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July 25, 2025 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald
01:18:13
Glenn Takes Your Questions on Tulsi's Russiagate Revelations, Columbia's $200M Settlement, and More

Glenn Greenwald answers questions from our Locals subscribers about Russiagate revelations, Columbia's $200M settlement, Mehdi Hasan's Jubilee debate, Zohran Mamdani, and more.  ------------------------------- Watch full episodes on Rumble, streamed LIVE 7pm ET. Become part of our Locals community Follow System Update:  Twitter Instagram TikTok Facebook  

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Good evening.
It's Thursday, July 24th.
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.
Thank you so much to the always lovely Michael Tracy, the always charming Aaron Mate for so capably guest hosting this show in my absence over the last couple days.
I'm excited to be back.
And tonight, every Friday night, we devote the show to a Q ⁇ A session where we take questions that have been submitted throughout the week by members of our locals community and answer as many of those as we can.
And as is typically the case, the questions yet again tonight are wide-ranging and very provocative on a diverse range of news stories.
And yet because we have a scheduled interview tomorrow night with a very special guest, one of the favorite for our viewers, Norman Finkelstein, we will instead be doing the Q ⁇ A session tonight on Thursday in order to make sure to get to that.
Among other things, we'll respond to questions about the newly released documents from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard regarding the Rushgate hoax, the very cumbersome and severe settlement that Columbia University just agreed to with the Trump White House that will restore their research funding in exchange for, among other things, subjecting their Middle East curriculum to government review and imposing radically expanded hate speech rules to man opinions about Israel and various Jewish individuals.
And we have many other topics as well.
Before we get to that, a couple of quick programming notes.
First of all, 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 their major podcasting platforms, where if you rate, review, and follow our program, it really helps spread the visibility of our show.
Finally, as independent journalists, we do rely on the support of our viewers and members, which you can participate in by joining our locals community.
You simply click the red join button right below the video player on the Rumble page.
It will take you there.
You get a wide range of benefits, including exclusive video content and interviews.
We sometimes stream exclusively there on Friday nights or tonight when we do a Q ⁇ A. We take questions from our locals members.
And most of all, it is the community on which we really do rely.
To support the independent journalism that we do here every night, again, simply click the join button right below the video player and it will take you directly to that community.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, right after this very brief message from our sponsor.
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Greenwald All right, most of you know the Q ⁇ A setup by now.
It's not actually that complicated.
It's sort of self-explanatory.
You submit questions, you being members of our local community, throughout the week and throughout today.
We then take those questions, try and go through as many of them as we can, and get to as many of them as we can, but I don't want to do a speed round.
It's not intended to be just a sort of yes or no, but instead to give my viewpoint, my analysis, my perspective, my commentary on whatever it is that is interesting you.
And a lot of times it ends up being topics that we might have wanted to cover anyway, that we just haven't had a chance to yet.
Other times it's topics that on our own we may not have covered.
And it's usually that kind of perfect mix.
That always makes me excited to do these.
So let's get right into them to make sure we cover as many as possible.
The first is from Christiana Kay.
And the question is very straightforward.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on Tulsi Gabbard and her latest revelations about Obama.
So, and there's actually a second question here.
Let me get to it now because it was going to be part of what I was about to say, which is from Kevin328.
Is Tulsi Gabbard's Russia Gate report meant to be a distraction from Epstein Gate?
So I actually think Tulsi Gabbard's revelations on their own are substantive and meritorious and important and deserve a lot of attention.
But I do think at this point, anything that the Trump administration is doing is intended to feed their base that is still very confused and upset and angry for the most part by this bizarre, increasingly bizarre posture that they've taken on the Epstein revelations,
namely not to make any, led by not Pam Bondi or Cash Patel or Dan Bongino, but by Donald Trump, that anything that they're kind of suddenly unveiling is presumptively an attempt to distract people from that anger and that confusion and that growing suspicion about what they did with Epstein.
And the problem for them is that the suspicions that have emerged that I don't even think were that present before, that Donald Trump fears that his name is in the files and therefore wants to make sure they're not released, even if his name isn't in the files in any way that's particularly incriminating.
But the climate that has been created around the Epstein files, and I've always thought the Epstein case has important questions to answer, and I still think the Epstein case has important questions to answer, including the ones I've outlined at length, such as whether he worked with or for any foreign or domestic intelligence agencies,
and what was the source of his massive wealth, and why were these mysterious billionaires embedded in the military-industrial complex So eager on just seemingly handing him over huge amounts of wealth in exchange for services that seem very amorphous at best.
I think there's a lot of unanswered questions that are important to say nothing of whether there's evidence that very powerful and important people participated in the more sinister aspects of what it was that he was doing and whether any blackmail arose from that.
And of course, Donald Trump's name is going to be in some of these files for so many reasons.
He was very good friends with Jeffrey Epstein at one point.
They spent a lot of time together.
It seems like most or all of that time took place prior to the conviction of Jeffrey Epstein in 2007 that has its own very odd set of questions around why he got such an incredibly lenient deal for crimes that most people are sent to prison for for a very long time.
There's actually an excellent discussion that if you haven't seen, I want to recommend on all of this, which is Darrell Cooper's discussion with Tucker Carlson on Tucker Carlson's show about the Epstein case.
Daryl spent huge amounts of time putting together the entire history of Jeffrey Epstein, where he came from, how he emerged on the scene, who his key contacts were, where his wealth came from, the questions that have arisen, the way in which they've been buried.
Despite what people have tried to concoct or depict about Darrell Cooper, in large part because of his, let's say, unconventional views on World War II, but more so his harsh criticisms of Israel, that he's some deranged, unhinged, fabulous who doesn't understand history,
he's actually one of the most scrupulous and meticulous commentators and analysts I've seen, by which I mean he really does only very strongly cling to facts and has no problem admitting, which he often does, that there are certain things he doesn't know, that there's holes in his understanding, that there's holes in the information.
And there's zero conspiratorial thinking or even speculative thinking in this discussion, or very little.
It's all just a chronicle of facts in a way that is laid out, not just to understand the Epstein case, but the reason why it's captured so much attention about the behavior of our elite class.
And so I do think Donald Trump's name appears in these files, the way the Wall Street Journal has reported it did.
And Trump was explicitly asked outside the White House by a reporter just like two weeks ago, did Pam Bondi give you a briefing in May in which she indicated to you that the Epstein files contained your name?
And to that, he explicitly said no.
And that's exactly what the Wall Street Journal is now reporting had happened.
Most journalists know that that happened.
There were leaks inside the Justice Department in the White House that this is what happened.
And again, I would be shocked if Donald Trump's name did not appear at some point in the Epstein files in some capacity because of his close friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.
They were in the same West Palm Beach social circles, which is a very small set of very rich people who compose that society.
The U.S. attorney who ended up being appointed, who oversaw Jeffrey Epstein's sweetheart deal, ended up being appointed by Donald Trump as Secretary of Labor.
He clearly has positive feelings for Glosain Maxwell.
