cover of episode 10/9/24: Shock Hurricane Milton Visuals, Kamala Media Blitz, Trump Says He's Not Isolationist, Kabul Drone Victims Speak Out, P0rn Industry Project 2025 Ad Blitz, Bibi Threatens Lebanon With Gaza Suffering

10/9/24: Shock Hurricane Milton Visuals, Kamala Media Blitz, Trump Says He's Not Isolationist, Kabul Drone Victims Speak Out, P0rn Industry Project 2025 Ad Blitz, Bibi Threatens Lebanon With Gaza Suffering

2024/10/9

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

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Hurricane Milton is predicted to hit Tampa Bay with devastating force, the first major hurricane to do so since 1921. Experts warn of catastrophic storm surges and rainfall, leading to mandatory evacuations. The potential impact on lives, supply chains, and the economy is immense, with Tampa being a critical port and major exporter of fertilizer.

Hurricane Milton is expected to be the first major hurricane to hit Tampa Bay since 1921.
Experts predict 10-15 foot surges and 18 inches of rain.
Tampa is a critical port and the biggest exporter of fertilizer in the US.
The hurricane could cause significant supply chain disruptions and environmental damage.

Shownotes Transcript

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All right. Good morning. Welcome to CounterPoints. How are you guys doing? How are you doing, Emily? I'm doing great. We unfortunately can't get a response from the audience right now as to how they're doing. But I'd also say I'm doing well. I assume they're doing well. Unless, of course, they are in North Carolina or Florida. And they also don't hold back on their opinions. And they have multiple different ways to deliver that.

That's true. Just not directly through the camera. Yes, a multitude of avenues to let us know how you're doing. But in all seriousness, we're going to start with the Hurricane Milton following up on Hurricane Helene. Obviously, Tampa is right in the bullseye of that storm, which could have all kinds of implications for

People's lives for supply chains for the economy So we're gonna start with that story Ryan and they're gonna go and move on to a much more fun topic Which is Kamala Harris's surprise media tour. I don't well Her staff was was browbeaten into getting her in front of the press and The staff was correct and we were wrong, you know, the media tour was a mistake. Well, I

We'll play some of that. Not a mistake from our perspective though, because you really do get just a great glimpse into the mind of Kamala Harris. Donald Trump was on Ben Shapiro's podcast. Speaking of somebody else who should not do media appearances. He was on Ben Shapiro's podcast yesterday talking about Israel policy. Ryan, you guys over at Dropsite got a fantastic scoop

Tell us a little bit about what people are gonna tease it a little bit. - We have the first interview ever with the survivors of the brutal, if you remember the August 2021 drone strike, which the US Army instantly said they had just attacked an ISIS-K operative and within moments learned that actually they had attacked an Afghan who was working with the United States.

and was being greeted at his car by many of his children and his family. And so the survivors of that drone strike are actually now, have been relocated to the United States. They're now living in Kansas City and they gave their first interview to Dropsite. And so we'll be playing that later today. - Fantastic. And we're actually going to discuss as well this effort by 17 porn actors to put some money into ads and swing states about Project 2025. There's a foreword written by Kevin Roberts.

talking about

how he would like to see porn regulated. So we'll get to that as well. We're going to try to do the entire segment without any double entendres, right? I don't think we... It's not worth even trying. It's not worth even trying at all. That'll be a good one. Yeah, not worth it. And we do have a Friday show this week. We do. We're going to have Jeremy Scahill, my co-founder of Dropside News, is going to be here to talk about kind of the arc of his career that brought him to this place, talk about, obviously, his coverage of

of the war in Gaza and in the rest of the region as well. He's done some fascinating interviews lately with the deputy commander at Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a lot of top Hamas officials. How does that work? Yeah. Behind the scenes. Behind the scenes, yeah. It'll be super interesting. I'm really excited about that.

All right, let's start in Florida where Hurricane Milton is expected to hit tonight. It is expected to be the first major hurricane to hit the Tampa Bay area since 1921. Some experts have said nobody in the area has ever survived a storm as strong as this, expecting 10 to 15 foot surges, 18 inches of rain to fall on Florida overnight. Just catastrophic predictions for what could happen to Tampa. Let's start with this.

officials are telling residents that they need to evacuate. Here's one official telling them what could happen if they don't evacuate. - It's the same message we're hearing from leaders across the state. If you stay, they cannot get you. They were able to do some water rescues in Helene. That will not happen with Milton. Once the winds, which are forecasted to start here at Tropical Storm Forest Gust, once they start tomorrow,

at around 8 a.m he expects that by noon they're not going to be they're going to have to evacuate the island themselves so starting at noon tomorrow if you're here there will not be help coming for you you are on your own and he's made that very clear it's that same message we're hearing from officials write your name write your number write someone else's number your date of birth on you because

When they come looking for you, they wanna know who to contact because you decided to stay. - All right, let's actually roll also this flood simulation so that if you're watching this, you can just get a visual of what Tampa could look like very soon. I can use this simulation to show you what it will actually look like in Tampa. At three feet above normally dry ground, water is already life-threatening. It's too late to evacuate. Water this high can knock you off your feet, make cars float,

and driving impossible the first floor of homes and businesses are flooded unfortunately the water is expected to rise even higher at six feet above the height of most people vehicles get carried away structures start to fail just look at this anything could be in this water sharp glass debris chemicals as well the scary part is some areas could see surge values at 10 to 15 feet

And this takes us up to nine. And look what it does. At this level, the first floors of structures are completely flooded. And there are few places that it is safe when the water rises this high. We want everyone to know their evacuation zone, listen to local officials, and evacuate when ordered to do so. That visual, Ryan, is stunning. And we can play this actual satellite footage as well. This is A3. Isn't this from the NASA dudes?

The one we're rolling out. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, take a look at this. And again, if you're listening to this, what you're seeing now is just the sheer size of Hurricane Milton, which-

- They're saying 140 miles from the center? - Unbelievable. - Which if you're watching this, you can see it just expands as far as the eye can see from a spaceship. - Right, yes, it's just incredible. That visual, I think also Ryan, of the meteorologist that we just rolled where you see the water levels going up higher than her head and then, I mean, this is within the next 24 hours. Unfortunately, just shocking. Let's play also here.

This is going to be just the evacuation alerts. You can get a feel for what's happening on the ground. - We anticipate significant storm surge and intense wind moving into the area before it impacts our community. The time to leave is now.

This is the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. Mandatory evacuations have been ordered for your area. Please leave now. We anticipate significant... Well, it's getting real. So obviously the government has no easy task ahead of them asking people to get out because while I'm sure many people are eager and have the means to get out, it's really not that easy for everyone.

And I think that's an important point. Also, people get told all of the time. It does, depending on, you know, if you live in Florida, it's easy to understand how people get sort of numb to predictions. Yeah, and natural disasters are a way of reminding us that money is kind of an imaginary thing and is actually not that useful sometimes. So, yes, it helps to have means if you left several days ago. If you're trying to leave in the last 24 hours,

You can't transform money into gasoline if there's no gasoline at the gas station and you can't transform money into a path out if the roads are all blocked. Right. If you get a flat tire and let's say you're elderly and don't know how to change it or like anything minor goes wrong,

There's the breakdown of our society our systems means that that's it like you there's nobody to call you're on your own and so it's it's it's really heartbreaking to see these pictures which are

in your mind become kind of before pictures. Even though they are still present day pictures, we know that what we're actually looking at is a picture that will soon have a line on the top of it that says before. It's a slow motion train crash. So let's take a listen to one man who is refusing to evacuate. This is A5. All right, Jay, they're saying 20 foot storm surge.

- Yeah, it could be 120, it doesn't matter. The boat floats, that's the whole thing. Keep the water on the outside of the boat and the boat will go up with the water and down with the water. That's what we wanna do. - Can we please get you into a hotel? - No, no. - Everybody's been asking, man, we gotta get you off this thing. - Listen, the only way I'm gonna go to a motel room is if a woman invites me and she's gonna stay.

That's the only way I'm going. - So it is the true ride to the point that you were just making. I think it's, you know, I've never lived in a hurricane-like vulnerable area, but I do always, when I'm watching people say, "Get out, get out." It's like, I don't know if you are persuading the people who are trying not to, or who are considering staying by just saying, "Get out, you're dumb if you don't get out." It's actually pretty hard. It's not that easy for everybody to get out.

