5/11/26: Hantavirus Scares Erupt, AOC Vs MTG On Israel, Larry Wilkerson On Iran War

22:33I feel like there's a lot of there's a gulf between expectations of what that sort of quote unquote allyship would look like. You know, it's one thing I agree with AOC. Like, I think there's a lot of reasons to continue to be skeptical of Marjorie Taylor Greene. I'll get into some of the things she said and done that there has not been an explanation for. Hey, how did you completely change your views? 180 degrees. Have you changed your views 180 degrees or do you still hold these incredibly bigoted Islamophobic views that you espoused in the past? Like, I think there is a lot of explaining to do still.

23:09I think there are a lot of amends to be made still from Marjorie Taylor Greene before people are just going to go, oh, yeah, welcome to the cause. You're our ally. But do I think it's incredibly useful to be able to show someone like her, someone like Tucker Carlson, someone like Thomas Massey, others who are on the right who have been strident Trump supporters who now have this very aggressive criticism of Trump and specifically on the issue of Israel and specifically on the issue of Israel and the U.S. committing a genocide? Do I think it's important to say, thank you for agreeing with us on this?

23:42This is very important and uplifting those voices in the context of opposing Trump. Yeah, I think that's very useful. I think it's something the right does all the time, by the way. I mean, if you look at the last election, Emily, part of how Trump was able to succeed was by taking people who were former Democrats or former liberals or seen as being, you know, in the center, independent or whatever, and finding the places where they agreed with him or supported him and really uplifting that. And that was part of how he built a coalition together. Now, again, do I think that means you should like trust Marjorie Taylor Greene, even from the perspective of how do you change your views so wholly and completely in one year?

24:22Is there just like a petty motivation here? And what would keep you from then switching your views again, completely to the other side? That's a really good question. But the other thing I would say is, you know, MTG has more sort of explaining and amends to make, but AOC also has some amends to make here. And in particular, something Jasper Nathaniel pointed out, and it's not an original thought, but she went on the stage at the DNC and said Kamala's working tirelessly for a ceasefire. That was really, it was not true. First of all, I think that's important that that was just a lie. and second of all it came at a time where they were trying very hard to maintain a position of support for genocide but get progressives and leftists and people of good conscience who were worried about being complicit in that genocide to get them on board aoc being a person who has a lot of credibility with the left going out there and carrying water and propagating that lie at the very DNC where they would not even allow a Palestinian American on stage to speak.

25:25Yeah, that was very harmful. People aren't just going to let that go, nor should they. So I would like to also see her. That's not to say she's, you know, like she can never be forgiven for that or anything, but I would like to hear from her why she said that. I would like to hear from her that that was a mistake. I would like to hear from her that that was damaging. And so I think that she also has some amends to make. I think she also has some, you know, explaining to do on how her position has shifted and if her position has completely shifted, because you do have recent votes where she still was, she still was doing this, oh, defensive weapon, offensive weapons, et cetera.

26:06Emily Jashinsky:Right. And we have that thought, right, of her at the DNC. We should roll it because it's, I had actually forgotten how, I don't even know what the right, how aggressively pro-Harris that speech was. So we should just roll this here. It's going to be E3. She understands the urgency of rent checks and groceries and prescriptions. She is as committed to our reproductive and civil rights as she is to taking on corporate greed. And she is working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing hostages home. Aggressive. I mean, that is an eager message in support of Kamala Harris. Yeah, and I'm not sure I bought by that corporate greed aspect either, given the way she walked back from some of the originally very powerful proposals she had with regard to corporate greed as she moved more into the arms of Mark Cuban and some of the other advisors who pushed her in a more corporate direction and to de-emphasize some of those positions she had held originally.

27:15But yeah, I mean, the other piece here that, you know, just to back up AOC and also we should keep in mind here, these are human beings. And Marjorie Taylor Greene has been viciously nasty and harassing of AOC. And those are very hard things to get past because you look at someone, you're like, oh, this this is your true character. Whatever you're doing now to try to position yourself as some moral actor is is an act because I've seen your own vindictiveness to my face.