In that notorious interview, he said, I wish her well.
Something that Donald Trump doesn't say about most criminals, let alone ones imprisoned on charges that they trafficked underage girls.
But the climate that has been created in part, in large part, by his closest followers, Pam Bondi and Cash Patel and Dan Bongino and his own personal attorney who is now the U.S. attorney for New Jersey,
at least for a little bit while longer, and some of the leading and most influential MA influencers were the ones who created this climate where if your name is even remotely associated with Jeffrey Epstein, your entire life and your integrity and your character are instantly cast into doubt.
One of the first times I really noticed this was when the Wall Street Journal reported on a series of contacts between people that no one knew had known Jeffrey Epstein and Jeffrey Epstein, one of whom was Noam Chomsky.
And the reason that happened was because Jeffrey Epstein had a very specific and passionate interest in academic institutions in Boston, especially the two most prestigious, Harvard and MIT.
He funded various research projects.
He gave $125,000, for example, to Bill Ackman's wife in order for her to have some sort of research project.
And he had two or three dinners with Noam Chomsky.
And Chomsky was very contemptuous of the questions from the Wall Street Journal.
I guess that's what happens when you're 92.
You don't take any kind of smear campaign seriously.
You don't really care.
And he just said, yeah, I had dinners with Jeffrey Epstein.
He was a very well-connected and wealthy person.
Now, oddly, Jeffrey Epstein was very close friends with the former Israeli prime minister, Ehad Baruch, who obviously knew Chomsky would have a great deal of animus towards.
And Jeffrey Epstein was very connected to the Israeli government in all sorts of ways, including through his primary benefactor, the multi-billionaire Les Wexner, who handed over to Epstein billions of dollars, it seems, in assets.
So it is an odd person for Chomsky to know.
But at the same time, if you're one of the most intellectually heralded professors and scholars in the Boston area at one of the most prestigious schools in the world, MIT, where Chomsky spent almost his entire life as a professor of linguistics, that is the kind of person that Jeffrey Epstein tried to target and befriend to make himself feel important, to make himself feel intellectually relevant.
And yet, you would have thought that that revelation by itself proved that Chomsky had gone to that island multiple times and had sex with underage girls and was a pedophile.
So there has been a lot of speculative guilt by association and hysteria that has surrounded this story, such that anyone whose name appears in those files is likely to have suspicion and doubt cast on them for the rest of their life, even if the connections were innocuous.
And I'm sure part of what Trump wants to avoid is any indication that his name appears in those files because of that climate that will spill over onto him, including by many of his own followers.
And then there are likely things in there that might, you know, one of the reasons why investigations are typically kept secret, including grand jury proceedings, is because there's a lot of accusations that get made that are unverified, but if they're published, they may seem like they have credibility.
That was part of what we had to deal with with the NSA, with the Snowden documents.
Much of the archive, a lot of the archive contained documents where they wanted to spy on certain people, and they would speculate that those people might have ties to terrorist groups or to al-Qaeda or to Islamic extremism or engage in other kinds of crimes unrelated to terrorism, but they were never charged with that.
There was no evidence for it.
It was just speculation about why the NSA thought they should spy on these people.
And had we published those documents with their names, we would have destroyed their reputations forever based on accusations that were completely unvetted and just appeared in these documents.
But clearly, Trump panicked when he learned that his name was in there.
And that is when not only did he order everything to be stopped, no more disclosures, the investigation closed, but when out of nowhere he began asserting that the Epstein files are all a fake, are all fabricated, or at least much of them are fabricated,
and claimed that they were the same kind of hoax that Obama and Hillary and Biden and Jim Comey and John Brennan manufactured for RussiaGate and the Steele dossier.
And like all of a sudden, the Epstein files went from the most pressing and significant matter, the disclosure of which would be the key ingredient to deciphering the sinister globalist elite that runs the world, and then overnight just suddenly became a hoax, a bunch of fake documents that never should see the light of day.
Obviously, the only reason why Trump would suddenly concoct that excuse, oh, they're filled with falsehoods and forgeries, was because he was fearful that it would harm his reputation or the reputation of people very close to him who he cares about.
And so said, no, this should never see the light of day.
This is just another Democratic Party hoax that you idiots are falling for.
And that behavior obviously fueled suspicions even more, as have the subsequent reporting from the Wall Street Journal about that birthday greeting that Trump sent to Epstein that he denies, but the Wall Street Journal reported.
And then the subsequent reporting that Pam Bondi briefed him, that his name appears in these documents.
So anytime anyone thinks about the Epstein documents for even one second, you know, that kind of loss of faith and trust in Trump is something that once it breaks, is very difficult to put back together.
And they are desperate to just, I mean, you know, the day after the Epstein files, they said, hey, here's the Martin Luther King files.
It's like, I guess it's good to see the Martin Luther King files, kind of like the JFK files, in that these are documents that should have been released a long time ago.
There's zero reason for secrecy.
It was one of the most consequential historical events of the last 70 years in the United States.
We should be able to understand what our government knows about that event.
But it wasn't like anybody was so eager.
Anyone thought that that was the key to deciphering much of anything.
It was an important historical event.
And there, from all appearances, nothing particularly surprising or shocking or informative about any of those documents.
That was clearly a way of saying, here, here's a new shiny toy that you can go look at and try and forget about Epstein.
And the revelation by Tulsi Gabbard, especially in the timeframe in which it occurred, most definitely, unfortunately, because as I said, they're consequential, is being contaminated by this perception that anything that the government is now throwing at you as disclosures are designed to distract you from the big whale that they've been covering up, that they themselves made into the most pressing matter.
J.D. Vance as well, and Donald Trump Jr.
But also the idea that they want to regain your trust by showing you that they're redirecting your attention somewhere else.
So yes, unfortunately, it does have the stench of that.
But at the same time, let's talk about these documents because they are extremely revealing.
And I know Aaron Mate spent a good amount of time yesterday.
He's someone who, he was one of the very, very few people who wasn't a MAGA journalist or pundit, wasn't a Trump supporter, who from the very beginning said, this whole story seems journalistically dubious at best.
And there were very few of us at the time doing that.
Jimmy Doerr was another person who did that.
Matt Taibbi was another one.
There were very, very few of us, and we all got called fascists and Trump supporters and Russian agents for having questioned these sensationalistic conspiracy theories about the relationship between Donald Trump and Russia or the role Russia played in the 2016 election that never had evidence for them,
that were all fueled by very familiar anonymous leaks from the CIA and the FBI and the rest of the national security state that hated Trump to the papers to whom they always leak when they want to manipulate the public, which is the Washington Post and the New York Times, which then gave themselves Pulitzers for having done so.
So I'm glad, but of all those people, I think Aaron has the most granular, detailed knowledge of every document, of every form of testimony.
It's something I haven't looked at in several years.
We haven't spent a lot of time in RussiaGate.
It was basically debunked when Robert Mueller closed the investigation while arresting nobody on the core conspiracy that they criminally conspired with the Russians.
Said they couldn't Find any evidence for it.
