6/8/26: Iran & Israel Exchange Fire, Trump Rage Quits Interview, Pentagon Warns Of Israeli Spying

24:39I mean, the other piece here, Sagar, is, you know, I don't know. Well, we continue to have this negotiating team that it's hard to take seriously, right? It's actually gotten worse because now it's Kushner, it's Wyckoff, and it's this guy from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which is like, you know, totally hawkish, pro-Israel outfit that has done some of the worst misinformation about, oh, if we just blockade their blockade, Iran is going to collapse in a mere amount of days. Oh, we'll take them out and their regime will crumble immediately. That's who the negotiating team is. There are no direct negotiations.

25:13So it continues to be very hard to see how you can believe these reports we get every single week. Oh, they're so close to a deal. Oh, they have a deal. Oh, they have a memo of understanding. Any day now, we're going to get an announcement and this whole thing is going to be over. How? How? And this latest round between Iran and Israel only puts that even further because one of the things Iran has to believe if they're going to move forward is that we are able and willing to restrain Israel and there is zero sign of that. Sorry, breaking news just five minutes ago. Remember, recall, I specifically said Iran said southern Lebanon.

25:49Israel is now striking the southern Lebanese village of Kirbat al-Dawar. I apologize to all Lebanese if I said that incorrectly. And there are now rocket sirens sounding all over northern Israel amid incoming Hezbollah rocket fire. So just to show everybody that despite the fact Iran explicitly said, things are off as long as you don't strike southern Lebanon, they immediately start lighting up southern Lebanon, which immediately draws Hezbollah fire, which we know will bring more Israeli strikes, which means now Iran, the ball is in their court. Are they going to actually fire missiles? This is the sheer unsustainability of it all.

26:27Hey, Israel, please just don't invade southern Lebanon. Why can't we? Why can we not say it? Please retreat to your own internationally recognized borders. Yeah. I mean, we're going through an entire proxy war with Russia right now over invading a sovereign nation over some, you know, oh, Russia claimed an immediate threat in Ukraine. That doesn't mean that we think it's real. It was bullshit. So same with here. Nobody says one word about violations of norms. You have this country which bombed multiple different ones, basically annexed parts of Syria, now annexing Lebanon, rampaging through the West Bank.

27:02Didn't they just do something in Gaza yesterday? They just shut down the humanitarian border. I mean, this is madness. And we're just not, the Lebanon one is where there's not, it's not even a dispute. Like, it's Lebanon. It's a country. They can't, there's no, you know, oh, 1948, 1967. They're like, nope, we just invaded the entire country we're occupying. And we sit here and we just take it. And it just shows you the sheer madness of the entire thing. Why can Trump not say every single Israeli boot is getting off out of Lebanon right now? The United States and Israel, or the United States and Lebanon will come to some agreement, whatever, and then in the future, you will not be struck.

27:36It's not difficult. Why? Yeah. Well, and previously, Iran's position had been tit for tat. You strike us, we are going to respond in kind effectively, like a horizontal escalation. So we're not going to go above and beyond. We're going to respond in a way that is consistent with what you did to us. Their new model, and that's, I think, in evidence with the retaliation on Israel here, is that if you hit us, we are going to hit back harder. So what does Israel want here? Obviously, they want to blow up the peace negotiations. They also want, they would love to see some, look, American service members dead, just to be honest with you, because what would that require?

28:16Then we would be fully back in it. They want our bases to be struck. They want us to have some sort of justification that means we have to get back fully into this war. That is what they're pushing for. That's what they're looking for. And so, you know, with this latest round, we are dangerously close to going back to full scale war. And look, there's a reason we've been having Professor Robert Pape on the show every week, because the escalation trap, you can when you have that frame, we can see how we end up in this position and why even though Trump is desperately afraid of going back into full-scale war, why that does not mean that that is off the table.

28:59It is not off the table. And you can see very easily the logic of this. I wanted to put one more thing here up on the screen. This is A to C. I thought this was significant as well. We've talked over the course of this war repeatedly about, OK, what are the Houthis going to do? Are they going to get more directly involved? And so in the midst of this exchange of fire, of these attacks between Iran and Israel, The Houthis jumped into the fray here. Yemen struck in the Tel Aviv area, declared a total ban on Israeli shipping in the Red Sea as well. The Yemeni Armed Forces launched a missile barrage targeting what it described as sensitive Israeli targets in the Yaffa area of Tel Aviv, claiming the strikes achieved their objectives with precision, according to a statement from the Sana 'a-based Sabah News Agency.