I thought the mayor's line was pretty good where yesterday she said, you know, if you stay, you're going to die. Yeah. Because at least that kind of shocks the conscience and shocks the listeners to say, oh, that's not the usual kind of rhetoric we hear from politicians. Now, maybe that Lieutenant Dan guy there, maybe he'll be okay. I don't think so. But, you know...

140 mile an hour winds and that little boat, I don't see it. - Yeah, doesn't seem like math that works out here. Let's put A6 on the screen. This is, I thought, a really helpful take from our friend Matthew Stoller who wrote on his sub-stack, Big, what happens if a hurricane smashes Tampa

It was just a really important, I think, glimpse at how vulnerable you were just making this point, right? And how vulnerable the economy is, the supply chain is. It's a real thing. Right. And Matt's asking, did we learn any of the lessons of COVID about the fragility of the supply chains? There are all kinds of important industries. Like Tampa is a very, very important port. And it seems as though we just saw this with the quartz that was used in or that is used in oil.

The course is using semiconductors. Yeah. In North Carolina, completely upended the semiconductor supply chain that we're pouring billions of dollars right now into domestically boosting. So Tampa as a critical port in the country, I mean, we could see tons of disruption from this because it appears we didn't learn a lot of lessons of COVID.

Yes, and also be a real shame if the CENTCOM base there in Tampa gets wiped out and put up this next element. People may recall most of the drone strikes around the world, you know, get which to Biden to his credit is actually almost completely eliminated. We now do them by proxy.

are carried out out of what's MacDill, Fort MacDill, out and down in Tampa. I talked to you yesterday about Hurricane Michael back in 2018. That wiped out an Air Force base in the panhandle, and they have permanently moved a huge air fleet out of there. You can imagine that

as it dawns on our military planners that hurricanes are a thing and continue to be a thing, that an Air Force base in Tampa, while it might be convenient, closest to the Middle East, so they do a lot of flights,

you know, that take off from there, head over there, head back, and also to, you know, Central and South America, also has some problems with it. Which, you know, I say it's a shame because, you know, the U.S. military not only, you know, built the post-World War II era that produced the greenhouse gases that we're now living with, but the Pentagon itself is a non-trivial place.

contributor to that total, like maybe the biggest contributor. So on that point, actually, Tampa is the biggest exporter of fertilizer in America, according to Stoller. And it's also the biggest importer, he writes, of gasoline and jet fuel that is used in Florida. So Matt says that means we can expect significant supply shocks and probably environmental damage, which is another add-on consequence. Yeah, the environmental damage from mixing all of the different

Toxins that are held in different bays in Florida could be extraordinary. But yes, exactly, Florida is like, is the breadbasket of our fertilizer.

And it's there aren't a whole lot of places for it seeing that disrupt is gonna be ugly Yes, and it's this was another thing that happened with Helene is IV fluid a manufacturer of IV fluid was hit that Supply chain got disrupted. Well another major manufacturer of IV fluid is in Tampa so can expect some serious problems there and also a lot of the recovery efforts in Helene are

ongoing, very, very much ongoing. And so rebuilding Tampa, you can imagine, you know, this is, this is, there is a limited supply of all of these resources. So depending on how devastating the storm is when it hits tonight and into tomorrow, there could be some seriously stretched resources for both the people of Appalachia, Western North Carolina, and Florida.

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Let's move on to Kamala Harris's media tour, which is interesting in some ways and entirely predictable in others. Obviously, she went on Call Her Daddy. She has just yesterday did The View. She did The Colbert Report. She did 60 Minutes. It has been a hell of a week for Kamala Harris, Ryan. Yeah, in 60 Minutes, they've just been rolling the interviews out. And we'll talk in a moment. People noticed that the interview that they aired

on 60 Minutes, on the television program for the folks, is different than how it actually unfolded. It was truncated. - In a key moment, yes. Of course they always do that. We'll get to that in a second. She also went on Howard Stern, which we have a clip from. But let's just start with this exciting mashup of Kamala Harris on the show.

on The View yesterday where, Ryan, it is going to be so funny if the women of The View are the people who get that sound bite that ultimately takes down Kamala Harris. Let's see, roll the clip. What do you think would be the biggest specific difference between your presidency and a Biden presidency?

Well, we're obviously two different people and we have a lot of shared life experiences. For example, the way we feel about our family and our parents and so on. But we're also different people and I will bring those sensibilities to how I

Listen, I plan on having a Republican in my cabinet. You asked me what's the difference between Joe Biden and me? Well, that will be one of the differences. I'm going to have a Republican in my cabinet because I don't feel burdened by letting pride get in the way of a good idea. Right. Good stuff.

The problem with that answer, okay, fine, she's going after Republicans, is that Biden's brand is that he loves Republicans and loves to work with Republicans. Good point. People are like, well, that's actually not a, you're saying it's a thing that's different.

And I guess he, did he technically not have a Republican in the cabinet? I guess not. No, but she actually had one of the most partisan voting records when she was in the Senate. So, and which was a selling point for her, as you'll remember, the 2020 primary that her voting record, I think had been intentionally. It was also, she was elected into the Trump presidency. Yeah. And you just weren't, if anything was associated with Trump as a Democrat, you were voting against it. So her entire Senate career was just-

Right, right. Although the Kamala Harris of, let's say, 2018 and the Liz Cheney of 2018 would not have been especially friendly like they were last week in Wisconsin when Cheney endorsed her. This view segment was so brutal that even CNN went in on Kamala Harris after it. This is Molly Ball reacting. We can roll this clip. I'm surprised, frankly, that she doesn't have...

more to say about this, given that she and her campaign know that this is one of the main questions that voters have about her. And one of the main things she's been trying to establish as part of her candidacy is the idea that she would represent a break from the past four years and to not be able to come up with something to say in that moment. She continues to not be

particularly nimble on her feet in a lot of these interviews? And this is a very obvious question that gave her an opportunity, frankly. Yes, she is not very nimble on her feet. That's a good way to put it, I suppose. Yeah, so what could she say? The things that people don't like about the Biden administration, according to polling, is one, his handling of Israel-Palestine, Gaza, Lebanon, all of that, and also his border policy. Yeah.

She and he have broken with his original border policy. So they've already done that. So that kind of leaves Israel. And she has decided for whatever reason that she'd rather just go down with a ship. Inflation too. Than break with him on that. I mean people, like if you look at polling, people are not pleased with the state of the economy. Yeah, she could say I'll have lower egg prices and I'm going to fight inflation more than anything.

Right. More than Biden did. But then it's like, well, Biden said he fought inflation all the time. Like, it's tough. It's, you know, she can just stick with the answer. Oh, she could say, I'm going to fire Lena Kahn. Yeah, she could do that. She'd be like, I talked to Mark Cuban way more than Joe Biden. I'm much better friends with Reid Hoffman. It's sort of what she means by I'm going to have a Republican in the cabinet.

Well, depending on which Republican. It might be Mark Cuban. She puts J.D. Vance in the cabinet. You might keep Lena Kahn. That's true. So she also talked about her health care plan on the view, let's roll this B3. What I am proposing is that basically what we will do is allow Medicare to cover in-home health care. Right. Right. Right.

Because we're talking about these kinds of things where it's just about helping an aging parent or person, you know, prepare a meal.

You know, put their sweater on. And it's about dignity for that individual. It's about independence for that individual. I mean, people are of declining skills to some extent, but their dignity has, their pride has not declined. They want to stay in their home. They don't want to go somewhere else. Plus, for the family to send them to a residential care facility to hire somebody is so expensive. Yeah.

Wipes you out. And I'll just say, here's the other thing about it. People say, well, how are you going to pay for it? Here's the thing. Here's how we pay for it. Part of what I also intend to do is allow Medicare to continue to negotiate drug prices against these big pharmaceutical companies, which means we are going to save Medicare the money

Because we're not gonna be paying these high prices. What do you make of that Ryan? That's great stuff. That's that's the Democratic Party I'd love to see out out there more often we are going to Take money from these giant corporations that are ripping us off and we're going to give it to people To make their lives better look wonderful. Let's do that and yeah that the Medicare paying for at-home care is you know something I've been hoping Democrats would do you know as soon as I

understood what it even meant. And 'cause she's right, it does save money and saves a lot of pride and dignity to keep people out of these residential care facilities as long as possible. It's the last place anybody wants to be. And also the children, the grown children who were performing this service for their parents, they're doing it out of a sense of filial obligation and love.

