Part Of The Problem - Dave Smith - Is The Media Turning On Israel?
Aired: 2024-04-11
Duration: 56:13


=== Solar Eclipse Goggles (03:17) ===

[00:00:00]  Fill her up.
[00:00:02]  You are listening to the gas human.
[00:00:08]  We need to roll back the state.
[00:00:10]  We spy on all of our own citizens.
[00:00:12]  Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
[00:00:16]  If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
[00:00:21]  Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
[00:00:33]  What's up, everybody?
[00:00:34]  Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
[00:00:36]  I am Dave Smith.
[00:00:37]  He is Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
[00:00:39]  How you feeling today, my friend?
[00:00:43]  I've mostly gotten my vision back from staring at the sun.
[00:00:47]  Oh, yeah.
[00:00:47]  How was that?
[00:00:48]  Did you take a good look at it?
[00:00:49]  I took a look.
[00:00:50]  I did too.
[00:00:51]  Not that exciting.
[00:00:52]  Dude, it's unbelievable.
[00:00:54]  I don't know if anything, like a solar eclipse really brings out the differences between men and women like nothing else.
[00:01:01]  Like, I know I speak for a lot of couples out there.
[00:01:04]  My wife was like, all right, I'm going to do like a big grocery shopping before the eclipse.
[00:01:08]  Like pull down all the blinds.
[00:01:10]  I want to make sure the kids don't see anything.
[00:01:12]  And she's like, here are the glasses.
[00:01:14]  You can wear these glasses if you want to look at it.
[00:01:16]  And I'm just like, I'm a free man and I have the right to look at a solar eclipse.
[00:01:22]  I ain't scared of no sun-moon combination.
[00:01:25]  And I just went right out and looked at it.
[00:01:26]  It hurt my eyes a little bit.
[00:01:28]  If you don't put on the goggles, you can't really see it.
[00:01:30]  The goggles like let you actually see it.
[00:01:33]  Is that just a big nothingness that just burns your eyes?
[00:01:37]  Didn't really interest me that much.
[00:01:39]  Well, I wear the goggles and apparently you can't just wear them and stare.
[00:01:43]  Someone should have told me that, but it wasn't that, it wasn't that fun anyways.
[00:01:47]  Yeah, none of it is, I don't know.
[00:01:49]  It's a lot of hype, these eclipses.
[00:01:51]  Let me tell you something.
[00:01:52]  That's the problem with reading the news is I start getting like, okay, why is everyone so interested?
[00:01:56]  It's like when you see a line and then you go stand on the line and you find out.
[00:01:59]  And usually I'm not that person, but I've seen other people do that.
[00:02:02]  Like, oh, there's a line here.
[00:02:03]  Must be good at the end of this line.
[00:02:05]  You know what I mean?
[00:02:06]  I got suckered by the news on the eclipse and everyone was so excited about it.
[00:02:09]  And I was free in the afternoon.
[00:02:10]  I was like, all right, I'll go, I'll go take a look at this thing.
[00:02:13]  It does.
[00:02:14]  I'll tell you, there are some things.
[00:02:16]  I remember talking about this when there were the Canadian wildfires last year that like, you know, the whole...
[00:02:23]  Plastic trees.
[00:02:24]  Yeah.
[00:02:25]  Like it's just a weird, ever since COVID, everything does feel like you're trying to like scientifically explain the apocalypse.
[00:02:33]  You know what I mean?
[00:02:34]  And you're just kind of like, it's like, no, no, no, they say these are Canadian fires and the winds blew them down here.
[00:02:39]  And you're like, yeah, but I don't ever remember a time before where we just lived in the middle of a forest fire because they burnt something in Canada.
[00:02:46]  And you're like, this does seem to.
[00:02:47]  And it was a, I will say, I know there's scientific explanations for all of this and it's nothing crazy.
[00:02:53]  But the fact that we had an earthquake like right before a solar eclipse, it does, it does feel like you're sitting there.
[00:03:01]  It's almost like you're in the apocalypse and the skies open up or something like that.
[00:03:05]  And you're like, no, that's just, this happens with clouds sometimes.
[00:03:08]  And you're like, I just watched my neighbor's soul leave their body.
[00:03:11]  And you're like, no, no, no, it's actually, it's an optical illusion.
[00:03:14]  And anyway, we may be living in some alternative reality.

=== Ben Shapiro's Underlying Question (14:34) ===

[00:03:18]  I'm not sure.
[00:03:20]  I drink, so I just go, it'll be fine.
[00:03:24]  Yeah.
[00:03:24]  Well, listen, that's one way to handle it.
[00:03:26]  I'm not opposed to that.
[00:03:27]  And since the COVID thing, you only get me excited once.
[00:03:30]  You know what I mean?
[00:03:31]  I'm done getting excited about these things.
[00:03:32]  If there's some new virus out there, I'll be the first guy who's dead just going, I don't care.
[00:03:38]  I'm not staying in my house.
[00:03:40]  I am with you on that as well.
[00:03:43]  I think a lot of people are going to be that.
[00:03:46]  Let's hope the next one that they release isn't more deadly.
[00:03:52]  Kidding.
[00:03:53]  Everybody kidding.
[00:03:54]  No conspiracies here.
[00:03:56]  I don't know if Gauci's still on the Chinese biolab market for new viruses.
[00:04:02]  I mean, it's not him anymore, but I'm sure somebody is.
[00:04:06]  I'm sure, dear God.
[00:04:07]  All right.
[00:04:08]  So there's something kind of interesting going on.
[00:04:11]  And I'm not sure exactly what it is.
[00:04:14]  But I think probably for anybody out there who's been paying attention, if you're paying attention at all to the corporate media and the coverage of the Israel-Gaza situation, something, a switch has been flipped.
[00:04:31]  And I don't know who stood up at a Bilderberger meeting and was like, you know what?
[00:04:37]  This Israel thing is getting to be a pain in the ass or something like that.
[00:04:40]  But again, I kid, just joking.
[00:04:45]  There are other explanations.
[00:04:47]  But I saw the other day, Richard Hess, who is the head of the Council on Foreign Relations for many years.
[00:04:55]  He came out very critical of Israel.
[00:04:57]  Nancy Pelosi has been very critical of Israel since this strike that killed those aid workers.
[00:05:06]  It's just been a different tone.
[00:05:08]  And it does seem like I don't know that.
[00:05:12]  I'm not saying this with confidence, but it seems like it's almost possible that like there are some people at very powerful levels that have been like, I think we got to cut like support for Israel.
[00:05:23]  I think this is like going to bring us all down with it.
[00:05:26]  And I don't know if that's true, but there certainly has been a change in the tone in the way it's being covered.
[00:05:32]  It's also quite possible that it's just like there's, I mean, if you look into some of the polling data, things are very bad for Joe Biden.
[00:05:42]  Like very, very bad for Joe Biden right now.
[00:05:44]  I was looking at some of the polls earlier this morning.
[00:05:46]  I don't know if you've seen these, Rob, particularly with people under 30.
