3/31/26: World Leaders Dire Warning On Iran, Israel Execution Bill Passes, CNN Assaulted By IDF, Trump Ballroom Bunker

22:02And I even saw one person who had been through these torture camps. You know, these are the type of places where, of course, we had the right to rape protests and the horrific abuse that's been documented by many human rights organizations. In any case, I saw a Palestinian former hostage of the Israelis saying, you know, don't be sad about this because many days the torture was so bad that we actually wished for death. So Sagar further codifying here a new way to mass murder Palestinians and further entrench and codify what is just undeniably at this point an apartheid state.

22:38Rory Johnston:Yeah. Again, the new law can only apply the death penalty for homicides intended to negate the existence of the state of Israel, which means it explicitly would rule out like settlers and others who were convicted in the 1990s of gunning down a Palestinian. So this is, I mean, look, let's call it the way that it is. And even in Israel, you know, the so-called like secular left, they're like, oh, this goes too far. Like this makes it seem very explicit the way that we're applying the law. And we're like, yeah, that's kind of the problem, by the way, you know, with the entire system of the way that it's all working out.

23:12Rory Johnston:But I mean, I just think it just, What we need to demonstrate, my goal, I guess, with all of this is just to show the people that we've empowered and the society, which is supposedly so Western, normal, that we're protecting, that we are protecting, coddling, and helping expand. That's the part which actually galls the most because a state like this, as you know, I'm not a moralist. If they want to exist, fine, whatever. That's your business. But don't be asking me for my money and your free health care and your defense to fight your war. And now it's to expand. Like just this morning, the Israeli defense minister said, we're declaring a security buffer zone for the entire one-third of Lebanon.

23:50Rory Johnston:That's one million people displaced. And when he says that, they're never leaving. They even said, we're going to demolish all homes on the border just unilaterally. In invasion, in annexation, a control. I mean, effectively, security control, which is, you know, possession is nine-tenths of the law, of this entire region. The world says nothing. So we take this society, we're copying and pasting it onto West Bank, onto Gaza, onto Syria, portions of northern Syria, and now onto Lebanon empowering and paying for this Israeli empire. I mean, think about the land grabs that these people have made since October 7th.

24:30Rory Johnston:That's the craziest part. I mean, I know people get uncomfortable when you throw this around, but it truly is a Nazi state and a Nazi ideology. I mean, from the expansionist vision, the greater Israel project, the repeated invasions and annexations to the ethnosupremacist ideology and the outright – the entrenchment codification like from a state level of mass death. And then the celebration, like that even is next, the celebration, the wearing that noose and celebrating mass death, mass murder in that way is truly something that is sick beyond belief. I mean, words fail to describe just how sick that is.

25:12But this comes from a blanket dehumanization of Palestinians where they are the ultimate evil. They are inherently bad. We are inherently good. That's what the ethnosupremacist ideology means. we are inherently good. So anything we do is inherently good. Anything we do to you is inherently good. And, you know, this thing passed without a problem, without a problem. Netanyahu changed it a little bit to have some like little bit of ass covering, slight differences that make no essential change to the actual functioning of the law. And so, you know, here we are. And just to underscore the point I was making before, put E3 up on the screen.

25:50You know, these are kangaroo courts. These are military tribunals that Palestinians are subjected to. You know, the judges come right at their, you know, their IDF judges. And the conviction rate, according to 972 magazine, and this is from a number of years ago, other estimates I've seen are 96%. But what they found is 99.74%. Okay. Torture, which is used to coerce confessions. Palestinians swept up for minor infractions, children held in these prisons as well, and then just blanket across the board a mandate, a mandate that if you are convicted in these kangaroo courts of these certain crimes, that you will be hung to death within 90 days of your conviction.

