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America's Hesitancy to Aid Ukraine
00:15:16
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| America used to take great pride in being the leader of the free world. | |
| Now its role in foreign wars is a subject of relentless division and discourse across the United States. | |
| Disastrous and exorbitant wars in the Middle East have created a generational revulsion to American lives being sacrificed for Washington, D.C.'s version of global morality. | |
| And I can understand why people are so skeptical. | |
| But the current political chaos is about wars in which American troops will have no involvement at all. | |
| The $95 billion aid package finally passed this weekend will be spent mostly on military hardware for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. | |
| On one side, critics draped to the Ukrainian flag are furious at America supporting what they see as a genocidal Israeli assault on Gaza. | |
| On the other, Israel supporters fume that backing for America's biggest ally in the Middle East is contingent on backing for President Zelensky. | |
| This was the moment that the Ukraine aid was finally approved by the House of Representatives this weekend. | |
| And this was the predictable response of Putin fangirl and occasional congresswoman, Marjorie, well, Moscow, Marjorie Taylor Greene, to give her her full name. | |
| When we had members of Congress in there waving the Ukrainian flag on the United States House of Representatives floor while we're doing nothing to secure our border, I think every American in this country should be furious. | |
| Who's going to vote for these people? | |
| How can you vote for these people? | |
| They don't serve our country. | |
| Well, chanting Ukraine and waving a foreign flag in Congress is probably not the best look. | |
| Those who did so were baiting their political opponents and they knew it. | |
| But the truth is that in substance, they are correct. | |
| The argument I hear most often against America's backing of Ukraine is that America can't afford it and shouldn't even try to until it fixes a crisis at the southern border. | |
| To which I would say, well, of course, America can afford it. | |
| This is a drop in the ocean of America's spending generally. | |
| And since when did the United States not have the ability to do more than one thing at the same time? | |
| The chaos at the southern border is a scandal. | |
| It could well put Trump back in the White House. | |
| But funding Ukraine or Israel or Taiwan has nothing to do with any of this. | |
| The money sent to Ukraine isn't really sent to Ukraine at all. | |
| It's almost all spent in America on American weapons to replace the ones being used in the war against Putin. | |
| And it was Vladimir Putin who started a war by launching a murderous invasion of a democratic American ally. | |
| If your position is that all war is bad and the US should have nothing to do with any of it, okay, fair enough. | |
| But are US conservatives really the peace next now? | |
| And if you believe that backing embattled strategic allies against America's enemies is important, as with Israel against Iran and its proxies, well, why is Ukraine ideologically any different? | |
| America first should mean leadership, not isolation, shouldn't it? | |
| So should the US fund an Israeli war that even President Biden believes has gone too far? | |
| Should the US back Ukraine's war against Russia, even with no end in sight to conflict? | |
| And will this money really make a difference on the ground? | |
| These are the big questions that we're debating tonight with the host of Tommy Lehran as Fearless on our kick, Tommy Lehran, Chris Kepoluto, who's a US military veteran and host of Task and Purpose on YouTube, and by the journalist and commentator Francesca Fiorentini. | |
| Okay, Tommy, you were very quick to challenge me on X a couple of days ago when you saw me embracing this deal as a good thing and you were chomping at the bits to explain to me why it's terrible. | |
| Off you go. | |
| Well, first of all, Piers, when you said that the United States has unlimited money, that's not true. | |
| We have no money. | |
| We are in debt. | |
| So the fact that we just have this unlimited money to spread across the world, meanwhile, we've got American cities looking like the third world, and of course our wide open southern border, that to me is a point of contention. | |
| But I'll also say this. | |
| Now, I understand initially wanting to help Ukraine, and I understand in year one, maybe year one and a half, maybe year two, supplying Ukraine with what they needed. | |
| But now as we're entering year three of this, at some point, there needs to be a reality check. | |
| Can Ukraine actually win this war without other countries stepping in and actually fighting it for them? | |
