03/21/16 – M.J. Rosenberg – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, now introducing our friend M.J. Rosenberg.
Long, long time ago, he was with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, and boy, is he a critic now.
Welcome back to the show, M.J. How are you doing?
Okay, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Appreciate you joining us again.
And I'm reminded to put my ear goggles on here.
And I should say that you, well, I don't know, do you have a place where you regularly write, if one searches your name, up comes the nation, and all kinds of other places where I know you've written in the past.
Yeah, I don't have a regular place.
I mean, I'm a regular at Huffington Post, but...
At Huffington, right.
Yeah.
Yeah, there's Huffington and the nation, all kinds of stuff comes up.
A lot of old, great articles, even for Media Matters, and I know that sounds like a complete contradiction in terms to people, but, you know, one of my favorite articles actually about Israel that I've ever read was by you at Media Matters about how, yeah, we've talked about this numerous times, actually, now that I think about it, I hope.
And that was, your article was, I think, starting from 1967, or maybe even before then, and you said, the peaceniks said, do this or else that'll happen.
And then the Israeli war machine did the other thing instead, and the predicted terrible result took place.
Then the peaceniks said, okay, do this and not that or else the terrible thing will happen.
And they did it again and again and again, and you gave, I don't know, 15 or 20-something examples over the last 30, 40, 50 years, something like that, of just, man, things really don't have to be this way.
Things could really be much better over there if those with the military power would listen to those who don't want to use it.
Right.
Of course, that also applies to the United States.
Absolutely.
To a much greater degree, even, really.
Yeah, it's not, it's no, it shouldn't be a surprise that they're like, Israel's like our Muslim buddy in the Middle East, because we both have the same mentality.
Right.
Always, you know, first resort is always to war, or just, you know, just belligerency, and that's, yeah.
So it's like, yeah, of course, nobody really can keep up with our record.
We really win the prize on that one.
You know, it turns out, just the other night, by chance, I was researching a little bit, well, I came upon the history of northwestern Travis County, where I live, in the heart of Texas, you know, where the capital of Austin is.
And boy, do I feel like an Israeli settler.
You know, the house I grew up in is right on land that was stolen from the Comanche with the most, the brutalest of Nakba's, you know.
Right.
It's their land.
Right.
And boy, and there is no denying how it was taken from them.
There was no apologizing about it, either.
We are white civilization, they're savages, they're dead.
Yeah.
They eradicate, basically what we in the United States did, and what the Israelis are doing, is they eradicate the, that there even was a historical presence of these people.
I mean, in Israel, until, I mean, right now, you know, there are signs, you know, in Hebrew, English, and Arabic, and on places where there were, like, Palestinian villages, there would be signs that would say something that was there.
They're taking all those down.
They don't want anyone to know what you just said about your home in Travis County.
They don't want anyone to think that there were other people living here.
When, in fact, the Hebrew names that are given to these places now are just variants of the Arabic names that were there for 800 years, you know, of these towns and villages.
Now, we colonizers just like to eradicate, you know, because it gives them, nobody wants any guilt, you know?
No guilt.
We've been here forever.
We're the only ones who've ever been here.
Yeah.
Yeah, if there ever were any Comanche around here, there must not have been very many of them per capita, or, you know, by the mile, or whatever it was.
Some kind of rationalizations start creeping in.
I know.
It's amazing.
But, you know, I think this has been going on since the Roman Empire.
Right.
Well, you know, I'm thinking about, you know, being raised in Travis County my whole life, like, of course, we learned about the Indians and everything, but it was like learning about ancient history.
Right.
And it's true, was, you know, it had been 150 years, but that's not 1500, or, you know what I mean?
Right.
That's pretty recent.
Anyway.
Yeah, right.
Well, listen, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee is in town in Washington, D.C., holding their annual convention.
Very interesting politics this time around, especially after the Iran deal and the presidential election year with Donald Trump, the wild card in there, and everything else.
So I'm not even sure, I guess, you know, what to ask you first, other than, you know, what did you think of Hillary Clinton's speech this morning?
I guess we can follow up from there.
Well, it started with Vice President Biden last night, and he, you know, something about Biden, he gives this, he's so abusive in this, like, nauseatingly cloying way, you know, he just personalizes it so much.
