J. Edgar Boozer

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It loads up to three times faster, so you get much happier customers at unbeatable price. It is easy, peasy way to get hardworking website that is nice, nice, nice. Try Ionos, your digital partner at Ionos.co.uk. MUSIC Welcome to Pied Save America. I'm John Faber. I'm John Lovett. And Tom Yovitor. Wow, that was enthusiastic. Let's go. Well, on today's show, we're going to talk about Trump's premature victory lap on Iran, his attempts to win back Joe Rogan with psychedelics, and Kash Patel suing the Atlantic because over two dozen people basically said he's a paranoid idiot who drinks too much, will also cover what was a big weekend for potential Democratic presidential contenders who are very much stepping up their public appearances and honing their stump speeches. Then Ilan Goldenberg of J Street talks to Tommy about how pro-Israel progressives are trying to make their case. 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Head on over to Kirkid.com, slash friends and subscribe. All right, let's get to the news. Donald Trump spent Friday counting all of his chickens before they hatched, firing off a series of manic all-caps posts where he announced that Iran had agreed to, quote, never close the Strait of Hormuz again, would turn over all their enriched uranium, would receive no money for it, would remove all sea mines, and that Israel would be prohibited from bombing Lebanon any longer. Trump then continued his premature celebration at a TPUSA event in Arizona, where he said this. Iran has just announced that the Strait of Hormuz is fully open and ready for business. This process should go very quickly and that most of the points are already negotiated and agreed to. You'll be very happy. The USA will get all nuclear dust. You know what the nuclear dust is? That was that white powdery substance created by our B2 bombers, those great B2 bombers, late one evening. Seven months ago, no money will exchange hands in any way, shape, or form. So right after this, maybe as he was speaking, everything appeared to fall apart. The Iranians said that all of Trump's claims were false, closed the Strait, and fired on two ships, which led Trump to threaten war crimes again, fire on an Iranian ship that tried to run the US Naval Blockade, and seize the ship, which in turn led the Iranians to threaten retaliation. And yet it seems as of this recording late Monday afternoon, a second round of negotiations in Pakistan may still happen. The latest is that JD Vance and the US delegation seem to be planning to go. And while the Iranians haven't publicly confirmed their attendance, two Iranian officials told the Times that they'll likely attend if JD Vance goes. Still some confusing. First time in history, anyone says, I'm not going to that event unless JD Vance is there. Maybe the last. Other than his literal wedding. So it seems like Trump was either lying or heavily exaggerating on Friday about the progress they'd made on a deal, or he pissed off the Iranians by spiking the ball before the deal was done, or maybe a little bit of both. I don't know. Tommy, what do you think? What happened? I think he was just making shit up. He was tweeting out his wish list of outcomes for talks that had not yet happened. And then he kind of elaborated their TPUSA with the golden dust. The dust. The nuclear. Created by Airbnb two bombers. The nuclear dust is his way of squaring the circle between we obliterated the program and we have to fight a war against them. It's all about the dust, because it's just dust. RFK is going to send out a foreign dust. But even last week, Iran was saying in their tweets that the Strait of Formuses only partially opened. Foreign Minister Abbasarachi said, the Strait of Formuses declared completely open for the remaining period of the ceasefire on the coordinated route that's very important, which is their little part that goes close to their shoreline so they can control everybody. That was what was open. And Trump was saying, oh, it'll never be closed again. Israel will never bomb Lebanon again. It was all, they're going to turn over their stockpile, which is the dust. It was all just made up. And then the other problem is within Iran itself, there's all these reports of an ongoing power struggle between elected officials, the IRGC, the nationalists, first the Islamists. It's not really clear who's in charge over there. It's like 1979, the first few months. And the way you know that was manifesting was the economists had a great piece today where they talked about how the Islamabad talks, the Iranian delegation had 80 people in it, including 30 who were described as decision makers. That's rolling deep. That's like a state that you know how to cut it. Too many cooks in that case. Too many cooks. Too many cooks, not enough dust. Yeah, who knows? Keep them all going. But it was a mess. Yeah, apparently the Trump administration officials told Axios today that there is this genuine, they kind of blamed it on the, this genuine split between the negotiating team and the IRGC. They also though admitted to Axios, they said that the Iranians never ever, at no point agreed to give up enrichment permanently. They certainly never agreed to do anything for free. They also said Trump is willing to lift sanctions, give somebody even though he's not saying that publicly. And release a bunch of frozen assets, billions of dollars. Yeah, there was also a story about the six cruise ships that had to like sneak through the Strait of Hormuz during this opening, which I just, there's something so funny about this. It's like, no honey, we're not, apparently there was no one to call. I know, it's such a bummer. It's such a bummer that they're empty, but just be like, we're going through the Strait of Hormuz. It's like a cannonball run of cruise ships. That's something you just don't tell the passengers. Just look out the window wave. On your left. That's not a rocket launcher. Is that a drone? Those are just fireworks. The beautiful gulf. Yeah, I think increasingly we just need to look at whatever Trump is posting about this as a completely separate, like is he lying? Is he telling the truth? It's a bit. It's not even, it's just- It's a performance piece. It's just bullshit. It's just, it's not even tethered to what he's hearing or not, maybe it's in some way a version of what he hopes the outcome will be. But based on this and more of the reporting that we'll talk about in a minute, he treats, the social media is basically just about what he wants to vent about how he's feeling and what he wants the public to believe is going on. It bears absolutely no resemblance to what he's hearing internally, to what they're conveying to the Iranians, to what the internal discussions look like. It is just a separate track. It's just like he's journaling. Yeah. He's just doing therapy. And sometimes it's therapy, sometimes it's like a vision board. Did you guys read all the truths today? There's a lot today. There's like a lot. Some of the couple of things that stood out to me there, he says, I'm winning a war by a lot. And then goes on to like mock Iran for losing again. He attacked Obama and the JCPOA. He said Obama gave $1.7 billion in all-capital letters. Green cash. He emptied out all the cash from banks in DC, Virginia and Maryland. Those bankers said they've never seen anything like it before. This always gotta be some made up detail. Like Tony Blinken was going bank to bank all the banks. Like in the movie, Assassins, where you have to wait for a couple of hours while they count all the money. He did one that started, he said, despite World War I lasting, and then he goes on and talks about the exact length in years and days of World War II, World War I, Korean War, Vietnam, Iraq. And then he said, I promised six weeks. And by the way, I am under no pressure whatsoever to make a deal, although it will all happen relatively quickly. Time is not my adversary. Oh, I think it is. I would say that. Yeah, exactly. Time is the last one on that. Time is the last one on that, yeah. Called Democrats Traders, bragged about building the greatest military our country's ever seen, including adding the space force, that was something that we had to get in today. And then also, Israel never talked me into the war with Iran. Sure, buddy. Yeah, my Israel never talked me into the war with Iran T-shirt. So it's sort of a lot of questions. I just, like, as is giving a speech, I meant to be a kind of political booster speech, and you say, great news, everybody. The Strait of Hormuz is opened. Like, that wasn't a problem two months ago. So it's still like, the lesson he took from the Iraq War was that the one most successful episode in the whole war was the mission accomplished banner, because he basically has been doing that every single day since the war began. Yeah. Every day, it's we won the war, every single day. It's we won the war, or we're gonna destroy civilization. That's it. I'm not pressured to end it soon, but I'm gonna end it soon, but I don't care when I end it, because we've already won, then we're gonna, well, we're gonna accomplish all this stuff. Do you see that Jared Kushner and Steve Whitcoffer being referred to as Whit Kush? It's so embarrassing. In diplomatic circles, Whit Kush. According to Playbook. Kush Whit, Kush Whit sounds better. Kush Goff. Jerk Goff, Jerk. Kush Goff. Jerk Goff. Jerroff, yeah. Jerroff. That works for me. Anyway, there was also an incredible Wall Street Journal story over the weekend about how Trump has been, quote, grappling with his own fears about this war, namely that if too many American troops were killed or captured, his presidency could end up like Jimmy Carter's. That seems to be the main takeaway for him. I also found this part notable. When a White House advisor asked Trump about his, remember the Easter Sunday post that threatened war crimes and ended with, quote, open the fucking straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell, praise be to Allah. Of course I'm a happy Easter. So Trump said about this post, quote, he came up with the Allah idea himself. He said he wanted to seem as unstable and insulting as possible, believing it could bring the Iranians to the table. And senior administration officials said, nailed the first part, I guess, I guess you guys may get the piece. I'd quibble with the analysis a bit. I don't think you needed the praise be to Allah tweet for the Iranians to think you're unstable and insulting to them. That's pretty well established. I think with the crazy bastards, Mark. Yeah, and all the bombing. You guys think that telling people that you're just pretending to be a lunatic to get a deal kind of ruins the point of pretending to be a lunatic? Yeah, the madman theory. Well, yeah, you read the piece, oh, he really was just, yeah, right. Oh, all right, you are what you pretend to be. But he's just sort of jerking everybody around. And I look back to like the concern, which I was completely legitimate, given what he was threatening that day. And then you read the piece and he was also meeting about the ballroom and doing fundraisers and kind of doing normal business that day. And there was a little bit of like the alarm that wasn't going off and the dog that wasn't barking. Like there was no, we weren't getting reporting that he was in the situation room, laying out the final parts of the plan. And so it confirms what we were just talking about, which is what he is posting publicly is not coming out of a conversation with the negotiators. It's not some part of some like public facing strategy and private facing strategy. It's just his separate stream of consciousness. He has a kind of whatever, contractor's mentality about negotiations. He clearly, like as I think the Iranians have assumed, as a lot of people have assumed, does not want the economic pain that comes with a long-term