27:42Emily Jashinsky:But in any case, that's the argument MTG makes about Trump, just to keep those two things in the same space for a moment. That's true. It's exactly the argument she's made. Like her break with Trump at one point is she texted him saying her son was getting threats. And if he could dial down some of his attacks on her. And he basically went and said, no, it's your fault, blah, blah, blah. And she tells that story a lot about how it kind of showed his character in a moment of test after she had gone on the line for him for so many years. which is all true. And so that character argument does, of course, go both ways.

28:16Emily Jashinsky:To your point, Chris. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and so we could put E4 up on the screen. Marjorie Taylor Greene really pushed this condemnation of Rashida Tlaib. She said that this one, proud to stand with Israel along my Republican colleagues, AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and Cori Bush, the jihad squad openly support Hamas terrorists attacking Israel. That's what she said. Again, there's no apology for this. And that was 2021. And if you see the press conference, she's behind a giant Israeli flag. So it's pre-October 7th. Yep. Right. So, you know, when MTG says, well, votes are all that matter.

28:56Well, if you stack up the voting record between her and AOC over any length of period of time, Outside of that one vote, AOC comes out on top, head and shoulders. It's not even close, right? It's not even close. And then we could put E5 up on the screen. This is after Zoran Mamdani is elected mayor of New York, and she posts this. I guess this is on Instagram. It's the Statue of Liberty cloaked in a burqa. So, you know, this is the sort of Islamophobic content that she was posting. This was quite recent, right? Zoran was not elected that. That was June of last year.

29:30Emily Jashinsky:Yeah, it was not that long ago. I guess this was after the primary victory. But still, yeah, this was not like ancient history. And again, we haven't we have seen Marjorie Taylor Greene grapple with some of her positions, talk about, for example, how she got sucked into QAnon. I have not personally heard maybe she said it and I haven't followed all of her content but I have not personally heard her grapple with her own hateful bigotry when it comes to Muslims and I think that would be very important and that doesn't mean either that would be sufficient to completely trust this individual. But, you know, I do think that would be an important thing to hear if you want to be someone that's taken seriously as actually defending human rights at this point in a universal way and not just picking a new racial scapegoat that you find to be more evil than the previous racial scapegoat that you were pushing.

30:26So, you know, from that perspective, I understand where AOC is coming from. I would just say, I think this is all if you're just looking at like my ideological lens and trying to elect progressives and trying to have a better place with regard to our relationship to Israel and opposing genocide and supporting human rights. I think Marjorie Taylor Greene is very useful. I think that, you know, the things she said have been important. I have appreciated the things that she has said with regard to genocide in particular. You know, I feel very similarly about Tucker Carlson, who I also do not trust, who I also think has a Christian nationalist view overall.

31:05So it's not like I'm going to make common cause with him. But do I find him use politically useful in this moment when I think we need to rethink our approach to the world and certainly our relationship with Israel and need to get back to a place where universal human rights are something that we can talk about and something we aspire to? Yes, I find them useful in that regard.

31:24Emily Jashinsky:Well, this is a really interesting—just the quandary that the left has found itself in over MTG is, I think, really useful in the way that it blends the personal and the political. And that's kind of what you're getting at is, like, there's so many people who have personal skepticism of AOC's character as opposed to, like, her utility as a leftist in Congress. And that's where you saw them kind of comparing AOC's votes on Israel, some people comparing AOC's votes on Israel to MTGs and the way that MTG, like, actually, as soon as she changed her mind, went out and started voting on this stuff. And I actually think there are a lot of people on the right who changed their minds about this.

32:04Emily Jashinsky:It's quickly in the scope of kind of the history of the conservative movement and positions on Israel. But it happened over the course of a couple years and it was a buildup. You know, for me, it started before October 7th, and you guys gave me a lot of grace on that. We've talked about it extensively. But for a lot of people, it started in the last couple years of that war. And it was because people on the right became really skeptical, obviously, even more skeptical, as they had already been, of what was coming out of the media. And when people started to see the rug get pulled out from under them with these narratives, people started questioning everything, basically.

32:43Emily Jashinsky:And so I don't necessarily, I think she's had a pretty normal transition from point A to point B that a lot of conservatives, especially conservatives who are like kind of America first, people who were motivated by MAGA to get involved in politics exactly like her to start paying attention to politics. I think it's pretty normal and consistent with what a lot of people experience. And I do think she put herself on the line and has been fairly brave in pushing back against some of this stuff. But just that she was brave, you know, to be as pro-Trump as she was in Washington, even when I disagreed with her and many people disagreed with her, it was uncommon to be like that, you know, pro—just as like the sort of like rally-going MAGA voter.