He loves Israel, he's always loved Israel, he tells stories about what Golda Meir told him in 1972, or whatever it was.
What really, and this may sound weird, but I was really offended by the fact that he brought up his late son, Beau Biden, and talked about how much Beau Biden loved Israel, and how he took Beau Biden's children to Israel, and how important that is.
And I thought, gee, you know, if, God forbid, I ever lost a kid, it would be hard enough to get up in the morning, and we know it is that hard for Biden, we know that.
But yet, the last thing you'd want to do is invoke the kid's name for political, you know, to pander.
And it's just like, wow, politicians are not normal.
I mean, you know, normal people, when they've had a tragedy, it's like, you don't bring it up casually.
People, you know, they bring it up very carefully.
I mean, you talking to them, don't bring it up at all, in a way, but he just, like, threw it out there.
Oh, loved Israel.
Jeez.
So, you know, just like, nothing.
And this is the AIPAC effect, you know, this, you know, giving this nauseating pandering.
The only good thing about it was that he said stuff about settlements, against settlements that they didn't like, and there was lots of booing.
So you know, when you're talking about it in the context of an AIPAC conference, the more booing there is, the more that indicates that something good has been said.
But then Hillary today, she just gave a standard AIPAC speech.
It was basically the same speech Obama would give, rather than being a speech that, let's say, a Republican would give, or it was just like, standard.
She punched all, you know, she said all the stuff.
She said that she's going to do, you know, she's going to, you know, have negotiations, but then she said, the United States must never be neutral.
So I guess she's going to convene negotiations, but as Israel's advocate.
So who's going to go to those negotiations, I mean?
You know, my expectations for AIPAC are so low, and for the people who speak there, that I didn't think Hillary's speech was that bad.
Because I judge it against the standards that Chuck Schumer would give, or even Biden would give.
It was just standard.
But, oh.
Which is, I mean, I think that really is saying something, because man, was it a hawkish speech.
Oh yeah, hawkish.
I mean, if that's moderate, then god dang, man, you know?
That's moderate for AIPAC.
I mean, let's see, maybe, you know, I think they're having Bob Menendez.
Well, look, wouldn't it be fair to say that she is, you know, outright to the right of Obama on everything?
Oh, on everything related to Israel.
Yeah, or even all foreign policy.
I mean, if we're talking about Syria, we're still talking about Israel, too, aren't we?
Yeah, well, that's true.
One thing that she made clear that she's to the right of Obama was when she said that among the first things she would do was invite Netanyahu to the White House.
Well, she knows very well.
The whole point of that, and the reason that the AIPAC crowd went crazy cheering, is Obama, ever since Netanyahu did that business of coming to the Congress and, you know, not even telling him, Netanyahu is not, you know, he's been persona non grata in Washington.
And she's like saying, well, unlike Obama, I'm going to treat him like the friend he is.
So, yeah, she's definitely to the right of Obama.
So the thing is that the hope I have for her if she becomes president is that, I mean, it's a thing, just a straw, but she hates Obama, she hates Netanyahu, and she's really just faking being a right winger.
But you know, what difference does that make?
You know, it doesn't matter what's in people's hearts, it's a matter of what's in their policy.
So we'll have to see.
I have to say, I have so little hope for this issue, and that the United States can do anything good about this issue at all.
I really do.
That's why I support the BDS movement, and, you know, just people doing what we can, because our government is just so locked into being in lockstep with the Israelis.
You know, it's just like, really, it's almost like, you know, and who would be the candidate?
You know, Sanders didn't speak, which is good, I'm glad he didn't speak, but I'm not sure his speech would have been all that different.
I mean, he, you know, during the Gaza war, whenever that was, two years ago, whatever, I mean, he was screaming and yelling at constituents who were telling him to condemn, you know, the slaughter that Israel was, you know, doing in Gaza, and he was getting really indignant and really defensive.
So the thing is, Israel and the money that Israel brings to their campaigns drives all these people crazy.
It's like they're bitten, it's like they become a rabbit, but it's not out of conviction.
It's, you know, it's for the money.
I mean, it's just, you know, and I, so in other words, but here's the interesting thing.
