Hey, come see us live on tour in Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, Cortland, New York, Oakmont, Pennsylvania, right outside Pittsburgh, El Paso, and San Antonio, Texas.
Go to JimmyDoor.com for a link for all those tickets.
Hey, this is Jimmy.
Who's this?
Rang, rang, bitch.
It's me.
It's President.
He sounds great on the phone.
I give it to him.
Hey, good to hear from you.
How you doing?
I'm doing great.
And I heard that you requested Joe Biden's Super Tuesday's takeaways.
I absolutely did not request that.
Well, that's what I heard.
Maybe it was Steph.
I don't know.
Okay.
Either way, here they come.
Buckle up, fuckers.
Okay.
My goodness.
What is this again?
Joe Biden Super Tuesday takeaways.
Oh, you called Tuesdays with Joey.
Indulge me, man.
I'm trying to make this a regular segment on MSNBC.
You get paid way more if you have a regular segment, you know.
You want to do a regular segment when you talk about Super Tuesday?
Well, I'll keep the name the same, but I'll talk about, you know, other stuff when it happens.
Anyway, are you buckled in?
No.
No, I'm not, actually.
Well, here we go.
Super takeaway Tuesdays.
Item one.
Biden wins big.
Nomination all but wrapped up.
Main challenger uncommitted and defeated as his weird third guy.
Maybe for what we have all dreaded.
Another Biden-Trump matchup in the fall.
Wait, what we've what we've dreaded?
Well, yeah, I'm an American citizen, too.
I'm just as disheartened as anyone else.
Takeaway number two.
Nikki Haley head to Bailey.
Haley suspended her campaign without making a public appearance or even issuing a statement.
Serving up this hot plate of chicken tikka masilence has led an animal to reach one conclusion.
She was too busy crying.
See, it wouldn't want to be a that tika masilance.
That's a that's way too clever for you, sir.
I don't think this is by the way.
I don't think this is going to fly on MSNBC, this segment.
Well, all right, not on Joy Reed, no, but item number two: what's the deal with American Samoa?
The winner in the territory of American Samoa was not Joe Biden, me, but some jabroni named Jason Palmer.
Who?
Exactly.
That's what I'm screaming.
Who the hell is Jason Palmer?
Is he related to Robert Palmer?
Simply unelectable.
Seriously, what's the deal with American Samoa and other such incredulous exclamations?
Insiders say that Biden's team is in fact worried about this development.
Really?
You're worried about what happened in American Samoa?
Jimmy, one must be worried about all facets of the campaign.
I lost a primary.
Yeah.
That's not good news.
And this one can't even be blamed on a genocide.
It's just a weird thing that happened for no reason.
What's your campaign strategy for dealing with American Samoa?
I'm going to continue to do nothing about climate change until American Samoa is completely submerged.
Sorry, you're a territory of the ocean now.
Should have voted for me.
Okay, I see.
Takeaway number two, slash item number three.
The State of the Union addresses tomorrow night.
Oh, that doesn't have to do with Super Tuesday, per se.
Yeah, I know, asshole, but like I said, that's just the title of my segment.
That doesn't mean I'm bound to only discuss that topic.
I don't see how everyone keeps getting confused here.
Okay.
Anyway, yeah, amazing speech time.
All-time banger coming down the pike.
Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.
How exciting.
Are you going to be watching, Jimmy?
Absolutely not.
Yeah, I tell you what, Jimmy.
Tomorrow night is my big opportunity to address the nation regarding the crisis in God moving forward.
I know people in this country are deeply pained, and my political standing has suffered immensely on the left.
So now is my chance to make statements that will address this situation head-on.
Heal the rift.
Win back trust and support.
And boy, am I going to fumble that shit?
God damn.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, you know it.
I know it.
Even that little fucking dog in there knows it.
I'm not going to see a goddamn thing that makes anybody feel better about anything.
Whatever nonsense dribble comes out of me will be reduced to thousands more are going to die.
That's pretty depressing.
Oh, man.
Yeah, it sure fucking is.
Yeah.
Just soul-killing.
Knowing I could do something, but I don't.
I wish I could, but it's, you know, it's Israel, man.
You can't do anything about Israel.
You just have to let it happen.
Israel is a Chinatown of the world.
Right.
Right.
To be clear, I'm referencing the movie.
I'm not dragging the Chinese into this situation.
I got it.
I understand.
Come on, Jack.
I won't be talking about those fuckers in my speech, too.
Okay, well, I guess this is the end of your segment then.
What segment?
The Super Tuesday thing.
I got no idea what you're talking about, man.
When you called, you said that.
Jimmy, Jimmy, I called you five minutes ago.
How the hell would I remember what I said back then?
I was a different man five minutes ago.
I can't be held to the standards of five minutes ago.
I'm just one person.
Okay, well, thanks for calling.
Did I ever tell you about a gangster I knew in my youth named Flat Kick Honeysuckle before a suit shoot?
Is this Bobby?
Am I talking to Bobby?
Yes.
I want to tell Bobby about Super Tuesday, but I forgot what.
Okay.
My pills are wearing off again.
Hello.
Okay.
I think we need to go.
Goodbye, Mr. President.
Wow, that was amazing.
We're here with Max Blumenthal, an award-winning journalist as well as the editor-in-chief and founder of the independent investigative news website The Gray Zone with an A. He's also the best-selling author of several books including Goliath, The 51-Day War, and The Management of Savagery.
Please welcome back to the show Max Blumenthal.
Hey, Max.
Hey, Jimmy.
How's it going?
Good.
Good to see you.
Now, the reason why I have you is, do you remember this story?
I want to show everybody.
