What to Watch as Israelis Go to the Polls; Opposition Leader Returns to Venezuela

0:00I hope that people never stop saying Matthew Perry's name, and I don't think that they will. Hi, everybody, and welcome to Here's the Scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vestugan. So today on the show, we are talking to the director of a new documentary about actor Matthew Perry, also known as, by the way, Chandler Bing on Friends, who died three years ago this week. We learn a lot about him, about his addiction, about his alcoholism. His family is featured in this documentary as well. So we're getting into all that. Plus, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has returned to Venezuela.

0:37What does that mean, though, for the interim government?

0:43Up first, though, Israelis are heading to the polls tomorrow, voting on whether to keep Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the nation's longest-serving prime minister in power, or to replace him. This is going to be the first nationwide election in Israel since the Hamas-led attacks on October 7th, 2023, and wars that followed in Gaza and Lebanon and Iran. And polls show that Netanyahu's party is facing some serious headwinds with his challengers criticizing his leadership on everything from security failures in the lead-up to October 7th to the economy. So what could this mean for the U.S. relationship with Israel, one of our closest allies?

1:21Joining me now is NBC News international correspondent Matt Bradley, who is in Tel Aviv, the heart of it all. Hi, Matt. Hi, how are you? I'm good. So Israel's got this election facing a number, though, of conflicts. You've got the war with Iran continuing. You've got continued unstable situation with Lebanon and Hezbollah. There's also been a rise in violence in the West Bank as of late, and the government has ordered a military operation there. How is this setting the stage for this moment for voters? Well, I mean, it's a very interesting question because, and this is something that I've been kind of been talking to a lot of people about.

1:56one of the really interesting things is that when you and I talk about Israel, we talk about Gaza and the West Bank and Lebanon and Iran. When Israelis talk about these elections, they're not really talking about those things, not nearly to the same extent, because they're not really issues. There's something of a security consensus around those things. Most Israelis were in favor of the war with Iran. Many are in favor of the way Netanyahu has behaved in Gaza, and a lot of the opposition to what Netanyahu has been doing in the Gaza Strip has come from those to the right of Netanyahu who think he hasn't cracked down hard enough.

2:32Same thing with the West Bank. Here in Israel, most of what we're talking about, first of all, for these elections is an up or down vote, Netanyahu yes or Netanyahu no. He's both the main candidate and the main topic. This is a referendum on Netanyahu and his governance of Israel, and not just since October 7th, 2023. For the 20 years he's been in power over the course of the past 30 years. So Netanyahu's party is facing its most substantial challenge from former Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot. How has he taken aim at the prime minister? So one of the big questions when I talk about how the big issue here is that up or down vote on yes or Netanyahu or no or Netanyahu, one of the things that is continuing to be such a vexing issue here are the events leading up to October 7th, the Hamas attacks, and the reaction afterwards.

3:26Eisenkalt is one of the first people, along with all of the opponents of Netanyahu, really, everybody who's opposed to Netanyahu is harping on this point, that he failed Israel in the lead up to the October 7th attacks and during the day itself. You know, actually, Gary Eisenkalt released this pretty clever campaign trick. It was a video game that allowed you to take a sleeping Netanyahu and walk him through the streets of Tel Aviv and dodge, you know, these dangers while sleeping. One of the big criticisms against Netanyahu is that he was literally asleep during and at the beginning of these attacks.

4:01And he says that he wasn't woken up and that if he was woken up, he would have taken firmer action. If you love Netanyahu, you're going to believe that. And if you hate him, you're going to see that as a blatant lie. The biggest real policy difference between Eisenkolt and Netanyahu, most of their difference is stylistic. The biggest policy difference is that Eisenkot wants to see an independent commission of inquiry be charged with examining what happened before and during the October 7th attacks. Netanyahu, for the past three years, has consistently pushed against an independent commission of inquiry.

4:33And a lot of Israelis, particularly those who didn't like Netanyahu before the October 7th attacks, they've been saying there needs to be an independent investigation. So what I'm hearing from you when it comes to Israelis, they're not necessarily thinking about whether or not, you know, they agree or disagree with the actions that Netanyahu took in Gaza, continues to take in the West Bank, the war with Iran. What else are they actually thinking about right now as they head to the polls? The big thing here for a lot of folks is going to be bread and butter issues that most Americans are going to be familiar with when they vote as well.

5:06Prices, health care, education, transportation. These things are big issues for anybody, and they are not part of the whole global discussion and ideological debate around Israel. The big thing here is prices. It is extraordinarily high priced to live here, especially in Tel Aviv, and a lot of people are feeling the squeeze. The other big issues are the draft of the Haredim. So this is another one. Really conservative Jews who would identify as Haredim, they have been given leave to study the Bible instead of basically serving in the military, which every 18-year-old Israeli is required to do, obligated to do.