29:44They also declared a complete and total ban on Israeli maritime navigation in the Red Sea, stating that all Israeli movements would be considered legitimate military targets. And of course, this should be assumed to have been done in conjunction and in coordination with the Iranians. So, again, it just shows you that they are willing to up the ante here. And this was all, again, in response not to attacks on Iranian soil, but to attacks in Lebanon. And now we see this morning, as Sagar was just saying, those attacks have restarted in southern Lebanon, jeopardizing, you know, any sort of detente that Trump was announcing this morning.

30:21It's just going to keep on going this way. By the way, the price, I don't know what's going on with the oil markets. They're just kind of delusional, I guess. Brent is still only at$94 a barrel. So, I mean, look, I'll take it. It means everybody gets to pay less in terms of gasoline. But I don't know. Maybe the doomers and all these warnings were incorrect or maybe that they were just way too early. They are just hell-bent on any time Trump is like we're going to have a deal, they really do seem to believe it. I think the stock market is even up this morning, literally only because— It is. by almost a full percent, which is why, especially after, because the Asian markets, we're going to talk more about this later, but they got crushed yesterday, again, on chip worries and also, you know, overall tech worries.

31:04So you would think that would have some impact on our markets, but apparently not. I don't know. I'll take it in the interim. Ryan's theory is that it's not necessarily that the traders are stupid. It's that they assume that the other traders are stupid and that they are predicting that, like, you know, everybody will take Trump's word for it. oh, I'm sure the ceasefire and the memo of the understanding is coming any moment now. And so they trade based on that. I don't know. What was it? I'm forgetting econ. It was like rational market hypothesis or something. I think we can put that one to bed from econ 101.

31:36I hope all the producers, all the teachers are going to update that. OK, let's get to the Trump interview. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. If we got clear facts, maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America. Have you ever wondered why some people seem to age slower? Like they figured out some secret the rest of us missed? Well, it turns out someone actually did, and it starts with a melon.

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33:47turning now to donald trump who sat for an extraordinary interview explosive as crystal said in many ways including the weather which is genuinely insane when you listen to this for some reason there was a massive rainstorm that was conduct or that was happening around the place that the interview was being conducted presumably outside but the one that stuck out more than anything was trump saying i never guaranteed no new wars let's take a listen what changed because you insisted no new wars. I didn't guarantee no war. Why would I have built the strongest military in the world? I built our military.

34:20I inherited a terrible military. We had no equipment. We had nothing. I built a tremendous military. Biden gave a lot of it away, but it's still a relatively small portion compared to what I built. But you said it over and over again, Mr. President. Why would I build a military? Now, I didn't want to use this, but I'm doing you and everybody else a big favor. in the midst of the greatest stock market in history, in the midst of the most successful country, because as you know, in the last time, we were dead country, Kristen. I know you're a big liberal, a big progressive. No, I'm just a journalist.

34:53So he says, I never guaranteed no new war. Why would I build the strongest military in the world? Well, just a little trip down memory lane. Here's Trump saying there will be no new war. Let's take a listen. Look at him. He's going to start a war. I said, no, no, I'm going to stop wars. I'm going to stop them. stop the chaos in the Middle East and prevent World War III, which is going to happen. World War III, we're closer to World War III than we have ever been. We don't need the wars, foreign lands, countries you've never heard of, countries that don't even want us there. This election is a choice between strength and weakness, competence and incompetence, peace and prosperity, or war or no war.

35:33They like a war, they love wars, you know, they love killing people, it's so wonderful. We will restore peace through strength and we will prevent World War III. We will prevent World War III. We are going to stop wars. There was all this chaos in the Middle East. In fact, do you remember when J.D. endorsed Trump in 2023, he literally wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed saying the best thing about Trump was no new wars. Tulsi, R.K. Jr., they were all on that. That was part of the reason that a lot of people supported him, at least the more libertarian faction of a lot of these people, the anti-woke libertarians.

36:04And now he comes out, humiliates them, and said, what did he say? He says, I never guaranteed any new war. And this is, I think, demonstrates a couple of things. Number one, how testy he gets on the subject. But two, how committed he is now currently to this vision of the war, not just with Iran, but you have to put it together with Venezuela and also what's happening right now in Cuba. Cuba is on the verge of collapse. I know we've covered it quite a bit, but I mean, it's seriously, things are getting very bad over there. The Visa, MasterCard just pulled out very imminent, you know, potential U.S.