Remember, this was the headline.
We've covered that this would turn out to be a fake story.
Remember this fake story by the Amber Heard?
This is what we like.
The New York Times, the Amber Heard of newspapers.
And it's not really fair because Amber Heard technically has put out way less huge lies.
Technically, she has.
Screams without words how Hamas weaponized sexual violence on October 7th.
And so this has been debunked a million times.
But it was first debunked by The Gray Zone.
Here's The Gray Zone from December 31st.
They did a video on it.
New York Times'Hamas rape hoax exposed.
Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate methodically debunked The Times'bogus report alleging Palestinian militants systematically raped Israelis on October 7th and respond to their own critics'sloppy attacks.
Anant Schwartz was Anant telling the truth.
Ha ha ha ha.
And here's your article on January 10th at the Gray Zone website.
Screams without proof.
Questions for The New York Times about Shadi Hamas rape story.
But then, this is from February 28th.
This is from just the other day.
It's from The Intercept.
They're acting like they broke this story.
The story can finally be told properly.
Between the hammer and the anvil, which is, I guess that's where Jeremy Scahill's head has been lately.
Ha ha ha ha.
Why, they crapped the title up of your much better title?
They're breaking the same story.
Obviously, they acknowledge the gray zone, so no worries.
Oh, no, wait.
They didn't do that.
What?
Ryan Grimm wouldn't overlook something like that.
Well, in this one, they did just acknowledge us in passing, just so no one clips this out.
Like, it was sort of an afterthought acknowledgement, but we'll get into that.
So, here is also Amy Goodman.
A new expose by The Intercept has found major discrediting flaws in the New York Times'December investigation, claiming that Hamas committed.
So, we speak to reporter Jeremy Scahill about the grave errors and misinformation that his team found.
Here's Amy Goodman pretending The Intercept broke the story.
Hey, I guess that's why it's called The Intercept.
They intercept stories from better outlets and then pretend that it was their scoop.
Here's Aaron Maté.
He says, correction for Democracy Now!
The Intercept is not the one that found major discrediting flaws in the New York Times'Hamas sexual violence scam.
Those flaws were uncovered by Intifada, the Gray Zone News, and Mondewise months ago, well before The Intercept and Democracy Now!
jumped on board.
This Democracy Now!
segment fails to mention that.
So, wait, so The Intercept, in passing, did say it was from your outlet, but Democracy Now!
completely omitted that, and I guess Jeremy Scahill wasn't in a hurry to correct it on the show.
Well, there was a previous article by The Intercept about the controversy, and we can get into that, and that just pretended we didn't exist.
So, their original story pretended like that Gray Zone didn't.
Here, Max Blumenthal tweets that out and says, nice summary of reporting by the Gray Zone, Intifada, and Mondewise from three months ago.
Nicely done.
And, you know, Aaron worked at Democracy Now!
I know!
And so, for Amy Goodman not to, it's kind of extra gross for her not to give a tip of the hat.
But Democracy Now!
Not only refuses to credit the Gray Zone and others who actually debunk the New York Times, it promoted the Hamas rape hoax back when we were exposing it as false.
This is from December 6, 2023, Democracy Now!
segment, uncritically echoing bogus Israeli claims of survivor testimonies.
Let's watch a little bit.
The UN Monday heard accounts of sexual assaults during Hamas'October 7th attack on Israel.
Speakers criticized the UN and others for failing to promptly investigate and condemn sexual crimes.
Former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg, who helped organize the event, was a key speaker.
Hillary Clinton sent videotaped remarks.
President Biden Tuesday condemned Hamas for the alleged attacks, which the group has denied.
The non-profit Physicians for Human Rights Israel last month released a report detailing survivor accounts of sexual assaults, which it said were widespread on October 7th.
This is Orit Solisiano, head of Israel's Association of Rape Crisis Centers.
Most of the people I assume are.
that the Hafaskan of terror are dead because they were shot there are There is information from people who saw what happened, but everybody should understand there should not be any anticipation that the survivals will come and speak out loud with a face.
It's not like me too.
This is a horrible and different thing.
What?
So what she says.
You can't talk to them and don't expect to hear.
Don't expect to actually hear anybody say they were raped or anything.
That's not how this works.
How it works is we make this stuff up as propaganda, and then it gets printed on the front page of the New York Times by people who aren't even journalists.
And why is this so much worse?
Because they're that racist against Palestinians, so it's much worse than a sexual assault in any other country.
I guess that's what you're implying.
This is so shameful.
They can't even show their face.
They actually have to wear Burke is now.
They're so ashamed.
They're so ashamed.
So Ray McGovern, who we know is ex-CIA truth teller, he says, I'm not surprised about Democracy Now.
I found it hard to conclude that Amy can act as a cog in the system until I was put on the no invite list.
Amy couldn't believe that Demscum spooks fabricated Russia gate.
She picked Empty Wheel, who admitted sharing inside information on RussiaGate with the FBI out of patriotism.
She outed her own source to the FBI.
That's what Empty Wheel, that's what he's talking about.
Democracy Now is the Bernie Sanders of independent media, and that is why we call her Amy Goodbad, post of hypocrisy now.
Is that why one corner of her mouth is turned up and the other down at all times?
I think she embodies the it might be.
Well, here is so here is Ryan Grimm repeating.
This is back from December 4th.
Instead of debunking it, he repeats it.
He says JFL called the sexual violence carried out by Hamas horrific and condemned it repeatedly in this interview.
So he's validating that.
He's not saying, hey, those are bogus.
And Aaron Mate comes in and says, how do you know Hamas carried out sexual violence?