[00:05:52]  Joe Biden was up like 28 points or something like that in 2020.
[00:06:00]  And he's like losing to Donald Trump now.
[00:06:03]  These key demographics that Joe Biden is supposed to own are abandoning him.
[00:06:08]  And a huge part of this is what's going on with Israel.
[00:06:13]  I'm not saying it's the only thing.
[00:06:14]  There's many factors, but 50%, according to some polls, 50% of Democratic voters believe what Israel is conducting is a genocide.
[00:06:25]  And that's pretty staggering.
[00:06:28]  If half of your voting base sees you as funding and facilitating a genocide, that's a difficult political situation.
[00:06:38]  That's the soul of the nation.
[00:06:39]  Yeah.
[00:06:40]  Decency.
[00:06:42]  So anyway, those are decency bombs.
[00:06:44]  And look, there's something where what, at least right now, as things currently stand, what is it in effect doing to hurt Joe Biden?
[00:06:56]  It's getting Trump elected, right?
[00:06:58]  I mean, that's like pretty much the political reality that we live in, at least right now for the moment.
[00:07:02]  We'll see what ends up happening.
[00:07:04]  But if you're hurting Joe Biden, you're helping Donald Trump.
[00:07:07]  And Donald Trump is right now the biggest enemy of the state in America.
[00:07:13]  He's the guy who every power, if there's one thing that every powerful faction in America agrees on, it's that this Donald Trump guy is unacceptable.
[00:07:21]  And so I think this might be what's contributing toward this shift rhetorically.
[00:07:28]  Anyway, as this shift is happening, there is, let's just say there's some freaking out amongst a lot of a lot of Zionists.
[00:07:40]  I thought this one was particularly fun.
[00:07:43]  So Ben Shapiro, who, of course, is a very popular uh internet commentator and uh co-owner of the Daily WIRE, he uh tweeted yesterday um or yes, this was yesterday.
[00:08:00]  He tweeted, the Biden administration is now effectively preparing to make aid to Israel contingent on unspecified changes to Israeli policy, which means that Israel can do little or nothing to appease the White House.
[00:08:16]  Hamas is now in control of the Biden administration.
[00:08:22]  This is, I swear to god, it's almost like all all powerful factions, it's always their own hubris that brings them down.
[00:08:32]  But first of all, I mean look, he could say that he's uh, he's upset that there's they're unspecified the conditions for continuing uh aid to Israel, that and that's his beef, that they're unspecified.
[00:08:48]  But the reality of the situation is that, and John Meersheimer I think uh was was correct when he said that the relationship between the United States Of America and Israel is unlike any other relationship between any two countries in the sense that from the beginning, they get unconditional support from America, like even if they do things that the American government doesn't want them to do,
[00:09:17]  even if they uh like trick the Americans and brag about it, and they're on tape bragging about it, like let's just say that Benjamin Netanyahu is on tape bragging about how he tricked Bill Clinton.
[00:09:32]  The aid still continues.
[00:09:33]  It doesn't even threaten it.
[00:09:35]  You know what I mean.
[00:09:36]  Even if the president says I need you to do x and they go, fuck you, we're not doing x, the aid continues.
[00:09:43]  That is, as John Mearsheimer pointed out, unlike any other relationship between two nations.
[00:09:48]  And that's not to say that no other nations get aid.
[00:09:52]  But the aid is always, you know, based on conditions like you can't just flip us the middle finger and think we're going to keep giving you aid.
[00:10:01]  Not the case with Israel, although at least the Biden administration is signaling that maybe that unique relationship is changing.
[00:10:08]  And then this is Ben Shapiro's, you know big problem.
[00:10:11]  It's unspecified, we don't even know what it is we have to do.
[00:10:14]  Leaving that aside the comment that Hamas is now in control of the Biden administration, you know there's something um uh, Daryl Cooper had a had a post on on Twitter or X, I should say, recently that that really he kind of crystallized something that I had been thinking about for a while.
[00:10:36]  But it there is this weird thing.
[00:10:38]  You kind of have two groups, broadly speaking, um on on the right.
[00:10:46]  Uh, there's say, like the, the hardcore right-wingers who are are Zionists, and the hardcore right-wingers who are Anti-Zionists, and quite often I'm not trying to paint everyone into this, but quite often they will both use this kind of like over-the-top uh crazy dehumanizing, bigoted language.
[00:11:08]  You know like the Zionists will use it against the Palestinians and then the Anti-Zionist right-wingers will use it against Jews.
[00:11:14]  You know, you see this stuff on Twitter all the time, like this way over the top, they're all evil, they're all bad.
[00:11:19]  You know we should do X, Y or Z to them and it's remarkable how much they're the same people like they're just, they're both.
[00:11:27]  You're both the same.
[00:11:28]  You're doing the exact same thing.
[00:11:30]  It's just you're picking on the group who it's acceptable within your social circles to pick on.
[00:11:36]  You know what I mean and like, that being said, It's funny because it just, when you say Hamas runs the U.S. government, at least in my mind, it's just like, oh, you sound like what every like Jew hating conspiracy theorist says, right?
[00:11:53]  Oh, the Jews run the government.
[00:11:54]  Okay.
[00:11:55]  I don't think either of those statements are correct.
[00:11:57]  However, I will grant that at least there's an ounce of credibility when the Jew haters say the Jews run the government.
[00:12:03]  Like at least they can point to the fact that there's a disproportionate amount of Jewish people involved in politics.
[00:12:09]  Now, again, I still think it's stupid to conclude from that that it's Jews.
[00:12:13]  It's ridiculous collectivist shit.
[00:12:16]  But it's like you could point to APAC, a very powerful lobby.
[00:12:20]  But Hamas runs the U.S. government?
[00:12:24]  That claim is just, it's so absurd on its face.
[00:12:28]  Yes, Hamas is, Hamas has so much control over the U.S. government policy that they've decided to fund and arm Israel in their campaign to eradicate Hamas.
[00:12:44]  What can you even say to this, Rob?
[00:12:46]  Also, I guess if Hamas runs our government, are we going to start bombing the civilians in our government?
[00:12:53]  Like, I mean, if there are terrorist organizations now running our country.
[00:12:58]  Oh, shit, that's such a good point.
[00:13:00]  I really didn't even think about it like that.
[00:13:01]  That's a really great point.
[00:13:03]  If Hamas runs our country, yeah, we're, we, we got to do whatever it takes, Rob.
[00:13:08]  Whatever it takes.
[00:13:10]  That is really something.
[00:13:11]  Has Ben Shapiro just declared war on the United States government?
[00:13:14]  Or does this mean that maybe we can actually negotiate with Hamas?
[00:13:18]  Because, you know, you know, as much as I dislike our government and they take our taxes, they force us to do COVID.
[00:13:24]  There's a lot of negatives there, but I guess they're not, you know, genocidal against us.
[00:13:28]  So I guess Ben Shapiro has found a pathway to peace.
[00:13:32]  Look at that.
