Trump Admin Unleashes More Policies That Prioritize Israel Over American Citizens; The Smear Campaign Against Gaza Aid Whistleblower with Journalist Mel Witte
The Trump administration unveils more extreme policies to shield and support Israel at the expense of U.S. citizens and their rights. Plus: Mel Witte (known as @Villgecrazylady on X) joins to discuss a smear campaign against a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation whisteblower. --------------- Watch full episodes on Rumble, streamed LIVE 7pm ET. Become part of our Locals community Follow System Update: Twitter Instagram TikTok Facebook
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, that the U.S. government and multiple state governments are devoutly loyal to Israel is hardly a secret.
Anyone who pays even minimal attention to American politics knows that.
But the Trump administration has severely escalated this framework.
The administration does not just send billions of dollars and massive amounts to arms to Israel.
They, of course, do that.
But they go much further.
They have been routinely punishing American citizens and jeopardizing American interest in order to serve and protect Israeli interests.
Over the past 72 hours, the Trump administration took two steps that shows how brazen and extreme this prioritization of Israel over Americans has become.
First, the Trump administration announced that it is dismantling and defunding arguably the world's leading mathematician and the most productive and essential research programs into applied mathematics, a field absolutely vital to the U.S. ability to compete with China, Russia, and the EU, because the Trump administration claims the institution that hosts this crucial program, UCLA, allowed too many protests against Israel and therefore is anti-Semitic.
It doesn't allege the program is unhelpful or that it's unproductive or wasteful.
No, they acknowledge that it's a good program, just that it's associated with an institution that allowed too many Israel protests and therefore we have to get rid of it, even however vital it is to American interests.
Then, even more incredibly, the Trump administration announced today that it will deny disaster preparedness funds for any American state or American city that boycotts Israel.
In other words, the U.S. government will deliberately jeopardize the security and safety of American citizens as punishment for their governments boycotting this one foreign country.
All of this done in the name of America First.
While the Trump administration just in the last hour tried to walk back this policy in response to an eruption of anger, even from their own base, the policy is still effectively in place.
And you could boycott any other country on the planet.
You could boycott even your fellow American citizens, American state.
You just can't protest Israel or you'll be in jeopardize of losing even disaster relief funds from the government.
Then last week I praised the work of independent journal and independent journalism of Mel Witty, Melissa Witty, who is a strong believer in the America First ideology that was sold by Donald Trump, whose candidacy and MAGA movement she has supported.
But unlike many, if not most Trump supporters, she actually took seriously the core premises of America First.
And she has been scathing in her denunciations of the Trump administration for deviating so brazenly from them.
But also quite relentless and meticulous and detail-oriented and evidence-based in her reporting on all of these matters.
We have wanted her on our show for some time in her work last week debunking a clear lie that was spread by Israel supporters about a green beret who worked for the Gaza Humanitarian Fund and blew the whistle on what was happening there makes this the perfect time to have her.
So we're looking very forward to that.
Before we get to that, a couple quick program notes.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
I don't think people realize how many policies there are already in place in the United States that punish American citizens, that deprive American citizens of certain benefits and certain rights, if they refuse to either sign a loyalty oath to Israel where they agree never to boycott the state of Israel, even though they're allowed to boycott every other country on the planet, even other American states.
You just can't boycott Israel.
And there are many programs that will dismantle crucial programs beneficial to American interest in order to shield Israel from criticism or to claim that by allowing protest against Israel, an institution is being anti-Semitic.
And it doesn't matter how valuable these programs are, if they're associated with an institution that Israel supporters dislike for having allowed protests against Israel, they will dismantle and defund the program.
Let's start with this as the second policy that happened on Friday night as an example just to illustrate how extreme this has become.
Here's Paul Graham, who is a very successful investor in Silicon Valley, has been very supportive of Republican and conservative policies, but also quite outspoken about the Trump administration's financing of Israel.
And on August 3rd, 2025, he said this, quote, the Trump administration has suspended the funding of Terrence Tao and the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA.
Terrence Tao is probably the most important and accomplished mathematician on the planet.
Maybe there are two or three people who compete with him.
But he's an Australian American citizen.
He works inside the United States.
He works on research programs funded by the U.S. government, which the government funds, because applied mathematics is one of the most crucial fields to all sorts of programs that the United States needs to compete with Russia with China, from AI and cryptography to detecting financial fraud, managing financial transactions.
Mathematics and applied mathematics has been, I mean, the Allies were able to break Nazi codes using cryptography because of mathematicians during World War II.
That's the equivalent of who this person is and what this program does.
And yet the Trump administration just announced that they're defunding it, not because they say that it's wasteful and not because they say it's not producing benefits.
And it's not part of some broader attempt to defund research programs at universities.
The Trump administration is funding all sorts of research programs at universities, as the U.S. government has always done for its own benefit.
The only ones they're defunding are ones that they claim are attached to institutions like UCLA that they claim are anti-Semitic.
Like they claim that about Harvard.
Filled with Jewish students and Jewish administrators.
Five of the last seven presidents of Harvard are Jewish, yet somehow the Trump administration decided that's a anti-Semitic Institution because they allowed protest against Israel.
Same with the UCLA.
Anyone who knows UCLA knows how robustly represented Jewish students are and Jewish faculty members are.
Here's what Terrence Tao said on his social media account about why this was done.
This was on August 1st.
The current administration in the U.S. has, through various funding agencies such as the NSF and NIH, recently suspended virtually all federal grants to my home university, UCLA, including my own personal grant, although this is far from the most serious impact of this decision on the grounds that UCLA was, quote, failing to promote a research environment free of anti-Semitism and bias.
One can certainly debate whether these grounds were justified or whether they merit the extremely draconian damage the very research environment that this decision is claiming to protect.
But if nothing else, this unprecedented decision does not appear to have followed the usual standards of due process for actions of this nature.
For instance, there appears to have been no good faith effort by the administration to receive a response from UCLA to its allegations before implementing its decision.
The suspension of my personal grant has a non-trivial impact on myself, but a far greater concern is the impact on the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, which despite receiving preliminary approval early this year for a new five-year round of funding from the NSF now only has enough emergency funding for a few months of further operation at best that the suspension is not lifted.
And he goes on to talk about what this program has done and all the benefits it's created.
Now, again, note here, this is so ironic.
The conservative movement spent a full decade mocking claims of racism, mocking claims that people on college campuses need anti-discrimination protection.
And then the Trump administration gets in and makes it one of their top priorities, one of their very top priorities to declare that there's a racism epidemic in the United States, but only against one group.
There's only one genuinely marginalized, true victim group in the United States, and that's American Jews.
And the Trump administration has been doing everything, no matter how much it harms American citizens or American interest, to purge the world of this one form of bigotry that it claims has pervaded all American institutions.
And it will sacrifice anything to do so.
Now, this is not new.
This is just how extreme these things can get in the framework of American politics.
In 2017, Texas was hit by a horrific hurricane, Hurricane Harvey.
And a city in Texas had a program to give relief funding, people who lost their homes, people who lost their cars, their belongings.
But as this BBC article makes clear, they required that people sign an Israel pledge, the citizens, the residents of their city, before they could get hurricane relief.
You had to sign a pledge vowing you will never boycott this one foreign country.
You're free to boycott all 192 other countries on the planet.
You're free to boycott other American states or other American cities as people have done over the last decade.
You just can't boycott this one special country called Israel.