The interesting thing is, tonight, at five o'clock, Donald Trump is speaking.
Now, he's a loose cannon, we don't know what he's going to say.
He could try to out pander Hillary, which is hard, but he could do it.
But he's such a contrary kind of guy, that he might get up there and tell AIPAC what it doesn't want to hear.
I mean, he's tried it a few times, which he said he wants the United States to be neutral.
Maybe he is gonna, I mean, it's just...
The problem is, is he doesn't know anything about it, right?
He can't read on the riot act on like, listen, your settlement's in area C, you're standing over the way of whatever settlement over B.
He doesn't know anything.
And one of the things I noticed with him, he was on one of the shows, and instead of saying Israelis, he says Jews.
I mean, how primitive can you get?
I mean, really, we're talking about, oh, the Jewish people, and they're like...
Well, and it just goes to show he's not even used to discussing the issue at all.
No, exactly.
Yeah.
He doesn't mean anything negative by it.
He's just saying, he's just approaching it as with brand new virgin eyes, basically.
Somebody owns some land, is in some dispute or something, what?
Yeah.
You know?
But the other thing, he's such a petty and personal, you know, he's oriented by his feelings.
He might, you know, he might give a...
He might say some decent things at AIPAC, decent from our point of view, because there was some Jewish businessman in New York, he's mad at us, you know?
He's just like...
Maybe.
I mean, I think that people are counting on that.
And I've actually heard people saying that about Hillary, too, that they trust that she is such a Richard Nixon son of a bitch, that it's going to be really hard for Netanyahu to push her around, frankly, or anybody else, that she'll be able to say, like, hey, here's a line and you can't cross it.
Now, I'm not saying I endorse that view, but that's kind of...
That's the only hope that people have, is that you would have an executive who's a loose cannon enough that they can't really be corralled.
And after all, you know, after they tried to push the Israel lobby, AIPAC especially tried to push us into war with Syria in 2013, and after they worked with Netanyahu to try to ruin the Iran nuclear deal, which is working spectacularly so far, etc., etc., like, they're pretty far out on a limb, far more than they used to be.
You know, that whole thing about the night flower lobby that regular Americans don't know about.
Those days are pretty much coming to an end, I think.
No, I agree.
I think the Americans are aware, American people are aware of it.
But I, you know, it's an interesting...
The thing about Trump, you know, the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, which is another one of those anti-discrimination Jewish organizations, they're both calling on people to walk out of Trump's speech at AIPAC.
It has nothing to do with Israel, it has to do with the bigotry and, you know, all that.
So it could be really interesting tonight.
AIPAC, you know, I used to work there, so I know, all they want is everyone to be really polite to everyone.
I mean, if Joseph Goebbels spoke, they would tell all the people, hey, be cool, be cool, we're bipartisan.
So I'm kind of, what I most hope for, I'm hoping against hope that the Trump speech becomes totally wild tonight, that he says things like, you know, we have to be neutral and the people start screaming and they feel self-righteous because, you know, Trump's the racist guy and the anti-immigration guy, but they don't care about that.
All they really care about is Israel.
But they'll look like they're on the side of the angels if they're all shaking their fists at Trump.
I don't know.
I mean, it's hard to say, you know, what sickens people.
If I had to bet, I'd have to say he's going to get up there and kiss their ass.
Come on.
That's what I think, too.
Because, you know what?
He's a businessman.
He knows.
Yeah.
You know, this is why they said in that New York Times piece that the establishment, they all hate Cruz more than they fear Trump, because after all, this is a guy who, all his worst, most blustery, most racist, whatever stuff, he doesn't mean any of that.
At the end of the day, he'll come right to the table and shake hands like everybody else.
They trust his business sense, you know, ultimately.
You know, I think that's probably true.
But can we hope?
I mean, I would just love a wild scene there with people screaming because he dares to say...
I mean, this is the thing.
It's so nuts.
First of all, the thing that's most nuts of all is that any presidential candidate speak at a lobby that is openly dedicated to the interests of a foreign country.
Right.
It is insane.
That we're even having this conversation at all right now.
Pardon?
That we're even having this conversation at all today.
I know.
Yeah, it is.
It's crazy.