26:39Let's go ahead and put E4 up on the screen. We've got a little bit of a polling here about the support for the war, which continues to be extremely high, very different political landscape in Israel for the war with Iran, then here you still have 78 % of Jewish Israelis who support continuing the war. Now, that is down from the 93 % who supported it a month ago. I guess you have some small percentage that are getting tired of living in bomb shelters. But, you know, you still have overwhelming support. And then meanwhile, what they call Arab Israelis, which are Palestinians who live in Israel, 19 % support the war.

27:18I guess originally it was about 26%. So you can see the way the society is completely divided here. We also wanted to get to this incident that unfolded with CNN's Jeremy Diamond and his team on the ground. So his photojournalist was actually assaulted by IDF soldiers. And then he was, Jeremy was able to speak to these IDF soldiers and ask them basically like, what are you doing? And their responses were incredibly, incredibly revealing about the way that the settlement movement works and the way that they are supported by the IDF and by the state and the way this whole thing is designed. Let's go and take a listen.

28:02This is E6 to that. Producer Abir Salman identifies us as journalists before translating the soldiers' commands. Sit down, sit down. Sit down. So the soldiers just immediately came up and started pointing the roepans directly at us, telling everyone to sit down immediately. Obviously, we're not posing any threat here. The commander comes straight for our camera. And within seconds… No! Yo! Yo! Mata usted! Mata usted! Whoa! A soldier has just put photojournalist Cyril Theophilus in a chokehold, forcing him to the ground. Don't touch him like that. Don't touch him like that. Give me my phone. The soldier who assaulted Theophilus continues to demand he turn off his camera before another smacks my phone.

28:47So as you can see, what we have seen happen in the last 24 hours is that settlers came to this area. They settled that hilltop. And now you have a lot of soldiers coming to this area with the Palestinians in this area. They're on top of the home of Imad, the man that we were just speaking to. And we're seeing the soldiers treat the Palestinians in the area as a threat when really what started this problem was obviously the settlers who came in the middle of the night and took over land that's not theirs. The Palestinians here are detained and questioned. Soldiers detain us too and walk us back to our vehicle.

29:21They say they're trying to establish order between settlers and Palestinians. So then let's put the next piece up on the screen. And this is a VO. I'll read you what happens here. This is an exchange between Jeremy and one of the soldiers who is, you know, so they're having this interaction. And Jeremy says they don't have permission to be here, even under Israeli law. He's talking about the illegal settler outpost. He says even under Israeli law, this is not a legal settlement. This is one of these outposts that they strike up. The soldier says, but it will be a legal settlement. It will be. Jeremy says, how do you know this?

29:57Slowly, slowly, thanks to your help, right? Jeremy says, of course, I help my people, says this IDF soldier. He goes on to talk about how the reason that they're doing what they're doing and helping these settlers is because of, quote unquote, revenge. Because of one of the settlers who was killed in some sort of a car incident. The details are very murky. But in any case, they explicitly say that they are doing what they're doing because they are seeking revenge. And, you know, this is something that Jasper Nathaniel has talked to us about. So you have these sort of designated, quote unquote, by Israeli law, legal settlements.

30:34They're illegal under international law, but Israeli law says these settlements, OK, these are officially sanctioned. And then what settlers will do is they'll create these outposts. They'll just go in and steal Palestinian land and set up a tent, put a car there. And then gradually those outposts, which are illegal, again, even under Israeli law, let alone under international law, those settlements will grow. And then eventually the state will come in and say, okay, it's legal now. And so that's what the soldier is talking about there. He says, well, it's illegal now, but it's going to be legal in the future.

31:06And Jeremy says, oh, with your help? And he's like, yeah, of course, I help my people. And it just shows you exactly what's going on here.

31:11Rory Johnston:What's really crazy about this is that I don't really know why. I don't pretend to understand, like, the Zionist community in the U.S., but every once in a while they just, like, pay attention. And so, you know, that pogrom that we covered a few weeks ago, for some reason they were all like, wow, Bibi really needs to do something about this. With this one, though, it's pretty clear they just messed up. They messed with the wrong journalists. They happened to mess with a United States citizen from CNN. That's it. By the way, does anybody remember? They just murdered those two guys in Lebanon, and they Photoshopped his body onto a Hezbollah military uniform.