And if you do, as an American citizen, if you don't sign this loyalty oath, you will be denied hurricane relief funds from one of the most devastating hurricanes of the last 20 years that massacred Texas.
Imagine that.
Imagine telling citizens of the United States, you are not eligible for hurricane relief and disaster relief while their homes are destroyed, their cars and belongings are destroyed, unless you first sign a loyalty pledge to Israel.
That is a condition to signing it.
The Trump administration clearly used that as a model because earlier today they released this policy as described by Reuters.
U.S. links $1.9 billion in state disaster funds to Israel boycott stance.
Quote, U.S. states and cities that boycott Israeli companies will be denied federal aid for natural disaster preparedness, the Trump administration has announced, tying routine federal funding to its political stance.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency stated in grant notices posted on Friday that states must follow its, quote, terms and conditions.
Those conditions require that they certify they will not sever, quote, commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies if they need to qualify for funding.
The requirement applies to at least $1.9 billion that states rely on to cover search and rescue equipment, emergency manager salaries, and backup power systems among other expenses, according to 11 agency grant notices reviewed by Reuters, quote, Homeland Security will enforce all anti-discrimination laws and policies, including as it relates to the BDS movement, which is expressly grounded in anti-Semitism.
A spokesperson for the Secretary of Homeland Security, Christy Noam, said in a statement.
Can I just stop there for a second?
The campaign to boycott Israel was based on exactly the same model that was used by Americans, American citizens to boycott apartheid South Africa and the 19 Canadians, which is this is a unjust government engaged in unjust acts, and we shouldn't reward them by doing business with them by visiting.
We're going to boycott them.
There's a boycott of South Africa.
It went on for years.
Americans participated in it, Europeans.
No one ever said that was racist or no one got punished for that.
And as I said, there have been boycott campaigns, successful ones aimed at American states by Americans, by other states.
They wanted to punish Georgia for their voting rights law.
They lost huge amounts of business.
They lost the Major League Baseball All-Star game or a big NBA game.
Huge numbers of conventions and conferences pulled out of Georgia.
They did the same thing to North Carolina and Indiana because they enacted bathroom bills that say that you have to use the bathroom that corresponds with your biological sex at birth to prevent trans people from using the bathrooms with which they identify.
And a lot of American states, other American states, and a lot of American citizens and American businesses boycotted Indiana and North Ghana.
And no one got punished under the Trump administration, the first Trump administration with that.
That was totally fine.
You're allowed to boycott anybody except Israel.
And the idea that it's anti-Semitic to boycott a state or a government is so offensive and so idiotic.
In fact, the hate speech codes that the Trump administration are forcing American colleges to adopt that expand the list of ideas you're not allowed to express, which we've gone over before, the IHRA definition, includes as anti-Semitism an example that says holding all Jews responsible for the state of Israel's actions.
Because the state of Israel is not Jewish people.
You can oppose and object to and criticize and campaign against the state of Israel and its government without being racist.
You could do that against, you can criticize the government of Nigeria without being anti-guilty of anti-black racism.
You can criticize the government of Saudi Arabia without being guilty of Islamophobia.
Everybody understands this except when it comes to Israel.
And this is how the Trump administration is justifying punishing American citizens, even denying them disaster preparedness funds to keep them safe and secure.
The first duty of any government to keep its citizens safe.
The government is saying, no, that's not our first priority.
Our first priority is to protect Israel.
That's your America First government.
It goes on.
The requirement is the Trump administration's latest effort to use federal funding to promote its views on Israel.
The American Jewish Committee supports the Trump administration's policy.
What a shock, said Holly Huffingale, the group's director of anti-Semitism policy.
The AGC is an advocacy group that supports Israel.
Under one of the grant notices posted on Friday, FEMA will require major cities to agree to the Israel policy to receive a cut of the $553 million set aside to prevent terrorism in dense areas.
And it goes on to describe all the different people who are going to lose funding.
Now, this was announced through this Department of Homeland Security policy, which is the Department of Homeland Security standard terms and conditions.
This is from April, and then there was another one applied today.
So under section 17, entitled Anti-Discrimination, it says recipients must comply with all applicable federal anti-discrimination laws material to the government's payment decision.
And then in paragraph D, it defines discriminatory prohibited boycott as any as refusing to deal, cutting commercial relations, or otherwise limiting commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies or with companies doing business in or with Israel or authorized by license or organized under the laws of Israel to do business.
Do you see that you can boycott anyone else that you want?
Boycott French businesses, Peruvian businesses, Korean businesses, Japanese businesses, Russian businesses, Iranian businesses, Cuban businesses, whatever, anything you want.
Even boycott businesses of North Carolina and Georgia and Indiana, and you'll be fine.
Just under these guidelines to the federal government, the only prohibited boycott is one aimed at this one special sacred foreign country whose interest comes even before disaster preparedness relief for American citizens.
The government will deny that funding to American citizens if they don't have the right views on Israel.
And the fact that this is done under the title of America First is about the biggest joke you can imagine.
All day long there was an eruption of outrage from this Trump administration announcement.
Like, what do you mean?
Why would American citizens be denied disaster relief if they don't agree not to boycott Israel?
It's like you're allowed to boycott whoever you want as an American citizen.
And in response to that, Homeland Security had to give a statement because a lot of even their own supporters were extremely confused and angry at how this could be.
And they just denied it was true by saying this.
They didn't really deny it, though.
They said there is no FEMA requirement tied to Israel on any current NOFO.
No states have lost funding and no new conditions have been imposed.
FEMA grants remain governed by existing law and policy and not political litmus tests.
But then it goes on to say that DHS will enforce all anti-discrimination laws and policies, including as it relates to the boycott, divestment, and sanction movement, which is expressly grounded in anti-Semitism.
Those who engage in racial discrimination should not receive a single dollar of federal funding.
So on the one hand, they're denying it, but then they're reiterating the fact that, yeah, if you're part of the boycott Israel movement, as an American citizen, you will be denied even a single dollar of federal funding, even if a hurricane destroys your house, or even if it's a program to prevent a hurricane from destroying your house and killing you and your family as an American citizen on American soil.
If you participate in any way in a boycott of Israel, the government's saying you will not get a dollar from us, American citizens.
Now, what actually happened here is that we showed you the government website had that language I just read to you.
And it was only about an hour ago now, maybe even last, 45 minutes, that the government clandestinely removed that language.
And then they come out and they say, oh, this is fake news.
We're not imposing any new conditions.
They have that language up all day in this document.
And then they secretly removed it.
And then they went on and said, this is fake news.
And a bunch of Trump supporters were like, oh, it's fake news.
I knew it.
They would never do that.
It's like, you can see the language still up on their site.
And then there's a new version where they removed it in response to the anger.
And yet at the same time, they're preserving this language that lets them do exactly that.
Here's Sagar and Jetty, who was one of the first to note that they actually changed the language.
And then he said this, okay, after speaking with folks, here's what's going on.
An original guidance from Homeland Security explicitly stated that federal disaster funding was barred from states that allowed boycotts of Israel.
The White House changed this explicit language after widespread outcry, but the DHS tweet makes it clear that the administration reserves the right to deny those funds on boycott grounds based on the Anti-Boycott Act.
In other words, they still might do it.
They're just not saying it out loud right now.
And there are a few cities around the United States, very few, but some, that have voted to boycott Israel.
