J. Edgar Boozer

22:57Jon Favreau:That's how depression works for sure. I sent President Trump some information. We have a gigantic opiate problem in this country. I sent him that information. The text message came back, sounds great. do you want FDA approval? Let's do it. For 56 years, we've lived under those terrible conditions. We're free of that now. We're free of that now. Thanks to all these people that we see next to me. And thanks to President Trump. We all respect Joe. And he's a little bit more liberal than that's okay. I have a lot of friends that are liberal. Interesting window into how the sausage gets made, huh? You just text the president something and suddenly the FDA, independent regulatory agency, just fast tracks it, no problem.

23:45Jon Favreau:Yeah, this is a good outcome on this specifics here, but Joe Rogan texting Trump some medical information and Trump being like, cool, let's do it. That's not a good process. Yeah, because you're pissing me on the war and so I'm trying to get you back. So whatever you want. I don't know what this drug is. It sounds great. I'll take some, but I just stave off depression, but I just keep moving. I just keep posting. Never be alone. If you don't want to feel sad, never be alone with your thoughts. Just keep moving. Just keep moving. Or your family. that's what trump thinks for sure to get out there just just just turn the tv on turn it louder keep posting gotta post through it through it yeah like i do think like what wrote like i think it's worth saying that this is something people like about trump the idea that it doesn't have the red tape and the sludge of a normal government that there's stuff that should be happening that isn't because government is slow and stupid and there should be a president just says oh this is a good idea there's good studies let's do it and there's there's two big problems with it.

24:35Real abundance coded there. A little bit. Well, there's somewhere between being able to build a train in California and Joe Rogan being a czar for magic mushrooms. But the problem with it with Trump is, A, it becomes about, it's not about like, oh, doing good things faster based on any kind of a process. It's just who knows him and who has access. So yeah, Rogan can get this done and maybe that's a good thing. But it also means the CEO of United can give Trump a million for the inaugural and then soft pitch creating the biggest airline by two in the world and potentially get it done because trump knows him and it seems like it's a big fun deal to do and when the and when the resulting merger sucks for people trump's like no i don't have to deal with that i have my freak at that they're pretty they wish they hadn't made that gift right oh you're mad about the things i did before i left get in line i'm trying to stay ahead of depression but the other and the other part of it though and i think it's like actually just as important is he actually doesn't do other than other than like the the like he can break things very quickly he can do that with doge he can shut down agencies but when he finishes these events where he's moving fast and doing things that other people couldn't do nothing fucking happens joe biden uh was really fucking slow on getting marijuana off of schedule one he put out a an order to review it in 2022.

25:54Trump says, I'm going to fast track it, right? That gave him a real opportunity that he shouldn't have had, but it hasn't happened. It didn't. It's not. Marijuana remains a schedule one drug as we're sitting here and talking. It has been held up ever since he wrote, signed that order over a year ago. Pam Bondi couldn't get it done. There's an opening for the administrative law judge that could be the one to approve it. And by the way, even if it does happen, there's a bunch of Republicans who are lined up to sue to prevent it from going into effect. So he gets the press event about how quickly he can do things.

26:24But meanwhile, he actually stops paying attention, doesn't really focus on it, doesn't really give a fuck, gets the good headline, and never really happens.

26:30Jon Favreau:I do love the events where you can tell he's learning the details in real time. And he kind of does a meta commentary on himself as he's reading the facts about, oh, that sounds good. Depression. I don't need that. I'll take one. But on Ibogaine, there was a great piece in the New York Times about Ibogaine treatment by Robert Draper that's worth reading. He did an episode of The Daily that you could listen to it, too. It's helped a lot of people. It's helped a lot of people struggling from PTSD, depression, truly debilitating mental health challenges, especially veterans. And the cause was picked up by Rick Perry, Kirsten Sinema, some interesting people.

27:02Jon Favreau:Sean Ryan, who's got a huge show on YouTube, a bunch of veterans. He's a veteran himself and former Navy SEAL, has talked about using Ibogaine to shake his addiction to drinking drugs, a lot of stuff. So Rogan had a bunch of conversations about this with people impacted, including Sean Ryan, including Rick Perry, including a couple people at that event there. um and it just it did not i think there's actually a really good outcome because it didn't make sense that you like you couldn't do medical trials on people with ptsd but you could like go to mexico and get treatment like what that's stupid so i'm glad trump cut through the red tape here like i'm sure joe rogan will kind of like give trump his flowers on this issue rightfully so i doubt it changes his concern about iran or the fact that he's talking about it yeah i think it's important for people like it doesn't it doesn't short circuit the actual reclassification process or the approval process for the treatments themselves, but for the studying.

27:52And it's not just for the medical studies. And it's Ibogaine, but it's also MDMA and psychedelic mushrooms. Yeah, it's a whole category. I was at a fish concert recently. I think a lot of people were in that study. A lot of studies. A lot of people doing some intense research. A lot of studying there. A lot of studying there. The sphere is the number one place for studying this stuff. Good place to study. Yeah, on the Rogan, like I think, if Rogan's smart, he will realize that this was uh he got trump to do something he wanted him to do and he will go back to continue he will criticize him when he wants to criticize him and not criticize him when he thinks he's doing something good like it could just be like that and i don't think it'll change anything big i think it's smart politics probably on on both parts on trump's behalf and on rogan's behalf like good for rogan for just saying fuck it i'm i'm these they're that they think they need me because they they see that i'm critical of them like let's get something good to happen like great good for him that's an amazing thing to do but if you're a rogan listener and have heard joe rogan talk about donald trump in iran and the epstein files and all the other things now that that rogan has criticized trump for i don't think this changes you're not an idiot this doesn't

28:55Jon Favreau:change anything for you this is the thing i don't get like the rupert burdock approach to trump is always a smart one you got like fox news doing the propaganda but then the wall street journal is kicking the shit out of him like reserve some optionality man like yeah show him you can throw a punch he respects that yeah that is very true um all right speaking of infamous podcasters uh We should talk about the FBI director who is suing the Atlantic over an absolutely brutal and somewhat terrifying story about his management style and personal behavior that's sourced to more than two dozen people, including, quote, current and former FBI officials and staff at law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

29:28He is called, quote, erratic, suspicious of others, prone to jumping to conclusions before he has necessary evidence. Always a great quality in an FBI director. Yeah, that's what you want. You always want the top cop. just jumping to conclusions before you have evidence. He's also accused of, quote, conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences and described as a national security vulnerability. He's reportedly been so drunk so often that his meetings have had to be rescheduled for later in the day, and his security detail has had difficulty waking him up. This is from the piece, quote, a request for breaching equipment normally used by SWAT and hostage rescue teams to quickly gain entry into buildings was made last year because Patel had been unreachable behind locked doors.

30:14Anyway, Cash is handling this well. Here he is announcing his lawsuit on Maria Bartiromo's show. You want to attack my character? Come at me. Bring it on. I'll see you in court. So you're going to sue them? Absolutely. It's coming tomorrow. Tomorrow you will be dropping a lawsuit against the Atlantic magazine. Yes. Yes, I will. For defamation. And because you know what, Maria? We have to fight back against the fake news. He looks drunk. Put a tie on. Yeah, I'll be filing it tomorrow, but don't expect it before noon.