I mean, look, let's say, you know, there are lots and lots of Indian-Americans in this country and, you know, Chinese, all kinds of, you know, Americans from different places.
But presidential candidates, the sole point of, and also the sole point of going to this foreign lobby is to say things that will lock you into a policy supporting a foreign country.
That's the purpose of it.
That's what you're going there for.
To get those standing ovations, you have to say that you're going to put Israel's interests above the United States, because obviously that's what they did on the Iran deal.
There's obviously, you know, the President of the United States says this deal is in our interest.
We're saying it's not in Israel's interest.
So we're against it.
So you're talking about a foreign lobby and they're all going there.
I mean, Ted Cruz, I thought he's some big patriot.
What's he doing there?
It's just like all that when it comes to Israel, everything's like flipped.
You know, it's just, you know, I've talked to, you know, mentioned on your show before that, before World War II, when England was desperate to get the United States into a war, you know, for good reasons, but that's not the point.
They did not go and organize in Washington, you know, and have gigantic conventions where people could, you know, demand that, you know, Roosevelt go to war when Roosevelt wasn't ready to go to war.
That would have been unheard of.
And that would, I mean, you don't do that.
Foreign countries here don't do that.
What they do is they hire lobby, you know, they hire a law firm and they have a couple of lobbyists who are maybe, or they can have 20 lobbyists who are working on their interests, but they're registered under the foreign, you know, the, you know, foreign registration.
What's it called?
The foreign, FARA, foreign, you know, the thing that our lobbyists have to be registered and APEC's not even a registered lobby.
They can do whatever they want and they get directly involved in politics and support the candidates that support Israel.
Yeah.
Only in America, as they say.
Yeah.
Well, and you know, it's funny too, like you say also about how flipped around it is.
That means there's a real opening there for anyone.
And I don't have any faith in Trump or anybody else doing it.
Anybody on the national political scene right now at all.
But the opening is there for someone to tell the simple truth.
And even if it's, you know, completely, you know, based on Zionist principles that you're damn right, America is going to protect Israel forever and ever and ever.
But within 67 borders, pal, you know, if someone was willing to get up there and say, like, I demand that all the cable news channels show the people of America a map and explain that Palestinians live on the West Bank.
They live in the Gaza Strip.
That ain't Israel.
That's their land.
And you know, I mean, it's a simple thing.
It's two plus two equals four.
There's no way, you know, the way Hillary Clinton spoke, oh yeah, the terrorist armies with their knives coming and attacking Israelis.
And she can she can narrow in on specific individuals, civilians who were murdered.
But the entire her entire pretext or premise is somehow that, you know, these terrorists are coming from the outside and invading Israel when they're attacking, at least in great majorities, they're attacking people in occupied territory.
Right.
And, you know, listen to Hillary's speech.
You wouldn't know that there were there was such a thing as occupied territories.
You wouldn't know there's such a thing as good Palestinians who are not, quote, terrorists.
Now, every every reference she had to Palestinians was about terrorists.
Nothing about the occupation.
Nothing, you know, didn't discuss anything about feeling any compassion or empathy for the Palestinians.
I mean, that was everything.
The knife attackers were swimming across the Jordan River to sneak into Israel and invaded and stab people.
Right.
Right.
But, you know, we talk about I think one of the indicators that we can expect nothing good from American politicians on this was Rand Paul, because I thought that, you know, you know, he's you know, he's Ron Paul's son and he himself has, you know, had expressed in the past skepticism, a lot of skepticism about foreign America's neoconservative foreign policy.
I thought that that was the you know, the you know, he could have distinguished himself in those debates by taking those kind of positions and maybe, you know, you know, kind of isolationist in a good way position.
He didn't.
He you know, he would all you know, he just, you know, he gave us the same kind of pro Israel bombast as the rest of them.
It was just like there's too much money at stake.
Yeah.
He also thought somehow that he could trick Sheldon Adelson into supporting, you know, like, I'm not going to pay that guy.
Well, you know what it was?
It wasn't quite that.
What I think happened was Sheldon Adelson had leaked that he was going to run a stop Rand campaign.
And then Rand went and kissed his ring and made a deal.
And I don't know the exact specifics, but I know he came out against the Iran deal and he came out for independent Kurdistan almost immediately after meeting with Sheldon Adelson.
