Noah Rothman Navigating Global Turmoil
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The 2022 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2024. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.votewebdomain from godaddy.com. Get yours now. Welcome to another episode of Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Warren and Sam Stone.

Our first guest up today, Noah Rothman, senior writer at National Review. He is the author of the new book, The Rise of the New Puritans, Fighting Back Against Progressive War on Fun and Unjust, Social Justice and the Unmaking of America. He has also written extensively recently on Israel, Hamas, and everything going on there, as well as with Iran. And so, Noah Rothman, thank you for joining us. Welcome to the program. Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate it.

So, Noah, this recently you had 400 federal employees basically stage a mutiny about Biden asking him to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Is there a takeover? I mean, Republicans can sort of state department. Yeah. They like to talk about the deep state. Do we have a Palestinian Hamas deep state problem?

Well, we've always had a quote-unquote deep state problem in the State Department. This is not an unfamiliar condition to anybody who recalls how the State Department responded to Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice assuming their duties as Secretary of State. There is a process-oriented bias in the state towards diplomacy. That's their job. This is the diplomacy.

The Department of State exists to perform diplomacy, and when diplomacy is no longer on offer, its representatives have a tendency to revolt. This one is far less concerning than previous iterations. It's only receiving undue attention because it's a cause celeb of the press to undermine the Israeli-American alliance. We have on offer here a very unconvincing story.

dissent cable authored by unnamed members of the State Department, none of whom have since come out and affirmed their support for this initiative. It is unworkable. It is not especially compelling prose. And what we've seen to lend it gravity and authority in places like The New York Times is blow-by-blow accounts of how the administration is trying to mollify this very

very kind of modest level of dissent in the State Department and the State Department officials breaking down, literally crying, according to the Times reporter in these meetings. It is a very emotive display and the emotion, I think, is designed to convey a lot more gravity than would otherwise be present from just a simple read of the text.

You know, Noah, that's a great point because I grew up with a little sister and she had a terrifying ability to cry on demand. Real tears. And I can't tell you how many times that got me into trouble growing up. And apparently it sounds like that's a skill they've developed at the State Department.

Well, it's a skill they developed in college. I mean, we spent the last 10 years. That's true. We spent the last 10 years incubating this idea, this belief that emotion itself conveys authority. It's part of this phenomenon in which we have simultaneously profoundly fragile individuals who are nonetheless aggressive in

in promoting their interests and threaten you with the prospect of being on the receiving end of emotion. Where did we think these people were going? For the last 10 years, we've introduced them into places like the State Department, USAID, breaking news desks at every major media institution. That is what we were training these people to do. And lo, there they are. Actions have consequences. That's a really good point. They're a TikTok-educated organization.

Miseducated. Miseducated age group who base everything on emotion. It's really quite remarkable. You wrote a piece this week. Why is Biden funding Iran amid a shooting war with his terrorist proxies? So he wants to give him $10 billion with what's going on over there. What are they thinking?

Yeah, so the rationale for this is very similar to the one that was retailed about a month and a half ago preceding the 10-7 attacks, but nevertheless not derailed by the 10-7 attacks in which the administration tried to unfreeze some funds that were attributable to a sale of petroleum to a South Korean interest. And those funds were frozen because they would have triggered sanctions both on South Korean investors

And they tried to unfreeze that and say, well, there's checks on these funds that can only be used for humanitarian purposes. Not a big deal. And there was an outcry and a revolt. A dude deserved one because the really great thing about money is that it's fungible. That's what everybody likes money for. You can do whatever you want with it, really. And that's the regime in America.

Iran basically said, they said, we'll do whatever we want with this money up to and include. I mean, if there are texts on it that it can't use it for whatever purposes you want, it has to be attributed to humanitarian purposes. That frees up all the other money that was erstwhile devoted to humanitarian purposes, and that can go wherever it wants. But it has and is being devoted to terrorist enterprises. From what I understand, though, part of the agreement was then the money would be transferred back and maintained in banks in Iran. And if that's the case...

I mean, all they have to do is come up with literally a fake statement. I mean, there's no auditing of those banks by any Western institution, is there?

Yeah, right, or Qatar. I mean, there is control over some of those funds. But again, it's just the fact of the matter is that money is fungible. Even if there is oversight of those particular funds, they free up assets elsewhere to be devoted to terroristic enterprises. The same thing is happening here with the $10 billion. This is supposedly money that was frozen because it was coming from Iraq to pay for electricity that is generated in Iran and imported. And the logic here is that Iraq can't get any –

electricity from anywhere else which is nonsense they import hundreds of thousands of kilowatt hours from saudi arabia which is just fine electricity does the exact same thing as iranian electricity keeps the lights on but what makes this especially egregious is that it is coming at a time when we are now functionally engaged in a war with iranian terrorist proxies across the region

There's been, at least since I wrote that piece, which probably is dated now, 56 attacks on U.S. occupied positions in Iraq and Syria from Shiite militias, which have produced a number of casualties amongst U.S. service personnel. U.S. service personnel have been injured in those attacks. We're shooting missiles that are being fired from the Arabian Peninsula by the Houthi militia.