31:43Rory Johnston:They even admitted it. They're like, yeah, we Photoshopped it, right? Yeah. I mean, these people, they don't care whatsoever. It's basically in their training. In their IDF response, they're like, we have instituted, we've called back what the entire reservist brigade, and we are going to retrain them. And you're like, well, this behavior's been happening this whole time. The same brigade is responsible. Didn't they kill a citizen, a US citizen? I believe they're responsible, at least, in some way, not to mention for all of their behavior. This is part and parcel, I think, for what they are. It also, I think, demonstrates the serious problems for the IDF, which the IDF chief even warned about.

32:21Rory Johnston:They're stretched to the brink. They've got these reservist 19-year-olds. You know, five of them got killed yesterday in Lebanon. So that's a real disaster, I think, for a society which is not very big. And then they're stretched all across the brink. And then you've probably just got the same phenomenon of, you know, putting people in various different places, no oversight, this same culture where you've encouraged this with Gaza. This is what it creates. So this particular battalion is called the Netza Yehuda 97th Battalion, and it's an ultra-Orthodox Israeli military unit and has come under scrutiny before.

32:58In fact, the Biden administration considered sanctioning them because they have done all sorts of wild things in the past as well. I don't want to make it sound like they're out of line with official government policy. They're not, but they are a bit of an outlier in terms of their aggressive tactics and I guess how brazen they are about it. And so this is, you know, this ultra-Orthodox unit that's set up to basically, you know, comes from a bunch of the settlers and set up because, you know, they have religious restrictions on men and women serving together, etc. So that's what this particular battalion is.

33:31And worth noting that the Biden administration considered sanctioning them, but didn't. And apparently Tony Blinken himself intervened and convinced them like, no, no, the Israelis will handle it. They're on it. And there's a moral army in the universe, you know, blah, blah, blah. And so now they're doing this PR thing of pulling them from the field and sending them for quote unquote retraining, as you said. I mean, it reminds a little bit of like, you know, the ICE like rampaging. Like the training was really not the issue. The problem was the mission that they were set on. The problem was what leadership wanted them to do.

34:01That's the problem here as well, where it's not just this battalion. It's the IDF in general is there by and large to protect settlers and help push forward the settlement movement. And they understand that to be the mission. They understand that to be what they're doing. They are a force for the Israeli government's project of continually expanding settlements and stealing Palestinian land. So Jeremy actually, to his credit, who I think handled this all very admirably, He spoke to this in response to the Israelis saying, oh, we're so sorry, and we're going to pull them, we're going to retrain them, etc.

34:37Let's take a listen to E8. The Israeli military has indeed taken what appears to be unprecedented action in the result of this, both in speed and in scope, with the Israeli military's chief of staff suspending the entire battalion from operations in the West Bank, sending them back for training. All of that happening within 48 hours of our report airing. In addition, Meir, that soldier that you saw speaking about revenge, about helping illegal settler outposts become legal, he has been dismissed from the Israeli military altogether. The soldier who assaulted my cameraman, Cyril Theophilus, he has been he is under investigation now by Israel's military police.

35:16We will follow, of course, the results of that investigation. But I do think it's important to note that the swiftness and the scale of this response is only really happening in large part because of who we are, Because we are journalists working for an American news network, we have seen incidents similar to this before involving Palestinian journalists where there is no accountability. We have also continued to watch as settler violence in the West Bank has continued to increase at a dramatic pace. And on that count as well, we have not yet heard a sufficient response from the Israeli military about what they are going to do to counter that growing settler violence against Palestinians.

