Welcome to another episode of Conversations with Coleman. My guest today is Glenn Greenwald. Glenn is a former First Amendment attorney turned journalist. He wrote for the Guardian for many years. He co-founded the Intercept magazine and he was involved in the release of the Edward Snowden Files. Glenn and I were scheduled to debate the topic of the Israel lobby at a live event in New York City, but that event got cancelled. So, I just decided to invite him on the show and turn the debate into a conversation.

In this episode, we talk about the alleged power of the Israel lobby. We disagree about whether the Israel lobby got us into the Iran war. We talk about whether regime change in Iran is desirable. We talk about Iran's nuclear ambitions. We talk about free speech on college campuses and how that's been affected by the Israel Palestine conflict. And finally, I press Glenn on his relationship with Tucker Carlson. As I told Glenn on the show, I think it's really important to be able to have these sorts of strong disagreements civily and respectfully, and I'm grateful to Glenn for modeling that. So, without further ado, Glenn Greenwald.

>> Okay, Glenn Greenwald, thanks so much for coming on my show.

>> Thank you, Brad. Nicoleman, it's great to be with you again.

>> Yeah. Um, so to explain to people the the context of this podcast a little bit, we were I was originally supposed to debate John Mirshimer on the power of the Israel lobby. He dropped out of the event. You stepped in um and that was going to be that was looking to be a very exciting live event in in New York City. That event that entire festival got cancelled uh for reasons I don't even really know and not really relevant. But uh I figured I would invite you on and we could address the same topic in podcast form. Now obviously without a moderator, you know, it's it's hard to do like a real debate and and I'm hoping it's more of a conversation than a debate. And um my approach in the past to podcasts where I expect to have a lot of disagreements with a guest is um to give my guests a lot of rope and uh and let them speak and and try not to interrupt very much and and I I think I have a a record of doing that. So kind of half playing moderator question asker and half playing um giving my my opinions. So, first of all, I want to thank you for coming on the show. And um I I guess the the way I kind of want to structure this is to talk about what I view as a a narrative that's gotten very far out of hand and and away from reality about the power of the Israel lobby. with respect to a couple topics. Maybe we can start uh before we get to Iran and and and and wars, we can start with the topic of free speech because this is something where I think you and I share a common philosophy, which is that we are both basically free speech absolutists. I think you identify with that label. I I pretty much do.

>> Mhm.

>> Um, and you've put your, you know, you've put your money and your in a lot of ways your, uh, your life where your mouth is on that topic. Uh, you've been an ardent defender of free speech, a very unpopular free speech. Um, whether it's Edward Snowden or countless other examples and, uh, I commend you for that and I it's a it's an issue that's important to me, too. Um, however, you know, I've in preparation for this podcast, I've been watching your podcast with Tucker Carlson recently, and the overall impression, uh, given by those podcasts is that we have actually lost free speech with respect to criticism of Israel. And so, uh, that that's a narrative that I think is is is totally blown out of proportion. And, and so, I guess I want to start there first. talk about maybe why you care about free speech and why you think it's under threat on the topic of anti-semitism and criticism of Israel.

