Weekly Roundup: Trump Wants a "Unified Reich" and Alito Appeals to Heaven
CORRECTION for Friday's on the original version of this Weekly Roundup that Biden invited Netanyahu to speak to congress when it was Mike Johnson. Was trying to express that Biden should condemn the invitation strongly. Alas.Brad and Dan discuss the Alito Appeal to Heaven flag controversy, Trump's "Unified Reich" video, and the affirmation of Palestinian statehood by US allies.
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*music* Axis Mundy By the way, the appeal to heaven flag...
Let's talk about the appeal to heaven flag.
But the reason it says appeal to heaven is because...
The meaning of it comes from this idea that when we have no other appeal, like when we have gone through just the justice system, when our political leaders have failed us, that our final appeal is always an appeal to heaven.
And that's what I feel right now for our nation is that when we have no other appeal, when man has failed us, when justice has fallen in the street, our final appeal is to heaven and to God himself.
That's Mercedes Sparks, an associate of Lance Wallnau, speaking on January 5th, 2021, the day before the insurrection.
Thanks to Jenny Cohen for posting that recently on X. Mercedes Sparks speaks here about the Appeal to Heaven flag as an appeal to a last-ditch effort, the only thing we have left, and that's God.
No more political leaders.
No more democratic processes.
No more appeals courts or ballot boxes.
Just an appeal to heaven.
When man has failed us.
When justice has fallen in the street.
When the only thing we can do is look upward instead of at each other in order to work it out.
In my mind, it's anti-democratic.
Because democracy is a power-sharing agreement.
It's a situation where we look at each other and say, we all get one vote.
Let's work it out.
Let's negotiate how we're going to have a public square.
What rights?
What policies?
What laws will govern us?
When instead of looking at each other and negotiating, engaging in dialogue and working it out, we say our only appeal is to heaven in a spiritual battle for good and evil.
Well, we've lost the thread of the voice of the people and we've now entered a cosmic battle.
And that battle is the one that, wittingly or not, Justice Alito entered when he flew the Appeal to Heaven flag over his residence.
We'll talk about that today, in addition to Trump's unified Reich video and the assertion of Palestinian statehood by countries in Western Europe who are key American allies.
I'm Brad Onishi, and this is the Straight White American Jesus Weekly Roundup.
Today, bright and early, with my co-host.
I'm Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
You know, there are times in the time zone things are a problem for me, but I think when we have to do it earlier, it's a bigger problem for you.
Yeah.
It doesn't matter.
Dan, I have tiny children.
Sleeping is just a luxury I don't have.
So sometimes, I've said this before, I get up at 5 a.m., sometimes I go to bed at 5 a.m.
I'm crazy like that.
It's a crazy life I live.
It's glamorous, it's fabulous.
At least this time of year, I'm looking out the window behind you, there's at least light now.
It's hard when you've got to get up and do the early recording session, it's dark and it's cold.
So, you know, some light in your day, literally.
Well, some light in your day, because we all need that in light of this week.
This week is a thing.
So going to talk about Alito and his flags, his certain flags he let fly.
Going to talk about the Unified Reich video from Donald Trump's campaign.
And then we're going to talk about the ICC.
It's some things out of Europe and involving Israel and recognizing Palestine as a state.
So let's jump into Alito's flag controversy.
Dan.
I think you and I text a lot.
As people might imagine, we send back and forth emails, you know, all week about stories we find.
And we really can't solidify what we're going to talk about until, like, Thursday, because things happen, right?
So you and I have got this rhythm down where we send all these emails back and forth.
And kind of Wednesday, Thursday, I start really thinking hard about, like, what are we going to talk about today?
Excuse me, on Friday.
By Tuesday this week, I was so mad about Alito that I was like, I texted you like, I'm going in on Alito.
And I really thought like, look, the guy flew an upside down American flag.
It's not getting enough attention.
We really need to break down what that means and talk about it.
And then all hell breaks loose because on Wednesday, we get the report from the New York Times that Over the beach house of the Alito family, there was the Appeal to Heaven flag.
So, let me share with you something that may sound like a tangent, but I promise you it is not, Dan.
I promise you that it is not.
So, you and I have both had winding academic careers.
Where was your first ever teaching appointment?
Like first real teaching appointment?
Yeah.
I was an adjunct at Oneonta State University, part of the State University System of New York.
Yep.
Nice.
I had a job in Virginia, and then I had two years, two years that I really cherish at Rhodes College in Memphis.
And Rhodes College is the alma mater of none other than Amy Coney Barrett.
And so Rhodes College is... I don't know if I remember that.
Yeah.
Wow, I forgot.
I think you've told me that and said that and I completely forgot.
Well, when she became justice, when she was appointed, a lot of outlets reported that she was a Rhodes Scholar, which was not true.
She studied at Rhodes College in Memphis.
Rhodes is an amazing place.
I cherish it.
But it was not only the alma mater of Amy Coney Barrett, also the alma mater of Abe Fortas, or Abraham Fortas.
Abraham Fortas was a lawyer, Jewish.
And appointed to the Supreme Court in 1965 by Lyndon B. Johnson.
He was very close to LBJ.
Now, in 1968, there was a chance for Abe Fortas to become the head justice, for him to be the head of the Supreme Court.
And yet, Republicans decided to do hearings and really investigate this because A number of things.
Now, I want to say this first.
I think there is some anti-Semitism involved.
And as anything involving one of the first Jewish justices on the Supreme Court, there had been a few before him.
Anti-Semitism definitely there.
And I'm just not going to ever ignore that or look away from it or think it's not a thing.
However, Abe Fortas had done a couple of things that Republicans, and including Richard Nixon, were able to capitalize on.