33:28Emily Jashinsky:It takes some bravery to do that in Congress because even the ones who act like it for the cameras don't do that behind the scenes. They don't believe any of it behind the scenes, many of them. So I have some respect for her. I wish she hadn't quit. I genuinely wish that she hadn't quit because then we would get to see where some of these votes and pieces of legislation that she was introducing would go going forward. But, Crystal, this actually makes me think we should perhaps invite her to talk about what she thinks on some of these questions. Now, it would be interesting. I would be down for that.

33:57I would absolutely be down for that.

33:59Emily Jashinsky:She had a really interesting interview on The View where she actually apologized for her rhetoric and for her actions. And she stepped back from some of it and said she felt like she contributed to a lot of the tensions that had escalated in Washington. I do think it would be interesting to hear some of that from her because her tactics and rhetoric actually is kind of an interesting part of the picture here. So we'll say, I mean, but it's a very it is a quandary for the left. And I think I don't blame anybody for me for being skeptical. But the political utility is I think it is fairly obvious.

34:34Emily Jashinsky:It's just the personal questions that remain unresolved. Absolutely. And the point you raise about I wish you hadn't quit is a really important one, because if she was in Congress right now, there are there's a lot she could be doing. She could be, you know, an ally for Thomas Massey. She could be an ally for Ro Khanna. She could be taking votes that actually matter. And in a very closely divided house, that could be making a difference. So, you know, one place where I slightly disagree with our beloved Ryan Grimm is, you know, he said she paid a political price. Well, there's no doubt that it was going to make it more difficult for her and her district.

35:12She also quit before she really paid a political price. You know, she didn't find out if she could withstand the onslaught, whereas Thomas Massey is still in there in his seat. He's up against a very well-funded primary opponent. He has got Trump backing, you know, strongly backing his primary opponent and attacking him all the time. And he's in there fighting the good fight and taking it and doing his best. So I do think that that is very unfortunate that she decided to quit rather than try to hold on to these newfound principles in a body where it really makes a difference. The other thing that I would say is, you know, AOC called her an anti-Semite.

35:53And I think at this point, because of the way that term has been so used and abused, that you really need to offer concrete examples of what you mean by that. You know, when you say that, why, how did you come to that conclusion? But I also will say that some significant chunk of the Republican, newfound Republican antipathy towards Israel is about anti-Semitism, is about griperism and Nick Fuentes and noticing and just direct anti-Semitism. It doesn't come from a place of we believe in universal human rights. It comes from a place of, oh, we decided the Jews are actually worse than the Muslims.

36:34We decided that the Jews are the real problem in this country, not Israel, not our policy towards a foreign country, but quote unquote, the Jews. And Marjorie Taylor Greene, who trafficked in some anti-Consemitic conspiracies in the past, your space laser thing or whatever that was, it's a reasonable question to say, is this where you're coming from? Are you coming from a place of we are all God's children and participating in this barbarism is horrifying? Or are you coming from a place of I have a new ranking of racial superiority and I have a new racial scapegoat? I don't think it's out of the question, given her previously state of views, her previous her very clear Islamophobia from the past.

37:12I don't think that it is out of the question to push with her where this these views come from. And, you know, so I think that skepticism is fair and is warranted with regards to her, with regards to Tucker Carlson, with regards to others on the right who have made a very quick pivot towards being anti-Israel and who have flirted or overtly embraced bigoted narratives, racially charged narratives in the past.

37:38Emily Jashinsky:I wouldn't say it's out of the question. I do think her, Tucker, I mean, Tucker has sort of started to his, I mean, he is getting slammed by the right for this now, for even saying that he thinks he was suckered in by some propaganda campaigns on Islam. And I don't know where MTG, it would actually be interesting to see MTG get on the record about some of this stuff. But from him, from MTG, from like Carrie Prejean, some of them are leading very heavily with this, exactly this religious argument, saying that nobody, like nobody should be treated like the people of Gaza were treated for the last several years.