30:46Jon Favreau:I'm going to roll into court. Yeah, that's right. File this bad boy. I heard the problem is he's actually down a podcaster after Bongino resigned. Oh, yeah. That's why he's kind of struggling. FBI needs more podcasters. Yeah, send more podcasters. Blockhead Dan. What did you guys think of the Atlantic's piece? I mean, look, just worth saying, Kash Patel shouldn't have this job to begin with. He's not remotely qualified to be FBI director in the first place. He was a low-level DOJ lawyer, then a Capitol Hill staffer. Then he got sucked into the Trump orbit, and now he's the FBI director. This is crazy.

31:15Jon Favreau:It's crazy. There's been a lot of reporting about how he treated the job like a joke, like it was fantasy camp. He was focused on the image and the perks. He used the private jet to fly to the Olympics. He's flying around to see his girlfriend. Remember, he went to a place called the Boondoggle Ranch for a weekend off of hunting with a big GOP donor. um and then also there's reports that he just him and dan bongino would just freak out about like what twitter thought of them and plan their tweets not like investigations and things um look that's understood yeah but this story it does make him sound like a genuine danger to the country like he is paranoid prone to emotional outbursts impulsive he's so bad at managing the building that good people are leaving and like he is drunk and let's just be he is drunk on the job Because FBI director is a 24-7 job.

32:02Jon Favreau:You don't get a night out from the terrorists or the bad guys. And so the question is, why is he still there? And the answer is because he will go after Trump's enemies. And Trump knows this. And now that he's even more damaged, he's probably going to step that up and go that extra mile to prosecute John Brennan or whoever. And it's scary. Yeah. Trump likes his cabinet secretary's weak and dependent upon him. But this, I do think, crosses a line into probably two week into Dependent, in the same way you saw Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem kind of sweatily trying to regain their good graces. It kind of crosses a line that you can't come back from.

32:41I'll just say, honestly. No one's sweating harder than him. No, this guy's, yeah. Sweat not that booze. And it has a smell, yeah. I had a different reaction, which is I saw this a little bit the way I saw ICE at the airports. Like, the more ICE at the airports, the fewer of them that are in American cities. And look, I think it is terrible to have someone like Kash Patel in charge of the FBI. There's no meeting he is in that he makes better, sober or otherwise. And so the idea that he is, according to the report, in Vegas in the Poodle Room atop the Fountain Blue Hotel. I went and looked up how you get into this private club, the Poodle Room.

33:12And it is so exclusive for American Express card holders. it is available only to private members people on a certain level of the hotel in a certain kind of suite and exclusive to certain holders of american express credit cards charge cards so so that's interesting the part to me that is the most alarming is not how he is absent and drinking all the time it is the way through firings and attrition the fbi has lost a lot of key people There was this story. There's also a story last week by ProPublica about 75 people that were part of different public integrity units, cyber units, election units that have all been forced out and left, replaced by Trump diehards and people that were part of the election interference operation.

34:00And now you have career people and people in the states on phone calls with DHS and the people representing the federal government are the kooks who they used to be suing from the outside. You go from as a secretary of state or a lead, a law enforcement official in a state trying to fight some of these people. Next thing you know, they're the people representing DHS on the calls. And so senior serious people are leaving and kooks and cranks and Trump anti-election zealots are coming in. And that to me is the biggest and most dangerous part. Who's going to want to fucking report to this guy who apparently had a panic attack because his email wasn't working and he thought he'd been fired?

34:36That's what they report here. That's the opening anecdote. And by the way. It's amazing. Can't get into some part of the system. Probably his password. Couldn't remember his password or something. And then he was like, he called everyone. I've been fired. I've been fired. I've been fired. And then news goes around the FBI headquarters. All these people are like, oh, he's gone. He's gone. He's gone. And they were like, no, no, it's just technical difficulties. He's fine. And then the lawsuit clearly put together by some whoever kind of lawyers that are going to be working for Cash Patel at this point, they referred to this in their lawsuit as a made up rumor basically confirming that he was locked out of his computer and the rumor did at some point exist.

35:17And then in the lawsuit, they say, Director Patel does not drink to excess at these establishments, the Ned something and the Poodle Room, doesn't drink to excess there or anywhere else. And this has not and has never been a source of concern across the government. They are claiming in their lawsuit against the Atlantic that no one in the government is concerned about Kash Patel's drinking. Quite a claim to make from a Sunday to a Monday. It's just also a claim that has nothing to do with proving the lawsuit or the allegation itself. In order for them to win this lawsuit, because this is, they're doing defamation based on what over two dozen sources told the reporter.

35:58So basically the way that you win a lawsuit like this is basically the reporter has to say that she didn't believe any of her sources at all, the over 24 that she talked to, and yet she published it anyway. Because she hated Kash Patel. and wanted him to suffer. Yeah, and she got all this information, and she's like, I don't care that all these people are telling me this information. It's all wrong. I don't know how to publish it anyway. We have video of him drinking to excess at the fucking Olympics. Right, he was chugging. He chugged a whole beer. He chugged a whole beer. We have proof of him flying off half-conced because he posted crazy things that we all saw that went beyond the investigation.

36:35The proof is publicly available. Forget showing that it wasn't true or that the sources didn't say it. She could just point to the actual public videos that he himself has been in.

36:45Jon Favreau:This is also like the 10th story about him being a clown. There was an article in the Times earlier this year about him going to a Five Eyes conference in the UK. It was like our closest intelligent allies. And Kash Patel's team said he wanted to go to a Premier League soccer games. He wanted to go jet skiing in London. He wanted to go on a helicopter tour. And it was like, this is an absolute joke. This guy's laughable. You know, before Noam and Bondi, I would have said like, Trump's just going to keep them like he keeps all of them but he seems to be on a on a bit of a tear recently and I feel like what's her name too yeah yeah I want to mention that Lori Chavez so right before we recorded the news broke that Labor Secretary Lori Chavez DeRamer has resigned she's the third cabinet member to do so in the last month and a half and she was under internal investigation from complaints about her conduct and how she treated her staffers also an alleged affair with a security staffer also using taxpayer funds for personal travel and also like cash patel drinking also texting your staffer to be like savvy b question mark yeah asking the staffers just to bring up a bottle of wine to the hotel room i don't know is that the worst maybe it's the end of a long night maybe um part of a pattern perhaps yeah so she she she's gone she's gone now too that's another she resigned although i'm sure she it sounds like she was pushed out and she's uh and then the white house and now she's going to the she's going to the private sector it's just like pam bondi she's gonna be one of those what is it the the shield for the central americas or whatever christine omen's fake job they didn't even give her a fake it doesn't it sounds like with pam they stood they decided to stop giving fake jobs after no right like pam bondi's just getting private sector she's getting private sector it's been the kiss of death recently if somebody at the white house says that the that uh the president has utmost confidence in in in his cabinet secretaries because soon soon after they're gone but caroline levitt put out a statement about patel in this article that doesn't even say that as part of it.

38:42She says, Director Patel remains a critical player on the administration's law and order team. It's basically the equivalent of like a valued member of our law enforcement operations, which sounds like he could be put fucking anywhere. He's gonna be the deputy to Nome at the Shield of the Americas in like the next like 48 hours, maybe before we're done recording. Wild, wild. That somehow Pete Hegseth still has his job. Yeah, that really sucks.