conflict. So he has to counteract that by seeming unstable and issuing these big threats and seeming blustery. But behind the scenes, that's all just a show, which is what the Iranians knew because they called his bluff that day and didn't relent to what he was saying in the lead up to this civilization-destroying threat. Yeah, the story I think really drives home that the whole war is just an exercise in ego and narcissism and stupidity. There was the Venezuelan operation, that was easy in Trump's mind. He was told by all these sycophants like Lindsey Graham and Pete Hexeth that Iran would be easy too, and that he could be an historic figure and reshape the geopolitical order and be better than Obama. And so here we are. There's also more detail about how in the opening days, they were presenting him hype videos of explosions, and he was like, this is cool. Why isn't the press just reporting this? Look at all the things blowing up. And then it also sounds like Hexeth told him that Iran wouldn't close the straddle-hermose or the people around him, or at least Trump was telling them that. I assume someone told him that they wouldn't respond in the most obvious way possible. And so Trump was shocked when it happened when global oil prices spiked. And that ultimately though, like what is upsetting him about what's happening with Iran is not the death and the destruction or the high gas prices, it is being compared to Jimmy Carter or Joe Biden. That is what is terrifying him and what he cannot summit. And so yeah, he's changing the subject. He's talking to his architect about the ballroom or like anything he can to get away from this. Multiple meetings a week on the ballroom. He refers to, that he sees himself as quote, the general contractor of the ballroom. Well, I think in his mind, he would see a successful outcome in Iran as a legacy item. He puts that on the same plane as the ballroom as a legacy item. Like it's all just one level for him, you know? And look, if the reason he is worried about U.S. casualties and chaos in the Middle East is for reasons of self-preservation and legacy, like that's a fine motivation, but, because at least the outcome could be the same, but his other problem is he can never risk seeming like he is not completely dominating and winning at every given moment. Like I don't know if the negotiations would be further along right now if he just simply shut his fucking mouth and stopped posting about stuff, but I certainly think he's made it worse. Like if you, instead of saying that you won all the time and just pissing off the Iranians and say, oh, they did this and they're destroyed, imagine if every time someone asked about the negotiations, Trump and the White House were just like, when we have something to report and we have good news to report, we'll let you know. Otherwise, we're just engaged in negotiations. He's not a big underpromise over to live a guy. Well, it also, like what is the end game of this? Any actual deal, not one he's describing, but a real deal will involve, you know, puts and takes. It'll have compromises on our side, compromises that will in some way, like resemble the parts of the deal he's been mocking for years that the Obama administration did with Iran. There's only so many levers that this kind of an agreement will have. And so the hope to me is you come to some sort of conclusion to this that results in a deal that he pretends is some kind of dominating victory and it is understood by everyone that Donald Trump is gonna call this the greatest deal in human history, even if it resembles in many ways the Obama deal. That's the hope, right? And he wants to give himself the Medal of Honor so that was in there too. He's kidding. That keeps coming up. But it was a joke. Let's talk about that. Who had the story? Was it the times the other day about how the arch he's building for himself went from like 70 feet to 150 feet, now it's 250 feet? It's like, you have to reroute the planes. They're gonna have to go on. Even like the architect that was for it was like, no, this is crazy, you can't do this. It's gonna dwarf like, you know, a bunch of veterans, memorials and monuments. Before we move on, I just, I want to call your attention to a political piece from Friday that has already become to me just an incredible artifact from a simpler time. The headline is, Big Psy of Relief. Republicans finally get some good news, can it last? And I was like, I saw them like, what is this about in the Litas? Republicans are breathing a little easier this weekend. Cautiously optimistic, the Trump has finally found an off ramp to end the war with oil dropping below $90 a barrel, the stock market making new all-time highs and gas down eight cents a gallon this week. Some feel the slightest bit of a wind at their back for the first time since February. And then it's got Representative Carlos Scorbello saying, Big Psy of Relief from Congressional Republicans today. It's just, it's so funny to like, to like do that story and for Republicans to like go on the record for that story when there's been like an hour after Trump said, everything's open, everything's great. It just goes to show that it's like, it's not just Trump, like this is how, this is like how Washington operates. The DC media operates the whole thing. And there's some, you know, like, oh, they're trying to say, they're trying to, they're wish casting to Trump. Like this is good when we de-escalate, this will be something that you'll get positive press about from your congressional. It's also a window into like the second, no matter what the deal is, no matter how bad the deal is, no matter how different it is from the JCPOA, no matter what it is, it's gonna be like, like the second there is any kind of a deal in the war is over, it's gonna be like, all right, now Republicans are feeling bullish again on the midterms. Great. Yeah, we'll look for that. Yeah, well, we can talk about that. Yeah. Hot Save America is brought to you by Mint Mobile. I don't know about you, but I'm keeping my money where I can see it. Unfortunately, traditional big wireless carriers also seem to like keeping your money too. If you're fed up with crazy high wireless bills, bogus fees and free perks, that actually costs more in the long run than switch to Mint Mobile. Stop overpaying for wireless just because that's how it's always been. Mint exists purely to fix that. Mint Mobile is here to rescue you with premium wireless plans starting at 15 bucks a month. 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Look, it's a weird scary world out there, more so than ever these days. You need to talk to somebody, work some things out. It could be anxiety about the world, your relationship issues, it could be trouble at work, whatever it is, you will benefit from talking with a therapist. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash PSA. That's better, H-E-L-P dot com slash PSA. The vast majority of Americans still hate the war. I think Trump's doing a shitty job. A brand new NBC News poll looks just like all the others. Trump is at 37% approval, 63% disapproval, including 50% who say they strongly disapprove. Record lows all around, and his numbers are even worse on Iran and the cost of living. Probably not helped by his energy secretary telling CNN over the weekend that, quote, it could be next year before gas is under $3 a gallon again. Republicans are starting to panic, they may lose the Senate as well as the House. And you can tell the White House is nervous because they're making public overtures to win back one-time ally Joe Rogan, who's been saying things like this about the war. Most people that voted for Trump or wanted Trump to be in office, one of the things that was attractive was this no more wars. Sure, of course. And now we're in one of the craziest ones. What the fuck are we doing? We're not doing anything. What the fuck are we doing? Like, how is this still going on? Well, over the weekend, Trump made a surprise announcement that he's fast-tracking FDA review of psychedelics as a medical treatment. An issue Rogan is passionate about. And you can tell Trump is too from his mastery of the terms involved. It's called iBogain treatment. iBogain. Remember the name? Is that pronounced relatively properly? What you said? I don't want to get it wrong. iBogain, because it's so important and experienced an 80 to 90% reduction in symptoms of depression and anxiety within one month. Can I have some, please? I'll take whatever it takes. I'll take whatever it takes. I don't have time to be depressed. You know, if you stay busy enough, maybe that works too. That's what I do. That's how depression works, for sure. I sent President Trump some information. We have a gigantic opiate problem in this country. I sent him that information. The text message came back, sounds great. Do you want FDA approval? Let's do it. For 56 years, we've lived under those terrible conditions. We're free of that now. We're free of that now. Thanks to all these people that we see next to me and thanks to President Trump. We all respect Joe. And he's a little bit more liberal than... That's okay. I have a lot of friends that are liberal. Interesting window into how the sausage gets made, huh? You just text the president something and suddenly the FDA independent regulatory agency just fast tracks it, no problem. Yeah, this is a good outcome on this specifics here, but Joe Rogan texting Trump some medical information and he's like, cool, let's do it. That's not a good process. Because you're pissing me on the war and so I'm trying to get you back. So whatever you want, I don't know what this drug is. It sounds great. I'll take some, but you know, I just stay off depression by just, I just keep moving. I just keep posting. I've never been alone. If you don't want to feel sad, never be alone with your thoughts. Just keep moving. Just keep moving. For your family, that's what Trump thinks. For sure. Just get out there, just turn the TV on, turn it louder. Keep posting. Gotta post through it. Post through it. Yeah, I do think like what wrote like, I think it's worth saying that this is something people like about Trump, the idea that it doesn't have the red tape and the sludge of the normal government that there's stuff that should be happening that isn't because government is slow and stupid and there should be a president that just says, oh, this is a good idea. There's good studies. Let's do it. And there's two big problems with it. Real abundance coded there. A little bit. Well, there's somewhere between being able to build a train in California and Joe Rogan being a bizarre for magic mushrooms. Strikadelics. But the problem with it with Trump is, A, it becomes about, it's not about like, oh, doing good things faster based on any kind of a process. It's just who knows him and who has access. So yeah, Rogan can get this done and maybe that's a good thing, but it also means the CEO of United can give Trump a million dollars for the inaugural and then soft pitch creating the biggest airline by two in the world. Seems bad idea. And potentially get it done because Trump knows him and it seems like it's a big fun deal to do. And when the resulting merger sucks for people, Trump's like, well, I don't have to deal with that. I have my freak Atari jet. I have my guitar playing. They're pretty, they wish they hadn't made that gift. Right, oh, you're mad about the things I did before I left, get in line. I'm trying to stay ahead of depression. But the other, and the other part of it though, and I think it's like actually just as important is he actually doesn't do, other than like the, he can break things very quickly. He can do that with those. She can shut down agencies. But when he finishes these events where he is moving fast and doing things that other people couldn't do, nothing fucking happens. Joe Biden was really fucking slow on getting marijuana