>> So just quickly I just want to observe that I think to state that we have completely lost free speech when it comes to Israel is much too far as an overstatement much too binary. Typically, the way free speech erosions work is they tend to be progressive and gradual and incremental. And for reasons I'll explain in a minute, I think there's absolutely very valid concern in that regard in the United States when it comes to the ability to criticize Israel. In general, I think, you know, people have kind of disputed and debated about my political ideology and leanings since I began writing about politics 20 plus years ago. And I've always kind of avoided every label except for civil libertarian. And along that, I think accompanying that is is free speech absolutist, which I I do embrace as as you correctly surmised. And the reason is that I think what that that strain has in common is just a general distrust of what human beings individually or as a governing faction will do if they have too much power, if there aren't sufficient constraints on their power. And I just don't trust human beings to declare truth and falsity in some absolute sense that entitles them to prohibit certain views from being expressed on the grounds they're false or that the ideas are dangerous. Because our intellectual history as human beings is the gospel of one generation becomes the discredited truth of the next in pretty much every field. And the potential for abuse if you give people the right to regulate speech or decide which ideas can and can't be expressed is so high that whatever benefits that you can identify from providing that power in a particular case or at a particular moment to me is is vastly outweighed by the dangers. As far as Israel is concerned, this is not a new development. It's not something that happened after October 7th. I can go back and show you so many examples of professors being fired or losing tenure, people in media being fired because of their criticism of Israel. In fact, I could make the case to you that that has been the most common form of what then became known as cancel culture where people have had their careers ruined, their reputations destroyed, job losses as a result of of criticizing Israel. There have been all kinds of campus controversies around banning pro Palestinian groups for a long time that I think is at odds with our conception of free speech. And you know, I did find a lot of common cause with conservatives or people with whom I don't necessarily have ideological agreement because I thought there was a lot of uh censorship including by the government against right-wing speech against people that desented on COVID and Ukraine and race issues. And I was vehemently opposed to that for a long time. After October 7th, my concern really became the attacks on free speech with regard to Israel. And I'll just give you for me one of the most disturbing examples which is that you know for as long as I can remember the American right in this country was opposed to hate speech codes both in general and especially on college campuses the idea that you can't express certain views you'll be punished for certain views if those views are deemed sufficiently hateful or bigoted and obviously suppressed debate in all sorts of ways. And one of the very first things the Trump administration did upon getting into office in the second term, supported by and funded by a lot of very very pro-Israel uh billionaires, was start bullying college campuses, some of our leading universities to adopt a wildly expanded conception of hate speech codes where faculty members could be fired or students could be expelled or otherwise disciplined for expressing a very wide range of views with respect to Israel or particular Jewish individuals. Just to give you an example, under this expanded definition that was created by Israel, adopted into the criminal law of the EU called the IH uh definition of anti-semitism, the International Holocaust Remembrance Act definition. You're not allowed to say that Israel is a racist endeavor as its founding or as a country or as an idea, but you're allowed to say that about the United States. You're allowed to say it about any other country on the planet, just not about Israel. You're not allowed to compare the Israeli government's actions to the actions of the Nazis, even though you can do that about American wars or Russian wars or any other country on earth. And I can go down the list. All of these special speech codes that were created specifically to constrain one's ability to criticize Israel. It wasn't about the protest. It doesn't govern conduct. It's not only about guest students. It's about all students on American campus. And there are a lot of different erosions like that on this issue that I could similarly describe for you.