Out of the sky with U.S. Navy assets, Americans are being held hostage by an Iranian proxy inside Gaza in Hamas. We're at war with these Iranian elements, and we're trying to deter a broader conflict by parking two carrier groups and a guided missile submarine off the coast of the Levant to try to keep Hezbollah contained. What are we doing?

We're funding a war in Ukraine. We're funding Ukraine's defense against Russian invasion. And Russia is being armed and supplied by Iran. Russia's fielding Iranian drones. And we're shooting them out of the sky with U.S. assets. We're funding two sides of this conflict. What are we doing?

What do you think, what is their mindset? I mean, why do they think this is a good idea? Well, so I'm reluctant to spelunk into the minds of the administration officials, because God knows what you'll find in there. And I don't want to judge their hearts. You can only assume, I have to assume, that this has something, if not everything, to do with an inherited affectation

affinity from the Obama administration for the restoration of something resembling the JCPOA, something that looks like an Iran nuclear deal, because I can't otherwise understand it. It's not strategically competent. It's operationally inept, for the reasons I just outlined. And otherwise, it has to be an ideological goal, right? I mean, that's my thought, too, but it just doesn't make any sense. It's like you said, we're actually...

funding an entity that's not only in a proxy shooting war with us, but they're providing Russia, who we're spending billions of dollars trying to kick out of Ukraine, with weapons. It makes no sense. And I'm just wondering, is there anybody in that room when these decisions are made saying, you know, this probably isn't the best idea we've had today? Because it doesn't make sense.

Well, like I said, I can't say one way or the other. You would think that there presumably would be voices of caution and prudence in the room, but they're most certainly just being shouted down or ignored. I can't say one way or the other, but you would hope that somebody would offer the common sense rationale that you just did. One of the things I see, and you're much closer to it, so I'm asking you if this is the case, past administrations really had

area experts, policy experts in different areas, different regions of the globe that were the go-tos. And you knew that was the person guiding it. And you could, you know, read into what their thinking and philosophy was. The Biden administration doesn't seem like it's that organized. It seems to be more chaotic where no one outside of that building seems to know who's making those calls or providing that input. Is that

accurate assessment or not? I don't know if I could say one way or the other. That's not an assessment that is...

completely wildly out of base. I mean, I think a lot of people would share that view. I mean, contrary to your assessment, I am not actually that close to the White House or Washington. I wouldn't assume you're that close to them. I just figured you'd have a bit better insight than I do. Not particularly. Yeah, and the decision-making does seem chaotic, but I'm inclined to blame the principal, the president, more than I am

other elements in the administration. I mean, if there's a coherent policy rationale, I mean, all of there's a lot of competing voices, depending on the executive agency you're talking about. But the president himself doesn't seem to have consistent instincts on foreign policy, say that they're bad.

He has been consistently wrong on foreign policy for much of his career, and his instincts seem to constantly conflict with each other in some fashion or form. I would say the international policy class has been wrong for 50 years on almost everything. There's a case to be made there, too. But certainly when it comes to Joe Biden's instincts, his instincts...

are generally to err on the side of what he defines as American interests broadly. And I think those instincts are defensible. What he fails to consistently fails to do is to see them through in a way that maximizes American interests. So he thinks we're overextended in Afghanistan and withdraws in the most shambolic way possible. He's

He thinks that it's appropriate and right and good, and I agree, to degrade Russian forces in Ukraine as much as we possibly can, but only does so with the most piddling, limited introduction of offensive weapons that you possibly can. And then when that proves insufficient, provide more and therefore undermine the objective.

The same thing we're seeing with Israel right now, where they're talking out of both sides of their mouth. Yeah, Israel has all the slack in the world to neutralize Hamas, but we're not going to let them do it unmolested. They're not able to clear out the hospital necessarily. They can't occupy the peninsula as compared to what?

Or rather the strip. As compared to what? So the administration has two competing instincts in its own head that it's wrestling with in public, and it's a rather embarrassing display. Well, and it seems to me when we make these decisions, whether it's Ukraine or Israel-Hammis...

We have a minute left here, but foreign policy needs to get back is what achieves a victory? There's nothing else. It seems like they're always trying to walk this tight line. Can I make certain people in my coalition happy while doing X? And it just seems like we always do this in foreign policy. If we're going to go in and we're going to spend resources and treasure,

You just got to go in and win. I mean, it says, guys, we're going to go win. You're not going to like some of this, but at the end of it, we're going to win this and we're going to win decisively. I think that would be a nice change in U.S. foreign policy.

