, what the context is, what the history has been.
I can't tell you how many times I've read those passages in Genesis and read literature I know they're in the book of Genesis.
I probably read them like a month ago or a month and a half ago because I talked about them on my show with somebody.
I just wanted to go back and have the language and the exact context.
How does Ted Cruz, who says that this is at the center of his worldview, he said, "I How does he not know that that's in the book of Genesis?
Genesis is the first book.
I mean, it'd be one thing if it were, I don't know, like just in some middle, more obscure, like if we're in Deuteronomy or Joshua or whatever.
It's like, oh yeah, I just forgot off the top of my head we're in scripture.
It's in Genesis.
It's the first book.
How do you not know that?
Especially if that's the centerpiece of your worldview.
If you're saying my entire foreign policy and my devotion to the state of Israel is constructed around this mandate from God, which people debate within Christianity?
Like, what is it that that means?
And that's what Tucker was asking.
And the majority of Christians do not believe that it means that you have to be loyal to the government of modern-day Israel, that the nation-state of Israel has constructed since 1947.
1948 is what the Bible dictates you to serve as an American member of God.
That's a very contestable and debated and new way of understanding foreign policy.
But there are a lot of members of Congress who will tell you that that's their belief.
Fine.
You would expect them to have an understanding of that theocratic view.
How do you understand that dictate from God if you can't even identify where in the Bible it is?
Like, what's around it?
What's the context of it?
How do you not know that's in the book of Genesis?
That's the foundation of your worldview.
This is what I'm saying.
This is why I found this so disturbing.
I find it disturbing that our U.S. foreign policy is being dictated by people's view of what God 2,000 years ago told them they should be doing as members of the U.S. Congress represented to serve the interests of the American people, that their overarching loyalty to bless the people of the state of Israel and to serve the state of Israel.
But I can at least respect someone who has that view if they've actually developed a genuine, complex understanding of it.
I mean, I think whatever is the foundation of your worldview, you should have a good understanding of that, like what your first principles are.
Ted Cruz is running around screaming, I'm going to be into a question.
I believe in the Bible.
That's what it tells me.
And he doesn't know that it's in the book of Genesis.
That's almost more shocking to me than the fact that he doesn't know roughly how many people live in the state of Iran and that he wants to fight a war in.
Quite unbelievable.
Here's Genesis 12.3.
I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.
Talking to the Jews who were in Israel.
So, obviously people debate the meaning of this endlessly.
I mean, Christians do.
And they're all over Twitter and everywhere today, people explaining the view of what this means and has always meant radically different than what Ted Cruz claims it meant.
But in any event, that's what he's saying is the reason that he, as a U.S. senator representing the people of Texas, believes it's his obligation to support Israeli wars, to force the American worker to subsidize the Israeli military.
Somehow those two things are connected, even though he has no idea what he's talking about there either.
I think anyone who goes to Sunday school or studies the Bible knows, again, it's in the very first book.
Does Ted Cruz know where the story of Adam and Eve comes from?
Like, what book that's found in?
All right, here is Mike Huckabee, who I think is much more devoted and serious.
Ends time, messianic, evangelical conservative.
That's why he's the ambassador to Israel that Trump chose.
And here's Mike Huckabee describing the foundation of his views.
The Bible tells us that God promises to bless those who bless Israel.
Hello, I'm Mike Huckabee.
TBN believes that supporting Israel is one of the most meaningful things a believer can do.
And that's why after a lot of research and vetting, we're partnering with Israel's most impactful relief organization, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
Now, again, I want to say, I don't have an objection.
to people's religious views forming their political views.
We all have some system of belief, whether it's a moral system about the morality of killing people or murdering them or cheating their governments or trying to run their lives, whatever it is.
We all have moral foundations that shape our political views and if someone's moral foundation is based in their views of God or religion or the Bible, that's as valid to me as any other.
I think it should be debated what role that should play, how to understand that, but at least I can have a respect for that.
And a lot of people in Congress will tell you explicitly that, and there was one member of Congress who was asked previously, look, if you believe that it's God who mandated that you serve and bless and protect the people of Israel, If you had to choose between one of those two countries being destroyed, Israel or the United States, which would you choose?