off of schedule one. He put out an order to review it in 2022. Trump says, I'm gonna fast track it, right? That gave him a real opportunity that he shouldn't have had. But it hasn't happened. It didn't, it's not, marijuana remains a schedule one drug as we're sitting here and talking. It has been held up ever since he wrote, signed that order over a year ago. Pam Bondi couldn't get it done. There's an opening for the administrative law judge that could be the one to approve it. And by the way, even if it does happen, there's a bunch of Republicans who are lined up to sue to prevent it from going into effect. So he gets the press event about how quickly he can do things. But meanwhile, he actually stops paying attention, doesn't really focus on it, doesn't really give a fuck, gets the good headline and never really happens. I do love the events where you can tell he's learning the details in real time. And he's like, kind of does a meta commentary on himself as he's reading the facts about, oh, that sounds good, depression. I don't need that. I'll take one. But on Ibogaine, there was a great piece in New York Times about Ibogaine treatment by Robert Draper that's worth reading. He did an episode of The Daily that you can listen to it too. It's helped a lot of people. It's helped a lot of people struggling from PTSD, depression, truly debilitating mental health challenges, especially veterans. And the cause was picked up by Rick Perry, Kiersten Sinema, some interesting people, Sean Ryan, who's got a huge show on YouTube, a bunch of veterans, he's a veteran himself in former Navy SEAL, has talked about using Ibogaine to shake his addiction to drinking drugs, a lot of stuff. So Rogan had a bunch of conversations about this with people impacted, including Sean Ryan, including Rick Perry, including a couple people at that event there. And it just, it did not, I think there's actually a really good outcome because it didn't make sense that you like, you couldn't do medical trials on people with PTSD, but you could like go to Mexico and get treatment. Like what, that's stupid. So I'm glad Trump cut through the red tape here. Like I'm sure Joe Rogan will kind of like, give Trump his flowers on this issue, rightfully. So I doubt it changes his concern about Iran or the fact that he's talking about it. Yeah, I think it's important for people. Like it doesn't short circuit the actual reclassification process or the approval process for the treatments themselves, but for this, for the studying. And it's not just for the medical studies and it's Ibogaine, but it's also MDMA and tecadillic mushrooms. It's like a whole category. I was at a fish concert recently. I think a lot of people were in that study. A lot of studies. A lot of people doing some intense research. A lot of studying there. A lot of studying there. The number one place for studying this about. Good place to study. Yeah, on the Rogan, like I think, if Rogan's smart, he will realize that this was, he got Trump to do something he wanted him to do. And he will go back to continue, people can criticize him when he wants to criticize him and not criticize him when he thinks he's doing something. Like it could just be like that. And I don't think it'll change anything big. I think it's smart politics, probably on both parts, on Trump's behalf and on Rogan's behalf. Good for Rogan for just saying, fuck it. They think they need me because they see that I'm critical of them. Like let's get something good to happen. Like great, good for him. That's an amazing thing to do. But if you're a Rogan listener and have heard Rogan talk about Donald Trump in Iran and the Epstein files and all the other things now that Rogan has criticized Trump for, I don't think this is changing, you're not an idiot, this doesn't change anything for you. This is the thing I don't get. Like the Rupert Burdock approach to Trump is always a smart one. You've got like Fox News doing the propaganda, but then the Wall Street Journal is kicking the shit out of him. Like reserve some optionality, man. Like show him you can throw a punch, he respects that. Yeah, that is very true. All right, speaking of infamous podcasters, we should talk about the FBI director who is suing the Atlantic over an absolutely brutal and somewhat terrifying story about his management style and personal behavior that's sourced to more than two dozen people, including quote current and former FBI officials and staff at law enforcement and intelligence agencies. He is called quote erratic, suspicious of others, prone to jumping to conclusions before he has necessary evidence, always a great quality in an FBI director. That's what you want. You always want the top cop, just jumping to conclusions before you have evidence. He's also accused of quote conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences and described as a national security vulnerability. He's reportedly been so drunk so often that his meetings have had to be rescheduled for later in the day and his security detail has had difficulty waking him up. This is from the piece quote, a request for breaching equipment normally used by SWAT and hostage rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors. Anyway, Cash is handling this well. Here he is announcing his lawsuit on Maria Bartiromo's show. You wanna attack my character? Come at me, bring it on, I'll see you in court. So you're gonna sue them? Absolutely, it's coming tomorrow. Tomorrow you will be dropping a lawsuit against the Atlantic magazine. Yes, yes I will for defamation. And because you know what Maria, we have to fight back against the fake news. He looks drunk, put a tie on him. Yeah, I'll be filing it tomorrow but don't expect it before noon. Yeah. I'm gonna roll into court. File this bad boy. I heard the problem is he's actually down a podcaster after Bon Gino resigned. Oh yeah. That's why he's kind of struggling. FB needs more podcasters. Yeah, send more podcasters. Blockhead Dan, Michael Ted Dan. What'd you guys think of the Atlantic's piece? Fine, I mean look, just worth saying, Cash Patel shouldn't have this job to begin with. He's not remotely qualified to be FBI director in the first place. He was a low level DOJ lawyer, then a Capitol Hill staffer, then he got like sucked into the Trump orbit and now he's the FBI director. This is crazy. It's crazy. There's been a lot of reporting about how we treated the job like a joke, like it was fantasy camp. There was, he was focused on the image in the parks. Like he used the private jet to fly to the Olympics. He's flying around to see his girlfriend. And remember he went to a place called the Boondoggle Ranch for a weekend off of hunting with a big GOP donor. And then also there's reports that he just, him and Dan Bon Gino would just freak out about like what Twitter thought of them and plan their tweets, not like investigations and things. Look, that's understandable. Yeah, but this story does make him sound like a genuine danger to the country. Like he is paranoid, prone to emotional outbursts, impulsive. He's so bad at managing the building that good people are leaving. And like he is drunk and let's just be like, he's drunk on the job. Because FBI director is a 24 seven job. You don't get a night out from the terrorists or the bad guys. And so the question is, why is he still there? And the answer is because he will go after Trump's enemies and Trump knows this. And now that he's even more damaged, he's probably gonna step that up and go that extra mile to prosecute John Brennan or whoever. And that's, it's scary. Yeah, Trump likes his cabinet secretary's weak and dependent upon him. But this I do think crosses the line into probably two week into dependent and the same way you saw Pam Bondine, Kristi Noem kind of sweatily trying to regain their good graces. It kind of crosses the line that you can't come back from. I'll just say honestly. No, it's sweating harder than him. No, this guy's, yeah, well, it's just, it's just sweat, not that booze. It has a smell, yeah. I had a different reaction, which is, I saw this a little bit the way I saw ICE at the airports. Like the more ICE at the airports, the fewer of them that are in American cities. And look, I think it is terrible to have someone like Cash Patel in charge of the FBI. There's no meeting he is in that he makes better sober or otherwise. And so, but the idea that he's, according to the report in Vegas in the poodle room, atop the Fountain Blue Hotel, I went and looked up how you get into this private club, the poodle room. And it is so exclusive for American Express card holders. It is available only to private members, people on a certain level of the hotel in a certain kind of suite and exclusive to certain holders of American Express credit cards, charge cards. So that's interesting. The part is to me that is the most alarming is not how he is absent and drinking all the time. It is the way through firings and attrition, the FBI has lost a lot of key people. There was this story, there's also a story last week by ProPublica, about 75 people that were part of different public integrity units, cyber units, election units that have all been forced out and left replaced by Trump diehards and people that were part of the election interference operation. And now you have career people and people in the States on phone calls with DHS and the people representing the federal government are the kooks who they used to be suing from the outside. You go from as a secretary of state or a lead, a law enforcement official in a state trying to fight some of these people. Next thing you know, they're the people representing DHS on the calls. And so senior serious people are leaving and kind of kooks and cranks and Trump anti-election zealots are coming in. That to me is the biggest and most dangerous part. Who's gonna wanna fucking report to this guy who apparently had a panic attack because his email wasn't working and he thought he'd been fired. That's what they report here. That's the opening anecdote. And by the way. Can't get into some part of the system. But probably his password. Didn't couldn't remember his password or something. And then he was like, he called everyone. I've been fired, I've been fired, I've been fired. And then like news goes around. The FBI headquarters always people are like, oh, he's gone, he's gone. They were like, no, no, it's just technical difficulties. He's fine. And then the lawsuit clearly put together by some, whoever kind of lawyers that are gonna still be, that are gonna be working for Cash Patel at this point. They referred to this in their lawsuit as a made up rumor, basically confirming that the room, that he was locked out of his computer and the rumor did at some point exist. And then in the lawsuit, they say, Director Patel does not drink to excess at these establishments, the Ned something and the poodle room, doesn't drink to excess there or anywhere else. And this has not and has never been a source of concern across the government. They are claiming in their lawsuit against the Atlantic that no one in the government is concerned about Cash Patel's drinking, quite a claim to make from a Sunday to a Monday. It's just also a claim that has nothing to do with proving the lawsuit or the allegation itself in order for them to win this lawsuit, because this is, they're doing defamation based on what over two dozen sources told the reporter. So basically the way that you win a lawsuit like this is, basically the reporter has to say that she didn't believe any of her sources at all, the over 24 that she talked to and yet she published it anyway. Because she hated Cash Patel and wanted him to suffer. Yeah, and she got all this information and she's like, I don't care that all these people are telling me this information, it's all wrong. I'm not gonna publish it anyway. Video of him drinking to excess at the fucking Olympics. He chugged