It would be a nice change. And back to your original question, you most certainly can't make the tiny sliver of a minority that's become very vocal in this particular conflict, the Israel-Hamas conflict, you can't make them happy because their interests conflict with the United States. Our interests conflict with our own. You have to sacrifice some of these people, and those are some really compelling candidates. Yes, there are. Folks, Breaking Battlegrounds will be back with more from Noah Rothman in just a moment.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Folks, you've been hearing us talk for almost a year now. It's been, I think, actually, Chuck, it might even be over a year that we've been talking about the opportunity to invest with our friends at YRefi. Folks, you've got to check this out. It's up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return. You can compound your interest. You can take it as income. There's no attack on your principal if you need to withdraw it at any time.

It's a fantastic opportunity. We highly encourage you to go check them out. Invest the letter Y, then refy.com or give them a call at 888-Y-REFY24 and tell them Chuck and Sam sent you. All right. We're back with Noah from the National Review. Noah, is Biden getting weak need on Israel? Is he trying to pacify a bunch of people and getting a little weak need on this now? Yeah.

I am not sure if Biden himself is getting weakening, but he sounds like it. His administration, particularly in state and certainly in elements of the Pentagon, including Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, most certainly are. There is an element of their support for Israel that is constrained by domestic political necessities, particularly to mollify the far left wing.

of their coalition, and that has produced a couple of episodes of cognitive dissonance that are really hard to reconcile. First, there is this notion that we were talking about earlier that the administration says, yeah, you know, Israel is totally justified to take out Hamas, yet at the same time we don't want to see, for example, active firefights in hospitals, something that National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said.

Well, what's the alternative to that but to sacrifice the mission? And we're talking about, for example, one of many, the al-Shifa Hospital, which is a notorious Hamas command and control node that they use as a combat position. What is Israel supposed to do but return fire? The alternative is to back off entirely. Likewise, we have this comment from Lloyd Austin, not Lloyd Austin necessarily, but reported by Axios via Austin's quote-unquote growing anxiety.

With the White House's support for Israel's actions in Gaza and both – and the north, in Lebanon, where we're trying to deter Hezbollah from the provocations that it's pursuing, firing rockets into Israel and drawing responses from Israel. So actually it was reported a couple of days ago that Israel might be trying to, quote, provoke Hezbollah and create a pretext for a wider war in Lebanon.

Now, that has some historical antecedent. In the early 1980s, the Begin government did precisely that, tried to provoke a conflict with the PLO in Lebanon and succeeded and prosecuted that conflict rather adroitly. But that's not what's happening here. No. It's a bizarre introduction of that historical antecedent.

because what's happening here is we're having rockets fired on Israeli positions and Israel responding. Israel's not provoking anything. In fact, if there probably are voices in the government

the war cabinet that want to see Hezbollah neutralized and would probably have preferred to fight that fight than preferred to fight in the rat's nest in Gaza. But that is not what we saw. That is not what we are seeing. So to introduce that at all is just this very strange, clearly ideologically motivated comment that makes me suspicious about what they're thinking in the executive agencies broadly. Yeah.

Well, that's – it just seems like Hamas propaganda. I mean, Hamas doesn't care about their civilians. I mean, it's – you know, you've got their leadership over in Qatar with their billions of dollars of fortune. They don't care. And that's my concern. It seems like all of the Hamas reporting is a lot of propaganda from the New York Times just saying, oh, I got talking points from Hamas today. I'm going to report it as fact. And then where everything else with Israel, well, we haven't verified it yet.

It's a really strange and disconcerting issue. Yeah, I agree. And it seems that the administration is fully aware that the value that average Gazans present to Hamas is in their capacity to draw fire and die.

and act as, serve as casualties that Hamas can say, well, this is a casualty attributable to Israeli action. Intellectually, the White House knows that, or at least they say that they talk a good game, but they don't take it to its logical conclusion.

Which is that only on the other side of a Hamas regime, only on the other side of a very successful operation that liquidates this regime and replaces it with something resembling a governing civilian authority, which does not exist in Gaza, will the Gazan suffering be alleviated. There's nothing – in the interim, there will only be more suffering.

So to have that logical leap will perhaps offend the sensibilities, particularly on the left, for whom the idea of occupation and military action and regime change and democracy promotion are anathema. So what's the alternative? This is the most important question ever. It replies to everything. The only question that matters is what is the alternative compared to what? And Israel's critics of its action in Gaza can't answer that question.

Well, I think – I mean if you look at the logical conclusion in the way that particularly all the other countries in the Middle East have made it very clear they do not want Palestinian refugees. And the reason is because they've been radicalized to the point that they would – they fear destabilize their own countries. So how does Israel ever solve this without –

Either you're going to have these flare-ups and they have to be given some latitude in them to respond or they have to carry through on what the left accuses them of and just wipe out the Gaza and the West Bank. Or they have to go in and indoctrinate those kids. I mean in 50 years from now, maybe that works. As we've seen in this country, it's not that hard and doesn't take that many generations to teach kids to believe whatever you want them to believe. So –

What other out is there? Well, two things. One is the milieu in which the Gotham people are steeped is a fabrication that has been imposed on them. We have polling now from a Ramallah-based pollster of the week talking to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, which demonstrates that Israel has a lot of work ahead of it.