Meaning, of course, I would choose the United States to be destroyed before Israel because God mandated that I do everything to protect Israel.
There's no discussion of the United States in the Bible.
Lee Fong, a friend of the show, a great, intrepid, independent journalist, went to Capitol Hill in a very neutral way, wanted to understand why Republican lawmakers, why lawmakers in general, Are so single-mindedly focused on Israel.
This was October 25th, 2023, so just a couple weeks after the October 7th attack, and here's what they told him.
We talked to members of Congress about Israel and the U.S.'s relationship.
All right, y'all go.
The U.S. has an intrinsic interest in making sure that Israel...
That Israel not only receives our best prayers and offers of success, but our armaments, our money, and our ability to make sure that in a very dangerous reason this democracy survives.
There are some biblical prophecies that say that control of Jerusalem by the Jews is important for the second coming of Christ.
This entire matter is based upon faith.
Of our maker, of our creator.
But it's also faith of a chosen people.
Can you ask why the Democrats are using our law enforcement officers as political funds?
The Democrats who have been campaigning to defund.
This is Lauren Boebert, the Republican from Colorado.
Our law enforcement, as their people, BLM and Antifa, riot and loot in the streets.
How would you like to see the Capitol place on there?
There's a new government in Israel.
Can you talk a little bit about the importance of the U.S. relationship with Israel?
There have been two nations created to glorify God.
I will bless both.
I will honor both.
I will do all I can to stand and defend them.
Thank you, Congressman.
Take care.
Thank you.
Do you have a quick second?
Sure, man.
Do you think there's a role of religious extremism here in the U.S. funding and shaping the conflict?
I mean, there are a lot of folks who are part of the evangelical movement that want to support Israel.
And we don't really kind of see that same kind of constituent group pushing the other way.
Yeah, I would like both.
This is Tim Burchett, a Republican representative from Tennessee, and he's very candid and very civil and I think very illuminating in his explanation, his answer to this question.
Same kind of constituent group pushing the other way.
Yeah, I would label the Baptist or the evangelical community as extreme because I feel like they're following the scripture and what the scripture says about Israel.
Those who bless Israel will be blessed.
I mean, they take it literal, and I'm one of those people.
You know, there's some Christian Zionists that do believe in some of these biblical prophecies, and they're very controversial, even within the Christian Zionist evangelical community.
Yeah, and believing in Armageddon that there will be a final battle around Jerusalem and that after that battle, you know, there's a judgment day.
Jews will be killed or converted.
Jesus will come back.
There's going to be a rapture event.
What do you think about those kind of prophecies?
I believe Jesus will come back, and I'm going to be on his side.
I was on Breaking Points, the program hosted by Sagar and Jetty and Crystal Ball yesterday, and they put a clip of Glenn Beck.
Who is a believer in this end times evangelical Christianity, the rapture and all that.
One of the reasons why he supports Israel so fanatically.
And he was going on and on about how we have to view the Iranian government as uniquely dangerous because it's an end times messianic religion that doesn't value life.
And yet here you hear, and there's another one that Lee did that's with preachers and the like about Israel, that essentially believes that it's not just that God commands that everybody bless the people of Israel, which has become to mean, as Ted Cruz tried to explain to Carlson, somehow that we're required as Americans to subsidize with our tax dollars Israel and its wars.
But the idea is an end times theology that Israel has to be strong and united, that that land has to be under the control of the Jews in order for Jesus to come back.
And then what is Jesus going to do?
He's going to kill and consign to hell all non-believers, which are Jews, unless they repent and accept him as the deity.
And there'll be a rapture and everybody else will go to heaven.
The believers will go to heaven.
Now, again, if that is someone's religious view, that's to me as valid as any to serve as a foundation for their moral views.
I'm not sure about foreign policy.
I'm not here to mock that in any way.
I'm not here to disrespect that.
I don't.
I think all people's religious views are their own and serve equal levels of respect.