a whole beer. He chugged a whole beer. We have proof of him flying off half conch because he posted crazy things that we all saw that went beyond the investigation. The proof is publicly available. Forget showing that it wasn't true or that the sources didn't say it. She could just point to the actual public videos that he himself has been in. This is also like the 10th story about him being a clown. There was an article in The Times earlier this year about him going to a Five Eyes conference in the UK. It was like our closest at Intelligent Allies. And Cash Patel's team said he wanted to go to a Premier League soccer games. He wanted to go jet skiing in London. He wanted to go on a helicopter tour. And we were like, this is an absolute joke. This guy's laughable. Before Noam and Bondi, I would have said, Trump's just gonna keep him, he keeps all of them. But he seems to be on a bit of a tear recently. And I just feel like- I just feel like- What's her name too? Yeah, I wanna mention that. Laurie Chavez to remember. So right before we recorded the news broke that Labour Secretary Laurie Chavez for Reimer has resigned. She's the third cabinet member to do so in the last month and a half. And she was under internal investigation from complaints about her conduct and how she treated her staffers. Also an alleged affair with a security staffer. Also using taxpayer funds for personal travel. And also like Cash Patel drinking all the time. Taxing staffers to be like, Savvy B question mark? Yeah, Savvy B my friend. Although asking the staffers just to bring up a bottle of wine to the hotel room. I don't know, is that the worst? Maybe it's the end of a long night. Maybe. Part of a pattern perhaps. Yeah, so she's gone. She's gone now too. That's another, she resigned. Although I'm sure it sounds like she was pushed out. And then the White House and then she's going to the, she's going to the private sector. Just like Pam Bondi. She's gonna be one of those. What is it, the shield for the Central Americas or whatever Kristine Ohm's fake job was? They didn't even give her a fake. It sounds like with Pantox. They decided to stop giving fake jobs after a note. Pam Bondi's just getting private sector. She's getting private sector. It's been the case of death recently. If somebody at the White House says that the president has utmost confidence in his cabinet secretaries because soon after they're gone, but Caroline Levitt put out a statement about Patel in this article that doesn't even say that. As part of it, she says, Director Patel remains a critical player on the administration's law and order team. It's basically the equivalent of like a valued member of our law enforcement operation, which sounds like he could be put fucking anywhere. He's going to be the deputy to Ohm at the Shield of the Americas in like the next like 48 hours. Maybe before we're done recording. Wild, wild. That somehow Pete Hegsett still has his job. Yeah, that really sucks. ["Pot Save America"] Pot Save America is brought to you by Hymns. Boner time. For that, but Nicola every time Tommy said that, you know, at the time, at the point you stop blaming stress, sleep, or just getting older. If bedroom performance is in question, it's probably crossed your mind to do something about it. The good news, you don't have to jump through a hoop to fix it. We do nothing for you to jump through a hoop to fix it. In fact, yeah, although it's easier to do without a boner, I'd say. You know, get caught in the hoop. If you're lucky. Just give your lucky. 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Labor market data shows almost a quarter of new graduate professionals in Birmingham studied at VCU. Ready to get started? Meet your future tutors and explore our industry standard facilities at our open days on the 26th and 27th of June. Search VCU Open Day to book now. The 2028 Democratic presidential contenders probably won't start announcing their candidate season till shortly after the midterms this November, but a lot of the potential candidates are really ramping up their public appearances and attending events alongside their potential opponents. This last weekend was particularly busy, Kamala Harris, Andy Beshear and Cory Booker were campaigning with other Democrats in Detroit. AOC and Kamala Harris were in Chicago. Pete Buttigieg held an event in Tulsa and John Ossoff held another Senate reelection rally in Georgia. We thought it'd be useful to just react to a few clips from the weekend that caught our attention so we can talk about how Democrats are thinking about shaping the party's message ahead of 2026 and of course 2028. First up, John Ossoff in Georgia. The faithless president depicts himself as Christ while he plunges the nation into wars of choice, while he and his family rake in billions from foreign princes, while he plunders our healthcare to cut taxes for the rich. Meanwhile, rent, power, groceries and healthcare have all hit all time highs this year. While you pay more for everything, the first family's wealth is growing by billions of dollars. Because their crooks... I just love that. I like that. They're crooks. What'd you guys think? I think because they're crooks is the message, right? He brings it all back to corruption. I think it's smart to mention the story of the week, the Christ imagery and they kind of wrap that into this broader message of the day about corruption that he has. My little nipik was I want everyone to stop saying war of choice. That's what I want that to, I have the same point. I've done it too. The phrasing doesn't make sense. Like people don't really know your talk, but it's like this war is immoral, it's illegal, it's a strategic disaster or like any other way. It's too light for me for war of choice. It's like, oh, I just made the bad choice. It's like, no, no, you launched an illegal war that's killing a whole bunch of people and fucking up the Middle East and the world. Yeah, I think the problem with it, I noticed it too. He says it, Kamala also says it in her... They all say it. They all say it, everyone says it. And it is a lingering thing from post-Araq and it's sort of like we did this preemptively, we chose to go to war. It was war we didn't have to fight. And it feels like it's a legacy of a different kind of a way of talking about it. I had the same thought when I heard it. It was like literally the one thing that to me rang very political in the whole speech. It's an excellent speech. The other thing I appreciated about it, I just watched the whole thing. It just gets up there and he jumps in. It is made to be, first of all, it's tight. It is made for people with low attention spans. It is, he does not waste up. There's not a lot of filler. There's an argument. There's a lot of facts. He moves quickly through it. He is into the meat of the speech and to the message of the speech within about a minute or a minute and a half from when he takes the mic, maybe a little bit faster. And he has a great indictment to me, like a broader indictment that's sort of a bipartisan indictment of the current way politics is done. And I thought it was a great quote, which was, there's a lazy cynical expedience, politics unmoored from fixed moral principles and incapable of inspiration or great national achievement. All of this gave rise to a depraved president who exploits this rot to empower and enrich himself. And I, like that to me was as clean away of critiquing the not Republicans and Democrats and a style of politics that's depleting and innervating that I should really like. There's a way that he, it wasn't in this clip, I should have put it in, but there's a way that he brings the crowd in just very, so that he's not just speaking at them because I think the risk of a, the risk of just giving big rally speeches is that you're just talking to people. And when he gives his speeches and he talks about like something like what Tommy was saying, like, oh, the story of the week, he'll always be like, did you see that? Did you see how that happened? I'm interested if after the Senate race, and he feels a little looser, because he just won reelection, if he's like a little more informal in the way he's, because I do think like, he's really nailed, I think the rally speech better than almost any of the other potential candidates right now. And what I'd love to see from him is like, how does he do an interview? How does he do when he like sits down and just talks about stuff? Because like message-wise in a rally speech, it's great. And you don't see, you don't see really good rally speeches anymore. The tone when he was in here was pretty similar. It was pretty serious, sober kind of, I know. And I can't tell if that's like, I'm running for reelection in Georgia. And like, I got to just focus on that. And I'm not, I'm not here to opine on, you know, national presidential politics, but I don't know, we'll see. Yeah, we should play it because it's interesting to how Pete's event was just a different style. Yeah, so here's Pete. He's answering a question from an Oklahoma voter about how to talk to people who disagree with you. We all live in Oklahoma, a lot of us do. Lots of people that are on the other side. What's your advice to engage them when we seem to be in such echo chambers and are so divided? Step one, I think try to do it offline as much as possible. And if you go into that encounter with an open heart, you do it knowing that you might have some of your own values and views challenged and that's okay. That's why I developed this very unexpected specialty of going to places like Fox News and other conservative outlets. How can I blame somebody for not embracing my point of view if they've literally never even heard it? I always imagine that I'm talking to people like people I grew up with who I disagree with and also actually like, what I think is really important too, because we've been made to feel like we just ought to be like snarling at each other. And I think there are so many people who maybe have a different worldview than we do, but just like us, they're tired of the sense that politics is just punching you in the face every time you look at your phone or turn on the TV. Headline, Pete open to speaking with Hasan Pike. Was he on the list? Did he get that question? I don't remember. I don't know, everyone did, I think. I mean, I think he's good. Like I think by the time we get to 2028, my hope is that people want the opposite of Trump and that they'll be betting on like a more unifying tone and message. I think Pete is betting on that. And he's trying to argue that I'm the guy who can best reach across the aisle and convince people. I think that the reality of what he's good at is a little more nuanced. Like he is really smart and can debate anyone and can beat anyone in debate, which is why Libs like us are like, yeah, you gave it to Joe Kernan on CNBC. Fuck that guy. Or like he goes on Fox News and he's great or the All In podcast. He was really good with them. You can fight back with everyone. That is a little bit of a different skill than being able to reach every community and like, you know, like connect with people. I'm not saying he can't do that. It's a different thing than they're kind of trying to sell by going to Tulsa for a town hall, if that makes sense. It makes it, it's like intellectually he knows and can articulate why it's so important to connect with people who are different and what he just said there. And like it helps persuade you and stuff like that. But there's like another step when you're running to be the president, which is you actually have to do that connecting yourself. And I do think that's different. And a lot of it is like he does deliver maybe the smartest analysis of politics and message and then most Democrats I've seen. And then, but then is that enough? Or do you need to actually show and just tell? And look, I think this is, but like, I thought