[00:13:33]  All right, guys, let's take a moment and thank our sponsor for today's show, which is yokratom.com.
[00:13:38]  If you are over the age of 21 and you enjoy Kratom, make sure to get your Kratom from yokratom.com because it's lab tested, quality stuff.
[00:13:47]  It's shipped directly to your door, and it is the best price on Kratom you're going to find anywhere, $60 for a kilo.
[00:13:54]  Also, longtime supporter and sponsor of this show and this podcast network.
[00:13:59]  So if you're over 21 and you like Kratom, make sure to get it from yokratom.com.
[00:14:03]  All right.
[00:14:04]  Let's get back into the show.
[00:14:05]  Look at that here.
[00:14:06]  There's another Ben Shapiro tweet.
[00:14:08]  This one just from a few minutes before we started the show.
[00:14:13]  And this is something like, this is what drives me so crazy about these guys.
[00:14:18]  So this is Ben Shapiro's tweet.
[00:14:20]  Let me read it and then we'll respond.
[00:14:22]  He said, so much of our politics is absolutely, I'm sorry.
[00:14:27]  So much of our politics is about deliberately ignoring the underlying question.
[00:14:32]  For those who want a ceasefire in Gaza, the underlying question is, do you want Hamas to survive as an operational entity?
[00:14:40]  For those who want defunding of Ukraine, the underlying question is, do you want Russia to ingest Ukraine?
[00:14:49]  So this is the trick that Warhawks always play.
[00:14:54]  The real question, Ben Shapiro says, for wanting a ceasefire in Gaza is, do you want Hamas to survive as an operational entity?
[00:15:03]  And the question about funding the war in Ukraine is, do you want Russia to ingest Ukraine?
[00:15:09]  See, it's the same old George W. dumbness, you know, just the, you're either with us or you're the terrorist.
[00:15:18]  That's the only thing you're allowed to think.
[00:15:20]  So in Ben Shapiro's world, the underlying question is, do you want Hamas to survive as an operational entity?
[00:15:27]  Well, why would it not be possible that people like us and there's many others like us that I think both me and you Rob, would agree that we do not want Hamas to survive as an operational entity, that it'd be nice if they didn't the the real underlying question that Ben Shapiro, of course, won't uh tell you is, is the,
[00:15:55]  the slaughtering of women and children, acceptable in pursuit of Hamas not continuing uh to exist as an operational entity?
[00:16:08]  That's the obvious question.
[00:16:10]  Like you just, if you just say, oh, the question is, do you want Hamas to be gone?
[00:16:14]  Like as if I could snap my fingers and there's no more Hamas.
[00:16:18]  If that were the case, then yes, that's the underlying question.
[00:16:21]  Why aren't you snapping your fingers?
[00:16:23]  If you want Hamas to be gone and you could just snap your fingers and they go, then why wouldn't you do that?
[00:16:26]  Then that's the underlying question.
[00:16:28]  But if I can't snap my fingers and instead I have to slaughter tens of thousands of people, put hundreds of thousands on the brink of starvation and millions of people being displaced.
[00:16:42]  Well, then that's not just the underlying question.
[00:16:44]  The underlying question isn't like, well, do you like Hamas or not?
[00:16:47]  Right?
[00:16:48]  The underlying question is like, can you justify doing this to this many people because you don't like Hamas?
[00:16:55]  You see how they all, and this is, by the way, this is like, I don't know, this is stuff that any 15-year-old should be able to understand if you were talking about these questions.
[00:17:03]  And again, the question in Ukraine is not, well, do you want to keep funding this war or do you want Russia to have control of Ukraine?
[00:17:12]  I don't know.
[00:17:13]  I'm an ANCAP.
[00:17:14]  I don't want governments to exist at all.
[00:17:17]  So of course I don't want Russia to take over Ukraine.
[00:17:21]  But the question is, if you correctly understand that funding this war has only led to more Ukrainians getting slaughtered and it's brought us closer to the brink of a world war than we've been since the 1940s, maybe at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
[00:17:38]  I shouldn't say that.
[00:17:40]  Closer to a world war than the height of the Cuban, than the height of the Cold War, I'll say.
[00:17:45]  Okay.
[00:17:48]  Then you have a whole different underlying question that you have to ask yourself.

=== Seeing Through the Bullshit (15:04) ===

[00:17:52]  So anyway, as these pro-Israel voices see the tide turning against them, they're just getting more and more unhinged.
[00:18:05]  And it's, if nothing else, it's an opportunity to see through the bullshit that they spew.
[00:18:10]  Like, I'm sorry, this is, again, you could be on any side of these issues, but what Ben Shapiro is doing here, these are not the underlying questions.
[00:18:17]  Sorry, that's just incorrect.
[00:18:20]  Okay, so real quick before we get into this Joe Scarborough video, let's just do plugs because this video is pretty wild.
[00:18:26]  You guys are going to enjoy it.
[00:18:28]  But we have a huge show this Saturday, April 12th at the Aladdin Theater in Portland.
[00:18:35]  Come on out.
[00:18:36]  First time ever, me and Robbie are doing a theater show.
[00:18:39]  So very excited for that.
[00:18:41]  There's still a few tickets available.
[00:18:43]  So go grab them right now.
[00:18:44]  And then very soon coming up, St. Louis, Funnybone, April 26th and 27th, four shows.
[00:18:51]  We're very excited for that.
[00:18:52]  We had a great time there.
[00:18:54]  That was one of our best weekends of 2023.
[00:18:57]  So very excited to come back to that.
[00:18:58]  Tacoma, Spoken, Stanford, Connecticut.
[00:19:03]  And then, of course, next month in May, I will be speaking at the Libertarian National Convention.
[00:19:10]  We also are going to be doing a stand-up show and a live part of the problem podcast out there.
[00:19:14]  Come check me out at the LP National Convention.
[00:19:16]  It's going to be an incredible time.
[00:19:19]  And I'm very, very much looking forward to it.
[00:19:21]  Then we got Atlantic City, Las Vegas.
[00:19:23]  I'll be back at the mothership in Austin, Texas, Nashville, Zaney's, a whole bunch of fun stuff coming up.
[00:19:29]  ComicDaveSmith.com.
[00:19:31]  And of course, RobbyTheFire.com for all of Rob's headlining dates.
[00:19:35]  Anything you want to mention?
[00:19:37]  Porch tour dates coming soon.
[00:19:39]  Got a couple openings left.
[00:19:40]  You can email me at robsnewsroom at gmail.com and check out Run Your Mouth.
[00:19:44]  The last episode, Did I Bomb That was particularly good?
[00:19:47]  Go check it out.
[00:19:48]  There you go.
[00:19:49]  I heard, I think I saw you tweet something about did I bomb that?
[00:19:53]  And I just thought you were talking about a comedy show.
[00:19:55]  I didn't realize this was a run your mouth.
[00:19:57]  You're like, did I bomb that?
[00:19:58]  You can assume yes.
[00:20:02]  We kid.