5:48They have been basically stepping aside from that. And this is one of the big issues and actually one of the big sources of protest here. You've been talking to some Americans that have been able to come back to Israel because there is no absentee mail-in voting. What have you been hearing from them? You know, the people that we spoke with just happen to be, and I'm not sure what the statistics are, but we're talking about tens of thousands of people who are making this journey. Most of these people that we spoke with are voting against Netanyahu. Who they're voting for is less important. For them, it's just a vote cast against Netanyahu.

6:21If we go back to the same old, same old that we had on October 6th of 2023, given all that we've learned since then, not just about the government's failures and the catastrophic strategy, that is Netanyahu's strategy. He's been prime minister almost entirely since 1996. There's no one else to blame here. One of the women I spoke with who was the most interesting, she was talking about how she's coming all the way here to Israel to vote on the left, sort of the center left against Netanyahu. And then she's going to go all the way back to America and vote for the Republican Party. She's going to vote on the right, even though she used to oppose the Republicans during previous elections.

7:03Why? Well, for here she is in Israel, it just shows how the paradigms are so different. In Israel, the whole political system is pushed to the right compared to the United States. And for them, you know, they really, she really feels as though she wants to see politicians who are quoting the secular vote. The elections in Israel are somewhat complicated, different than here in the United States, obviously, because it might take a couple of weeks to understand the results of them. Can you walk us through that process and what, you know, different scenarios could potentially play out here, Matt?

7:37Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting because it is a parliamentary system of the kind that could be, you would recognize maybe in Europe. But basically what we're talking about here, tomorrow, we're going to see all these millions of people voting. None of them are going to be voting for individual named candidates. They're voting for political parties and every vote is thrown into the national hole. It's just all of Israel all at once. Everyone voting for parties, not for people, even though most of these parties are essentially just main candidates. Once they do that, there's going to be a complicated tabulation to decide exactly how many seats come from how many votes out of the whole national total of voters.

8:14Once that is determined, you're going to have the number of seats for each party. Then we go into this coalition building and all of this horse trading. And the decision is going to come down to who can make a coalition that is large enough and popular enough to be voted in by the entire Knesset. Even a coalition that is made up of parties that didn't get that many votes, they can actually dominate. And if they can attract the vote of the Knesset, if they can convince the president, Isaac Herzog, that they are going to be able to form this coalition and keep it together, and he will then nominate them to do that, to form this government.

8:50So that could be a process that lasts for days. It could last for weeks. It could last for months. If it fails, then the president will go back and pick someone else to form a coalition. If that doesn't work or the president says, you know what, we're not going to come up with a coalition. This is impossible. Everybody goes back to voting again. A whole new round of national voting. And this has happened many, many times before. It was only a couple of years ago that there was something four or five different full-on, all-singing, all-dancing nationwide elections. And the result was Netanyahu remained in power, which is why I'm telling you, don't count this man out.

9:27Matt Bradley, thank you. Thanks, Yasmin. All right. Coming up, Venezuela's opposition leader Maria Carina Machado is back in the country. What this means for the upcoming elections there, that's next. And while you're waiting, why don't you just leave a comment or a review and then let us know what you think about this episode or about our podcast. And then maybe I'll read it in the next episode. All right. We'll see you on the other side.

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11:16And we're back with Here's the Scoop from NBC News. So let's go now to Venezuela, where opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has returned after months in exile. She arrived on Sunday to huge crowds of supporters waving flags and cheering. It was Machado's first appearance in Venezuela since the U.S. military deposed President Nicolas Maduro and his former VP, Delce Rodriguez, has now exceeded the time that she was authorized to serve as interim leader. So for more on how and why Machado has now returned to the country, I'm going to bring in Ana Vanessa Herrero, a reporter based in Caracas. Ana, welcome.

11:56Thank you. How are you? I'm good. It's really good to have you. Gosh, we have seen these huge crowds in the return of Maria Carina Machado. How has it been going there and watching her return? How is she being received? What are people telling you? Well, let me tell you, yesterday was absolutely insane. So when I received the news, I was actually watching a tennis match. I played tennis. So I was there with my team watching them play. And then everyone just stopped, started shouting, screaming. Other people started crying. And when I started asking, everyone started saying, Maria Corina is back.

12:37Maria Corina is back. Finally, we're going to have democracy. And that was the same experience. The experience that I shared there was the same that other people have been telling me happened around their households, apartment buildings, everywhere they were. And immediately after that, people started just gathering on the streets, waiting for her. They didn't really even know if she was coming, where she was coming from, how she was coming. She was driving, she was flying. But everyone just, you know, burst out in the streets to celebrate that she had returned. And not only that she returned, but that what she represents.