| And furthermore, you've got Ukraine being the second most corrupt country on the face of the earth behind Russia, and we're continuing to send millions and billions of dollars. | |
| A lot of Americans don't really know where that's going. | |
| And a lot of us also feel that when this eventually ends and there's some kind of a diplomatic resolution with Russia, then the United States is going to go in and give more money to Ukraine for so-called nation building. | |
| So when does the spigot get shut off? | |
| And also, why are Democrats so reluctant to say we will loan you this money? | |
| We will loan you this equipment. | |
| Why is this a forgivable loan when the United States itself and so many Americans are currently suffering under inflation and Joe Biden's policies? | |
| That's something that a lot of conservatives want to know, and that's why we're furious over this. | |
| Explain to me, though, the difference ideologically between supporting Israel, which is under threat from a totalitarian regime in Iran and through proxies, and Ukraine, which is under threat from a totalitarian regime in Russia. | |
| What's the difference? | |
| Well, for one, Israel has a chance of winning their war. | |
| They can decimate Hamas. | |
| They can put an end to this quickly and decisively if our own president would stop standing in their way. | |
| And of course, we've got disgusting, nasty pro-Hamas protesters on our own college campuses, which is a discussion for another day. | |
| But Israel can win this. | |
| Israel can wipe out Hamas and Islamic terrorism. | |
| We haven't seen Ukraine be able to hold off Russia. | |
| So there's the first difference here. | |
| And also, as I mentioned previously, Israel has a track record of being able to audit itself, being able to be responsible with money that it's being given. | |
| I don't know if we can say the same thing about Ukraine. | |
| I don't think anyone would believe that Ukraine, which has a long history of corruption, Piers, as you know. | |
| Okay, I have one question for you. | |
| Which of these two leaders is currently involved directly in a corruption trial alleging fraud, bribery, and breach of trust? | |
| Is it President Zelensky or is it Prime Minister Netanyahu? | |
| Well, the people of Israel will have to decide on the Netanyahu issue, and they will decide that. | |
| But Ukraine as a country goes far beyond just Zelensky. | |
| Ukraine itself has a long history of corruption. | |
| So it's not about just one guy and one election that can easily maybe solve some of those problems. | |
| This is about a nation that has a history of corruption. | |
| So a lot of Americans are unsettled about sending so much money. | |
| And also, I would also point this out. | |
| It's not just military aid. | |
| It's also economic aid. | |
| The fact that the American people are funding economic aid for government bureaucrats in Ukraine, I'm sorry, Piers, that's a bridge too far for me. | |
| Okay, Francesca, your response. | |
| Yeah, I think both of your framing is bogus. | |
| I don't think that Israel is fighting against a totalitarian regime in Iran, and I don't think they're waging a war. | |
| They are waging a one-sided ethnic cleansing against the people of Gaza, 34,000 of whom have been killed already, and 25,000 of those people are women and children. | |
| There was just a mass grave discovered under a hospital in the city of Kanyunis where surgeons and scrubs were found handcuffed before they were summarily killed. | |
| So I think both of your framing is off here. | |
| If anything, if you're going to talk about the ways that Ukraine actually mirrors Israel, it's that the people of Palestine are the Ukrainians and their own sovereignty has been taken from them by Israel and in the case of Ukraine, by Russia. | |
| Look. | |
| Look, broken clock situation here with Tommy Larin, because honestly, we disagree about pretty much everything. | |
| But I think it is true that we need to see some sort of light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to funding endless war. | |
| You know, Tommy, you said diplomacy. | |
| Man, if only we had diplomacy in this situation in both Israel and in Russia, but no one's actually talking about true diplomatic solutions. | |
| So Representative Ilhan Omar has said that she would like checks on the amount of weapons that are sent over to Ukraine to see if there is, you know, what has been the result of that. | |
| Can we talk about diplomatic solutions? | |
| As a progressive, as someone who does not want to see more war and more death, I believe in that too. | |
| What's funny about Republicans in this case, though, is they never met a war they didn't like. | |
| They never met, they don't apply this to Israel. | |