38:18Emily Jashinsky:And Tucker said last week, he thinks that actually Israelis are less safe, Jewish Israelis are less safe now than ever before. I feel like they've definitely led in with that aspect of this, that it's just destruction of human life that's really enraged them. And so I feel like, I feel pretty comfortable. Again, I don't think you're wrong that it's out of the question. I feel pretty comfortable, at least personally, that they're coming from a place of horror and disgust at what transpired over the last several years and not attributing that to anybody for purposes of immutable characteristics and the like.

38:54Emily Jashinsky:But it's I mean, we'll see where this goes from here. I mean, obviously Netanyahu was I mean, I don't feel comfortable just simply because, again, to stick with the case of Marjorie Taylor Greene. It would mean that she's not only broken with Trump and she's not only changed her view on Israel, but truly some of her foundational views of the world have changed. Right. Because she was obviously in the past not coming from a place of we are all equal and everyone deserves equal rights. So is she in a different place on that? I'm open to that. I'm open to it, but I don't know. And so, you know, that's that's where I am.

39:30Again, do I find her politically useful? Absolutely. Do I think we should embrace and encourage the things that she said in opposition to genocide and in favor and, you know, in opposition to this horrible barbarism? Yes, 100%. Do I think we should also embrace, you know, the genuine outreach that she has made? For sure. But, you know, do I still have some deep concerns about what her underlying ideology is and what sort of things she could easily push in the future? Yes, those concerns certainly remain.

40:01Emily Jashinsky:Totally fair. I actually think that's one of the big fault lines in the left-right foreign policy coalition right now or emergent coalition. I think one of the fault lines is even probably some things that you and I would disagree on or Sagar and Ryan, all of us would potentially disagree on about things down the line that might come up on foreign policy questions. It might not be that much. It might probably it'll probably be more between Marjorie Taylor Greene and all four of us, to be honest. But I think it is actually one of the fault lines. So we'll have to see. But now who was just talking about on 60 Minutes, we'll probably play the clip tomorrow, how support for Israel, he says, is directly declining in course or in correlation to.

40:45Emily Jashinsky:I don't know if he uses that exact word, but to the rise of social media. Geometric relation to, which I don't know if that's really the right language. I don't know. I'm imagining triangles. But the point he's really making is that people have more access to information, and the more access to information people have is making them less favorable towards Israel. And so I feel like, you know, there's—for a lot of people, it's very real. I don't know—I don't personally know MTG, so I can't speak for her. But I think some of the good news is that there has been a very real and sincere questioning of some of these first principles that conservatives always bought into and believed by people on the right, certainly young people on the right, who are saying, you know, we can't support, we can't just automatically support a country that is going to be willing to engage in some of what we saw in Gaza over the last few years.

41:37Emily Jashinsky:And Crystal, at least that is something to be optimistic about in the future when it comes to, yeah, hopefully, hopefully the rupture in this unquestioned and reflexive alliance between the United States and Israel. Yep. All right. Well, we've got Colonel Larry Wilkerson standing by to talk to us more about the Iran War. So let's get to that.

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45:13Emily Jashinsky:We're joined now by retired U.S. Army Colonel Larry Wilkerson. Thank you so much for joining us, sir. It's a pleasure to have you on. Good to be with you. Yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us. Let's put this first tarot sheet up on the screen. This is from The Wall Street Journal. Headline, Israel built and defended a secret Iran war base in Iraq. So details from the journal, quote, Israel set up a clandestine military outpost in the Iraqi desert to support its air campaign against Iran and launched airstrikes against Iraqi troops who almost discovered it early in the war. People familiar with the matter, including U.S.

45:47Emily Jashinsky:officials said. Sir, just wanted to get your response right off the top here to revelations in the journal. How significant is this? It's odd that the journal would come out with this since it is so pro-Israeli. It's a revelation, if you will. But it's nothing new. They have had major operations in what is called Kurdistan, northern Iraq, for some time. In fact, the Iranians know about most of them. and in their first volley of missiles some weeks ago struck them, that they have things in the Western desert, which is vast and virtually empty, is no surprise. And I will guarantee you 99 % certainty that the United States, probably Great Britain, and perhaps others like the Jordanians, had complicity in running these bases, as it were, from Western Iraq.