13:15For people that don't know, can you remind everybody what it is that Maria Karina Machado actually represents? Like who she is, the place that she holds in Venezuelan politics? Yeah, Maria Karina Machado is a longtime political leader. She's not new to the Venezuelan scenario, political scenario. But she was the person who managed to win the 2024 presidential elections, elections that, as you can remember, were seen as highly fraudulent by dozens of leaders, countries, NGOs, organizations around the world. So Maduro claimed victory in those elections, but prove, and all the ballots that she showed, prove otherwise, that she had won the elections.

14:05After that, a great deal of repression came over the Venezuelan lives. Everyone started feeling very scared, and at least 2 ,000 people were arrested in less than a week. So she went into hiding for a long time. Then she was awarded with a Nobel Prize. She managed to get out of Venezuela to receive the Nobel Prize and started traveling to other countries to do this kind of diplomatic roundtable, diplomatic approaches. And then after the U.S. raid and when Maduro was taken and arrested, she has been trying to get into the country again. But unfortunately, all her efforts were banned, not only by the Venezuelan interim presidency, but also by the United States.

14:53How is she allowed back in now? Do we know how she got in and why she's coming back now? Well, we don't know the details. We haven't had confirmation on the details just yet. We would need to hear that straight from either the U.S. or Maria Corina Mattel herself. But Maria Corina's team has shared in the past that she tried to return to Venezuela several times, and all of those times were blocked by the Venezuelan interim government, led by Nancy Rodriguez, and also by the U.S. government. The president, President Trump, that is, said he didn't know anything about her return to Venezuela. So I'm just wondering how it is that she's able to be in the country with her safety being secure, because her life, obviously, one of the reasons why she was in hiding for so long is because she felt as if her life was under threat.

15:47Yeah, well, that and because she wasn't allowed in. Right. So, yes, Donald Trump, as you said, he didn't know anything about this. But that is really hard to believe when every single movement that you, every step that you take in Venezuela has to be approved by the United States. And that is anything, any law that is being passed. And that is just how things are going right now on the ground. So it's really hard to think that Donald Trump didn't know that this was happening or that this was coming. And it's even harder to believe when you have the knowledge of them stopping these efforts before.

16:26So could her presence now there put pressure both on the current government along with the United States to fast track the elections in spite of the United States saying that they won't hold elections until Venezuela is economically stable? Because that is what Machado wants. Yeah, absolutely. That is what everyone who's following Maria Corina Matzada wants. And even those who don't follow her, but follow the opposition, they also want elections. So the real problem right now on the ground is that the elections, the conversation is not on the table. There is a lot going on around oil, the economy, which is, by the way, not improving at all, at least not for everyday Venezuelans.

17:14But there's no conversation surrounding a possible free election. And her presence now means exactly that, that we as Venezuelans are one step closer to this moment that everyone has been waiting for since, pretty much since 25 years ago, but really since 2024, when at least 7 million people, and that is what the evidence shows, voted against Nicolás Maduro and then couldn't really enjoy the momentum that they worked so hard to get and that she led in that time. So now, does this mean that the U.S. is going to help her get there? Probably not. So apparently she's going to have to work this on her own.

18:06But it's not the first time that she's done this. So people are very hopeful that this is going to happen in the near future. Well, and we're kind of in this limbo period, it seems, right now as well, because Delce Rodriguez was only authorized to be in power for 90 days or so. And that deadline is long since gone. So the timing of this is incredibly interesting, to say the least. Ana Vanessa Herrero, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, coming up. A new documentary about Friends star Matthew Perry is out tomorrow. We're going to talk with the director about what she hopes viewers take away.

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20:17And we're back with Here's the Scoop from NBC News. So three years ago this week, Matthew Perry, or Chandler Bing, for many fans of Friends, died from an accidental drug overdose. Throughout his career, Perry was very open about his struggles with substance abuse, and he devoted a lot of time to helping others battling addiction. Now his story, with all its ups and downs, is being told in a Netflix documentary series called The One About Matthew Perry. Here was his sister, Mia. Whenever I got scared or whenever I was crying... Let's get a close-up on Maria's hands. That's Maria's ear. And he would immediately make me start laughing.

20:56He always just kind of came in and, like, saved the day. This is Maria Ishtar Perry. Say something, Miss Perry, or just smile. And so just seeing him suffering and struggling, I was really scared for him. So Mary Robertson is the director of The One About Matthew Perry, and she is joining me now. Hi, Mary. Hello. So I had the privilege of seeing this already. It's incredible. And I learned so much about Matthew Perry. Of course, I mean, all I knew him from was all the films that he had done and of course Friends and Chandler Bang. And I think, you know, I knew a lot about his addiction, but not to the degree to which came out in this series.