One of them was he took money for teaching summer school at American University.
And you're like, well, what's the big deal?
Well, the money that he received to teach those courses didn't come from American University.
It came from rich people.
And some of those rich people had cases that would wind up in front of the Supreme Court.
And he was also paid a sum That was equal to 40% of his salary as a Supreme Court Justice.
It's a problem.
It's a problem.
A couple years later, he enters into an agreement where he's going to get $20,000 a year from the Wolfson family.
And again, some issues.
The head of the Wolfson family had been up for securities fraud.
There had been some things, and it just didn't look good.
Didn't look good.
What did Abe Fortas do, Dan, if I just want to expedite my little foray into history, Rhodes College history?
He resigned.
He resigned because there was pressure to keep the court something that was free from politics.
He resigned because it didn't look good, these things that had happened.
Was it totally fair?
Maybe, maybe not.
Look, I've done a bunch of reading on Abe Fortas this week.
I could do a two-year dissertation on Anub Fortas and come back and tell you whether or not this was actually something he needed to resign for.
Was this fair?
How much anti-Semitism?
How much Nixon, Chicanery?
We can go into it.
Fine.
But what I want to point out is that he resigned because public pressure, because, and I'm going to give you a word that I think we don't really use anymore, or it's at least not very operative in our politics, and that is shame.
He was shamed into resigning.
Now, part of why he resigned was that he was so close to LBJ.
Like, he would, like, sit in with LBJ, Dan, on, like, cabinet meetings.
He would tell him things happening at the court.
Not good.
Not good.
He resigned.
He resigned because, why?
The Supreme Court is the only branch of our federal government where the people are not elected.
There's no election.
They are appointed to a lifetime role, as long as they're on good behavior.
That's what it says.
Samuel Alito has now flown two flags, the upside down flag and the appeal to heaven flag, that are being widely used and circulated among insurrectionists, open Christian nationalists, theocrats, Nazis, and other people who are waging war on American democracy.
Do you remember, Dan, when you were in purity culture?
This is going to sound really weird.
Do you remember when you were dating somebody in purity culture and it was like, what was the whole goal of living a Christian life?
To be above reproach.
Meaning?
I remember this being a minister.
Even if I wasn't doing something wrong, I didn't want anybody- No appearance of evil.
No appearance.
I don't want anybody in my flock thinking I'm doing something wrong.
So I'm going to just avoid anything that would even look like, okay?
Yeah.
Leading anybody astray is also anybody who might observe you.
So if it looks like it could draw the inference that you're doing something wrong, you don't do it.
So you basically sit next to the person you're dating with your hands in your pockets all the time and don't show any affection.
That's exactly it.
And now, that is all, none of that, purity culture sucks, and we've talked about that all the time.
But here's the thing, here's the thing.
If you're a Supreme Court Justice, if you are part of one of, if you are one of nine people who's been given a lifetime role, not elected, but appointed, if you are supposed to, as John Roberts says, call balls and strikes, that's the role of the Supreme Court.
If the Supreme Court is not supposed to be partisan, If you are not supposed to express any affiliation with one of our political parties, if you are supposed to be the nine people in the country who are as close to the platonic guardians, like separate from election cycles and worrying about getting money so you can have ads and cordoned off from the concerns of having to get reelected every two years or four years,
Or to get things done before your time's up and you're out of the limelight.
If that's true...
You should be above reproach and you should give everyone in the American public the fullest, fullest, fullest assurance that you are ruling with the utmost impartiality as far as it can be done in terms of a human being, rationality, evidence, open-mindedness.
And what I mean by that is simply open-minded to the evidence.
Neutrality.
I mean, that's what it's supposed to be, right?
Evidential neutrality.
So, if you were going to fly these flags, you can give us all the plausible deniability.
And I have spent so much time this week, Dan, on this.
I did a special episode on it yesterday.
If you want like the deep dive 40 minutes and you're like, what are you guys talking about?
What is the appeal to heaven flag?
Finish this episode and then just click what I did yesterday with four amazing guests.
That's all you have to do.
It's not hard.
I mean, it is hard.
You've got to take time to listen.
They will tell you what the Appeal to Heaven Flag means.
I'm just here to say, Dan, and I'll throw it to you after this, I got one more thing to say, is that you can do all the plausible deniability you want.
John Bolton got on the TV and was like pointing his finger and shaming people, so A. John Bolton, don't ever shame anybody, pal.
Don't.
Don't shame anybody.
B.
He's like, just leave him alone.
It's a Revolutionary War flag.
No, I'm not going to leave him alone.
I'm not.
Sorry, Mitch McConnell.
I'm not going to leave the Supreme Court alone.
I'm not.
It's a lifetime appointment.
The nine people in the country who are supposed to give us the closest to human fairness, neutrality, rationality as we can get.
And you're out here flying a flag.
That in the current moment, in the present moment, today, is being used by Nazis, insurrectionists, theocrats, and Christian nationalists.
Dutch Sheets talks down all the time about spiritual warfare and waging war on the demons in our government.
That's the man who popularized the Appeal to Heaven flag.
Dutch Sheets says that the goal is to restore America to the place where the spiritual and the civil are united in our government.
And this man, Justice Alito, is flying the flag that Dutch Sheets uses to symbolize that whole movement.
Don't catch me, John Bolton or Mitch McConnell with Leave This Man Alone.
This is not okay.
This is a massive, massive problem.
Off to you.
Yeah, so a couple things.
One is, the first thing, there's an anecdote.
I'm not going to go to the full anecdote because it's really offensive.
But when I was in, I don't know, maybe like late grade school, early, I think back then it was junior high school, middle school, whatever.
I used a word that is offensive, right?