46:44Yeah, actually, Harats reported that the U.S. told the Iraqis, hey, just stay away from that area. We're doing some things over there. So you are spot on with your instinct that there was some U.S. complicity here as well. I wanted to just get your reaction to where we are currently with the quote unquote negotiations with the war. We discussed earlier that the that Trump has outright rejected the Iranian proposal. Trump also met with Netanyahu yesterday by phone. Netanyahu is insisting that the war is not over. And we've seen some indications, certainly from the Hawks and from the fact that Israel continues to bomb in Lebanon, that they would like to undercut any possible negotiated settlement and head back to war.

47:27So what is your sense of where things are right now? Well, the last thing you said is absolutely a certainty, I think. Backing up a little bit, I don't think it's a certainty that negotiations are going to produce something that Donald Trump will ultimately accept. Well, I think it is at least a 50-50 chance that we would resume bombing Iran mercilessly just as soon as the stock markets are right for it to happen. And I don't mean that cavalierly. Donald Trump is coordinating through Hegseth, of course, and Cain, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, these strikes based on his desire for his friends and ultimately his family to make money off the stock market.

48:08So that's part of it. And then the other part of it is I don't think there's a chance he's going to get what he really wants, which is none of the things that we've been talking about other than a nuclear deal. And certainly Israel is not going to buy that. So that's going to be a real stopgap measure, if you will, in trying to make that the only thing we do. So there's at least a 60-40 chance we're going back to bombing Iran again. Disasterous as that will be. It won't produce anything but more resolution, more missiles coming out of Iran, this time aimed at everything in the region to include Saudi Arabia oil facilities, Bahrain again, Kuwait, all the countries that depend on that black gold for a lot of their wealth will find it all pretty much drying up because Iran is going to target it all with the help of Russian and Chinese satellites, which we know are helping them now.

49:05just as we helped Zelensky strike Russia with our satellites. So this is a very complicated game we're playing now. And Donald Trump is, I think, somewhat desperate to get out of it. But he is unable to fashion away with all the pressures and powers that are around him that don't want it to happen.

49:24Emily Jashinsky:Yeah, that's a great point. And he's heading, obviously, to China in the next couple of days, supposed to be there on Thursday for a major state visit. And what is your sense of when the bombing could resume based on, I know you just mentioned the stock market. What might we expect to see in terms of the timeline going forward? Well, generally speaking, he does it on a Friday. But I don't know if that will be a telltale sign of anything this time, because it could all be a faint just to put more pressure on Iran at the moment that they think they're going to come to some kind of deal. But I don't think so.

49:59As I said, I think the odds are 60-40 that we're going to resume this conflict, and it's going to be with a vengeance with everything in terms of our air power we can pour at them. And before people say, well, the carriers are in position and all that, that's not what I'm talking about. The carrier air power is really insignificant when you start talking about what we're planning to do. This is marshalling almost the entire United States Air Force and ancillary forces to drop bombs from B-2s, B-52s, all the way down the line on Iran to further pulverize it, create war crimes, and kill a lot of innocent civilians.

50:37So this is not something I look forward to, and I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong. I hope we come to some kind of nuclear deal. But then what are we going to do about Netanyahu, who has said, I'm going to keep the war up? Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. I also took note that President Trump has been posting clips from neocon Mark Levin. This one in particular is very noteworthy to me. A lot of historical revisionism, I think one could say that, or at least noteworthy historical take here from Mark Levin that I wanted to get your reaction to. Guys, let's go ahead and play F5. We don't have to create opposition.

51:12There is opposition. We need to seize the opportunity. And we need to see the opportunity. And by that, I mean that our CIA, along with the Israeli Mossad, make determinations about the best way to determine who to train and arm. While at the same time, we continue the economic stranglehold and our military, along with our allies the israelis provide coordinated support with targeted and supportive attacks on the irgc and the basij paramilitary police that's in my view how you do it oh mark you never served in the military i know history i know history nobody alive ever served in the civil war either nobody alive ever served in the Revolutionary War either.

52:06That's not the point. You do leave it to the experts to figure this out. But the President of the United States, the Commander in Chief, he makes the decisions. And I look at history. I look at success. Success in destroying the Soviet Union. Success in pushing communism out of Central and South America. And we did this. Success in pushing communism out of parts of Africa, success in pushing the Russians, the Soviets, out of Afghanistan. We didn't send in troops. We armed the freedom fighters, the Mujahideen in Afghanistan and others throughout the world. He was reading a script prepared for him by either Mossad, the IDF, or Moe.