36:36action, all kinds of crazy bay of pig shit being planned by Marco Rubio and the rest of the team. So this definitively, it makes it clear. He's like, no, I never said that, even though we literally have it on camera a million times. Yeah. I mean, this is him being like a sleazy car salesman. Like, well, I never technically said I will guarantee that there will never be no new wars. You know, things change. And why would I have this incredible military if I wasn't going to start any new wars? Like, obviously, I'm going to use it. And I mean, in a way, there is a kind of truth to that, because if you did not listen to what he said, but looked at his previous actions and also looked at, you know, some of the people who had long been in a circle, look at the fact that he had John Bolton in the first administration.

37:17You would say, yeah, I can't really take his word for these assurances. And the other thing that he does is he would say, no, I won't go to war with Iran on one day. And then the next day, we would posture in a very hawkish manner towards Iran. So it really was a sort of like hear what you wanted to hear, choose your own adventure type of situation. And here we are. We have, I guess, I don't know that we chose this adventure, but this is the adventure that we ultimately got. He was very agitated throughout this entire interview. And, you know, Kristen Welker has done Trump interviews before. And it's not that he likes her, but he has tolerated her.

37:54They seem to have, like, I don't want to say a rapport. But she has been able to, you know, push him and have some exchanges back and forth in a way that he has at least been able to sort of accept and tolerate. I covered the White House with Kristen. He's always kind of had a thing for her. Like, I don't mean. You know, she's a very likable person. Yeah, she's a very sweet person. Yeah, on a personal level, she's super nice. But I remember he would always gravitate to her. My theory is because she's on Meet the Press and she's on NBC News. And that's what he loves. And he's such a boomer. He's a boomer.

38:22Like for him, he's like, oh, Tim Ruster. And, you know, Tim Ruster died when I was like 12. But, you know, in Trump's brain, that's, you know, like some great. Yeah, that was yesterday. Exactly. So for him, he loves like Fox News Sunday and George Stephanopoulos and Meet the Press. New York Times. As much as he claims. Yeah, why is he obsessed with the New York Times? Anyway, that's just setting the stage. Well, and so I actually think because several times during this interview, he commented on the storm and his hearing is going. You know, he struggles to understand questions that are asked, you know, of him in normal circumstances.

38:55So I think his like old man agitation was coming out here. They get into this exchange about, you know, whether the election was stolen previously, about whether the election is being stolen from Spencer Pratt currently in California. And he gets so frustrated and just completely spazzes out and rage quits this entire interview. Let's go ahead and watch a little bit of this exchange so you can see what happened. What they did to the lives of people, they destroyed people. They sent people to jail who did nothing wrong. Just to be very clear, there's no evidence of what you're saying. But let me ask you about Todd Blanch.

39:34Listen to me. Listen to me. Let's talk about Todd Blanch. There's tremendous evidence. There's nothing but evidence. The election was rigged. It was a dirty election. And it's happening again right now in California. You've never presented evidence. You know that I won an election in a landslide and I got 94 % bad press. But, Mr. President, you've never presented evidence. Because you have no credibility. But you've never presented evidence that it was rigged. Let's keep talking about it. I want to talk about Todd. You have more evidence. There's more evidence than ever presented. Let's talk about.

40:05Your elections in this country were like a third world country. Your elections are crooked and you're crooked and meet the press is crooked. And so is ABC and CBS and CNN. But Mr. President. Your one sided crooked networks. All right. Let's call it quits because I've had it. Thank you, darling. Have a good time. Mr. President, let's please. I traveled all the way to Wisconsin. I've sat in the rain with you. I know. I've sat in the rain with you for an hour. On and off in the rain. And I've given you enough time. You want to straighten out your press because you know what? A country can never be great with a dishonest.

40:40Listen, we traveled all the way to Wisconsin for this interview. Oof, rage quit. There you go. I mean, look. In fairness, that storm was out of control. I'm genuine. I could not have done anything about that storm. That would have driven me completely insane. It was pretty wild. Why did they not call it? I think they were in like a barn. It's like a metal roof is what it sounded like anyway. But yeah, I mean, the other thing is, as you age, not that Trump has ever had real impulse control. but as you age, you lose your impulse control. So he just like, she kept trying to change the subject because she could tell how agitated he was getting.