It's just that we ought not to be disparaging or demonizing the Iranian government for having a messianic end time view of religion when so many people in the United States who are shaping our foreign policy, especially with regard to Israel, do, but at least the people Clips, at least a couple of them, are able to explain and are totally informed about that religious view, whereas Ted Cruz is a complete charlatan who has no idea what he's talking about and can't even identify the place in the Bible, even though it's in the very first book, the one that I think everybody
reads, has read, that explains that view.
All right, let's look at a...
I want to stress again, what made this interview so impactful, the reason people are talking about it so much, is because despite the centrality of all these questions, they're almost never asked.
So I've never taken money from the Israel lobby, have you?
Taken money from the Israel?
From AIPAC.
So AIPAC raises a lot of money for me, but it's actually a misnomer because the people who raise money are individuals.
So it's not the PAC itself, but they're individual members who believe in the American-Israeli friendship and relationship.
Is AIPAC a foreign lobby?
No, it's an American lobby.
AIPAC stands for the America-Israeli Political Action Committee.
What is it lobby for?
So, to be honest, not a whole lot effectively.
Listen, I came in to Congress.
13 years ago, with the stated intention...
When Tucker Carlson says, look, you get a lot of money from APAC.
What is it they want you to do?
What is it they urge you to do?
And listen to what Ted Cruz finally says.
I came into Congress.
And I've worked every day to do that.
I came into Congress with the stated intention to be the leading defender of Israel, not of Texas, of Israel, not the people of Texas, of Israel, in the United States Senate, and I work every day, every day to do that, he said.
He wakes up every day.
This is not my description of Ted Cruz's own description of how he sees his role in the United States Senate.
He wakes up every day in order to fulfill his goal, his stated intention of being the leading defender of a foreign country.
That's what he sees his role as being.
Now, I'm the last person who would doubt Ted Cruz in terms of his devotion to that goal.
I believe that is his goal, and he wakes up every day to fulfill it.
That's why he is such an ardent supporter of changing the government of Iran and using the U.S. military to do so, because that's the government that Israel currently hates the most.
Back in 2002, it was Saddam Hussein, so that's what we went and deposed.
No one can doubt that that's Ted Cruz's actual goal and that he works very hard to achieve it.
I think, unfortunately for him, there are a lot of other people in the U.S. Senate who have the same exact goal and have worked a lot longer than he has.
Joe Biden, for example, for decades.
He gave stirring speeches about how we ought to be grateful for Israel, give all the money Israel wants, do everything Israel needs.
Chuck Schumer, who ostensibly represents the people of New York, said that his job in the U.S. Senate is to make sure the left, American liberals, remain pro-Israel.
That's his job, he said, Chuck Schumer's job in the U.S. Senate.
he described it.
John Fetterman obviously has been critical of Trump for being too soft on Gaza, too soft So he has a lot of competition, but I don't think this is sufficiently appreciated.
And again, everyone knows this is true.
Everyone knows that so many elected leaders in the United States perceive their primary role as being A person defending and serving the interest of a foreign country named Israel.
We just had several members of Congress, I can show you a lot more, telling Li Fong they believe it's their highest religious duty to do so, that God instructs them to do so.
And here's Ted Cruz saying, I'm amazed that these words came out of his mouth.
I went to Congress with the stated intention to wake up every day and defend The interest of Israel, and every day that is what I have done.
How are you a member, a constituent of his, a citizen of the United States, a citizen of Texas, and you have a United States senator who's supposed to be there fighting for your economic interest, your family's interest, future security, and he's telling you, my interest in waking up every day is not your interest.
It's not defending your interest.
That's not my role.
It's defending the state of Israel, and that's what I wake up every day to work on.
Here's how the rest of this exchange went.
A lot of times, AIPAC I wish were much more effective.
There are folks online who are in the fever swamp terrified of AIPAC.
I'm not terrified of AIPAC at all.
You're the one who seems a little uncomfortable when I'm asking.
No, not uncomfortable at all.
I'm just asking what AIPAC does.
My understanding, having known a lot of people who want AIPAC, is that it lobbies on behalf of the Israeli government.
Oh, okay.
When was the last time AIPAC took a position that deviated from Prime Minister Netanyahu?
All the time.
Okay.
Let me go back and give a little history.
If you want to do a deep dive on AIPAC.
Okay.