52:56That's all I can guess. I would be willing to bet a lot of money on that. He was reading from that script. And we've already seen how false that narrative is. What happened earlier that is being touted by certain people like the Wall Street Journal and others that was so effective in terms of almost overthrowing the regime was a joke. It was worse than 53 and Kermit Roosevelt's attempts to overthrow Mossadegh. worse because it did not succeed, and yet it killed a lot of Iranians. And the people killing the Iranians, either directly or indirectly, were MI6, Mossad, and CIA, not the Iranian security forces.

53:41The Iranian security forces were stunned at first, then figured out what was happening and went after those mechanisms that were allowing them to operate so freely within their country, eliminated them and then began to eliminate those people. In fact, so much so that Mossad has very few people on the ground in Iran right now. But the point is, it wasn't the Iranian people that were fomenting revolution, and it won't be in the future either. It was Mossad, CIA, and MI6 in combination making it look like they were doing it. And the Iranians, they're not stupid. They figured that out. They've had it been done to them a number of times before, and they eliminated most of the operatives inside the country, which is bothering Israel big time right now because they have no eyes and ears on the ground in Iran like they've had for so many years.

54:32So these are all lies that Levin's telling.

54:36Emily Jashinsky:Well, I want to go also to F4 because this was from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's interview on 60 Minutes last night. He said that he is hoping that Israel can wean itself off remaining military support from the United States. Let's go ahead and roll F4 here. Do you believe it's time for the state of Israel to reexamine and possibly reset its financial relationship to the United States, meaning what the United States provides to Israel on an annual basis? Absolutely. And I've said this to President Trump. I've said it to our own people. Their jaws drop. But I said, look. What do you mean?

55:17What are you saying? I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have. Because we receive$3.8 billion a year. And I think that it's time that we weaned ourselves from the remaining military support. Can you give me a timetable? I said, let's start now and do it over the next decade, over the next 10 years. But I want to start now. I don't want to wait. Do you buy it? That's interesting. I had heard rumors to that effect. I hadn't heard that particular film clip or seen that interview. But I think what he's talking about are several things, one of which he's demonstrated by his travels over the last several years.

56:07He understands what I've been telling everyone I can speak to about is this inexorable shift of power that's moving to the east with the magnet being China. But now increasingly, China, India, and Russia, BRICS is going to meet in India in September, and Modi's going to preside. And we're going to see a very different BRICS, I think, after that, because they've all pretty much decided to pitch in. So Netanyahu is no idiot. He's a very smart man. He's been prospecting all across these other countries to find potential U.S. replacements because he realizes that the big daddy is not going to be the big daddy much longer with the colossal debt that we have and what Xi Jinping is going to do to deepen and exacerbate that debt and is already doing.

56:54So that's one thing. The second thing is he's sending a signal to the United States, a rather subtle signal. But nonetheless, I've known B.B. for a long time. And before him, I knew Eric Sharon. They do this sort of thing to signal their disdain for the Americans, for the United States, so that we suddenly come begging back to be their benefactor again. And then the next reason is he's trying to needle Trump in order to keep him from ending this war. insinuating that there are actually other people in the world that we could use to back us, even if we wanted to continue this war and you stopped it and you know who they are, et cetera, et cetera.

57:35So he's a very smart man. He's evil. He's genocidal. He's maniacal, but he's a very smart man. That's what makes the other traits so dangerous. Talk a little bit more about the upcoming meeting in China. What sort of a position is Trump coming into this meeting with, at least as far as it looks today? What sort of things will you be looking for as you observe from the outside? 50-50 that he doesn't go. That's the first thing. Oh, wow. Second, he is going to be embarrassed severely when he meets Xi Jinping, because there's going to be no warmth, no friendship, no cooperation in his mind. He's going to be there to lecture Donald Trump.

58:17And Donald Trump doesn't take lecturing too well. So we could see the meeting start and then abruptly end. Nobody knows. But Xi Jinping is in the catbird seat now in terms of global power, in terms of ascending power. We're in the dark seat. We're in the seat of the empire with Darth Vader and the Sith Lord having been exposed to the world. And that's a very difficult position from which to operate. What scares me about that position is that no empire descending into the depths, if you will, in human history that we know of 5 ,000 years, has had the technological means to at least temporarily arrest that development.