But it's also taking it's also very hard. It's taking away from what they could be doing else really taking care of their kids So they might have to hire somebody to be with their kids at the time. It's There this time you can't take shifts at work It's time that you can't just you know, relax and recharge on your own So and it's not something that people do forever Obviously that's something it's it's something that many people do for a

Some some months or years but while they're doing it's very it's very difficult even though it is rewarding and it is the thing you're doing out of love and so for the state to step in and say we're gonna try to soften this blow for you a little bit by taking some of the billions and profits that the pharmaceutical industry is taking from you good great good for her just keep saying that the whole time well, that's what I was also gonna ask you I mean I can imagine a decent number of people

voting for her just for that. Oh my gosh. On the wing and a prayer that it could ever become law. Yeah, yes, completely agree with that. She went on Howard Stern as well. J.D. Vance said something similar to this or no? I mean, not exactly this. It would be smart if he did. He's on the childcare side. He's been supportive of helping to financially support family members who perform childcare for relatives, right? Yeah. Which this is similar. Similar, although it's such a

I mean, any conversations that smack of greater state involvement in health care is like a hard red line for Republicans still, even though, I mean, we've talked about this before, their lack of replacement plan for Obamacare, their lack of any plan. What if we call it Trumpcare?

Trumpcare, you call it Trumpcare, then we're all good. He actually probably doesn't have hardened ideological opinions on what to do with the healthcare system from what we can tell. So who knows? But she also, I mean, but my final point on that would be that I think we're increasingly waking up to the horrors of those facilities and we'll look back on it like 50 years from now as,

real cruel Experiment that we went along with for way too long. Yeah, my mother worked in a nursing home the whole time I was growing up Yeah, miserable plan. Yeah, I would walk there after school and sit there and just hang out there absolutely miserable places Wonderful people at the nursing home. Yeah for until she was off Probably learned a lot. Yeah. Yeah play some dominoes. I

- Well she was the activity coordinator, so she was the one doing the bingo and the arts and crafts and so I'll do some of that.

So Howard Stern interviewed Kamala Harris yesterday as well. So if you're going through kind of the checklist here, she's sort of mirroring the podcast playbook that Donald Trump rolled out starting a couple of months ago, which is interesting and you kind of do have to do it. That's one of the things Trump said to Lex Friedman. It seemed that he'd maybe learned that from his experience with Elon Musk in spaces and maybe a little bit of Barron's touch in there as well. It's just...

It's true, like this is where the audiences are. She did a, Kamala Harris did a basketball podcast last week that didn't get a ton of attention. But here she is on Howard Stern. Easiest decision in the world would be for her campaign to do Howard Stern because he has become an absolute shill that might as well get paid by the DNC. Here's how that went. I think that some of the most important work that anyone can do, which is to require that we have a society that does not allow in particular

for violence and that kind of behavior to go without consequence, serious consequence. It's really weird too, because to me, you're the law and order candidate. And yet they try to paint you like you're some leftist who, I don't know, who wants to have people running through the streets, committing crimes. You were a prosecutor. I have put a lot of people in jail. I have personally prosecuted everything from, you know, um,

child sexual assault to homicide. I have put a lot of people in jail. So true, but also, I like how Howard Stern is like, they try to paint you as being soft on crime. She was telling people to contribute to the 2020 bail fund for Minneapolis protesters, which you and I will disagree on, but she did do that. There you go, believing that she believed that. Well, yeah, but he's saying they try to paint you this way. It's like, she did that. She did do that. That was her. That was like,

She posted a tweet to her. But did she do it if she didn't even mean it? That's a great question. That goes a little deeper than we're prepared to address today. So, yeah, I mean, Howard Stern is kind of open about being a show at this point. He's not like ashamed of it, but he really, really laid into her on that one. Just really gave it business. Yes. Okay. So speaking of.

She also went on Colbert, by the way, and addressed kind of the same question as The View. He asked basically, in what ways will you be different than Joe Biden? She said, again, I'm not Joe Biden, and I love the American people. And to paraphrase Molly Ball, was not very nimble on her feet. We watched that before we started taping. It was cringe. So she gave the same answer twice to the question of how would you be different from Joe Biden, which is, well, I'm not Joe Biden. Yeah.

Which either she came up with that on her own or they actually did prep for this question. Yes, you would assume that you think that for this question. It's the number one question that Voters are asking it's you know, the consultants are saying this is a change election How do you show that you're the change candidate and that seems to be what they've come up with so far? I mean I get that it's difficult because you're the vice president and

And so then the obvious follow up is why didn't you do it? And the obvious answer is, well, the vice president doesn't do anything and we all know that. Yeah. But that's not a very, you know, self satisfying answer. Yeah.

pointing to your own impotence. While we're on the subject, I don't begrudge either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump for doing fairly friendly podcast interviews, and I don't begrudge... Sure, you should do those and the other ones. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't begrudge Howard Stern, who is now an open partisan Democrat, for doing those interviews and doing it from his honest perspective. Same thing with...

Alex Cooper or Ben Shapiro talking to Trump, whoever it is. I mean, you're not going to suddenly cosplay as Walter Cronkite. It would just be weird. It wouldn't make sense. You're probably not equipped to do it if you're Alex Cooper anyway. But to see Howard Stern, Howard Stern just kind of marvel at

the toughness of this or the fake toughness of this like manufactured robot girl boss cop. It is just against everything that Howard Stern ever stood for and that may have been and I'm not saying Howard Stern stood for anything good but man was that a great glimpse into the transition of Howard Stern. Howard Stern has let you down I see.

No, I've never been a big Howard Stern fan, to be honest. But it does show just the dramatic change that he's taken in his life. Yeah, and he wrote a memoir about that like a year ago or so. It's like five years ago. That...

Was it that long ago? Yeah, it was a while ago. Yeah, basically I think he just feels extremely guilty. Yes. For all of the raunchy stuff he did for 20 years. The sexism in particular, I think he feels guilty. Yeah, and so he's now atoning for that for the rest of his life. And you know, it's just not funny. It's just not funny.

Mark your calendars so you don't miss out on this celebración. Visita visittucson.org slash viva. Wouldn't it be nice if nothing stood in your way? You're so close, yet so far.

TV should be easy. We do the hard work so you don't have to. With Xfinity, nothing stands between you and what you want to watch. Just say 4U into your Xfinity voice remote to jump back into your favorites, like streaming the iHeartRadio Hot Top 40 playlist for all the hits. Or get a new recommendation based on what you've watched or saved, so you can get right to the good stuff effortlessly.

And the next day, Morning Joe will give you perspective on what it all means for the future of our country. Watch coverage of the 2024 presidential election Tuesday, November 5th on MSNBC. Let's move on to something that is, I guess, funny in some ways. People caught CBS because usually when you do a sit-down interview with 60 Minutes or whatever, you'll tape it.

maybe an hour and they truncate it to 30 minutes, something like that. So stuff always gets left in the cutting room floor. The job of the editors is to make sure what is cut up is true to what was actually said. But in this case, when you look at the full footage from CBS, they release that often on their 60 Minutes YouTube, which is great. What they actually aired on 60 Minutes, it seems like, was not exactly true to the answer here on Netanyahu. So let's take a listen. But it seems that

Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening. Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region. But it seems that

Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening. We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.

So what you heard first there is how Kamala Harris actually answered the question without editing. And what you heard afterwards was how CBS edited the question. So Ryan, they made it sound a lot smoother, a lot more vigorous, cleaned up some of her like just uncomfortable pauses and hesitancy. What did you make of the edit there?

Well, yeah, it's like, oh, you ordered this without the word salad? Yes. Our fault. And they just dump it in the trash and just get to the middle of the answer. You ordered this without the word salad. I can sympathize with the editors who are like, okay, we need a clip here. Yeah. And none of this made sense. Yeah. Now, if you go back and re-listen to it, what she's trying to say in that first answer is, well, we actually have put pressure on them and some of the things that have happened have been a result of that pressure.