So, Ted Cruz says, perish the thought.
AIPAC isn't here to lobby for the agenda in the interest of a foreign government.
They don't have to register as a lobby of a foreign government the way everybody else does.
They lobby for the United States.
Give me one example of when AIPAC has ever contradicted or deviated from Benjamin Netanyahu's agenda.
And Ted Cruz says, oh, it happens all the time.
And Ted Cruz says, give me one example.
And of course Ted Cruz can't because it never happens because of course AIPAC is controlled by, funded by, coordinating with, exists to serve, functions at the direction of a foreign government.
They're foreign agents operating in the United States.
They're agents of a foreign government.
The only ones who don't have to register as such.
John Kennedy.
Thought they should register as such, the AIPAC predecessor.
His head was blown off.
I'm not saying that was the reason at all.
I'm just saying, as a result, that was the last time that issue was really raised.
And I think in that little clip, you got the sense of what AIPAC actually is.
So here's Ted Cruz's attempt to evade that question.
Prime Minister Netanyahu.
All the time.
Okay.
Let me go back and give a little history.
If you want to do a deep dive on AIPAC.
I don't.
I want to do a shallow dive.
I want to get to the core question.
AIPAC is lobbying for a foreign government.
It's not.
It's lobbying for the United States?
It is lobbying for a strong U.S.-Israeli relationship.
Okay.
So it has nothing to do with the foreign government.
It wants America and Israel to be closely allied.
Okay, but...
So that's not true at all.
It's not true.
No.
How much contact do you think AIPAC leaders have for the government of Israel?
No idea.
I imagine some.
I think the government of Israel is often frustrated with AIPAC because AIPAC's not nearly strong enough.
Do you think there's any coordination between the government of Israel and AIPAC?
Do they talk?
sure if you're lobbying for Sure.
I'm not mad about that.
There are a million countries that lobby Washington.
I like a lot of those countries, including Israel.
But APEC or Americans?
They're not Israelis.
Hold on.
There are tons of Americans who lobby on behalf of foreign governments.
I know them.
I'm related to some of them.
I know how it works.
I'm from here.
So my question is not, is it outrageous that foreign governments lobby the United States?
They all do, including Israel.
My only question is, why don't we admit that is what's happening?
You're denying it, but it's true.
Because what you're saying is false.
Why aren't they registered as a foreign lobby?
Because they're not.
Okay.
Is there anyone who believes that at all?
That AIPAC is not?
A entity existing in the United States that lobbies the U.S. Congress for the interests of a foreign government?
Is there anybody who believes that?
And the idea that AIPAC isn't sufficiently effective?
There have been occasionally a few members of Congress over the years, often black members of Congress, so not only, who have become outspoken critics of the state of Israel, saying, why are we sending billions of dollars every year?
To fund the Israeli military and subsidize their society when Israelis have higher standards of living than most of the people in the poor district I represent.
How does that make sense?
That's what Cori Bush was saying.
That's what Jamal Bowman was saying.
I remember Congress named Cynthia McKinney who used to say that.
And AIPAC will take $15 million.
And they'll just find some random local politician.
They like to find black ones to run against the black incumbents they want to remove so that nobody can say it's racist.
And they'll fund a $15 million primary challenge that has nothing to do with the campaign with Israel, even though the whole thing's about Israel.
It's not like the challenger runs in St. Louis saying, Cori Bush is insufficiently supportive of Israel, I'll be loyal to Israel.
His name was Wesley Bell.
They spent $15 million.
He unceded Cori Bush solely because of AIPAC.
Of course he's now AIPAC's puppet.
But they run the campaign totally deceitfully.
Oh, Cori Bush doesn't serve her constituent.
She doesn't support this road paving program as though AIPAC cares about any of that.
Everyone knows AIPAC cares only about whether members of U.S. Congress serve Israel or not.
And if they don't, they punish them by removing them.
So everybody knows the incentive scheme in the United States.
It's very, very potent.
If you're a member of Congress, a member of the Senate, and you want millions of dollars to pour into your coffers what you need for re-election, serve Israel, and AIPAC will make sure you have what you need.
You'll be drowning in cash.