These are people who fully believe, like to the tune of, it's a 70-30 issue, sometimes 80-20 issue, that the 10-7 massacre was justified and righteous, and that victory for the Palestinian territories will be the result of this war, and that if they had to choose between a one-state solution, a two-state solution, and a Palestinian state from the river to the sea, 75% would choose a Palestinian state from the river to the sea and eject everybody in the middle.

But, Noah, how do you—I mean, that's not—the problem is that's not going to change. I mean, that's the whole crux of the matter here. I don't view that opinion by those folks and those supporters of the United States changing that opinion. Do you? Well, so here's the thing. This is the second part. The peace process that culminated in the Abraham Accords has not been derailed by this conflict.

We actually have very little indication of that, save for the fact that when this erroneous hospital bombing was reported on October 18th, which turned out to be a short round rocket fired by Islamic Jihad militants, and there were some street demonstrations in places like Jordan, that doesn't happen without the consent of the regime and these controlled societies.

But otherwise, you have not seen a lot of street action, and you've still seen the coordination of governments like Jordan's government with Israel. You've seen Saudi Arabia sharing intelligence and actually using anti-missile systems to shoot down one of these Israel-bound rockets that were fired out of Yemen from the Houthis.

So you do have still some coordination and cooperation with the Arab states. And indeed, there's speculation that the 10-7 attack was supposed to derail the normalization process that was ongoing with Saudi Arabia. I don't think Israel will be put off with this normalization process with these governments, if not their people, if it executes a very strong maneuver that takes an Iranian proxy off the chessboard.

Okay, fantastic. Noah, we thank you very much, folks. We're going to keep Noah with us for one more segment here. And then the final segment, we're going to have Corinne Murdoch. She's done some reporting here in Arizona that we think you all should need to know about.

We're going to be coming back with more from Noah Rothman, senior writer at National Review. He's the author, Rise of the New Puritans, Fighting Back Against Progressive War on Fun. You can get that right now at Amazon and all your favorite local bookstores. Breaking Battlegrounds will be back in just a moment.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Continuing on the line with us for the third segment today, Noah Rothman, senior writer at National Review. Noah, one of the things that I've been watching in this conflict, and I wonder if now Israel needs to start considering a modification of their military strategy.

They are reliant on the U.S. for any deep strike capability. And clearly, Iran is heavily involved. I think if Israel had the capability, they need to start considering, you know, do we need the capability? Do we need the bombers? Do we need the deep strike capability?

Because probably President Trump's most successful move in office was the missile execution of the Iranian General Soleimani, which completely shut that regime down from their terror activities for a period of time. Does Israel need to consider getting that capability in their own hands? Well, so the premise is a little debatable. Israel certainly has long range capability in its intelligence services and intelligence

You would look back into its history from the Raid on Entebbe to the Asirak reactor strike. They do have the capacity to execute long-range offensive operations via the air. They're very risky. If one were to be undertaken when it comes to Iraq, or rather Iran, that would involve overflight rights in Iraq and refueling operations in midair over some very hostile territory.

states. So it's complicated logistically, but that's not necessarily a capability issue. So I don't necessarily know if they have an ordinance issue, a platform issue. What Israel is relying on the United States for are interceptor missiles, the Iron Dome missiles. That's the stuff that's manufactured in the U.S. and provided to Israel. They have their own capabilities, but they get a lot of that stuff from us. But when it comes to platforms, they're capable of

their own self-defense. In fact, that's part of the reason why there's sort of a domestic bit of confusion, particularly in Congress, or at least people who are following the debate in Congress, over why the proposition to proposed aid to Ukraine is so much bigger than the proposed aid to Israel. And the simple answer is Israel doesn't need it. Yeah, they have a lot of money. They just need access to buy them the weapons and materials we have.

No, I bet, too. And yeah, they have a very practiced military and this is a very capable, capable military, the idea. Noah, does the Republican electorate really care about issues anymore? It sure doesn't seem like it in a lot of ways. For example, we talked about two major issues here today, which, frankly, are really important. And it does affect them long term. But how they don't see it, some some folks in the constituency is bothersome to Sam and I.

It's bothersome to me. I wish I had an answer for that question. I like to think not, but it certainly does seem like there's a fair amount of complacency and that the Republican electorate is just kind of on autopilot right now. And it's coming at a time when the world is getting much more dangerous. The international threat environment is deteriorating rapidly. And, yeah, it does require sober and conscious efforts to combat that.