But it's a deeply unsatisfying answer because you're like, well, what pressure and what things? Like this didn't actually tell us anything. And then eventually she gets to the thing where she said there. In print journalism, it's funny, we'll have a 300-word answer from somebody and we will grab the two sentences that make their point that we need and sometimes then we'll paraphrase in and out. But when you're doing a televised interview with a potential president of the United States,

you gotta be a little bit more kind of sacred with the words. Agree. Because like the voters want to know how this person's mind works more than they want just a crisp, clean answer to this question, which if you notice, because they cut it the way they did, the answer doesn't really even flow from the question. It's like, what have you done? Why isn't he listening? And she just, in the edited answer, just says, well, we're going to continue pushing it.

It was a super tough interview, by the way. I think you can hear that question on Netanyahu is actually pretty tough in and of itself. It looks like he's not listening to you. Great, valid question. Super tough on the border. I think it was the hardest interview that she's done so far, and her answers were...

were going viral for all the wrong reasons on social media the last couple of days for exactly the reasons that people were worried about Kamala Harris being the candidate in the first place. Joe Biden stepped down, she was the heir apparent, and this is how she sounds in interviews. So it's

Seems like that's exactly what happened over the last few days and 60 minutes was a really, really rough go for her. And what's wild, and I'm curious if you noticed this, I was listening to Hugh Hewitt and Dan Senor on a podcast the other day. They talked about this interview. They were livid at CBS for, they said, anti-Israel questions and at Harris for not answering it by saying, well, the real problem

And the real reason we don't have a ceasefire is because of Hamas, because Hamas won't do a ceasefire. So like from the right, she's getting blasted for that answer, saying it's too sympathetic to Hamas and letting Hamas off the hook. And CBS, because CBS is not asking all about Hamas, I guess. And then from the left, the left looks at that answer and it's like, this is absurd and ridiculous and you're facilitating a genocide. And the people in the middle are like,

I can't even make sense of any of this. Right. So it's like 0 for 3. I mean, ultimately, if your ideology on that question is power, then your answers won't make sense. You can't please anybody because if your ideology is pro-Israel, then you can sense that she's not entirely pro-Israel. She's not lockstep, although in practice she is. Right, but ideologically not. Wow.

Well, who knows? Again, you're assuming she has an ideology. Right. That's what, yeah. Her ideology is not having... Questionable assumption. I'm going to need a citation for that. I think her ideology is not having a strong ideology. That's why she's not like... Oh, which means that therefore she's not actually an ideologically supportive Zionist. Yeah. Yes. Right. Like she's exactly, she's not an ideological Zionist. She might be pro-power and pro-American power. And she's surrounded by ideologues. Right. And if her ideology is power, then you enable... Right. So anyway...

That's what I made of it. And actually, speaking of that, that's a great opportunity to bring up B6. This is Mark Cuban saying that he doesn't believe Kamala Harris should keep Lena Kahn as FTC chair. Cuban said, if it were me, I wouldn't. This is what he told CIMA for. By trying to break up the biggest tech companies, you risk our ability to be the best in

artificial intelligence and Cuban has obviously been all over the place stumping for Kamala Harris. So add him to the list of very powerful billionaires telling Kamala Harris, giving her money and saying, we don't want Lena Khan. Yeah. And I had a story a couple of days ago at Dropsite on this same theme that I can put in the, in down in the notes there.

Where Cuban says the same thing where he except he goes even a little further He says about Gary Gensler and Lena Kahn. He says quote. She's been very clear. This is Harris She's been very clear that she's against regulation via litigation. She said it She's had me say it for them then Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC asked him is that a veiled way of saying that Gary Gensler is Legislating through lawsuits and he says I don't think it's very veiled at all I think it is what it is. I think it is what it is

Litigation, regulation by litigation is another word for enforcement. It's like you put laws on the books and then if people don't, if corporations don't follow the laws, you sue them and you fine them or you go after them criminally if they really break the law. That's how it works. If you just put the laws on the books and you can't do any litigation,

what good are the laws and the books? And so Cuban, it's fascinating to hear him say, she said it, she's had me say it for them. She's had me say it for them. So he is a surrogate. He's an official Kamala Harris surrogate. And so he's saying, what I am saying about Lena Kahn and Gary Gensler

I am saying at the direction of Kamala Harris specifically. She's had me say it for them. Yeah. This is sort of a remarkable. Which is what a star it is by definition, but he's being very clear. I am not on my, I'm not out on a limb here. And kind of unintentionally transparent, I think is one of the remarkable things about the post-Trump era is that. He's trying to scream at Wall Street. She's with you.

Yes, that's it. Yeah, and he wishes he could do that clearly. He's probably doing it in texts and everything like that, but it is a remarkable moment of transparency that you don't often get from surrogates who are on their talking points like nobody's business. Yes, that's when you have a billionaire surrogate, they probably feel a little freer. Yeah, they feel free. What are you gonna do to them? It's similar to Trump, right? Like he'll say, I know the system, I alone can fix it, I'm part of the system. They don't talk like politicians. So anyway,

I don't know that Mark Cuban meant for that to be super transparent, but it was and that is actually what happens. They do give surrogates actual talking points to go out there and use. Moral of the story though, I think Ryan is Kamala Harris predictably having a lot of trouble in the harsh spotlight of the one month mark, the final stretch, home stretch, one month until election day. Not as joyful as it was in August.

But as she says, it's still her against Trump. That's right. That's right. And that's what matters at the end of the day, for sure.

Mark your calendars so you don't miss out on this celebración. Visita visittucson.org slash viva. Wouldn't it be nice if nothing stood in your way? You're so close, yet so far. T.

Speaking of Donald Trump, he was on Ben Shapiro's podcast yesterday. We can show he was at an event. This is C1. You can see he was at an event with Donald Trump earlier this week. That was on the anniversary of October 7th. So Trump went to, this was, did you catch this in New York? And here he says, do you want me to sign this? Right. Yes. Yeah.

Yes, and you can see him with Ben Shapiro there. And he was at, basically he was at the grave of Rabbi Schneerson in New York. That's a, you know more about this than I do, but that was the Lubavitcher prominent, um,

It's a big deal that Donald Trump went there, which is why Ben Shapiro obviously came up for it. On the anniversary of October 7th, you can see Trump is wearing a yarmulke there. And the next day, he went on Shapiro's show. So we have some thoughts from this. We have some clips from this, some highlights from this.

Let's take a listen. It was really an honor to introduce you to the family of an American citizen currently being held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza Strip. That citizen's name is Idan Alexander. I wanted to thank you for that. The family was very grateful to you, obviously, for taking the time to meet with them. And, you know, it was really a meaningful experience. Wonder if you wanted to say something about the situation for that family and the other families like them.

I thought from a religious standpoint, it was so beautiful. I had not been that aware. As you know, I'm not Jewish, but I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood, to put it mildly, with my father being a Brooklyn builder. I knew lots of Jewish people, almost exclusively, if you want to know the truth. But I thought it was a beautiful...

He's explained the whole thing and how it worked. Actually, it was very beautiful, ceremonial. I got to meet the family, and they were great. The young brother is very close to his brother, who's hopefully somewhere right now. They really don't know. It must be almost harder when they just don't know. They're not sure whether or not he's alive or not alive. They think he is.

But, you know, being alive over there now is rough stuff. And before it was rough, but now it's probably even rougher. And some people, even on our side, seem to suggest that you're some sort of total isolationist, want to slash the military. You and Senator Vance have said that your foreign policy is peace through strength. Can you describe what your second term foreign policy will look like?

Yeah, number one, he wouldn't have taken Kyiv because he wouldn't have had a war. And you would have had the country just the way it is. Our policy is very simple, peace through strength. We had no wars, and I'm not an isolationist. I helped a lot of countries. I kept countries out of war. We had two countries, smaller countries. I can explain it later. I can explain who they are when...

We're together. But they were fighting and they've been fighting for a thousand years and they go back and forth and they were going to fight again and kill tens of thousands of people. And I said, look, you do that was going to be no trade. There's going to be tariffs put on your head. There'll be no trade. And that's for both of them, et cetera, et cetera. And two days later, they call me up that they've made peace. I do these things. Nobody ever even heard of it. Iran was broke.

We had no terrorism, we had no attacks, we had no Hamas problems, no Hezbollah problems, we had nothing because Iran didn't have the money to give to them because I put sanctions on and I dealt directly. And you know what I was asking for, Ben? One very simple thing. I don't want them to have a nuclear weapon. Very simple.

Everything else, you know, I want him to have a great life. I want him to be rich. But I just didn't want him to have a nuclear weapon. I would have been able to do that very easily. But when the...