The idea is as boycotting South Africa was designed to end apartheid, boycotting Israel, originally was designed to, and the occupation of the West Bank, which the entire world considers illegal, and the blockade of Gaza, same thing.
And now it's to stop the war in Gaza.
Boycotts are completely legitimate, nonviolent means of protesting a government or corporate institution.
People boycott things all the time.
So here are a few examples.
The East Bay Echo reported January 24th, 2024, the Hayward City Council narrowly approves divesting $1.6 million from company with ties to Israel.
ABC News, May 2024, Richmond, Virginia becomes the second U.S. city to divest from Israel after Hayward.
The Times of Israel, September 2024, Portland, Maine City Council votes to divest from companies doing business with Israel.
The Detroit Free Press, October 2024, Dearborn to divest from weapons companies tied to Israel.
So just weapons companies.
How is that not the right of a government to say we're not going to do business with Israel?
We're not going to buy products from Israeli companies or for an American individual to do that.
This is such a fundamental right.
One of the most amazing things that has never gotten enough attention.
Here from the Journal of Law and Social Change in 2023 titled Anti-Boycott Laws and the Politics of Political Boycotts, since 2014, 34 out of 50 American states have passed laws punishing people if they boycott Israel.
Again, you can boycott any other country in the world, U.S. allies, even American state, just not Israel.
Most of them, but not all of them, are red states.
And mostly what these provisions say, these laws say, we've reported on them before, is that if you want to have a contract with the state government, similar to if you want hurricane disaster relief, you have to sign a pledge first promising that you don't support a boycott of Israel.
Look at how much is done in our country just to venerate the interests of the Israeli government above our own citizens.
Now, as I've said before, there are all kinds of boycotts that go on all the time, and nobody gets punished for it.
There are no laws passed sanctioning it.
Here from Newsweek in April 2022, Americans want to boycott Chinese goods.
And companies like Amazon should help them, Senator Rick Scott says.
Here's another campaign after Russia invaded Ukraine that says, stop funding Putin's war, boycott Russia today.
Here is where very powerful boycott campaigns from American citizens to boycott fellow American states.
Here from CNN, April 2021, Georgia-based companies face a boycott calls over the voting bill.
The state of Georgia, Georgia-based companies lost billions of dollars because fellow Americans boycotted them in protest of their voting rights bill.
Nobody got denied funding for that.
Nobody was told they were going to be punished.
You can boycott all other American states all you want, just not Israel.
CBS News, March of 2016, North Carolina faces a business boycott over an anti-LGBT law.
That was that trans bathroom bill.
Now what, let me show you something really amazing here.
When Andrew Cuomo was governor of New York, he ordered state employees to boycott Indiana and North Carolina.
He instituted a boycott as New York State of Indiana, North Carolina protest of their bathroom bills.
Here from CBS News, March 31st, 2015, Governor Cuomo bans non-essential state-funded travel to Indiana over the religious freedom law.
And then here from the Washington Post, and they also, he also boycotted North Carolina over the bathroom bill.
He banned employees from visiting North Carolina, didn't want to put money into their economy.
So he boycotted at least two American states, Indiana and North Carolina.
But then he turned around and he said, the one thing I won't tolerate, I will order the state to boycott North Carolina and Indiana, fellow American states, fellow American citizens.
The one thing I will not allow, though, is a boycott of Israel.
And he wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post, the next year, 2016, Governor Andrew Como, if you boycott Israel, New York State will boycott you.
And he talked about this executive order saying there can be no contracts with any individual or company unless they sign an oilty pledge promising not to boycott Israel.
So he himself is a perfect example.
He boycotted Indiana, North Carolina, and then turned around and said, the one thing I won't allow is a boycott of this one special country, Israel.
The same person.
Now, one of the things that is so amazing about the decision at UCLA is that this kind of research into applied mathematics is absolutely crucial to so many programs that the U.S. government needs to compete with China.
Mathematics is foundational to artificial intelligence.
It's foundational to so much military technology.
It's foundational to surveillance and encryption.
It's all the basis of that is all mathematics.
It's absolutely vital for Bitcoin, which the Trump administration is saying they want to promote.
And the reason the U.S. government funds programs like this, and we've gone over this before, is not to be benevolent.
It's not like a charity, I go here, leading world's leading mathematician, here's some money to go hire some people.
They're doing research that the U.S. government directs if the U.S. government wants to be done because it redounds to the benefit of the U.S. government.
And I just want to give you one example of this, because so many times people don't, people are saying, like, why should the federal government be funding research programs?
Why can't the universities fund it themselves?
Now, first of all, the Trump administration is not stopping funding of research programs or colleges.
So if that's something you want, that's not what the Trump administration is doing.
In fact, the Trump administration denied funding to Columbia and to Brown and to other American universities.
And now they've restored that funding because Brown, for example, promised to have DEI for Jewish students.
They're going to Jewish day schools.
They're required to do that and encourage young Jewish kids to apply to Brown as if there's a shortage of Jewish students at Brown.
There's always been a proportionately high number of Jewish students there and on the faculty, but they're required by the Trump administration to do that.
So as long as you are devoted to Israel, you're going to get all the research funding that you want.
The only time research funding gets cut is if the Trump administration believes that you are somebody who's just a little bit too opposed to Israel.
And they don't care how many benefits you're producing for the United States.
They'd sacrifice the benefits to American interests in order to punish people who allow protests against Israel.
That's their priority scheme, the America First priority scheme.
There's a reason every country in the world, a major country, including China, spends massive amounts to fund research products, projects, because that's how governments stay technologically in the lead for space, for anything involving algorithms, for detection of securities fraud, to say nothing of all the other tech And AI and everything else I mentioned.
Applied mathematics is fundamental to everything.
And that's what the Trump administration is dismantling in the name of combating animus toward Israel or anti-Semitism.
Just to underscore how this works, here's Mark Andreessen, who is a Trump supporter, gave a lot of money to the Trump campaign.
He was one of the pioneers of the internet, really.
He created the Netscape browser.
And that enabled people to start using the Internet.
It was a browser that obviously is foundational to how we use the Internet.
And it was really the first browser.
It ended up getting, Microsoft tried to destroy it.
He ended up selling it to Microsoft.
But he gave an interview earlier this year to the New York Times about how the United States was able to take the lead in internet technology and become dominant to this very day.
All of Silicon Valley arose from this.
And he described how crucial government funding was without government funding.
None of this could have happened.
Remember, this is a Trump supporter, very conservative person.
And this is what he told the New York Times: quote, basically, I'm a product of the great land-grant universities, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
It was a huge leap to actually leave the state and go to a university that large where I came from.
And they had this incredible influx of money at the time from the federal government for supercomputers and what turned out to be the internet.
And then he said, actually, by the way, that was led by Al Gore when he was in the Senate.
I always thought he got unfairly treated by how people describe this later.
The famous quote was, I invented the internet.
He actually never said that, said Mark Andreessen.
I'll defend Al Gore's honor to the death.
What he said was, quote, I took the lead in the Senate in creating the internet.
What he meant is that he was the tip of the spear for funding four national supercomputing centers.
They picked four college campuses, and Illinois was one of them.
So the Illinois campus, when I was there, was like living in the future.
We had computers, which literally cost up to $30 million a pop, that basically were representative of what was to come.
We just had them a decade before everybody else because of this program.
There's so much research that's vital that no, the private sector won't invest it because it's too speculative, it's too long-term, it's too expensive.