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40:37The 2028 Democratic presidential contenders probably won't start announcing their candidacies until shortly after the midterms this November. But a lot of the potential candidates are really ramping up their public appearances and attending events alongside their potential opponents. This last weekend was particularly busy. Kamala Harris, Andy Beshear and Cory Booker were campaigning with other Democrats in Detroit. AOC and Kamala Harris were in Chicago. Pete Buttigieg held an event in Tulsa. And John Ossoff held another Senate re-election rally in Georgia. We thought it'd be useful to just react to a few clips from the weekend that caught our attention so we can talk about how Democrats are thinking about shaping the party's message ahead of 2026 and, of course, 2028.

41:17First up, John Ossoff in Georgia.

41:20Jon Favreau:The faithless president. depicts himself as Christ while he plunges the nation into wars of choice, while he and his family rake in billions from foreign princes,

41:39Jon Favreau:while he plunders our health care to cut taxes for the rich.

41:47Jon Favreau:Meanwhile, rent, power, groceries, and healthcare have all hit all-time highs this year. While you pay more for everything, the first family's wealth is growing by billions of dollars.

42:06Jon Favreau:Because they're crooks. I just love how you're playing. I like that. They're crooks. What did you guys think? I think because they're crooks is the message, right? He brings it all back to corruption. I think it's smart to mention the story of the week, the Christ imagery, and then kind of wrap that into this broader message of the day about corruption that he has. My little nitpick was I want everyone to stop saying war of choice. That's what I want that to. I have the same point. I've done it too. It's just the phrasing doesn't make sense. Like people don't really know what you're talking about.

42:36Jon Favreau:It's like this war is immoral. It's illegal. It's a strategic disaster. Like any other way. It's too light for me, war of choice. It's like, oh, I just made the bad choice. It's like, no, no, you launched an illegal war that's killing a whole bunch of people and fucking up the Middle East and the world. Yeah, I think the problem with it, I noticed it too, he says it, Kamala also says it in her cat. They all say it. They all say it, everyone says it. And it is a lingering thing from post-Araq. And it sort of is like, we did this preemptively. We chose to go to war. It was war we didn't have to fight.

43:09and it feels like it's a legacy of a different kind of uh way of talking about it i had the same thought when i heard it was like literally the one thing that to me rang very political in the whole speech it's an excellent speech the other thing i appreciated about it i just i said i just watched the whole thing he does not just gets up there and he jumps in it is it is made to be it is first of all it's tight it is made for people with low attention spans it is he does not waste up there's not a lot of filler there's an argument there's a lot of facts He moves quickly through it. He is into the meat of the speech and to the message of the speech within about a minute or a minute and a half from when he takes the mic, maybe a little bit faster.

43:47And he has a great indictment to me, like a broader indictment that's sort of a bipartisan indictment of the current way politics is done. And I thought it was a great quote, which was, there's a lazy, cynical expedience, politics unmoored from fixed moral principles and incapable of inspiration or great national achievement. all this gave rise to a depraved president who exploits this rot to empower and enrich himself and i like that to me was as clean a way of critiquing the not republicans and democrats and a style of politics that's feel that's depleting and innervating that i just really like there's a way that he um it wasn't in this clip i should have put it in but um there's a way that he brings the crowd in just very so that he's not just speaking at them because i think the risk of a risk of just giving big rally speeches is that you're just talking to people and when he gives his speeches and he talks about like something like what Tommy was saying like oh the story of the week he'll always be like did you see that did you see how that happened I'm interested if after the senate race um and he feels a little looser because he just won re-election if he's like a little more um you know informal in the way he's because I do think like he's he's really nailed I think the rally speech better than almost any of the other potential candidates right now.

45:01And what I'd love to see from him is like, how does he do in an interview? How does he do when he like sits down and just talks about stuff? Because like message wise in a rally speech, it's great. Um, and you don't see, you don't see really good rally speeches anymore. The tone when he was in here was pretty similar. It was pretty serious, sober kind of, I know. And I can't tell if that's like, I'm running for reelection in Georgia and like, I got to just focus on that. And I'm not, I'm not here to opine on, you know, national presidential politics, but I don't know. We'll see. Yeah. We should play it because it's interesting to how Pete's event was just a different style.

45:30Yeah. So here's Pete. He's answering a question from an Oklahoma voter about how to talk to people who disagree with you. We all live in Oklahoma, or a lot of us do. Lots of people that are on the other side. What's your advice to engage them when we seem to be in such echo chambers and are so divided?

45:49Jon Favreau:Step one, I think, try to do it offline as much as possible. And if you go into that encounter with an open heart, you do it knowing that you might have some of your own values and views challenged, and that's okay. That's why I developed this very unexpected specialty of going to places like Fox News and other conservative outlets. How can I blame somebody for not embracing my point of view if they've literally never even heard it? I always imagine that I'm talking to people, like people I grew up with, who I disagree with, and also actually like, which I think is really important, too, because we've been made to feel like we just ought to be, like, snarling at each other.

46:24Jon Favreau:And I think there are so many people who maybe have a different worldview than we do, but just like us, they're tired of the sense that politics is just punching you in the face every time you look at your phone or turn on the TV. Headline, Pete open to speaking with Hassan Pike. Was he on the list? Did he get that question? I don't remember. I don't know. Everyone did, I think. I mean, I think he's good. I think by the time we get to 2028, my hope is that people want the opposite of Trump and that they'll look betting on like a more unifying tone and message. I think Pete is betting on that. And he's trying to argue that I'm the guy who can best reach across the aisle and convince people.

47:00Jon Favreau:I think that the reality of what he's good at is a little more nuanced. Like, he is really smart and can debate anyone and can beat anyone in debate, which is why libs like us are like, yeah, you gave it to Joe Kernan on CNBC. Fuck that guy. Or, like, he goes on Fox News and he's great. Or the All In podcast. He was really good with them. You can fight back with everyone. that is a little bit of a different skill than being able to reach every community and like you know like connect with people i'm not saying he can't do that it's just it's a different thing than they're kind of trying to sell by going to tulsa for a town hall if that makes sense it makes it it's like intellectually he knows and can articulate why it's so important to connect with people who are different and why and how he in and what he just said there and like it helps to persuade you and stuff like that.

47:47But there's like another step when you're running to be the president, which is you actually have to do that connecting yourself. And I do think that's different. And a lot of it is like he does deliver maybe the smartest analysis of politics and message in most Democrats I've seen. But then is that enough or do you need to actually show and just tell? And look, I think this is like, I thought the clip you referenced with Joe Kernan. Like that's the one that got me even more excited, even though this is more my style of message, but like what him going back and forth with Kernan and he wasn't a dick either.

48:23No, he was great. He beat him in that debate, but he wasn't like attacking him.

48:26Jon Favreau:And that is red meat for my silo. And I loved it. Yeah, right. So Pete opened this up with like a nine or 10 minute speech just on mic, which was great. And he's, he always - See the way they shot that too. They both, everyone's doing from below. The same thing for Asaf. It's like from the below kind of leader shot. Asaf looks like, Asaf also is like, is he getting bigger no they're tail tailoring the shit out of those shirts unbelievable yeah we got listen he's not missing chest day but what's he doing what's happening with leg day all right that's what i want to know where's where's our what's happening with the the glutes yeah how are the glutes i know people are posting pics of the fucking ossoff glutes now oh no yeah no he there there's not like you know back there everyone's four you feet is different yeah that's right that's that's what's coming to my side low but no i i so it's with pete and and ossoff it's funny it's interesting to see them like what that would be like competing against each other well they're both they're both like i was thinking about the sort of what are the lessons from what happened to orban and people writing but what are the sort of the message lessons from it and there's a pro pro-democracy anti-corruption here's how corruption at the top has hurt you message that was galvanizing and unifying and both of them are doing a version of that message i think right now because asif is in the middle of a re-election he's trying to to show not tell he's trying to make the biggest argument he can to get to the most people.