>> Yeah. So, let's talk about the the IH definition because this is an area where well you and I have some overlap and some agreement. So to start with where I agree everything you said about the generic defense of free speech uh I agreed with every word and it was stated beautifully. Um when it comes to the IH definition uh you know people can look this up the the definition itself is fine but the examples it gives many of the the examples are like you know maybe a third of the examples are just critiques of Israel right they're not

>> oh I hate you cuz you're a Jew right that would be bigotry towards Jews it's I think Israel is racist if you say that you should totally be allowed to say that like that that I completely agree that that should not be included in any campus this speech definition of of anti-semitism. And um it's a it's a shame that the these administrations cowtowed to the Trump administration on on that score. Uh but the reality is just because this uh policy exists on paper doesn't mean it's actually enforced on campuses, right? Like when Colombia and Harvard adopted the IH definition of of anti-semitism, the Columbia Spectator and the Harvard Crimson, they immediately publish articles essentially saying exactly the phrases that are proscribed in the definition to to make the point that a they should be able to say it. Which they're right about and and secondly to to emphasize the point that like obviously they knew they were not going to be disciplined. they weren't disciplined. Uh it's very easy to like if you were to if you were to survey the campus newspapers of all of these campuses, there's last last I checked there were like 30 that have nominally adopted the IRH definition. The it would it would be 10 to one or 100 to one the articles published in the campus newspapers that are critical of Israel calling you know the war a genocide or an apartheid state as opposed to articles defending it. Right. So, you know, you add to that the fact that the pro-Israel students on these campuses are, you know, they're outnumbered 5:1, 10:1. Um there are all sorts of examples from uh an organization like like FIRE where you know recently Columbia University law students their student supporting Israel club wasn't recognized on campus I think because of it was either because of a Facebook post or because oh it's because they adopted the IH definition as a club. Obviously a club can have whatever definition it wants of anything, right? Like I can start the Black Students Club and be like, "I think racism is when you tap your feet three times and turn around. I'll get rubber stamped and approved." But the the pro-Israel students face a student body that sometimes has power over them through student senates and has the power to basically discriminate against them as a club. It happened to SSI at Duke University at well as well recently. They didn't get officially recognized because of a of a Facebook post that was pro-Israel. Um there was a case Recently, the Davidson College administration uh accused the pro-Israel students of harassment, the pro-Israel club of harassment for handing out flyers. Um, there was another case recent like just a couple days ago where the Catholic uh I think it was at the Catholic University of America where the pro-Israel club wanted to invite speakers for an event and the university required them to invite a speaker on the other side of the issue which is a requirement not leveled at any other kind of club. So my my question for you is is um absolutely there are there are many cases of pro Palestinian voices uh their speech being chilled and you've uh you know you could talk about uh with a professor Steve Slida Salida um you bring up these examples pretty often when I see an organization like fire which is the foundation for individual rights and expression when I go to their website I can guarantee that they're going to have they're going to make complaints about people's free speech being violated in a way that is neutral to the issue. They're going to have all the examples of pro Palestinian voices that have been chilled and they're going to have all the examples of pro-Israel students, pro-Israel clubs whose events have been shut down who who and so forth. And I'm not quite sure about that when when it comes to you. uh like are you do you think do you see yourself as neutrally advocating for free speech the violations of free speech as on both sides of this issue or consistently taking the one side?