And oftentimes the benefits aren't necessarily profit-based.
The U.S. government uses a lot of different technology for the U.S. government's national interest.
If the U.S. government needs to control this technology, that's why they've always funded it.
It's not charity.
And you have all these American First Conservatives saying China is our gravest enemy.
We have to make sure we stop Chinese domination.
And yet the Trump administration is in the process of dismantling the very research programs that enable the United States to keep pace with China.
Again, not in the name of eliminating waste, not in the name of arguing that it's inappropriate for the government to fund academic research programs.
They're doing it in the name of Israel and anti-Semitism.
That's it.
That's what everything is done in the name of.
Remember, even our trade policies are now based in prioritizing Israeli interests.
Here was Trump on True Social on July 31st.
This is after France announced they were recognizing Palestine as a state, and Canada was reportedly doing the same.
And then Trump posted this, quote, wow, Canada has just announced that it is backing statehood for Palestine.
That will make it very hard for us to make a trade deal with them.
Oh, Canada.
So we're going to sacrifice a trade deal that enriches the United States and enriches American businesses and American citizens with our largest trading partner, which is Canada, because Canada angered Israel by recognizing Palestine as a state?
Why would that have any effect on the willingness of an America First presidency to do a deal with Canada that benefits American businesses and the American people?
I thought that was the whole point of the America First Movement.
And yet you're seeing these policies over and over and over again.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is in Israel, or at least was over the weekend, gave a big speech about how it's his duty to devote himself to Israel, to make Israel the centerpiece of policy.
Hardly the first time he's been there.
Almost everyone goes and makes pilgrimage to Israel.
Remember that debate in the New York City Democratic primary for mayor when they asked every candidate, what will be your first foreign trip?
And they all immediately said, I'm going to go to the Holy Land.
I'm going to visit our great ally, Israel.
One of them, the only one who deviated, said, I'm going to visit our ally, Israel, and then our other great ally, Ukraine.
And they asked Iran Mandani.
They said, how about you?
And he's like, I don't plan on doing foreign trips.
My focus is on the people of New York City.
I'm not going to run to foreign countries.
I'm being elected mayor to take care of the people of this city, whoever they are.
And there are a lot of Jewish people in New York City, and I'm going to meet with them not in Tel Aviv, but in Staten Island and the Bronx and Queens and Manhattan and Brooklyn where they live.
And Andrew Cuomo thought that was his big moment as though that was somehow reflecting poorly on Zoran Mandani when he said, I'm an American.
I'm running for an American office.
I'm not going to rush off to Israel or any other foreign country.
I'm going to stay here and make our city affordable.
And even a lot of American First People who have nothing in common with Zoran's ideology said, you know what?
That seems like the right answer to me.
He seems like the only one who answered that question well.
I could spend the entire rest of the show on policies that prioritize the interests of Israel and Israeli citizens, including the fact that Israel often kills American citizens with American weapons.
And no American politician essentially will even denounce that.
They side with Israel even when Israel kills American citizens.
But we have a great guest and I'm anxious to get to her.
She is Melissa Witte, who is often better known by her Twitter handle, Village Crazy Lady, where she has, in my view, consistently offered some of the most insightful commentary and even reporting on the platform.
She shares the previously prohibited podcast with Jenin Eunice, who was the lawyer who represented Missouri and Arkansas in suing the Biden administration over their censorship program.
That's her podcast co-host.
She's also become a good friend of this show.
She's actually somebody who has, I think, politics you'll find very interesting despite how outspoken she is.
She just broke a big story last week.
We're just on her own initiative.
She went and investigated a smear campaign against a U.S. Green Beret who was a whistleblower in the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.
It was the subject of the sort of lies that always get told when somebody threatens Israeli interests.
We're going to talk to her about that as well.
And we are thrilled to have her.
It's great to see you.
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
We've used you so often as a source, so it's good to finally speak with you.
Thank you so much for having me.
Yeah, I'm excited.
Oh, go ahead.
You're all fine, I think.
Sorry, the delay is just, it's throwing me off.
So I'm just going to focus on this one.
So thank you so much for having me.
Yeah, I was actually watching your podcast last night where you recounted the real shoe leather journalism that you did.
I'm going to get to that in a second.
But before we do, for people in our audience who don't know you, aren't familiar with your trajectory, can you just describe a little bit what your political ideology and your political trajectory has been?
Sure.
So I'm kind of a lifelong Republican conservative.
I grew up in a very conservative household and I pretty much always voted for Republican.
In 2012, though, I did write in Ron Paul because I really didn't like Mitt Romney.
Anyways, I'm, yeah, he's just awful.
But I'm just your typical average, everything about me is totally almost like stereotypical normal.
And then on this one particular issue, which is Israel, I just happen to take a very different view, right?
I was introduced to kind of anti-Zionist ideas when I was in college.
And that's why they want to go after college is so bad because they have such an influence even on people like me.
And so I've always kind of noticed this subservience really, it's really heavy in the Republican Party and it gets weird to a certain extent.
Democrats are a little bit more eloquent with it, right?
They're not so kind of slobbering all over themselves, but Republicans just go out of their way to really kind of pledge their fealty, show how loyal.
And what you'll find if you really start paying attention to Republican politics is that there is almost no conservative or America first policy that they will not sacrifice to get something for Israel.
And we see this over, and if you watch it, you just see it over and over and over again through the years.
So prior to October 7th, I mostly just did a lot of campaign finance threads on Twitter.
I went to school for political science, and that was kind of my wheelhouse.
And then, I don't know, I just got really into talking about this because it really does affect every single aspect of American politics.
Whether people really, I think now people are finally starting to wake up and realize, holy crap, this lobby, this country, this foreign country has a lot of influence on us, right?
So in about like the last year or so, I've had a lot of struggles with my audience on Twitter and whatnot and make a lot of people unhappy.
But fortunately, we see this space opening up on the right, right?
Where it's okay to say, no, actually, I want America first and to a certain extent, America only, right?
All of our policies should be about what's best for America.
And I see more and more every single day, people gravitating towards that idea.
So you mentioned that in 2012, that you'd voted Republican basically all your life.
Though in 2012, you wrote in Ron Paul when Mitt Romney was the nominee running against Barack Obama.
And Ron Paul is so interesting to me because I do think he presaged a lot of the kind of dissident mindset that grew up in conservative politics, thanks to Donald Trump and the America First Movement.
And in so many ways, despite the fact that they were both in the Republican Party, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney had almost nothing in common.
And Ron Paul, when he ran for president, shocked a lot of people by how well he did, despite being hated by the entire establishment.
I think that really told a story about what's happening in the Republican Party.
So what is it that made you vote, want to vote for Ron Paul over Mitt Romney?
Given that Mitt Romney is a very traditional Republican, conservative candidate.
And specifically, what is it that you thought of like the America First movement that grew up within the Republican Party around the Trump campaign?
So Ron Paul, I remember kind of distinctly being disturbed by how unfair the media was to him.
And that definitely made me more sympathetic to him.
I remember one particular interview on Fox News.
And it was over, he had just had a debate.
And then the next morning he goes on and this Fox News host, I don't remember which one, she starts asking him these questions about anonymous Twitter comments, right?
And they had gone to these people's Twitter pages and seen that maybe they had put in something maybe anti-Israel, quote unquote, anti-Semitic.
And they started asking him to denounce these like random comments that were made online.
And I can still see his face.
He was like, he didn't even understand.