Jayapal parroting evidence-free allegations is not something to welcome.
You should at least use the word alleged.
And he doesn't.
He didn't use the word alleged.
And, well, here's so here's there was no cover.
This is from December 24th.
There was no cover-up of Hamas's sexual violence on October 7th.
The right manufactured it.
The media and feminists bought it.
And Israel is exploiting the outcry.
What the right manufactured.
So at least there's some original spin on the story.
You have to read the first line or the first paragraph to see where the intercept was at at that point.
Okay, it's one thing is true.
It says Hamas and other Palestinian militants committed unspeakable sexual violence against Israeli civilians on October 7th.
Well, that turns out.
So the thing that drives me nuts is that the intercept is now shitting all over the New York Times for that false story when they printed just as false things in their own.
And so I said this on the show last Friday, and I said the intercept shouldn't be wagging their finger at anybody.
They should be wagging their finger at themselves for their shitty coverage, which I knew this.
So anyway, here's one more.
To underscore that the intercept has no evidentiary standards on the Hamas rape claim, consider this insane lying.
Yes, some individuals and extreme left organizations have denied these atrocities or upheld them as justified resistance.
Forget for a second that the rape claims are unsubstantiated.
Who are these individuals in extreme left organizations that have upheld rape as justified resistance?
This is pure invention.
It was Roxanne Gay.
And here's Ryan Grimm saying, this is so then, so then when it came out that that New York Times story was fabricated, Ryan Grimm, one of the least ethical guys in all of journalism, says this is horrifying.
The guy lies about activists, healthcare activists.
He lies about YouTubers to defend politicians.
I'm the regular.
This is what he does.
And here he is now pretending that his own publication didn't publish the exact same lies.
He goes, this is, and himself, too, by the way, tweet out the exact same lie.
He goes, this is horrifying on so many levels.
How could the Times let this happen?
They know I wouldn't question them.
I like how Aaron goes, good question.
Here's a related question.
How could the intercept let this happen?
And he doesn't have a comeback.
My favorite Ryan picture.
Oh, Ryan.
So code name Muddy Waters.
Code name Muddy Waters because that's what he's here to do, Muddy the Waters.
And he says that here's Ryan Grimm again.
The balls on this guy to just be the, I guess we should get the Hypocrites of the Year award.
Glad to see the New York Times taking internal and external criticism of its coverage seriously.
It's important to any organization to be able to self-reflect, learn from mistakes, and improve.
He should be saying this to a bearer.
And then he goes, oh, wait, that's not what they're doing.
Yeah, that's not what you're doing.
That's not what you're doing.
Is Pierre thinking about turning things around?
Or what do you even have to do with it?
You choose it.
So Aaron says, if you want to understand why Ryan Grimm and Jeremy Scahill don't want to credit the journalist who first debunked the New York Times rape story, here's one reason.
Not confident to let the facts speak for themselves, they're still going out of their way to pay lip service to that very narrative that Hamas did commit these rapes.
How do you maintain a relationship with powers?
The Great Crystal Bull told us.
That's what, as the Great Crystal Ball tells us.
Here we go.
Two ways to think about what happened on October 7th.
The first way is that it was a day of extraordinary mayhem and violence.
The Israeli defense has melted away.
Not only did you have several thousand Hamas fighters stream across the fence, but you also had hundreds Of civilians, some associated with gangs come across.
And in that context, the idea that there would be no sexual assault is not taken seriously by pretty much anybody who understands kind of war and violence.
That's one way to think about October 7th.
Okay.
So what's the other way?
So maybe, maybe lying, maybe lying for power.
You don't take war and violence seriously.
You don't take it seriously.
Maybe lying for the powerful would go easier for him if he would just switch over to the Kyle Kalinsky blonde web surfer here, dude, guy, because whatever he's doing now, that's not working.
Aaron then says, first of all, October 7th wasn't a war.
That was a one-day guerrilla operation in a very limited timeframe.
To frame it in the context of a war is in fact not serious.
It's a prison break.
Second, yes, that was more of a prison break.
Second, that's not how you approach allegations.
And an allegation needs to be backed by credible evidence.
In the absence of any credible evidence, there's no need to pay lip service to the allegation, unless you're pandering.
Also, your low-flow shower head is not helping you.
Then Aaron also says they would do the same thing in their latest article.
They do the same thing in their latest article.
They keep repeating.
The question has never been whether individual acts of sexual assault may have occurred on October 7th.
I believe it is.
Yes, it is.
I think they're mayhap.
Why are you bothering me with mayhem?
They actually had the nerve to put that family in the photo.
So why they have to, those are the ones in the photo saying, hey, our daughter wasn't raped.
Can you imagine that?
Your whole family's pictured there.
Well, we're sad because of the rape.
And you had no idea they're going to make this happen.
No idea they're going to make this up.
So what this is, this is propaganda that the intercept and Ryan Grimm is happy to repeat along with Democracy Now, because they have to make the people.
So because what Israel is doing right now is so horrific, they have to somehow make the people they're doing it to be just a little bit worse than they are.
And that's the point of this.
Let me bring in Max Blumenthal, who actually broke this story and that the Intercept hijacked and Democracy Now pretended they didn't do it.
What do you have to say about this, Max?
Well, this is like the role of the Intercept in Democracy Now is like when a narrative starts to emerge that's challenging power and they realize that it's actually legitimate and we've already taken all the attacks for it.
We've already been smeared again and again.
And then they realize it's true months later after validating it.
They come in and basically claim credit for it, take the baton and run with it.
They aren't posing as actual alternative.
They're not actually like alternative media.
They're what the New York Times might have been if it had been slightly more ethical and slightly more independent.