59:00And what I mean by that is nuclear weapons. As long as we have nuclear weapons and we have a leadership that is going to fight this dissent majorly, then we have the prospect of using nuclear weapons. We have to remember the only country in the world that has used nuclear weapons against human beings is us.

59:21Emily Jashinsky:Let's talk about Lebanon as well. I want to roll some of this clip and you can, people will be able to see in here, this is going to be F2. Courtesy of DropSite News, they write, Israel killed 51 people in Lebanon in 24 hours on Saturday as the Israeli army continued its attacks despite the so-called ceasefire. The toll since the beginning of March has surged past 2 ,846 killed and 8 ,693 injured, according to the Ministry of Public Health just yesterday. Now, the sound and video here is courtesy of Courtney Bonneau, who is a journalist over there and recorded this video from southern Lebanon that I also want to get your reaction to.

1:00:05Emily Jashinsky:This is going to be F3. I'm reporting to you from the town of Tora. I don't know if you can hear the armed drone buzzing above our heads in the Air Force. We just heard a bombing in the distance. We're at the site now of a massacre that took place yesterday. Five members of the same family, mostly women, were killed in an Israeli airstrike. uh violence has been escalating really fast here in south lebanon yesterday the israeli army targeted 39 towns and villages killing more than 30 people all civilians multiple force displacement orders have been issued including in the town where i live since yesterday uh since midnight last night until now i've been listening to shelling bombing and machine gun combing in the hills across from where I'm staying and like the Al-Mansouri and Al-Bayada area.

1:00:56Emily Jashinsky:This morning came a fresh wave of displacement orders and death threats and with that came a fresh wave of bombings and killings. Multiple people have been killed already today and I just received a heartbreaking report of a Syrian laborer traveling by scooter with his 12-year-old daughter in Nabatia. They were targeted on the scooter. The father was killed instantly and the little girl who again is 12 years old managed to run away and when she started to run even though she was injured the Israeli drone targeted her again and she's alive for now she's critically wounded she's currently in surgery I will keep you updated about that as I can to my western followers I really want you to think critically about the definition of terrorism to whom it gets applied and who does it benefit?

1:01:52Emily Jashinsky:Because where I've been sitting for the last 18 months, you know, this mass murder and mass, you know, look at this, this mass destruction, this ethnic cleansing of South Lebanon, you know, this looks a lot like terrorism to me. And so Courtney was, if you're just listening to this, standing in front of just heaps of rubble in southern Lebanon. Where do you think this goes for, as Netanyahu looks at the prospects for taking some of that land, some more of that land, I should say, what do you think his next moves could look like? First, let me say that I agree with every word she uttered, and much more than that, because I know people there, and I know what's happening.

1:02:39And I know what Israel has done in the past, even in 1982, when Bariq Sharon was the defense minister and they went into Lebanon wholesalely, and only Ronald Reagan was able to tell them, stop and get out. And they did. After they were told to stop and they did, they created massacres and camps. This is Israel. I'm sorry to say it. I'm sad to say it, but this is Israel and it's gotten far worse. They did Gaza in accordance with what you just heard her say, times 10. They still haven't defeated Hamas in Gaza. Naftali Bennett is angry with Netanyahu because he will not order the IDF into those tunnels to go after Hamas for good reason, because Hamas will tear them up if they go into those tunnels.

1:03:28And he's frustrated and he's angry and he gets mean when he's frustrated and angry, and he is the world's greatest state sponsor, individual sponsor of terrorism, period. And he's doing that now in Lebanon. He is not honored, and I used to say a day, he's not honored an hour of the so-called ceasefire in Lebanon. He's using it now to do what he used it to do earlier with less results, but now sweeping results. He's destroying Lebanon's ability to recover. He's killing Lebanese citizens, not Hezbollah, not even remotely Hezbollah. He's killing Lebanese civilians. He's destroying their homes, home by home, bulldozer by bulldozer, bomb by bomb.