>> Well, I mean, as you mentioned at the start, I have often at the risk or damage to my own career or standing with allies and like defended free speech of the views that I find most repugnant, including when I was a lawyer before I even became a journalist, when I was defending white nationalists or neo-Nazis and the attempt to ward off attempts to curb their speech, knowing that it would then be incursions into other types of speech. I was one of the earliest people objecting to the first kinds of big tech censorship of people like Miloianopoulos and Alex Jones knowing that it would then lead to others. I've defended people on the right with whom I have very little in common politically for a long time. And on this issue, if you show me an example of and and I'll take your word I'm not as familiar with these cases. Um and I'll explain to you why. I would obviously vehemently condemn if any kind of club or group at a college university is being uh is being discriminated against because of their pro-Israel views. I mean, and and I don't think anyone who has ever listened to me even minimally doubts that. But if you say to me, have you focused more on the suppression of pal pro Palestinian speech? I would say absolutely yes. And I'll give you the reason why. Like these examples that you just cited are individual examples at colleges. And I'll just assume that you know you presented every incident fully accurately that there's no other mitigating factors and these are individual examples of suppression of free speech on the part of people who support Israel. But what I'm talking about is something on a completely different scale. I'm talking about the federal government forcing our leading universities to adopt codes that enable faculty members to be fired and students to be expelled for expressing what you yourself have acknowledged is a very common range of views about Israel that ought to be permitted. This isn't just one individual dispute at Davidson College. This is the United States government run by a president who was funded in large part by billionaires who are highly supportive of Israel who did so in order to have a pro-Israel agenda. imposing speech codes on American colleges, our leading colleges and universities. And you can say, "Oh, some people still get away with saying the things that are on the prohibited list." And I have no doubt that they're not enforcing it 100%. It's a very new development. The Trump administration is only in power a year. You're talking about newly enacted uh speech codes over the last year or so. It'd be like saying, "Oh, I can point to some people in 2020 and 2021 expressing dissent about Tony Fouch's views of COVID or the World Health Organization. Therefore, look, it's not really a big deal that there was censorship because some people got away with saying it and weren't actually punished." I think obviously when the US government and our major administrations at universities conspire or collaborate to impose speech codes, the danger is that that it can be enforced. and the mere fact that it exists is a serious chilling effect. If you're a professor and you know your your job is at risk, you can be fired even if you have tenure for expressing those views. Of course, that's going to make you think twice. In fact, there's a a Jewish professor of of genocide studies at Colombia who every year uh includes in her curriculum books by the worldrenowned 20th century philosopher Hannah Erant who was very anti-sionist and says a lot of the things that the IH definition now precludes and she basically said I'm either going to have to change my curriculum or leave Colombia because that is something that you're going to take into account. As far as fire is concerned, they absolutely they're I love fire. to me they're what the ACLU used to be. I've said that a thousand times. I'm highly supportive of fire for exactly the reason that you just said. At the same time, if you go and look at fire, and this is well before October 7th, they were, even though they were created in defense of uh the ability of conservative students to speak without being censored because there was so much censorship of conservative students on college campuses. they were at least equally active in the defense of pro Palestinian speech from being censored even though their executive director and several other founders and key donors are Jewish are Zionist they they have a very free speech a principled view of free speech I think the time that I saw fire the most rhetorically aggressive and again this goes to what I'm trying to say is that talking about something on a completely different scale was when Florida Governor Ronda Santis who actually went to Israel to sign legislation affecting the free speech rights of of people in Florida. When it came to Israel, he actually went to Israel to sign a bill governing the rights of of Flidians. In 2024, he ordered that all campus groups of Palestine for justice be closed at every state university. And the reason he did that, he said, was because he believed they were providing material support to terrorist groups. He didn't mean they were furnishing money to them or providing arms to them. He meant that the effect of their speech saying we should stop the war in is in Gaza that uh the the Israel is are the aggressors that this advances the interest of Hamas and Hezbollah and other terrorist groups. And of course you can't have free speech be the the primary let alone sole basis for accusing people of uh material support for terrorism. and fire said that this was one of the most aggressive fullfrontal assaults on free speech by the government in years and they urged college administrators to reject and refuse to adhere to Governor Dantis' uh claims and just one last thing you know Coleman and I again I can point to so many examples like Norman Finkelstein uh you know was approved by the tenure committee at the pal but because Allan Dersowitz was on a jihad against him for being supposedly too anti-Israel he pressured using his public platform and a lot of very high funded groups depal university to withdraw the offer of uh offer of tenure as you mentioned Steve Salatia same thing at the University of Illinois who actually sued the University of Illinois from it you're talking about government pressure you know there's not a very wellorganized pro Palestinian lobby in the United States there's a very wellorganized and wellunded pro-Israel lobby in the United States that's why both parties have been so steadfastly pro- Israel and so I think we're talking about a very different scale and I would also say the argument that you you began kind of making which is like, oh, pro-Israel students on college campuses are outnumbered. They're kind of in a weaker position and they therefore need some some protection. I know you're not endorsing these speech codes, but it it really does that it is retoolent of the leftwing argument about black people or trans people or gay people or Muslims on college campuses who are these oppressed marginalized groups outnumbered as a result. I know you're not. I'm just saying that that depiction I and you you're very clear you're not in favor of these speech codes. I don't want to suggest otherwise. I'm just saying that was like a a a depiction that was a little bit retoolent of that to me. So it could be that that pro-Israel groups or students are being uh in individual cases suppressed. But the scale of the suppression and the censorship and you know I I'll just add one more quick example just to really underscore what I'm talking about in terms of where the power centers lie in 32 34 states might be 36 states mostly red states but I don't not only I know you heard me talk about there's a Tucker there's a law in place that says if you want to have a contract with the state government you have to certify that you do not support or participate in the government a boycott of Israel you can boycott the United States and other states. You can boycott North Carolina. You can boycott Norway or Indonesia or Peru. You just can't boycott this one country, Israel. And I actually profiled a woman who had stringing job performances in Texas where she was a speech speech pathologist in Austin school district, but she supported a boycott of Israel and she got fired. This is unbelievable that as citizens of the United States, if you want to contract with the state, you have to certify you don't participate in a boycott or support a boycott of a foreign country. There's no similar laws for Palestinians because the power center in our governments and in our uh financial private sector power centers are obviously far more pro-Israel than anything else.