that the clip you referenced with Joe Kernan, like that's the one that got me even more excited. Even though this is more my style of message, but like what him going back and forth with Kernan and he wasn't a dick either. No, he's great. He beat him in that debate, but he wasn't like attacking him. And that is red meat for my silo. And I loved it. Yeah, right. So Pete opened this up with like a nine or 10 minute speech just on Mike, which was great. And he's, he always- So you have a shot that too. They both, everyone's doing from below. The same thing for Asaf. It's like from the below kind of leader shot. Yeah, Asaf looks like, Asaf also was like, is he getting bigger? No, they're tailoring the shit out of those shirts. Unbelievable. Slim fit for days with the stuff. Yeah, we got, listen, he's not missing chest day, but what's he doing? What's happened with leg day? That's what I want to know. Where's our, what's happening with the- The glutes. Yeah, how are the glutes? No, people are posting pics of the fucking Asaf glutes now. Oh no. Yeah, no, he, there, it's not like, you know- Some cake back there. Everyone's four U feet is different. Yeah, that's right. That's just coming to my silo. But no, so it's with Pete and Asaf, it's funny. It's interesting to see them, like what that would be like competing against each other. Well, they're both, they're both like, I was thinking about the sort of, what are the lessons from what happened to Orban and the people writing about, the message lessons from it. And there's a kind of pro-democracy anti-corruption. Here's how corruption at the top has hurt you message that was galvanizing and unifying. And both of them are doing a version of that message. I think right now, because Asaf is in the middle of a reelection, he's trying to show not tell. He's trying to make the biggest argument he can to get to the most people. And that'll be a proof point later. Pete can be more intellectual because he's not running for anything. So he can say, he says this a lot when he's up there, which is, hey, you're not alone. A lot of people feel the way you do no matter what you're seeing on television. You're trying to make that same argument around a lot of the same issues. I was thinking about Pete, because some people ask me all the time, I'm sure they ask you, what do you think about Pete? He's so good on Fox. And I don't really have the answer to it, but to me, it's the difference between Pete selling voting for Democrats, democracy, whatever. He's an incredible salesman for it. He goes to these hostile places and he sells the fuck out of it. And the question is, why is it with Pete sometimes? You maybe agree with what he's saying, but you don't come away thinking that's my salesman. You're like, what a pitch, I agree. But in politics, you can't just make an argument for the car, you're making an argument for you as the person selling the car. And there is a gap there with him that I think this is the kind of event he's trying to kind of feel out. I don't think he's trying to just prove it. I think he's literally out there kind of getting reps. I think where he gets shit from the left in particular is people question whether the bio and the lived experience kind of matches up with the reality. Like when I had Peggy Flanagan in here the other day, the superintendent governor of Minnesota running for the Democratic nomination in Minnesota for the Senate seat, she was talking about growing up and living on Medicaid and living on Snap and how that informs all her choices and the people she fights for. And when someone talks to you like that, from that lived experience, it's impossible not to be moved by it and to connect and to believe it. And I think like the criticism Pete sometimes gets is like, well, you were in the military and you worked at McKinsey and you did all the things that kind of like checked the box on the way to being an elected official. But does that mean you were like really connected with the people you represent? I'm not like, I'm not questioning him or trying to be a dick about it, but I think that is the hit. And I agree, but I also think that is a- Newsom will deal with that as well. Yes, but for both of them, that is an intellectual logical framework for trying to understand a feeling, right? Because Trump is worse than all of them, right? But there are people that think that he can connect and there's a way in which he has an ability to overcome that. And so I think when people go to that, what's the people look for facts and figures to try or sort of story to explain it, but then there is something that like, what is it that prevents Pete from connecting to big parts of the democratic base, which we've talked about a million times? Like what is that gap? I don't think it's just resume. I think it's something else that he's trying to figure out. Yeah. Finally, two clips from Kamala Harris, one from the Detroit event where she was talking about the war and one, one other place she posted that was actually from her trip to North Carolina last week. He entered a war, got pulled into it by BB Netanyahu. Let's be clear about that. Entered a war that the American people do not want, putting at risk American service members. Since the start of Trump's war of choice, it's $15 more every time you fill up your tank of gas. The price of diesel has now gone up 80% since the start of the war. And you best believe that's gonna carry over to how much you're paying for all the goods that are being transported. Who let her do that? I would love to just know how that gas station video came together. Because it's like, my friend, you live in California, the prices are much higher here. If you want some like sticker shock in the backdrop, it's like they got out of the car on the way to the airport and we're like, let's just put this in a rip. I think it's the same suit as the Chicago event. So I think is that the same day? I don't think it was the same day because I remember wondering what the hell that was a couple of days before. No, I agree, it came out, yeah. No, maybe she just, I don't know. But anyway, I wanted to put both of them because I do think that she is at her best when she is doing the prosecution of the administration that she was in the first half of the clip. The gas, and look, she's not the only one who's done this, but it is such a, talk about like signaling that you are a throwback from a different era of the Chuck Schumer event. Yeah, I mean, even Chuck Schumer would give a little, you know, like she literally driving in North Carolina, gets out of the car, there's a gas station. She's like, all right, vertical video, here I am. And I'm just gonna be like, the cost of this war is, blah, blah, blah, it's just so like, it's very Senate. You can see a whole bunch of Democratic senators who would maybe not run for president, probably do that. We all know gas prices are really high. Like when Chuck Schumer would do the gas station press conference is because gas, prices were high. And it was the 90s. And it was the 90s in 2000. He was trying to signal to people that he would want to be his voters, the party's president, that he cares about the things he was trying to do a hit to get him on, you know, CBS two and ABC seven and have like a moment. So people see that he cares about these issues. He introduced some kind of like a message bill that would address gouging or whatever it was. And it was just a message hit to stay in front of his voters to show that he's fighting for them. Kamala is essentially not running for anything. And if she is, it won't be for some time. She happens to be in North Carolina. We all know gas prices are high because they're on the fucking science. When you go to the gas station, that's the beauty of the issue, honestly. So look, who doesn't know that? We all know that. Yeah, it just sort of seems random, you know what I mean? And I think that's sort of what I'm looking for from political leaders, all of them right now is I want you to be leading on things in a full-throated way early, you know what I mean? Early on, let's take on the argument against the Iran war, not once the prices are way up. Like it's okay to do it then, but I don't know. It just sort of felt like you've been here, you've been in LA, you could have done these events or you have some big political issues here. Yeah, we've got, you know, it's just, the choices of when to speak out and on what just confuses me a little bit as a strategic matter, I think, is what I'm reacting to. Yeah, the challenge for her is, so she was the last nominee, she is leading in the polls right now for, if you look at polls of national Democrats, she's especially leading with black voters. So she's gonna get a look, right? And she's gonna have, if she decides to run, she's gonna be like a real formidable candidate, but that's not gonna last long if she doesn't back that up with, okay, here's why I'm running, here's what I have to say, here's what I have learned, and here's my thoughts about not just where we are, but like where we have to go, and in a way that is like personal to her and that no one else can copy. I mean, they all have to do that, but I do think even though she was only nominee for 100 days, she's already been there, so like the burden is even higher for her, the bar is even higher for her to like come up with something a little new and different. And she was vice president in the administration for four years. I always think that's like more important to the challenge that she has, and I watch her. But I even, I saw her, I've seen her do the like, she's tried to do the like, well, you know, we need some, I've had experience, I've sat in these rooms, I've had these jobs, and I do not think the experience argument is going to carry any Democrat very far in 2028. Yeah, well, it's also that was, we already know that argument, part of, it was part of the argument she made when she was running the first time. I watched her, the full event in which she's, but, and, you know, she spoke out about the war and the way that you clipped, but then, like when asked about like, what do Democrats have to do differently, you end up with like, I think of something I agree with, we can't just be nostalgic for the past, we have to have a different vision. But she does what I think a lot of Democrats have become accustomed to doing, which is say, Democrats need to have a vision. Democrats need a vision for what we're gonna do about affordable healthcare. We need a vision for affordable housing. Like, I completely agree. I do think that's exactly what we need. I know, it's a lot of translating pundits beat that we all do into rhetoric for an audience, right? Like, it's not enough to be against something, we have to be for something. We can't just go back to how things were, that wasn't good enough for people, we gotta figure out a new way forward. Yeah, yeah, it's like, this is what people, this is what people are saying in the focus group, so now I'm gonna say it. And again, this is a problem a lot of them have. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so we'll do that with a couple, we'll do that with different candidates as they pop up. I know there was some other ones out there. I only saw a little bit of Cory Booker speech, I didn't see much of it. I didn't really see Andy Bashir's, but they'll be out there more. We'll take, we'll look at a lot of them. When we come back, Tommy speaks to Alon Goldenberg of J Street about how pro-Israel progressives are trying to make their case. 