You know, he's a little bit older and he's like, what?
I don't, do these people work for me?
And, you know, she had to like break it down that, no, these were random people on Twitter commenting about your performance.
And they wanted him to answer for them.
And I remember just thinking, this is so absurd.
He's not getting a fair, you know, they're, they're not talking about what he was talking about on the debate stage, which he did so well with his like foreign policy, denouncing the wars, denouncing a lot of the interventionism, right?
And so that, I remember that made me kind of angry that I just felt like my guy wasn't getting a fair shake, right?
Then go forward into the fall.
I actually happened to be pregnant.
That was the year that I had my daughter.
And I was just kind of really disgusted with the way that Romney, I didn't, it was, to me, it was kind of business as usual.
And at that time, you know, we were just coming out of the great recession and whatnot.
I didn't feel like their policies were, it wasn't populist enough for me, I guess.
At that point, I was kind of thinking, you know, I want accountability for the meltdown.
I want accountability for a lot of these things, but that's not what he was offering.
It was kind of just a, let's move forward.
And, you know, I just didn't think that I didn't think he was going to win.
And that's the only time I've ever written anybody in.
Well, I just want to zoom in on that a little bit because earlier you said like you're fine with the Republican Party except for this fixation on Israel.
And having followed you.
At that time, yeah.
But yeah, so I mean, like having followed you, I do get the sense that you are very aligned with the critique that Trump brought to the 2016 campaign of Republican politics.
Namely, not just Israel, but this broader obsession with wars and intervention.
He talked a lot about the war in Iraq.
Ron Paul talked a huge amount about that.
But also, you know, as you were just kind of suggesting, this more populist approach to even financial issues, like the idea that after the Wall Street, you know, Barons caused this global meltdown and the destruction of, you know, Americans' future economic security, the Obama administration with Kim Tim Geithner and all those,
you know, Larry Summers and all those people totally devoted to Wall Street only acted to save the people on Wall Street and let Americans get foreclosed in mass and they had to eat the whole thing and said they were the ones who did it.
So is your dissatisfaction with say non-MAGA Republican Party politics about a wide range of issues like economics and war in general beyond Israel?
Definitely.
I mean, by the time 2016 rolled around, I was pretty disgusted with the Republican Party.
And just in general, I still have a lot of maybe anger issues.
I don't know what you would call it about 2008 and the things that happened.
And just, you know, when I say things that happened, I mean just the way that these people were allowed to, you know, let off.
They just crash our economy.
We bail them out and then everybody moves on their merry way.
They consolidate the banks.
Really, this rollup of economic policy in the U.S. that benefits the wealthy, right?
So I was certainly sympathetic to like the Wall Street.
It's escaping me right now.
The what was it?
In 2009, 2010, the protests, it was called Occupy Wall Street.
Right, right.
So I was certainly sympathetic to them.
But so I was married.
I actually happened to be married to a Green Beret for about 10 years.
And in 2006, I was very, very anti-war at that point, very, very worn out from the deployments and just seeing kind of the BS, right, that goes along with that.
And that's a whole conversation in and of itself.
But when Donald Trump came out and he said no more wars, he said, you know, she's going to get us into Syria.
And I believed him 100%.
And I think he was 100% right on that.
It was like, okay, he's got my vote.
I actually don't care about anything else.
If he says he's not going to get us into another war, that's the only thing I care about.
And that was the vote that I made in 2016 was based on that.
Yeah, so it was very anti-war.
Yeah.
And so I like why I know you have a principally like conservative MAGA, America First audience, pro-Trump audience.
And yet, from the start of this second administration, this second term of Trump, you have been very critical of things like his bombing campaign in Yemen, his participation with Israel in the war with Iran, the just constant American money and weapons that flow to Israel for them to do what they're doing in Gaza.
Was that difficult for you to kind of attach yourself to a candidate like Donald Trump in a political movement like MAGA and then become very outspoken when you felt like they were deviating from the principles they claimed they would adhere to?
Yeah, so, you know, I came out of 2020 super anti-COVID, all of the things, you know, that go along with that.
And I was super, I was just done with Donald Trump, right?
And I was on the DeSantis train and I was kind of, I guess, grossly misled.
Maybe not misled.
You know, people say, well, it was there to see, but he certainly is very prone to intervention, as we saw.
Fanatically pro-Israel.
But right, fanatically pro-Israel.
I just, I hadn't been aware at that point.
I had been so highly focused on domestic issues for, you know, since for COVID, obviously.
So 2020, 2021, 2022.
So I wasn't really paying attention that much.
And then obviously October 7th happens.
And at that point, I was super anti-Trump, right?
And then October 7th happens and DeSantis just goes off the deep end.
I was just kind of flabbergasted by the way it was like DeSantis and Nikki Haley and Tim Scott and they were practically brawling over who could be more sycophantic in their devotion to Israel and we'll do anything and everything, right?
And I was really grossed out by it.
And the only one who didn't say anything was Trump, right?
Vivek, it was interesting that kind of like tipped his toe in it.
And then he clearly had gotten, you know, he got put back in his place and he just towed the line.
But he was never as bad as the other three.
But Trump just stayed quiet the whole time.
And I thought it was interesting because his first instinct, I believe it was first comments that he made on after October 7th was, well, that was, you know, that shouldn't have happened.
And maybe people should look into that because BB, you know, you could tell he kind of hinted at the fact that he didn't necessarily buy the official line, that they had just broke through the fence, right?
So, and I remember him getting dragged for that.
And so it kind of made me soften to him a little bit.
And then as the primary went on, it just got to be more where I was just disgusted with all of them.
And then Trump really wasn't saying anything, right?
So I eventually just kind of pulled my support for DeSantis, didn't say anything during the primary.
And then when it was clear he was going to win, I was like, okay, well, I'll back him because he says this has to end.
We have to end this.
And, you know, he's trying to appeal to Arab voters, trying to appeal to Muslim voters, at least making some outreach.
Now, I know that people will say, well, you're dumb and you should have, you should have known better and whatnot.
And that's probably fair criticism.
Perhaps I should have.
But at the same time, I feel like the Dems and Biden were just so unforgivable in the way that they had supported and enabled Israel to just carpet bomb this entire civilian population for, at that point, it had been over a year that there was no way I could ever vote for Democrats.
And so I just, I was like, well, at the end of the day, it'll punish the Democrats for what they did.
And I don't know.
Now it seems a little bit like it was just going to be an awful, awful pick, no matter who, who won, because look at what they're doing, right?
Absolutely.
Well, you know, it's interesting.
Israel really has, you know, criticism of Israel was pretty much confined to left-wing politics for a long time, but also there's this sort of, you know, paleo-conservative, we might even call it America first one on the right, like not just Ron Paul, who was very critical of Israel, but people like Cappy Cannon, who really kind of even anticipated Ron Paul and then Trump.
If you go look at what Pat Buchanan was saying about immigration and foreign policy and corporatism and populism and the like, you know, he ran against George H.W. Bush as an incumbent and really created a movement on these issues, you know, 25 years earlier.
But it is true that like Israel really hasn't been on the front burner for a long time.
And I understand like 2020 and even going into the 2024 election before October 7th, people were focused on COVID, which obviously was valid since it disrupted people's lives, but also the kind of woke excesses that came out of Me Too and the Black Lives Matter movement and a lot of that craziness.
So I think this is really the first time people are getting a very hard look at what the true face of Israel is and, more importantly, what the subservient relationship of the United States to Israel is.