I do think Republicans – I don't think a single Republican voter would say I don't care about policy. In fact, quite a lot of them would say I want to restore a lot of the policies of the Trump administration that I like and supported. And I do too. The only problem with that is just about all the architects of those policies that I liked. The Trump administration's very tough approach on Russia was the hardest administration on Russia in my lifetime, and I've always been a Russia hawk.

And to see that from that administration was heartening, even if it conflicted almost entirely throughout the administration with the president's own rather capitulatory and obsequious rhetoric about the Russian president. But the policies were good. The immigration policies were good. The Israel policies were good.

Well, that was good. But the architects of those policies are hated. Donald Trump hates every one of them. You can't say a nice word about Mike Pompeo or John Bolton or half a dozen others in the administration. His biggest failure to me, Chuck, is his lack of loyalty. Loyalty is a one-way street, and that is to me a really, really major character flaw. It is. Noah, we've got about a minute left here. How did you get into reporting? How did you get into becoming a journalist?

I was a radio producer. Were you really? I was a producer of news talk radio at WABC in New York City for a lot of years and bounced around the radio world for a while and was doing news talk. And then the business got a little difficult after 2007. Just the environment turned against talk radio entirely. So I kind of got out of it. I went back to school, got a graduate degree and sort of fell into writing and reporting about politics and wanted to get into the opinion side.

And eventually migrated up the chain from Mediaite to Hot Air over at Salem, Salem Communications, and then to Commentary Magazine, which is an intellectual magazine of opinion and analysis, publishing since 1945, and then joined National Review in February. That's fantastic. Do you ever get anxiety with all the things you feel like you need to read day in, day out?

Just to stay on top of things? Not really the reading part. It's the writing part because the reading part is the enjoyable part, the intake, the consuming of the information. I find myself having too much to say. I don't have enough time to say it. So it's a triage experience. Well, Noah, let our listeners know where they can catch you. Where can they find you at?

You can find me at National Review, Noah Rothman. You could read me on Twitter at Noah C. Rothman. Or you could read either of my two books at Amazon, Unjust, The Unmaking of America, and The Rise of the New Puritans, Fighting Back Against Progressive War on Fun. Noah Rothman, thanks a million for joining us. We hope you join us again sometime in the future. Have a great weekend. My pleasure. Thank you, guys.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Warren and Sam Stone. I want to thank Noah Rothman from National Review for his time today. Really appreciated all his comments. Up next, a reporter who's covering some things happening here in our home state of Arizona that really I think have some national interest, Chuck, and probably need to be on more people's radar because this is happening in virtually every state, maybe not exactly the way it did here, but in one of the cases.

Uh, but we have Corinne Murdoch reporter. Uh, she prioritizes truth and rejects those partisan takes that Sperry favored narrative. I can speak from experience. That is absolutely true. She's one of the, the few reporters out there I consider absolutely on point. Uh,

In addition to AZ Free News, her reporting appears in The Daily Wire and Be The People News. She got her start reporting with the Star News Network. Her proudest reporting accomplishment to date was when the Rush Verlimbaugh Show cited her investigative reporting prior to her passing, which is pretty darn amazing. Corinne, thank you for joining us today. Welcome to the program.

Thank you so much for having me. So you did a piece fairly recently about something that, frankly, I think is happening all over the country. We're just not hearing enough about it. And maybe a lot of folks don't entirely understand how, frankly, dramatic this could be in terms of

increasing their energy bills in terms of making gasoline and other things much, much more expensive, really increasing the cost of their daily life. And that is that we're

We are now seeing ESG and ESG-promoting investment funds move really heavily, and it's happening here now in Arizona. You did a great piece on it that basically a story that no one else is covering. Right. So let's describe it. But first, describe to our audience again what ESG is. We keep hearing the acronym. I'm sorry. I jumped right ahead. And people always forget what it means. So, you know –

Please explain to the audience exactly, Corinne, what ESG means and what this means with people like BlackRock coming in and investing in our energy infrastructure.

Right. So ESG stands for environmental social governance measures. It's basically these standards that are set on a global scale and making sure that all of these states, all of these cities, everybody meets these standards. They are somewhat tailored to individual areas, but for the most part, the goal is to march on to zero carbon by 2021.

Initially it was like 2030 and now it's, it's 2050. So moving completely away from fossil fuels and the social and governance aspect kind of has to do with some of the more progressive ideologies that are trying to be met there. But the environmental is, is about zero carbon specifically. And that's, that's entirely what the move is toward is total electrification of everything. Cars, cars,

All energy sources, trying to rely entirely on solar and wind and getting rid of anything that has fossil fuels in it. And that includes, interestingly, because Arizona actually gets a huge percentage of our power from nuclear with the Palo Verde reactors. But they don't view nuclear as necessarily clean energy, do they?