| They don't apply this to anywhere else in the world. | |
| They love war. | |
| They got us into Iraq. | |
| They got us into Afghanistan. | |
| They got us into, you know, some drone wars in Pakistan. | |
| And now they want to send troops down to the southern border so they can prevent a Salvadoran woman from coming into this country and setting up the best lunch spot in their town. | |
| Pupusas are delicious. | |
| And that's where they're like, oh, they love wars. | |
| So why is it that this is the one war the Republicans don't like? | |
| Huh. | |
| Does it have anything to do with the fact that in the year 2016, Donald Trump actually changed the RNC platform, the Republican platform then? | |
| And the one thing he changed was what? | |
| We will not defend Ukraine if Russia gets involved. | |
| Very curious. | |
| Okay. | |
| Well, let's bring in the military expert, Chris Capaluto. | |
| Chris, it is strange to me looking from outside that the Republican Party is so split on this. | |
| Normally, if you had a case of a Russian dictator illegally invading a sovereign democratic country in Europe, then every Republican I know historically would have been absolutely in favor of helping that European country repel the Russian invaders. | |
| And yet the Republicans are split. | |
| There are some who share Tommy's views about this. | |
| There are others like Lindsey Graham, absolutely emphatic the other way. | |
| There are people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who've been dubbed Moscow Marjorie for her slavish support of Putin's rhetoric, even down to just spreading utter nonsense that they're run by Nazis. | |
| In fact, there's never been an election in Ukraine where more than 3% of far right have voted. | |
| You've never had, as she claims, that it's a war on Christianity. | |
| In fact, it's the Russians who are killing a lot of Christian leaders in Ukraine, not the Ukrainians, and so on. | |
| So it's very strange to me to see the party so divided on this. | |
| But from a military strategy point of view, what is the rationale, do you think, for America supporting Ukraine? | |
| And why would it differ in any way from supporting either Israel or Taiwan? | |
| Thank you, Piers. | |
| Yeah, I think it's the Republicans have concerns about sending $95 billion in foreign aid to countries like Ukraine and in this case in Ukraine. | |
| And I can understand that concern because you don't want to see the money go and like Tommy just brought up, Tammy just brought up. | |
| You don't want that money to be wasted, especially if you think that there's no possibility of Ukraine potentially winning. | |
| But when you look at from a military point of view, from a military strategy point of view, you look at the actual aid bill, you see the type of capabilities that we're planning to send to Ukraine. | |
| Like the first thing on the aid bill that you see is the long-range attackum. | |
| The Attackum missile, the previous version that we sent to Ukraine, had a top max range of about 165 kilometers. | |
| This new missile is going to have a 300-kilometer max range, which will put additional pressure on the Russian front lines. | |
| They'll be able to strike their command outpost deeper behind the front lines. | |
| So I do think that this aid will increase the likelihood. that Ukraine could be victorious. | |
| So yes, I understand the Republicans' hesitancy to send money there, especially when Ukraine in the past has had issues with corruption and you don't want to see that money be wasted or spent in a bad way there. | |
| But when you look at the bill, what happens is you see that there's additional funding for oversight in that bill. | |
| So I think there's less of a concern for that. | |
| I think that the main thing that's missing in Ukraine right now is that they don't have the artillery shells that they need. | |
| They don't have the air defense capabilities that they need. | |
| Because when right now we're seeing Ukraine is being pushed back. | |
| That is factual. | |
| They just lost a city in Avdivka. | |
| But the reason that's happening is because Russia is able to push their fighter jets closer to the front lines. | |
| They're able to drop glide bombs, 500 kilogram bombs that leave giant craters, that they're firing at 100 of these munitions a day. | |
| So if they had air defense munitions and the Patriot batteries, if that was sent to Ukraine today, that wouldn't be happening. | |
| And the evidence that I would provide for that is if you look at the last two years of aid that we sent, we saw it was working. | |
| In 2022, the Ukrainians pushed forward in their counteroffensive. | |
| They gained land. | |
| They weren't losing territory until, what, coincidentally, they just started losing territory in the last six months. | |