And that's why you're getting a lot of these kind of first-ever pervasive debates, including in right-wing politics.
Like, wait a minute, why is this one country playing such a, you know, massive role in our own country's politics?
Essentially, since we were sold this America first ideology, like we're going to put our country before any other countries.
And it's so blatant that that's not, when it comes to Israel, what the United States is doing.
Why do you think it is?
Have you thought about why Israel plays such a central role in American politics?
Well, you know, I mean, the easy, of course, you would say, oh, it's the evangelical vote, right?
As far as the right goes, that's the easy scapegoat.
And I'm not saying that the evangelical vote is not important.
It is to a certain extent, but of course, it doesn't explain the left-wing at all, nor does it explain Republicans that aren't in the Bible Belt, right?
So you have to just go back to, actually, it has to be something bigger than that.
And it, I think a lot of it boils down to campaign finance, which does explain a lot.
There is a lot of Zionist money, pro-Israel money in the campaign finance.
But if you start digging on the history of America and whatnot, if you start digging into, like, Cold War politics, what you see is, especially with older Americans, there is this very ingrained kind of, I don't want to say slavish devotion, but it is certainly, it is chiseled onto their hearts.
And it's just this affinity and love for Israel that was, you know, it's just kind of like bootstrap country that came up and was the David and,
the Goliath story and throughout the Cold War that was kind of really beat into people's head again that's where the idea that Israel's the only uh democracy in the Middle East comes from is actually not from like the war on terror it's actually a relic of the cold war days where all of the the Arab countries aligned with the Soviets and the U.S. was aligned with Israel and so that's uh it's really kind of put I think into older Americans hearts especially that we have to stand
with them, right?
And this is what they grew up with.
So I get it to a certain extent.
And you have a lot of Zionist influence in the media.
You have a lot of Zionist influence in, you know, newspaper, journalism and stuff like that.
That's, it's really that the U.S. has only been exposed to this one side, right?
So most people, if you ask them, they think, number one, they think that Israel was getting attacked every single day by Palestinians.
Palestinians were just going out and murdering Jews every day, right?
For no reason, just for, like, hatred of Jews.
For no reason whatsoever.
Right, right.
And this is a carefully, and it's hard to break through on people's heads that, no, actually, that's not what's happening.
Number one, that's actually just not what's happening.
Number two, there's a two-sided conflict here.
And the Palestinians have real grievances that I try to frame them to my audience, like, what would you do if this government showed up one day and said, hey, you don't have the proper, you know, permitting on this house that you've lived in for the last 30 years, and we're going to bulldoze it to the ground?
You know, what would you do?
I know what you guys would do.
At least I know what you guys LARP and say you were going to do.
You're, you know, you're the dope tread on me.
You guys fly the Gadsden flag.
And yet, you expect Palestinians to just kind of take it laying down.
And that's super frustrating, right?
Because that is antithetical to what so many conservatives say that they stand for.
Yeah, there was this movie in 1984 called Red Dawn.
And it imagined a Soviet invasion with, I think, Nicaraguan and other communist forces, where they were able to invade the United States.
And it turned into heroes, you know, the sort of civilians who ended up using violence, like picking up rocks and guns and arms to kill as many of those invaders as they can, based on the ground that if someone is occupying your country, a foreign country, of course you have the right of violent resistance against them.
And I, but, but all of that changes when it comes to comes to israel though i do think it's interesting uh that if you look at polling now the only group that actually as a majority continues to have favorable views of israel are republicans over the age of 50.
So people have been basically feeding on Cold War propaganda and Fox News for a long time.
But even Republicans, I don't mean just 18 to 24, I mean under 50 as a group, have unfavorable views toward Israel.
And I think, as you said earlier, that's the reason why they're becoming so extreme and targeting the very few areas where anti-Israel sentiment can flourish, like our universities.
That was the reason TikTok got banned.
And, you know, they're really kind of pursuing whatever remaining free speech sectors there are that still allow criticism to Israel.
But I think it's a losing battle for them.
The Internet's just too free.
The brazenness is too great.
What do you think of that?
I agree.
You know, Thomas Massey, a couple days ago, he said, my foreign policy is the golden rule, right?
And I think for a generation raised on the idea of, like, American exceptionalism, we do what we want.
That's a hard pill to swallow.
But for younger generations, we're kind of like, yeah, actually, we should treat other people the way we want to be treated, right?
And so if you just extend that out, I mean, I can still remember this professor who he liked to pick on me a little bit.
He could tell that I was just this.
I was at the University of Texas, San Antonio.
He could just tell I was this, you know, Southern kind of brainwashed evangelical Christian and whatnot.
So he liked to have fun with me a lot in my views.
And, I mean, he just asked me, what would you do if this was happening to you?
And when posed with that question directly, there is not an honest soul out there who can say, I would just walk away, right?
It is, it is, I truly believe it is human nature to resist tyranny.
And sometimes it's violently, right?
And we have the right to armed resistance that is a fundamental human right.
And I'm not going to deny it based on politics, right?
It's just, it's an instinct that people have.
And I'm not going to hold that against anyone.
And of course, the Israelis, the founding, of course, used violent resistance and even classic terrorism against the British occupiers of the land they consider theirs.
And you've had even, you know, top Israeli military officials who have said, if I were Palestinian, I would also join Hamas.
You know, and that was the Israeli mindset.
And people who speak honestly about it are willing to say that.
All right, let me ask you about this, what I consider reporting situation.
you did i don't know if you consider it journalism i definitely consider it journalism and it's you know i'm a big fan of independent journalism and to me what you did is a classic vibrant case of of why it's so important so just to quickly set it up um and i'll let you tell the story but there is a green beret who was working with the gaza humanitarian foundation which is the organization that israel United States created to keep the UN and all of their groups out to deliver food.
It's been an utter disaster on every level, responsible for not just famine, but people being massacred when they line up to get food, starving people over and over and over, including into this week.
And he basically came out and denounced the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in a lot of very compelling ways, made a big media round.
And of course, as always happens to anybody who effectively criticizes Israel, he became the subject of an immediate smear campaign, much of which was false.
And the main attack on him was false and proven so by the work that you did.
So can you just tell the story of like how that happened, how that caught your attention and why you decided to go do the work you did to debunk this?
Yeah, sure.
So like I said, I was married to a Grand Beret.
So when I hear people kind of talk about, you know, my dad was in the military.
I was younger when he retired, but still, I've just kind of been around the military my entire life.
I know how the American military is.
And I'm not saying it's perfect by any means.
Of course, I'm vehemently against like the Iraq war, a lot of American foreign policy and whatnot.
But our soldiers just something that's irked me for years is when people say the IDF is the most moral army, right?
When American politicians in particular say that, because I think, number one, it's such a slap in the face to the American military.
It's just gross.
But also, when I personally know, I've heard the stories for years from soldiers and whatnot.
Our soldiers don't do these things.
Our soldiers don't dress up in lingerie when they go into, you know, when they're doing like house sweeps, right?
They don't smash little kids' toys and record themselves and, you know, post these things or even take pictures or souvenirs of these things.
That just doesn't happen.
And if it did happen, there would be serious consequences for it.
We have actual systems set up in place.
We have, throughout the war on terror, we have tried soldiers for crimes that, you know, like premeditated murder, setting things up, even theft, you know, of personal property when they were on raids and whatnot.