No, they didn't mention nuclear. Their focus is entirely on anything they call renewables. And they can see that for some time in some of these coming decades, they'll have to rely on things like nuclear as backups. But their goal is to

quote-unquote, get back to nature in loose terms, which is solar and wind. But they do concede that they need some other alternative sources like nuclear. You know, it's interesting because one of the things we've heard actually BlackRock and its CEO start kind of running away from ESG because they said it's been harmed. And yet we see that was a few months ago and then here they are just a few weeks ago saying,

And they're buying up companies that work with these utilities with the intent to install ESG philosophy in their management of these utilities. So it's really kind of talking out of both sides of their mouth at this point.

Yes, I will say it is Blackstone, which they're pretty comparable, BlackRock and Blackstone, but Blackstone is right up there. They're the ones that bought out this company that is backing the ESG effort in Arizona, and they're very much aligned, all of them across the board with their goals.

They're in lockstep, so to speak. They just – Blackstone provides a lot of the financial backing and support that's necessary to overhaul these changes. It's just – none of it's – I mean, look, I don't mind alternative energies. I don't mind us trying everything in the book. I just want a stable, cheap bread. But you want it stable. I mean, for example, Wall Street Journal did a report this week –

where half of the Los Angeles area EV chargers don't work. Now, think about that. They're asking us to switch from combustible engines, which, folks, that's just gas, to EVs. And in Los Angeles, which pushes it, and I am sure it is quite a status symbol to have an EV car, right? Half the chargers don't even work. And these people think we're going to be relying on all this by 2050? Yeah.

This is just insanity. Well, and to that point, you know, I have family and friends who have come from California that have had EVs, and they will tell you that it's kind of...

You have to work your whole day around some of these technologies because you're right, there's not places to charge them, but also the charge times don't last as often. You're stuck in traffic and you're sitting there stressed thinking about where am I going to find my next charging point? Do I have enough charge? And if it's winter, the battery runs out faster.

Can it start up in the mornings? Are you going to be late for work? There's all these factors that go into thinking about using a product, whereas you get a car, you know, a regular car. You just go find a gas station. I really don't think there's much to think about in a day. And my day doesn't involve working around these technologies. But with electric, it does. You know, one of the things, Chuck, that we dealt with at the City of Phoenix all the time, right, were parking meters.

Parking meters are an incredibly simple thing, much simpler than an EV charging station. And yet, if you go into downtown Phoenix at any given time, a goodly portion of those meters aren't working. And I would bet you that in L.A. and all these other places, you're going to see what they're having there, what you said, with all these chargers being down, simply because government has never proven that they can maintain this type of basic varied infrastructure. And we're seeing it in real time. They can't do it.

Um, Corinne, let's talk about the article you wrote and posted on November 14th. ASU law professor deletes viral tweet detailing fake racial attack against Muslims. Now, this seems to be a very standard procedure for progressives now. They do lots of fake. The demand for hate crimes far exceeds actual hate crimes. Can you give our audience a little background about it and how he's replied and what ASU has done, if anything, about it?

To my knowledge, ASU has not done anything. Khalid Beydoun is a widely known Muslim professor and media expert. He's tapped for a lot of the Ivy League commentaries, and he's invited on speaking tours and has had several book deals on countering Islamophobia. And I

In my article and in my research, I also discovered that several years ago, he had pulled something similar with another viral tweet where he'd

made a claim that race and religion, specifically concerning Islam, were a motivator for hate speech or alleged hate crime back in that time, and then deleted the tweet after it went viral. So he's done this recently again with the Islam Hamas war, detailing an alleged, I guess they call it hate speech against Islam,

before he deleted it, before Community Notes came in and said, this can't be true. Right. And if you read the article, it's very clear why it alleges that somebody sent a message, but the message looks like it came from this individual person's phone, which she claims is a follower, but Community Notes said perhaps it was Bejoon himself, and he denies that, of course, but who's to say because it was deleted? Yeah.

It seems like ASU, there is actually sort of in a way more debate on the campus because you did have the school senate. I think it was the school senate president, Chuck, who they blocked some of these more radical motions that were coming forward. But ASU, like every campus right now, has a really twisted narrative on Israel and the Middle East that seems to be pervasive today.

And we're seeing again at ASU acts of violence. Fortunately, so far, no one's actually been hurt. But violence and intimidation. Is there any are you hearing any consideration from leaders on that campus that they need to start addressing some of these things? And maybe, I don't know, making sure that their classes don't teach lies about Israel like it's a genocidal apartheid state?

See, that's the interesting thing in all my Arizona and national coverage I've looked at. These campuses and university leaders want to equate both sides of the issue and give credence to both, but what's happening is it's just raising tensions on both sides. It seems that you can't have both presented as equal because ultimately one is going to

raise up intentions and come out against the other. I mean, we've seen that across campuses. Like, students are going after students based on ideology, and professors are saying, well, we have to treat everything fairly. And clearly, the students don't see it that way, and the community doesn't see it that way.