If, on the other hand, you want to question the reason why the U.S. workers are forced to subsidize Israel, why we go to war for Israel, AIPAC will destroy you.
And I'm not saying they can do that in every case.
But they certainly can do it as much as, and I would say far more than any other powerful lobby.
There are a lot of powerful lobbies in the United States, pharma lobby, defense contractors, banks, all of them have very powerful lobbies.
None have demonstrated quite the level of intimidation that AIPAC wields for all sorts of reasons, including the fact that they're extraordinarily well-funded and extraordinarily powerful.
and that's why they're so predominant in Congress.
Here is just in case you were There is anybody out there who questions whether or not what Ted Cruz is saying is true?
Here's the president of Israel, Israel Katz, who...
He's the defense minister of Israel.
And on May 20, 2024, he said this, quote, The state of Israel owes them much for their longstanding support.
I ask them to work with the administration and Congress to take dramatic steps against the decision by the prosecutor of the ICC to demand arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and the defense minister.
The prime minister of the Jewish state and other senior officials cannot be declared war criminals and equated with Hamas murderers.
Israel is a strong country that knows how to ensure its existence, but on the international stage, we need the unconditional support of the U.S. government stemming from genuine friendship.
Openly standing up and giving AIPAC their marching orders in public.
Imagine what happens in private.
Li Fong, the aforementioned intrepid independent journalist and friend of the show, my former colleague at the Intercept, my friend, he said this about that part of the Ted Cruz interview that we just showed you.
"Ted Cruz told Tucker Carlson that AIPAC doesn't coordinate with the State of Israel and thus does not need to register under the Foreign Agents Registry Act.
That's plainly not true.
They discussed coordination openly.
Here's an Israeli minister stating that he asked AIPAC to lobby Congress on the International Here's something else that Lee Fang posted today.
Quote, Pro-Israel groups in the U.S. should have to register as foreign agents, but don't.
Internally, they realize secretly handing grants to U.S. advocacy groups to lobby for pro-Israel laws would likely lead to foreign enforcement.
And then he posted some of the documents that demonstrate that Israel knows that they're violating the Foreign Lobby Act.
And as Dr. Carlson pointed out, a lot of people in Washington have gone to jail for failing to file that form, that foreign agent form.
Where you have to disclose, I'm getting paid by the Qataris, I'm getting paid by the Nigerians, I'm getting paid by the Indonesians, or the Brazilians, or whoever, to lobby for the interests of foreign government in the United States.
It seems like only AIPAC is exempt.
Here's Benjamin Netanyahu appearing at the AIPAC conference in the U.S. where leading members of both parties make their yearly pilgrimage to stand up on stage and pledge their support and loyalty for the state of Israel.
And here's what Benjamin and I have to say about AIPAC.
I want to thank Ward Friedman, Lillian Pincus.
Lillian, you don't have to remind them how far back we go together.
Howard Core, AIPAC's Nuclear Core, everyone at AIPAC.
I want to thank all of you for the work you're doing to strengthen the remarkable alliance between our two countries.
Thank you.
All right, so just by the way, I mentioned at the beginning my colleagues were demanding that I narrow down much greater than I had chosen the number of excerpts I wanted to show you to discuss because they were like, you're going to go over three hours if you don't.
And they know me very well.
I argued for a fourth.
They were trying to get me to do three.
I do have a fourth.
So given the time, we're going to do the Tulsi Gabbard segment, which I do think is very important about what should happen to her, what will happen to her, whether she should resign, whether she's going to be fired, whether she can remain.
We'll do that tomorrow.
It's important, but it'll still be newsworthy tomorrow.
I just want to show you this last extremely revealing clip between Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson where things got particularly heated, Ted Cruz got particularly uncomfortable, and you'll never, ever guess, never in a million years, even if I give you 100 guesses, what Ted Cruz decided to imply was truly motivating Tucker Carlson.
Do you think that it's just interesting because what you're now describing in a very defensive way, I will say, is No.
And you began, and it's so transparently obvious to everybody.
I don't know why you'd be embarrassed of it.
You've said that you are sincerely for Israel.
I believe you.
I don't think you have some weird agenda.
You seem to be sincere.