But it has like a technical dictionary meaning, and I got in trouble for it.
And I've shared the stories of what happened to me at school when I would be litigious.
This was another one.
I got called into the principal's office because somebody on the playground heard me use this word.
And my response was, what?
It just means, and like I had the dictionary meaning.
Did anybody think that I was using that word by the dictionary meaning?
Of course not, right?
So yeah, people can look at the flags.
It's a Revolutionary War flag, right?
But here's the thing.
They're symbols, right?
And symbols can change meaning.
That's one of the things that they do.
They become reappropriated.
They change meanings.
We talk about this on It's In The Code all the time.
We talk about it on this podcast all the time.
So as you hit on it, and as everybody's hit on it, In this current moment, does flying the U.S.
flag upside down indicate significant distress?
Was it used by ships at sea and things?
Of course.
Sure.
Fine.
Is that what Alito is doing?
Does anybody on any side of the issue think that Alito is, what, thinks he's on the ocean and in trouble or something?
No, of course not.
It gets re-inscribed and has a different meaning.
So the next one is, I think, you know, this notion that he has, like, well, my wife blew the flag.
It didn't have anything to do with me.
The neighbors put up offensive signs.
There was a Vox article, I think, this week.
I don't know if it came out this week.
We came across it.
I know we've both looked at it.
But, you know, basically just by the numbers, looking at Alito as the most staunchly GOP-supporting justice on the court.
Ian Millhiser, the Republican's man on the inside.
Yeah.
Thank you.
I had to restart my computer before we recorded and it closed.
The point is, you know, we know what this is.
It happens immediately after that.
The whole notion of, you know, reproach and whatever.
Everybody knows who Samuel Leto is on the bench.
So it's completely, it's just literally non-credible.
Incredible to think that, ah, just my partner flew it.
I didn't, you know, it was nothing, nothing to do with me.
The other thing is this, and the people will say, you're limiting free speech.
You're saying Supreme Court justices shouldn't have free speech.
Yeah, that's part of what we're saying, right?
You used the baseball metaphor that John Roberts has used, calling pitches and strikes.
I'm an NFL fan.
You've got a bunch of officials on the field.
Do I think some of those officials probably have a favorite NFL team?
Sure.
Yeah, probably.
They probably grew up in, I don't know, Philadelphia.
They like the Eagles, whatever.
Am I going to have issues if they show up in their Philadelphia Eagles jersey on the field and the Eagles are playing my team?
And is it going to start feeling like, man, they're really throwing a lot of flags that are going against my team, right?
You can set those things aside and you should.
So yes, if you are going to make the choice to be a Supreme Court justice or any other judge, right, and your job is to be impartial, I mean, that's literally your job description, I understand we're all human and biases and blah blah blah.
Some of these questions are inherently contested.
Yes, all of that, no matter what you do, there will be lots of people who disagree with you and so forth.
But in principle, you set that aside and your whole job Is to be a neutral arbiter, to say, I will listen to the arguments that are made.
I will look at the evidence that's made.
I will, I think if you're a Supreme Court justice, make an effort to be consistent with my own principles or to have a governing interpretive philosophy.
We talk about this all the time, the appeals to originalism and so forth that just go out the window, especially if you're Alito, if it's anybody attached to the GOP or the political right that's on the docket.
So yeah, all of this is to say that, yeah, at the very least, he should be recusing himself from cases now.
And notice, you brought up the story of Fortas.
He didn't just recuse himself.
He didn't be like, I'm going to take a step back from some of these cases.
He resigned.
Lito's not going to resign.
I don't think it does any good to call for him to resign.
But this notion that now anybody can even think that he's, you know, somebody's going to come before the court and he's going to be neutral.
The last point that I'll make is that people go back and listen to some of the things that he said during oral arguments about the Trump immunity case.
He threw it out there as this hypothetical that there's a contested election.
The language is there.
And another thing that the Vox article does really well is to highlight the way that he will make these.
They're not even veiled references.
They are just distanced enough from political events that somebody can't say, gee, are you like working for the GOP or what?
But they clearly indicate his ideological bias.
He said that about the election in the oral arguments.
About Trump immunity claim.
So, yeah, flying these flags.
It means what it means.
It means what everybody thinks it means.
The reason they are flown is to communicate to others exactly what you think about the election and that you accept the big lie and that you support January 6 and everything else.
So, yeah, I'm going to, like, blow a gasket or something.
So I'll throw it back to you.
But yeah, just it's an absolutely ridiculous story this week.
So I just, once again, friends, if you are feeling behind, so this has been covered.
Stephen Colbert covered it.
Matthew Taylor was on CBS News yesterday.
This has been around the news.
So if you're not caught up, Forgive us for feeling like we fast-forwarded or we jumped halfway through the story.
I would just say, go in our feed, and yesterday I did a 40-minute special episode with a constitutional lawyer, a scholar of religion, a journalist, and a minister.
Sounds like a joke, Dan.
They all walk into a bar.
And talk about Samuel Alito.
So the minister waits outside, but the rest walk into the bar, right?
There we go.
And they all talk about Samuel Alito's Appeal to Heaven flag.
So jump in on that if you want the symbology, if you want the history of the flag, if you want to understand how this flag was used by insurrectionists, by Christian nationalists, by all those folks.
I'm going to give two more thoughts on this, Dan, and we can wrap it up.
One is, Anna Kabrakshman made this on that episode yesterday.
Alito is a Catholic.
Alito is conservative.
Justice Thomas is the same.
There's a lot of connections to Leonard Leo.
They organized a fishing trip last week.
It turns out Leonard Leo also flies the Appeal to Heaven flag.
I just want to make a couple points about all this.
One, The idea that Mrs. Alito, as he referred to her, was the one responsible for flying the flag.