35:53And that is also an issue that we will continue to cover extensively. Yeah, I really appreciate him highlighting the fact that, yeah, if this was a Palestinian journalist, they wouldn't have done anything whatsoever. If anything, they would have arrested or criminalized Palestinian journalists. And that's the flip side of the conversation we were having earlier about how Palestinians are put through this military, quote unquote, military court system where they're all convicted with almost no exception. And then on the flip side of that is when settlers steal land, brutalize Palestinians, even murder Palestinians.

36:24They almost never face any sort of criminal conviction or accountability, which is what makes it even more remarkable that Ben Gavir is actually a convicted terrorist even within Israel. That shows you what an absolute maniac and racist monster that guy is.

36:41Rory Johnston:Everybody go and follow Jeremy because don't forget who's about to buy CNN. and so I wouldn't be so sure that David Ellison and crew are going to allow any reports like that anytime soon. The preview of The Real Future was last night when Jake Tapper spent eight minutes on a segment about Hassan Piker's anti-Semitism. Oh my God. What a fucking joke. And one of the guys, sorry, one of the guys that he had on his panel about bigotry too was out all day defending the racist - No, I know that. The racist law - It's crazy. mandating that Palestinians be mass murdered, um, in, you know, through this new system.

37:17I mean, it's just insane.

37:19Rory Johnston:Do you know how long eternity eight minutes is on cable television? So 44 minutes in a one hour show. I'm just going to dedicate eight minutes to this. Yeah. Uh, yeah. First of all, yeah, you could have done a segment on the Israeli thing. Even that, I mean, if I had 44 minutes, I think our first block today was 38 minutes. I can guarantee you that's not what I'm talking about. And yeah, I just, I'm still gobsmacked, uh, by the entire thing. You know, look, Hassan and I have our differences, but for fuck's sake, I mean, can we take this thing like a little bit seriously? Yeah. So crazy. Yeah. That same dude too, by the way, was one of the ones who was like attacking Miss Rachel as being anti-Semitic for standing up for kids in Gaza.

37:55That's who they brought on for this panel about bigotry, where he instantly said that every Jew in the world is associated with Israel and, you know, loves that. I mean, that's, which was actually anti-Semitic and offered on that panel. It's really funny.

38:06Rory Johnston:You come for some people and And it's just like, for me, like, when you come for Miss Rachel, like, I'm ready to go. Like, I'm ready to fight as hard as I can. I just, I can't deal with these people. You know Roald Dahl, the writer who thought up Willy Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it.

38:41You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. The guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's? Played poker with Harry Truman. And had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, before writing a hit James Bond film. How did The Secret Agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? and what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids. The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

39:18I'm Laurie Siegel, a longtime tech journalist. And consider my new podcast, Mostly Human, your bridge to the future.

39:25Rory Johnston:Anyone can now be an entrepreneur. Anyone can build an app. And it's very empowering. Each week, I'll speak to the people building that future. and we're going to break down what all of this innovation actually means for you. What I come to realize is that when people think that they're dating this AI companion, they're actually dating the companies that create this. We're experiencing one of the greatest tech accelerations in human history. And let's be honest, that can be messy. There's no playbook for what to do when an AI model hallucinates a story about you. But it's my belief that we should all benefit from this moment, Mostly Human will show you how.

40:04My goal is to give you the playbook so you can benefit.

40:08Rory Johnston:The reason I say agency is because, like, if we can give power back to people, then I think that's probably the best thing we can do for your mental health. Listen to Mostly Human on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. If you're trying to keep up with everything happening on and off the court, we've got you covered on the podcast, Flagrant and Funny. You look at the top four number one seeds. What do you think UCLA is going to do? Break down that for me, my friend. Obviously, UConn is the overwhelming favorite in this tournament. But I'll be honest, I think people are kind of sleeping on Texas.