[00:20:03]  Rob kills everywhere.
[00:20:04]  Everything he touches.
[00:20:06]  Okay, let's jump into this on the theme of the narrative kind of changing.
[00:20:10]  So by the way, I'm picking up in the middle here because this is when things get spicy.
[00:20:13]  Just to catch you up, at the beginning of this, this interview, it was Willie Geist, who's like one of the co-hosts on the show.
[00:20:22]  And he's got an Israeli minister on and he's asking him the questions about like, oh, what about all these innocent Palestinians?
[00:20:29]  The guy just keeps going back to how terrible October 7th was and how Hamas are Nazis and they must be eradicated.
[00:20:35]  And, you know, kind of the typical, I think at one point he says, if it's, if they, they get us, then they'll come for Europe and America next.
[00:20:43]  Because Hamas is about to take over the world, evidently.
[00:20:46]  They can't stop the Israeli offensive in Gaza, but they're very close to taking over Europe.
[00:20:50]  And then the next logical step is the United States of America.
[00:20:54]  They're going to paraglide across the Atlantic Ocean.
[00:20:56]  Anyway, this is all very real.
[00:20:57]  So anyway, he's just giving kind of the propaganda.
[00:21:00]  And then my dear friend, Joe Scarborough, comes in and stumbles into like being a journalist for a second, which was cool.
[00:21:10]  It's a new career path for Joe Scarborough.
[00:21:13]  Anyway, let's watch this because it was really, very interesting.
[00:21:17]  Big enemies are, Mr. Mayor.
[00:21:19]  Mayor, can I ask you a question?
[00:21:20]  I'm so glad you brought that up.
[00:21:22]  So I have always looked at Hamas as Nazis.
[00:21:25]  They're terrorists.
[00:21:26]  Have you always looked at Hamas as Nazis?
[00:21:29]  Unfortunately, yes.
[00:21:31]  And it was right now.
[00:21:33]  Pause it already because I don't know.
[00:21:36]  I just, for me, because I've watched a lot of like the corporate coverage of all of this, but it was literally from this question and the way like his tone was, how excited and kind of indignant he is.
[00:21:49]  I was like, oh, shit.
[00:21:51]  He's actually going to do it.
[00:21:54]  Like he's, I can already tell what he's setting them up for.
[00:21:57]  He's like, you always knew they were Nazis, right?
[00:21:59]  You just compared them to Nazis.
[00:22:00]  So you always knew this, right?
[00:22:01]  And he's like, yeah.
[00:22:02]  And you're like, oh, he's about, because basically it came in off him talking about Qatar funding them and after calling them Nazis.
[00:22:08]  And he was like, very interesting.
[00:22:09]  You should bring that up.
[00:22:10]  You know, how long have you known they were Nazis?
[00:22:12]  I was like, oh, shit.
[00:22:14]  He's actually setting them up now to grill them about Israel propping up Hamas.
[00:22:18]  And this is, so anyway, here we go.
[00:22:21]  Let's keep playing.
[00:22:22]  Yeah, so you always have.
[00:22:24]  Have most of the Israeli people always looked upon Hamas as Nazis?
[00:22:30]  Well, you know, some of the people in Israel, because we seek peace, thought maybe one day they will prefer peace than war.
[00:22:39]  October 7th, what about Benjamin Netanyahu?
[00:22:43]  What about him?
[00:22:44]  Has he always looked upon Hamas as Nazis?
[00:22:47]  Well, are you talking about Qatar or Hamas?
[00:22:50]  Hamas.
[00:22:51]  Hamas.
[00:22:53]  I think that everyone understands that Hamas's charter is to destroy Israel.
[00:22:58]  And by the way, not only Israel.
[00:22:59]  So you've always known this.
[00:23:01]  I mean, yeah, check out the charter.
[00:23:03]  So let me ask you this question.
[00:23:05]  And I can't get an answer.
[00:23:06]  And maybe we're just not covering it in the press.
[00:23:09]  Maybe you can help me out.
[00:23:11]  Why did Benjamin Netanyahu send the head of Mossad to Doha three weeks before the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust and told Qatar to continue funding Hamas?
[00:23:28]  I think if anything, October 7 shattered that concept.
[00:23:32]  And it's my understanding.
[00:23:34]  Like you just said, you always knew there were Nazis.
[00:23:35]  I always knew there were Nazis.
[00:23:36]  I would never give.
[00:23:38]  We were always angry that Qatar funded Hezbollah and Hamas.
[00:23:42]  I want to know why did Benjamin Netanyahu do that?
[00:23:46]  Let me ask you this.
[00:23:47]  Why did Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump know in 2018 the sources of Hamas's illicit funding and they still did nothing?
[00:23:58]  They wanted that money to get to Hamas.
[00:24:00]  I'd like to know why, because we don't know in America.
[00:24:03]  Have there been any investigations in Israel at this point?
[00:24:07]  I'm sure we'll investigate it and I totally agree with you.
[00:24:10]  That Qatar is a wolf in sheep's clothes.
[00:24:14]  And they're doing it.
[00:24:16]  No, I must correct you.
[00:24:18]  Benjamin Netanyahu was asked by the leaders of Qatar, do you want us?
[00:24:26]  Do you want us, Qatar, to give money to Hamas?
[00:24:30]  This was in September.
[00:24:32]  And Netanyahu's representative said, yes, of course.
[00:24:36]  You're feeding that wolf and you're telling that wolf to feed the Nazis in Gaza.
[00:24:44]  So explain to me, because I really want to know why was Benjamin Netanyahu and his government funding, they were allies with Qatar in the funding of Hamas.
[00:24:56]  Why?
[00:24:58]  I think it's a mistake.
[00:24:59]  And it was uncovered October 7th.
[00:25:02]  October 7th demonstrated that if you think you could buy quiet peace by funding Hamas, it's a huge mistake.
[00:25:09]  And it's weird to me.
[00:25:11]  Why did Benjamin Netanyahu, knowing that their charter said that they were to be afraid of the money?
[00:25:17]  Let's pause it for a second.
[00:25:19]  Because listen, it's almost painful how uncomfortable this guy is right now.
[00:25:24]  Like you can see all over his face that he's like, dude, I'm an Israeli and I'm doing an interview on MSNBC.
[00:25:32]  What are we doing here, guys?
[00:25:33]  Like, this isn't how it's supposed to go.
[00:25:35]  I'm supposed to be screaming racist at you, if anything.
[00:25:38]  Like, you don't get to do this to me.
[00:25:40]  But isn't it just, look, already, and we're going to keep playing, but already, you see, he's asking him a question.
[00:25:45]  He goes, why?
[00:25:47]  Why did Netanyahu do this?
[00:25:49]  If you knew that it was in their charter that they wanted to wipe Israel off the map and they want from the river to the sea to be Palestinians and all the Jews to have to leave.
[00:25:58]  And if you say they're Nazis and you say Qatar is a wolf in sheep's clothing, then why was this Netanyahu's goal to fund Hamas?