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Get the hubba hubba feeling when you order your favorite takeaways with Food Hub. Download the app today. It's Food Hub, hubba. Get Red Hot Deals on heavy machinery in the next Richie Brothers UK and Island auction on the 24th and 25th of June. We've got a huge selection of quality use machinery from diggers to dozers, tractors to telehandlers, and much more with fresh inventory rolling in every day. Register today at rbauction.co.uk. My guest today is Senior Vice President and Chief Policy Officer at J Street. Ilan Goldenberg, welcome to Potsdamerica. Thanks for having me. Great to see you. So over the last couple of years, probably longer, there's been an intense debate about the war in Gaza, the US-Israel relationship, especially US military support to Israel, and the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Now thanks to President Trump, you can lump in the role Israel may or may not have played in the latest war with Iran and Lebanon to that debate. So most recently in the Democratic Party, this debate manifested as a fight over whether Democrats should go on a Twitch streamer show, a guy named Hassan Piker. There's this think tank called the Third Way. They said that Hassan should essentially be banished from the party. This was in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. So John Favreau talked through a lot of this with Hassan for an episode that came out about a week ago. Folks should check that out if they want more. But you wanted to provide a different perspective on how you believe one can still be a supporter of Israel and a liberal Zionist and a Democrat all at once. So we want to talk through that and maybe I can poke and prod your arguments here we go. So let's just start with where you disagreed with Hassan on his definition of Zionism and kind of go from there. Sure. So the problem with, I think Hassan's argument on that, and thanks for having me Tommy, was, he talked about Israel and Zionism as essentially an ethno state with superior, essentially looking at a, what you'd call a supremacy ideology. And if you actually look at the founding documents of the state of Israel, for example, and you look at the history of Zionism, Israel is intended to be a Jewish democratic state. It was also to be in its Declaration of Independence, described as a state with equal rights for all of its citizens. That's what the vision of the state was. Now that's been incredibly imperfect and huge efforts still need to be made to move them in the right direction. That's one of the reasons J Street exists, right? I mean, we exist because the view before us was, you just gotta support Israel and everything Israel is the perfect democracy in the Middle East, the only American democracy in the Middle East, the only democracy in the Middle East really. And our argument was, no, there's all kinds of problems that need to be worked out. And we need to be honest and critical with a friend of ours in Israel. But the answer isn't the tilt all the way in the other direction. And to say, well, Hamas and Israel are, Hamas is a lot better than the Israeli government. And I'd much rather have Hamas than I would the Israeli government and treating it as uniquely evil. Because look, Bibin Netanyahu is a fascist, potentially authoritarian. Donald Trump is also a fascist and authoritarian, right? Do I call America a fascist state, an authoritarian state? No, I don't. I recognize that there's huge problems here and I operate from within that very kind of basic understanding. So this I think was kind of my problem with Hassan, right? Which was the argument was this state is uniquely evil. This state was founded purely based on ethnic cleansing. I mean, we have terrible ethnic cleansing in the founding of the history of the United States and in so many different countries around the world. And so I think we just need to pull back and have a longer conversation about what is wrong and what is right and within the context of the state of Israel and how to move it to a better place. So look, I don't wanna, I'm not gonna try to speak for Hassan or anybody else, frankly, but let me just offer what I think kind of the push back to your argument would be, which is not that I think anyone was saying, Israel was uniquely evil. It was just sort of whether or not there's a supremacy ideology in the sort of founding documents. I think what he would say is, Israel was founded after the mass displacement of I think 700,000 Palestinians. Since 1967, Israel has occupied the West Bank and Gaza and there has been groups of people living under permanent occupation. And the reality today is that it seems like Israel has chosen to be a Jewish state and not a democratic state. And so I guess like, I can't, it's fine to debate what like David Ben-Gurion and others had in mind in the 1940s. I'm not an expert on this stuff. I would never pretend to be, but I think people would say, look at the reality on the ground is that it's this much darker version of whatever that intention was of permanent occupation. And then some would argue apartheid or at least very clear instances where there are different rules for Jews and Palestinians that we can unpack that as well. What would you say to that? Sure, well, I'd say I don't disagree with that, right? But the answer is not Hamas, right? I mean, this pulled back a little bit. I also worked on the presidential campaign in 2024. I spent a lot of time talking to American Jews. I spent a lot of time talking to voters. And I think most voters are not in these two extreme positions, right? I mean, I think at the end of the day, you have those who are from the beginning inside the Democratic Party have said, here's the APAC position. We're gonna support Israel no matter what. And then there's where Hassan is, which is to argue that Israel is this kind of uniquely evil or deeply, deeply problematic state where the reality is, I think you find most at least American voters, I would argue. And you can look at polling that shows this that can say, hey, you know, what I really want is for all Jews in Israel and all Palestinians to have freedom, security, equality, a state of their own. That's what we're arguing for at J Street. I can be horrified by the acts of October 7th by Hamas, and I can be horrified by the horrific actions that the Israeli government has perpetrated in Gaza against Palestinian civilians. You know, I can really hate Bibi Netanyahu and I can have some sympathy for the Israeli people at the same time. I can recognize that antisemitism is a real problem. And I can also recognize that criticism of Israel is not antisemitism, and that even very sharp criticism of Israel in antisemitism is not antisemitism. So this is where, you know, a guy like Hassan Piker, I don't necessarily think he's antisemitic, I just disagree with his views. And I think this is the kind of nuanced, hard conversation that I think we need to have in the Democratic Party and in the sort of Democratic coalition, because I also think that's where most Democratic voters are. That's where I would say most normie voters, Democratic voters are. Certainly American Jews that I talked to, and that's what J Street was founded to represent, was that this is where most American Jews are, they're not where A-PAC is. But it's also, I think, just not where, even if we have some folks on the base who are going further left, I think that there's just a huge constituency for this very common sense of view that I'm expressing. Yeah, look, my view on Hamas is that what they did in October 7th is evil and unjustifiable and fuck them and that they're bad for the Palestinian people and for the Jewish people and that's fine. I think what Hassan was making kind of an inflammatory point when you look at the death toll in terms of the number of people that Hamas killed on October 7th versus the IDF, but I think you get in trouble when you're doing comparisons. I'm also been someone who's not a fan of BB Netanyahu since 2009 when I first was in the same room with the guy. I think you're getting at this middle ground position, and I wanna push you on that a bit, because I think every elected official in the United States basically pays lip service to the idea of a two-state solution. And I think for decades, the US government made a very sincere effort to facilitate talks that would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state. But for basically his entire career, Netanyahu has worked to block the creation of a Palestinian state, and these days he brags about it. He says, like, throw my adept statesmanship, we premedated this from happening, he calls it a terror state. And in reality, I think the peace process has been dead for a long time and then since October 7th, both Israelis and Palestinians have lost faith that it will ever happen. I think like one-fifth of Israelis and Poles think there's any hope for a Palestinian state, and that number is kinda propped up by Arab Israelis. So, you know, meanwhile, the situation on the ground, it's the West Bank gets further annexed every week, Gaza is now even further occupied by Israel. So I think the critics would say this liberal Zionist vision of a support for Israel and a two-state solution is kind of delusional in a way of just avoiding the obvious reality that Israel long ago chose to be a Jewish state and not a democracy, so full democracy for all people who live there. So what's your response to that argument? So look, again, I don't disagree the situation as grim, and also I'll say I worked on some of those negotiations that John Kerry led in 2014. I was part of that process during under President Obama. And yeah, some of the assumptions in those, in that old way of doing things were deeply problematic. For example, the idea that we couldn't touch security assistance for Israel, and we need to give them a blank check because if we start to enforce or threaten or just basically say, forget even threaten or leverage, just say, you know what, if you're not behaving in a way that is consistent with our policy and our interests and our laws, we're just not gonna give you these weapons and not sell you these weapons, which is really what my position is now and where J Street is and has been for a long time. We were advocating last week for 40 senators to vote against these kinds of weapons. So I'm not arguing for that, the liberal Zionist old position of, let Israel do whatever it wants and let's just work this out, right? We can use leverage, we do have leverage. And at the same time, I also don't think the answer is, well, we should support Hamas or we should be, no one's saying we support Hamas. Let's just, I feel like it's a straw man that we're leaning on here to make a silly argument. Fuck Hamas, everyone agrees, fuck Hamas. Okay, well, let's just say this, I actually think what you do have a problem is you have extremists on both sides. You have Netanyahu and you have Hamas, right? And let's not forget in the 90s, when we actually almost did get to a peace deal, it was Hamas bus bombings then brought Netanyahu to power. These two guys, these two sides are two sides of the same coin, they're thriving off and building off each other. And similarly in the 2000s, right? Netanyahu actually has millions of dollars in cash from Qatar landing in Ben-Gurion Airport and being pushed into Gaza to pay off Hamas and empower Hamas and keep it quiet while he's purposefully weakening alternative moderates on the Palestinian side. So the point is what J Street advocates for and what we do when we talk to Israelis and Palestinians on the ground is there is a, I think still a strong minority who wants to work towards that alternative vision both on the Israeli and the Palestinian side. Whether we don't call it a two-state solution, we actually call it, we started calling it a 23-state solution because we don't think it's just gonna be a deal that gets a new Palestinian state and Israel's living side by side. We think it needs to be part of a regional integration that actually has Israel at peace with all of its neighbors which creates a lot of incentives for the Israelis. And part of that is a new Palestinian state. Now, when you do polling like that and you present Israelis with the president of the United