40:45Experts are suggesting that UCLA is the number one challenger to UConn and that right after that would be Texas. S &C is so deep and so thick in just about everything. It really is annoying. So it's UCLA, Texas, South Carolina, LSU. Only ones that could possibly upset UConn. On Flagrant and Funny, we're giving our unfiltered takes on the biggest moments, the conversations everyone's having. So whether your bracket is busted or you just want the latest on the tournament, we got you. Listen to Flagrant and Funny with Keri Champion and Jamel Hill on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

41:19Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. All right, we've got one more rather dystopian story here. So Trump's been very excited about his big, ugly new ballroom. Kyle calls it the Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Ballroom that he's constructing. He let slip a little interesting nugget about some of the facets of this ballroom yesterday. Let's take a listen to that. Now the military is building a big complex under the ballroom, which has come out recently because of a stupid lawsuit that was filed. But the military is building a massive complex under the ballroom, and that's under construction, and we're doing very well.

42:02So we're ahead of schedule. That's part of it. The ballroom essentially becomes a shed for what's being built under the military, including from drones and including from any other thing. The glass on the windows, you see the big windows. The glass is extremely thick. It's high grade bulletproof glass. So all of the windows are bulletproof. I think the Times wrote, gee, some of the windows are fake. We have no fake windows. They said they talked about a stairway in the south. We don't have a stairway in the south. That was replaced a long time ago. But this is a view of it from the north. death and that's if you see it it fits in with the white house it's almost a twin to the white house it's uh something we just wanted to pay tribute to the white house so there you go admitting the military is building a massive complex to do something underneath of this ball room and sagar you and i were getting questions yesterday in the ama about this and we hadn't seen this news yet and we're like oh there was some youtube thing about a data center i haven't seen any proof for it and then trump just just i mean i've had people come up to me i have been

43:11Rory Johnston:I'm up to me on the street and beg me to cover the ballroom data center. I'm not going to, this happened like three times. Yeah. And I'm always like, what the fuck are you talking about? But I mean, listen, all right, let's, let's put the hat on. First, let's give the innocent explanation. Here's the innocent explanation. The PIOC, the Presidential Emergency Operations Center is a piece of shit. If you read, let's say, I'm trying to think. There's a good book, Days of Fire. There you go. Peter Baker, A History of the Bush Presidency. Bush is stunned the first time he has to go down there. He's woken up in the middle of the night, like after 9-11.

43:42Rory Johnston:They're like, sir, you have to go to the emergency bunker. And he goes down there and it's like 1960s technology. He's literally sleeping on a cot like him and his wife. And he's like, this is untenable. Apparently, it's basically not been upgraded since that time. There's been minor cosmetic improvements, but it's a 1960s bunker at the end of the day. It's really not that great. We want our presidents to write out the nuclear population style. Right, exactly. I mean, yeah. While the rest of us. Anyone else watching Paradise? Not to give away too much. But yeah, so like that's the existing situation with the Presidential Emergency Operations Center.

44:12Rory Johnston:In 2025, they had already reported that they wanted to completely think about it. Trump, he's not going to be in an unstylish bunker, right? So he needs a nicer bunker to survive a nuclear apocalypse. That he's bringing upon us. So what is he going to do? So he's going to build a new one. Well, the new one is – well, the current one is under the existing White House complex. so if you're gonna build this giant ballroom, you might as well put a new Piaq underneath the ballroom. So that's the innocent explanation. At the same time, everybody else who's freaking out and is like, well, if you have all these billionaires building these bunkers in New Zealand, and then the president himself wants to build a new, but you're like, what does he know that I don't know?

44:52Rory Johnston:Which is entirely rational, again, for anybody who's watching the show Paradise. Again, not to give away too many spoilers, but it's actually unironically something that would happen. Secret knowledge, people with means, building bunkers, especially in the middle of this Iran crisis. Maybe they know something that we don't. It's scary. I mean, here's the thing. Like the president can't tell the future any more than we can. He has access to additional information that we don't. Although I'm not even sure that's true because apparently he has less information by his own choice because he decides to just get these two minute hype reel briefings instead of consuming actual information.