And of course, there's been no accountability.
Those very same people lied in 2020 when they said that the Hunter-Biden laptop was Russian disinformation exactly in the same way.
No accountability for any of that.
But I haven't spent all that much time engrossed in Russia Gate documents like I used to do all the time when I was reporting on it.
But Aaron has a very still-trapped memory, especially for this particular story.
So I was very glad to let him come on and talk about it in my absence.
That's why we, one of the reasons why we asked him to guest host last night.
So I know he did a lot on this.
But I do want to say that what was so obvious from the very beginning was that this was a very coordinated, politicized theme that emerged out of nowhere in the middle of 2016 that the Hillary Clinton campaign, out of desperation, invented out of whole cloth.
I will never forget the day that it was sort of circulating in the air.
You had people like David Korn trying to insert the steel dossier reporting before its disclosure.
Oh, there's a document out there that everyone in Washington knows about that contains shocking revelations of Trump and Russia.
And that was all part of the effort to try and lay the foundation for this.
But the Hillary Clinton campaign released this ad with this very sinister baritone and this very dark music and these very grainy photos saying, what does Donald Trump and the Kremlin, what are they doing in secret?
What is this relationship that they have?
And I was just so amazed because not only was there no evidence for it, zero, none.
It never even made sense on its own terms.
Like why if the Russians wanted to hack the Podesta and the DNC emails, would they have needed the assistance of the Trump campaign?
How would the Trump campaign have helped in any way in that hacking?
Why would they need to do that?
Why would they collaborate with the Trump campaign that way?
There was never really even any evidence that Putin actually wanted Trump to win that race.
If anything, a lot of people assumed that Hillary was the overwhelming favorite to win, was almost certainly going to win, and no one wanted to get on her bad side.
And no one thought Donald Trump could win.
And the idea that the Russians would go so heavy never made much sense, but even more so, there was never any evidence for it that it came from Putin, that even if the Russians had been mucking around in the election, that it came from Putin, that it was part of a big master plan that had any effect on the election.
There was never any evidence for this.
But the intelligence community went all in because they were petrified of Trump.
They hated Trump.
They saw correctly that Hillary Clinton would be a very safe guardian and continuation of the status quo, which is what they saw in Biden and Tom Wall Harris as well.
And Trump, for whatever else is true about him, is very unpredictable.
Sometimes he will go to bat for the military intelligence, the military industrial complex and the intelligence community more aggressively than anyone else, as he's done many times.
But he's also unpredictable.
And they want predictability, continuity, stability.
And the Democrats represent that and Trump didn't.
And that was why they were so eager to destroy him, both in the campaign and then sabotage his presidency once he was inaugurated and won.
And that's exactly what they proceeded to do with this fake story.
That ended up getting completely debunked and everybody just walked away from as though it never happened.
And what these documents reveal is what we assumed at the time, which was that the Obama administration, obviously, was desperate to help Hillary.
It was the CIA under John Brennan, an extremely politicized, corrupt, and dishonest actor that Trump first had, that Obama first had as national security advisor and then installed as CIA chief, that led the way in concocting evidence.
They had James Clapper there too with a history of lying.
Those are the people running the national security state.
And they were open partisans.
Remember, these are the same people who ended up among the 51 intelligence officials in 2020 who lied with that letter blaming the Russians for the Hunter Biden laptop and calling into question its authenticity right before the election because they were petrified it would help Trump win and Biden lose.
So their politicized motives are beyond question.
Same with James Comey at the FBI.
His hatred for Donald Trump has become legion.
And these were the people who took the best assessment of the U.S. intelligence community, the analysts and the spies who were saying, there's very low confidence that Russia really did anything here.
We're not sure that they were the ones that did the hacking.
We're definitely, there's no evidence that Putin even has a preference, let alone that he's pursuing some master plan to implement that preference.
And Obama basically ordered Brennan and Clapper to go back and take another look, meaning to revise what their own intelligence professionals were telling them.
Exactly what happened, by the way, with the Iraq War, when there were all sorts of analysts inside the CIA telling Dick Cheney and the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz, that they did not believe that Saddam Hussein had an active WMD program.
You may remember the very bizarre story in Pat Leahy's memoir where he says he was jogging on the street with his wife or walking on the street with his wife and these two guys who he didn't recognize came up to them as joggers and kind of whispered in Pat Leahy's ear, like, hey, take a look at file number 14 in the CIA briefing that you have in the Senate.
And he went and looked and it was filled with documents calling it serious doubt, the WMD claims.
And then they did it a few days later and said, have you taken a look at file six?
And he went there and found even more convincing evidence.
He did end up voting against it, but never revealed to the public that those documents were there, let alone that any of that happened, because he was too much of a coward.
But he did write about it in his book.
So there were parts of the intelligence community, the parts that were the actual professional analysts, who resisted the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction.
And that's when they got George Tennant, the CIA director, to say, oh, it's a slam dunk.
They created their own intelligence teams who were ideologically driven, who would give them what they want.
They had Colin Powell go to the UN and use his credibility, squander his credibility to represent that fake evidence, that fake intelligence.
This is exactly what happened here.
The intelligence professionals with no real stake in the game, career intelligence officials, were saying, there's really not much here, not very much at all that we could actually provide you to bolster these conclusions.
And they just went back and found whatever they wanted and concluded whatever they wanted and started leaking it to the Washington Post and the New York Times.
And it became something that was considered not just possible, but basically proven truth.
And the idea that Trump and Russia were in bed together, that Putin had blackmail leverage over Trump, became the leading narrative of the Trump campaign and the Trump presidency for the first 18 months through the Mueller investigation, drowning out all of our other politics, an utter and complete fraud and hoax.
And we now see the actual details of what happened that for me at the time were extremely obvious, extremely visible.
But the rest of the media, other than the few exceptions I named, there were a few others.
And there were some right-wing reporters doing excellent work, Molly Hemingway and Chuck Ross doing like real day-to-day reporting, a couple others as well.
But most of the media just didn't tolerate any kind of questioning of the Russian Gate narrative.
There was no place other than Fox News to go and question it or criticize it.
Not in the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or the Washington Post, not in any of the other cable shows.
And anyone questioning the Russian Gate narrative was expelled from left liberal precincts.
And it became some sort of heresy to even question it when the whole thing was a scam and a fraud from the start.
Now, I do not think there will be any accountability for this, in large part because let's remember that that Supreme Court immunity case that liberals raised hell over and said was some kind of newly invented president to immunize Donald Trump to allow him to commit crimes in office, as I pointed out at the time, was neither new nor radical.
But what it also did was immunize every other president besides Trump, past and present and future, from crimes they commit in office as well, as long as it's in the exercise of their Article II powers.
And that means Biden got immunized.
It means George Bush got immunized.
It means Barack Obama got immunized.
It means whoever follows Trump got immunized.
And whatever else is true, clearly everything that is being accused of everything Barack Obama is accused of having doing was in the exercise of his Article II powers, namely overseeing and directing the intelligence agency.