And many of them have aspirations to work for places like the New York Times.
So they have this culture of respectability politics, which is why they couldn't cite the gray zone in their initial piece by Ryan Grimm and Daniel Bogaslaw, which was about how the New York Times shelved this edition of its daily podcast under internal pressure.
Basically, the staff was freaking out because they had published this piece by Jeffrey Gettelman and a Not Schwartz and company that we blew out of the water.
We, Electronic Intifada, which is actually one of the first online pro-Palestine or Palestine-oriented publications taking on the Israel, Israeli propaganda, period, that ever appeared online.
And Mondo Weiss, which is one of the first major, maybe the first major Jewish anti-Zionist kind of news and analysis outlet.
So they just came and just took all the credit from everyone.
They didn't tell their readers why there was this controversy at the New York Times.
I know for a fact it was because of us.
And me ripping to shreds from top to bottom all the sources that the New York Times relied on, all their demonstrably false testimonies.
The intercept, as you demonstrated in that intro, hadn't even weighed in yet.
So their readers weren't even informed on why this controversy had developed.
And then when they come back with their follow-up piece, which includes Jeremy Scahill on the byline, I basically had to lobby someone at the intercept and say, are you going to credit us this time?
And they did, but I was credited just with like one tweet.
I kind of had to help them find it.
And we were relegated to the sidelines of the article.
And the article, the subheader of that article is the story of the New York Times controversy.
You know, if you're going to tell the story, it should start with us ripping that piece to shreds.
But again, the readers aren't told how that piece was clinically dismantled.
And now they have a new piece up, Ryan Grimm and Jeremy Scahill, which it does credit us, Electronic Intifada and Mondo Weiss.
But again, it's credited as, oh, they had previously raised issues as if they're doing the debunking.
When in fact, this new piece, all it does is recycle debunking I've already done.
In fact, I went even further than them in exposing the phony source that they're exposing.
Now, so they're basically just trying to come in and take credit for work we've already done, fundraise off it, maybe win some awards.
I don't know what the issue is.
And water it down.
And yes, sort of suppress the power behind it by qualifying and saying maybe there was some rape.
You know, Palestinians can be, militants can be kind of rapey.
I mean, maybe it did happen.
Actually, anyone who's serious.
Oh, I guess there's no such thing as rape, Max.
I guess that's what you, maybe that will.
Oh, I guess you go on.
Let's just say maybe.
I mean, we don't totally know what happened on October 7th.
But, you know, what Ryan said there was that anyone who's serious about war and violence has to assume that this happened, even though there is no evidence.
Yeah.
So a journalist has to uphold some evidentiary standard, but none is being upheld here.
And that's, again, part of the respectability politics culture that pervades the intercept, where they're more concerned about how they're perceived by legacy media than by their own audience or by the grassroots political forces that are out in the streets surrounding the Israeli embassy, putting pressure on institutions like the New York Times and protesting this genocide in Gaza.
And so, that to me, it's not real, you know, independent alternative media.
It's sort of like an Ersatz version of the New York Times.
It's not surprising that they've shared staff with so many mainstream outlets.
Dude, Jeremy from the Quartering is better than Ryan Grimm.
I'll say it right now.
I have no doubt about it.
No, Jeremy the Corning, way better than Ryan Grimm.
Well, Jeremy went on Democracy Now initially about some piece he did debunking Israel's atrocity fabrication, something we, Electronic and Defada and Mondo Weiss, already did, not crediting us.
And then he said he learned this from his own research.
Those were almost his precise words.
Jeremy Skahille.
So I guess his research was reading the gray zone.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking the whole time.
Like, oh, we just explored a bombshell report from another better source.
No, I made this other guy reports on nerd stuff usually, but actually, that would be like me.
Like, check out my new book.
It's about Blackwater.
I got to read that squad book still because there is a part where Bill Clinton, apparently, saying about Hillary, said she couldn't sell pussy on a troop train as her trying to have a woman angle how bad of an idea that was for her campaign.
That is in his book, supposedly.
Well, I mean, that's a good scoop.
And, you know, I'm glad they're bringing that story.
Kurt's breaking that story.
I'm going to be the first to read.
Ryan had sources in the New York Times.
I'm glad they got that out there.
It's caused, it's deepening the crisis for the New York Times.
I'm glad that's happening.
It's just unethical to not cite us and the outlets that actually created this crisis.
And it says everything about the kind of mainstream alternative media that we're seeing crop up.
That's like fake alternative media, billionaire-backed outlets.
I mean, you see it on the right too: billionaire-backed outlets and phony alternative podcasts that are actually reproducing mainstream narratives while co-opting a certain element of what's germinating in alternative media.
And here, you know, they waited for months.
I was attacked so many times for challenges.
Like Katha Pollett, the arch second wave in-house feminist at the nation, called me and Aaron rape denialists, which was slightly better than what she said about Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames, which is she just called them rapists.
She didn't call you rape apologists?
She called us rape denialists.
That's even worse.
Yeah, it's sort of like a Holocaust denier.
But I mean, we were getting these attacks, and all along, the intercept was sort of dabbling with the same narrative.
Like, oh, yeah, the one thing is true.
Hamas did this.
And then all of a sudden, they realize, wait a minute, people at the New York Times staffers are taking our work seriously because they actually read it and they realize that we have demonstrated that this story is just false, that these what these sources are saying is not backed up by evidence.
And then they come in when it's safe.
So to me, that's also sort of, I mean, that's just typical of mainstream alternative media: is waiting till a narrative's safe, but it's still kind of contrary to because mainstream media has moved so far into the pro-war neocon realm that it's like lost all credibility.