By the way, Tucker, it's a very weird thing.
The obsession with Israel.
We're talking about foreign countries.
It's hardly an obsession.
You're not talking about Chinese.
You're not talking about Japanese.
You're not talking about the Brits.
You're not talking about the French.
The question, what about the Jews?
What about the Jews?
I'm an anti-semite now.
Senator, you're just...
Okay.
And then that very same Ted Cruz announcing that what Barry Weiss does, if they're honest, what Ben Shapiro does, if he's honest, what Chuck Schumer does, and he has been honest, is that their supreme cause, their primary loyalty, is advancing the interests of a foreign government, even though they're American citizens, and in this case, American politicians.
Ted Cruz just minutes ago.
It was just like in this clip.
We separated the clips, but it's just a couple minutes earlier.
He's the one who said that he works up every single day to serve the interests of Israel.
Every day he said that's what he does.
And the reason why so many of us who don't do that talk about Israel a lot is because Israel's the country.
We give more money in foreign aid to over many decades by far than any other group.
We fund their military.
We go to war for them.
The reason, as General said, We're so hated in the Middle East and that people from the Middle East want to attack our country in large part is because they know that we're the ones who provide Israel with all the weapons that bomb their countries and blow up babies and kill Arabs and Muslims all the time and have done so for decades.
They know the United States is behind that.
We pay an enormous price financially, militarily, in lives and soft power and reputation in terms of our own physical security for Dedicating ourselves to the state of Israel for all the reasons we've been showing you people and the government admit they do.
We've been arming and financing their destruction of Gaza.
What human rights groups all over the world, what I agree as well, will say is the worst crime by far in the 21st century.
The worst atrocity, the worst, we're talking about forced starvation, all the other things that we've documented.
The U.S. government has been right at the heart of that, first under Biden, now under Trump.
Nothing changes in foreign policy when you vote for one party or the other, even though Trump promised a major break from bipartisan foreign policy.
That's why we talk about Israel, because the Ted Cruz's and Chuck Schumer's and so many others have made it the centerpiece of our foreign policy and of our country, to the point where we now have civil liberties attacks, attacks on free speech in the name of this foreign government.
People getting deported and expelled for the crime of criticizing the state of Israel.
Hate speech codes being imposed to prevent you from saying things about Israel or particular Jewish people, what you can say about anybody else including American citizens or the United States.
It's infected and contaminated every last aspect of our And so Ted Cruz, who says that he wakes up every day to serve the interest of Israel, this one foreign government, can then turn around to Tucker and say, why are you obsessed with Israel?
It must be because you're an anti-Semite.
That's the nature of this discourse always.
Conservatives went around for a decade, whining, complaining, screaming.
And I was with them a lot on these grievances.
The minute you disagree with a liberal on anything, they call you a racist or a misogynist or a trans, whatever.
You question liberal dogma, and you get accused of being a bigot.
That's exactly how most pro-Israel advocates function.
The minute you question them, the minute you criticize Israel, you're instantly branded as a bigot and anti-Semite.
Exactly the same tactic they pretend to loathe when it's done to them.
Here's how this played out.
I'm talking about the British.
You're not talking about the French.
The question, what about the Jews?
What about the Jews?
Oh, I'm an anti-Semite now.
Senator, you're asking the questions, Tucker.
You're asking, why are the Jews controlling our foreign policy?
That's what you just asked.
I am hardly saying that.
That is exactly what you just said.
Well, actually, I can speak for myself and tell you what I am saying.
Good.
On behalf not simply of myself, but of my many Jewish friends who would have the same questions, which is to what extent...
I did not.
Of course you are.
And rather than be honorable enough to say it right to my face, you are in a sleazy, feline way implying it or just asking questions about the Jews.
I'm not asking questions about the Jews.
It has to do with the foreign government.
Isn't Israel controlling our foreign policy?
That's not about the Jews?
You said, I'm asking So let's be clear.
It's sleazy to imply that I'm an anti-Semite, which you just did.
No, I just said, why is that the only question you're asking?
You answer it.
Give me another reason.
If you're not an anti-Semite, give me another reason why the obsession is Israel.
I am in no sense obsessed with Israel.