Even if he did it corruptly, even if he did it criminally, the scope of the immunity from the Supreme Court was so broad that it said basically that anything that you do in the scope of the exercise of your legitimate powers under Article II, even manipulating intelligence, is not subject to criminal prosecution because that would be a violation of the separation of powers by having the judiciary punish presidents for the exercise of their Article II powers.
That's what the Supreme Court decision was.
Theoretically, John Brennan or others in the intelligence community, James Clapper, people inside the Obama White House, could theoretically be prosecuted, but the history of the expanded Article II powers that long predated this immunity decision that led to it, as I pointed out at the time, as I documented at great length, despite it being pictured as some brand new idea, radical new idea just to protect Trump.
In fact, it was the logical conclusion of the expansion of executive power and the immunity provided to them, makes it extremely unlikely, extremely unlikely that any of these people are going to be held criminally responsible.
There's questions of statute of limitations, even if they could be held criminally liable, for example, for perjury.
We're talking now about nine years ago, events from nine, eight, seven years ago.
A lot of the statute of limitations have already elapsed, but at the very least, this should be considered a nail in the coffin, not just of the fact that this was a fraud perpetrated on the American people for a long time, using the abuses of the intelligence community to do so, but that it was very deliberate.
It was very knowing.
It was very conscious by the people at the highest levels of our government.
It's just yet another case where the most damaging and the most extreme and brazen hoaxes happen when the intelligence community, the White House, and their media partners unite to disseminate lies to the American public day after day, week after week, month after month that they constantly reinforce.
And yes, some of them are trying to draw this distinction between, quote unquote, having Russia hack the election in terms of whether they hacked the voting systems and altered the results versus whether they hacked the election metaphorically by hacking the DNC and Podesta's emails and then changing the course of the election.
But at the time, that distinction was never being drawn.
There was a reason they repeated over and over and over and over and over.
There are montages people have made of every major media outlet, of every major media figure, of politicians in the Democratic Party, over and over, obviously through a coordinated script saying the Russians hacked our election.
And the message got to the American people.
70% of Americans, two years later, in polling, believed that Hillary Clinton was the rightful winner of the 2016 election, but that the Russians had hacked into our electoral system and changed the voting outcome.
You may recall the very notorious incident at the Intercept where a person inside the government, a reality winner, leaked to the Intercept a document, and the Intercept handled it extremely carelessly.
They allowed people to believe that I was the one who did it and oversaw it.
When in fact, I hated the story from the beginning.
I didn't even believe it should be worked on because the document was so unreliable.
But they mishandled it to such an extent because they were so eager to get it published to show the media that despite my constant skepticism, vocal, vehement, constant skepticism about RussiaGate, that they were going to join the real part of the media, impress the Washington Post, the New York Times, and NBC News by showing that they're willing to do a major story bolstering the Russiagate fraud.
The whole point of that document was a very speculative memo that had been written suggesting that the Russians had succeeded in tests on how to tap into our electoral system to basically bolster the idea that the Russians succeeded in changing vote totals to help Donald Trump win the 2016 election.
That was what the big, huge, important disclosure from Reality Winner was, that the inner south fell for lock stock and barrel because they wanted to.
But even on the question not of whether they hacked the election in terms of the electoral system and changing vote totals, but even in the metaphorical way that they're now trying to mean that they intended it to be, namely that the Russians played a key role in that election,
that it was Vladimir Putin's determination to help Trump win, that they hacked the DNC and Podesta emails in order to help that Kremlin goal, that there was very little to no evidence for that either, that the intelligence community that was extremely reluctant and dubious to endorse it basically were forced to when Obama ordered them to go back and make sure that they had released something prior to his leaving that allowed the media to believe that this was the overwhelming consensus of the intelligence community.
That is a gigantic scandal.
It's not surprising.
It's something I believed for a long time is exactly what happened.
It seems so obvious at the time.
Probably other than the Snowden story, maybe the big investigation we did here in Brazil in 2019 and 2020 that resulted in Luo being freed from prison.
I can't recall any story, any reporting I did that generated more contempt and hatred and pushback because it was a religion to the mainstream media and the Democratic Party and not just the partisans of the Democratic Party, but most of the liberal left part of the party, though they deny it now, bought onto this Russian Gate story as well.
And I do think it's so refreshing anytime you get disclosures of classified documents that are concealing not information that might harm the American public or the National Security of the United States that they're disclosed, but that will harm the reputation of people in charge because it shows corruption that they abuse the secrecy powers to conceal.
Unfortunately, there is this skepticism that it's being done to distract from Epstein, and partially it probably is.
And there's going to be very little coverage of this because the media outlets that would cover it, that should cover it, are the ones who are the leading perpetrators of it.
How can they without admitting massive guilt, which they're never going to do?
They still haven't done it to this day, despite being caught lying repeatedly that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, a much more straightforward lie that they got caught disseminating over and over before the election.
So I don't expect this to do much.
You can see the only people who are talking about this are the people who were skeptical of the Rush Gate story from the start.
A lot of vindication is definitely deserved.
People should claim it.
It's an important story to explain to the public.
But the people who really deserve accountability for this probably aren't going to get any, and that's one of the major problems of our system.
And until about a month ago, that's what the MAGA movement was saying was so important about the Epstein files as well.
The people engaged in wrongdoing will face no accountability because these documents have been hidden.
And it seems like these documents are going to remain hidden even more so because of the new determination by President Trump, for whatever his reasons, to keep them hidden and even to disparage their reliability or authenticity, even if they did get released.
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All right, there was this big announcement today from Columbia University and the White House.
It was actually announced yesterday that this conflict between the Trump White House and Columbia, Trump White House cut off all research funding for Columbia, threatened to punish it in all sorts of other ways based on alleged claims, that they tolerate anti-Semitism,
that they allow Jewish students to be harassed, all those claims that the Trump administration has been making to gain greater control of the curriculum at colleges, speech codes at colleges, faculty hiring at colleges.
Columbia capitulated, as it was clear they were going to do, and they announced a major new deal with the Trump administration to restore their funding.
Samsonite, about that deal, asked this, quote, did Columbia really just put Trump on the dole?
$200 million, pardon my language, but you need to help me understand what the hell is going on here?
Thank you for all the great work you do.
God, you must be very well spoken, very polite if you have to apologize for what the hell is going on here and say pardon my language.
For a lot of people, that is actually very elevated language.
So congratulations on that.
And then there's a related issue that I'll get to with this next question.
But the Columbia deal is basically, a lot of it, it doesn't make sense on its face because the idea is it's a deal to restore financing of the U.S. government to Colombia, even though part of the deal is that Columbia has to pay $200 million to the Trump administration, kind of as a punishment or a fee.
They're accepting that they'll lose $200 million for all the naughty and bad things that they did.
And allowing too much criticism of Israel and allowing protests to get out of control in the view of the Trump administration.
And in general, just allowing too much anti-Semitic thought and ideas and expression to the point that Jewish students are being endangered.