1:04:18He wants southern Lebanon as part of the greater Israel complex. Give him that, and he'll go on like Hitler did and take all of Lebanon. And Erdogan in Turkey knows that, So we're setting up the prospect of a real clash between Turkish forces, which are superior to the IDF, and IDF forces. So this is a disaster unfolding. Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to get your reaction also to, I don't know if you saw this opinion piece in The Atlantic, but I found it quite noteworthy from Robert Kagan, who's co-founder of the Project for a New American Century, very noteworthy neocon. He's a senior fellow at Brookings.

1:04:55and his headline was checkmate in Iran. Washington can't reverse or control the consequences of losing this war. I'm going to read you the opening two paragraphs here. He says it's hard to think of a time in the U.S. suffered a total defeat in a conflict, a setback so decisive that the strategic loss could be neither repaired nor ignored. The calamitous losses suffered at Pearl Harbor, the Philippines and throughout the Western Pacific in the first months of World War Two were eventually reversed. The defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were costly, but did not do lasting damage to America's overall position in the world because they were far from the main theaters of global competition.

1:05:30The initial failure in Iraq was mitigated by a shift in strategy that ultimately left Iraq relatively stable and threatening to its neighbors, kept the U.S. dominant in the region. Defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character. It can neither be repaired nor ignored. There will be no return to the status quo ante, no ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done. The Strait of Hormuz will not be open as it once was. With control of the Strait, Iran emerges as the key player in the region, one of the key players in the world. The roles of China and Russia as Iran's allies are strengthened, the role of the U.S.

1:06:07substantially diminished. Far from demonstrating American prowess as supporters of the war have repeatedly claimed, the conflict has revealed in America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started. That is going to set off a chain reaction around the world as friends and foes adjust America's failure. I get a little nervous when I start agreeing with people like Bob Kagan, but I wonder what you make of his analysis and also the significance of someone with his worldview saying that Iran has checkmated us and that this will be a defeat like none other in history. Well, I detest Robert Kagan.

1:06:45I've detested him ever since. I learned of his complicity in the clean break strategy and other things like that, that we got so embroiled in in the George W. Bush administration first term. But in this case, I know why he's doing it. He's trying to anger those decision makers and advisors to decision makers who are thinking about ending this conflict. That's what he's trying to do. He's trying to anger them so that they'll go full money against Iran with everything the empire has and everything is. Interesting. But I agree with you. He's right. And the reason it's happening is because we did this war of choice, which was stupid.

1:07:28And it's going to rebound pretty much in the way that he described. I think we could even be if the Iranians are resolute, if we bomb them again, as I said, there's a good chance we'll do, and they hit their second tier of targets, we will have undoubtedly recession by June, global recession by June. And by September, October, we'll have global depression. And you know what happened after the last global depression, World War II? Well, very frightening prospect. Thank you so much, sir, for joining us today. We always really appreciate your analysis and your time. Totally.

1:08:05Emily Jashinsky:Well, that does it for us on today's edition of Blue Blazer Point, Crystal. It was great to be here in the country club. Dark Navy Blue Blazer. Yeah. We both got the dress code, little, I guess, tastefully small necklaces there. Wow. I just got to bring my glasses next time. That's right. Do you have glasses? Do you wear glasses? No. I was going to say, I've never, are you contacts? My eyesight is just naturally perfect, Emily. I don't know what to tell you. I was going to say we're going golfing after this, but I'm driving the cart. That's what the Blazers are for. I agree with that. All right, guys.

1:08:39Tomorrow we're going to have a nice little fascist points. Emily and Sagar will be in, and then we'll be back to actually me and Emily on Wednesday. So mixing things up this week. I will see you Wednesday, and then we'll see you tomorrow.

1:09:06Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy. Not quite. On Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guests, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an acapella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:09:37Emily Jashinsky:My mother-in-law spent years sabotaging our relationship until karma made her pay for it. Alright, Sophie, tell me about how we started this story. She moved in for two weeks, lasted five days, left a mess, and then pressed her ear against their bedroom door and burst in screaming. When kicked out to a hotel, she called her son-in-law's workplace, pretending his partner had been rushed to the hospital by ambulance. She faked a medical emergency? And spoiler, that was just the beginning. To find out how it ends, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:10:09On the Look Back at It podcast. 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84 was big to me. I'm Sam Jay. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. 84 was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Listen to Look Back At It on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.