I don't know how much longer they can play fair to both sides. I guess my question is, it's not to me a matter of fairness, Chuck, when you're allowing students to be taught in your university things that are completely ahistorical and anti-factual. This isn't opinion. This isn't... Well, look, we talk about this. I don't mind people having different opinions than me. But he's clearly lied twice. I'm sure if you really... I'm really sure if...

If Corinne spent six months going through everything he's taught, she'd probably find a hundred lies that he's teaching people. Yeah, I mean – These are the simplest ones to pick up. Beyond just ASU though, this is this whole narrative that like this is being taught in schools. Kids are being taught in school that Israel is a genocidal apartheid state. Now those two things are provably untrue. You can debate what they do in the settlements in the West Bank and that sort of thing. Those are –

Factually inaccurate. The idea that Palestine has existed for thousands of years. Factually inaccurate. Judaism is an older religion than Islam. So, I mean, these narratives. Don't universities have some sort of obligation to teach people actual truth? Well, like truth in reporting. You have to do truth in reporting. Why shouldn't there be truth in education? Yeah. I don't know. Corinne, is there...

Is there much of a push or any pushback against some of this stuff that's being taught? Or are you hearing of any of that?

No, it's odd because it's increasingly become this everything is valid. And it seems that they believe that a completely open square unchecked has become the venue for determining truth when it seems like there's no real basis for truth, although they may not say that in their own terms. But that's increasingly become clear to me. And I'm reporting on these universities.

It's a very Marxist philosophy in education. 100%. Corinne, what next articles are you working on now? What do you have coming up people should look forward to?

Well, it's interesting because speaking of ASU, there is something coming out that I have done and it has to do with the integrity project. So keep an eye out for that because I found something very interesting about their past version of themselves, so to speak, that they don't widely publicize and they have a huge hand in planning how they're going to be quote unquote tracking misinformation in the state. Yeah.

And we've seen how that goes. These these third party university groups, nonprofits play a role in censoring people in the past. So so so let's back up for a minute. This is explain, first of all, what is the Integrity Project?

The Integrity Project is a nonprofit that is heavily partnered with ASU and it's pretty much derived from ASU faculty and members and leadership. The advisor to the president is on their board and one of their journalism school leaders is on their board.

and several of their major donors on the board. And they are tasked with doing research and doing research and all this other information on tracking misinformation in the state of Arizona and combating quote-unquote like fake news, but they hate the term fake news. That's what they say. So they are determining what

valid news. It's Arizona's version of the Stanford Internet Observatory and apparently I didn't even know it existed. So folks stay tuned and keep up to date with Corinne Marduk's work. Corinne how do people follow you and keep in touch with everything you're doing?

Follow me, Corinne Murdoch, on Twitter, Instagram. That's about it. I keep it simple. I'm mostly on Twitter. Or X now. Twix. I've taken it calling it Twix. Corinne Murdoch, thank you so much for joining us today, folks. You can catch her, like she said, on Twitter and all the various social media. But she's doing great work here and like a lot of reporters around the country digging into some of these stories. Breaking Battlegrounds back next week.

The 2022 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2024. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web with a yourname.votewebdomain from godaddy.com. Get yours now. Welcome to the podcast segment of Breaking Battlegrounds. We want to thank our guests today, Noah Rothman and Corinne Murdoch. Chuck, one of the things from Noah's conversation, you keyed on it, I kind of did too, is

No one is talking about what is the – how does Israel get out of this situation? What's the end game? I'm not hearing it from people in Israel. I'm not hearing it from people in our government. It's certainly not coming from the international chattering class. Yeah. You know, so I –

Our interview, and I'm forgetting his name, but the Wall Street Journal reporter covering the Ukraine war we had on a month ago. It was brilliant. Yeah. And I was actually having dinner with a friend who's a Navy SEAL the other night. And he made that comment you and I have discussed a lot saying, you know, is there a ceasefire? How do you get there? He goes, that's temporary.

Someone has to win. Now, I'm paraphrasing them, but someone has to win. And I think this is what always the PAL doctrine was of calling PAL folks. If you don't know, for using U.S. military action, the question was, is it vital to national security interest, right? Do we have a clear attainable objective? Have the risks and costs fully and frankly be analyzed, okay? I view this situation the same way with Hamas, right?

We try to... We do what all nice people try to do. And I know there's a lot of people who think America's this evil giant, and we have them in our country now, right? But we're always trying... We're always putting the burden on the military to do this sort of one hand tied behind their back. Does anybody think...

We have the Afghanistan is dragged out as long as it was. Iraq is dragged out as long as it was. If we weren't always doing this with one hand tied behind our back. Right. No, I mean, America's never lost a war. America has simply lost the willpower. And and you have to. So I go back to this comment about Ukraine. This ends when you let Israel finish it.

And it sounds horrible because people will die. And I hate saying and I really have gotten too squeamish about this, Chuck. Sometimes you have to just win a war. So the pal Dorot, we need to talk more about the pal doctrine again. Yeah. Right. So it applies to Ukraine. We're either going to give them what they need.