There's also lawsuits brought by Jewish students against Columbia that Columbia is now agreeing to pay millions of dollars in order to settle.
So congratulations to the very put upon and marginalized and oppressed Jewish students at Columbia who are now going to get major payoffs for all the hardship and the harassment and the oppression and marginalization they had to endure from seeing protests that made them uncomfortable.
But you can believe that Columbia University allowed the protest to get out of hand if you want.
We've gone over this many times before.
The history of student protest in this country has been an iconic part of the college experience.
The protests against the Vietnam War in the 60s were infinitely more disruptive and radical than the protests throughout 2023, mostly into 2024 at most campuses, where the resistance was largely symbolic.
The Jewish, the campus protests at almost every school, including Columbia, were filled with Jewish students themselves, despite all the speech about how these protests were dangerous and harassing for Jewish students.
Huge numbers of Jews composed these protests and these encampments.
We interviewed several of them to the point that every Friday night, every Friday night, inside the Columbia encampment, supposedly the most anti-Semitic one, the most dangerous one with a history at the school of anti-Semitism, there were Shabbat dinners for all the protesters where Muslim and Christian and Jewish students as part of these protests would all get together for Shabbat dinner.
They celebrated Muslim holidays as well and Christian holidays together.
So there was a huge exaggeration, which there always is, of any threat anytime the government wants to seize power over our private institutions or academic institutions.
There's also a lot of misconception about the funding that comes from the U.S. government to these universities.
The reason that the government funds universities, they don't fund them and just say, here, here's $500 million for you to use how you want.
They task these universities who can attract the greatest minds from all over the world to pay for research facilities and labs, to research cures and treatments, to research all sorts of technology, including military technology.
That's where a lot of military technology comes from is at these universities.
This is not a charity.
It's being done to keep the United States competitive and a lot of the research ends up being done in our elite universities.
And never before has this money come with attachments about what views can be heard on campus or what kinds of professors can teach certain things and how they have to be approved by the government.
So two of the things that Columbia University has done that jeopardize free speech rights and academic freedom, not for foreign students and not in ways that pertain to the right to protest.
It has nothing to do with the protest.
It has nothing to do with foreign students.
It's purely about the expression of ideas, the peaceful expression of ideas in a classroom, in a student newspaper, or what can be taught in schools.
So part of it is that the curriculum for certain departments, obviously beginning with the Middle East Studies Department, which is the one of greatest interest to the government because that's where Israel can be criticized and discussed, now has to be subject to the review of the federal government.
And on top of that, and even worse, the Trump administration demanded that Columbia adopt what Harvard has already adopted under government pressure and other universities as well, which is a radically expanded hate speech code that outlaws and bans ideas that have always been permissible to express at our leading universities under the First Amendment and the basic notions of academic freedom, but that are not outlawed.
You're not allowed, for example, to call Israel a racist endeavor, even though you're allowed to call the United States a racist endeavor.
You're allowed to call any other country a racist endeavor, just not Israel.
You're not allowed to say that Jews played a role in killing Jesus, even though Christians have believed this for centuries.
You're not allowed to say it.
It's not like you can say it and then other people get to debate it.
Talk about, no, the Romans played a greater role.
No, this tax does.
What does it mean?
Maybe nothing for, no, just no discussion of that.
That's now deemed anti-Semitic.
You can't subject Israel to criticism that somehow you can't prove you subject other countries equally to the exact same criticism.
So like if you criticize Israel for engaging in a genocide, but you haven't said the same thing about some faction in the Sudan that does the same thing, you can be guilty of anti-Semitism.
Even you may not talk about the Sudan because your government has no role in it while your government funds and arms what's happening in what's being done in Gaza.
Now suddenly you have this burden of proof when you criticize Israel to show that you criticize other countries in exactly the same way.
You don't have that burden of proof for any other country.
You can criticize China without having to prove that you criticize other countries in the same way.
That burden is only for Israel.
You're not allowed to say that certain Jewish individuals seem to have more loyalty to Israel than they do to the United States, even though it's so clearly it's true.
People like Ben Shapiro and Barry Weiss and so many others are not allowed to say that anymore, not allowed to express that.
If you do, you're now in violation of the expanded hate speech code that the Trump administration demanded Columbia Institute to govern not the foreign speech of foreign students, but the speech of American students and American faculty members and what can be taught in curricula.
And the whole point of this is to severely chill what can be said to young people about Israel, what people who are young can say about Israel on college campuses about risking punishment.
I want you to think about that for a minute.
How unbelievably severe that is, how seriously grave of an assault on free speech that is, not in defense of marginalized American groups, which is bad enough, but in defense of a foreign country and its interests and those who are loyal to it.
Remember, the Trump movement spent a decade mocking viciously the idea that marginalized groups, minority groups, and college campuses were intended to feel safe by banning ideas that make them uncomfortable.
And now that's exactly what the Trump administration required Columbia to do in exchange for having its research funding restored and Harvard as well, so that now the movement that said it hated hate speech codes on college campuses, that it hated the idea of safetyism on college campuses, now has required schools to expand their hate speech codes on behalf of a foreign country.
At our institutions that are supposed to be the primary safeguards of free thought, of free idea, going back to the Enlightenments, academic institutions were supposed to be the place where the ability to question even the most sacred pieties were most protected, that no orthodoxies were off-limits to being challenged, where all dissent could thrive.
And what's happening is everybody sees the same polling data that we've shown you, that huge numbers of people in the United States have dramatically revised toward the negative side their views of Israel and the U.S. relationship to Israel.
And there's panic over that among Israel and its loyalists in the United States who are reacting to that by trying to squash and destroy any place that allows criticism of Israel.
Remember, the reason why the TikTok ban passed was because, not because of the China issue, that never got enough votes or near enough votes when it was only supposedly banning TikTok to protect us from China.
It only got enough votes after October 7th when enough Democrats got convinced that one of the reasons why so many young people had turned against Israel and were against the war in Gaza was because TikTok was allowing too much anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian sentiment to be expressed, and they wanted to either force TikTok to close because of that or to force it to be transferred to a corporation that would be much more aggressive about censoring material that the government wanted suppressed.
Right now, there's this amazing thing happening where Paramount is involved in a major merger.
That's the parent company of CBS News and other networks as well.
And the idea of the merger basically is that Larry Ellison's son, Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, who's worth $35 billion, his son, the heir to the Ellison fortune, and the Ellison family are fanatical supporters of Israel, are buying CBS news, with 60 Minutes being one of the examples.
And 60 Minutes has been widely criticized for having broadcast a lot of reports that are very pro-Israel, but also some that were critical.
And not only is he now taking control of CBS at a time when polling data shows this change in public opinion about Israel, but he's negotiating with Barry Weiss to buy her basically Israeli government state outlet, the free press, for something like $200 million to give her $200 million.
And not only will the free press then become part of CBS News, but she will have some sort of ombudsman role or even a correspondent role at 60 Minutes.
So you see this change in public opinion about Israel and then you see the response, which is attacking all of our major institutions, imposing censorship on them, and then using billionaire wealth to buy up these media outlets and then install within them people who are going to ensure that the content is completely pro-Israel.