States were to come to Israel and say, here's a plan, end all the wars, this was done during the war in Gaza. We're gonna end the war in Gaza, we're gonna get the hostages out, we're gonna pursue a plan that ultimately ends with Israel at peace with all of its neighbors. And as part of that, you can have a Palestinian state. That kind of proposal still gets 60% in Israel. Isn't that a lot of hurdles to set up before the Palestinians were just like, I just wanna live in peace with self-determination. Suddenly, Israel has to make peace with every single neighbor before they can have that opportunity. No, it's actually not that complicated. You just do both processes at the same time. And at the end of the day, it's really about peace with Saudi Arabia and everybody else goes along. Hasn't that been pretty complicated though? It is complicated, but so is a Palestinian state on its own. And by the way, I should say the problem, like you said, there's a lot of non-believers on the Palestinian side too. Polling in the Palestinian public is also pretty terrible right now, right? On both sides. But at the same time, on the Palestinian side, again, if you actually offer them a pathway, those numbers change dramatically. If you just say what makes the most sense now, I mean, the overwhelming majority is still for armed resistance, but there's still 40% who are pushing for this two-state solution. And the other thing I'll say about this is, this goes back to my days again, working at the State Department on these. When you present both sides of the public with, here's a deal, would you take it? You present it to the Israeli public. When you do polling, you get to about 40%. And you present it to the Palestinians and like, here's a deal, would you take it? 40%. You say, here's a deal, and the other side has already agreed to it. The numbers jumped to like 65%, 70%. Point is, I still think there is a desire on both sides. To get there. And I think what you have to start doing slowly, and it's gonna take time, is get away from this dynamic where it's, Hamas on the one side representing the Palestinians, and Bibi Netanyahu on the other side representing the Israelis, and they're playing off each other, and they're strengthening each other, and they're weakening all of the alternatives. You're gonna have elections in Israel later this year. That's a real opportunity. We just saw what happened in Hungary. And there is an opportunity, those elections aren't gonna necessarily bring you the most left-leaning government you could ever imagine in Israel. The alternative to Netanyahu is probably kind of a center to center-right government, but it's one where at least you have people you can work with. Well, let's talk about the Netanyahu piece of this, because like, again, I greatly dislike Israeli Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, I have for a very long time. I think he's corrupt, I think he's racist. I think he's bad for Israel. But I do, I feel like the US people talk about him sometimes as if getting rid of him is like a quick fix and will fix everything. And it seems very unlikely to me, as you mentioned, like the country is lurched to the right. You've got violent extremists, like literal terrorist sympathizers like this guy, Yitamar Ben-Gavir, who are now in government. And by the way, his support for his party in polls is going up and up and up, not down. Even the moderate candidates though, they're not that liberal on the Palestinian issue. Like the head of the moderate, Yashar Party just visited a West Bank settlement and that was like tied to some really horrible abuses. Yair Lapid seemed to back Mike Huckabee's bizarre claim that Israel has like a right to take over the whole Middle East because of biblical claims. So like, again, it would be great to see Netanyahu gone and like preferably in a prison somewhere, but isn't there a lot of evidence that for the Palestinians and for the Palestinian issue, the even more moderate parties are not gonna be all that much better? I think what you will see is, first of all, you're gonna stop digging, right? So going back to Ben-Gavir, for example, yeah, his numbers have gone up, but also Smotritch's numbers have gone down, these two parties together, his numbers in terms of support. Two real extremists currently in the government. Exactly, two extremists currently in the government basically stay as the same. But exactly, guys like Smotritch and Ben-Gavir aren't in this new government, right? And Smotritch and Ben-Gavir, these extremists, play this unique role of essentially being king makers, which gives them huge amounts of leverage in Israeli decision-making and pushes the government to more terrible and terrible places. Whereas if you had instead guys like Yair Lapid or Yair Golan who are not ideal, but these are kind of the Israeli center left playing the kingmaker role, that's a meaningful difference. Yair Golan being a retired general who ran down to Southern Israel on October 7th and saved a lot of people, just basically got up and went down there, but also is very much arguing for a two-state solution and is arguing for some of these things. And what you could get then at least as a government that at least starts cracking down on things like what we are seeing in the West Bank and extremist settler violence in the West Bank. We're at J Street pushing for legislation actually in Capitol Hill called the West Bank Violence Prevention Act that at this point has overwhelming support of Senate Democrats, more than 40 and 130 or so members of the House, which would start to impose sanctions on these guys, on these extremist settlers, but could actually make a real profound difference because all these things, the violence and the settlements and all of it is tied together, all these institutions are tied together, you can actually start to apply real pressure and change behavior. And so I think there's opportunities to, we're not solving this problem anytime soon, but if you have a government that is at least more restrained and also cares about the US-Israel relationship because it's very clear now, and this is also another thing that started happening in Israel in the last couple of weeks in particular, you've seen it with some of the polling that's come out about Israel and you've seen it with, what's happened with this vote last week in the Senate, there finally is a questioning that's coming to the center of Israeli politics of like, what's happened here? How is our relationship with the US collapsing in such an extreme way? And as that happens, I think there's, you're gonna have a government that is more centrist, not great, but is gonna care more about that. And that gives us more leverage and also creates a situation where they start to potentially at different moments say, well, yeah, maybe parts of the party of our government would like to do this thing in the West Bank or in Gaza, but we're actually worried about the Americans and their opinion and we care about, for example, what Democrats also think of us. And so we're gonna restrain ourselves more and you start to move, not, we're not solving this problem immediately, but at least start to change the trajectory of this whole conflict. Yeah, look, I hope that's true. I guess I just worry that, look, when I see this effort, it's a very misguided effort by the third way to like, to try to declare that Hassan Piker, the Twitch streamer is sort of like out of bounds, it seems to me to be part of a broader effort to silence critics of Israel and the US and chill debate about policy that frankly happens all the time in Israeli media. For example, right? Like if an American politician was like, Israel's an apartheid state, that is, that's language that is treated as outrageous or potentially anti-Semitic all the time. But as you know, I mean, in 2021, the most prominent Israeli human rights organization in Israel called Israel an apartheid regime. And I was like, that was in 2021. And I just sort of pushed back on this idea that maybe the Knesset is growing increasingly concerned about like sort of US views of laws and decisions like that, because pretty recently, Israeli lawmakers passed a law to expand the death penalty, but only for Palestinians, which seems like a pretty like egregious example of the kind of law or policy that Betzalem was talking about when they wrote that paper several years ago. So I mean, aren't those pretty clear cut examples of kind of apartheid like or unequal treatment of individuals based on religion? And shouldn't we be having a more honest conversation about that kind of stuff in the United States and not like doing what the third way is doing here? Yeah. I mean, we should be having an honest conversation about these things. You know, I will say, I'm not saying that the Knesset's moving further to the left. I think that if you look at the Israeli public and you like polling where you have elections in October, you're gonna have a different government. This government in Israel is horrific in all the different ways. But it's not just this government. There's a lot of systemic and deeper things. And that's exactly the conversation I want us to be having. And 100%, we were out there as an organization sharply critical about this, but I think we just need to be careful when we have that conversation to not, you know, and like I not sway too far in the other direction to the point of, you know, essentially casting Israel as this, you know, okay, there is ethnic cleansing in Israel's history. There's probably ethnic cleansing in cases of, I'd say 50 or 100 of the countries that exist in the world today, including some very recent as well. And so what we just have to be careful to do is not turn Israel into, we need to normalize our relationship with Israel, right? That's what I've actually, that's one of the things we've argued for a long time. That means no more blank check. Let's treat Israel like a normal country, right? And let's have those hard conversations. It also means let's not treat it as this uniquely evil or sinister thing, which I think is happening in some far extreme places. So I think I agree with you with the whole third way conversation here of like turning Hasan Piker into some kind of measuring stick for all this. You know, I don't think that, you know, I listened to the interview with John Favreau, I don't think Hasan Piker is anti-Semitic. I just think his views are misinformed. And in many ways, I just think we need to be careful to not go in that direction, because if you wanna ultimately in the United States, build a political coalition that's actually gonna win in 26 and more importantly in 28, I don't think that most people are aware he is. I think most people are kind of in this middle, in this position, it's not the middle ground of Democrats versus Republicans. I'd argue it's the middle ground of where the Democratic Party is, which is just kind of like, yeah, there's all kinds of horrible stuff happening there and we should do something about that and instead of just letting them use our weapons, but also I don't think these people are the devil necessarily, right? And so that's what I'm arguing for. I hear that, like I don't think people, I don't think Hasan is arguing that like Israel's the devil or that Israeli people are evil in any way. I think what's happening and what I think the sort of political class can sometimes miss because they've been having these conversations for years, people like you are genuine experts in the founding documents of Israel, right? And maybe sometimes we make a mistake when we kind of try to pull from history. Like, I think the average Americans experience of what's happening in Israel right now, especially young people, if they started paying attention to politics a couple of years ago, they just see intolerable amounts of killing by Israel, first in Gaza, now in Lebanon and Iran, and they're