45:28But in any case, he can't tell the future, but he knows. Oh, I'm courting. We are a nuclear-armed superpower. Our buddy Israel is also nuclear-armed, increasingly superpower. We are courting this confrontation both with Russia and China. And, oh, by the way, Iran may be pursuing a nuclear weapon as well. Do we put it out of the realm of possibility that Israel drops a nuke? No, we don't. And then off to the races, who the fuck knows what happens next? So I'm going to get a bunker. I'm going to make sure I'm good So I can play these end times, you know, apocalypse games because, you know, it'll be fine.

46:01Me and my family and my aides will be will be good. Good luck. Rest of the world. Not to mention this again gets into the, you know, the mentality of these old men who are running the world who have no long term interest in survival of human civilization. Apparently, Caroline Levitt was asked about this yesterday. Let's go ahead and take a listen to what she had to say. Can you tell us more about this massive military complex underneath the president's new ballroom? I cannot tell you more about that, actually, as a matter of fact. However, the military is making some upgrades to their facilities here at the White House, and I'm not privy to provide any more details on that at this time.

46:41So, military making some upgrades. It's not just Trump freelancing. And also, I just have to comment on when he's holding up the board and whatever, like, this is what he actually cares about, this frickin' ballroom. This is the passion project, right? He's sick of the Iran. The Iran war has become tedious to him. That's his issue with it. And he wants out of there. And he's looking at the market. It's not going too good. I'm sick of doing this. He just wants to focus on like his gold trimmings that are going into his nuclear bunker so he can survive the apocalypse that he himself has created.

47:09Yeah, this is, look, I don't know.

47:12Rory Johnston:This entire thing is the bunker. Okay, but then let's have fun with it. Aliens, right? Wait, what? Huh? How? With the bunker. He needs to survive. They're coming to kill us all. They can't do anything about it. Instead of a nuclear apocalypse, he's gonna go down there, he's gonna save himself, him and his friends. It's possible. Can't rule it out. What is the data center theory of why they're building a data center into the White House? Some secret data. Look, I'm not ruling it out. Maybe they have a point. I have not fully delved into it. It's like some secret military installation and it would be a large data center to, I think, to collect information on all America, like some sort of supercomputer.

47:54Rory Johnston:Palantir. Palantir, yes, sub-state that would exist. I mean, a bunker to survive a nuclear or alien apocalypse makes a lot more sense to me. That's just me, so I don't know. Keep, tell us your own theories. Tell us your own theories and maybe why it fits with the data centers. All right, thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate you. Wednesday. So Ryan and Emily on tomorrow. I think Professor Pape is on tomorrow, right? Yeah. So yeah, enjoy. Enjoy a shakeup in the Professor Pape interview. So you had to change his schedule. They'll see you then.

48:42You know Roald Dahl. He thought up Willy Wonka and the BFG. But did you know he was a spy? In the new podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, I'll tell you that story and much, much more. What? You probably won't believe it either. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. I was a spy. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Peace to the planet. Charlamagne the Godhead. And listen, we are back. The Black Effect Podcast Festival is back in Atlanta on April 25th at Pullman Yard.

49:21And the full lineup is nuts. We got the Grit Sineggs podcast, Deontay Kyle and Big Ice Cup Cat. We got Club 520 with Jeff Teague and the gang. Don't call me white, girl. Mona will be there. Keep it positive, sweetie, with Crystal Renee. We got Reality with the King with Carlos King. And yes, Drink Champs will be in the building. Plus, you know, we're going to have a lot of guests. So you need to join us. And we got the Black Effect Marketplace, the picture podcast, and everything you expect from the Black Effect Podcast Festival. Tickets are on sale right now. Go get yours at blackeffect.com slash podcast festival.

49:56Don't play yourself, okay? Pull up.

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50:39This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.