Oh, I didn't know that.
I don't think the deal was that Adelson would pay him, but that at least cease fire, man.
I'm not.
Trust me.
Rand said, I'm no threat, Brian.
And so that was the deal that they made was that Adelson wouldn't run a get Rand campaign.
So it wasn't even money for the money.
It was just for not spending the money against him.
Well, you know, the interesting thing, though, is that, you know, with the Republicans, you have any politician that has to, you know, deal with the fact that their base is crazy right wing on Israel because of the evangelicals and others.
You know, between the evangelicals and the neocons, their base is really, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu's base.
Democratic Party is changing.
I mean, I mean, I'm hoping I wrote a piece about that in the Huffington Post.
I mean, I hope Hillary looks at those polls, the Bernie Sanders people and the young Democrats and Democrats in general.
The Pew poll shows that Democrats in just people who identify as Democrats are as pro-Israel as they are pro-Palestinian.
It's the same numbers like they're both in the 40s.
Sympathy for both.
Totally different than the Republicans.
The generation coming up, and this includes Jews, but not, you know, includes everybody, is not enamored of Israel anymore.
Those days are over.
And if they are enamored of Israel, they're enamored of an Israel that would, you know, make sacrifices for peace, you know, like, you know, make an offer the way Rabin didn't reach out, not just be a brutal fist in their face, like, you know, they are now.
And I think that, you know, you know, if, you know, I think that one of the reasons that Hillary's speech was not, in my opinion, as bad as it could have been, is that she's keeping one eye on those Sanders kids.
You know, she doesn't want, she thinks that, you know, those kids on campus, people who are young people for Bernie, they're not going to go for that.
That Biden, well, you know, I go crazy over Biden's phrase, he always says, there must be no daylight, no daylight between Israeli policies and US policies.
She didn't say anything that nauseating.
And I think, I think it's interesting, though, that I think we're going to see Sanders might be changing things, not specifically on this issue, but in general, for people to become more aware of what the Democratic base is.
And it's much further left than people like Hillary Clinton are used to.
Yeah, it's much further left than him on foreign policy issues, too.
And it's a real shame that he, and you know what, any of these hypocrites, they can flip flop.
And I was funny, I meant to say politicians, any of these politicians, they, everybody knows they're all hypocrites, and they can flip flop around and whatever.
And Bernie Sanders has been pretty bad on, you know, Bill Clinton's bombing of Iraq and sanctions blockade in the 90s.
And he was good on Iraq War Two, but he was bad on funding it and bad on Libya and bad on some things.
But nobody holds a candle to Hillary Clinton, certainly not the Democratic Party.
I mean, she's Dick Cheney.
So even if she tried to hit back at Sanders with, yeah, but you sort of kind of supported that too.
It could never, you know, it would always pale in comparison to her hawkish advocacy of all of these wars, at least since Kosovo, you know, at the top of her lungs and including the Afghan surge and everything.
But he just won't attack her on foreign policy at all.
He could have her ass.
I mean, come on.
She's blew up Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen.
Boy, she completely destroyed Yemen with her coup d'etat, putting Hadi in there and led straight to the current war, you know.
But I wouldn't give up on him yet on this because he says he told AIPAC or something about it when he turned down the AIPAC speech.
He says he's going to be giving a foreign policy speech really soon.
So I, you know, I'm not, I mean, true, he has never said much of anything about foreign policy, but unlike Hillary, he's not particularly interested in foreign policy.
I mean, he has to learn this stuff.
And I don't know, he's run such a good campaign in terms of doing so much better than anyone thought.
I think it's possible that we could be surprised if in the next stage, he doesn't go after Hillary on foreign policy.
We know he's not a neocon.
At most, what he is, is kind of like, I'm just, that's not my issue.
I don't want to talk about it.
The other way.
Yeah.
I think one of the things I don't like about Bernie Sanders is that he has these things like you're not allowed to question him on it.
Did you watch the videos, you know, you know, the video of him, you know, when those anti-Gaza people, you know, when he was talking to them, he just tried, like, he, he doesn't seem interested in broadening himself, like, you know, okay, I know he doesn't know much about the Middle East.