49:45And that'll be a proof point later. Pete can be more intellectual because he's not running for anything. So he can say, he says this a lot when he's up there, which is, hey, you're not alone. A lot of people feel the way you do, no matter what you're seeing on television, trying to make that same argument around a lot of the same issues. I was thinking about Pete, because some people ask me all the time, I'm sure they ask you, like, what do you think about Pete? Pete's so good on Fox. And I don't really have the answer to it. But to me, it's the difference between Pete's selling voting for Democrats, democracy, whatever.

50:13He's an incredible salesman for it. He goes to these hostile places and he sells the fuck out of it. And the question is, why is it with Pete sometimes you maybe agree with what he's saying, but you don't come away thinking that's my salesman. You know, he's like, what a pitch. I agree. Right. But it doesn't in politics, you can't just make an argument for the car. You're making an argument for you as the person selling the car. And there is a gap there with him that I think this is the kind of event he's trying to kind of feel out. I don't think he's trying to just prove it. I think he's literally out there kind of getting reps.

50:40Jon Favreau:I think where he gets where he gets shit from the left in particular is people question whether the bio and the lived experience kind of matches up with the reality. Like when I had Peggy Flanagan in here the other day, Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota running for the Democratic nomination in Minnesota for the Senate seat, she was talking about growing up and living on Medicaid and living on SNAP and how that informs all her choices and the people she fights for. And when someone talks to you like that from that lived experience, it's impossible not to be moved by it and to connect and to believe it.

51:11Jon Favreau:And I think like the criticism Pete sometimes gets is like, well, you know, you were in the military and you worked at McKinsey and you did all the things that kind of like check the box on the way to being an elected official. But does that mean you were like really connected with the people you represent? I'm not like, I'm not questioning him or trying to be a dick about it, but I think that is the hit. And I, and I agree, but I also think that is a, a, a, Newsom will deal with that as well. Yes. But, but for both of them, that is an intellectual, logical framework for trying to understand a feeling, right?

51:42Because Trump is worse than all of them, right? But there are people that think that he can connect and there's a way in which he has an ability to overcome that. And so I think when people go to that, like what's it, people look for facts and figures to try or sort of story to explain it. But then there is something that like, what is it that prevents Pete from connecting to big parts of the democratic base, which we've talked about a million times, like, what is that gap? I don't think it's just resume. I think it's something else that he's trying to figure out. Yeah. Finally, two clips from Kamala Harris, one from the Detroit event where she was talking about the war.

52:13And one one of the places she posted that was actually from her trip to North Carolina last week. He entered a war, got pulled into it by Bibi Netanyahu.

52:23Jon Favreau:Let's be clear about that. Entered a war that the American people do not want. Putting at risk American service members. Since the start of Trump's war of choice, it's 15 more dollars every time you fill up your tank of gas. The price of diesel has now gone up 80 % since the start of the war. And you best believe that's going to carry over to how much you're paying for all the goods that are being transported. Who let her do that? I would love to just know how that gas station video came together. Because it's like, my friend, you live in California. The prices are much higher here. if you want some like sticker shock in the backdrop.

53:03Jon Favreau:It's like they got out of the car on the way to the airport and were like, let's just put this in the ring. I think it's the same suit as the Chicago event. So I was like, is that the same day? I don't think it was the same day because I remember wondering what the hell that was a couple of days before. No, I agree. It came out, yeah, you're right. I don't know. But anyway, I wanted to put both in because I do think that she is at her best when she is doing the prosecution of the administration as she was in the first half of the clip. The gas, and look, she's not the only one who's done this but it is such a talk about like signaling that you are a throwback from a different era of the chuck schumer event yeah but i mean even chuck schumer would give a little you know like she she's literally driving north carolina gets out of the car there's a gas station she's like all right vertical video here i am and i'm gonna be i'm just gonna be like the cost of this war is blah blah it's just so like it's very senate you can see you A whole bunch of Democratic senators who would maybe not run for president probably do that.

53:59We all know gas prices are really high. Like when Chuck Schumer would do the gas station press conferences because gas, prices were high. And it was the 90s. And it was the 90s in 2000. He was trying to signal to people that he would want to be his voters, party constituents, that he cares about the things he cares about. He was trying to do a hit to get him on CBS2 and ABC7 and have a moment so people see that he cares about these issues. He introduced some kind of like a message bill that would address gouging or whatever it was. And it was just a message hit to stay in front of his voters to show that he's fighting for them.

54:29Kamala is ostensibly not running for anything. And if she is, it won't be for some time. She happens to be in North Carolina. We all know gas prices are high because they're on the fucking signs when you go to the gas station. That's the beauty of the issue, honestly. So who doesn't know that? We all know that.

54:43Jon Favreau:Yeah, it just sort of seems random. You know what I mean? And I think that's sort of what I'm looking for from political leaders, all of them right now, is I want you to be leading on things in a full threaded way early. You know what I mean? Early on, let's take on the argument against the Iran war, not once the prices are way up. Like, it's OK to do it then. But I don't know. I just sort of felt like you've been here. You've been in L.A. You could have done these events or. We have some big political issues here. Yeah, you know, it's just the choices of when to speak out and on what just confuses me a little bit as a strategic matter, I think, is what I'm reacting to.

55:19Yeah. The challenge for her is, so she was the last nominee. She is leading in the polls right now for if you look at polls of national Democrats. She's especially leading with black voters. So she's going to get a look. Right. And she's going to have if she decides to run, she's she's going to be like a real formidable candidate. but that's not going to last long if she doesn't back that up with okay here's why i'm running here's what i have to say here's what i have learned um and and here's my thoughts about not just where we are but like where we have to go and and in a way that is like personal to her and that no one else can copy yeah you know which i mean they all have to do that but i do think even though she was only nominee for 100 days she's already been there so like the the burden is even higher for her, you know, the bar is even higher for her to like come up with something a little new and different.

56:12And she was vice president of the administration for four years. I always think that's like more important to the challenge that she has. And I watched her. But I saw her, I've seen her do the like, she's tried to do the like, well, you know, we need some, I've had experience. I've sat in these rooms. I've had these jobs. And I do not think the experience argument is going to carry any Democrat very far in 2020. Yeah. Well, it's also that that was, we already know that argument part of, it was part of the argument she made when she was running the first time. I watched her the full event in which she spoke.

56:41And, you know, she spoke out about the war in the way that you clipped. But then, like, when asked about, like, what do Democrats have to do differently, you end up with, like, I think it's something I agree with. We can't just be nostalgic for the past. We have to have a different vision. But she does what I think a lot of Democrats have become accustomed to doing, which is say, Democrats need to have a vision. Democrats need a vision for what we're going to do about affordable health care. We need a vision for affordable housing. I completely agree. I do think that's exactly what we need. I know.