[00:26:08]  And he goes, I think October 7th proved that that was a mistake.
[00:26:13]  Well, yeah, but that isn't an answer to the question.
[00:26:17]  The question was, why were you doing it?
[00:26:20]  Not did it blow up in your face.
[00:26:22]  Yes, we all agree it blew up in your face with the atrocities on October 7th, but that's not the question.
[00:26:29]  The question is why you were doing it.
[00:26:31]  And he's got nothing.
[00:26:33]  He's got nothing he can say.
[00:26:35]  It's just painful.
[00:26:37]  Said that they were to kill Jews and eradicate Israel.
[00:26:42]  Why would any leader of Israel work to fund that organization to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars and work with Qatar to fund Hamas?
[00:26:57]  I think that question should be asked and we'll get an answer.
[00:27:00]  We'll ask.
[00:27:01]  When are we going to get the answer?
[00:27:02]  We've been asking it for six months.
[00:27:03]  When are we going to get the answer?
[00:27:05]  At the end of the day, once we finish the war, all these channels will rise and we'll deal with them.
[00:27:11]  Right now we're focused on winning the war.
[00:27:12]  And I'm going to ask you another question.
[00:27:14]  I need to ask you another question.
[00:27:15]  I want to ask you another question because you brought this up.
[00:27:19]  You brought it up.
[00:27:20]  And it is so sickening to think about the Israeli women that were beaten, raped, murdered, the Israeli grandmothers who were burned to death, the toddlers who were shot in their beds for 10 hours.
[00:27:44]  Some of these people waited for Benjamin Netanyahu's government to come and recognize.
[00:27:49]  You could pause it here.
[00:27:51]  We could cut it off.
[00:27:53]  That's basically the gist of what I wanted you guys to see.
[00:27:55]  But this, oh my God, the thing that's so painful is that he goes back to his propaganda of just holding up the faces of the hostages, but he doesn't even realize that now, because this is all, because Joe Scarborough has rubbed up against the truth for a minute.
[00:28:11]  And now, of course, he's grilling them about the wait time, the response time being 10 hours and stuff, that now holding those up, it's still as tragic as you want it to be, but it doesn't exactly serve the propaganda aims that you're trying to anymore.
[00:28:26]  Because once you're like, oh, you guys went out of your way to fund this terrorist group and then didn't respond as they were like abducting these people and you're holding up their faces.
[00:28:35]  It's like, yeah.
[00:28:36]  But this is now a lot of it's on you.
[00:28:41]  I'm not saying it's not on Hamas too, but like if you were propping up the group that you claim you always knew were Nazis and then they did this and then you didn't protect the people against the group of Nazis who you were propping up.
[00:28:57]  Man, that propaganda tool doesn't work so good anymore, does it?
[00:29:00]  It seems to me like they're trying to get their way out of the situation by throwing Netanyahu under the bus.
[00:29:07]  I feel like that seems to be the easiest out for the American administration to go.
[00:29:11]  Netanyahu is a bad leader.
[00:29:13]  He was at fault for this.
[00:29:15]  We're going to move forward with the good relationship with Israel.
[00:29:18]  And maybe, I don't know, whatever they're trying to do with the guy who runs the West Bank to actually move forward with, I guess, him running Gaza.
[00:29:28]  I don't really know what the I don't think they're going to move forward with that if I had to guess, but we'll see.
[00:29:34]  No, I don't think they'll get to that, but it just seems like the Democrats are in a pickle here where, you know, in swing states with our voters, the war is so unfavorable.
[00:29:45]  They're realizing they have to do something.
[00:29:47]  And young voters in general, young voters in general, not even Muslims who are who are just totally against this, who are an important demographic for Democrats.
[00:29:58]  But it's interesting watching Scarborough basically be an actor.
[00:30:01]  And I guess somebody gives him the marching orders of, all right, we're doing this now.
[00:30:05]  And he just knows how to, all right, cool.
[00:30:07]  I get to play, I get to play that card.
[00:30:09]  Dude, it's unbelievable.
[00:30:10]  They're all like, look, we watched this and me and you really broke this down during COVID, where it would be very clear that it was like one day, like, okay, we're allowed to talk about lab leak.
[00:30:20]  And then just everybody, oh, one day, okay, we're allowed to, you know, whatever.
[00:30:24]  There were so many different things like that.
[00:30:26]  We're allowed to be against outdoor masking.
[00:30:28]  And then they would just turn as if nothing had happened.
[00:30:31]  You know what I mean?
[00:30:32]  As if we haven't been watching you for decades and decades and all of this.
[00:30:36]  This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.
[00:30:39]  If you've ever considered therapy, let me tell you, I can personally tell you that I've benefited from it in the past and I have lots of friends who have as well.
[00:30:47]  I think sometimes people have this conception that therapy is all about, you know, like going over everything in your childhood or why your dad didn't hug you enough or hugged you too much or something.
[00:30:58]  The truth is that oftentimes therapy is just about helping you deal with obstacles that are in your way, helping you kind of overcome things and be the person you want to be and put yourself in a better situation.
[00:31:09]  It's been tremendously beneficial to me and lots of other people.
[00:31:12]  I know, as I said, and if you're considering therapy, there's no easier way to do it than with BetterHelp.
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[00:31:48]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:31:50]  Look, I think you're right.
[00:31:52]  I think they're throwing Netanyahu Yahoo under the bus.
[00:31:54]  They're not throwing Israel under the bus, but they're throwing Netanyahu under the bus.
[00:31:58]  The other thing here is that, and look, if I really do think there's so many details.
[00:32:04]  And of course, I've done so many podcasts.
[00:32:06]  I've done a lot of debates.
[00:32:07]  I got more debates on this topic.
[00:32:09]  In fact, I got a really big one coming up in a little over a week.
[00:32:12]  I can't announce it yet, but I think this is going to be, I expect this to be the biggest debate I've ever done, which I think more eyeballs will be on this than anything I've ever done or any debate I've ever done.
[00:32:27]  No more, not more eyeballs than doing Rogan, but you know, like, but more than any other debate.
[00:32:34]  There's so much.
[00:32:36]  Look, this is a, it's a very long conflict.
[00:32:39]  I have read a ton about it.
[00:32:42]  There's still always more stuff that you can learn and read.
[00:32:44]  And there's a lot of complexities and nuances to the whole Arab-Israeli history.
[00:32:51]  And before that, the Arab Zionist settlers history.

=== The Two-State Solution Path (11:05) ===

[00:32:57]  That's important to know.
[00:32:58]  I do think with this current conflict, there is probably no piece of information that's more important than this, than what they're getting at.
[00:33:05]  There's no thing, there's no element that's more important to understand because when you understand it, it devastates the entire case that Israel is making for why this assault on Gaza is justified.
[00:33:22]  And I talked about this a bit two episodes ago.
[00:33:26]  I know that the episode got flagged on YouTube for like a copyright strike and it got kind of messed up, but I did end up posting it over on X and it's up on, now it's up everywhere.