People, I hear all the time, they ask like, why do you talk about Israel so much?
Why are you so obsessed with Israel?
Obsessed with Israel.
These are the people who are passing laws and bills and doing things every single day on behalf of Israel.
The people inside governments and largest corporations and now in our academic institutions.
Of course, I'm going to report about it.
I'm going to focus on it a lot more when our government is paying for what I think is the greatest atrocity in humanitarian climate in the 21st century, which is the genocide and mass starvation in Gaza.
But beyond that, it has all kinds of repercussions here at home.
And they never stop.
And here's just one more example.
This is from someone called Your Last Uber driver.
Trying to think what the implications of that might be, but I guess it's inspiring in the sense that if you're afraid there's a disappearance of Uber drivers, this person who asked this question will be there toward the end.
They're going to be your last Uber driver.
And they seem very wise, very reliable, so perhaps that's good.
Your last Uber driver says this, quote, did you see that there's more censorship coming down the pipe?
There's some bill in Congress that I saw some tweets about.
It claims that it's going to target disinformation after the whole Grok thing.
So yes, there is bipartisan legislation designed to impose greater censorship powers over the internet, over big tech, which we all agreed I thought was a terrible thing.
It has bipartisan support.
It's led by Congressman Joff Gothimer of New Jersey, who's a fanatical supporter of Israel, as well as the Republic.
He's a Democrat from New Jersey, as well as the Republican Don Bacon, who is a Republican from Nebraska, who is also a fanatical Israel supporter.
And it comes from the ADL, whose job is to censor American Discourse on behalf of Israel.
And here's the press release from Joff Gottheimer, the congressman from New Jersey.
ADL announces legislation to combat terrorists and disinformation on social media.
Social media apps are breeding grounds for terrorist organizations and sympathizers.
It follows the Grok's AI anti-Semitic and violent posts.
And then here's Congressman Gottfeimer and Congressman Don Bacon at a Jordan Neutch conference heralding their censorship legislation to force big tech to censor what they regard as anti-Semitic.
This bipartisan legislation will require social media companies to release detailed public reports of violations of their terms of service and to outline how they're addressing these violations, which includes the use of their platforms by terrorist groups.
Every day companies dove report this information.
It will result in a $5 million fine.
Social media companies can no longer hide the crimes that take place on their platforms, especially when they pose a threat to America's national security.
And we're very proud this bill has the backing of the anti-defamation league.
I want to just emphasize that last point.
He's talking about his legislation, and then he says what he's particularly proud of.
National security.
And we're very proud this bill has the backing of the anti-defamation league.
Wow, that's something you'd be so proud of.
You're introducing a censorship law for American citizens, and you have the approval and background of a group with a long, aggressive tradition of demanding that people be fired or censored if they become critical of Israel.
Congratulations.
Here's the Republican Congressman Bacon on why he supports this censorship bill.
Frank, I saw anti-Semitism for the first time when I was 15 years old.
I had good parents who taught me it was wrong, but loved the lasting impression of seeing my first incident as a teenager.
If you're on my social media, you see it every day from people that are responding back with what I consider clearly anti-Semitic kind of messages on social media.
You saw an article today.
It was about me, but talking about Real Pose, congressmen who are pro-Zionists, right?
And you're like, in other words, it's all over our social media and it's unacceptable.
So this is a member of Congress who receives massive funding from AIPAC, needless to say.
People are offended by his views.
He's a public figure.
And he gets criticized on Twitter.
And he sees it.
People are calling him a Zionist, someone who's too loyal to Israel.
He doesn't like it.
And now he wants to enact a bill drafted by the ADL to force big tech to censor what he considers anti-Semitism.
You don't think there's anti-black racism all over Twitter?
Go look at Ilyan Omar's tweets and the things that people say to her in response.
Or Jasmine Crockett.
Or any, any, go look at what Pete Buttigieg gets.
You don't think there's all sorts of variant anti-gay animists directed at him?
Every single person in public life, no matter who you are, deals with that.
Most of us are adults.
We understand that it's actually healthier to allow free speech.
I mean, if we hear things we really dislike that are really ugly, it's in our bloodstream as Americans to kind of believe that about free speech, that yes, you get insults and all sorts of vituperative comments about things about you and who you are.
But most of us don't have the impulse to go and censor that.
And it's especially important to allow the public to express criticisms of political figures, elected officials in Washington who are doing something like financing and arming a war.
You're allowed to speak aggressively toward them, even if they don't like it.
He's not even Jewish.
Jaff Gothheimer is Jewish.
Congressman Bacon's not even Jewish.
And he's like, I'm getting so much anti-Semitism in my Twitter feed.
Who cares?
Stop reading it if it really bothers you.
But passing a bill to force big tech to censor the stuff that you think is unpleasant?
And why is anti-Semitic speech more disturbing to you than anti-black speech or anti-Muslim speech or anti-LGBT speech or anti-immigrant speech, which is also all over the place?
My view on all of it is the same, which is that it's not the role of the government nor of big tech to censor any of it.
But this is what's happening throughout the democratic world.
It's particularly happening in the EU, Canada, and most of all, worst of all, in Brazil.
We have a First Amendment that makes it more difficult, and that's why they're trying to outsource it to big tech.
This is exactly what I thought we were all so angry about that the Biden administration did when they forced big tech to censor dissent on COVID and on the 2020 election and on Ukraine.
I was for exactly the same reason that this is so dangerous.
And that's what I mean.
I'm the one obsessed with Israel when you have every day members of Congress like this standing up and introducing new bills on behalf of a foreign government that attack our free speech rights as Americans.
Yeah, I'm going to talk about that a lot.
All right, here is anti-warism who says, Glenn, what are your thoughts on people getting fired for hate and political speech?
I spent some time thinking about it when I saw that self-identified fascist who debated Benny Hassan in a recent viral clip, allegedly got fired from his job.
People argue that it's a private employer's choice on who they want to keep and the only government, and only the government has to respect the First Amendment, which I guess makes sense.
But I find that most people are completely hypocritical about this when it comes to speech that they like.
Yes, this was the idea of cancel culture and the objections to it.
It wasn't about government attacks on free speech.
That is a violation of First Amendment.
It was the idea that if you express views that are disliked by mainstream thought, that now you get fired, you get canceled.
And it happens not just to people in prominent positions, but also to people in lower-level positions.
So here's the example.
Honestly, I hate this whole format that has become popular, this like surrounded jubilee format.
I can't stand how many Haassan debates.
He wrote a book saying, I'm the greatest debater, and really all he does is just filibuster and talk over people.
Maybe you get out four or five words until he starts speaking over you, and he thinks that's somehow an effective way of debating.
But here's the person who basically self-identified as a fascist when Medi accused him of being one.
He then lost his job.
I think it's like a 21-year-old kid.
All these people at this place were quite young.
And here's what happened.
Quite frankly, if Trump is anti-Constitution, good.
And I think he should go further.