| I think that that's happening because the aid dried up. | |
| So the Pentagon, they're smart. | |
| They have stockpiles right now in Germany of all these different munitions that are just waiting for the green light to be sent into Ukraine. | |
| The aid would get there quickly. | |
| I do think it would have an impact on the ground. | |
| Now, to your point, Piers, about why aren't we supporting a country that is under attack from authoritarian governments? | |
| Something that I think that is interesting from a military strategy point of view, recently, if you look at China, North Korea, and Iran, they're all, they don't have any qualms with supporting Russia. | |
| You look at North Korea, they just spent 3 million artillery shells they shipped on 6,000 containers over to Russia to help support Russia's war efforts. | |
| When you look at Iran, they sent thousands of drones, 300,000 artillery shells. | |
| This is billions in aid that Iran and North Korea have sent. | |
| And China as well. | |
| China might as well be sending a foreign aid bill of their own because they're buying cheap Russian oil and they're supporting the war effort that way. | |
| And they're also more recently upping their ante. | |
| They're sending machine tooling parts. | |
| They're sending missile components that they could use for cruise missiles in Russia. | |
| So Russia, Iran, and North Korea are adversaries, authoritarian governments. | |
| They believe that it's worth investing in Russia. | |
| They believe that the outcome of the war in Ukraine is important enough to invest all of that billions of aid into. | |
| So I am surprised that the Republicans aren't moving faster on the bill, but they are moving on it. | |
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The Cost of Isolationism
00:05:51
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| You just saw Mike Johnson. | |
| He just switched to 90. | |
| Well, he did, but interestingly, Donald Trump actually from his point of view. | |
| He said it was because he got an intelligence report that made him change his mind. | |
| So I'd be curious to know what was in that report. | |
| Yeah, well, he made it clear that he read the reports, believed them, and thinks that if anyone thinks that Putin will stop with Ukraine, they're living in Cloud Cookie land, which brings me back to you, Tommy. | |
| Why are you living in Cloud Cookie Land about Vladimir Putin? | |
| Why do you not think that if he was to prevail in Ukraine to actually beat a sovereign democratic European country, he wouldn't just march into another one? | |
| He's a ruthless Russian dictator. | |
| And since when did Republicans suck up to ruthless Russian dictators and say, go on, help yourself to sovereign democratic countries? | |
| I thought you were the absolute epitome of saving freedom and democracy, weren't you? | |
| Well, I'll tell you this. | |
| There are a lot of neocons in my party who love war and they love the military-industrial complex and they would love to continue wars all around the world because it lines their pockets. | |
| I'm talking about people like Dick Cheney and Nikki Haley. | |
| Dick Cheney and Nikki Haley are not America first conservatives like was birthed during the Make America Great Again movement where we said we are done with endless wars. | |
| We are done with going in and meddling in other nations and then spending more money to rebuild those nations. | |
| And a lot of us have had enough of it because we've seen that the fruits of that have not proven anything positive for the American people or our way of life. | |
| But I'll also say this. | |
| There's a lot of talk about should we help Ukraine? | |
| Should we not help Ukraine? | |
| Like I said before, Piers, let's make it alone. | |
| Ukraine is a mineral-rich, natural resources-rich territory. | |
| They should be able to repay us. | |
| If indeed they are able to take our generous handouts, they should be able to repay us. | |
| So I don't understand why that can't be put on the table and why there's such heavy pushback for that. | |
| But out of interest. | |
| They do, in fact, beat Russia with our help. | |
| Right, but are you comfortable for Vladimir Putin to win? | |
| Do you think that's in America's national interest, given what you've just heard from a military expert about the axis of evil? | |
| Quite clearly, Iran, North Korea, China, all invested in Russia, prevailing here. | |
| Why would that not send massive alarm bells to you about what's going on in the geopolitical part of this? | |
| It certainly does. | |
| But again, if Ukraine can win this war without American boots on the ground, that would be great. | |
| They haven't given us the indication that they are able to do that. | |
| And how many years is this going to drag on? | |
| How much more U.S. funding is going to drag on? | |