[00:33:37]  But there were some issues with this episode.
[00:33:38]  But the two episodes ago, when I did a response to Coleman Hughes, I talked a bit about this, but I will just mention it again because it's like, as I said, I think it's the most important element to understand when you're thinking about this current conflict.
[00:33:52]  And that's what Joe Scarborough is getting at.
[00:33:55]  But again, he nudges up against it, but he doesn't actually give the truth.
[00:34:00]  Like he doesn't answer his question.
[00:34:02]  He just keeps asking it.
[00:34:03]  And this guy is clearly not going to answer it.
[00:34:06]  But the truth is that there's really no question.
[00:34:13]  The question of why Netanyahu wanted to bolster Hamas is answered in his own words and in the words of many people around him.
[00:34:24]  Like I read the quotes from his finance minister and like all these other quotes the other on the last podcast, but they were all explicit.
[00:34:32]  It's not just that they were like, we like Hamas, so we want to prop them up.
[00:34:37]  The reason they wanted to prop up Hamas was because they wanted to divide the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
[00:34:46]  They didn't want them to both be represented by the Palestinian Authority.
[00:34:50]  They wanted to divide them and have a radical terrorist group in Gaza for two main reasons.
[00:34:58]  And they explicitly, this is not like my guess.
[00:35:01]  This is what they were telling us in their own words.
[00:35:04]  And basically the reason is that, okay, and Rob, you know this because you know, you know Israel pretty well and you've been there many times.
[00:35:13]  There is the Likud party is not all of Israelis.
[00:35:19]  And that does not represent all of Israelis.
[00:35:22]  In fact, hundreds of thousands of people were out in the streets protesting against Benjamin Netanyahu.
[00:35:26]  There's Israel has always been, although they're very, a very nationalist country, they're a lefty country.
[00:35:33]  They're basically a socialist country that, you know, from the very beginning, and the government still owns over 90% of the land.
[00:35:42]  The original idea for Israel was like to be a bunch of kibbutzes, you know, and then, okay, yes, they eventually realized that like we got to have businesses and stuff like that, because like every country who's going to survive can't just be a socialist country.
[00:35:57]  But there's my point is that there's many liberals and leftists in Israel.
[00:36:02]  And if you have, let's say, a PA who's saying, hey, we want a two-state solution, there's going to be a lot of pressure from the lefties, the liberals in Israel, who are all going to say, hey, yeah, we should make a deal.
[00:36:17]  That's what we're for.
[00:36:18]  We're for a peace process and a two-state solution.
[00:36:21]  And so then Netanyahu has to answer to all of those people.
[00:36:23]  But if it's Hamas, all of that goes away.
[00:36:27]  Because you could just look at those, even the liberals in Israel will go, well, yeah, we can't.
[00:36:32]  We can't make a deal with Hamas.
[00:36:34]  These guys want to kill all of us.
[00:36:36]  And then as it was Benjamin Netanyahu's finance minister who said that he goes, well, look, it's Hamas.
[00:36:46]  All of a sudden, we get no pressure from the international community.
[00:36:48]  Hamas can't file a claim at the international court.
[00:36:53]  Hamas can't propose resolutions at the United Nations.
[00:36:57]  Now, we don't have to worry about any of that.
[00:37:02]  And so what exactly is the answer here?
[00:37:05]  Well, here it is, right?
[00:37:08]  Every U.S. president for my entire life, just about every U.S. president, Trump maybe not included in this, but all the rest of them, all wanted a two-state solution.
[00:37:18]  So much of the Arabs wanted a two-state solution from Yasser Arafat on.
[00:37:24]  They were advocating for a two-state solution, what they call the peace process.
[00:37:28]  Many liberal Israelis were in favor of a two-state solution.
[00:37:34]  The Likud party is not.
[00:37:36]  They're not in favor of a two-state solution.
[00:37:39]  They want the whole thing.
[00:37:40]  This is why Benjamin Netanyahu went to the UN with a map of the new map of Israel last year with all of the West Bank and Gaza as part of Israel.
[00:37:51]  That's what they want.
[00:37:52]  They don't want to give the Palestinians their freedom because they want their land, particularly the West Bank, Judea and Samaria, as they call it.
[00:38:03]  So the plan was to prop up Hamas so that you never have to do a two-state solution.
[00:38:12]  That's what it was all about.
[00:38:14]  And I'm sorry, but like once you know that, it just destroys the whole argument that, well, we can go kill as many of these civilians as we want to because we have to get Hamas.
[00:38:27]  Because now the real story is like, no, you propped up Hamas so that you could screw over those people.
[00:38:34]  So no, you don't get to slaughter those people now because you claim you have to get Hamas.
[00:38:40]  Like the whole pretext for the war falls apart.
[00:38:45]  And look, and perhaps the most important thing for Americans to consider in all of this is like, we're paying for it.
[00:38:54]  It's like we're, we're, you know, when they're sitting here going, Netanyahu sends the head of Mossad to go to Qatar to tell them to give Hamas these funds.
[00:39:08]  Well, I mean, okay, you could say that was different money, but money's fungible.
[00:39:13]  That's us.
[00:39:14]  They're deciding that we have to prop them up in their effort to prop up Hamas.
[00:39:18]  You know what I mean?
[00:39:19]  It's like if, I don't know, it's like if my wife goes and like starts funding a terrorist organization.
[00:39:29]  It's like, oh, I'm funding that.
[00:39:32]  That's basically, that's the equivalent of me funding it.
[00:39:35]  It's like, hey, no, I didn't give you money for that.
[00:39:39]  I give you money for other stuff.
[00:39:41]  Anyway, this is, it's like, why the hell when our country's falling apart, do we have to fund this bullshit, which is all based on lies?
[00:39:52]  And it's all, look, man, there's just no, again, the most important element of the story to understand is this, at least with like the current conflict, because Rob, right, like, doesn't it just change everything that you just look at it and you're like, oh, so now you look at even October 7th in a totally different way.
[00:40:09]  Like it's not, I mean, it's still an atrocity, but it's like, it's an atrocity largely of your own making.
[00:40:16]  So you play, you wanted to play with fire because you thought it would screw over the Palestinians.
[00:40:22]  I mean, maybe that's not your goal.
[00:40:23]  Maybe your goal is just to take what's theirs, but in effect, it screws them over that they can never have their freedom because look, we got this group Hamas there.
[00:40:32]  And then that blew up in your face.
[00:40:35]  And you didn't protect your own people when it blew up in your face.
[00:40:41]  Sorry, I just don't know how you get out of this without being like, Netanyahu should be like publicly tried for all of this.
[00:40:50]  And of course, what is the answer that we get here in Joe Scarborough?
[00:40:53]  It goes, well, yes, we'll have to look into that once the war is over.
[00:40:58]  Just let us finish.
[00:40:59]  Let us finish slaughtering all these people and then we'll get to the bottom line of whether this was all our fault or not.
[00:41:05]  How can you defend that?
[00:41:07]  Rob, go ahead.