Really?
Because in everything else that conservative Catholic men like you talk about, aren't you the head of the household?
Male headship.
Yeah.
There it is.
Where did that go?
Where did all that happen?
The buck stops with you, except for when you need an excuse as to why an upside-down flag is hanging outside of your house?
Yeah, when it comes to this stuff, he and Thomas are suddenly good egalitarians, and these, you know, equal partnerships, no male headship, no male authority over the women that they're married to.
My wife is independent now, and she has a whole life apart from me.
Huh, interesting.
Number two, I talk about being above reproach.
There's another Bible verse where Jesus says, to those who much is given, much is expected.
If you're given a lot of talents in the parable, you have to use them wisely.
Dan, we're lowly professors and there are things that we do because of our role that mean we don't retaliate or respond or give in to crass remarks when they're directed at us.
Now, not always, but like, if you think about being in class, have you had students say mean things about you?
Have you had students say things that just got your blood?
I mean, I've had students say things to me that I'm like, Right?
And this happens online every day.
Trolls come for me, people send me emails, and once in a while I engage and as soon as I do it I like just regret it instantly.
If you are a Supreme Court Justice or if you are at the residence of the Supreme Court Justice, you don't get to fly an upside down flag to show up your neighbors.
That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
You're a public official of the highest rank.
Have some dignity.
Uphold the worth of the office that has been bestowed upon you.
Have some decorum.
Have some class.
You don't get to fly a flag because your neighbor, oh, my neighbor did this to me.
My neighbor's flying a flag and they didn't like my casserole and they parked in my spot, so take that, upside down flag.
No.
Nope.
No.
You overturn Roe v. Wade.
Who has more social power here?
The neighbor with the sign that made you mad or the Supreme Court justice?
Yeah, just get over it and grow up.
All the way around.
Have some dignity, as you say.
Now, final point I'll make is Matt Taylor talked about this yesterday, but I'll talk about it again today, and that is Alito's Catholic.
He's not a charismatic Christian.
He's not a speaking-in-tongues Pentecostal.
Why is he flying this flag that comes from that world?
And it's because the best way to think about this flag is as a meme.
It's a meme.
Memes travel.
Memes go way beyond their original context, and then they take on this life of their own.
And a meme then gets passed around, and even if you weren't part of the original group using it, you know what it means, you know when it's useful, you know how to use it when you need to.
The Appeal to Heaven flag and the Upside Down American flag are memes for two things.
One, restoring America's covenant with God that has apparently been broken and can only be restored through spiritual warfare and Christian revolution.
That's what the Appeal to Heaven flag means to those who use it.
The Upside Down flag means, we better do it right now or there won't be a country.
We're in an apocalypse.
Both of those, Dan, have been used to justify domestic terrorism, violence, and overthrowing our government.
There is no excuse in the world for using these symbols.
I don't care about deniability.
I don't care about John Locke.
I don't care about any neighbor who egged your house on Halloween, Mrs. Alito, or Mr. Alito, or anyone at the Alito house.
I don't care.
This is so unacceptable.
It's hard to put into words.
Any final thought, Dan, before we go to something that's just as distressing?
Yeah, I think the last final thought on this is the incoherence.
So somebody flies a flag, right?
Or they have a bumper sticker, or they circulate a meme, or say, a problematic video that we'll get to in a few minutes.
And there's a reason they did it, right?
There are, I don't know, thousands of flags in the world that I don't fly.
Why?
They don't mean anything to me.
I don't know what they mean, right?
So if you fly a flag, you choose to fly it, you're putting it over your house, you're driving with it on the antenna of your car, you're doing whatever you're doing, right?
You chose to do that.
And then when somebody comes at you and says, Why are you flying that flag?
You're like, what are you asking why for?
It's just a flag.
Doesn't have to mean anything.
See, the incoherence of it, right?
Alito's justification of it basically has to be, oh, I didn't have anything to do.
I didn't have any reason.
There was no reason.
It was just there.
I woke up one morning and the flag was like flying over the house.
Kind of weird.
It's just incoherent.
People choose to use your meme metaphor, right?
They choose to circulate the memes because they communicate something, but then their only way to justify doing it is to deny that it communicated the thing that's the only reason for doing it in the first place.
It's completely incoherent.
It is, and he had to go get the flag.
You have to go get an Appeal to Heaven flag in order to fly it, okay?
Last thing, I gotta say it.
Dick Durbin, you need to do something here.
Head of the Judicial Committee, you need to do something.
And I'll just say to all of you out there that are like, well, what can they do?
The House will never vote to like, you know, send it to the Senate for impeachment.
That's how it works.
You can have an investigation and hearings, and you can do things to drag this out into public.
What happened when the J6 committee, Dan, for a month dragged this out into the public two summers ago?
A lot of people saw J6 and Trump and everything else, the Proud Boys, in a different light.
What happened when they drew it out?
What happened at Stormy Daniels' trial?
A lot.
Now, we don't know the outcome of that trial yet, but don't get at me with this doesn't make a difference.
Drag Alito through it.
Show the court you're going to pay attention.
Democrats, this is the way you lead.
And there's, Dan, there's a holistic message just waiting.
Hey, if you don't vote, you're going to get more of these guys.
The guy that overturned Roe v. Wade but is so petty he had to fly an upside down flag to show up John across the street for parking in his spot.
Hey, if you don't vote, you get more Eileen Cannons, who are just gonna delay everything so much that there's no Trump trial, even though he's literally got classified documents under his toilet.
There's a message here that says, these are the men taking away your right to choose reproductive access and healthcare.
These are the men taking away voting rights in South Carolina, which we haven't even got to and we probably won't.
