8/12/25: Trump Threatens Nationwide Crackdown, Huckabee Denies Gaza Starvation

25:47Ryan Grim:Like, you know, Yesterday, you heard mayors from all across the country and in the cities that Trump indicated, like Chicago and Baltimore and Los Angeles, unequivocally say, you know, our city is handling crime. Crime is low here. But also defending their city in a more forceful manner. And I would like to see the sort of notion of like, let's find a common ground and compromise versus let's defend our citizens and defend our citizens rights. At this point, it doesn't appear that there is going to be a legal challenge of Trump's invocation here of Section 740. Is is that something that you would like to see going forward?

26:30Ryan Grim:Do you believe that he's on strong legal ground in terms of his actions? Yeah. So I think one of the biggest outstanding questions is sort of what what is what is the emergency? Like what define emergency? Right. And I've asked the attorney general and the attorney general and the mayor have both said, well, you know, he has broad sort of, you know, powers here. And I said, that's great, but we have to challenge. I think we should be challenging or doing some type of injunction basically to say, what are your grounds for an emergency? Make the prima facie case for an emergency that serves as the predicate for seizure of control of the police or deployment of the National Guard.

27:11Ryan Grim:And we know right now the facts don't support Trump's claims of a public safety emergency in D.C. because of the fact that, you know, our crime is down in every category over the last two years. There's been a 52 percent drop in violent crime in D.C. And right now we're actually experiencing some of the lowest crime rates we've seen in 30 years in the city. So the real question is, then what is the prima facie case that the president has laid out that justifies sort of the notion of emergency? And I've asked the attorney general to investigate this question to determine what the district's best legal course of action moving forward should be.

27:49Ryan Grim:But I think yesterday what I wanted to hear is the mayor and the attorney general say we are going to go to the courts to get an opinion to see if Trump has met the legal requirements for emergency before just sort of leaning on. Let's compromise. Let's find a way forward. You know, let's have conversations, which we have to have. But also let's challenge the actions, because if not, we'll be in an endless cycle of the president declaring emergency. And with no clear definition and no court guidance here, we're setting ourselves up down a slippery road that could lead to us losing our autonomy.

28:31Yeah, and people can make up their own minds, but watching Mayor Bowser there, I felt she looked kind of shaken. Like it didn't seem like this was a person that's going to lead this fight here. If there was someone who was going to lead the fight, what could they do? Like, given the vulnerable position that everybody acknowledges D.C. is in, you know, what assets do you have? What leverage do you have? And how would you kind of organize pushback against this?

28:55Ryan Grim:Yeah. Well, you know, first and foremost, I talked about, one, we have to pull our legal levers where we can. I think it's so important for us to, you know, we've seen jurisdictions who are facing the same amount of attack on their local autonomy, you know, going to the courts and trying to get injunctions and fighting on the legal level to be able to do that work. In addition to that, let's be honest, the real threat fear here is that we would lose home rule, which gives us this ability to have autonomy. In order to overturn home rule, this will require a majority vote in both the House and the Senate, followed by presidential approval.

29:34Ryan Grim:And even with the majority in the House, a repeal in the Senate would likely face a filibuster, which will require at least 60 votes to proceed. So another thing we need to be doing is really getting going to Congress, getting our allies on Democratic senators, the House of Democratic House of Representatives. You know, we talked yesterday. We said, you know, we need to be going to the Congressional Black Caucus within Congress asking for their support. And many of them are calling us. How can we support? And so, you know, we need to be doing those things. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who is our delegate and warrior on the Hill representative, has put forward legislation to give D.C.

30:11Ryan Grim:its full autonomy. We should be trying to get those type of things done as quickly as possible. you know when we're up against what we're up against in this country you know the idea that you know conforming is going to create a space where we're not going to continue to have to give and give and give you know it's just not based in reality yeah you can ask Columbia University how that's gone for them when they you know bent over backwards to try to capitulate and it didn't matter they still had to pay the bribes the administration they've had the Middle East studies department taken over. And, you know, there's there's no there's nothing to be gained from capitulating to this individual.

30:54Ryan Grim:I think that lesson should have been learned pretty well at this point. I was curious your perspective, what you're hearing from constituents about their concerns about what this is going to mean for their lives. And also just what have you heard? How is the National Guard going to be used? We know that agents have been pulled up from various agencies, DEA, FBI, Secret Service, how are they going to be deployed? We were raising questions earlier about what are the rules of engagement here? Do you have any understanding of what this is actually going to look like? Yeah. In our call meeting yesterday amongst the mayor and the council and the AG, what our understanding was is that they are going to sort of just be a presence.