41:12She's like, oh, let's talk about Todd Blanche. Let's move on. But he just wants to go in and in and in. And the other thing, this California thing is driving me freaking crazy. People acting so shocked that a Trump-backed Republican in LA is not gonna win. This is any kind of shocker. And people can go back and watch Sagar and Ryan interviewing David Dayen before the election even happened. And he laid out the first ballots that are going to be counted are going to be very strongly Steve Hilden and Spencer Pratt. And then as more ballots come in, they're going to be more Democratic and the numbers are going to shift.

41:44This was all predicted in advance. It was no shock. It was no surprise for people that actually knew what was going on. But in any case, yeah, I take it as a sign of, you know, I think the rain agitated him, but also his old man fragility, where he just cannot even, you know, keep it together with someone that he, you know, afterwards he's still like trying to be a little bit nice to her on his way out. So this isn't someone that he has like a deep hatred for. And the other thing that was funny to me is that CBS caught a strain there given what we know about how they've gone over and above and beyond to try to keep him happy.

42:14What I think has really happened here is he cannot face criticism whatsoever. And this is a very different Donald Trump. I'll tell you, I interviewed him many, many times. You can go read the transcripts of any of those if you want to. We would, you know, we did exactly what Christian did. When he gets mad, you kind of worm your way around. You don't want to get kicked out. And so you'll push here a little bit there, push something like this. But from when I understand the Israel-Iran situation, the Iran thing has become such an obvious disaster that he is very fragile on the subject. He cannot hear one word of credit.

42:47And this translates to everything. This is why he's so edgy. This also explains why in the middle of bombings, he's sitting there picking up his cell phone from all of these different reporters being like, oh, I'm going to tell them not to do this. Like he's sitting there, basically, he's like all of us. He's like monitoring the situation on the news, except he's the most powerful person in the world. He's probably getting all of these different military briefings and all these other people coming in. And he's trying to shape the narrative from his phone and with words. But that's not something he's ever been able to do before.

43:14It is very LBJ-esque, like in terms of sitting, you know, encostated in the White House. You have all this criticism outside everywhere you go. Every time you turn on the news, you just see this nightmare. You know they have this thing hanging over your head. And so what do you do? You surround yourself with yes men and people who tell you that you're doing such a phenomenal job. And so this is what happens combination with aging. It's created this exact situation. It's more of a bubble really than ever before, because I can tell you, I mean, he would do some of that in the first term. And there was also a lot more novelty to it, to attacking the press, CNN, fake news.

43:47It's been 10 years. I mean, come on. We've heard it all before. CNN is fake news going after the lying press and all this stuff. It's just it's kind of an old act, literally. Yeah. this point. Well, also he's, you know, the bloom is off the rose in terms of feeling like, oh, he's fighting them because he's fighting for us. No, he's venal. He's corrupt. He's in it for himself, for his old man, you know, delusions of what his legacy is going to be for his own personal enrichment. Everyone, not everyone, most of the country, overwhelming majority of the country sees that very clearly now. So yeah, now when he throws a temper tantrum, it just looks like a temper tantrum.

44:24It doesn't look like, oh, you're standing up to the big bad Kristen Welker and NBC News. And the other thing is, you know, to that point, this over some January 6th election stealing stuff. I mean, he's gotten asked these questions many times before and he says his nonsense about how it's rigged. All she tried to say is, look, there's no evidence of that. And then she tried to pivot the subject and he just completely lost it over that, which I think does show you how vulnerable he's feeling right now, how much he recognizes that his political position is deteriorated and how sensitive he is to literally everything.

44:59There was another moment here that we wanted to show for you. And I think this actually does get to the core of some of the reason why he is so on edge right now is because even key Trump-supporting constituencies at this point are struggling really heavily because of the economic decisions that he's made. We're going to talk a little bit more about this, but his polling on economics, on inflation in particular, is just catastrophic. You even have a lot of Republicans now at this point saying he hasn't done a good job on this. So Kristen asked him specifically about farmers and the way that they are struggling because of fertilizer costs going up due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, thanks to his disastrous war.

45:41Let's go ahead and take a listen to the way he spends a complete and total delusion around this. Gas is up, diesel is up. It's all coming down as soon as the war's over. Well, 70 % of farmers say they can't afford fertilizer. What's your message? The farmers are doing very well. Let me ask you, what is your message to farmers? Many who support you, but who say they're struggling. All of them support you. Who say they're struggling. Because there's nobody better than farmers. You know, I gave farmers last term$28 billion because China took advantage and other people. And you know who paid for China.