These are the men restricting your American life Drag them out into the light and see what they look like.
That's my encouragement, Senator Durbin, if you're listening.
Let's take a break.
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All right, Dan.
I'm gonna try to, like, take some coffee.
I'm gonna drink, uh, I gotta maybe get a donut here.
I don't know what's gonna happen, but I'm gonna turn it to you about something that also sucks from this week, just to put it in really, uh, official language.
Go ahead.
Yeah, another complex issue that came out, and I think people probably saw this, but I think most people, I don't know, maybe there's some nuances that people may not be familiar with.
But this week, the ICC, that is the International Criminal Court, okay, in The Hague, the ICC's prosecutor, Kareem Khan, announced that the court is seeking arrest warrants For Yair Sinwar, who's the leader of Hamas, and I think some other Hamas leaders as well, over the October 7 attacks against Israel, but also against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel's Defense Minister Galant.
And again, there may be other names that are floating around, but those are the two big ones, over their response in Gaza since then.
Now, this is the prosecutor recommending arrest warrants.
Arrest warrants haven't been issued.
But this was a big deal.
This was like big news, created quite a stir this week.
And the charges are war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And again, for both Hamas and Israel in its response in Gaza.
And as I think lots of people have noted this, I think I saw it on CNN that pointed it out, but of course this would put Netanyahu in company with people like Vladimir Putin, and that's going to be important in just a few minutes here.
So, it's also worth noting that the UN's highest court, the International Court of Justice, is also currently investigating whether Israel's actions in Gaza rise to the level of genocide.
Remember that those charges were brought by other UN members.
And of course, as we'd expect, this move has just sort of started a firestorm of controversy and divided the U.S.
from some of its big allies.
So let's start with the U.S.
Biden blasted the decision.
He insisted that what's happening in Gaza, quote, is not genocide.
Most think he's trying to kind of reaffirm primarily maybe to Jewish voters that the U.S.
still supports Israel, right?
Remember, he finally put conditions or conditioned military aid to Israel recently.
And that briefly at least gave a little bit of pressure from those on the left leaning on the Biden administration.
But now, of course, he's got pressure from moderates.
And even more conservative folks to reassert support for Israel.
And so he's sort of over the barrel on that.
And so he did that.
Senate Republicans, of course, have threatened sanctions against ICC staff.
Secretary of State Blinken, who obviously is not part of the GOP, he's Biden's Secretary of State.
He emphasized the court's lack of jurisdiction and said that it was, quote, wrongheaded to equate Israel's response with Hamas's actions.
So that's the U.S.
And for people who don't know, countries, a lot of countries, including the U.S., including Israel, including China, including Russia, do not recognize the court's jurisdiction and aren't members of it.
So the U.S.
is not in any formal way subject to the ICC, always opted out of that, and Israel as well.
But when the ICC issued arrest warrants for Putin, the U.S.
praised the decision and the Biden administration called the action justified and has continually shown support for the ICC since Russia invaded Ukraine.
So this U.S.
response of, well, you know, they don't have jurisdiction.
How dare they do this?
They praised the same court for making the moves against Russia.
Why does all that matter?
I don't feel like any of that is surprising.
Because in contrast, European countries generally support the court.
And in particular this week, France and Belgium made big news because they affirmed the ICC's move, not even just sort of, oh, we should respect the ICC and listen carefully to what they have to say or something like that.
They affirmed the move.
And then also this week, and I see this as related, I don't know that there's a direct line, but Ireland, Spain and Norway announced this week that starting next week, they're going to officially recognize Palestine as a state.
This, of course, all of this has issued or triggered outrageous, outraged responses from Netanyahu and Israel.
Ireland made clear in this statement that they were not indicating any support for Hamas, but they said that the people of Palestine deserve some right of political recognition and the same rights that the Irish received when they gained independence.
So, Israel recalled its ambassadors from those countries in protest and so forth.
So, a mess with all the ICC stuff, European responses, U.S.
responses, the complex issues related to Israel's response, and I think increasing global isolation.
Some takeaways for me, and then I'll throw it over to you.
One is just that Israel's in, you know, full PR spin mode, if you listen to sort of what's coming out from them.
They're making the news rounds.
They're arguing that the ICC is not neutral, that it's political and so forth.
Interestingly, the Palestinians are making the same argument and saying that there were more charges leveled against Hamas than Israel.
So, you know, the ICC is politicized in favor of Israel, but Israel is spinning it the other way.
It is driving a wedge between the U.S.
and European allies.
It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.
I think if the GOP, as we've talked about for a long time, has no winning answers on abortion, it's clear that the Biden administration has no winning answers on Israel-Palestine and sort of what to do and how to move forward.
And at the end of the day, it's all basically symbolic.
That doesn't mean meaningless, but it does mean, as we said, the ICC has no authority to go and, I don't know, should the arrest warrants come out, to go and retrieve Netanyahu.
There's no extradition.
We've seen, I think, Netanyahu's political career is in the balance right now and hangs on what happens in Gaza.
So he has, I think, no intention of changing what he does.
So a lot of observers think it won't change much on the ground, but I think I don't know.
I think long-term, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out, how it shifts things in regard to Israel, U.S.
election, things going on in college campuses, you name it.
We could unspool it forever.
So, I think that a couple things here.
This is not a surprising response from the United States.
You were never going to get the United States to do this.
It would have caused a landmark shift in our foreign policy, and it would have caused a landmark shift in global geopolitics.
With that said, Dan, there's no world in which I think the Biden administration was going to sign on with the French and the Belgians this week.
There's no way they were going to affirm as Norway and Ireland did.
Northern Ireland actually don't have that in front of me, so I don't know if it was Republic Ireland or Northern Ireland.