57:12It's a lot of translating pundits beat that we all do into rhetoric for an audience, right? Yeah. Like, it's not enough to be against something. We have to be for something. We can't just go back to how things were. That wasn't good enough for people. We got to figure out a new way forward. Yeah, yeah. It's like, this is what people are saying in the focus group. So now I'm going to say it. And again, this is a problem a lot of them have. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Anyway, so we'll do that with a couple. We'll do that with different candidates as they pop up. You know? I know there were some other ones out there.

57:40I only saw a little bit of Cory Booker's speech. I didn't see much of it. I didn't really see Andy Beshear's. But, you know, they'll be out there more. We've got time. We'll take, yeah, we'll look at a lot of them. When we come back, Tommy speaks to Alon Goldenberg of J Street about how pro-Israel progressives are trying to make their case.

58:00you

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59:31Jon Favreau:My guest today is Senior Vice President and Chief Policy Officer at J Street. Elon Goldenberg, welcome to Pod Save America. Thanks for having me. Great to see you. So over the last couple of years, probably longer, there has been an intense debate about the war in Gaza, the U.S.-Israel relationship, especially U.S. military support to Israel, and the line between anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism. Now, thanks to President Trump, you can lump in the role Israel may or may not have played in the latest war with Iran and Lebanon to that debate. So most recently, in the Democratic Party, this debate manifested as a fight over whether Democrats should go on a Twitch streamer show, a guy named Hassan Piker.

1:00:12Jon Favreau:There's this think tank called The Third Way. They said that Hassan should essentially be banished from the party. This was in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. So Jon Favreau talked through a lot of this with Hassan for an episode that came out about a week ago. Folks should check that out if they want more. But you wanted to provide a different perspective on how you believe one can still be a supporter of Israel and a liberal Zionist and a Democrat all at once. So we want to talk through that and maybe I can poke and prod your argument and see how we go. So let's just start with where you disagreed with Hassan on his definition of Zionism and kind of go from there.

1:00:46Sure. So the problem with, I think, Hassan's argument on that, and thanks for having me, Tommy, was he talked about Israel and Zionism as essentially an ethnostate with superior, essentially looking at what you'd call a supremacy ideology. And if you actually look at the founding documents of the state of Israel, for example, and you look at the history of Zionism, You know, Israel is intended to be a Jewish democratic state. It was also to be in its Declaration of Independence described as a state with equal rights for all of its citizens. That's what the vision of the state was. Now, that's been incredibly imperfect and huge efforts still need to be made to move in the right direction.

1:01:31That's one of the reasons J Street exists, right? I mean, we exist because the view before us was, you know, you just got to support Israel and everything. Israel is the perfect democracy in the Middle East, the only American democracy in the Middle East, the only democracy in the Middle East, really. and you know our argument was no there's all kinds of problems that need to be worked out and we need to be honest and critical with a friend of ours in Israel but the answer isn't to tilt all the way in the other direction and to say well you know Hamas and Israel are Hamas is a lot better than the Israeli government and I'd much rather have Hamas than I would the Israeli government and treating it as uniquely evil because, look, Bibi Netanyahu is a fascist, potentially authoritarian.

1:02:20Donald Trump is also a fascist and authoritarian, right? Do I call America a fascist state, an authoritarian state? No, I don't. I recognize that there's huge problems here, and I operate from within that very kind of basic understanding. So this, I think, was kind of my problem with Hassan, right? Which was, the argument was, this state is uniquely evil. This state was founded purely based on ethnic cleansing. I mean, we have terrible ethnic cleansing in the founding of the history of the United States and in so many different countries around the world. And so I think we just need to pull back and have a longer conversation about what is wrong and what is right and within the context of the state of Israel and how to move it to a better place.

1:03:07Jon Favreau:So look, I'm not going to try to speak for Hassan or anybody else, frankly, but let me just offer what I think kind of the pushback to your argument would be, which is not that I think anyone was saying Israel was uniquely evil. evil. It was just sort of whether or not there's a supremacy ideology in the sort of the founding documents. I think what he would say is Israel was founded after the mass displacement of, I think, 700 ,000 Palestinians. Since 1967, Israel has occupied the West Bank and Gaza, and there has been groups of people living under permanent occupation. And the reality today is that it seems like Israel has chosen to be a Jewish state and not democratic state and so i guess like i i can't i'm i it's fine to debate what like david ben gurion and others had in mind in the 1940s you know i'm not an expert on this stuff i would never pretend to be but i think people would say look at the reality on the ground is that it's this much darker version of whatever that intention was of permanent occupation and then some would argue apartheid or at least very clear instances where there are different rules for jews and palestinians that we can unpack that as well what would you say to that sure well i'd say I don't disagree with that.

1:04:15Right. And but the answer is not Hamas. Right. I mean, this pull back a little bit. You know, I also worked on the presidential campaign in 2024. I spent a lot of time talking to American Jews. I spent a lot of time talking to voters. And I think most voters are not in these two extreme positions. Right. I mean, I think at the end of the day, you know, you have those who are from the beginning inside the Democratic Party have said, here's the AIPAC position. We're going to support Israel no matter what. And then there's where Hassan is, which is to argue that Israel is this kind of uniquely evil or deeply, deeply problematic state where the reality is I think you find most at least American voters, I would argue.

1:04:55And you can look at polling that shows this that can say, hey, you know, what I really want is for all Jews in Israel and all Palestinians to have freedom, security, equality, a state of their own. That's what we're arguing for at J Street. I can be horrified by the acts of October 7th by Hamas, and I can be horrified by the horrific actions that the Israeli government has perpetrated in Gaza against Palestinian civilians. You know, I can really hate Bibi Netanyahu, and I can have some sympathy for the Israeli people at the same time. I can recognize that anti-Semitism is a real problem and I can also recognize that criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism and that even very sharp criticism of Israel and anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.

1:05:46So this is where a guy like Hassan Piker, I don't necessarily think he's anti-Semitic. I just disagree with his views. And I think this is the kind of nuanced, hard conversation that I think we need to have in the Democratic Party and in the sort of Democratic coalition, because I also think that's where most Democratic voters are. That's where I would say most normie voters, Democratic voters are. Certainly American Jews that I talked to, and that's what J Street was founded to represent, was that this is where most American Jews are. They're not where AIPAC is. But it's also, I think, just not where even if we have some folks on the base who are going further left, I think that there's just a huge constituency for this very common sense view that I'm expressing.

1:06:30Jon Favreau:Yeah, look, my view on Hamas is that what they did on October 7th is evil and unjustifiable and fuck them and that they're bad for the Palestinian people and for the Jewish people. And that's fine. I think what Hassan was making kind of an inflammatory point when you look at the death toll in terms of the number of people that Hamas killed on October 7th versus the IDF. But I think you get in trouble when you're when you're doing comparisons. I'm also been someone who's was not a fan of Bibi Netanyahu since 2009 when I first was in the same room with the guy. I think you're getting at this middle ground position.

1:07:02Jon Favreau:I want to push you on that a bit because I think every elected official in the United States basically pays lip service to the idea of a two state solution. And I think for decades, the U.S. government made a very sincere effort to facilitate talks that would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state. but for basically his entire career netanyahu has worked to block the creation of a palestinian state and these days he brags about it you know he says like throw my adept statesmanship we prevented this from happening he calls it a terror state um and in reality i think the peace process has been dead for a long time and then since october 7th both israelis and palestinians have lost faith that it will ever happen i think like one fifth of israelis and poles uh think there's any hope for a Palestinian state.