It was directly in a billionaire's asshole all the time now.
Well, that's how far it's moved.
It's in the colon now.
Hey, you know, here's another great way you can help support the show: you become a premium member.
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I mean, this to me, him tweeting this out on January 2nd, this is horrifying on so many levels.
How could the Times let this happen?
He'll never say that about his own intercept that actually is still doing it.
How can you let it happen?
How could you let it happen?
You're the DC Bureau chief.
How could you let it happen at the intercept?
It happened at your publication.
Let's pretend that didn't happen.
And let's pretend that these guys somehow have integrity and that somehow Ryan Grimm is the arbiter of truth and journalistic integrity.
A guy who's on the take from billionaires.
How many billionaires to pay his salary?
Not it was up to three at one point.
And hey, Jamila PayPal, she condemned those rapes, those fake rapes that never happened.
So cut her some slack.
What a chump he is.
The guy, I mean, I'm reminded of, if you go on Twitter, if you look up hashtag Grimjob, you'll see a lot of his best work.
One of them was when he tweeted out a deceptively edited video about me saying I didn't get a joke that David Sirota was making.
And he cut the part off where I said, hey, that's a good joke, David Sirota made it.
Really?
Yes, he did that.
Yes.
That's the DC Bureau chief so desperate to try to smear a YouTuber because I do the thing they can't stand.
Tell the truth about them.
He cut that video up about as well as he does his own hair.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I don't want to get into personal attacks.
You all have different.
I have like several more.
That's your prerogative.
That's your prerogative.
I mean, you have a different history with Ryan than I do, But it's really, to me, this is about just the culture that the intercept represents and that they just can't like I just couldn't believe reading the latest piece they did where they're just going over information research I already did that I already put out there and then at the end there's a throwaway line about how we had raised questions about
some of this.
It's like, why even bother putting that out?
Like, what is, what are you trying to accomplish?
Like, I'm sure that, like, I think, I don't think there's, it adds any value.
The New York Times stuff, great.
You moved it forward.
Tell your readers why there is a controversy at the New York Times.
Tell the truth.
They didn't do it.
And I know for a fact they didn't do it because the gray zone is considered toxic because we challenge other anti-imperialist narratives that upset powerful people.
So we, you know, we challenged the-Russiagate.
That we would challenge Russiagate when, you know, the mainstream alternative sort of left liberal media was lapping it up.
All these sites that have fallen apart.
We challenged the phony Uyghur genocide narrative that was used to ramp up the new Cold War on China.
We challenged the whole narrative of, of Assad deploying chemical weapons in Douma, for example, which justify U.S. and U.K. missile strikes.
And throughout all of those times, the Intercept was on the other side, pushing the dirty war on Syria, pushing the new Cold War on China with dubious leaks.
Actually, a month before Qasem Soleimani and Iran was assassinated, the Intercept published Iran leaks from a dubious source.
It looks like Western intelligence might have leaked those to the Intercept.
So, and, you know, they're running basically press releases for the Al-Qaeda-affiliated white helmets at the Intercept.
Yes.
So that's how they're, they're always, they're, they're always catering to imperial narratives.
Now you have a situation where what Israel's done is so horrendous in the Gaza Strip that, you know, average liberals are horrified by this.
I was actually at a protest encampment two days ago outside the home, the mansion of Tony Blinken, Secretary of State Tony Blinken.
Really?
That these courageous Palestinian activists have been maintaining 24-7.
They've camped out in tents outside his home.
And anytime someone goes in or out of his gates, they just immediately start chanting.
They pour fake blood on the ground in front of his motorcade.
It's amazing.
No legacy media coverage at all.
No DC local media coverage.
And car after car drives by in this wealthy neighborhood and people are saluting them because people have had it with what Israel is doing.
It's just, if you're on the side of humanity or not, there's no middle ground there.
And so it's kind of easy for an outlet like the Intercept or Democracy Now to come in and start challenging Israeli propaganda.
They've lied so many times, but when it wasn't easy, they were always on the other side.
And there's been no accountability there for the positions they took on Syria, for example, when we were just getting mercilessly attacked for challenging these obviously staged events, which were designed to cause regime change.
The same way that Israel has lied about key elements of October 7th in order to create consent for what it's doing in Gaza, which is a regime change operation.
That's what we're witnessing.
They want to eradicate Hamas, which is the legitimate governor of the occupied, besieged Gaza Strip.
They won an election.
They have a popular constituency.
And as a result of that, I mean, we're seeing the same thing we saw we're seeing in Syria, mass starvation.
Because when you start to come in and try to destroy a government, you start sanctioning it, besieging it.
You won't even let police operate in the streets.
It turns into Mad Max.
It's impossible to get aid in.
Aid trucks get raided.
And obviously food isn't getting in because Israel is blocking it.
But people start to starve.
But that's the same thing that happened in Syria.
And again, the intercept was on the other side.
So we need to have a clear accounting of where these outlets stand on the issue of imperialism, on the system that makes this genocide in Gaza possible.
Like it's the same system that's supporting Ukraine, that's supporting the Ukrainian military.
It is the same system that's flooding Taiwan with arms and encircling China.
It is the same system that is encircling Iran with military bases.
And it doesn't matter if you agree that women should have to wear hijab or not.
That system-As long as they wear a mask?
...
is making life miserable for everybody.
It's the same-So we're opposed to that system.
The intercept camp seemed to make up its mind.
And now it's coming in and kind of trying to gain traction as this grassroots outlet taking on the man by basically Israel-ing our work.
I know you wanted to mention that the Jimmy Dore show was also out in front on the Syria gas attacks.