I apologize, everybody.
We can look it up.
Uh, but they affirmed, you know, the recognizing Palestine as a, as a state.
That was not going to happen.
You know what, though, that could not, you could be avoided?
There's a thing.
And I'm setting something up here for our third segment.
It's a little bit of intrigue, but you didn't, you didn't have to invite Netanyahu, Joe Biden, like you don't have to do that to like, he doesn't have to come talk to Congress.
He doesn't.
He does not.
And, you know, whether or not the United States is going to continue to support what Israel is doing in Palestine, in Gaza, is one question and it's one we've addressed and we've shared our thoughts on.
This seems like an unforced error.
This is not seemingly going to be a good move because there are so many folks Hey y'all, this is Brad, just stopping this segment in order to make a correction.
We say here that Netanyahu was invited by Biden, but in fact, he was invited by Mike Johnson.
So I wanted to set that straight and wanted to say that what we're trying to express and should have expressed is that Biden should and could condemn this invitation and say that this is a bad idea and so on and so forth.
Nonetheless, wanted to get this right.
Thanks for bearing with us.
Who are part of the Democratic base who are thinking, why would you invite him?
You don't have to.
It's not a requirement.
And there are people that are going to tune out.
We've talked about it.
Now there's debate.
Does Joe Biden and Gaza and Palestine and his actions with Israel, does it actually matter to Gen Z?
Does it actually matter for voter turnout?
We will see.
I'm in the camp that it does.
I'm in the camp that what matters on college campuses is enthusiasm.
It's not a matter of, are they going to vote for someone else?
It's a matter of, are they going to vote?
And there's going to be a lot of people that do stay home if they feel like Joe Biden's not the guy to vote for.
There will be people that vote for Cornel West and other people and we can go on down the line with that.
However, last comment and I'll throw it back to you before we wrap this up is, Certainly a lot of Republicans who would never think about doing what the French or the Belgians did.
Why?
Because they are just staunchly, what, pro-Israel?
And supposedly, supposedly anti-Semitic at the same, er, they're staunchly pro-Israel and anti-anti-Semitism, all in the same breath.
That's their position.
Well, we're going to see about that in a second.
I'm just going to leave that hanging there for one minute, Dan.
Final thoughts on this before we go to the cliffhanger I just left us.
Just to your point about the unforced error of inviting Netanyahu, like, yeah, number one, obviously, we're not obligated to let foreign leaders like address Congress.
That never has to happen.
But just in case, to state the really obvious point, that is interpreted by most observers as a sign of what?
Of affirmative support for Netanyahu and his policies.
The Biden administration could have remained frosty.
They could have issued a statement and said, we don't support this move by the ICC.
Period.
Full stop.
No further comment.
Whatever.
Or as a country that, you know, neither we nor Israel recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC, so we really have no comment on that.
You know, something.
There's all kinds of ways you could do that and not stake your claim of saying, number one, nope, it's not genocide.
You just now staked, you know, you're not trying to ride the fence anymore, Biden.
You just fell off onto one side of it.
And as you say, inviting Netanyahu, I think, communicates all the things that Biden, I would think, doesn't want to communicate, shouldn't be communicating right now.
All right.
Let's take a break and come back and return to this anti-anti-Semitism that we've heard so much about from the American right and some other things that happened this week.
Okay, Dan.
Donald Trump's campaign sent out a video this week.
They sent out a lot of videos.
What's the big deal?
Tell us all about it.
Yeah, so Monday, I think it was Monday, Trump's Truth Social account posted a 30-second video, shared a 30-second video.
They did not create the video, right?
They didn't create the content, but they circulated it, describing a vision of America, if he wins in 2024.
No big deal so far, right?
Campaigns do this kind of thing.
It included fake newspaper headlines.
I mean, you can just sort of picture the newspaper headlines up there.
And it had lines like, Trump wins, and what's next for America?
Hey, no big deal, right?
The problem is, Brad, little problem with the video, is that in the background there was text about, quote, the creation of a unified Reich.
And in case the connection wasn't clear, it even connected to Germany with references to German industrial strength.
So, just, you know, to make sure that that was out there for everybody to see.
We have this repeated emphasis on Trump's Reich created again.
Huge backlash, as we'd expect.
The term Reich, for people who don't know, it's just German for empire or reign or domain.
But we talked a few minutes ago about symbols or words changing meaning and context.
And probably everybody knows that Hitler's Nazi regime was famously the self-styled Third Reich.
They boasted of the Thousand Year Reich and so forth.
So the term within sort of modern Euro-American history, European history, has been completely co-opted by Nazis and fascists, right?
It has become associated with fascism.
So now, when somebody hears the Reich, it indicates this is obviously the anti-Semitic connection.
It indicates fascism, it indicates Nazism, it indicates anti-Semitism.
So Monday afternoon, the Trump campaign blamed the videos posting on a staffer who basically missed the reference, somehow missed all the Nazi connections and the fascist connections and all the resonances that the word Reich now has.
But it stayed on the social media account overnight.
So they blamed it on a staffer who, I guess, just didn't know any better.
Democrats... Sorry, go ahead.
It's now come out that that staffer heard none other than Mrs. Alito.
So, somehow... She's everywhere, Dan.
She's just everywhere.
Anyway, alright, go ahead.
And it's because the neighbors had, you know... The neighbors were acting up.
They had a party.
They were out there grilling way past dark, Dan.
They were out there grilling with their Coors Lights and their Bratwurst, and so the Alitos got upset, and Mrs. Alito let the unified rag thing go.
That's how... Sorry.
Anyway.
I'm pretty sure the neighbors also tried to ban the Bible from the local library, and so... They were out there grilling the Bible.