Well, damn it.
You're running from president?
Learn.
Yeah.
Well, he lived over there for a while.
Right.
So it's not like he's completely, you know, doesn't understand the security situation or whatever it is.
I don't know.
Whose land is whose on the West Bank, you know, his heart is totally domestic issues.
I don't blame him.
I mean, I can understand that.
I mean, that's who he is, you know, you got, look, for political reasons, you know, I mean, why, if you look at how far left he is on this, that, or the other issues, somebody who agrees with him on all those issues would tend to be much better on foreign policy.
His default is to be pretty middle of the road and IE bad, you know, foreign policy, but you're right.
He never made it a centerpiece, but he's smart enough politically to be horrible.
But see, I think what's going on here is he's trying to pull Hillary to the left on domestic issues a bit, and he's trying to keep the left inside the Democratic Party until endorse Hillary day comes.
And he knows that that's his role here is to, to deliver his voters to her.
And he doesn't want to weaken and undermine her too bad because, hey, anybody but Trump, right?
And all that.
So he's not going for the jugular where he absolutely could destroy her.
I mean, just on the Libya war, he could just explain in four sentences why this is the least qualified person in the world to be in charge of our military, you know?
It's funny.
He's looking at it all different ways.
I'm kind of, you know, I'm Jewish, so to me, it's kind of cool that we have a Jewish guy, the first Jewish guy ever to seriously run for president, Joe Lieberman, didn't count with anything.
And he's not a crazy Zionist.
I mean, I think that is cool.
It was cool that all the Muslims in Michigan all came out and voted for him, too.
Yes, right.
I mean, he really is a bridge between, you know, between Muslims and Jews.
It's kind of, it's amazing.
I, you know, and, you know, Joe Lieberman was, you know, he was the first Jewish national figure, you know, Jewish figure to really make it on the national scene.
And he was a rabid Zionist, a rabid Zionist.
This guy, he's, you know, he's a, Bernie Sanders is old school.
He represents the old fashioned liberal Jews before they were totally blinded by ethnic chauvinism.
He has no use for ethnic chauvinism.
I really admire him for that.
I really do.
Yeah.
It's nervy, but it makes, it certainly makes him unpopular at AIPAC, no matter what he says.
You know, he could have got up there and said, if he spoke, I love Israel, I love Israel, but they look at him and they say, ah, you don't really, you're some kind of, you're like an American.
Well, he gave a really good speech about Islamophobia in Michigan and completely denounced it.
Oh, I didn't know that, really?
Yeah.
Well, I don't know exactly how great it was.
I read it.
I didn't, or read of it.
Right.
And, you know, some quotes out of it and stuff.
I didn't watch the video, but, you know, he was basically saying like, hey, hey, this is very first principle American values here.
Right.
We're all Thomas Jefferson on this issue.
I don't care what God you're interested in.
Right.
Stop.
Right.
No, I think that's really, I think that's, it's old fashioned.
Within the context of the Jewish community, he's an old fashioned socialist Jew from the 1930s.
He's not that generation, really.
He's the next generation.
But it's heartening.
And, you know, I also love the fact he doesn't give, he doesn't put out all this religion BS at all.
I mean, for him to get, you'd never get that guy to say God bless America.
Well, maybe that would be the test.
When Bernie Sanders starts ending speeches with God bless America, we know we'd lost him.
But up to this point, he doesn't do any of that pandering on that, you know, that everybody does.
Hillary talks about her growing up in Methodist church and everybody talks about their religion.
He doesn't do that.
I got to give him credit.
He's not, he's far from perfect.
And I would definitely prefer, you know, I prefer Elizabeth Warren, frankly, you know, but he's done pretty good.
And I think he would be a lot stronger candidate against Trump, too.
This is the thing.
I think he would be a much stronger candidate against Trump because of the appealing to like, you know, the grievances on economic issues and that kind of stuff.
Well, yeah, I mean, he's he basically sounds like a nicer version of Trump when it goes to, oh, the Mexicans and the Chinese are taking all our jobs away, which I think is economic ignorance.
But anyway, everybody apparently loves hearing that kind of thing.
And and but he's the he obviously has some idea what he's talking about.