31:38Ryan Grim:Really, they don't have any sort of, the goal is to just be a presence across the city in different locations. I don't know how real that is. I will say I had a constituent reach out to me because Rock Creek Park, which is National Park Service land, is in my ward and her and her son were on a run and they were sort of stopped and told they couldn't, you know, sort of run in a certain section. And, you know, they just, you know, they really wanted to know, Council Member, you know, what do we do in these circumstances? You know, there's a vast amount of National Park Service land, which is federal land that is a part of, you know, Ward 4 particularly, but across the city in general.

32:25Ryan Grim:And in reality is what I've been saying to residents is when you're on national park land, when you're on federal land, they do have, you know, additional powers there. I, you know, have recommended people stay off sort of national park service land or, you know, make sure while you're there, you're there with others and numbers. And you also remember, you know, you have your constitutional rights. Be very clear about that. Make sure you have your identification on you. Make sure you let people know where you are. because the reality is with so many different law enforcement entities on the ground in the District of Columbia, it's really going to be hard.

33:05Ryan Grim:It's really hard for us to sort of determine who's doing what and where. And we've also been asking constituents to report to us where they're seeing national law enforcement so that we can try to make sure people can go to that area and at least observe what is happening between constituents and federal law enforcement. Right. And let me ask you about this billion dollars. D.C.'s missing billion dollars. You can put up a seven here. It's a tweet from my old colleague, Sam Stein. One way we could make D.C. safer and cleaner without using the National Guard would be to restore the one billion dollars in cuts to the city budget that was passed into law with Trump's signature, which Trump and Republicans were supposed to reverse but never got around to.

33:46So this was something they slipped into the budget or slipped into the spending bill, stripped a billion dollars from D.C.'s budget, said that, oh, we'll fix that next time. Just trust us. Don't worry. What's the status of that billion dollars? And talk about the portion of the budget that that makes up. Like how important to the city is this amount of money? Like to the federal government, a billion dollars, you know, they can lose that easily. But to the city, what's it mean?

34:15Ryan Grim:Yeah, for us, remember, you know, our largest parts of pots of money, health, right, public safety, education and human services. And so when you have big cuts like this, it means those are the four sections of our city budget that have to take a hit. And this is not the time where education can take a hit, where public safety, which, you know, as all the talks about wanting to make sure the district is safe and this being about safety, but you cut, you know, a billion dollars from our budget. And what is the city's whole budget if you count all four of those buckets plus? We have about a$19 billion,$20 billion budget given the year, but maintain about a$19 billion budget.

34:58So a billion dollars, that's cutting into bone there. So what gets hit if that billion dollars does not get restored? That's right.

35:06Ryan Grim:What gets hit are the – because it's such a – we have such large parts of money, public safety takes a hit because that's one of our largest budget expenditures. Our education takes a hit. And remember, many of our schools are on quarterly payments, especially our public charter schools. And so the inability for us to be able to give the, you know, actually expend those funds, you know, was a real hit to sort of our education nexus. Human services, the same people they're saying they want to support are unhoused residents, which have been, I must say, are under attack and being scapegoated in this moment in such a disgusting manner.

35:43Ryan Grim:Our unhoused residents, a human services budget is the budget that takes the cut when we lose a billion dollars. And that's our ability to put unhoused residents into shelter, into care. And so, you know, that's what makes this sort of just so hypocritical, because to say you want safety and you want to make sure we don't have homeless individuals on the street, which in and of itself is sort of outrageous to say and to dehumanize humans in that way. it's so hypocritical because you're cutting the same budgets that support public safety, human services, and those things that you say we need to clean up and fix as a city.

36:24Ryan Grim:Yeah, that billion dollars, I'm sure, could do a lot more than some National Guardsmen wandering around and federal agents harassing people trying to jog in Rock Creek Park. Councilmember, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you taking the time, and we really appreciate your perspective. If you have a second, I did have one more question. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Ryan. I wanted to get your defense of what I think is the best criticism of the city. And you were elected in 2020. Is that right? So during the pandemic, D.C. had one of the most severe crack lockdowns.