46:12Last term. You know, I had a great first term. I had the greatest economy ever. And you know what? This one's blowing it away. What's your message to farmers, though, Mr. President, who say they are struggling, they're struggling to make ends meet? Are you ready? Am I allowed to talk? You keep asking questions and you don't listen to the answers. I love the farmers and the farmers love me. The farmers trust me. In the first term, I had something very similar. China and others were, and Canada, which was brutal. They were taking advantage of our farmers. They don't take advantage of it anymore.

46:43I gave them$28 billion split up. They never had a payday like that. And the farmers loved me. And they came back and they voted for me in record numbers. You know that nobody's ever even come close. Now, because of the fact that we had a choice, I had a choice to make. I could keep it going. The farmers were doing great. Fertilizer was very cheap. Everything was cheap. Gasoline was very low. Everything was very low. I could have kept it that way. But I said, I have to take a little bit of a turn. The farmer's going to understand it better than anybody. We're going to have higher gasoline. We're going to have a little higher fertilizer, et cetera, et cetera.

47:17But I'm going to get rid of a nuclear weapon in the hands of very dangerous people. Excuse me. Wait. It should have been done for 47 years. No president had the guts to do it. I did it and I've done it. It's almost complete. As soon as that's complete, gasoline prices are going to drop like a rock. So you've got actually two contradictory messages there. First, he says farmers are doing great. And then he has to acknowledge, well, you know, yeah, things are up a bit, but it's for a great cause and it's only going to be for a short term period of time. So even he had to acknowledge like, yeah, there is some consequences.

47:50Fertilizer is near the all time high. It's already edging close to the 2022 level. By the way, in the rest of the world, it is continuing to destroy a lot of the local farmers. I was just reading a story in Brazil. I have some of the data here in front of me. Brazil's has now soared about 50%, which made it an agricultural powerhouse, but the country's edge is now being tested because of fertilizer prices. So even in a lot of these third world countries where they had had an edge in terms of increasing their amount of arable land, what they also had is the new fertilizer increase is increasing the cost of any even cheaper goods that you would try to get into the US.

48:29I'm not saying I support this. I'm just saying from an economic perspective. Same with coffee. If everybody has noticed, coffee prices are just so unbelievably high compared to where they were even a year ago. Beef prices also remain very, very high all throughout the summer. And with this whole screw worm thing, they may continue. But this is the new Trump posture is basically just, I mean, he's always been this way, attack, attack, attack. And it has worked for him to great advantage when it comes to domestic politics. But you cannot bullshit your way out of the Gordian knot of the war that you created.

48:59And a lot of people can just take notice of that every single time they go to buy a gallon of gasoline. It's just, that's the one, It's like the one thing you shouldn't have done if he took one lesson away from the Bidenist presidency. Don't fuck with gas prices and with inflation. And this time he actually chose it. OK, let's see how that works in the midterm elections. Let's get to spying. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. If we got clear facts, maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting.

49:45Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America. Have you ever wondered why some people seem to age slower? Like they figured out some secret the rest of us missed? Well, it turns out someone actually did. And it starts with a melon. Yep, a melon. There's a rare French melon that stays fresh four times longer than the fruit you and I buy at the store. Scientists discovered it produces an extraordinarily high level of a super antioxidant called SOD, the kind that helps defend skin from the visible signs of aging. And get this, Meaningful Beauty partnered with world-renowned French cosmetic specialist Dr.

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51:28Turning now to this discussion of Israeli spying in the U.S. I'm going to give credit to NBC News. They broke this story first. Let's put C1 up here on the screen. The Pentagon has raised the threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to the highest level. Let me explain some of what they have, and then I will give you some of what I have. They say the Pentagon is increasingly concerned about Israel ramping up its spying on the U.S., recently raising the counterintelligence threat level from America's top ally in the Middle East to the highest level. The Pentagon's DIA, so this specifically is like the internal intelligence agency for the Pentagon, the Defense Intelligence Agency, in recent weeks has issued a new counterintelligence threat assessment amid rising tensions between Israel and the U.S.

52:10over the way forward in the war with Iran. They said the DIA posted an internal message viewed by a current official that raised the level for Israel to, quote, critical. The designation stems from concerns within the Pentagon that Israel is making fun of making a particular effort to surveil top U.S. officials. I'm going to give you some of the names of those officials a little bit later on. The DIA assessment includes a seven-page document and features a chart. The document says the assessment of Israel is its ability to conduct human espionage and technical collection is at a critical level.