Kamala and his people say about Kiev. And people call it Kiev and they call it Kiev. I've always called it Kiev. And it depends on what part of the world you come from is what I finally figured out. Okay, so Ben, if you were listening to that, was laughing. Yeah.

The last bit and had a bemused look on his face for a couple of the other moments as well. Rabbi Schneerson passed away in 1994. It was obviously very big for the Chabad movement. So that's where Trump and Shapiro were in there. You're right, Ryan. He did seem like he asked to sign a prayer book. And it looks like the rabbi said no.

But the next day he goes on the Shapiro show. Shapiro, by the way, it should be noted, is not pretending to be like an objective guy here. He's fundraised for Donald Trump. He held the fundraiser for him back in the spring, I think. So he's pretty openly, much like Howard Stern is openly pro Kamala Harris and pro Democratic Party establishment. Shapiro's pro Trump in this case. What did you make of how Trump responded to those questions? And as producer Mac points out, background on Edan Alexander, he's now 27.

He was born in Tel Aviv, grew up in New Jersey, graduated high school in New Jersey, then moved to Israel, joined the IDF and was stationed outside of Gaza and was captured on October 7th. Trump doing his best, I guess, to care about any of this stuff. And we all know exactly what he's gonna say every time it comes up, that he has no

He has no real solution for anything. He's just gonna say, if I was president, none of this would have happened and just kind of leave it at that. Yeah, that's his favorite line. Yeah.

And you know, he doesn't expound on it like Kamala Harris tries to expound on this line about what's different between her and Joe Biden. She really could just say I'm not Joe Biden and let everyone stew in the awkward silence and move on. That's what Trump does. He's like, if I was president, none of this would have ever happened. And you can kind of get away with it because it's impossible to deny. It is true. She is not Joe Biden. And it is true that if he was president, we don't know what would have happened. We don't know. Can't prove wrong. Yeah.

I actually think there's a decent argument for that in Ukraine, but we don't need to open up that particular can of worms. Ukraine's possible for sure. It galls me when he does it on October 7th though, because October 7th had so much to do with the Abraham Accords. They've been explicit that the Abraham Accords cutting Palestinians out of normalization in the Middle East.

incentivized them and drove them to violently put themselves back into the conversation. Like that's what they have said. It also is exactly what people predicted would happen if you tried to do Middle East peace without the Palestinians. And so he kind of

put all the kindling out there, threw a match in and walked away. And then when it starts burning, he's like, oh, if I was still around here, that wouldn't happen. It's like, no, I'm sorry. Ukraine, maybe, quite plausible. Who knows? You guys seem tight. But this one, no, this is on you.

Well, on Ukraine, I mean, Trump actually armed Ukraine. There you go. And a lot of Republicans were very happy about that at the time. So anyway, it's all, this is in the context of a huge reporting from Bob Woodward, which I honestly don't believe a word of, and we might disagree on that. But I don't believe a word of what he wrote on Joe Biden or Donald Trump, frankly. He doesn't usually have direct sources and tapes. Yeah, yeah.

People just spill their guts to him. Yeah, some people do. Yeah, if Bob Woodward is listening, people talk. It's just the rule of Washington. So, right, yeah, the big reporting is that he claims a Trump aide says that maybe Trump and Putin spoke about seven times, maybe as many as seven times since Donald Trump left the White House. So former president. Just catching up.

Just catch it up. There's all kinds of things to talk about. And Putin actually speaks English to him. He drops the whole, I don't speak English thing. Is that how this goes? I didn't see that. So the book is out next week. I'm just joking. Oh, I thought you were saying that was actually in the report. And I was like, that would be quite a good detail. It's possible. But I think the book comes out on October 15th. Well, the reason that sounded somewhat plausible to me is that some of the reporting is about how Putin was given Abbott COVID tests by Trump.

And told Trump not to be public about it, allegedly, because it would reflect poorly on Trump. Like Putin was concerned about Trump, according to Bob Woodward's reporting, which is also somewhat strange to me. But anyway, that's why I think in the context of all of that.

I think that's especially interesting in the context of all the Ukraine conversation is especially interesting in the context of all of that. It also said that MBS has a burner phone labeled Trump and a burner phone labeled Jake Sullivan, according to one of Bob Woodward's sources. That's definitely possible. I reported years ago.

that there was a WhatsApp group that had Jared Kushner, Netanyahu, MBZ, and MBS. And I think that all of their various intelligence services were like, yeah, what are you doing? Get yourself a burner. Yeah, you're not going to want to be doing that on your iPhone.

But anyway, so that was Donald Trump on Ben Shapiro's show. But both of them clearly, both Trump and Kamala Harris, clearly making the rounds of kind of their partisan media, their ideological media friends. I don't know if that really changed any minds. I doubt that changed any minds. Pretty much everyone who's listening to Shapiro is...

Already with Donald Trump and probably isn't making up their minds based on this in particular anyway, so yeah, I doubt it well, we're actually there might be a bunch you were like wondering whether to vote and

Because whenever you're talking to a large enough crowd of Americans, you're talking to many, many people who are on the fence about voting. That's a good point. Ben definitely does have like never Trump people in his audience. The people who are just like sort of regular, probably educated, upper middle class, suburban voters who might be, a lot of people take for granted that the Abraham Accords were a

a period of calm and stability, like that's taken as fact. That, you know, the Abraham Accords actually were solving the problem in the Middle East. Rather than helping to further it. Potentially, you're right. So like the Republican line is that, listen, contrast the era of the Abraham Accords with the era of October 7th. Like this is the big. Except Biden like picked up the Abraham Accords and carried them forward. Yeah. Yeah. Jake Sullivan was bragging about like a week before October 7th.

Yeah. So anyway, I think that's- All the architects still in power. Yeah. And Jared Kushner with a $2 billion private equity fund. And Howard Stern, when he was courting Hillary Clinton to go on his show, was saying specifically to the campaign, he writes about this in his memoir, specifically saying to the campaign, we have truckers, persuadable people who might be thinking about voting for Donald Trump, but if you talk to them- It's Howard Stern. Yeah. If you talk to them and you make your case to them on my show-

it might actually swing some votes. So you can see where Kamala Harris would come into that and say, eh. But I don't know how many of those undecided voters are actually still listening to Stern, honestly. I think a lot of them are because he still has a talent for speaking. Yeah, of course. People need shows that are hours long. If they have a lot of window time, they got to get through in the day. Especially live stuff. Yeah.

Get ready for a full month of fiesta y cultura because it's time for Viva Tucson. Let's celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month como nunca antes in true Tucson style. From September 15th to October 15th, join us for comida, musica y eventos that you won't find anywhere else. Our rich history and traditions make the old pueblo the perfect place para celebrar y aprender.

Mark your calendars so you don't miss out on this celebración. Visita visittucson.org slash viva. Wouldn't it be nice if nothing stood in your way? You're so close, yet so far. T.

All right, Ryan, let's move on to this incredible scoop that you guys got over at Dropsite. Really, really spectacular story, a fascinating story. I don't say spectacular in a good way. I say spectacular in a way that it is profound. So tell us what we're about to watch. On August 29, 2021, an American Hellfire missile fired by a drone killed seven children and three adults outside of Kabul. My colleague Armin Gassim filed this report for us about it.

I heard a very trivial sound and I see that the sky is black, the smoke. And I think that maybe the accident happened in the high port, but unfortunately my wife called me.

The US military has confirmed in the last few minutes that it's carried out a drone strike. Drone strike against an ISIS-K vehicle. The Pentagon confirmed they hit a vehicle which had suicide bombers in it. The procedures were correctly followed and it was a righteous strike. When I came home and I saw everyone's burn, that everyone was killed and

The pace of the body was around the yard, around the roof, everywhere the pace of the body. And just I see that. I'm not able to see my daughter, my nephew, my niece. I don't see them again.

I offer my profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed. I'm not angry with you since they are announced that they do mistake, project mistake.

and they apologized for us and we forgive America because nothing can bring back our family now. But I expect for the US government that they got away for us. It was so expensive in California.