Spend $34 billion a year on our troop deployments in Europe, as a basically like a vestige of the Cold War. For European countries that spend 1% on their own defense, and we're basically subsidizing their defense for them.

All told, we spend what, $60 billion to $100 billion a year on our military bases all around the world, which, you know, like, if we wound them down, you can make an argument. Does that, would that money be better spent at home? Totally. You can make that argument.

But I don't actually see people do that. What I see, what I see is people focusing only on the $4 billion that goes to Israel, and I like, a thousand to one, right? Which suggests to me it's not like a neutral concern about our financing adventurism and militarism abroad. There's something, there's some unique bias whereby people are way more obsessed with Israel than they are about the fact that we have 30,000 troops deployed at expense, at billion-dollar expense yearly, in say, South Korea and Europe, etc.

And so, you could critique the whole system, and I think that would be consistent. But the fact that it's a thousand to one Israel makes me think something here is bespeaks of a psychological bias.

And so, you know, beyond that, we can talk about the aid. Obviously, $4 billion a year, I think something like 80% of it comes back to America, and they have to spend it in US defense companies. That's an industry that employs a million Americans. We do get certain benefits from the US-Israel close military ties. We get, they have, you know, besides the CIA and MI6, Mossad is one of the best intel intelligence agencies in the world. If they detect an attack, a planned attack on the American homeland, they tell us that, right? And attacks have been thwarted as a result. They have the best missile defense in the world. We benefit from that. We benefit from that insanely good missile defense rocket defense tech that China and Russia therefore doesn't get to benefit from. That's again, like, you might not like projections of American military power, but that does enhance it.

And so, all told, it seems to me that the narrative that like, we, 0.05% of our budget every year, is so glaring, and only in this one particular case, right? No one ever talks about South Korea, Europe. That to me bespeaks that there is a huge bias underlying this argument, and it's not coming from a place of kind of neutral concern for militarism and spending abroad.

>> All right. I have a lot to say about that. Just a few points rather. But before I do, I just want to get clarity on what you're saying. When you use this term several times that people who are focused on or expressing concerns about American aid to Israel have a kind of bias, is one of the words you said, a psychological bias? Like, can you, what do you mean by that? Is that like a euphemism for people are bigoted and anti-Semitic who talk about Israel, or or what do you mean by that?

>> If I thought they were bigoted against Jews, I would say, I would just say that openly. I think obviously there are, like, I consider Nick Fuentes an anti-Semite, right? Because he'll literally say anti-Semitic stuff. But you can be biased against a particular country without necessarily being bigoted against that. There's a lot of reasons you can have a cognitive bias in life.

>> So, what are the reasons, why are people biased against Israel?

>> I would argue, if you want my theory of it, my theory is that it has a lot to do with the sense that Israel is a country that is a part of the white Western world, and that therefore its activities in the Middle East should be judged through the prism of white people oppressing people of color. And that that is a powerful biasing lens. It's an ideological bias. It's not, I'm not accusing people of racism. But that to me explains why there would be so much more focus on Israel. It's really like about us exercising our past demons in the Western world, and this sense that like whiteness and Western dominance has been horrible, and Israel becomes representative of that. That's what I mean by that.

>> Well, one of the counter-examples that you gave is that we have military bases in Europe, especially in Germany, very large military bases, and that these people only care about the ones in Israel, but not in Europe. If it were an issue of people being anti-white, wouldn't they be at least as concerned, and if not more so, since Europeans are clearly white in a way that Jews aren't necessarily?

>> No. No. Because it has to do with Israel is viewed as like an outpost of whiteness in a sea of what is like indigenous brown land that belongs to brown people, whereas Europe is where white people are from. So it doesn't trigger the same psychological effect in Westerners.

>> All right. So let me, let me address, I'm not sure that Jews are considered white. Certainly there have been times in history, very recent history, when they haven't been, including in the United States. So I think people who are focused on whiteness would focus on Europe. But in any event, let me, you know, these are just theories about reading people's intentions. As far as your numbers are concerned, like, you're really conflating two extremely different things by trying to compare the cost of our military bases in South Korea to the aid that we give to Israel. We're not talking about a military base in Israel. We don't have a military base in Israel. We have a military base in South Korea, and that costs money because we have to pay for the upkeep of the bases, for the payment to the troops, for whatever it is that they need. These are two completely different things.