So this is wonderfully revealing of the modern conservative mindset.
So I appreciate you spelling it out so openly.
Just checking, do you support the Second Amendment?
I do.
Okay.
Surprise.
I was shocked to hear that.
I'm saying that Donald Trump is defying the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the 14th Amendment.
He's thinking of defying the 12th and 22nd Amendments.
You're saying you don't care about the Constitution, but actually you do because you quite like the Second Amendment.
You just don't like the bits that you disagree with.
Can I just be clear on that?
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm more than willing to amend it and include it.
Whenever it's in your paper.
Yeah, absolutely.
So can Democrats do the same when they're in office?
No, absolutely not.
So you don't believe in democracy.
No, I don't.
Absolutely not.
What do you believe in?
Autocracy.
A little bit more than a far-right Republican.
Hey, what can I say?
I think you can say I'm a fascist.
Yeah, I am.
Absolutely.
I'm just checking who's clapping just to get my set of where everyone is.
All right, so can I understand why an employer would want to disassociate themselves from that person saying that in that manner?
Yes, I can understand that.
But I also think that if we have this climate where people cannot say what they believe unless it's completely acceptable to power factions or mainstream forces, that even though we have a First Amendment that restricts what the government can do in theory, oftentimes cultural repression and social ostracization are much more potent and effective tools for controlling ideas.
In fact, George Irwell wrote a preface to Animal Farm where he basically said that although the Soviet Union has very overt forms of repression and censorship, if you criticize Stalin, the KGB shows up at your house and takes you away and sends you to a Gulag, Siberia or whatever, that actually the British form of censorship is much more effective.
It's basically deluding people into thinking that they're free, but making sure they get fired, they're not employable, they don't get hurt in media if they express any opinions outside the very narrow range of accepted opinion.
And ironically, his preface couldn't be published because it was too sensitive.
It seemed like almost too pro-Russian at a time when the West was entering the Cold War by saying, oh, look, the Russian form of oppression is less effective than the British form.
Kind of proving his point that his preface was censored, but it's now available.
You can go read online.
I think it's absolutely right.
And one of the things, you know, there was all these examples in the Black Lives Matter movement with Me Too, when, you know, low-level workers got fired for any kind of questioning or deviation from the right language.
They had a truck driver who stopped and he supposedly made the okay sign at a traffic light, at a traffic stop, and that was interpreted as a white supremacist message, and he got fired.
Media outlets were doxing people for comments they were leaving to get them fired.
That climate is incredibly repressive and intimidating, but after October 7th, huge numbers of people in media and Hollywood and politics and journalism were fired for expressing criticism of Israel and their destruction of Gaza and academia as well.
And suddenly all the concerns about cancel culture disappeared.
So if you're 21 years old and you go and you basically say, I want Trump to be a king and an autocrat, and that's because I'm a fascist, that's still self-identifying as a fascist is going to fall rather shockingly on the ears of a lot of people in the United States.
And if you're a public, if you're an employer who deals with the public and you're a private company, especially if you're in a certain community, you deal with a certain group of people, it might be very harmful to your business interests to have somebody like that employed.
So I understand why that could happen.
But I also think it can be very dangerous to create a climate where people are dealt with when they express an opinion that they dislike, not by being disagreed with, not by being even disliked or ostracized, but by being punished.
Again, if this were an isolated case, you know, I would say there is, you do have, when you live in a society, you do have to kind of think about how you express yourself and what effect it has on others.
And if you decide you don't, then you probably are going to suffer consequences.
It's just a lesson you learn in life of living in a society.
You have to accommodate to some extent how you're perceived.
But I also think that it can be very dangerous if it becomes too much of an automatic reaction, which in a lot of different ways I think it became.
And a lot of the right was very opposed to these sorts of things when it was conservatives who were largely the target of it.
And then after October 7th, a lot of that changed where people started applauding much more draconian forms of cancel culture like Bill Ackman spearheading and organizing a blacklist among the most powerful law firms, Wall Street banks and hedge funds to vow never to hire undergraduate kids 18 to 22 who sign a letter condemning Israel for their use of indiscriminate violence in Gaza,
trying to make sure they're unemployable and having mass firings of people who express similar views.
I noticed the disappearance of the concerns over cancel culture when that happened.
And so if you're going to be concerned of cancel culture and you don't apply it equally, it's like anything, not really a principle.
All right.
Last question is from Casey M71, who says this, although it would appear that Zoran Mandani has a very good chance of becoming New York City's next mayor, to what specific lengths will the Democratic Party's establishment wing go to prevent his election?
Does his position on the unfolding genocide in Gaza help him or hurt him?
So you say, I find this dynamic so fascinating that whenever the American left is faced with a nominee from the Democratic Party that they hate, they are Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton or countless senators or whomever, they're told it's your obligation to support and vote for whoever your party nominates, whether you like them or not.
But the minute there's a nominee of the Democratic Party that the Democratic Party nominates and the establishment hates and the left likes, that obligation disappears.
There's no reverse duty to say, okay, we don't like Jarman Mandani.
They're going to sabotage him if they want.
I still believe in 2016, had the DNC not cheated and Bernie Sanders had won the Democratic nomination, Democratic Party elites absolutely would have done everything to prevent him from being president, even if it meant electing Trump.
Because what party leaders typically fear the most is the loss of their prerogatives within their own party.
They would rather lose and keep control of the party than win if it means this shifting to some new group or some new generation.
And we especially saw that when Jeremy Corbyn became the leader of the Labor Party and the vast majority of Blairites and people in the center and the center right of that party overwhelmingly and overtly sought to destroy him, not to get a new party leader in, but to ensure that he lost the election.
They would rather have lost to Boris Johnson, had Boris Johnson become prime minister, which is what happened, than lose control of the Labor Party by winning under Jeremy Corbyn.
And this is why, you know, I don't think that Democratic establishment, the Democratic establishment and elites believe they can stop Zoran at this point.
I also don't, you know, in part because the alternatives are just so weak.
I mean, you have Andrew Cuomo completely plagued by all sorts of scandal, just old, not really having anything to do with New York City, clearly not even wanting to be mayor.
And then you have Eric Adams, who got caught red-handed, taking bribes from Turkey and was only let go because he did a deal with the Trump administration to allow ICE to operate in New York City.
And then Curtis Leela, who's not a serious candidate, but are going to divide the vote enough to ensure that Zoran will win.
Not 100% sure anything could happen, but I think they're kind of resigned to it.
But they also are afraid more so, you see this with Hakeem Jeffries.
Zoran Mandani won Hakeem Jeffries' district, congressional district, by 12 points.
And yet Hakeem Jeffries, the head of the Democratic House caucus in New York, refuses to endorse Zoran Mandani.
Which again, if it were reversed and left-lane leaders, people to this day got angry that Bernie Sanders didn't endorse Hillary Clinton quickly enough.
He went around the country campaigning for her, but they say he didn't do it enthusiastically enough.
But look at how the prerogatives they take for themselves.
And there's never a point at which the left says, God, these people hate us so much.