[00:41:08]  Defend it.
[00:41:10]  There's also a stupidity to it because if sending money directly to Hamas is what, you know, firstly, just the idea of not being able to send food, not being able to sell water, and that there's this cartoonish vision that anything you allow in over there, it gets turned into a gun, gets turned into a bomb, gets turned into a missile, but yet you can just send cash.
[00:41:30]  Cash is okay.
[00:41:32]  And from what I remember was the conversation with Cutter, Cotter, I don't know, was actually after January 7th, they asked, or October 6th.
[00:41:40]  I get these things confused, whatever.
[00:41:43]  They asked if they should continue sending payments.
[00:41:45]  And they even said afterwards, when they were starting to go to war, yes.
[00:41:49]  I seem to recall reading that in the New York Times.
[00:41:52]  I might have that wrong as well.
[00:41:53]  But anyways, if this is coming up now on MSNBC, my guess is you're going to be hearing a lot more of this storyline, which at the beginning of the war was something people like us were talking about, but was definitely not mainstream information.
[00:42:08]  Dude, it is, listen.
[00:42:09]  And I know maybe I point this out too much, but I know that people who listen to this show like regularly know this.
[00:42:17]  It is amazing how it's like, look, telling the truth has benefits to it.
[00:42:21]  And it's unbelievable how much it's like, oh, once it's acceptable, once you go through these phases where first, you know, you're like attacked and you're mocked and all of this stuff.
[00:42:34]  And then six months later, it just becomes like, yes, this is what everybody's acknowledging now.
[00:42:39]  And this, this has happened with so many stories.
[00:42:42]  I would say all of the big stories that we've covered over the last six years or something like that, it's all like that.
[00:42:51]  It's all like, it's crazy.
[00:42:53]  You're not allowed to say this.
[00:42:54]  You get called all types of vicious names for saying it.
[00:42:57]  And then fast forward the tape a little bit and it's just accepted.
[00:43:01]  Everybody's saying it.
[00:43:03]  And this is what I was, I just, you know, I space out and say stupid shit, but what I was trying to say is if making payments directly to Amas is what empowered them and allowed them to remain in power and then ended up with the terrorist attack, wouldn't you want to address that?
[00:43:18]  Why would you wait till after the war?
[00:43:20]  In fact, you might not even need to fight this war.
[00:43:23]  It could just be if you switched your administration and came up with some sort of a new policy that wasn't just sending money in and pretending like they were the enemy and then keeping all of the civilization miserable.
[00:43:33]  There might have been a different pathway here.
[00:43:34]  There might still be a different pathway here.
[00:43:36]  But the idea of admitting that you made a tragic mistake, but let's just see the war through.
[00:43:43]  Well, why?
[00:43:44]  Well, because this is the other, this is the other tactic that the Warhawks always rely on is that it's never the time to ask that question.
[00:43:52]  So yes, that's about, but this isn't the time.
[00:43:56]  This isn't the time to ask that question.
[00:43:59]  Right now, we have to just blindly support this effort.

=== Parallels to Past Wars (12:10) ===

[00:44:02]  But yes, we're totally going to get to that.
[00:44:05]  As soon as we win, which is that's coming up very soon.
[00:44:09]  But then, yes, we totally should get to that point that you were making about how, yeah, that's this might all be our fault.
[00:44:16]  Which is so, it's like, hey, we're spending a lot of money.
[00:44:19]  It's like in the Ukraine, we're spending a lot of money on this.
[00:44:21]  A lot of people are dying and it doesn't look like we're going to win.
[00:44:23]  Now's not the time for that question.
[00:44:25]  Yes.
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[00:45:37]  All right, let's get back into the show.
[00:45:38]  Look, and there's, there's parallels to a lot of other, you know, events where things like this happen.
[00:45:43]  And it's, there's, there's many differences, but there are certainly parallels to, you know, America funding and arming and training Osama bin Laden.
[00:45:54]  There's parallels to ISIS and stuff like that.
[00:45:57]  I do think that conspiracy theories, conspiracy theorists sometimes jump to a conclusion that is not correct.
[00:46:08]  I understand why it's why they would ask some of these questions.
[00:46:13]  You know, if you were familiar when the 9-11 truth movement was really big, and there still are 9-11 truthers out there, but they used to always point to this one document.
[00:46:28]  Oh, God, I'm going to blank on the name of the document, but it was from Project for a New American Century.
[00:46:33]  And if you're not familiar, the Project for a New American Century was like a neocon think tank in the 90s.
[00:46:38]  And they had all the big neocons there, the PNAC, as they're called.
[00:46:44]  It was Wolfowitz and Robert Kagan, who, of course, is the husband to Victoria Newland, the architect of Ukraine.
[00:46:55]  These are like the top level guys at Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and I believe David Wormser.
[00:47:03]  Was he a part of it?
[00:47:05]  Certainly Richard Pearl guys like that, like all the top neocon guys.
[00:47:12]  And they had, they laid out their neocon vision in their project for the new American century, referring to the 21st century.
[00:47:21]  And it was basically fighting wars.
[00:47:23]  They wanted to fight wars on multiple fronts in the Middle East.
[00:47:26]  They wanted to expand NATO all the way to Ukraine.
[00:47:28]  Like this is all these plans that we've watched come into fruition in the last 24 years, 23 years.
[00:47:38]  But there's this one line in the document where they're like, you know, we'd really love to fight all these wars in the Middle East, but we probably couldn't get popular support for that without like another Pearl Harbor type event.
[00:47:53]  And so the 9-11 truthers would point to this and go, see, proof.
[00:47:59]  They did 9-11.
[00:48:01]  This is what they knew they needed this event in order to get everything they wanted.
[00:48:04]  And they even said, we need another Pearl Harbor, you know?
[00:48:08]  But it doesn't exactly prove that.
[00:48:11]  You know what I mean?
[00:48:11]  Like it doesn't.
[00:48:12]  And I'll tell you personally, the more I study this shit, the in some ways more conspiratorial I'll get, but then in other ways, I get less conspiratorial.
[00:48:21]  So like I, it actually, it, because really, like the more you look into it, it's like, well, no, it does, that doesn't actually prove that they did 9-11, but it damn sure proves that they recognized 9-11 for what it is, if that makes sense.
[00:48:38]  So it, it did work out for them that they had Bush and Cheney in the White House and 9-11 happened.
[00:48:45]  And there's no question that all of those neocons went, got it, just got our new Pearl Harbor.
[00:48:52]  And now we're, and immediately you see the anti-Iraq propaganda start to come out.
[00:48:56]  Like we didn't go to war in Iraq till 2003, but it was late 2001 where they were already starting the whisper campaign of, I think Saddam Hussein was involved and he's got these weapons.
[00:49:07]  The next attack's going to be him giving these weapons to the terrorists.
[00:49:10]  And it was, they all knew this was bullshit.
[00:49:11]  They're just trying to get the war that they always wanted since back in the 90s.
[00:49:15]  And perhaps even earlier than that.