| And also, why isn't Europe chipping in a little bit more? | |
| I'm sorry, Piers, but you'd think maybe the U.S. didn't have to be the babysitter. | |
| Well, I would say I'm right. | |
| I'd also say on the right. | |
| Well, hang on that. | |
| I would say the UK has, but other countries have been lagging. | |
| And you're right. | |
| I've always agreed with Donald Trump, by the way, about NATO countries not pulling their weight financially. | |
| It shouldn't be left to America to always be the ones who do pay their dues when others don't. | |
| So I completely agree about that point of it. | |
| But I just find it staggering that anyone in America would genuinely think that letting Putin win would be good for America, because it wouldn't be. | |
| It would embolden one of your great historical enemies. | |
| Let's bring in Francesca here on that because you're not. | |
| I would just say it's an awkward position for Tommy to be in because the reality is that there's total hypocrisy here, that this is the one war that Republicans are like, oh, our God-King Emperor told us we don't like this war, and so we have to figure out a way to not like this war, but like all the other wars, which is Donald Trump. | |
| And here's Donald Trump's worldview. | |
| I think Tommy is tapping into something very real in the Republican Party, which is a sense of isolationism, right? | |
| They're like, we don't want wars abroad. | |
| We want wars here on our own people, like black people, brown people, and the southern border. | |
| We love those kinds of wars. | |
| Well, she will hang on, She never said anything. | |
| Let me finish. | |
| Hang on. | |
| Hang on, let me finish. | |
| Hang on. | |
| Let me just... | |
| On that point, no, I can't let you say that without challenging that. | |
| She never said anything like that. | |
| And the truth is about the southern border, it's not the cozy little picture that you paint of some poor woman and their baby, you know, being stopped from coming and having lunch. | |
| The situation of the southern border, whether you're on the left or the right or any political side in America, is an absolute disaster that everybody knows is an absolute disaster. | |
| So to categorize as racism, I think is completely wrong. | |
| Oh, I... | |
| They don't call it racist. | |
| It just happens to be Latinos and black people that get the boots on their necks. | |
| But when it comes to law and order on our God Emperor, who's currently in his first criminal trial right now, that's fine. | |
| He can flaunt whatever laws he wants. | |
| The thing is this, I don't believe that we need to support those endless wars. | |
| I think Tommy's absolutely correct. | |
| And I think the base of both the Democratic and the Republican parties, the left, the right, whatever you want to call it, are sick and tired. | |
| Because as Piers, you aptly laid out, there's never a question of where the money's going to come from when it comes to war. | |
| But whenever we want anything like, I don't know, money for education or paid family leave or reigning in, you know, climate chaos, then it's like, oh, my goodness. | |
| And it's usually Republicans who are like, trillions of dollars of debt. | |
| But if Donald Trump is re-elected, he's going to extend that debt by extending the tax breaks that he gave to his billionaire friends. | |
| And that added almost $2 trillion to our deficit. | |
| But no one's asking how we're going to pay for that. | |
| So I'm pointing out the hypocrisy on the left and the right. | |
| Leading Democrats are full of it when it comes to endless war. | |
| And I'm the first to call that out. | |
| Again, we need an actual diplomatic solution. | |
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Trump's Hypocrisy on Alliances
00:05:19
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| Yes, Putin is an unstable actor, but there has to be a way forward that isn't just more war. | |
| I agree with you. | |
| We don't want him to win, but also how can we actually move this forward that doesn't involve simply funneling more money in the United States? | |
| Let me bring Chris back in there. | |
| I mean, I just think people are very naive about people like Vladimir Putin. | |
| He is a ruthless dictator. | |
| He basically behaves like a mob boss. | |
| He kills political rivals. | |
| He jails them and they mysteriously die. | |
| He kills with impunity people he thinks are traitors to Russia. | |
| Even on British soil, he did it with poison and so on. | |
| This is a guy who does whatever he thinks he wants to do to get what he wants. | |
| And he wants Ukraine. | |
| And I think the idea that if he prevails there, it enhances America's interests or security is for the birds. | |
| Yes, to that point, I think one of the greatest strengths of America is our alliances around the world. | |