And-Well, you were like the cavalry that came in and gave us a platform when no one else would.
It was like the reinforcement that we needed at that time.
And you spoke to such a broader audience than we were.
And it made sense to people.
And that's why, like, you know, I think that's why Aaron Maté was like going down the rabbit hole on the OPCW.
But it was thanks to you that people were able to understand the importance of that investigation.
Yeah, I'm still pretty sure.
And the intercept was just attacking it again and again.
Yeah, the scarf sniffing was the part where they really kind of blew it on the fake chemical story.
You know that?
Oh, it's mustard gas.
The CNN.
Oh, yeah.
And the New York Times, I mean, the New York Times had like they recreated the what they wanted the Duma attack to be where they basically had a cartoonist.
Yes.
The thing the courts can't do anymore because it creates false impressions.
The three the 3D computer model.
Yeah, they want an award for that.
but they won an award for that didn't they mention after it's been all you said you can't use it in anymore as evidence yeah they want an award they want an award for a cartoon illustration of something that didn't happen that didn't happen well it did work i mean i guess a lot of idiots believe mike mcrae said I remember after Qatim Soleimani was assassinated by Trump, the Intercept had a panel in New York about it with the New York Times.
They teamed up with the New York Times on a panel.
It's like, how can you team up with the New York Times on it on a panel about one of the most hideous acts by the U.S. Empire?
And of course, Mehdi Hassan was on that panel.
He now has, he now has a mainstream alternative media outlet called Zetayo that he's pushing because he was pushed out of MSNBC for telling the truth on one issue.
All the way up to October 6th, all the way, Mehdi's chilling for Biden, selling the war in Ukraine, selling the new Cold War with China by hyping up Uyghur genocide, doing all the work that just being a member of the mainstream media.
So before that, he was at Al Jazeera and the intercept, and he was crafting the trajectory of his career so he could one day join MSNBC or a mainstream outlet.
And now he's independent and he's declaring that he's billionaire-free and that he will finally tell the bracing truth about how the media has coddled Donald Trump.
And if the media keeps isn't held accountable, that Donald Trump will win again.
Have you read his book?
That's your criticism of the media?
They've coddled Donald Trump.
Like, I've never seen them, and I don't support Trump, but I've never seen the media be more unfair to a president.
Have you read his book, How to Win Any Argument Except That One?
Yeah, just interrupt your guest constantly.
Yeah, I mean, he was, I called him out for lying about Assad and for lying about the gas attacks.
I called him out for, I mean, he even smeared Seymour Hirsch.
I mean, that's the kind of guy that fits in well at the intercept.
My friend, no, my friend.
The intercept will never tell you the truth about Syria.
They wouldn't do it.
It was just such a, it was, or Russia Gate.
They wouldn't.
I remember Ken Klippenstein, who's such a fraud.
He said he didn't cover Russia Gate because it was boring.
The biggest story of his lifetime.
He tried to pretend he was also one of those guys who pushed that Iver Mecton was horsepaced.
He did.
Whatever the establishment.
I remember him just celebrating the deaths of overweight people who were in their mid-80s who happened to be unvaccinated.
He was just gleefully delighted with that.
Yes.
Yes.
Which also speaks to the culture at the intercept.
That's the culture at the intercept, of course.
I mean, they started out good and they just, well, they couldn't, they went downhill faster than anything.
I mean, and you have it on the right, too.
Like, there's this alternative veneer that various billionaire-backed characters uphold because mainstream media, including Fox News, post-Tucker, are just so discredited among the right-wing grassroots.
And they basically steal a lot of ideas and soften them from the dissident right and also from the left.
And Elon is sort of fostering this culture.
But like, you can look at Bobby Kennedy and his campaign also as a dimension of this.
All of them swallow the poison pill of Israel, of Zionism, including Alex Jones, for example.
He just will not take on.
He says he's against the New World Order and he will not take on the show.
Well, I know, I haven't watched his reporting on it, but when I brought it up on our show, he was against the Israel narrative in Gaza.
So maybe acknowledge every goddamn thing we said to him.
Everything we said, he didn't fight, he didn't push back and he acknowledged it.
So I was, I had heard that about him too.
And so that's why we brought it up to him.
But right, right, I'm not misremembering this, right?
I remember we were shocked because either you or I brought it up was chopping at the bit to bring it up.
And he was immediately.
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
Anyway, so maybe he goes back and forth.
I don't know.
I mean, he did better than Vivek Promise or I promised him.
Yeah, he did.
Yeah, he certainly did.
I mean, that's, you know, another Vivek Sr.
Prami.
Vivek Senior Prami.
He tried to immediately pivot to the genocide of the Uyghurs.
Away from Gaza to the.
I go, well, how many people?
Vivek.
He goes, a million.
I go, well, Gaza's two million.
So it kind of really.
Because he goes, let's just look at the numbers.
There's a million people in the Uyghurs that are being go, well, how many?
Billion?
Well, there's two million.
You got him on his own metric.
I couldn't believe it.
You know, don't ever bring up the Uyghurs again after this Gaza thing because they're the birthday boy every day compared to what the hell's going on in Gaza by a lot.
Well, Matt.
I mean, why aren't there, there was no allegation of any systematic killing or killing in any large number of Uyghurs.
Basically, they said that they were put in internment or re-education camps and that constituted genocide.
And I mean, we debunked all the reports that were coming out because they all, most of them went back to one extremely dubious researcher who said he's on a mission from God to destroy the Chinese Communist Party.
Whatever you think about China or the Communist Party of China, it was just an obvious campaign to generate support for the U.S. to ramp up its political war with China and create the context for a war over the Taiwan Strait.