1:07:46Jon Favreau:And that number is kind of propped up by Arab Israelis. So, you know, meanwhile, the situation on the ground, it's the West Bank gets further annexed every week. Gaza is now even further occupied by Israel. So I think the critics would say this liberal Zionist vision of a support for Israel and a two-state solution is kind of delusional in a way of just avoiding the obvious reality that Israel long ago chose to be a Jewish state and not a democracy. So full democracy for all people who live there. So what's your response to that argument? So look, again, I don't disagree. The situation is grim.

1:08:23And also I'll say I worked on some of those negotiations that John Kerry led in 2014. I was part of that process, you know, during President, you know, under President Obama. And yeah, some of the assumptions in those, in that old way of doing things were deeply problematic. For example, the idea that we couldn't touch security assistance for Israel. And we need to give them a blank check because if we start to enforce or threaten or just basically say, forget even threaten or leverage, just say, you know what, if you're not behaving in a way that is consistent with our policy and our interests and our laws, we're just not going to give you these weapons and not sell you these weapons, which is really what my position is now and where J Street is and has been for a long time.

1:09:09We were advocating last week for 40 senators to vote against these kinds of weapons. So I'm not arguing for that, the liberal Zionist opposition of let Israel do whatever it wants and let's just work this out. We can use leverage. We do have leverage. And at the same time, I also don't think the answer is, well, we should support Hamas or we should be - No one's saying we support Hamas.

1:09:35Jon Favreau:I feel like it's a straw man that we're leaning on here to make a silly argument. Fuck Hamas. Everyone agrees. Fuck Hamas. Okay. Well, let's just say this. I actually think what you do have a problem is you have extremists on both sides. You have Netanyahu and you have Hamas, right? And let's not forget in the nineties when we actually almost did get to a peace deal, it was Hamas bus bombings, uh, in that then brought Netanyahu to power. These two guys, these two sides are two sides of the same coin. They're thriving off and building off each other. Uh, you know, and similarly in the two thousands, right?

1:10:03Like Netanyahu actually has millions of dollars in cash from Qatar, landing in Ben-Gurion Airport and being pushed into Gaza to pay off Hamas and empower Hamas and keep it quiet while he's purposefully weakening alternative moderates on the Palestinian side. So the point is, what J Street advocates for and what we do when we talk to Israelis and Palestinians on the ground is there is a, I think, still a strong minority who wants to work towards that alternative vision, both on the Israeli and the Palestinian side. We don't call it a two-state solution. We actually call it, we started calling it a 23-state solution because we don't think it's just going to be a deal that gets a new Palestinian state and Israel living side by side.

1:10:49We think it needs to be part of a regional integration that actually has Israel at peace with all of its neighbors, which creates a lot of incentives for the Israelis. And part of that is a new Palestinian state. Now, when you do polling like that and you present Israelis with the president of the United States were to come to Israel and say, here's a plan, end all the wars. This was done during the war in Gaza. We're going to end the war in Gaza. We're going to get the hostages out. We're going to pursue a plan that ultimately ends with Israel at peace with all of its neighbors. And as part of that, you can have a Palestinian state.

1:11:25That kind of proposal still gets 60 % in Israel.

1:11:28Jon Favreau:Isn't that a lot of hurdles to set up Like before the Palestinians are just like, I just want to like live in peace and with self-determination. Suddenly like Israel has to make peace with every single neighbor before they can have that opportunity. No, it's actually not that complicated. You just do both processes at the same time. And at the end of the day, it's really about peace with Saudi Arabia and everybody else goes along. Hasn't that been pretty complicated though? It is complicated, but so is a Palestinian state on its own. You're trying to create – and by the way, I should say the problem.

1:11:56Like you said, there's a lot of nonbelievers on the Palestinian side too. Polling in the Palestinian public is also pretty terrible right now, right? On both sides. But at the same time, on the Palestinian side, again, if you actually offer them a pathway, those numbers change dramatically. If you just say what makes the most sense now, I mean, the overwhelming majority is still for arm resistance. But there's still 40 percent who are pushing for this two-state solution. And the other thing I'll say about this is, you know, and this goes back to my days, again, working at the State Department on these.

1:12:27when you present both sides of the public with, here's a deal, would you take it? And you present it to the Israeli public. You know, when you do polling, you get to about 40%. And you present to the Palestinians and like, here's a deal, would you take it? 40%. Then you say, here's a deal, and the other side has already agreed to it. The numbers jump to like 65%, 70%. Point is, I still think there is a desire on both sides to get there. And I think what you have to start doing slowly, and it's going to take time, is get away from this dynamic where it's Hamas on the one side representing the Palestinians and Bibi Netanyahu on the other side representing the Israelis, and they're playing off each other, and they're strengthening each other, and they're weakening all of the alternatives.

1:13:15You're going to have elections in Israel later this year. That's a real opportunity. We just saw what happened in Hungary. And there is an opportunity Those elections aren't going to necessarily bring you the most left-leaning government you could ever imagine in Israel. The alternative to Netanyahu is probably kind of a center-to-center-right government. But it's one where at least you have people you can work with.

1:13:42Jon Favreau:Well, let's talk about the Netanyahu piece of this because, again, I greatly dislike Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. I have for a very long time. I think he's corrupt. I think he's racist. I think he's bad for Israel. But I do I feel like the U.S. people talk about him sometimes as if getting rid of him might is like a quick fix and we'll fix everything. And I just like it seems very unlikely to me, as you mentioned, like the country is lurched to the right. You've got like violent extremists, like literal terrorist sympathizers like this guy, Itamar Ben Gavir, who are now in government.

1:14:16Jon Favreau:and by the way his support for his party in polls is going up and up and up um not down even the moderate candidates though they're not that liberal on the palestinian issue like the head of the moderate uh yashar party just visited a north uh west bank settlement and that was like tied to some really horrible abuses yair lapid seemed to back mike huckabee's bizarre claim that israel has like a right to take over the whole middle east because of biblical claims so like Again, it would be great to see Netanyahu gone and preferably in a prison somewhere. But isn't there a lot of evidence that for the Palestinians and for the Palestinian issue, the even more moderate parties are not going to be all that much better?

1:14:58I think what you will see is, first of all, you're going to stop digging, right? So going back to Ben Gavir, for example, yeah, his numbers have gone up, but also Smotrich's numbers have gone down these two parties together. His numbers in terms of support.

1:15:12Jon Favreau:Two real extremists currently in the government. Yeah, exactly. Two extremists currently in the government basically stays the same. But exactly, guys like Smotrich and Ben-Gavir aren't in this new government, right? And Smotrich and Ben-Gavir, these extremists, play this unique role of essentially being kingmakers, which gives them huge amounts of leverage in Israeli decision-making and pushes the government to more terrible and terrible places. Whereas if you had instead guys like Yair Lapid or Yair Golan, who are not ideal, but these are kind of the Israeli center left playing the kingmaker role.