| It's one of the reasons why a country of 330-something million people can punch above its weight class is because we honor our alliances. | |
| So part of the reason for this foreign aid bill is to show our adversaries that we're willing to back up our alliances. | |
| Because without friends in this world, we would be in a lot of trouble, I think. | |
| And the southern border, that's one example where we haven't invested enough, I think, in national security at the border and not just putting military units on the border there, because you have to do more than that. | |
| You have to invest in Mexico. | |
| People, I don't think they realize Mexico is one of our greatest allies. | |
| They're our largest trading partner. | |
| And jobs that are being shipped out of Asia and out of China, companies are looking to leave there and go to Mexico. | |
| So I think in the next 10 years, Mexico is going to be one of our greatest allies. | |
| And finding a way to cooperate on the issue at the border with immigration, something that is mutually beneficial, I think is going to be in the interest of everyone. | |
| And so, yeah, I think alliances, whether it's with Mexico, alliances with our partners in Europe, and promoting them to step up to the plate and take on more of the burden of the cost of the defense cost, then yeah, I think that that's also important. | |
| Yeah, I do too. | |
| All of this comes back to Donald Trump. | |
| Can I just say all of it comes back to Trump? | |
| Trump was the reason that there wasn't a bipartisan border bill passed. | |
| Biden was ready to sign it. | |
| I personally disagreed with it, but a bunch of leading Republicans did. | |
| And then, oh, God Emperor stepped in and said, no, not yet. | |
| And so I want to know what Tommy's answer to that is putting all of this on Biden when Biden was the one to say, let's move forward with border security. | |
| All right. | |
| All right, Tommy, last word to you. | |
| I can't wait to talk to somebody. | |
| Yeah, I can't wait to talk about border security with Francesca because she's got a very limited knowledge of the subject. | |
| I wonder how many times she's been there. | |
| I've been six. | |
| Go with me next time. | |
| All right. | |
| The bipartisan border bill was a sham and a joke. | |
| It gave your president, Biden, sleepy over there, poo-poo pants. | |
| It gave him the authority to shut down the border. | |
| We know he's not going to shut down the border. | |
| He never considered. | |
| Yeah, if you're trying to debate the cognitive abilities between your president and mine, let's go, my friend. | |
| But I will say, our border is wide open. | |
| We don't just have mothers and children coming over. | |
| Yeah, okay. | |
| You got it. | |
| You convinced the world that Joe Biden is cognitively responsive. | |
| That'll be a good debate for another day. | |
| But as it comes back to our southern border, we've got terrorists coming across our southern border. | |
| We've got military-age men coming across our southern border. | |
| And by the way, it's bankrupting our nation. | |
| It's bankrupting your major blue cities where they don't know where to put these people. | |
| And the black and brown people that you talk about in these major American cities that happen to be American, they are the ones getting the short end of the stick as their facilities and their resources are being used to take care of people who have no legal right to be here. | |
| So if you want to talk about that bipartisan border bill, it was a joke. | |
| Also, your president today could take executive action to solve the problem as my president, Donald Trump, did. | |
| He chose not to. | |
| He chooses not to because he sees these people as future voters. | |
| He wants the Democrat Party to remain in power. | |
| And that is why we have an invasion at our southern border. | |
| Biden continued all of Trump's policies at the border. | |
| I just want to name that. | |
| Like, I supervised it. | |
| But you know what, Francesca? | |
| There comes a point. | |
| You know what, Francesca? | |
| There comes a point in every presidency where you cannot keep blaming the guy before you. | |
| You can't. | |
| No, no, I'm... | |
| Biden has done nothing on the southern border. | |
| Nothing. | |
| He continued Trump's policies of Title 42, preventing anyone from seeking asylum. | |
| That is illegal under international law. | |
| So why isn't the right celebrating that that was Joe Biden who continued a Trump policy? | |
| I don't get it. | |
| I'm not blaming him. | |
| I'm blaming him for a Trump policy that the right should ostensibly like. | |
| I don't like it, but everyone, like the Republicans should. | |
| It's just wild to me. | |
| But yes, you know, back to Ukraine. | |