36:56And if you were in school, let's say you're a fourth grader in March when they shut down the schools, you basically didn't come back into school until you were a sixth grader. and you know they had this like a year later in the spring they brought kids back for like two hours a week and tuesdays and thursdays or something but they really don't start bringing kids back till the year after that and then you know they're they're they're like doing lunch out and freezing cold and it was like it was a little bananas um and kids being out of school from let's say going from 10 to 12 um they they came back and you talk to the teachers you talk to the cops they're like you saw adults were when they were when adults were coming out of the lockdown like it took them a while to like figure out how to engage in like society again but for a kid who went from 10 to 12 or 12 to 14 felt like like an entire lost generation those 12 year olds are now 17 and you and you're they're the ones you're seeing out there um not all of them obviously But, you know, they went through this experience, which was in somewhat somewhat argue unnecessarily foisted on them.

38:09Yes, there was a pandemic, but there was an overreaction to it. What's your response in hindsight, I guess, to to that criticism?

38:19Ryan Grim:You know, I think we were just in unprecedented times and we were really trying to do what was best for the safety of students and the safety of our educators. and I think we did what we felt was best and what we were given guidance was the best thing to do at that time. And I don't think anyone could say it was the right way or wrong way to do it because of the fact that it was just such an unprecedented moment in our country and in our city. Do you agree with the link that people make that I'm making there that that time away for those kids at that vulnerable age had something to do with the spike in crime?

39:05I would disagree.

39:06Ryan Grim:I would disagree. I think our young people went through a lot and they needed to process that. And we have no idea as adults what it was like for them as students. We obviously needed to have more mental health supports for our students in returning. And that's a whole nother conversation about the shortage of supports that we have in our schools due to the pipeline issue we have. But I think, you know, I wouldn't correlate that to sort of the uptick we saw in our young people acting out in that regard. I wouldn't make that correlation. Well, Council Member, really appreciate you being here. We'll be following this story pretty closely.

39:53So, you know, hope you can come back sometime soon.

39:55Ryan Grim:Thank you. Thank you for having me. Shop the Sherwin-Williams sale and get 30 % off Duration, Superdeck, and Woodskates products August 14th through the 24th. Whether you're refreshing your interior or exterior, we've got the colors to bring your vision to life. And with delivery, getting everything to your door is easier than ever. Shop online to have it delivered or visit your neighborhood Sherwin-Williams store. Click the banner to learn more. Retail sales only. Some exclusions apply. See store for details. Delivery available on qualifying orders. Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here.

40:32Ryan Grim:You know us, or rather, you know them. Tony and Candace, Nina and Lance, Spike, and yes, the chicken. We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia, AO Rewatch, our brand new podcast. Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning. Breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made? Why do we think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it.

41:05Ryan Grim:And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Kreisel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody. Well, I thought he was going to write, I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia A-O Rewatch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clemens. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook.

41:42Ryan Grim:Every episode, we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers. The show is famously super accessible, so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller. The definition of what is a movie has kind of changed anyway, too, right? What do you think it is now? It's images and words being spoken, captured by some sort of technology. Danny McBride. He loves Ova. Oh, that's fantastic. And you make it on, you make your own. That's great. I call him Tarot Reed.

42:17it's a good name they're all named after cast members of american pie yeah i call i don't i never looked up if she was in this but i call him lychee sobieski yeah i don't think she was an american pie but i still haven't looked it up haven't looked it up she was prominent around the same time yeah then mary steenburgen why are you guys talking to me like i'm worried

42:36Ryan Grim:why are you talking so down to me that you think i don't understand your little play play game i really trying to set you up for success here. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Piers Morgan hosted a pretty extraordinary, I would say, interview with our ambassador to Israel, the one and only Mike Huckabee. And we have a couple of clips here we wanted to share with you, starting with Piers asking him about the number of people who are being starved to death by Israel inside of the Gaza Strip right now. Let's go ahead and take a listen to Huckabee's response.

43:16Why does Hamas hate GHF? One of the things they demanded in one of the negotiations just two and a half weeks ago was that GHF had to be shut down. Why would Hamas want to shut it down? I'll tell you why. Because GHF method of getting food has really hurt their capacity to control the food market, and it's costing them money. Otherwise, they would say, sure, go ahead and bring the food. And all we care about is people getting to eat. They don't care about people getting to eat. They care that they eat. And if you look at the people from Hamas, when they get photographed, they're well fed. None of them are hungry.

43:53I guarantee you, look at their faces, look at their bodies. And instead of food, they could use some Ozempic.