We're talking here about military aid to Israel. Automatically, every year, $4 billion goes into the coffers of the Israeli Treasury. And yes, a lot of it, but not all of it, is spent on American defense contractors. I don't know why the American taxpayer is forced to empty their pockets to give a gift certificate to Israel to go shopping in Boeing. But also, this $4 billion is not in any sense the actual amount of money that we spend in defense of Israel. In 2024 alone, and obviously, this was in large part because the Biden administration financed the Israeli destruction of Gaza, the United States Congress, on top of the $4 billion, allocated another $18 billion directly to Israel. So now you're talking about $22 billion. On top of that, the Biden administration and the Trump administration deployed massive amounts of military assets to the Middle East in order to protect Israel, including when we were shooting down ballistic missiles in the times when Iran and Israel were in conflict. We keep permanent military bases in the Middle East, a lot of which goes to protecting Israel. This is billions and billions of dollars more. We've lost American lives in that region, at least, you could say, in conjunction with Israel. I would certainly say, and a lot of other people would as well, in order to defend Israel. So the amount of money that we spend on Israel, for Israel, is way above $4 billion. That's like the absolute minimum number that we give automatically every year. But it doesn't include countless other costs, including the cost, like I said, for propping up dictatorships in the region that used to be anti-Israel, but now are very neutral or even pro-Israel, like Egypt and like Jordan. We pay those dictatorships and keep them propped up because they keep the peace with Israel in that region. That's the same with the entire Persian Gulf. We prop up those tyrannies and dictatorships as well and are encouraging them and actually have already fostered more positive relations between those tyrannies that we support and Israel. So the amount of money we spend, not just in the Middle East, but on Israel, you cannot compare it to the amount of money for bases in Germany or South Korea.

There are a lot of people who question why are we including Trump, by the way, who question why we have these bases in Germany. There's no real direct threat to Western Europe. Why do we need to spend all this money on Germany or on South Korea? But the Israel issue is a much different issue because the amount of money, when you add it all up, is vastly different because we're ending up in a lot of wars in the Middle East, but not on behalf of Europe, and not on behalf of South Korea. And so people are obviously attentive to that extremely high cost as well.

And then, you know, there have been people who, like David Petraeus and a lot of other people throughout the years, including people in the Bush 41 administration, even in the Bush 43 administration, certainly the Obama administration, who have said that the one of the main reasons why we pay such a high cost in the Middle East, where we could do a lot of business, where we could do a lot of entrepreneurial ventures, where we could do a lot of commercial partnerships, but have been impeded from doing so because there's so much intense anti-American sentiment in that region. A major reason for that is because of the perception, obviously the accurate perception, that we're the ones who finance and arm Israel's aggression against its neighbors and Israel's suppression of Palestinian statehood and Palestinian rights, which you also have to put into the cost to the United States from having being tied at the hip to Israel in a way that like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson warned we should never do. We shouldn't have these enduring alliances with foreign countries.

So when you add up all the costs, and then on top of that, there's no South Korean lobby to speak of that compares with the pro-Israel lobby. There's no pro-German lobby to speak of. They're not forcing the US government to keep those military bases there. The pro-Israel lobby is so visible. And just let me add one more point about like why the pro-Israel lobby is so terrifying to people in Congress. It's because they have demonstrated a unique ability to remove people from Congress in a way that almost no other lobby has been able to do or has tried to do. We have reelection rates in Congress, as I'm sure you know, that compared to like the old Soviet style elections from like the early '70s under Brezhnev, like 97, 98% reelection rate. These people stay in office for 30 years. But AIPAC has repeatedly demonstrated their ability to remove people from Congress who are too pro-Israel. They pour insane amounts of money, like incomparable amounts of money, to defeat Corey Bush or Jamal Bowman. And they run these, you know, cynically recruited candidates who supposedly never, who never talk about Israel, even though that's what they're there for. And Israel has done that repeatedly. It has ruined the careers of all kinds of politicians for not being supposed, not being pro-Israel enough. So these things don't compare. There are so many factors to the US's relationship that certainly aren't present for Korea, South Korea, or Germany, or even Europe as a whole.

>> Okay. Um, you made many points there. I want to see if I can get to all of them. So, first of all, you know, if you're talking about foreign, South Korea does spend a lot of money lobbying Congress, like, you know, $200 or $300 million over the past 10 years. There was a scandal in the '70s where they were bribing Congress people, precisely in their own interests. Like, this happens. There are tons of lobbies. They all lobby for their own interests. It's a dirty world. You still have to prove that actually the lobbying is getting results and that there aren't simpler explanations for why people do things.