1:15:49That's a meaningful difference. Yair Golan being a retired general who ran down to southern Israel on October 7th and saved a lot of people, just basically got up and went down there, but also is very much arguing for a two-state solution and is arguing for some of these things. and what you could get then at least is a government that at least starts cracking down on things like what we are seeing in the west bank and extremist settler violence in the west bank we're a j street pushing for legislation actually on capitol hill called the west bank violence prevention act that at this point has you know overwhelming support of senate democrats more than 40 and 130 or so members of the house which would start to impose sanctions on these guys on these extremist settlers, but could actually make a real profound difference because all these things, the violence and the settlements and all of it is tied together.

1:16:46All these institutions are tied together. You can actually start to apply a real pressure and change behavior. And so I think there's opportunities to, we're not solving this problem anytime soon, but if you have a government that is at least more restrained and also cares about the US-Israel relationship because it's very clear now, And this is also another thing that started happening in Israel in the last couple weeks in particular. You've seen it with some of the polling that's come out about Israel and you've seen it with what's happened with this vote last week in the Senate. There finally is a questioning that's coming to the center of Israeli politics of like what's happened here?

1:17:25How is our relationship with the U.S. collapsing in such an extreme way? and as that happens, I think there's, you're going to have a government that is more centrist, not great, but is going to care more about that and that gives us more leverage and also creates a situation where they start to potentially at different moments say, well, yeah, maybe parts of the party of our government would like to do this thing in the West Bank or in Gaza, but we're actually worried about the Americans and their opinion and we care about, for example, what Democrats also think of us. And so we're going to restrain ourselves more.

1:18:04And you start to move, we're not solving this problem immediately, but at least start to change the trajectory of this whole conflict.

1:18:12Jon Favreau:Yeah, look, I hope that's true. I don't know. I guess I just worry that, look, when I see this effort, it's a very misguided effort by the Third Way to try to declare that Hassan Piker, a Twitch streamer, is sort of like out of bounds. It seems to me to be part of a broader effort to silence critics of Israel in the U.S. and chill debate about policy that frankly happens all the time in Israeli media. For example, right, like if if if an American politician was like Israel is an apartheid state, that is that's, you know, language that is treated as outrageous or potentially anti-Semitic all the time.

1:18:53Jon Favreau:But as you know, I mean, in 2021, the most prominent Israeli human rights organization in Israel called Israel an apartheid regime. And I was like, that was in 2021. And I just sort of pushed back on this idea that, you know, maybe the Knesset is growing increasingly concerned about like sort of U.S. views of laws and decisions like that. Because pretty recently, Israeli lawmakers passed a law to expand the death penalty, but only for Palestinians, which seems like a pretty like egregious example of the kind of law or policy that B'Tselem was talking about when they wrote that paper several years ago.

1:19:30Jon Favreau:So, I mean, aren't those pretty clear-cut examples of kind of apartheid-like or unequal treatment of individuals based on religion? And shouldn't we be having a more honest conversation about that kind of stuff in the United States and not like doing what the third way is doing here? Yeah. I mean, we should be having an honest conversation about these things. You know, I will say I'm not saying that the Knesset's moving further to the left. I think if you look at the Israeli public and you look at polling, we have elections in October. You're going to have a different government. This government in Israel is horrific in all the different ways.

1:20:02But it's not just this government. There's a lot of systemic and deeper things. And that's exactly the conversation I want us to be having. And 100 % we were out there as an organization sharply critical about this. But I think we just need to be careful when we have that conversation to not, you know, and like not sway too far in the other direction to the point of, you know, essentially casting Israel as this, you know, okay, there is ethnic cleansing in Israel's history. There's probably ethnic cleansing in cases of, I'd say, 50 or 100 of the countries that exist in the world today, including some very recent as well.

1:20:41And so what we just have to be careful to do is not turn Israel into, we need to normalize our relationship with Israel, right? That's what I've actually, that's one of the things we've argued for a long time. That means no more blank check. Let's treat Israel like a normal country, right? And let's have those hard conversations. It also means let's not treat it as this uniquely evil or sinister thing, which I think is happening in some far extreme places. So I think I agree with you the whole third way conversation here of like turning Hassan Piker into some kind of measuring stick for all this.

1:21:18You know, I don't think that, you know, I listened to the interview with Jon Favreau. I don't think Hassan Piker is anti-Semitic. I just think his views are misinformed. And in many ways, I just think we need to be careful to not go in that direction because if you want to ultimately in the United States build a political coalition that's actually going to win in 26 and more importantly in 28, I don't think that most people are aware he is. I think most people are kind of in this middle, in this position. It's not the middle ground of Democrats versus Republicans. I'd argue it's the middle ground of where the Democratic Party is, which is just kind of like, yeah, there's all kinds of horrible stuff happening there.

1:22:00And we should do something about that instead of just letting them use our weapons. But also, I don't think these people are the devil necessarily. Right. And so that's that's what I'm arguing for.

1:22:10Jon Favreau:I hear that. Like, I don't think people, I don't think Hassan is arguing that like Israel is the devil or that Israeli people are evil in any way. I think what's happening and what I think the sort of political class can sometimes miss because they've been having these conversations for years. You know, people like you are genuine experts in the founding documents of Israel, right? And maybe sometimes we make a mistake when we kind of try to pull from history. Like, I think the average American's experience of what's happening in Israel right now, especially young people, if they started paying attention to politics a couple of years ago, they just see intolerable amounts of killing by Israel, first in Gaza, now in Lebanon and Iran, and they're doing it with American weapons.

1:22:52Jon Favreau:And then if you're my age, you've been kind of watching Netanyahu since 2009, sort of doing his best to prevent the Palestinian state from being created, coming to Congress to insult Barack Obama and try to blow up the Iran nuclear deal in 2015, and then just wrapping his arms around Donald Trump in the biggest kind of bear hug ever. And so it's like, it's not that people have deeply held views about the origins of Zionism or because they're anti-Semitic. They're just like, why is this really strong country bombing the shit out of Gaza over and over again? And why are we giving them weapons to do it?

1:23:27Jon Favreau:Why am I paying for that? Right? And they're just horrified by it. And like, it's a visceral reaction that I think, you know, like Jonathan Greenblatt will try to like scold me if I use the wrong words to try to prevent this conversation from happening. But it's happening no matter what. Yeah. No, I look, I can't disagree with a lot of that in terms of the fact that, I mean, Bibi Netanyahu is an asshole and I've also been living with him for 15 years. Right. I mean, my first government job was working on Iran and the Pentagon in 2009, just literally starting about a month or two after he came into office.

1:24:02And he's been the problem since then for years and years. And so we're not in a different place on that at all. And I think he's the one who's done the most damage to this entire nature of the relationship. But I agree. It is bigger. The history is longer. We can have those honest conversations. I mean, it's one of the reasons now, like, I don't know if you've paid attention. We've taken a fair amount of flack for it. J Street, we've been advocating for years, right, for this position of you can have both, you know, a support for Israel and no blank check. Let's ask all the hard questions. So last week we came out with a new position that's flared up a lot of interest, which is basically to say there's three pieces to the U.S.-Israel security relationship, right?

1:24:52The first piece is we do operational cooperation on certain things. When it's in our interest, we should do that, whether it's our militaries working together, whether it's sharing intel, which they do help us with, with everything from ISIS to Iran to all kinds of other challenges. When it makes sense, we can do that. Two, basically they get$4 billion a year from us, right? And have been for years and years and years. And J Street's position is it's time for that to end. It's basically a financial subsidy, right?