I know of actual prosecutions that happened because of that.
So when I hear that it, it enrages me.
But what I encountered with this thing.
So when Tony Aguilera first came out, number one, I didn't, I didn't need to hear his story.
I already believed the Palestinians because they've been telling us these things have been happening for at this point.
It's been two months.
So I believed him because I already believe Palestinians because they've already shown.
I mean, they're the ones posting the videos every day, right?
But what I came across this account that was really trashing him.
So I called, I called my ex-husband and I asked him, Do you know this guy?
And he knew of him, didn't really know, but he had heard the name.
Even if Tony, Tony, he knew who he was.
Yeah.
Or the person attacking him.
No, he didn't.
I mean, that's like an anon account.
Apparently, they're supposed to be Granberts, but no, but he knew the name.
But he, you know, and I asked him if he knew anything about him.
He's like, no.
Asked him if he had heard any of this stuff.
He's like, no, definitely not.
So I knew that, you know, he would know if this guy was like super bad, right?
Then what happens is this fact.
Before the attacks on him, can you just summarize like what his whistleblowing was about?
Like in general, you said, you know, you didn't need to hear his story.
What was his story, you know, in general?
So he's part of the GHF, which is Gaza Humanitarian Fund.
And they have set up now four distribution sites in Gaza, right?
So what these are are they to distribute food, not water.
We learned from him later, but they are these four sites that they're the only distribution or they say I'm so sorry, my dog.
Trust me, we understand.
Of course.
I have no idea where everybody else is at to get them.
We don't mind dog interruptions.
We like them.
Go ahead.
So they had these four sites set up.
And the way that the system is set up right now, because they only have the four, is that they announce when they're going to open on their Instagram, WhatsApp, and excuse me, not Instagram, but Telegram, WhatsApp, and Facebook pages, the GHF, right?
So Palestinians have, they're not allowed to hang out around the distribution centers.
They have to go home.
They have to disperse.
And then so we have, what you have is you have people walking every day, sometimes miles to come to these distribution centers.
And then it's announced online when it's going to open, right?
And then they're open anywhere from like six to 15 minutes with an average opening of 11 minutes.
And it's like a free-for-all.
People just run in and they grab whatever they can, right?
And then, so it's, it's technically, it's set up to draw Hamas out, right?
So it's set up as like the survival of the fittest kind of thing where you, because you have to be strong and fast, essentially, to get the most supplies, right?
So that's, that's the idea behind it.
They're running facial recognition the whole time.
And this is why the UN wouldn't participate in any of these distribution centers because they said they were being used as bait.
And they, it's, and, you know, it goes against humanitarian law.
It's antithetical.
It's unethical.
Everything about it is just wrong.
So this is why the UN won't participate.
And this is actually why the initial company I believe that was contracted by the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, they backed out at the last minute.
They just said that this was not neutral.
It was unethical.
And they could not abide to humanitarian law by participating in this setup.
Regardless, a new company comes in.
It's this DUG Solutions, U.S. Solutions.
I believe it's UG Solutions.
It's a contractor.
It's like a private corporation.
It's not part of the government.
Right.
Right.
So they're willing to do it.
And this is what they set up.
And this is what Tony Aguiler becomes a contractor for.
From what I've read online, it's pretty good pay.
It's about a $10,000 sign-on bonus.
And then it's $1,500 a day.
And so they get these guys, these kind of like retired, you know, special forces, retired military types that go over there.
And they are like the armed guards, essentially, right?
So they're helping to set this up.
But yet again, it's this free-for-all where people are just running in and it's only open for a very, very limited amount of time.
So what happened with Aguiler is he's there.
Number one, he's very disturbed by the setup, right?
And then I believe it was the second day because it opened on May 28th.
I believe it was the 29th, he said.
He had, I'm sorry, let me go back real quick.
When the site closes, the IDF is using live fire to disperse the crowds, right?
And this is how we are ending with people getting shot and killed every day from these distribution centers.
And it's anywhere from 50 to 100 people every single day.
I mean, I think I've seen as high as 149 people on one day.
It's really, it just violates every law of consciousness, of humanitarian law.
It's international law.
But we won't even go there.
Tony Aguilera witnesses this one day.
I believe it's the May 29th, second day it's open.
He sees this little boy walking, right?
Because this little boy is late to the free-for-all and he doesn't, there's nothing left, right?
Because of course it's set up for men, the strongest, the fittest.
And he's only able to grab, I guess, like a handful of rice and lentils or something like that.
Or it's a torn bag of rice.
And he walks up to Aguilera and he's, and he, sorry, he is really grateful.
And he walks up to Aguilera and he gives him like a hug and tells him thank you in English.
And this little boy who is clearly malnourished, dehydrated.
And it really bothers him, right?
That he's, you know, he's taken aback.
And then the boy walks away.
I don't know if it was that day or if it was the next day, but there's some kind of disbursement fire.
And anyways, this little boy who's like five years old gets shot.
And that really impacted Aguilera.
And he becomes very bothered by it.
And he starts voicing problems with this setup.
He doesn't like it.
He knows, number one, that they are in violation of international law.
They are, these are war crimes that are being committed.
He is a witness to a war crime.
And I guess more importantly for him on a personal level is the fact that he is in Gaza on a tourist visa.
He has no diplomatic immunity to what he's witnessing, right?
So these men, as of right now, these Americans over there, they don't actually have any international protection, right?
From prosecution should.
So he becomes concerned.
He starts voicing dissent.
And GHS doesn't like that very much, right?
So what happens is they end up firing him, I guess.
He has some back and forth with them.
He comes home.
I believe, I haven't watched all of the Tucker Carlson interview, but I believe that at some point he conversed with his wife.
And she said, you need to go forward.
You need to tell people what happened.
And that's when he decided to blow the whistle.
And I believe his first interview was with BBC.
Right.
And so that obviously makes a big impact.
This is not, I mean, as you say, it shouldn't have taken that.
For a lot of people it did, though, because the Gazans themselves have been documenting this.
And, of course, Israel has blocked any international media from entering Gaza.
So they are purposely hiding what they're doing.
And we rely on Gazans, not just to say what's happened, but to document it.
But in this case, here you have a former Green Beret who is very credible in how he tells the story.
He's clearly emotionally affected, as anybody minimally decent would be.
Yeah.
And he makes a big impact.
And for that reason, he has to have his reputation destroyed.
So one day there emerges online this tweet that, of course, went viral because all the Israel supporters madly spread it.
Basically saying that he is somebody who is a wife beater.
That he had actually been prosecuted and convicted for beating his wife.
And I saw this tweet, you know, everywhere.
I mean, and I just assumed because there was, like, attached to it was a purported legal document, which purported to be the criminal case where he ended up either pleading guilty or being convicted of beating his wife.
And you took that and began investigating it because it didn't seem right to you.
And what led you to go investigate that and what is it that you found ultimately?
So I used to work as a paralegal in North Carolina.
So I know the North Carolina law very well.
And first off, and I'm pretty sure it's actually all 50 states that this is.
But if you are convicted of assault on a female, you cannot own a gun, right?
And you can't get a top secret security clearance, right, from that.
I mean, you are screwed if your job is you have to hold a gun, essentially.
So the idea that this lieutenant colonel had been convicted of assault on a female and then gotten a job as a contractor, that just wouldn't happen.
It just would not.
He would never pass.
They would never hire him, right?