[00:49:19]  Anyway, there is, I see a parallel in Israel's strategy with Hamas to the Obama administration's strategy with ISIS, which if you recall, when ISIS first arose, there was a famous press conference where Barack Obama referred to them as the JV is in junior varsity.
[00:49:49]  And this came back to bite him in the ass because then they started pulling off some, you know, legitimate like terrorism in Europe and in the United States of America and certainly all over the Middle East.
[00:50:02]  And then it was like, ah, you said they were the JV and now they're killing all these innocent people and all that.
[00:50:07]  But there's this other like hot mic or secret recording of John Kerry where he is basically laying it out.
[00:50:16]  And look, he doesn't know he's, this is going to be leaked.
[00:50:19]  This is what he's actually saying behind closed doors.
[00:50:22]  And he was saying that he's like, look, we saw the rise of ISIS.
[00:50:27]  He might call him ISIL or Daesh or whatever, but he's talking about the same.
[00:50:30]  We're all talking about the same thing.
[00:50:31]  But he goes, we saw the rise of ISIS.
[00:50:33]  And we thought that that would put pressure on Assad to either make a deal or step down.
[00:50:41]  You know, like he knows like that we're arming this group and now he knows he's got to come to the table.
[00:50:47]  And then these ISIS rascals, they turned around and invaded Iraq.
[00:50:54]  But that was never part of the plan.
[00:50:57]  You know what I mean?
[00:50:58]  You weren't supposed to go and do that.
[00:51:00]  You were supposed to put pressure on Assad.
[00:51:02]  Like, we already overthrew the government we didn't like in Iraq.
[00:51:05]  We don't need you to go in there and invade Iraq and scare the hell out of the army that we propped up and were training.
[00:51:10]  That just makes us look bad.
[00:51:12]  You see, we gave that country to the Shiite militias.
[00:51:16]  And we wanted you, Sunni insurgency, to put pressure on Bashar al-Assad.
[00:51:22]  We didn't want you to go fight our buddies over there.
[00:51:25]  And this is really like, it's not some big conspiracy.
[00:51:28]  Like, it is and it isn't.
[00:51:29]  You know what I mean?
[00:51:30]  Like, it's like, it's not that they wanted this.
[00:51:34]  They didn't want ISIS to invade Iraq.
[00:51:35]  And there's really no conceivable way that you would think they wanted that.
[00:51:38]  Obama, who had already pulled troops out, had to send troops back into Iraq.
[00:51:42]  It made him look terrible.
[00:51:43]  You know what I mean?
[00:51:44]  Like it was, this was not the plan, but there was so much hubris amongst these people.
[00:51:52]  They view themselves as being a billion times more powerful than anyone else that they're like, oh yeah, we can arm these guys and use them as our pawns.
[00:52:03]  But it turns out you couldn't completely.
[00:52:05]  You couldn't, as Netanyahu said, control the height of the flame.
[00:52:09]  And this was Netanyahu.
[00:52:10]  See, this is what Netanyahu told his fellow Likud party members, his fellow Likud party in the Knesset, is that he told them, he goes, we're going to bolster Hamas and prop them up, but we can control the height of the flame.
[00:52:25]  In other words, like, yes, we're funding these terrorists right next to us, but they're the JV.
[00:52:30]  This is Hamas.
[00:52:31]  And if you read the top level Israeli government officials throughout the whole time, I mean, literally from 2006 through 2023, they would talk about Hamas like this over and over and over again.
[00:52:47]  They're the JV.
[00:52:48]  We can control the height of the flame.
[00:52:50]  And so I would just say to people, it's not, I don't think it's that like Netanyahu wanted October 7th to happen or he wanted that as the pretext to go fight this war.
[00:53:02]  I do basically agree that no, this destroys his legacy in the long run.
[00:53:07]  This is terrible for him.
[00:53:09]  I think it's just hubris, like it is with so many of these different cases where they believe that they can move everybody around like pieces on a chessboard.
[00:53:19]  But it turns out there's a limit to your power, even when you have a lot of it.
[00:53:23]  There's still a limit.
[00:53:24]  Those are still human beings and they could decide now, you know what?
[00:53:27]  We're not just going to sit here and serve as your excuse to never give the Palestinians a state.
[00:53:34]  We're actually going to plan this attack on you.
[00:53:37]  And I think tragically, that's ultimately what ended up happening here.
[00:53:42]  It's it's it's quite a story.
[00:53:46]  The whole thing is wild, but I do think that that's really what happened.
[00:53:50]  I think it's really, it's hubris.
[00:53:52]  You know, I've gotten accused sometimes of this, I mean, it's a stupid accusation, but there's when if I talk about, I talk about like the coup in Ukraine in 2014 being an American-backed coup.
[00:54:11]  And people will say, you know, the people with Ukrainian flags in their bios, they'll say, well, you're denying agency to the Ukrainians who were protesting in the street.
[00:54:23]  You know, like you're acting like they're just puppets of the CIA or the State Department or something like that.
[00:54:29]  But like those were real people who had real grievances with the, you know, with their government.
[00:54:34]  And it's like, no, I'm not denying their agency.
[00:54:37]  I'm just pointing out the fact that the U.S. State Department was backing it, right?
[00:54:42]  And that they were like, that they were keeping the protests going through the winter of 2013.
[00:54:48]  And they were bringing out rock stars and making this whole thing like a big festival.
[00:54:52]  And they were keeping the protests going and that they played an integral role in pulling off overthrowing the Yanukovych government.
[00:55:01]  And, but anyway, I've gotten that complaint before that like, if you claim, it's like, oh, you blame the U.S. meddling for everything.
[00:55:09]  And therefore you're acting like all of these people involved don't have agency.
[00:55:12]  But that's not it at all.
[00:55:13]  And in fact, to some degree, I think actually it's the U.S. foreign policy establishment who acts as if these people don't have agency.
[00:55:24]  So like they're always kind of like pitting them off against each other, but they don't realize that like, no, these people actually do have agency and they're not always going to do exactly what you wanted them to do, especially when you're talking about a group like ISIS, who's like the most radical Islamist group on the face of the world.
[00:55:40]  They're chopping people's heads off and stuff.
[00:55:43]  And you're like, oh, but we figured we could get them to put pressure on Assad and they wouldn't go invade Iraq.
[00:55:48]  Like, why would they want to do that?
[00:55:49]  It's like, oh, because they do have agency.
[00:55:52]  And they decided to do something that wasn't part of the plan.
[00:55:54]  I think that's the same thing that happened here with Hamas.
[00:55:57]  All right, look, we're going to, we're going to wrap up there.
[00:56:00]  Don't forget this weekend, come see us out in Portland.
[00:56:02]  Comic Dave Smith for all those tickets and all our headlining stuff coming up.
[00:56:07]  Robbiethefire.com.
[00:56:08]  Run your mouth.
[00:56:09]  Rob's phenomenal podcast.
[00:56:11]  All right.
[00:56:11]  That's it for today.
[00:56:12]  Peace.