52:41It also identifies a series of specific incidents that heightened U.S. concerns. So the spokesperson for the Israeli embassy said this, quote, completely false, that Israel spies on the U.S. Israel does not gather intelligence on American entities, let alone U.S. government officials. Israeli intelligence collection efforts are aimed at its enemies, not its allies. Any claims to the contrary are either misinformed or politically motivated. We should ask Mr. Pollard about that one. Yes. The Pentagon has declined to comment, and a White House official said in the statement, the story is entirely false and sources someone who doesn't have any knowledge.

53:14The ODNI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, was overseas, did not respond to a request for comment. So let's focus in on a few things. Number one is this statement from the White House that says this is completely false. Can we put C2 up there on the screen? The entire story is false and sources someone who doesn't have any knowledge of what's going on. I want to point everybody to a very interesting line. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not respond to a request for comment. And I also want to point to some very specific examples, including a seven-page document that features a chart.

53:44That document, I can confirm to all of you, exists. Now, let me tell you about some of the things that are in there. I gotta be a little careful here in terms of protecting some of the many people who I spoke to about this story. Basically, what they have seen in terms of their raising to critical is they have raised it to a similar level that they treat general US adversaries. This is based on a few specific incidents. Some of these incidents, again, I cannot go into deep detail, include the explicit surveillance of top officials inside of the Pentagon who they deem to be a threat to their agenda inside of the Pentagon.

54:16The New York Times, by the way, can confirm some of this as well. Let's put C3 up here on the screen so it's not just me who is telling you all of this. I'm gonna read from you a very specific line. The report includes that Israel has stepped up its efforts to eavesdrop on senior American officials, including Steve Wyckoff, President Trump's top negotiator, Elber J. Colby, the Pentagon's top official, and one of his main deputies, Michael D 'Amino. Now, Colby, D 'Amino, and Wyckoff, I guess, could technically be seen as some sort of the restraint part of the Pentagon. Colby, in particular, we've had him here on the show.

54:51You can go back and watch some of those past interviews. Wyckoff, obviously, look, I don't really know what Wyckoff believes, but Israel seems to believe he's a problem because he was one of the people who initially started that, who initially pressed them for the ceasefire. They've never forgiven him for it, and even for his involvement, despite him still being very, very pro-Israel. I also want to point to a very specific line that they use, which I can also tell you eavesdrop. What do you think that means? It means trying to bug people's phones. Here are some of the other things that I have learned, is that the Israeli government has been increasingly, while U.S.

55:25military officials are in Israel, that they have found themselves basically subject to the same, quote, threat analysis that they would whenever they're traveling abroad. Now, it is standard operating procedure for U.S. officials when they leave the country to actually turn in their government device and to get a traveling phone. And it's explicitly for this reason, because of potential being able to break into their various devices. And there was at least some belief that attempts at that had been made. And now the Times and the NBC News have gone further, and they're basically saying they explicitly tried to eavesdrop on these three officials that we know about, also military officials inside of Israel, CENTCOM and others.

56:04But the main target of Israeli intelligence right now, from based on everything I've been able to see, is to get as much visibility into the Pentagon's internal decision-making as possible, including to the White House, to make sure that they can try and influence things from their side. Now, nothing I'm saying is explosive in such a way that, like, if you watch the show, you probably believe it. But I think what's explosive is the fact that the DIA concluded this in a memo. And again, I think the number one thing I can offer you is the memo exists, that they definitely have been, they have specific instances in some of these cases where they have tried to eavesdrop on these U.S.

56:39officials. AIPAC, the U.S., and others are AIPAC, and the White House are all denying this. But I can tell you for 100%, this memo exists. It includes multiple specific instances of Israeli officials who were either caught or where the DIA believes that they were trying to surveil U.S. officials. I also should note that this memo does not just include evidence from after the outbreak of the Iran war. This critical threat memo was issued based on years now of counterintelligence activity that they have been able to conclude. And it was done specifically to try and protect the integrity of the U.S.

57:13war decision-making process. There are still people in the Pentagon who care about that. I can report for all of you. This is based on some of my conversations with multiple different sources who are around this. But the most noteworthy and depressing part to me is the White House saying that this story is completely false. The people in charge of actually making sure that we're not getting spied on are the ones who are denying that the story doesn't exist. It exists. I can tell you explicitly it exists. The memo is real. The actual things in various contacts that are made inside the memo, again, I wish I could go into even some more just because it's really crazy, but that would give away a little bit too much.