And I know that even to – I highly doubt even just to work in Gaza, like in another country.
I don't believe that an American company would have hired him to begin with.
So I knew that the conviction, the allegation that OE had been convicted, I knew that was BS to begin with.
Then I am a little familiar with – because I'm in Cumberland County, but I grew up in Harnett County, which is where this – This is North Carolina?
Right.
This is all North Carolina.
And so I'm just really familiar with the area and whatnot.
But I grew up in Harnett County.
So – and again, the law office that I worked at, we worked multiple counties around us.
I know what certain things look like, right?
So when I see this arrest warrant for Harnett County, and that's what it was, that is what was being posted online, a few things stuck out to me.
Number one, the zip code is a Fort Bragg zip code.
And I know that right off the bat because I used to have a marketing job, and I oddly know all of the zip codes around this town.
And so – but the address said Sanford, which is about 40 miles north.
So that was wrong.
Then I look at the docket number, and it's missing.
There's, like, last three identifying numbers.
That was wrong.
I knew that right off the bat.
And so I look up the address.
Address doesn't exist.
So I'm like, okay, there's something weird here.
I call up my podcast co-host, Janine.
I ask her.
She's like, well, let's look up the docket number and see if we can find anything.
We look it up, and nothing.
It just comes up plain.
Because she's a lawyer, so she has access to those databases and knows how to research them.
Right.
And so I said, you know what?
I'm just going to go down to the courthouse and see what they have.
Because if there's anything – because I don't want to tweet out this is fake unless I know, like, 100%.
Right.
So I go down to the courthouse, and I'm, you know, on their system, and I don't find anything on this.
I start chatting with the clerk.
She was, like, super sweet.
I showed her the picture of the mugshot, and she says, oh, I think that's fake.
She said, because they don't put the date of birth on there.
She said they only put age.
So we pull up the Harnett County Sheriff's arrest warrant and sure enough it's it's a it's very, very similar format, but there are little things that are just off, right?
And one of them specifically is it does not say date of birth.
It says age.
And of course, the other thing is the docket number and whatnot.
So I start digging some more and I come across his divorce filings, right?
Well, separation filings.
And specifically, there was a child custody battle and whatnot.
So I start reading through this.
And what I find is that there actually was a domestic incident that lines up with the date that's on this arrest warrant.
And it, you know, it's people have, you know, couples have problems sometimes and things happen.
And something happened here.
There was, there was clearly an issue and whatnot.
But what actually happened is that the wife ended up writing a three-page affidavit, kind of acknowledging, not kind of, she fully acknowledged that there was an incident involving alcohol.
And it was her fault, essentially, what happened.
I guess she fell.
I got the feeling maybe she fell down some stairs or whatnot.
And her face was banged up.
And then the next day she goes to work.
They tell her, no, you have to go to the hospital.
She gets to the hospital, hospital, calls the sheriff.
She tries to explain to the sheriff what happens that they, she had been drinking, they had gotten into a fight.
She fell.
Of course, sheriff doesn't believe her, which I understand.
But she's adamant about this, that no, my husband has never touched me.
My husband has never hit me.
He is not abusive to me at all.
And, you know, and they have some problems.
And there's other things in the file that really confirm and back all of this up.
It made me very confident in this letter, right?
In this affidavit, to the point where I was like, you know what?
I have to, I call Janine.
I'm telling her I'm having this kind of dilemma about, because I don't want to put these people's personal lives out there, right?
But at the same time, his credibility is very important.
And they're smearing this man.
And after reading the file, I'm convinced he actually is innocent.
He did not do that.
And it was a fake document, right?
There was no arrest warrant.
I have not seen anything that, I mean, I know that this incident happened, right?
But the thing with North Carolina is if like she had just decided she wasn't going to cooperate with prosecution, it would have just been dismissed by the judge.
There would still be a record somewhere, right?
Of it.
And yeah, whatever is online, that is not real.
That is not what was put up with Harnet County.
People are like, no, he definitely got arrested.
I'm like, well, somehow it got erased from existence.
So now I actually do think it is, it was fake.
It's this weird thing, but I know 100% that he was not charged at all with this crime.
And so anyone tried to.
So what I actually think happened is someone knew that there was an incident between the two.
And I do think that they made this fake kind of arrest warrant.
And if I rise every record, every Israel supporter was like, read every retweet.
Yeah, he's a wife beater.
He's a, I mean, it's just, it was so nasty that I was like, you know, I have to, I have to go out there with this, that this didn't happen like this, number one.
And I actually think that they did, someone with information did, you know, take it.
And I do think they made this document.
Again, I can't find it online, right?
I can't, I can't find any record of it.
I have looked through the Hope County or the Harnett Counties.
You know, they actually, they print a daily or a monthly report of all their felony and A1 arrests.
It is not in that December 2021, his that arrest, which should have been because Assault on a Female is an A1 misdemeanor.
It should have been in that report.
It's not in there.
So it's like scrubbed from existence if that happened, which makes me think, no, he actually wasn't arrested.
Well, also, you, with all this information that you just recounted, all the documents that you found, you went and reported online what you had discovered, that this was basically a lie in a fabricated document.
Oh, it was definitely, it was definitely a lie.
It was definitely an exaggeration.
And what I think is someone knew that there had been an incident that created like a fake arrest warrant from it.
And then just right.
And then just created this whole fake thing.
And you have this account, this anonymous Green Beret, Green Beret NAP account, NAP something.
I don't even understand what it is.
This guy's really stupid.
I know he has had multiple meltdowns in my convention stuff.
But this is the point.
So that viralized fake document.
You then posted your proof that this was fake.
And your reporting also viralized.
Like everybody was retweeting it as well because of how widespread this fake accusation was and this document was.
And he then came in in Europe to try and argue with you and you destroyed him.
He had no idea what he was talking about.
Nothing he was saying makes sense.
But what I'm saying is, had there been proof, like had there really been an arrest warrant about this stuff, this would all be out there by now because it became very important to Israel supporters.
And I do think, I mean, first of all, as you say, I mean, people who beat their wives definitely are guilty of something very immoral.
We should use that to judge their character.
Right.
But it doesn't actually inform one way or the other about the credibility of his claims.
Correct.
But that's always the idea.
You know, they did that with Daniel Ollsberg.
Like, he had the Pentagon papers showing the U.S. government had lied for, you know, a decade about the Vietnam War.
And they tried to break into his psychoanalyst office to find, you know, private life dirt on him, knowing that it would distract attention.
It would make him look bad.
People would want to look at the findings.
That's what always they do.
And it just is amazing how vicious and dirty they are that you criticize Israel in an effective way.
And obviously, Green Beret, who went there and is telling a firsthand story that is very emotionally affecting, is a real danger to their whole narrative.
And within like days, they have this fake document that they're circulating everywhere, accusing him of having been convicted of wife beating.
And it's, it's, you know, it's really amazing how much you put yourself in jeopardy if you if you criticize Israel in a meaningful way.
Right.
It's concerning because who wants to put themselves through that?
Who wants to put their family through that, right?
Who wants to put their children, their wife, anything like that.
And the thing about Tony Agner is he's extremely convincing.
Like I said, I didn't need his testimony because, you know, I'm very invested.
I follow this stuff every day.
But to your normie who doesn't follow any of it, he's very convincing, right?
He has this kind of aura about him in that he's very confident in the way he speaks.
And he's, you don't feel like he's trying to manipulate you when you hear him talk, right?