We are on the brink of war with Iran.
And so these are valid questions.
If I can finish, you asked me why I'm obsessed with Israel.
Three minutes after telling me that when you first ran for Congress, you elucidated one of your main goals, which is to defend Israel.
And I'm the one who's obsessed with Israel.
I don't see a lawmaker's job as defending the interests of a foreign government.
Period.
Any government, including the ones that my ancestors come from.
So that's my position.
That does not make me an anti-Semite.
And shame on you for suggesting otherwise, and I mean that.
Okay.
You know, this is the one thing that I really hate more than anything, is this kind of cowardice in discourse.
If you want to call someone an anti-Semite, just call them that.
Say, I know that you hate Jews.
I believe that you hate Jews.
I believe that you're operating from bigotry.
The reason you're questioning my loyalty to Israel isn't because you think Okay, at least if you say that, people will see what you're doing.
But they very rarely do that.
I mean, people online will do that because who cares?
They say anything off anonymously.
But obviously he was implying very strongly.
Using innuendo and insinuation of the reason Tucker Carlson is questioning AIPAC, questioning the loyalty that Ted Cruz said he has to Israel and the propriety of that, the necessity of going to war for Israel and Iran, fighting alongside them against their worst enemy.
He's insinuating and implying that it's because Tucker Carlson is an anti-Semite who is obsessed with Jews.
But then when Tucker Carlson says, you're calling me an anti-Semite, Ted Cruz, I didn't say that!
Just asking you, why are you so obsessed with the Jews?
Of course he was saying that, but he's such a coward.
I hate it when people use insinuation and innuendo to accuse somebody else of bigotry and then give themselves plausible deniability.
I didn't say that you hate Jews.
Why are you so sensitive?
When of course that's exactly what he was implying.
And this is the way the discussion always ends up.
It always ends up here.
You can watch your government send billions of your dollars, as you do every year, to this foreign government.
You can watch.
Your own government.
Be filled with politicians who you elected to serve your interests.
Admit that their primary responsibility, whether it's because God tells them to or whatever other reason they might have, is to serve the interests of a foreign government that Ted Cruz says he wakes up every day to fulfill.
And the minute you ask a question, I'm like, wait a minute.
Why are we doing so much for this foreign government?
Why don't we send all our money there?
Why don't we give them all our arms?
Why don't we fight all their words for them?
Why don't we sacrifice our interests for them?
The ending of that discussion is you are an anti-Semite.
The last time any president meaningfully defied the orders of the Israeli government of AIPAC, Ronald Reagan did it.
There's a memo of his saying when Menachem Begin, prime minister of Israel in the 1980s, was bombing southern Lebanon and killing huge numbers of civilians, massacring civilians, Reagan called him up and said, this is disgusting what you're doing, it's like a holocaust and I demand that it end.
And 20 minutes later, Menachem Begin called him back and said, we're stopping the war.
Reagan stood up to Israel all the time.
But the real conflict became when George H.W. Bush was president.
People like James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, who were in the realist school, like John Mearsheimer of foreign policy, were his secretary of state and national secret advisor.
And they had a very simple view, which was, rightfully so, for the repression of the Palestinians.
And so the United States government, across partisan lines for decades, had the view, our interest is that you have a two-state solution.
We keep telling you we don't want you to expand more settlements in the West Bank because the West Bank doesn't belong to you.
The West Bank is going to be part of the Palestinian state and the deal we're trying to foster.
And when you allow your citizens to expand their settlements in a part of the area that doesn't belong to you, it makes a two-state solution more difficult.
And no matter how much we keep telling you that it undermines our interests, you keep doing it anyway.
And if you keep doing things that we're telling you undermines our interest, we're not going to keep funding you.
We're not going to give you loan guarantees that you need.
And that threat from the Bush administration, saying if you don't stop these policies that hurt us, we're not going to keep giving you loan guarantees, caused a major explosion on a bipartisan basis in Congress from the Ted Cruz's and the APAC's and the Schumer's who say our number one job is to serve Israel.
And there was a major scandal accusing Jim Baker and Brent Scowcroft of being anti-Semites.
And you know who led that campaign?