Or get out. Right. Just stop this nonsense. Well, it may look. I think there was a window, you know, from Nikki Haley's comment at the debate. Had we given Ukraine everything they needed right up front? Well, as we've learned from some of our guests on the show, because of the U.S. boutique weapons industry, that's not as easy as it sounds. Right. Right. You had takes a long time to train people. It takes a long time to produce the material that they're going to need. That is what it is.

The assessment in each case has to be can – is there – part of the question about is there a viable victory, right? Is there a way to win this thing? What I find really interesting about – and I thought Noah Rothman brought up a great point was that this conflict isn't derailing the gains made by the Abraham Accords in the Middle East, right? I mentioned that the countries throughout the area do not want the Palestinian refugees there.

This is going to sound brutal, but if you carpet bombed the West Bank and Gaza out of existence, Iran would be pissed because –

they'd be losing a proxy. It's a propaganda point for them. But nobody else in the Middle East, oh sure, there'd be rage in the streets, but their leadership would be high-fiving each other behind closed doors. What you said, folks, Sam's doing hyperbole, he's using an example. I'm not advocating for this. But let's look at this. You have almost 78%

of Palestinians who have no desire to coexist with Israel. Right. And as we were talking to Noah and he was making a point, Sam, I don't know what changes that mentality. I don't think it's possible. Well, that's why I said, I mean, so, you know, the Brits back in the British and ancient history in the Roman era had a saying, right? The Romans take our children and they send us back Romans. Right.

I don't know how without committing genocide, which Israel has never been willing to do. Nor should we want it. Nor do we want them to. But without that or without taking those children and indoctrinating them. Now, one thing that's interesting here is most of the textbooks in Gaza, which are explicitly anti-Israel and to the point of calling for the genocide of Israelis and Jews, are produced, printed and distributed by U.N. agencies. U.N.'s worthless.

It does not meet its lofty standards when it was created. Now, again, I'm not one of those people who doesn't think countries should talk. No, we should talk. The UN needs to be just disembared and started over again. Square one. We go back to square one. We erased the League of Nations and created the UN. It's time to erase the UN and create a new alternative because they are a barrier to peace on this planet. Right. And, folks, one thing that's important for us to think about on these issues from Ukraine –

Israel. These issues do affect you as an America long term. Without a safe world, without some order, it will come to our shores. You're seeing it now in our universities. You know, you look this week, you had more than 150 violent protesters stormed

The DNC in Washington, D.C. And was it six or eight Capitol Police officers were injured in that? I believe it was six. How many were injured on January 6th? Well, actually injured? Actually injured. One. Okay. I don't see the press jumping on this. I mean, that was violent. Right. What we saw here, when the ASU Senate president and vice president refused to put up a motion condemning Israel—

The pro-Palestinian protesters on the campus started throwing rocks at the buildings, breaking windows, vandalizing, doing all this. They should all be expelled. Every one of them should be gone. Expelled, 100%. Yes. The funny thing about this DNC, this violent protest of the DNC, which isn't funny, but Brad Sherman, you know, Democrats never miss an opportunity to take an opportunity to take a shot at Republicans. Democrat Congressman Brad Sherman, who was evacuated from the building, later tweeted, apparently...

these pro-Hammis demonstrators want Republicans to prevail in the next congressional election.

That's his tweet after that. Instead of saying this is unacceptable, that's not how we do things in America. These people need to face the full court punishment of the law. You know, ridiculously enough, Chuck, at this point, at this exact moment in time, there is exactly and only basically one Democrat in this country that I respect. It's John Fetterman. I know. I know. Folks, remember, another reason to be concerned about this Israel and this Hamas situation is remember, 32 Americans were killed on October 7th.

Yeah. Right? And Israel says at least nine Americans are being held hostage. Yeah. I'm still American. We did it with what's-her-name in Moscow. You and I talked about it. We thought it was a bad trade for – what's the WNBA basketball player? Yeah, but they traded her for the merchant of death for – But we wanted her home. But we did want her home. We want Americans home, and thinking otherwise is ridiculous. Yeah. No, it's – the –

The inability to draw a hard line around the capture, killing, hostage-taking of Americans is a massive moral failure on the part of this administration. 100%. And in case you missed it this week, Ann Boyer, she is the poetry editor for the New York Times. Oh, my goodness.

She resigned. You can find it on Twitter. But her last line is just classic. If this resignation leaves a hole in the news the size of poetry, then that is the true shape of the present. I am the poetry. Unbelievable.

The ego. I just, well, folks, we hope you have a great weekend. There's a lot going on in the world. Stay up on it. And we hope you have a fantastic weekend with your family and friends. Visit us at BreakingBattlegrounds.vote or wherever you download your podcast and give us a five-star review. Have a great weekend.