21:37You actually initially thought about doing something on Matthew when his memoir came out in 2022. Yes, that's correct. Like so many millions around the world. I was a Matthew Perry fan. I grew up watching Friends on NBC when it was appointment viewing on Thursdays. I connected with this character that was, you know, incredibly sarcastic but incredibly vulnerable at the same time. His humanity shone through and, of course, he was riotously funny. It really fostered a sense of warmth and attachment. Years later, I read his memoir. I read it in one big gulp. I remember sitting on this blue couch and looking out the window and seeing the trees, and I couldn't put the book down.

22:15It opens with Matthew saying, I should be dead, which was incredibly hard to read, striking, and an indication that he wasn't going to hold anything back in his memoir. It was raw. It was an authentic account of his battle with addiction. And it was very, very funny. And after reading that, I wrote a number of people affiliated with the publication, you know, begging, you know, to have some part in maybe trying to adapt the project as a documentary. I didn't hear anything back at that time, which is not a surprise. I think, you know, the book was wildly successful, a real phenomenon. I'm sure they received hundreds, thousands of letters from folks like me.

22:55But, you know, a couple years later after Matthew passed, I was continuing to think about his story, the resonance of his legacy. And I was talking about it with my colleagues at the company that I run called Maxine. You know, many of us love someone who has grappled with addiction. And I really think all of us love someone who has grappled with addiction. Yeah, because it shows resilience. It shows struggle. It shows overcoming something. But then also not overcoming it and continuing to live but suffer. Yeah. One of the things about this documentary is you also include a lot of friends that Matthew met in rehab.

23:29What did you learn about him through some of those characters? Matthew said that he wants to be known for the ways in which he helped other people. And we feature in the film the story of Tim Harrington. He's never shared his story before. When Tim met Matthew, Matthew was in recovery. And Tim was in recovery, but in a very fragile place. And he was about to basically become homeless and move into his car. And Matthew said, stop. You're not going to become homeless. Yeah. You're going to come in with me. Yeah, move in with me. And this was when Matthew was at the height of his fame. He was playing Chandler Bing on Friends.

24:04He lived in a very, very nice house at this time. And Tim describes going from essentially being homeless to moving into Matthew Perry's mansion, that they lived together for almost a year and a half. They went to meetings together multiple times a day. They listened to drops of Jupiter in the car. They went to events and premieres together. This was the year that they did the collective bargaining agreement in which, right? Like, they all made a million dollars an episode. So he was like, yeah, it was top of his game. Yeah. Yeah. Tim describes that moment of Matthew in the film. He says, you know, he remembers when Matthew came home and jumped up and down on the bed and said, you know, we negotiated and we're getting a billion dollars.

24:42But then also describes a moment in which he basically said move out. And it seems like Tim saw like a relapse coming in Matthew. Yeah, I mean, we don't know for certain whether or not that, you know, preceded a relapse, but Tim was worried that it might mean that Matthew was creating some distance and about to relapse. I feel like through this series and this documentary, like, there's a potential for him to develop a whole new fan base. Like, it's like reviving Matthew Perry and kind of his talent and reminding people that, yes, he was Chandler Bing, but he also was like so much more of a person beyond that.

25:21What do you want to leave people with? Like, what do you think his legacy is? I'm feeling emotional now.

25:30Matthew's legacy is robust. I think, you know, there's an expression that I heard recently that we die twice and once when we leave our physical bodies and the second time is when people stop saying our name. I hope that people never stop saying Matthew Perry's name. And I don't think that they will. And I think that that's because his portrayal of Chandler Bing is incredibly resonant. And I hear people tell me all the time about the connection that they made to that show. And they're 15 years old. They're 18 years old. They grew up in Brazil. They grew up in India. I mean, that performance is indelible and will go down as one of the great works of culture.

26:12And then beyond that, and perhaps the most important part, is that Matthew was someone who tried to help others who were grappling with addiction and substance use disorder. And he did. He saved lives. We know that he saved at least one life, and that person is in the film saying as much, and I know that there were countless others. I just know that. And I think, I hope that with this film, you know, those who are in Matthew's shoes feel seen, and those that are supporting someone who is also grappling with addiction, I hope that they also feel seen through this film. Mary Robertson, thank you.

26:45Thank you. All right. That is going to do it for us at Here's the Scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Basugin. And we'll be back tomorrow with whatever the day may bring. And if you like what you heard, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And you can also subscribe to our daily newsletter, The Inside Scoop. It's a deeper dive on the main stories of the day that comes out every weeknight straight to your inbox. You can sign up for The Inside Scoop as part of our paid subscription at NBCNews.com. We'll see you tomorrow.

27:26Who's ready for a bike ride? Peppa Pig is learning to ride her bike. First, pop on her helmet. Safety first. Then, attach the push stick and give her bike a push. And watch Peppa paddle. Her legs go round and round as the wheels turn. With more than 75 sounds and phrases, every ride is a big adventure. Peppa Pig Ready Paddle Go! Available at all major retailers now.