When you draw this comparison between, like, the point you made about military bases versus direct military aid, like, from my point of view, from the point of view of a US taxpayer, it's still, it's all dollars going out of my pocket, you know? I'm not sure there's a huge distinction to be made. And in fact, you can make it in the other direction. You could argue not only do we, does it cost us $4 billion out of US taxpayer pockets to maintain 30,000 troops in South Korea, but it's also the troops themselves. Like, we actually have personnel there that are, in principle, threatened and in peril by any kind of breakout of hostilities between North Korea, South Korea. We don't have any troops in Israel. Israel has never asked us to put our troops there. And if they did, if we did have a military base with 30,000 people deployed in Israel, I'm pretty sure that many people who share your viewpoint would cite that as like an escalation of our commitment. So, it can't, it can't like be at the same time true that our commitment to Israel is bigger because we don't have a military base there, even though we spend the same amount of money.

And again, it's worth reiterating that like, something like 80% of that money comes back to US soil, either profits to weapons companies, income to the million Americans that work for weapons companies, or tax on that income and that profit that goes back into the coffers.

You made another point about, you know, like Jordan and Egypt and how in facilitating those peace treaties, which I view those peace treaties as a good thing for the Middle East, for regional stability and so forth, that we ended up essentially paying both sides as a sweetener to help get them to sign on the dotted line there. To me, to reframe that as like, all that money is going to Israel's benefit as opposed to all of the sides. Like, Egypt did not benefit from its wars with Israel. Like, it really suffered a great deal in its wars with Israel. And to get both sides to sign on the dotted line and make peace, we're actually paying for regional stability, not paying just for Israel's interests. We're paying for Egypt's interests as well. We're paying for our interests, insofar as we equate our interest to stability, right? And so, I think there's a way in which that gets, that framing gets like distorted as yet more payments that are going to Israel's interest, which I would disagree with.

Um, you may have made some other points there that I'm missing, but I do, you can respond to anything you want to respond. I do, before you leave, want to get to Iran and whether and why you think that this Iran war is fought at Israel's influence. You can put it in your own words.

>> Yeah. By the way, I just want to say I totally empathize with what you said at the start that when you have your own show and you invite a guest on and you kind of want to debate, it is difficult because you're playing kind of both roles and you have to give your guests more time than you might otherwise if you're debating. But I think you're doing an incredibly fair job and take as much time as you want when you're responding. I'm happy about that.

Just a couple points that I just wanted to make that I didn't make earlier. On this issue of Israel and the benefits that we get, I'm not saying we don't get any benefits from that relationship. But we also pay a lot of costs from behavior that is not typically the behavior of allies. When we were doing the Snowden reporting about NSA spying and NSA documents, there were documents and we reported on these and published them that talked about how we give more intelligence tech and surveillance data, including about Americans, to Israel than any other government in the world. And yet the documents that say who are the greatest spying threats to the United States, who spies on us the most, the most invasively, the most dangerously, number one on the list of surveillance threats and spying threats to the United States was Israel. We have the big case of Jonathan Pollard, who spied for Israel and got extremely sensitive documents. And yet people who claim to be America First Patriots like Mike Huckabee and others go and meet with Jonathan Pollard and treat him like he's some sort of respectable figure or even some kind of heroic figure the way he's seen to be in Israel, even though he stole American secrets, some of our most sensitive ones, and gave them to a government.

You know, we can debate Middle East policy and how it is in our interest to prop up dictatorships in Egypt and Jordan. I would actually argue that our tendency to prop up dictatorships is a major reason why there's so much animosity to us in that region, and not just in that region, but other regions, including in Iran. But at the end of the day, Egypt and Jordan, who we give billions of dollars to to keep those sick tyrannies in place, are Israel's neighbors. They don't threaten the United States. Egypt and Jordan can't threaten the United States, but they can threaten Israel. And I'm not saying it's the only reason why we send billions to those regimes to keep peace with Israel, but it's certainly a major factor.

Yeah. So as far as the spying is concerned, yeah, I mean, the Pollard case was terrible. But this is another one of those scenarios where if I were like an intellectually honest person concerned about allies spying on allies, I would say, okay, you go looking for evidence, you will find super credible confirmed reports and leaked documents proving that France spies on us, Israel spies on us, we spy quite a bit on Japan, we spy on South Korea. All of these things are. And yeah, I guess you could debate the extent of it, right? Which the better spy agencies are going to spy better. Like, Mossad is really good at what it does, and the CIA is really good, and so forth. And so, but the question once again occurs to me is why is it that all of this evidence for allies spying on allies in this dirty world of espionage exists, and yet I have never heard a single person ever, literally ever, complain about an example of it except for Israel spying on America.