1:25:24Jon Favreau:Yeah. And there's no reason that they don't need this financial subsidy for anything anymore. Israel at this point, it's a country with a per capita GDP similar to France or the UK or Germany or any of these very wealthy countries. They don't need this money. They have a$45 billion budget. So let's just kind of phase that out relatively quickly. And by the way, I'm not the only guy saying that. Rahm Emanuel is saying that. Bibi Netanyahu is saying that. Lindsey Graham is saying that. AOC is saying that. It's one thing everybody agrees on. It's time for that money to go. And then the third piece is when it comes to arms sales, there's some things that really do make sense, like Iron Dome, for example, right?

1:26:05missile defense system that protects Israeli civilians from attacks.

1:26:09Jon Favreau:There are some people who argue that the Iron Dome enables more militarism by the IDF because they know that they can repeatedly bomb a country like Iran and then just be protected from incoming fire. I'm just sort of laying out the other side of that debate for listeners. No, for sure. And my argument on that is if you go back, for example, and imagine there are moments when that might be true, but if you really think about it in totality, imagine if on October 7th Israel didn't have those systems and hundreds of more in the aftermath when Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran started launching and the Houthis started launching missiles at Israel.

1:26:44If Israel didn't have the capabilities to protect civilians, first of all, just on a human life perspective, we're talking about somewhere between 500 ,000 and 700 ,000 American citizens living in Israel. That's a real issue. But also, what do you think the Israeli response would have been if a couple thousand more people would have been killed as a result of these missiles landing in their cities. I think there would have been more killing of Palestinians and Lebanese, for example. But even – so I would argue for Iron Dome. But I also think when it comes to other weapon systems, let's just apply the laws that exist on the books already and hold Israel to the same standard as every other country, which means there's certain things they wouldn't get.

1:27:34Especially there's a law called the Leahy Law, which reviews unit by unit what partner countries are doing in the world. There's a special process for Israel that is different than, it's pretty much the most lenient process that any country in the world gets. We don't need that. Israel doesn't need that. That's not good for US interests. It's not good for Israel. There's other laws which look at if you're preventing aid from going in, American aid from going in, you should be cut off from certain weapons. Again, we should have done that. Biden administration should have done that. I was part of the Biden administration.

1:28:11It didn't do that. I disagreed with that at the time. I kind of evolved on that as I will admit I evolved on that as the, you know, as the war went on, you know, and I certainly am there now, right, where it's time to cut off some of these weapons. So you can be just discerning and nuanced in all of this is my view.

1:28:30Jon Favreau:I totally hear that. Look, I think I'm really glad that J Street is part of this conversation and was lobbying senators to cut off certain types of U.S. military. I think the votes last week were what, for 1 ,000-pound bombs and like armored bulldozers. There's absolutely no reason the U.S. needs to be providing those systems to Israel, especially given the context right now. I think you're right that we absolutely should not be giving a rich country$4 billion a year for no reason for military support. By the way, money is fungible and that money can then be – they're using that to fund a universal healthcare system that a lot of people here would love to have.

1:29:02Jon Favreau:And so I'm glad that like this conversation has become more nuanced and more rational and that people are less scared of getting like slapped down if you sort of break from the APAC party line or orthodoxy going forward. I do think the challenge the Democratic Party leaders are having is the base of the party. Young people have moved way further, way faster than the Democratic elected officials have, even if Democratic Party elected officials have moved really, really fast, historically speaking, on this issue. Yeah, no, I think that that's true. But I also think we need to balance that with the sort of independent voter and the non-base and majority sort of normie voter.

1:29:46Right. And I think you're right. If you look at young people and their view on this, you know, somebody like me, I imagine somebody like you are probably roughly the same age. Right. you know we both grew up with kind of Israel of Yitzhak Rabin which was not the you know Joe Biden grew up with the Israel of I should start with Joe Biden grew up with the Israel of really the post-Holocaust scrappy country came out of you know essentially underdog and every event he would do on this always started with this story of going to Israel in 1972 and Golda Meir so he had it was brutal. One mentality, right?

1:30:26Folks like you or I grew up with a liberal Israel that was powerful, but was looking to make peace, right? At least I did. And then you look at people, you look at my kids and you look at just everybody, again, anybody under the age of 25 or 30 doesn't remember a world without Bibi Netanyahu. And it's a huge problem. But I also think, you know, there's still the majority of the Democratic Party that's not necessarily there, despite those being the loudest voices, right? And certainly it's not the majority of, you know, American voters who are kind of at this, as far left as the base, as far as the base has gone on this.

1:31:11And so we're going to have to find, And I think we just might—it's a danger of going too far. I think you're right. I also think politicians haven't moved far enough yet. But I think that 27 will be a really interesting dynamic. I hope that there can be—that can be a unifying moment for politicians and Democratic Party leaders and candidates to be able to essentially express a position of not throwing the U.S.-Israel relationship in the garbage and still recognizing that there is potential value there. while at the same time saying the way this has been done in the past needs to end. And for me, the answer is, again, it goes back to treat Israel like a normal country.

1:31:56Treat Israel like a normal ally, whether you want to call it an ally or not. Someone say ally. Others more opposed can just say normal country. That means on both sides, right? That means no more blank check. It also means there's some things we'll work with them on because we have an interest in doing so.

1:32:11Jon Favreau:For sure. I think that's right. Look, I think I think the normie voter, the most powerful have not thought about this for one fucking second. And the most powerful argument to them is going to be let's stop spending money on wars or giving it to other countries and spend it at home. And right. So like that is really going to be the the people are going to sketch out thoughtful nuances of foreign policy because that kind of like nationalist isolationist view is going to be the the siren song politically. that is incredibly powerful, that frankly works on me in a lot of instances and is, I think, something we all just have to keep in mind as we are seeped in this stuff and have more nuanced views that might not, you know, kind of get to the average voter on a random day.

1:32:50Jon Favreau:But either way, look, I really appreciate you coming on and talk about this stuff. I imagine this will not be the last time we'll be talking about this. Maybe we'll pop back on to talk about another round of talks tomorrow in Pakistan with the Iranians. Hopefully they're not as terrible as the last one, but we'll find out. I think I told you before we started is I kind of feel like we're just in, it'll be fine. Trump will make something up and we won't go back to war, but we also won't be in a position where we've made any progress in the straight of Hormuz or remain closed. That's kind of like my guess on all that.

1:33:22Jon Favreau:Wonderful. Well, it could be worse, I guess. Thank you so much for coming on. Where can folks find J Street's work and what you guys are up to? Sure. You can look us up on jstreet.org. We also have our substack that Jeremy Ben-Ami, our founder, writes. Myself, word on the street. But really, the website and sign up for, we do a lot of different things. We work with candidates. We do a lot of lobbying on the Hill. We are going deep into American Jewish community, trying to change a conversation and have this nuanced conversation. so there's ways to get involved all over the country, 20 chapters around the country who are doing this kind of work to really build, at the end of the day, a liberal alternative to that conversation that until recently was just an AIPAC conversation and this is what we're trying to build and really democratic politics with the Jewish community overall.

1:34:16Jon Favreau:Excellent. Well, thank you again.

1:34:22That's our show for today. Thanks to Alain Goldenberg for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday from DC. How about that?

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