So I followed up with the State Department at the press briefing yesterday, asked Matt Miller if there had been any advancement on the negotiations with this family about potential compensation or whatever the word they use for compensation was, like a gratuity payment or something bizarre.

uh uh he said he had nothing to add yet but he would get back to us uh when when he did um so you know this is many years ago at this point that this happened um but i found it interesting that the survivors were able to say you know mistakes happen i don't harbor any anger at the united states

I thought that was fascinating. And they said they forgive the United States. And if you were listening to this, the video ends with text, a graphic that says,

The US says negotiations are ongoing but that any payment would be out of goodwill and not out of any admission of guilt or legal liability. And what's interesting about that is earlier we watched the clip in the video of the US officials saying we apologize to the family. And you hear that juxtaposed with Mark Milley saying, quote, it was a righteous strike. Right.

So, on the one hand, it's a complete walk back of the initial position of the US government, obviously. On the other hand, still no admission of legal liability forthcoming as far as the US government is concerned. And that's sort of an interesting square to try and circle. Yeah. And it's also a reminder that it is good that we left Afghanistan. Because if this type of killing, 10 innocent people,

does not, you know, can't, is a tragic mistake, but isn't the kind of thing that causes like a policy change or like we're gonna review our policies here and see how this happened. Say, well, you know, it was a mistake, mistakes happen, and we're just gonna keep going forward. Like, you're gonna continue to kill innocent people if the policy's okay. 'Cause you, you know, you've got somebody in Tampa probably. - Yeah, yeah. - Who's looking through a camera.

at a grainy video and they see somebody walking to the trunk of a car with some object and filling something and they're like, well, that could be a bomb. Well, sure, anybody carrying any, like anybody who comes home from the grocery store or anybody who's going to a game and is loading things into the trunk, like is in a grainy footage, potentially,

A terrorist loading a bomb in there. And it's a hard way to think of the world, to think of yourself, you're loading up your trunk for softball practice and you might just get a hellfire shot at you because a 19-year-old in Tampa figures better safe than sorry.

It's almost worse than that because it's not just a 19-year-old Tampa. It's this like bureaucratic chain. Right, and this one probably went up a ways. Right. But you have to do it quickly, right? Although they can follow the car for a while.

So, I mean, hopefully the family gets what they consider to be justice. We'll see. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. But amazing that they were able to say that they don't harbor any anger, that they forgive the United States. And like you said, hopefully they get some semblance of justice here. And not surprising that California was too expensive and that they had to move to Kansas City. Not surprising at all. And this is happening in the context of just yesterday, I think it was the FBI announced that they had thwarted a plot by an Afghan who was here on a special immigrant visa to

This was in Oklahoma City to have some type of ISIS terrorist attack against America. And what's frustrating about that is our inability to do any bureaucratic vetting correctly at all. Like you blow up the family of an aid worker who wanted to come to the U.S. and be a part of the U.S.,

But this falls through the cracks. I mean, it's just we're incompetent. We're completely incompetent. The family that should have been here contributing is burned. And that happens here.

Yes, indeed. All right. Well, let's move on to, this isn't quite just about Project 2025. It says Project 2025 on the banner at the bottom of the screen, but it's sort of about the porn industry getting involved on behalf of Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. This is a wild story, not an entirely unpredictable story, but we can put E1 up on the screen, a tear sheet from the New York Times about how the porn industry is jumping into the presidential campaign targeting Project 2025. That is the New York Times' story.

Headline, what's happening essentially is that 17 porn actors got together, cobbled together $100,000 and are planning in swing states to run on Project 2025 or to talk about Project 2025 in political ads on those porn sites. So basically in swing states saying, don't vote for Donald Trump, obviously it's a, I

effort to aid Kamala Harris' campaign. And it is based on Project 2025, which Ryan and I have pulled up the part of Project 2025 that actually deals with pornography. And Ezra Klein, who's scheduled on the show next week, programming note, I have to go to Rome, have to. I will be in Rome for work next week. But Ezra Klein is scheduled to come on the show. But Ezra asked me about this part of the Project 2025 campaign.

mandate book because I had spoken about pornography at porn regulation at a conference earlier this summer. And this is what Kevin Roberts wrote in the Mandate for Leadership from Project 2025. Pornography manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political Gordian knot inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare, which is something you hear in libertarian circles a lot.

It is no claim to First Amendment protection. Its purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women. Their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders and telecommunications and tech firms that facilitate its spread

should be shuttered. So much farther than I would go on porn regulation. I feel like I'm pretty hawkish on porn regulation, Ryan, but you can see where the porn industry would find that to be enormously threatening and politically beneficial because it is so hardcore. You should all be in jail. Yeah. It makes for a very easy political ad on behalf of the Harris campaign. Obviously, in order to do this, you have to tie Trump to Project 2025, which

Trump is trying very hard to distance himself from Trump. I think they've already done that successfully. They have. I mean, my like super quick take on it is that Trump had nothing to do, literally nothing to do with the writing and drafting of Project 2025. He likely had no idea what it was and it angered him when he heard out about it. But

But in his administration, there would definitely be lots of influence from Project 2025. The people who created Project 2025, they're going to be front and center, in front of the line for jobs. Two things can be true. Yeah, Trump had nothing to do with it. And two, he would definitely use it in his administration just out of necessity. Right. And if Trump doesn't care about policy for the most part, then he's going to delegate that to the people who do care. And if he hires the people that wrote Project 2025...

Then these porn folks are...

Right to be nervous. Yeah, yeah, and it's politically. And there are state-level assaults on the porn industry, right? Yes, yeah. Where there's Republican control. Yeah, you can't go to Pornhub in certain states anymore. Basically, Pornhub just, they said it was too hard to operate in certain states because there had been, a lot of this, I think, comes down to the age verification laws, that that was such an owner's burden, which I think conservatives are right to say at Congress.

That kind of tells you a little something about how these websites are being run. But it was such an owner's burden that they just don't operate in certain states anymore because it's really hard to verify the age of people who are using those platforms in a way that complies with those laws that were passed.

And there are privacy concerns, I understand that. The age verification laws require people to like upload their driver's license or something. Yeah, I think it varies, but that's... I can imagine why that would be something that... Yeah. Somebody might not want to do. You can imagine why that would have an effect on people's voting decisions. So $100,000, not a lot of money though. So if...

They always come up with these different names for voters, soccer moms, whatever. Porn dads. Because here, so in the New York Times article, they say,

Between 18 to 29 year olds 44% say that they've watched porn in the last month and between 30 to 49 year olds that number goes up to 57% in the last month. So you have your soccer moms. That's a huge electorate. Yeah, the key demographic. But you can imagine where that would actually be pretty powerful. I'm surprised it's only $100,000 because

Like that's the privacy stuff is psychologically that would have a huge, I would imagine that would have a huge and powerful effect on people's decisions when they're actually going to the ballot box. And it's seven swing states, $100,000. When you spread that out, seven swing states, it's really just not that much money. Right. It's more the earned media and the New York Times and breaking points and counterpoints that is...

that's gonna exponentially boost that. - You're welcome.

Yeah, so if you're getting a targeted ad, they know something about you. Yeah, they know something about you. Well, I think it is just on, that's the other reason it might only be $100,000. They might actually have cooperation from the sites to like subsidize the ads and all of that. Yeah, if they were smart, they would use their massive audience and advertise to them. And it's kind of funny, by the way, because Donald Trump is like the president.

The only president, to my knowledge, that has ever been on the cover of Playboy and posed for the cover of Playboy. So it's Trump. This is something that Trump probably likes. I'm sure he personally doesn't want any part of that. He doesn't care. Stormy Daniels, of course, likely had some type of relationship with Stormy Daniels.

This probably also blends together in people's minds with overturning Roe v. Wade and because in the same states where they would be shutting down Pornhub, they're also pushing significant abortion restrictions in the wake of overturning Roe v. Wade. And so it probably all gets blended together in people's minds as Republicans just creeping into your bedroom in multiple different ways. Yeah, I think that's true. I think that's true.

The Kevin Roberts quote that I read earlier, even I was surprised by that. But you know what? You're like, this can't be right. Like, oh, whoa. I didn't doubt that it was right, but it is, I will say, that there is a moral consistency to that that is superior to the kind of mealy-mouthed approach you see sometimes. So at least he's being morally consistent. He's going for it. Yeah. I think that it's actually probably going to increase on the right, just given, like,

The porn industry saying it's good that 57% of 30 to 49 year olds are watching porn once a month, that doesn't appeal the most. How did they lump trans people into that? What was the quote again? So I'll pull up the quote here, but I will say that does- Too many $10 words at the front end of that quote for me to be able to follow it. It is.