So it's dangerous.
It has to be challenged.
And we understood that.
And Tony Blinken, in his, I think one of his first public speeches said China is guilty of genocide against the Uyghur population of Xinjiang and Western China.
So I went to the State Department.
I've been there twice to ask them, how is it that China is responsible for genocide when you haven't even said they've killed anyone?
But you consider Tony Blinken said that Israel systematically slaughtering 30,000 people and thousands and thousands of more missing under the rubble, 70,000 are wounded in just such a short time.
Like 15,000 are children.
How is that Meritless, and they just can't answer the question.
Max, you're telling me if I get attacked, I have a right to self-defense by starving three generations of the guy's family.
Is that what you say?
I mean, they're starving them to death.
That's what they're calling it.
They're bragging about it.
They're bragging about it.
They're like happily doing it.
They torture them on camera.
The Palestinian prisoners now put it on social media and were like supposed to just consider that legitimate because they were attacked one day.
Well, that's why, yeah.
I mean, there's that's and to today, actually, uh, the New York Times is still getting away with this.
A.G. Sulzberger, who's the publisher of the New York Times, spoke at Reuters, Thompson Reuters Institute.
He delivered this keynote speech boasting of their sexual violence October 7th investigation as one of their proudest works on Israel.
Jesus.
So it's like he's not even, he's just pretending like the controversy isn't even happening.
Well, he's proud of that the lie spread.
I still see, like, the guy who drove me to the airport, like, brought up, yeah, you know, it never happened.
I can't wait to tell people how that never happened.
It actually delights me too, because I'll watch him do like Dershowitz when they're asking him about Epstein.
He goes, well, I'm surprised with all the feminists about all the rapes that were going on on October 7th.
You know, feminists like Alan Dershowitz bought in real hard to it.
I mean, he's definitely accused of sexually assaulting more named women than Hamas.
They showed their faces, not these mysterious ones you're not supposed to look for.
Well, listen.
Isn't it weird for Hillary Clinton to get up there and just make these general allegations of mass rape by Hamas when like there are actual female accusers of the man who's still her husband?
Like, and there are no actual living accusers against Hamas.
You got to bring them in the room like Bannon did.
The only way to stop her with that is actually physically have them in front of her while she's trying to do her fake rape dog.
Like, what about us?
Like, I mean, if Hamas had raped those women, maybe Hillary would advocate for them.
But not if Bill Clinton did, right?
I just think maybe she should just, you know, Streisan effect, like, stay away from that territory.
You would think, wouldn't you?
What's that?
You would think.
You would think I'd be like, hey, that's kind of a weak spot with my well-known husband, who by my own apparent standards is guilty beyond belief.
Like, I probably don't want to touch on that too much.
No, you got to dig all the way through when you're in a hole.
This isn't like me too.
It's like there are no actual living people or allegations, and it will take years for us to find out.
That's what we were told today by the United Nations Special Representative on Sexual Violence, Pramila Patton, who said, we won't know.
We won't have any evidence, possibly for years.
And then by then, Israel will have enacted the Samson option and nuked half of Europe because it would have been sanctioned.
But, you know, by then, we won't remember.
This is like the level of bullshit that we're being fed by major institutions, major figures.
We're being lied to.
The New York Times publisher is pretending that we didn't debunk this entire investigation.
Just everyone sees through the lies.
Everyone who is a critical thinker, who's capable of understanding context in history, sees through the lies, and nothing is happening.
And they feel just so voiceless and filled with rage.
And that's what I think.
That's why I think so many people identify with Aaron Bushnell, who burned himself alive in a form of protest, not suicide, but what he called an extreme form of protest.
Obviously, I don't know anyone who would do that, who would go that far, but it's just the feeling of just being so frustrated and angry that we're being lied to on such a massive scale while people are being starved.
A genocide is being live streamed, and it feels like there's nothing we can do.
There's no major candidate we can get behind.
The only thing voters can do in the Democratic primaries is vote uncommitted.
Kamala Harris is just straight up lying to us, saying she wants a ceasefire.
Then she waits for the applause and then she says for six weeks.
And then by then, Super Tuesday and the primaries will be over and then we'll be safe from the uncommitted voters.
And it's reported in paper after paper as Kamala Harris calls for ceasefire.
It's just the lies of the media are just so deep that, and it goes back to the conversation that we started out having, which is that there are other, we, from the beginning, from October 7, along with this other, this coalition of independent outlets, have been speaking for those people who feel that way.
And the intercept has come in kind of late in the game and realized, wait, this is where the action's at.
Interception.
Yeah, we used to call them the interslept because they were like so slow on the draw or the interventionist because they were pushing the military intervention in Syria.
But now I guess it's intercepted.
Well, Max, I appreciate you coming on and covering this ripoff of your reporting and the ignoring of it by Democracy Now and the intercept.
So everybody should check out Max Blumenthal's work over at the Gray Zone.
Anything else you'd like to say before we say goodbye?
No, it's been a while.
So it's good to catch up session.
Yeah, it's good.
Yeah, it's been forever.
I can't remember the last time I talked to you.
Let's do it again soon.
Okay, yeah.
Hey, did you see that story about how they arrested that Blaze reporter over January 6th bullshit?
I saw it.
I haven't really dug into it.
Okay, I'm going to dig into it.
Hey, are you going to Icarus?
Are you going to Icarus Festival?
Yeah.
I'll see you there.
I'll be there.
When is that?
I think it's in April, June.
Is it June?
No, June.
Okay.
First week, I think.
I might do a set.
I think, yeah, I'm doing a headline set.