| I've said it again. | |
| We actually need... | |
| Look, here's the world that Trump wants. | |
| Trump wants a world where all these wars are over quick. | |
| Tommy said it herself, right? | |
| What's wrong with you? | |
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Free Speech vs Genocide Propaganda
00:03:51
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| Look over in Israel. | |
| Well, what's wrong with that is 25,000 women and children killed in Gaza having been suspected militants or not militants or who cares? | |
| Or they were in a neonatal unit in a hospital waiting for their child to survive a war as they gave birth early. | |
| So that's what's wrong with just allowing any one of our allies to do whatever they want. | |
| Well, that's Trump's worldview. | |
| Israel, of course, is responding. | |
| Hang on. | |
| On that point, Israel is responding to one of the worst terror attacks of modern times in which Hamas slaughtered 1,200 people, including innocent people. | |
| Someone remind Francesca. | |
| Premium? | |
| Pierce, you've got to remind Francesca that there was a ceasefire on October 6th, and the terrorist organization Hamas chose to break that ceasefire. | |
| Hamas also keeps their military stockpiles underneath of schools and hospitals, something that she's conveniently ignoring because she has taken on the Hamas propaganda and made it her own. | |
| Congratulations. | |
| No, congratulations. | |
| So it's cool to kill a bunch of preemie babies in their incubators. | |
| Is that what you're saying? | |
| It's cool to fire upon hospital workers. | |
| It's cool to level colleges and universities, Tommy, because supposedly there's Hamas units under them. | |
| Is that what you're saying? | |
| It's okay. | |
| This is all collateral damage. | |
| Supposedly, supposedly. | |
| That's what they actually do. | |
| That's actually the strategy. | |
| So it's okay. | |
| That is the Hamas propaganda strategy 101. | |
| No, it's Israel goes to great lengths more than any other country in the world, maybe outside of the United States, to avoid civilian death. | |
| You know that. | |
| I know that, but you're reading the Hamas propaganda and you're spreading it around to the world. | |
| But unfortunately, it's sad to me that you are public. | |
| That's why there are AI systems, but I guess that's what I'm saying. | |
| That's up to people as soon as they got home to their homes. | |
| Like, do you read? | |
| Do you read the newspaper? | |
| Do you understand what's coming out? | |
| IDF soldiers are saying, I pressed the button to murder an entire family because there was a suspected militant as soon as they entered their home and I killed dozens of their family members. | |
| That just came out. | |
| That's not propaganda. | |
| That is an Israeli reporter talking to IDF soldiers. | |
| But like, whatever. | |
| It's fine. | |
| The fact that everyone's so triggered when anyone talks about the truth shows you what side needs the propaganda in this genocide, and that's Israel. | |
| I've got to leave it there. | |
| I think Francesca has a protest at Columbia to get to. | |
| All right. | |
| Let's leave it there. | |
| Free speech, Tommy. | |
| You believe in free speech? | |
| Remember free speech the right? | |
| Is that a problem? | |
| Yeah, free speech doesn't cover actually making threats against Jewish people, does it? | |
| Sure. | |
| Yeah, you've got so much evidence to back you up, Piers. | |
| But keep telling yourself that the college teachers... | |
| There were literally people chanting about Hamas in those protests. | |
| Putin and college students. | |
| Are those the biggest threats, if I'm clear? | |
| I think if you're a Jewish student in New York or someone like that, and you have people literally chanting support for the terror group which slaughtered 1,200 people on October the 7th, yeah, that's not free speech. | |
| That's actually a threat on people's lives. | |
| Have been arrested in their opposition to this genocide. | |
| Jewish people in this country have been leading the charge to stop this genocide. | |
| Okay, they've been so brave. | |
| And Donald Trump says probably the most anti-Semitic thing. | |
| This is the guy who's running for president and says, if you're Jewish and you don't vote for me, that's terrible. | |
| You hate Israel. | |
| You hate yourself. | |
| Is that not anti-Semitic? | |
| Come on now. | |
| Well, he has a Jewish son-in-law, and in fact, his daughter is now Jewish. | |
| So he can't be aware of that. | |
| That's the guy who got a $2 billion deal from Saudi Arabia? | |
| Hell yeah. | |
| All right. | |
| I've got to leave it there. | |
| But thank you for a spirited debate to Tommy, to Chris, and to Francesca. | |
| I appreciate it. | |
| Thank you very much. | |
| Thank you. | |