It is a common, now correlation does not equal causation is what I would say to that, but it is a common thing when you talk to kids who have detransitioned or even they didn't do a full medical transition, but they end up regretting different types of therapy or whatever. It is a thing that a lot of,

They had some porn addiction along the way. Yeah. Some comorbidity type situation. Right. Yeah. I mean, basically, yes. That's what he's trying to say. That's what he's trying to say. Okay. So the quote here, Ryan, because I know you wanted to hear it very, very badly, is pornography manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children, for instance, is not a political gourd, not inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech, property rights, sexual liberation, and child welfare. So that's the...

It's like a junior in college writing a paper with no self-awareness. But that is where it invokes the propagation of, quote, transgender ideology. And again, I understand why it's invoked there because that's a common point. If you're somebody who sees the stories of detransitioners as representative of something that's troubling, as I do, it comes up a lot. So I get where it comes from.

That quote went harder than I would have expected. And just for people watching, if you want to be a writer, if you want to express your ideas, don't write like that. It's bad. Bad writing. Maybe we can get Kevin Roberts on the show. You guys can talk about writing. If you ever find yourself writing Gordian Knot, stop and go back and rewrite the sentence. Gordian Knot is never what you really needed to say. Don't use cliches as crutches. They're intellectual crutches.

All right, let's move on to our guest who is actually has a pretty unique perspective. Poor guy, Jewish, Iranian, American, anti-war activist here with the National Iranian American Council.

At the intersection of all the worst things going on. So stick around. We'll be talking about Benjamin Netanyahu urging the Lebanese people to, quote, free themselves of a huge portion of the Lebanese population and what that means for regional stability going forward. Stick around for that.

Mark your calendars so you don't miss out on this celebración. Visita visittucson.org slash viva. Wouldn't it be nice if nothing stood in your way? You're so close, yet so far.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released an unusual English language video directed at the Lebanese people urging them to free themselves from a significant portion of the Lebanese population through the organization Hezbollah. Let's roll a little bit of that. This is a message to the people of Lebanon. Do you remember when your country was called the pearl of the Middle East? I do. So what happened to Lebanon? A gang of tyrants and terrorists destroyed it. That's what happened.

Lebanon was once known for its tolerance, for its beauty. Today, it's a place of chaos, a place of war. Israel withdrew from Lebanon 25 years ago, but the country that actually conquered Lebanon is not Israel, it's Iran. You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza. It doesn't have to be that way.

All right, so we're joined now by Etan Mubarak, who is an analyst at the National Iranian American Council. Etan, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the program.

Thank you so much, Ryan and Emily. Great to see you. Great to be here. Just a quick note. I'll be speaking today in my personal capacity as a Jewish Iranian American advocate, not on behalf of my organization, the National Iranian American Council, but I will discuss the organization's work and positions.

Excellent. And we actually prefer that because then people can speak a little bit more freely than if they're speaking on behalf of a large institution. So, Itan, Netanyahu goes on in that clip to say that

The Lebanese people basically have a choice that they have to, quote, free themselves from Hezbollah or he's going to turn Lebanon into Gaza. He's going to do to Lebanon what he did to Gaza. And so separating those two things out, first of all, what would it look like for Lebanon to, quote, unquote, free itself of Hezbollah?

Well, Ryan, I think it would look a lot like we're seeing in Gaza. And if recent events are any indication, it's likely to look like a lot of what we've already seen. But the bottom line is, you know, the United States and China

and activists are demanding that the United States should not be helping Netanyahu pursue a campaign of regional war with Iran or regime change in Lebanon while he continues to fail to achieve his strategic goals in Gaza. You know, instead of preventing a war with Iran and throughout the region, U.S. policy is actively fanning the flames of this conflict.

And we need to change course. The fighting in the Middle East broadly over the last year in Yemen, in Syria, in Jordan, where we lost three U.S. service members, and most recently centering Lebanon, Iran, and of course Israel and Palestine, has flown directly in the face of Biden's stated goals of avoiding a regional war. And Netanyahu continues to cross red lines in Gaza,

in Rafa as he inflames tensions and seeks this

this regional war. And Hezbollah has also carried out heinous attacks on civilians. But they've also stated repeatedly that their attacks will end with a ceasefire in Gaza. And we should be wary of this campaign to distract from the failures of achieving strategic goals there. And a quick follow-up on that, and then let Emily get in. If we can put up F2, NIAC has helped to organize a coalition against

War with with Iran and I've noticed in the reporting over the last few days that the US is not only coordinating with Israel when it comes to Israel's response to Iran's response on the back-and-forth airstrikes that we're seeing which would implicate the War Powers Act because it introduces the United States into hostilities and

But there's even reporting from the New York Times and elsewhere that the United States is considering its own direct airstrikes on Iran, which would obviously be a flagrant violation of the War Powers Act and the Constitution itself. What's your understanding of the current situation and whether or not the laws on the books have anything to, you know, are at all an obstacle in what the United States is considering here?

Yes, Ryan. Yeah. Yesterday, NBC claimed that U.S. officials discussed joining Israel in offensive strikes against Iran, you know, passing them off as defensive after the fact. And we and you're right to point out that we need to keep in mind Congress has not declared war on Iran. And that is

outcome would be disastrous for the region. And it'd be exactly what Netanyahu wants. And some extremist Israeli and U.S. Iran hawk camps are suggesting that this is some kind of generational opportunity to take out Iran, you know, the head of the snake, the eye of the octopus and what have you. And these calls, again, are meant to distract

from the need for a ceasefire. But in that letter that you mentioned that NIAC led, signed along with over 80 civil rights, human rights organizations, we're demanding, again, that the U.S. not pass any new laws, but just adhere to our basic laws on the books, that we condition weapons, condition offensive weapons in line with the Leahy laws. And there's going to be a historic vote on a

on a joint resolution of disapproval to condition weapons. Coming up, Senator Sanders is expected to force a vote in mid-November after Congress returns from recess. And that'll be the first straightforward Senate vote on Israel arms sales since January, a crucial opportunity.

to enforce whether or not, to see whether or not the U.S. can enforce its own laws relative to the Leahy Law and National Security Memorandum 20. And at the crux of the efforts from those generational calls of people, especially hawkish on this, is the idea that Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map, as they often say. So I'm curious for your perspective, Etan, on how this,

the, that central, as somebody who is both Jewish and Iranian, how the characterization of Iran's ultimate goal towards Israel, what do you make of that, especially as it is used to justify potentially extreme responses that could be very, very escalatory?

So, I mean, let me just make it clear as a as a Jewish Iranian American, my family left Iran. They live they came to the United States and many of them live in Israel now. And I have friends and family in Israel who are horrified by this conflict, who are exhausted by

by the mental toll and strain of this, you know, aside from the Palestinian humanitarian issue. But I think the bottom line for American Jews and the bigger picture around, you know, Iran and the regime's calls to annihilate Israel is that, you know, the U.S.,

I'm an American citizen. I can only control what the United States government does. And activists around the country have been focused, laser focused on us doing better. And the U.S. needs to do a better job of stopping this chaotic cycle where Israel, Hezbollah, Iran, proxy,

parties keep trying to outmaneuver each other and one up each other, each unwilling to see as to be seen as the one who backs down this kind of constant cycle of tactical wins in a war as a strategic loss for everyone involved, for all civilians involved. And we've seen how military solutions play out to solving political problems. And, you know, with I also want to make it clear, I absolutely condemn the Islamic Republic solution.

regimes, human rights abuses. And I stand with the Iranian people's movement for self-determination. The regime has been brutal in its treatment of women, journalists, and dissidents of all kinds. And at NIAC, we publish a human rights tracker every single week covering the human rights activists and abuse stories coming out of Iran. But when we analyze these policies and we advocate for policies, we have to acknowledge facts. And the fact is that our policies of maximum pressure

broad economic sanctions, and general isolation and just eliminating of diplomatic off-ramps have undermined U.S. and regional security interests and human rights in the region. Human rights are a disaster all across the region, including in Iran and obviously in Palestine. So our policies, they need to be attached to advancing clear goals. And I think that needs to be the framing with regards to Iran. And that doesn't mean that in a

In a vacuum conversation, I don't want to see the Iranian regime gone and see a better government that serves the Iranian people. But I don't think the United States and Bibi Netanyahu are the careful executioners of a regime change in Iran, especially given –

the U.S. legacy of supporting efforts to install and regime change in Iran in '53. So I'll leave it at that. And there's more to talk also. There's a template. Sorry to ramble, but there's a template

for how we can solve this in terms of goals. Like the Iranian nuclear deal, even though it wasn't perfect, it was working to contain Iran's nuclear program and Iran's current president, Hezir Echian, supports it and put together a cabinet, whatever you think of Hezir Echian, he put together a cabinet of former JCPOA negotiators, again, in support of a deal that was containing Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief

to the Iranian people. And the Trump administration withdrew from it. While Iran was complying, it destroyed goodwill and trust

But there is still a world, I believe that there is still a world where we can re-engage with Iran, even in this moment, and de-escalate the regional conflicts and deal with the nuclear issue. But it's not going to come if the U.S. continues to be unwillingly or be dragged along into a five-front regional war at Netanyahu's behest.