I think you're going to be one of the Comedians on that show.
All right.
Well, I got to get some Israel jokes together.
I got.
Oh, you're going to step on all my fucking Israel jokes.
I won't say no beforehand.
Yeah, okay.
All right, no problem.
I can say strong pro-Israel.
Yeah, that's right, because you're Jewish.
Not anymore, you're not.
Yeah.
You're an anti-celphite.
That's what I call you.
They're going to reverse my brisk.
Okay.
We're putting it, but we're stapling it back on.
Hey, this is Jimmy.
Who's this?
This is Hillary Supporter.
Oh, hey.
We haven't heard from you in a while.
Yes, I've been on sabbatical.
Oh, from what?
I'm realizing that I don't know what you do exactly.
Are you a teacher?
No, I'm on disability for anxiety and related issues, but sometimes I need to take time off from that and explore other mental health problems.
I got it.
I see.
But I'm calling you now because I'm extremely angry and offended.
At me?
Not directly yet, but now that you mention it, yes.
Fuck you too.
The main reason I'm calling is because I'm furious about the results of so-called Super Tuesday, which shouldn't be named that.
It should be called Super Shitty Pick Dumb Men Tuesday.
I see.
I don't see why they don't just have me in charge of naming things.
The fact that we have the choice of these two men in November just shows what a joke democracy is in this country.
What a joke.
What a joke.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
*laughter*
I actually agree with you there, but I think it was always pretty clear it was going to be Biden versus Trump all along.
I'm not talking about that, idiot.
I'm talking about the California senators race.
Do you live in California?
No, I live in Portland.
I'm too scared to live in California.
There are too many men and cars and dogs.
Well, why don't you?
Why do you care about that race then?
Because in many ways, California has been the light of the world as far as politics goes.
For years, California had two female senators, Senators Boxer and Feinstein.
I commissioned giant portraits of both of them to hang in my foyer.
They were heroes to so many people.
I cry every time I look at them.
They were amazing.
And you were both elected to the Senate in 1992, which was called the Year of the Woman.
That was also the year we elected Hillary Clinton to be president the first time.
Bill Clinton was elected president.
No, he wasn't.
People were really voting for Hillary.
Everyone knows that.
And now, because of the primary, the Democratic field is narrowed to two straight men for the Senator of California, Adam Schiff and Steve Garvey, who was a quote professional baseball player, whatever that even means.
It means that he was paid money to play baseball on a baseball team.
Okay, whatever you said doesn't even sound real.
It sounds like nonsense, whereas men make up to entertain each other or whatever.
So California has gone from having two female senators to zero female senators.
That should be illegal.
That should not be able to happen.
What do you mean?
That's who people voted for.
That's called democracy.
No, it's not.
It's the opposite of democracy.
Democracy is not just people voting for people that they want to win.
That would be chaos.
Democracy is social justice, which means we elect more women, more queer people, more black and brown bodies, not fashion.
Oh, don't call that.
And the woman they knocked out of the race, the woman who could have been California Senator?
Representative Katie Porter.
She would have saved the world.
She's just amazing.
You like her?
Amazing.
You like Katie Porter, huh?
Absolutely.
I'm a Katie Porter supporter.
I like the ring of that.
Please be quiet.
Jimmy, she's so brave.
Remember last year when she was bravely photographed reading a book called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck on the House Flo?
I love that title.
During the vote for Speaker, she was telling the world that she wasn't giving a fuck in that moment, Jimmy.
Who else could be brave enough to do that?
Nobody.
Certainly no man.
Uh-huh.
And she went on Bill Maher and bravely trashed that demon girl, Riley Gaines, who lost to a trans swimmer and said it wasn't fair, which is the most hateful thing that has ever happened on earth.
They should bring back concentration camps for these female athletes who don't want to lose to trans women.
Katie Porter called out her evil for what it was.
Hateful, evil, and evil hatred.
Yes, so hateful.
This could have been my senator, and we were robbed of this by stupid voters.
If Hillary were president, she'd send in the military.
Yeah.
Maybe do a Gaza strip to the counties where she lost.
Hillary supporter, that's terrible.
I mean it.
I don't care.
I mean it.
And after she lost, she did something amazing, Katie Porter did, and brave.
She gave a speech and did not concede.
Oh, you know why her opponents use dirty politics tricks to win, which destabilizes the country if Trump does it.
But if a woman does it, it's amazing.
She should say nasty things.
She should have sour grapes over losing Fair and square because she's a woman.
I think you've gone full circle at this point and are just being sexist, Hillary supporter.
No, the idea that women should be subject to the same standards of integrity as other people is the patriarchy.
Outmoded ideas of right and wrong have been oppressing women for centuries, and it has to stop.
But now it never will because the entire state of California has been lost to the forces of darkness, i.e., men.
Well, that's one way of looking at it, I guess.
But I'll tell you this: Katie isn't going anywhere.
I know, Katie.
She's going to keep fighting for us and fight hard.
This isn't over.
She might get the election overturned.
Who knows?
Or just show up to Washington and pretend that she's the senator and scream, excuse me, when challenged.
That would be a real girl boss move.
That would be something.
Okay, I have to go.
My anxiety is manifesting.
I know the patriarchy expects me to say some funny thing that I'm going to go do when I hang up, like these calls usually end.
But like Katie, I am breaking the chains and being disruptive.
So there, I'm not doing anything funny after I hang up.
Take that.
I'm just going to sit here in darkness for hours despite you, Jimmy Door.
Damn it, that's something funny.
Yes.
Forget I said that.
Katie supporter, Katie Porter supporter out.
Okay.
All right.
Yay.
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