57:47it includes multiple instances where military officers and others found themselves or believe themselves to be under either electronic surveillance, human surveillance, or other type of surveillance, either in Israel and in some cases electronically here in the United States. Well, they say in the New York Times report that some officials discovered that the Israelis had either attempted or succeeded in installing software on their phone. It could be Pegasus, something like that. Want me to go into the details on that one? Sure. So this appears to have been an effort where, you know, sometimes whenever you go to a secure area, if you've ever been to a SCIF, you often have to turn in your phone for a briefing.

58:23Well, they would come back and then they would discover, oh, actually, there might be something that's been installed on my phone. So there you go. Now, it's actually a little bit unclear as to where the software was installed. Either it could have been in Israel. There have been some speculation that it occurred in the U.S. Best I've been able to tell it occurred while they were on travel, while they were in Israel. And they're actually particularly worried about their own personal devices. Remember that Steve Wyckoff and others have used their personal devices and signal devices whenever they were conducting diplomacy.

58:51It just made them very vulnerable. And also fly around on private jets, not official secure government aircraft. And so that makes them more vulnerable. And what The New York Times points to is that, look, Israel has been spying on the U.S. And we spy on them, too, by the way. But they aggressively spy on the U.S. And this has been always known. That's not new. But they say that the efforts have been ramped up significantly actually during the Biden administration after October 7th as they were trying to get a window into, OK, what is the decision making that's going on inside? Are they going to try to constrain us in any way?

59:27The answer turned out to be no. But in any case, that's when they really escalated these efforts. And one person that The New York Times quoted here said that what they're doing now is, quote unquote, unhinged. So, you know, again, these are not people who are Pollyanna who, you know, would expect that Israel would not spy on us whatsoever, which to me seems like a reasonable expectation of an ally. But in any case, that is not the expectation that our government apparently has. But even given that baseline of expectation that they will spy on us, they consider the actions who have been taken here to be unhinged.

59:58I want to pair this, too, with another story, which is the efforts to effectively link the U.S. and the Israeli militaries and make them so intertwined that this is something we talked about last week with Brandon Weikert, to make them so intertwined as to make it almost impossible to extricate ourselves from this relationship. this is the country that we're talking about, a country that spies on us as aggressively, if not more aggressively, according to these reports, as our adversaries, as our biggest adversaries in the world. There is no other ally that is conducting this level of operations against us.

1:00:37It is not a thing. It is only Israel. And so it really does call into, I mean, look, to me, the relationship of Israel as an ally is already called into question. This further calls into question the idea that this country should be an ally, that we should have this type of relationship with them when they are committing acts against us that are adversarial all the time. And I said earlier in the show, they would be delighted if U.S. service members got killed right now in the Middle East so that we would get drawn back in. That's our ally. That's who we send billions of dollars a year or two without a second thought.

1:01:10That's who we're trying to directly intertwine our military and intelligence services with. This is insanity. And I can tell you, and the Times have confirmed some of these instances, the ones that really shocked these officials the most and why they elevated it to a critical threat was when the Shin Bet, the Israeli Domestic Intelligence Service, the FBI, tried to plant a bug in a Secret Service vehicle here in the United States. They literally tried to do that. The Times has it in there too, that's in the memo. So that demonstrates the level of concern that they have. Remember, these are general bureaucrats.

1:01:42They're looking at China, Russia, all of these others, and they're Like, hey, you have a country which literally tried to bug a Secret Service vehicle. We should probably do something about that or alert someone over at the White House. They tried to put this into a memo and issued it to the Pentagon. And then the White House comes out and says it's entirely false. So that's the concerning part to me is not just what they got away with. But if this were China, if this were Russia, if this were literally any other country, they would freak out. There would be calls from Congress to come in and to investigate.

1:02:09And instead, you have what Ted Cruz, who defended basically Israeli spying on the U.S. in his interview with Tucker Carlson. And then let's also remember, there's basically been a years-long psyop by a lot of these pro-Israel people in the U.S. who are saying that Israel doesn't even spy on us in the first place. Let's throw back to Ben Shapiro making this case from several years ago. Let's take a listen. This has become the hot speculation on the Internet is without evidence. You say that Mossad was running Jeffrey Epstein. When I say without evidence, I mean without evidence. Naftali Bennett, the former Israeli prime minister, said, quote, As a former Israeli prime minister with the Mossad having reported directly to me, I say to you with 100 % certainty, the accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false.