43:59Ryan Grim:So there is a lot to say about that, Ryan. I mean, at this point, denying that there is starvation in Gaza. It just is in such a defiance of the clear reality. There were more kids who starved to death literally yesterday. Israeli military officials, not to mention the UN and other aid organizations, have said there was no significant looting of aid by Hamas. This is just a lie. And in fact, the reason why the UN and other agencies and Hamas or whoever don't like GHF is because it is the weaponization of aid and Palestinians are getting massacred at GHF sites practically every single day when there is a distribution, not to mention being forced to traverse through active war zones in order even to get to those few distribution sites for their poultry lentils and, you know, rice or flour or whatever the meager provisions that are being provided.

45:04Ryan Grim:And as Anthony Aguilar explained to us, not even water, because that would be too expensive. So all of these food goods that require water, but no actual water. Yeah, this is a pretty easy one. If you're on the side of defending GHF, then you're the bad guys in this situation. Like there's no question about it. Boston Consulting Group, just for two of its partners pitching business and getting involved in the early stages of GHF, those two partners were fired. The BCG is now facing an existential crisis with clients leaving, with staff leaving, with their reputation completely tarnished simply for being connected to this GHF.

45:49And this is months ago. To have, to this day, the ambassador defending it and saying that it's preposterous that Hamas would oppose this as part of a deal is utterly outrageous. Almost every single day, there are massacres at these aid sites. If you remember Adil Khalil, who's a doctor from Dallas who's been on this program. He's now back in Gaza for his third mission. And he texted me when he first got there. And he said that a doctor told him, you know, briefing him for his upcoming shift. He's like, if there's an aid, if aid distribution is open while you're on your shift, that is very bad luck for you.

46:34But if there's no aid distribution while you're on, then you're going to have an okay shift. So bear that in mind. That is how the hospitals understand this, that when the aid sites open, the bodies are coming in.

46:51Ryan Grim:Can I tell you something? And that's what Huckabee is defending. Yeah, go ahead. Even sicker that I just, I was listening to Theo Vaughn, to his great credit, and I'm extremely grateful to him for this, had on a doctor, American doctor who just returned from Gaza. And he said, you know, in Islam, it is forbidden to take your own life to commit suicide. And he heard of people who would say, you know, if my wife, if my family are killed, I'm going to one of the GHF sites, basically in hopes that they will take me out. like suicide by GHF site aid, quote unquote, aid massacre. That's how dark it is.

47:29Ryan Grim:And he also attested, as numerous doctors have at this point, he worked at Nassar Hospital as well, which is the primary hospital where these aid massacre victims would be brought. He said, you know, when there was an aid distribution, you would have roughly 300 people come in wounded with various wounds and, you know, plenty more who were killed. So that is that's what our ambassador, Mike Huckabee, great Christian, is defending here. We also have a clip here of him being asked by Piers Morgan to comment on the assassination of five Al Jazeera journalists. Again, we covered this extensively yesterday.

48:07Ryan Grim:Israel is not denying that they targeted and assassinated these five journalists, including among them, Anas al-Sharif. But they were, you know, there were Hamas. So it was fine for us to execute them. Let's go ahead and take a listen to what Huckabee had to say about that. The IDF has killed five journalists from Al Jazeera amongst seven people who were killed in a direct and targeted strike in Gaza City. Al Jazeera called it a targeted assassination and a blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom. Now, the IDF immediately put out a statement saying that 28-year-old correspondent Anas al-Sharif, who had become extremely well known in Gaza for his broadcasting during the war, they said that he served as the head of a terrorist cell in Hamas and produced documents, including personal rosters, lists of terrorist training courses, phone directories and salary documents that they said proved he belonged to Hamas.

49:07Ryan Grim:But since then, a number of journalists, including many from the BBC, have said that this evidence, to their eyes, a very experienced war correspondent, is not convincing. And the reason this matters so much is that if the IDF has deliberately targeted a group of journalists in Gaza City, and it turns out that that man, Al-Sharif, was not a Hamas terrorist, then that would constitute a war crime.

49:39I also would point there are photos where this alleged journalist is hugging the head of Hamas and smiling and yucking it up for the cameras. There is evidence that indicates that he was an asset for Hamas. And if it's proven that he isn't, then that's a different calculation. But right now, the evidence points to the fact that he was. and why would someone pose as a journalist? I mean, I know why they would do it, but I think that's incredibly despicable if somebody is pretending to be just reporting the news but is actually being a participant in the outcome. It's like if a referee at an American football game, instead of wearing the striped jersey of the referee, decides to put on a team jersey and actually root for one team over the other and aid and abet one team over the other.

50:35But the big difference is that in football, it's just a game, really doesn't matter. This matters. People are dying there every day. And anyone who helps Hamas, who is sympathetic to them, who aids and abets them, I can understand they would be a target. But there is no actual hard evidence that he was a Hamas terrorist.