And I think in the contrast, there was one night, I forget if it was Super Tuesday or which it was, but there was one night where he gave a speech and then they clipped over to Trump.
And from substance to bluster was just such a night and day kind of thing.
I disagree with Sanders.
I mean, I'm a libertarian individualist, pro capitalist, you know, in every way.
I disagree with him on all this stuff.
But just the fact like here's a guy who is interested in reading books about stuff versus here's a guy who believes in himself a lot or whatever.
You know what I mean?
It's very clear.
And here's the other thing is she is so personally scandalous if she does not run on.
That's right.
I'm Richard Nixon, baby.
And what this empire needs is a mean SOB to take charge of this thing.
If she doesn't run on that and tries to pretend that that's not who she is and run away from that, he's just going to destroy it.
That's the only advantage that she has.
And it's a real weakness.
The only thing she can do is try to turn it into an advantage.
But I don't think she can.
And so it's not just that she's bad on every single policy issue in the whole wide world, but and even championed the most horrible of the policies, especially on the wars.
But she also has.
I always thought it was 45.
It's a 55 percent disapproval rating of people who they just don't trust her.
And why?
Because they know if they were a Saudi prince, that they could pay her foundation a few hundred thousand dollars and then run away with some F-16s or whatever it is.
I mean, they know that she is so corrupt.
And I think she just reminds people of their boss that they hate.
She's just a really lousy candidate.
And in terms of substance and image, you know, but she's going to be running against someone who scares the hell out of everybody.
Look at Romney and Obama 2012.
It was the country's pretty evenly split as far as it goes.
And yet some people love Obama as much as people hated Obama.
Some people love them.
Right.
Nobody loved Romney.
And that was the margin.
That was the margin was the love.
And so Romney, people were willing to vote against Obama.
But was anybody really coming out for Romney?
No.
And that's how that's what Hillary Clinton is doing.
She's running on settle for me.
Whereas Trump has people who are absolutely in thrall, you know.
Yeah.
But people like me, liberals, liberals, progressive, whatever.
We I know so many people who absolutely can't stand Hillary Clinton.
So the hate for and I use the word hated.
I mean, hate that hate for Donald Trump is will cause them to go down to purple states and campaign for her just because of that race baiting that he does.
Yeah.
I mean, that really has pushed that part far beyond what was smart even for his tactics.
And that's going to that.
Yeah.
Right.
Because there's a point.
Right.
Because he at in the early stages, it's what put him on the map.
It's how we won.
But he keeps doing it.
That and the woman stuff.
I mean, like, jeez.
I mean, how many more times are you going to keep offending women with these stupid attacks on Megan Kelly?
I mean, it seems like you start talking about Hillary being like a boss.
You can't stand Trump.
Trump and and his buddy in New Jersey, who he hangs out with now, Christie.
They're like they're like the kind of people that make women want to throw up.
I mean, you know, they're, you know, just.
It's just misogynist.
I mean.
Well, I think that they remind everybody of Tony Soprano and the boys, too.
Yeah.
That, too.
This guy is reminds us of a mob boss more than a senator or a president.
Yeah.
In a lot of ways.
We live in great times.
Great times.
Absolutely.
Great choices we have here.
I mean, it's amazing.
Yeah.
Well, you know, the thing of it is, I mean, it was going to be Jeb, right?
Trump is completely the black swan here.
It was going to be Mr. Centrist, RINO, liberal Republican versus the conservative Democrat.
Might as well be the Rockefellers themselves up there.
Same as always.
Right.
But here's a guy who is rich enough.
He's the only guy in our whole society I could think of who's rich enough, famous enough and full of himself enough to kick down the door and just say, no, me instead.
Right.
Otherwise, you have to be a governor or a senator, period.
That's just how the system works.
That's interesting, though, because he is the only person who could do it.
That's true.
That makes it either good news or bad news, in my opinion, bad news.
Yeah, me too.
He is a singular personality.
If Donald Trump fell over and died today, you can't find another one.
Say, OK, I'm going to take his place.
Who would take his place?
Kanye?
I mean, you know, are we just going to be putting up like, you know, celebrities?
Well, who has that kind of money?
Nobody.
Right.