They were out there barbecuing the Bible, and they just couldn't stand it anymore.
All right.
Yeah.
So obviously Democrats criticized this, as you would expect, but some of the GOP did as well.
Lindsey Graham.
I figure we don't get to talk about as much as we used to.
We miss Lindsey here on the show.
The faces Brad's making are awesome.
Lindsey Graham, Mike Rounds, I think Mitt Romney.
There are others who criticize this.
Here again, just sort of the takeaways to tie this together.
Again, This is like a code that's out in the open.
Everybody knows the association with the word Reich.
It's one of those words that just can't kind of be used anymore outside of that context because it was so co-opted and affiliated with The Nazi regime.
It's like the symbol of the swastika, right?
It was a symbol that meant other things.
It did not originate in Germany.
It didn't originate as a fascist symbol.
But if you're going to put a swastika somewhere, that's what people see.
That's what it means now.
Trump has already said he wants to be a dictator if elected.
I feel like we talk every week.
We've talked for months.
You've had guests who've talked for months.
Analyze for months and years now the sort of neo-fascist leanings of Trump, the claims to immunity, the unified executive, all these movements and groups aimed at basically putting in, you know, installing him as a kind of autocratic ruler should he win the election.
It's not a stretch.
And I think it was a sign to supporters, intentional.
I don't think it was unintentional.
I don't buy that for a minute.
I don't think that nobody noticed it.
I think it's a sign for supporters that they vote for him.
They'll get exactly what we talk about.
And I think nobody who's watched Trump since he came down that escalator can reasonably be surprised by this or can take it with any seriousness that, you know, His campaign didn't know or didn't notice or that a staffer missed all the references to write.
So those are some of some of my thoughts and takeaways.
Other thoughts you had as this kind of unfolded during the week.
All right.
So a couple of things.
The last couple of weeks on this show, we have spent so much time talking about House Republicans.
Like Aaron Bean of Florida.
We could talk about high-ranking House Republicans like Elise Stefanik, who used to be my congressperson when I lived in New York.
We could talk about the folks who have been yelling most loudly about the problem of anti-Semitism on the part of House Republicans.
We could go to the Anyone and everyone who's been supposedly taking up the issue of anti-Semitism as their principal concern in the last two months.
And guess what?
Yes, Lindsey Graham popped up.
Lindsey Graham, any chance Lindsey has to get on the news, he's happy to do.
Mitt Romney, the one guy who's written a memoir now and has said he's retiring and he's broken with Trump, not in a way that I think is all that forceful, but nonetheless, okay, he spoke up.
All right, thank you for that, Mitt Romney, appreciate it.
Where is the, I want to know, where is the human chain of House Republicans standing in unison around the Capitol?
Working to end antisemitism, especially as it pertains to the presidential candidate of their party, putting out a campaign video that calls up every last bit of trauma, tragedy, attempted genocide, and just one of the worst human tragedies of history.
All of that in a campaign message.
Where is the overwhelming outrage?
And it just makes the point that I tried to make a couple weeks ago, which is this.
Antisemitism is real.
It is ascendant.
It is traumatic.
It is violent.
It is hurtful.
I can only imagine, and that's all I can do is imagine because I am not in this position, but I can only imagine what it is like to be a Jewish person and to see this kind of video appear in the United States from a presidential candidate in 2024.
I cannot imagine what that would be like, but my guess is it is hurtful.
It is difficult.
It is traumatic.
It is a lot to take in.
It's just further proof that the calls for anti-Semitism on the American right are opportunistic.
The care is not for the well-being and flourishing of Jewish people, because if it was, there would be widespread effort to denounce this.
And say that this is not going to stand from our presidential candidate or anyone else.
So I think that's point number one.
I think point number two is that it all works together today, Dan.
You just said it.
The word Reich is rife with historical meaning.
You cannot say the word Reich and think it's just going to be a neutral word.
We have other words like this.
We all know that.
I'm a Japanese American.
And if you say the word Jap, Two Japanese Americans.
We are instantly going to look up and say, what?
What is that now?
Because you might just say, oh, you know, I just shortened Japanese.
That's it.
No big deal.
And we're going to say, sorry, that's the word that was used to dehumanize and demean and everything else in throughout the last century of American history.
What do we say today?
We say people of color.
Right?
We say people of color because, right?
When in the past people have said the word colored to refer to people of color, it has had a demeaning effect.
It has had an effect that has made them second class citizens and at best and at worst less than human.
And so we don't say that now because it's hurtful.
It's traumatic.
It has a historical meaning.
So if you're going to send out something that says Reich, it's almost like, I don't know, Dan.
Let me think.
Let me think.
I'm just going through the Rolodex in my head here.
Let me think.
Let me think.
Oh!
It's almost like... Wait.
Wait.
I almost had it.
Wait.
It's almost like flying a flag over your house.
That for the last 10 or 15 years has been used by people waging war on American democracy who showed up at our Capitol a couple years ago to literally stop the election.
It's almost like using that flag and then trying to tell me, what?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
That's John Locke.
I like John Locke.
Who does not have a flag over their house inspired by John Locke, especially at the beach?
John Locke and the beach, they go together.
Come on.
Everyone knows that.
It's almost the same, right Dan?
It's almost like symbols and words have histories, and when you use them you evoke those histories, intentionally, unintentionally, for better or for worse.
One of the things, I promise this is the last, well, I guess I can't promise the last geeky thing I'll say, but the last geeky thing about symbols and signs and things like that is that, when you talk about the meanings changing, but the meanings also sort of, languages, some theorists will use it, the language sort of sediments, right?
Think of like concrete setting, right?
It's like those meanings can change again, just like, you know, if you put a set of concrete steps outside your house and they break down over time, you could remove them, but it's going to take a lot of work.