50:58Ryan Grim:The only evidence appears to be old pictures of him with Hamas leaders, of which there would be many people in Gaza who would do pictures of that nature with the governing body. This is prior to October the 7th. I think judging people as terrorists prior to October the 7th, when this was a government that was being financially supported by Israel, amongst others, to the tune of billions of dollars, is pretty disingenuous. So first of all, Ryan, as Piers is pointing out there, there is no evidence that Anas was linked to Hamas or a Hamas militant at any point, let alone post October 7th. And you can all go out and watch his work product if you want to know what he has been up to for these past nearly two years.

51:40Ryan Grim:Second of all, I just have to note, it is quite rich for a former Fox News host to take this line about how if you're cheering, rooting for one team specifically, and you put on the jersey and you're not just being the neutral ref, then that should make you a legitimate military target is quite rich coming from this former Fox News propagandist. Yeah, it's utterly preposterous. If you live in Gaza and you're a high ranking, you know, if you're a journalist of serious repute, like the Hamas leadership wants to be seen with you. Like that's it's it goes it goes the other way around for the most.

52:20Yeah, that. Well, think about the other thing I was thinking about.

52:23Ryan Grim:Hey, all of our members of Congress are there taking photos with Benjamin Netanyahu right now. You know, does that mean they're fake Congress people and they're legitimate military targets? It's it's ridiculous. It's utterly absurd. Right. And also, Israel's own documents that they put out said that he left in early 2023 because of some explosives accident that, you know, cost him his hearing in one ear and vision and, you know, hurt his vision and other eyes. It's like, well, A, none of that is like evident in any of his work. But even assuming that this is the case, you're saying that he has not been a combatant since October, since before October 7th, 2023.

53:05the rule is that you can only kill combatants. Like just because somebody previously served, and I'm not acknowledging that he previously served, I'm not saying that he did because there's really no evidence that he did. But even if he did serve then, that doesn't allow you to kill him years later. You cannot kill Barak Ravid just because Barak Ravid served in the idea. Or same with any of them. Which he did. And that's what people do for the most part. They serve in the militaries of their country. But you can't then later kill them. So then yesterday, Israel put out again, they said, oh, clarification, because they saw they were getting clowned all over the world for this argument.

53:45They said, clarification, we have newly uncovered new secret documents that show he was still a secret terrorist. and people around the world have been getting their news from Anas al-Sharif and they know that he has been working from dawn all the way off and through the night because you can't sleep because of the drones and the explosions. He's posting and doing live hits constantly. And so now Israel's claiming that actually in his downtime, he was the secret terrorist. And they're only saying that now, their clarification, because the last answer landed like a dud. And they're like, oh, this is only working on our most loyal propagandists.

54:33Everyone else is like, no, this is not credible.

54:35Ryan Grim:Well, and they've murdered so many journalists, hundreds at this point. The number I saw was north of 240, more than in any war, including the Civil War. they've murdered so many most of the time they don't even feel the name to justify it it's just they just kill them and nobody hears anything about it and there's I think cannot be disputed at this point that journalists have been intentionally targeted you know you have international journalists are barred from entering the Gaza Strip so they aren't aren't there to shoulder some of the burden of being able to report out this genocide so it's fallen to Palestinians to be responsible for the full reporting burden of, you know, documenting their own friends and family members being starved and brutalized and killed.

55:25Ryan Grim:And then on top of that, they all, I mean, Anas was receiving text messages. He anticipated his own murder at the hands of the IDF and put together, you know, his final statement to be published upon his death. That's how much danger he felt his life was in. And, you know, we can put put this next before this is, you know, Israel targeting another journalist. Now, Ryan, my understanding is this journalist was able to survive this strike. But after the initial you're seeing the rubble from the initial strike. And while he's walking around, seeing who's OK, you know, what are the injuries, what's going on?

56:06Ryan Grim:And there's another double tap strike here, once again, targeting them. And I think you pointed out the likelihood likely they were trying to not only murder this journalist, but any aid workers who would come to try to assist. Yeah. And that was Motus Samtolul, a very high, very well-known journalist in in Gaza City. And yes, it does seem like it was a double tap and the double taps are aimed at, you know, you first hit a site and it's terrorist organizations that kind of pioneered the use of these double taps. You strike a site and then, you know, loved ones and rescue workers come to the site and then you set off or you launch a second explosion to hit them as well.