doing it with American weapons. And then if you're my age, you've been kind of watching Netanyahu since 2009, sort of doing his best to prevent the Palestinian state from being created, come into Congress to insult Barack Obama and try to blow up the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, and then just wrapping his arms around Donald Trump in the biggest kind of bear hug ever. And so it's like, it's not that people have deeply held views about the origins of Zionism or because they're anti-Semitic, they're just like, why is this really strong country bombing the shit out of Gaza over and over again? And why are we giving them weapons to do it? Why am I paying for that? Right? And they're just horrified by it. And like, it's a visceral reaction that I think, you know, like Jonathan Greenblatt will try to like, scold me if I use the wrong words to try to prevent this conversation from happening, but it's happening no matter what. Yeah, no, I look, I can't disagree with a lot of that in terms of the fact that, I mean, Bibi Netanyahu is an asshole, and I've also been living with him for 15 years, right? I mean, my first government job was working on Iran and the Pentagon in 2009, just literally starting about a month or two after he came into office, and he's been the problem since then for years and years. And so we're not in a different place on that at all. And I think he's the one who's done the most damage to this entire nature of the relationship, but I agree, it is bigger. The history is longer. We can have those honest conversations. I mean, it's one of the reasons now, like, I don't know if you've paid attention. We've taken a fair amount of flak for it. J Street, we've been advocating for years, right? For this position of you can have both, you know, a support for Israel and no blank check. Let's ask all the hard questions. So last week we came out with a new position that's flared up a lot of interest, which is basically to say, there's three pieces to the US-Israel security relationship. Right? The first piece is, you know, we do operational cooperation on certain things. When it's in our interest, we should do that, whether it's our militaries working together, whether it's sharing Intel, which they do help us with, with everything from ISIS to Iran to all kinds of other challenges. When it makes sense, we can do that. Two, basically they get $4 billion a year from us, right? And have been for years and years and years. And J Street's position is, it's time for that to end. It's basically a financial subsidy, right? Yeah. And there's no reason that they don't need this financial subsidy for anything more. Israel at this point, it's a country with a per capita GDP similar to France or the UK or Germany or any of these very wealthy countries. They don't need this money. They have a $45 billion budget. So let's just kind of phase that out relatively quickly. And by the way, I'm not the only guy saying that, Rahm Emanuel is saying that, Bibi Netanyahu is saying that, Lindsey Graham is saying that, AOC is saying that. It's one thing everybody agrees on. It's time for that money to go. And then the third piece is, when it comes to arms sales, there's some things that really do make sense, like iron dome, for example, right? Missile defense system that protects Israeli civilians from attacks. There are some people who argue that the iron dome enables more militarism by the IDF because they know that they can repeatedly bomb a country like Iran and then just be protected from incoming fire. I'm just sort of laying out the other side of that debate for listeners. No, for sure. And my argument on that is, if you go back, for example, and imagine, there are moments when that might be true, but if you really think about it in totality, imagine if on October 7th, Israel didn't have those systems and hundreds of more in the aftermath when Hamas and Hezbollah in Iran started launching and Houthi started launching missiles at Israel. If Israel didn't have the capabilities to protect civilians, first of all, just on a human life perspective, we're talking about somewhere between 500,000 and 700,000 American citizens living in Israel. That's a real issue. But also, what do you think the Israeli response would have been if a couple of thousand more people would have been killed as a result of these missiles landing in their cities? I think they would have been more killing of Palestinians and Lebanese, for example. But even, so I would argue for Iron Dome, but I also think when it comes to other weapons systems, let's just apply the laws that exist on the books already and uphold Israel to the same standard as every other country, which means there are certain things they wouldn't get. Especially, there's a law called the Leahy Law, which reviews unit by unit, what is what partner countries are doing in the world. There's a special process for Israel that is different than, it's pretty much the most lenient process that any country in the world gets. We don't need that. Israel doesn't need that. That's not good for US interests. It's not good for Israel. There's other laws which look at if you're preventing aid from going in, American aid from going in, you should be cut off from certain weapons. Again, we should have done that. Biden administration should have done that. I was part of the Biden administration. It didn't do that. I disagreed with that at the time. I kind of evolved on that as the, I will admit, I evolved on that as the war went on. And I certainly am there now, right? Where it's time to cut off some of these weapons. So you can be just discerning and nuanced in all of this is my view. I totally hear that. Look, I think I'm really glad that J.S.R.U.D. is part of this conversation and was lobbying senators to cut off certain types of US military. I think the votes last week were what? For 1,000 pound bombs and like armored bulldozers. There's absolutely no reason the US needs to be providing those systems to Israel, especially given the context right now. I think you're right. We absolutely should not be giving a rich country $4 billion a year for no reason for military support. By the way, money is fungible and that money can then be, they're using that to fund a universal healthcare system that a lot of people here would love to have. And so I'm glad that like this conversation has become more nuanced and more rational and that people are less scared of getting like slapped down if you sort of break from the APAC party line or orthodoxy going forward. I do think the challenge the Democratic Party leaders are having is the base of the party, young people have moved way further, way faster than the Democratic elected officials have, even if Democratic Party elected officials have moved really, really fast, historically speaking on this issue. Yeah, no, I think that that's true. But I also think we need to balance that with the sort of independent voter and the non-base and majority sort of normie voter. And I think you're right. If you look at young people and their view on this, somebody like me, I imagine somebody like you were probably roughly the same age, right? You know, we both grew up with kind of Israel of Yitzhak Rabin, which was not the, Joe Biden grew up with the Israel of, I should start with Joe Biden grew up with the Israel of really the post-holocaust scrappy country came out of, you know, essentially underdog. And every event he would do on this, always started with the story of going to Israel in 1972 in Golden Gate year. So he had like one mentality, right? Folks like you where I grew up with a liberal Israel that was powerful, but was looking to make peace, right? At least I did. And then you look at, you know, people, you look at my kids and you look at just everybody, again, anybody under the age of 25 or 30 doesn't remember a world without Bibi Netanyahu. And it's a huge problem. But I also think, you know, there's still the majority of the Democratic Party that's not necessarily there, despite those being the loudest voices, right? And certainly it's not the majority of, you know, American voters who are kind of at this as far left as the base, as far as the base has gone on this. And so we're gonna have to find, I think we just might, is the danger of going too far. I think you're right. I also think politicians haven't moved far enough yet. But I think the 27 will be a really interesting dynamic. I hope that there can be, that could be a unifying moment for politicians and Democratic Party leaders and candidates to be able to essentially express a position of not throwing the US-Israel relationship in the garbage and still recognizing that there is potential value there, while at the same time saying, the way this has been done in the past needs to end. And for me, the answer is, again, it goes back to treat Israel like a normal country, treat Israel like a normal ally, whether you wanna call it an ally or not. Someone say ally, others more opposed can just say normal country. That means on both sides, right? That means no more blank check. It also means there's some things we'll work with them on because we have an interest in doing so. For sure. I think that's right. I think the normie voter, the most powerful, I've not thought about this for one fucking second and the most powerful argument to them is gonna be let's stop spending money on wars or giving it to other countries and spend it at home. And so that is really gonna be the, people are gonna have to sketch out thoughtful nuance views of foreign policy because that kind of nationalist isolationist view is gonna be the siren song politically that is incredibly powerful, that frankly works on me in a lot of instances and is, I think something we all just have to keep in mind is we are seeped in this stuff and have more nuanced views that might not kind of get the average voter on a random day, but either way, like, Alon, I really appreciate you coming on and talk about this stuff. I imagine this will not be the last time we'll be talking about this, maybe we'll pop back on to talk about another round of talks tomorrow in Pakistan with the Iranians. Hopefully they're not as terrible as the last one, but we'll find out. I think I told you before we started is I kind of feel like we're just in, it'll be fine. Trump will make something up and we won't go back to war but we also won't be in a position where we've made any progress in the street if we're moves or remain closed. That's kind of like my guess and all that. Wonderful, well, could be worse, I guess. Thank you so much for coming on. Working folks find J Street's work and what we guys are up to. Sure, you can look us up on Jstreet.org. We also have our substack, the Jeremy Benami, our founder writes myself word on the street, but really the website and sign up for, we do a lot of different things. We work with candidates, we do a lot of lobbying on the hill. We are going deep into American Jewish community trying to change a conversation and have this nuanced conversation. So there's ways to get involved all over the country, 20 chapters around the country who are doing this kind of work to really build at the end of the day a liberal alternative to that conversation that until recently was just an APAC conversation and this is what we're trying to build in really democratic politics in the Jewish community overall. Excellent, well thank you again. That's our show for today. Thanks to Alain Goldenberg for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday from DC. How about that? If you wanna listen to Pod Save America ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to cricket.com slash friends to subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Also, please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at Cricket. Pod Save America is a Cricket media production. 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