Like, why are we giving them our support when they so blatantly subvert and sabotage our candidates?
You would think they would just have some dignity and finally leave.
Jeremy Corbyn finally left the Labor Party, but only this week.
He and a much younger leftist member of parliament whose parents or grandparents were Pakistani immigrants to the UK, but she was born in the UK, as her parents were, third generation now UK citizens.
The two of them are the co-leaders of this new party in protest of the Labour Party's support for Israel and other policies as well, because they concluded that there's no way within the Labour Party to actually reform.
They will sabotage you if you try.
And this is something we saw with AOC when AOC was running and won her primary in 2018 against a very senior member of the Democratic leadership, Joe Crowley, who was really in line to become House Speaker once Nancy Pulisi left.
She sounded all these radical notes.
I interviewed her.
I was amazed at how thoughtful she seemed to be about making sure that her primary criticisms were directed mostly at the Democratic Party, how she understood that her main job had to be to go in and change the Democratic Party and not the Republican Party, so that there were two actual parties with two different sets of views.
And she gets in and she understands that to play the game, to get ahead, to gain power, you have to compromise constantly, become a good Democrat.
She's barely distinguishable from Nancy Pelosi at this point.
Remember, AOC just voted last week, last week, to send $500 million in military aid to Israel while calling it a genocide.
Even while four members of her own party, Illian Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Summerlee, and Al Green, all voted for Marjorie Taylor Green's amendment to block that money from going there, AOC voted to send $500 million to Israel.
One of the things that got my attention about her in 2018 was when she said, this is at the time when the Palestinians were doing their peaceful march up to the border fence, and the Israelis started just sniping them to death.
And AOC said, it's time for the Democratic Party to stop supporting these grotesque human rights abuses by Israel.
And I thought, okay, that's interesting to me.
And now here she is, just a few years later, sending $500 million to Israel while pretending to believe that Israel is engaged in a genocide.
So there is a very real question of whether somebody who's very politically ambitious, as I'm Ron Mandani is, can possibly change anything within a party system that is designed to destroy any challenge to its leadership, to its core dogma, to its donor base.
And you see him making some concessions already.
And while I still hope he wins given the alternatives, I mean, just the part of the debate alone where they said, where are you going to, what's your first foreign trip going to be?
And they all said, we're going to go to the Holy Land and we're going to go right to Israel and we're going to take our first trip to Israel.
And he said, I'm going to stay at home and work on the affordability issues facing the people of our city.
That alone, that kind of politics, like as Mayor of an American city, my job is to focus on the American people and not go pay some homage to Israel or to some other foreign country.
Or that he understands that affordability and economic populism is the key issue, not culture war stuff, which is what he ran on in his campaign.
Those are the kind of things that that populist message that I think we need more of, both on the left and the right.
But if you ask me, do I think he's going to immediately start compromising, then my answer is probably going to be yes, because he's going to have to work within the Democratic Party infrastructure to get anything done.
I think I might have talked about this before, but I'll just tell this quick story since the last question.
When my husband got elected to, became an elected official and got into elected office, first as a city councilman in Rio Janeiro and then a member of the Brazilian Congress, I saw this firsthand.
He wanted to go and introduce packages and laws and projects to help the people of his community, the people who voted for him and that he felt an obligation to serve.
That's the only reason why he was interested in politics was to try and change people's material lives for the better.
And then you get there and you hear like, oh, that seems like a good bill.
We're not sure we can get it to the floor though, but if you're willing to support this project of mine, it's kind of corrupt, like just, you know, about greasing the wheels, then maybe, you know, we'll be able to get your bill to this floor and support you.
And then you're suddenly faced with this choice.
Like, do I now start compromising and becoming part of the system in the hope that I can actually get the things done that I want to get done?
Or do I just stand on principle and say, no, I'm going to sit on the outside.
I'm not going to play your game, even if it means I can never get my things to the floor.
Maybe in 10 years you can use your charisma and ability to get a platform.
But when you first get there, you're faced with these huge obstacles where if you want to get anything done, you have to play the game.
And then at some point, you have to calibrate how much are you really compromising to serve your original goals or how much are you now compromising because you want to get on the key committees?
And then what are the motives that you want to get on the key committees?
Is it because that's a better path to power?
It's a very, very difficult road to navigate.
Even if you arrive with the best of intentions, you find yourself in this corrupt, sleazy system constructed to co-opt you and to basically get you to play the game that you vowed you were running to destroy.
And it's very hard once you're immersed in it to see what the real principles are and what the real compromises are that are going to actually undermine what you set out to be.
And I think the only way to do that is by avoiding the structures that are already so fundamentally rotted and so fundamentally corrupt that they're going to contaminate you the more you attach yourself to them.
And I think running as a Democrat, being part of the Democratic Party, is going to guarantee that you end up on the AOC to Pelosi path.
Remember, Nancy Pelosi, when she started her career from San Francisco, was considered way to the left of the Democratic Party.
And by the end, she was, she had no ideology.
She was just a manager, like a technocrat, supporting wars and Wall Street and finance, insider training.
And that's the path that you end up on and that the system is guaranteed to lure you into.
And you have to be someone who just has a personality that's very combative, very willing to sacrifice your own ambition and self-interest and career pursuits in order to combat.
And if you ask me if that's Oran Mandani, I don't know him well enough to say one way or the other for sure, but it doesn't seem like that's what he is to me.
Kind of like what Obama pretended to be and then wasn't.
That seems to be the kind of, you know, in every 10 years the Democratic Party offers a new person like this, I go, here's the exciting one.
Here's the new one.
Here's the one who's really going to be on your side.
We know you hate our party.
We know you hate our dogma and our leadership.
But look, we found something really new and exciting for you.
And it keeps people, young people, people who identify as the left on that path to identifying with the Democratic Party.
And oftentimes the Democratic Party changes very little.
Usually that's the case.
Everybody likes to keep up hope.
Nobody likes to be defeatist or nihilistic, wants to believe that there's something hopeful.
That's how I'm the same way.
Why would I wake up and focus on these sorts of things every day unless I believe that there was prospects and hope for positive change?
I've seen positive change.
You look at history, you look at current politics.
It can happen.
Change in public opinion can happen.
And you want to believe that.
If you didn't believe that, you would go do something else if you thought it was all futile.
But the road of being lured in by outsiders to the Democratic Party who seek to get into the Democratic Party and assume power within it is one fraught with almost nothing but disappointment and defeat and betrayal and ultimately a draining of any belief that that continues to be the correct path.
And people want to believe that, so they keep kind of being vulnerable to that sales pitch.
Maybe Zoran will be different.
It's possible.
But I certainly won't be shocked sitting here six months from now or a year from now if someone comes and shows me or I see for myself all the evidence that he's basically morphing into AOC and then Nancy Pelosi, that would not shock me in the slightest.
All right, so that concludes our show for this evening.
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Tomorrow night we'll have Norm Fickelstein on in lieu of the Q ⁇ A that we would have done tomorrow night that we did instead tonight.
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