56:54Well, miraculously, he survived. At least 10 people were killed in that strike. He's also Gaza City. And so what's going on here, and Anas and his colleagues were in Gaza City and have been this entire genocide. Their tent was known to be outside of Al-Shifa Hospital. They were broadcasting from there constantly, which has also raised these questions about to the IDF, like, oh, wait a minute. You had this evidence that he's a secret terrorist. Why now? Like, why are you waiting until now? And the answer is quite obvious, that they have announced that they're going to do this incursion and take over Gaza City.

57:36So they are now methodically killing the journalists in Gaza City. I hear myself saying this, and it sounds insane that this is being done out in the open. But this is what is happening on a methodical day-to-day manner. Yeah. No, it's just you, you know, you can't believe that these things are unfolding and so clear.

58:03Ryan Grim:And yet somebody like Mike Huckabee goes on with Pierce. And I will say, you know, Pierce asked a little follow-up there. Pierce can be very dogged when he wants to be. And he was a little meek in this particular segment with Ambassador Huckabee for whatever reason. Also wanted to share with everybody a U.S. negotiator who was involved in the negotiations that led to the release of the Israeli-American hostage, Eden Alexander. Alexander, he is now coming out and speaking out about how he feels that it has not been, surprise, surprise, Hamas, that was the problem in the most recent negotiations, that it's actually the U.S.

58:43Ryan Grim:side that, you know, walked away and is speculating about why that might be. This is B5. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. Both the mediators, the Egyptians and the Qataris, said that they felt that the Hamas response to the Israeli proposal with regard to the maps was positive. Hamas was not really rigid in terms of what it was willing to do. It was willing to negotiate, you know. And the same thing between the exchange of prisoners and hostages. So there was the opportunity to come to a deal. And honestly, I don't know why we did not pursue that. Because if we did, we would have had a deal about two and a half weeks ago.

59:28Ryan Grim:But somebody cut off that line of negotiations. Somebody is Israel? I'm presuming that the decision at the end of the day was an Israeli decision. What I was told by the mediators, that the Israeli delegation, when they saw what was presented to them, said that they were cautiously positive. I don't know what happens in Israeli behind-the-scenes politics, But clearly, it was not something that was at the time acceptable to Israel. And then? And then we've been nothing in the meantime. Things were frozen. So there you go, Ryan. I mean, he's just basically acknowledging outright that Israel was the problem in these negotiations.

1:00:13Ryan Grim:What more can you tell us from DropSize reporting about this? Yeah, this is Bishra Baba. This is the guy who kind of was the kind of head of like Arab Americans for Trump and like set up this back channel to Hamas for Wyckoff. And, you know, it's important that the history is laid out there just so we just so everybody understands what happened here. It was reported in Israeli media that he resigned from the negotiating team. That seems to be completely fabricated. He responded publicly saying, you know, I'm not technically a member of the negotiating team either way. I'm helping envoy Whitcoff.

1:00:57I retain enormous respect for Whitcoff. And then he did this interview, just making clear what happened. And based on the documents that Jeremy Scale obtained over at DropSite, what he's saying there conforms exactly with what we understand as well. that Hamas responded favorably to the offer. They were preparing to sign the documents and move into the implementation phase. And Witkow first, and then Israel announced that it was all off and that they were going to try, you know, other means to get the captives back. And those other means entail assassinating a ton of journalists in Gaza City and then moving into gaza city and then we'll see uh what comes next so but that is that is the accurate history uh that hamas was ready to make this deal and the u.s and israel decided not to make it so his dispute with

1:01:53Ryan Grim:i believe it was channel 12 israeli channel 12 saying he had resigned from the negotiating team is basically like well i was never officially on their negotiating team and he's still involved yeah he's he's still he's still involved there are just no talks right now um there's you know There's news of Israel and the United States kicking around ideas again that might lead to something, but there are no negotiations that he can be a part of.

1:02:38Ryan Grim:We're launching Podlandia, AO Rewatch, our brand new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together, breaking down sketches, going deep on our iconic characters, and pulling back the curtain on how it all got made. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Kreisel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song. Well, I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that.

1:03:12Ryan Grim:Listen to Podlandia, A-O Rewatch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:03:21Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clemens. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook. Every episode, we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers. The show's famously super accessible, so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on.

1:03:39Ryan Grim:We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller, Danny McBride, Riz Ahmed, and Mary Steenburgen. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. Your Duolingo is not going to come back to you when a man is inside of you. Oh, no! I'm Julie Pinheiro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:04:20Ryan Grim:This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.