That's how the symbols work.
The hardened meaning, so to speak, of these flags is clear.
The hardened meaning of the word Reich is clear.
We know what that means.
And so we know, excuse me, unless somebody's a Kid in middle school learning this and, you know, literally doesn't know what they mean.
We know that if adults, intelligent, educated adults and political operatives use these symbols, they are using them because of their established meanings, not because they were ignorant of that or not because of their original meaning that they had in some bygone era.
They mean exactly what it seems like they mean when people use them.
So, you know what I'm really tired of?
You know what I'm really tired of?
I think we could just maybe no more for like the year.
Plausible deniability.
Because this just keeps happening.
It keeps happening that there's plausible deniability that the flag Alito flew is from John Locke and George Washington.
But it also happens with the Donald Trump campaign and Donald Trump himself all the time.
I'm done with plausible deniability.
I would love for leaders that are so careful, that are so responsible, that we don't have to have these discussions on whether or not they meant it, whether or not this was okay.
And I will say, I'm done giving the benefit of the doubt.
So this is not an accident.
This is a chance, as Ruth Ben-Ghiat says, to test out authoritarian limits, to test out fascist language, and see the reaction.
And just push, push, push, and then pull back, and then push, push, push, and then pull back.
It's happened over and over and over again since 2016.
It happened with the Great Replacement Theory.
The Great Replacement Theory used to be something you heard on the far right by white nationalists.
It is now on Fox News every night being touted by Republican House members.
That's what happens when you push the boundary and you pull back.
You push the boundary and you pull back.
Eventually that boundary is way farther than when you started.
That's what's happening here.
So one more thing here, Dan, is this coincides with... Jenny Cohn had a great Twitter thread about this.
The Claremont Institute, the Claremont Institute being the former John Eastman think tank home, Has several times over the last year published articles that have, in some way, praised Carl Schmitt.
Dan, and you talked about being geeky.
Now, everyone is like, what?
You were on a roll, Onishi.
You know, why are we now talking about Carl Schmitt?
Carl Schmitt's a political theorist from the early 20th century.
And Carl Schmitt popularized this idea that politics is about the friend-enemy distinction.
Okay?
The Claremont Institute is basically doing the wonky geeky version of what's happening with the kind of language being used with the Unified Reich.
The friend-enemy distinction is really saying politics is about having friends and having enemies.
That's it.
The Claremont Institute is like the think tank of MAGA World, basically.
But if you're going to openly praise the friend-enemy distinction, you know what you're telling me?
I'm not going to praise democracy and all the messy discussions and dialogues and negotiations that happened with it and figuring out how to be neighbors.
With people.
I'm just gonna look at the world as friend and enemy.
And it just keeps happening over and over.
Whether it's the wonks at the Claremont Institute, the social media guy at the Trump administration, or whoever's decorating the Alito Beach House.
Yeah, I mean, just because I'm imagining most people aren't, you know, reading Carl Schmitt all the time.
That's opposed, so friend and enemy as opposed to political opponent, right?
Somebody that, you know, they're a person, we have different views, maybe different values, different visions for America, but we're going to like, you know, figure out a way that we can all live together.
And Schmitt was, you know, actively opposed to democratic politics.
He thought that democracy was kind of a failed system.
Yeah, an explicitly anti-democratic theorist who, as you're saying, is becoming the intellectual figure behind the more think-tanky version of MAGA World.
As we wrap up here, I texted you last night and I was like, things we're not going to be able to talk about this week, even though we should, includes Nikki Haley saying she will vote for Donald Trump after saying he's unfit for office, after saying he made fun of her husband's service in the military, after saying that he was a hothead who can't govern.
The Supreme Court ruled on South Carolina gerrymandering and basically totally made it.
Thumbs up.
Made it.
It's all good.
Yeah.
Gerrymander the hell out of it.
No problem.
I mean, there's really no such thing as racial discrimination or racial bias when constructing congressional maps.
Whatever.
Who cares?
We didn't get to that.
So there's a bunch of other things we didn't get to.
And that's just how it goes.
Reason for hope, Dan.
Let's do it.
We got to make our hard right turn.
Yeah, and I purposely went way away from all this stuff because I needed to this week.
So this one's lighter, but I think people can appreciate it.
This week, I read that the Department of Justice and 30 states have finally filed their lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster for antitrust practices.
And as somebody who's got several Live Nation tickets in my phone right now and has paid, what is it, 30% service fees or whatever?
Anyway, I took hope from that.
In all seriousness, I hate when any companies, whether it's my cable company, my internet provider, Ticketmaster, what have you, just gouges everybody because they can.
And that was something that just brightened the week a little bit, even though it'll be years before it makes its way through the courts.
But that was something that Gave me a chance to feel good about something not related to all the awful things we've been talking about this week.
One lucky fan.
We're going to send a picture of what tickets Dan has.
No, we're not going to do that.
It's going to be some obscure death metal band.
And Taylor Swift.
So, Pearl Jam tried to warn everyone about Ticketmaster.
I just want everyone to know that.
Go look it up.
Pearl Jam tried to warn everybody.
So, anyway.
My reason for hope is the Biden administration did just do another round of student loan forgiveness and we have criticized Joe Biden and I got a lot of criticism for Joe Biden anytime there anyone asked me but there are good things happening and I do think that that is one good thing that is happening and I think about myself when I had student loans and I think about those who are facing those those third grade teachers who are trying to figure out how to make their their monthly budget work or to buy a house or whatever may be
That really helps.
It makes a difference.
And so, that's a good thing.
Alright, y'all.
As I said, go listen to our special episode on The Flag that is out yesterday.
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