Other than the idea that, you know, that if he's the idea of increasing the pool that we choose presidents from, from being governors and senators and adding ridiculous TV personalities to the pool, rich TV.
I mean, we're just going downhill.
Yeah.
It's for good or for ill.
That's the thing of it.
You know what I mean?
It's all this technology is a double edged sword.
So on one hand, local police murders of unarmed civilians become national news stories because social media insists and makes it that way.
And TV has to give in to that.
And we also run Trump for president.
So, you know, it's things are changing for good and for bad.
No, that's that's true.
And but that's the thing about technology.
I mean, it's just you just don't know how it's going to play out.
I would say all in all, it's probably for the good.
For the first reason that, you know, you also, you know, local repression, local violence, local, you know, you get you hear about them now.
But then there's the Kardashians.
Hey, they're the next ones to run.
There always was, though.
I mean, whoever whoever came before them, you always had that kind of celebrity.
Oh, yeah.
Well, name who did come before them.
I don't remember anybody before them.
Oh, I don't know.
Well, actually, I've never seen that show, so I don't really know anything except the name and boobs.
Yeah, I've never.
I really I couldn't.
You know, I couldn't pick her out in the lineup.
But but everyone being all very, very concerned with the personal lives of famous people.
I mean, that ain't new.
No, that is definitely.
And it is.
I mean, that's the Britain circuses thing.
That's a distraction.
You know, everybody's into, you know, movie stars and sports figures.
And it's a gigantic distraction from what's going on in society.
Hey, you know what?
We're way over here.
But to get back to.
Well, I don't care.
I mean, that's the whole thing is it's not.
It's all recorded.
It's all prerecorded.
And people can listen as long as they want or not or what.
I don't care.
I want to get back to the Israel thing again, though.
I mean, this is all very relevant.
The the domestic politics of presidential election and everything.
But there was something you said earlier that and I'm not sure if you mentioned this exact poll.
I think you may have been referring to this same poll that I saw that I think was at Phil Weiss's blog where they had.
It was a poll of Jewish students, American Jewish students.
Yeah.
And the all the numbers on support for Israel were really low.
And I'm not sure who came up with the poll.
But the questions were along the lines of do you consider Israel to be part of Western civilization or not?
And this kind of thing.
And the numbers were down in the 30 percent.
And way, way low.
Right.
Right.
For support.
And so what that meant to me was, I mean, I guess to a couple of important things.
First of all, American Jews, as we've discussed numerous times, as you've been explaining yourself, are liberals and believe in civil rights stuff.
And and don't cotton to Jim Crow, whether it's here or whether it's there.
But the other part of that is they actually know a thing or two about it because they're American Jews, presumably.
I mean, and I don't know how how much information, you know, they're raised with or whatever.
But my assumption is they know more than the average American about what's going on over there and who's occupying who.
And that's why they are even more than the civil rights principles.
Just the fact that they know what's going on over there, even in the broadest strokes, makes them the first ones to turn against the project.
Where the average American idiot who believes Hillary Clinton, that the knife attackers are coming from across the river somewhere or whatever, would tend to still be in Israel's camp.
Yeah, you know, that is really good analysis.
I agree.
American Jews, it's very hard to grow up Jewish in this country and not know about Israel.
So you know about it, you know, if you and if you're all you have a brain, you look into it for yourself.
The brain dead ones become the AIPAC youth, you know, and they go to the AIPAC conference and they, you know, but but most of them.
Most of them are on the left politically and then they just say, wait a minute, wait a minute.
What is this occupation thing?
I think you're absolutely right.
Comparing the average non-Jewish young person and the average Jewish young person.
It's the Jewish kids who know about the occupation and don't like it.
It's it's.
Yeah.
And I think I think that's why they're very, you know, they're very active on campus.
Jewish kids would like to be the boycott movement and other things.
Yeah, it's changing.
It's just changing.
I feel that.
I mean, I'm not confident.
I don't.
Time is not on the side of this project, that's for sure.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, listen, I'll let you go.
I want to make sure this thing is not overly long, so people will still listen to it.
OK, well, listen, but I had a great time talking with you again.
It's been way too long.
Yeah, me too.
OK.
Yeah.
All right.
Good times.
Have a good one.
OK.
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