One other thing I wanted to ask you about, by the way, I forgot to mention that I would bring this up, but I don't know, did you notice that Netanyahu yesterday or the Israeli government yesterday put out basically an infographic with a bunch of targets of people that it intended to assassinate at some point going forward? And on that was Ali al-Sistani, one of the most revered

figure, maybe the most revered, you know, cleric or religious figure of the Shiite faith. Somebody who met the Pope, you know, fairly recently, a political spiritual leader. And a lot of people were shocked to see his face with the target on it, along with like Hezbollah commanders and like, I think Yahya Sinwar or something was on there. I don't know if you saw that, but is that rippling through the Shia community at all?

So I can't speak to it, I haven't seen it. - Yeah, that's a different area over there. So anyway, I also wanted to ask you about the, if you have any sense of where the situation with the Irish, speaking in my own sect,

The Irish in Lebanon. The IDF has kind of ordered these Irish peacekeepers to basically get out of their way. And the Irish are saying, we can put up F3, by the way. This is a VO of some IDF soldiers raising a flag in southern Lebanon. A rather provocative act and certainly...

You know, not beating the charges of a planned occupation of southern Lebanon by doing that. So, you know, the Irish troops have said that they have not been directly threatened by the IDF. Hezbollah has said that they will not fire

at IDF troops who are anywhere near the Irish because they don't want to catch the Irish. What do you make of this UN peacekeeping role of the Irish kind of refusing to back down? And what's your sense of how things are going broadly in Israel's ground invasion?

Well, I know that the Irish prime minister on the global stage has been one of the most outspoken proponents of Palestinian human rights and critics of the alleged war crimes committed by the IDF within this. I'm glad to see...

peacekeeping forces involved and trying to stand in solidarity amidst, you know, with the Lebanese people. You know, we've seen with the ground invasion so far, what, 2,000 Lebanese folks killed, a million displaced,

And while the IDF and the Israelis maintain a strategic advantage in terms of airstrikes, the ground invasion, there are questions, especially considering the recent operation that saw eight IDF soldiers killed. I mean, the fact is,

I think more broadly, this is one of the darkest periods in the region's history, but it still doesn't have to be like this. And we need to call out as Jews, as Americans, obviously we need to call out the call and call it anti-Semitism and escalation from the one side calling to destroy Israel. But we also need to call out

and condemn this greater Israel expansion dream, along with ethnic cleansing and occupation in Lebanon and in the West Bank ongoing. You know, no side, despite these calls to eliminate

the Israelis from the one side and calls to expand Israel into these states on the other. No side is going anywhere, in my opinion. Despite the regime change fantasies, no side is going away. And we need to

just embrace the sustainable path through diplomacy and negotiations. I don't see the ground invasion in Lebanon eliminating Hezbollah. They may have degraded them. They may significantly, certainly some decapitation strategy has worked in that sense. But there's a lot of

international relations scholars that have questioned the efficacy of Yeah of decapitation tactics. Go ahead. Oh, so we wanted to get your reaction to a fairly viral Confrontation that Liam Cosgrove of gray zone had with State Department spokesman Matthew Miller yesterday Ryan was there for it So he'll have probably some color to add to the conversation, but this is Liam

questioning Matt Miller on escalation, essentially, we can roll this clip. We often hear in response to these concerns that, well, Putin, Khomeini, you know, they're war criminals, they're terrorists, as if they're too inherently evil or immoral for us to negotiate with. But

Meanwhile, this administration has financed a genocide in Gaza for the last year. And every day you're up there denying accountability for it. So, I mean, what gives you the right to lecture other countries on their moral? So if you have a policy question for me, I'm happy to take it. If you want to give a speech, there are plenty of places in Washington where you can give a speech. Yeah, but people are sick of the bullshit in here. I mean, it is a genocide. I'm going to go on to another question. And you are risking nuclear war in Ukraine for this. Plenty of other places to give a speech. So the question, I guess, was what gives you the right?

How dare you? Yeah. What does give the United States right? So if you have a response to that, go for it. We just wanted to kind of make sure that we had that as a chaser to the program. Yeah. What do you make of it, Idan? Look, I share the frustration in the question. And frankly, I'm an organizer. We work at NIACC. We were, you know,

We have 14 volunteer chapters and thousands of members and allies around the country and we've been organizing meetings every, you know, with at every chance we can for the last year with members of Congress and their staff trying to call for no war with Iran, ceasefire, no weapons for war crimes, UNRWA funding, by the way, another huge issue, and diplomacy first. And

In these meetings, people get extremely emotional and Democrats have failed, frankly, to, in my opinion, properly engage with Middle Eastern Arab Muslim communities on this and with progressives generally. There was a moment of hope when Kamala replaced Biden and when Puzetskian got elected. But right now, we're not...

I don't have so much faith in the administration right now, certainly before the election, to make any significant departures from what has been. And again, you know, the clip aside, I would just love to reiterate some of the things that activists have been calling for, again, with the war powers, with diplomacy, with Iran rejecting this war, the

Great statements from some members of Congress, folks like Representative McGovern, Jayapal, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Senator Van Hollen, et cetera. And the UNRWA Restoration Act was just introduced, which is a huge, huge potential opportunity.

in addressing the humanitarian crisis. But I feel for that reporter. I'm glad I don't have to be in those rooms because I might lose it. And future meetings are much better. Yeah, that was, yeah. So there was a question there.

Where do you get off, basically? Where do you get the right to say the things you say? Right. Itam O'Brock, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.

All right, well, that does it for us today. Like I said, quick programming note, Sagar will be here in my stead next week. Bro show on Wednesday? Yeah, I have a fellowship in Rome. In fact, Ezra's a triple bro show. Triple bro show, oh my gosh, that's gonna be too much. That's still not a lot of tea, right? I mean, that's three low tea dukes, right?

Don't tell Sagar that. Sagar's bringing the tea. Someone cut this. Actually, don't leave it in. It's more fun that way. But anyway, that's the schedule for next week. I'm looking forward to watching. I wish I could be there. Ezra is such an interesting guy. And you guys go way back.

Yeah, I mean we've been we came up in this field together 20 years ago or something at this point right Lord. Oh So that'll be exciting. I remember when he was a young man compared to me compared to you now. We're both old Well, I look forward to watching that and watching a bro show with you and soccer soccer doesn't often get to sub in on counterpoint So that'll be extra fun. He's on your where's he gonna sit? Oh, no. Oh

I always move for Crystal, so he should move for you. I actually prefer this side, so I'm going to try to move over to this side. All right. Stay tuned to figure out which side of the desk Ryan ends up on. And after that, we have what? Two, three weeks until the election? Yeah, stick around for CounterPoints Friday. Come back on Friday for it. We're going to have Jeremy Scahill, my co-founder over at Dropside News and my former colleague.

back at our last organization as well. Very exciting. All right, stay tuned. We'll be back with more on Friday or Thursday night. If you're a premium subscriber, breakingpoints.com to get the show early. See you later.

And hide a secret from everyone around her.

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Wouldn't it be nice if nothing stood in your way? You're so close, yet so far. T.

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10/9/24: Shock Hurricane Milton Visuals, Kamala Media Blitz, Trump Says He's Not Isolationist, Kabul Drone Victims Speak Out, P0rn Industry Project 2025 Ad Blitz, Bibi Threatens Lebanon With Gaza Suffering