Bill Clinton and the Democrats.
When Bill Clinton ran as a Democratic nominee against the sitting incumbent president in 1992, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton ran around the United States accusing Bush 41 and James Baker and Brent Scowcroft of Jim Baker got smeared in headlines all over the country.
He was a very respected foreign policy advisor, lawyer.
It basically destroyed his reputation overnight.
They just branded him an anti-Semite.
And ever since then, that was 1991, thanks to Bill Clinton and the Democrats and plenty of people in both parties and the media, Everybody understood from that point forward, if you even question why we do so much for Israel, even when it harms our interests, your reputation will be destroyed.
You'll be branded anti-Semite.
And that put an end to any real attempt by any president to defy Israel.
To his credit, Obama entered the Iran deal over Netanyahu's vicious objections.
Did a couple of other things as well, but he also signed a deal on his way out promising $4 billion a year to Israel with Netanyahu.
And so this always has been What has destroyed American's ability to question any of this, calling people an anti-Semite.
You just saw Ted Cruz do it the most cowardly, slamming way possible to Tucker Carlson.
And I think, finally, and this is the one note of optimism on which I will end, is that people are tired of that.
They got tired of the liberal tactic, just running around calling everybody anti-Semite all the time, calling everybody a racist all the time, rather, calling them a misogynist.
Everybody understood that the more you just throw that term around, the less impact it has, the less meaning it has.
And so, it wore off, and there was backlash against it.
Like, go ahead, call me a racist.
Call me a misogynist.
You've drained those terms of meaning.
They're just weapons.
Cynical weapons that you employ to end debate and prevent questions about your views.
And that is 100% done, even more so.
From pro-Israel conservatives or pro-Israel Democrats to end any questioning about the state of Israel and our loyalty to it.
And I think people are at the point with independent media watching Israel blow up babies every single day and commit atrocities with our weapons in our arms in Gaza of being told we can't talk, we have to lose our jobs, we have to submit to heightened hate speech laws and codes on college campuses.
people get fired from college campuses.
If they question this foreign government, people are like, "Wait a minute, why is this foreign government dominating our country so much?" And people aren't scared anymore of being called an anti-Semite.
And that's why Tucker Carlson was able to go and do what he did with The fact that Tucker himself is not Jewish makes him more vulnerable to that accusation, but by no means, just being Jewish, shield you from it.
I can guarantee you that.
And it used to be that being branded that was career-destroying.
It no longer is.
And that has opened up for the first time these kinds of questioning, these kinds of debates.
And when you finally open it up and shine sunshine on it, that's when you finally start to see the truth.
That's when things start to, all the mold and dirt and things hidden beneath the floorboards can finally be detected and washed away.
And I think polls show clearly that that's what's happening with Americans' views of Israel and particularly our loyalty to it.
The problem is it's probably a little bit too late.
To prevent Donald Trump from getting even more involved on behalf of Israel in the war in Iran, if that's what he seems inclined to do and if that's what he ends up doing.
But the good thing is, this is clearly unsustainable in the long term.
If I were Israel, although I'd be happy for the moment that Trump is going to fight a new war against 4U, is already doing so, really.
It's only a question of how much more he does it.
They might be happy in the short term.
In the long term, I think it's done more to endanger Israel, those kind of tactics, than anything else that Israel opponents could possibly dream of.
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Thank you.
All right, as I indicated, we really wanted to delve into the current status of Tulsi Gabbard.
Perhaps there'll be a resolution to it tomorrow that we will then cover.
Some news reports suggest that imminently that might happen.
But for the moment, obviously, her position has become very difficult for reasons that we've covered.
We wanted to kind of delve into what Tulsi Gabbard might conclude she has to do, what might be done to her, what that means for Tulsi Gabbard, but also for Trump's foreign policy going forward, given how central she was to his campaign and to his foreign policy vision.
That has clearly been dispensed with the war in Iran.
But as my colleagues presciently told me, and I didn't believe them, that doing just four of these segments is going to take me at least 90 minutes, and so I wouldn't have time for that.
They ended up being right, so we'll definitely do that tomorrow.
For now, that concludes our system update episode for this evening.
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