1:02:57This accusation is a lie being peddled by prominent online personalities, such as Tucker Carlson, pretending they know things they don't. And in fact, I followed up with the former prime minister, Naftali Bennett, And what he told me is that Mossad has not been active in the United States since the or against the United States since the Jonathan Pollard scandal of 1987, when a U.S. Army contractor is actually working for the Navy revealed classified information to the Israeli government. He was prosecuted by the United States government and ended up in prison for almost 30 years. And so Israel since then has not spied on the United States.

1:03:31So Ben called up the Israeli prime minister, former Israeli prime minister. Hey, you don't spy on us, right? He said, oh, yeah, no, we don't. And Ben said, yeah, okay, all right, let me go ahead and report that to my audience. Israelis never lie today. Why would they lie? Let's go to the next one. I love this one in particular. This is a very pro-Zionist poster. I believe he's done some stuff over there, the Middle Eastern analyst for the Free Press. He says, the deeper story of the NYT article about Israeli spying, citing an alleged report, isn't the spying itself. There's no direct spying on America because the cost of discovery would be enormous.

1:04:03But there's obviously a great deal of analysis and open source work on America, just like there is in the U.S. intelligency on Israel. Neither side is stupid. But as he claims, quote, there is no direct spying on America, so the cost of discovery would be enormous. I just told you that the cost of discovery was actually nothing. It's that they are literally trying to spy on top U.S. and Pentagon officials who in some cases either opposed the war or espoused views that were oppositional to their conquest of the entire Middle East. and they are getting no cost from the White House. The White House is denying that their own government's conclusion of spying is not correct.

1:04:40Just to be very clear, there's no cost. And there's never been a cost. No. When Jonathan Pollard was discovered, you know, shipping secrets to the Israelis. Which they then sold to the Soviet Union. Yeah, there was a cost to him. But then what happens? Years later, he's, you know, he's pardoned. He's let go. He goes back to Israel where he now serves in the Knesset and is getting invited to meetings with Ambassador Huckabee. Serves in the Knesset, or either serves or he's running for the Knesset. I forget which one. He's doing one of those, basically a prominent Israeli citizen. He has advocated publicly that Israel nuke the United States.

1:05:13Not joking. You can go and look up that clip. This is a former US citizen, you know, citizen, who is now an Israeli citizen who said Israel should nuke the United States and forces them to pursue a ceasefire in Gaza. Not joking. He actually did say that. And who, you know, is very proud of spying on behalf of Israel and has included calls to other Jewish Americans telling him that they should spy for Israel. Let's put C-Sex up there on the screen, Mark Levin. He says, the Israeli spying on us story is bullshit, which links to alleged debunking, all predicated on just the White House line denying that the report exists.

1:05:50Again, if the report is false, then why did the Pentagon and the ODNI deny a request for comment? You know why? Because even they did not want to lie on the record to the press to say that the memo didn't exist because it would mean that someone would immediately come out and they would leak the memo. So there you go, the details, some of which I've been able to gather. The Shin Bet placing a bug in a Secret Service vehicle, but the top one is about the software installed on other officials. But the top, top, top one is them explicitly targeting officials and others here in Washington who they believe are opposed to their agenda, an immense counterintelligence network that has been put up against them to monitor either their communications or their beliefs and others to make sure that they can try to influence the decision-making from the outside.

1:06:35There's a lot of other explosive stuff in there that I'm gonna press to see if I can continue to report. But look, I just wanna make very clear to our audience, this memo exists and the White House is straight up lying, 100 % lying about this. And the details of this, I mean, it's crazy. It is absolutely crazy. It places Israel in the same category, or at least in terms of its estimates, China and Russia, that's literally the level of threat that they're having, except in this case, they won't even acknowledge that the threat is real. It's insanity. And so much of our policy vis-a-vis Israel, if you really press lawmakers and supporters of it, just comes back to like, well, they're an ally.

1:07:12So that's why we do this. They're an ally, period, end of story. And so this really calls into a, well, why? What are, look, you know, for me, I view it from a moral lens. But if you're viewing this through a realist, you know, U.S. first, America first lens, what are we getting out of this relationship that justifies this? I mean, it has been utterly disastrous for the United States and our strategic interests to go along with what the Israelis want us to do. And then you see, you know, these actions being taken against us. It is so, I mean, there is no one, literally no one, who actually believes that Israel does not spy on us at all.

1:07:51Like, that is just utterly preposterous. And just an update, I looked it up. Jonathan Pollard ran for the Knesset, but withdrew recently. So there you go. Best of luck, Jonathan, in your private citizenry there in Israel.

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