>> Because of how much money we give them.

>> But what about, again, what about South Korea? South Korea has spied on us. South Korea has absolutely done this, and we're losing $4 billion a year.

>> And I showed you what the NSA document said, but you know that Israel spies on us way more aggressively. There's never been a case of some like French spy in the or spy American spy in the Pentagon or the NSA handing secret documents to the French on the scale that Jonathan Pollard. It's just a much bigger and different scale. I think the anger comes from the fact that we go to war for these countries. This country. We deploy our military to defend Israel almost every year. Billions and billions out the door, and then they steal our secrets. It's just not the behavior of an ally. There's a big difference between spying on a country and stealing its secrets.

>> Okay. Can we get to this claim that we go to war for Israel? Because this is obviously at the core of our disagreement and a lot of anger on this issue. But before we get, can I just clarify very quickly? When I just said, like, we go to war for Israel, what I meant, and I know, and I do want to talk about whether we went to war for Israel in Iran and Iraq, but all I meant was when Israel has a war, we put our military in that region to defend Israel and put our service members in harm's way for Israel. That, I mean, that's not in dispute. That's what I was referring to there.

>> Okay. So let's talk about the Iran war, since it's what's happening now. You know, I haven't actually seen you talk too much about it. I guess I think you had a recent Tucker, but can you make the case for me based on actual evidence that we're fighting the Iran war because of Israeli influence of some kind?

>> Yeah. Yeah. So my view is not that the only reason Trump went and fought a war with Iran and attacked Iran is because of Israel, but that that was a very significant factor. And I'll start with the fact that Iran has been Israel's primary adversary in that region for decades. It has been number one on the wish list of Benjamin Netanyahu, going all the way back to the war on terror and before, to lure the United States into a regime change war in Iran because of Israel's understanding that the main bulwark of resistance against its total and complete domination of that region is Iran. That that is the only counterweight to power. It is, in a lot of, in the eyes of a lot of Israelis, an existential threat to Israel. I don't think it is, but a lot of Israelis believe it is. And if you believe it is, you're going to prioritize that as a war. I don't think anyone thinks Iran is an existential threat to the United States.

You have the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to the United States last year seven times, obviously to talk about the American war against Iran that he was trying to lure the president into fighting. Of course, we did attack Iran last year in conjunction with Israel. We supposedly totally and completely obliterated their nuclear program in a way that we were told would mean that we wouldn't have to attack them again because that problem had been solved for a long time for the foreseeable future. And yet now, after seven visits from Netanyahu, the United States is back in a war against, not a country that can existentially threaten the United States, not a country that has ever attacked our homeland. We have had terrorist attacks over the past 25 years, some very significant ones. None of them have come from Iranian terrorists or Shia terrorists. They've all come from our best friends in that region, the Sunnis and the Saudis and people who hail from that particular strain of geopolitics and religion. So Iran has not attacked the United States, can't attack the United States in a meaningful way.

And then you have the fact, of course, that even on the question of timing, and this, I think, you know, people are debating what Marco Rubio said, what Trump said, what Tom Cotton and Mike Johnson said, everyone said in the people I just named and others that we had to go to war with Iran. When asked what the imminent threat was, the imminent threat we were told was, "Well, Israel was going to go to war with Iran." And they told us they're going to go to war with Iran. And we believe that once Israel did that, the Iranians would attack our military bases because of the support we give to Israel. And so we had to also attack preventively because of what Israel was going to do. So they, in their narrative, talk about the centrality of Israel and what it was intending to do as a major reason, at least in terms of the timing, if not the decision itself.

>> Yeah. Okay. So a few points I think I believe in the principle of parsimony, which is to say, if there's a simple explanation for something, go for the simple explanation. Don't go for the complicated explanation with dubious evidence. You know, Donald Trump, lifelong aggressive posture towards Iran for decades, long before he was even president. He believes, as he stated on Andrew Schultz's podcast. Now, I'm not saying I believe this because I haven't seen the evidence, but Trump believes that the Iranians were behind the Butler, Pennsylvania assassination attempt that nearly killed him. And then recently, we have the conviction of Af Merchant, the Pakistani man who was, according to what came out in when the jury convicted, backed by Iran, assassination attempt that was probably targeted at Trump, potentially Nikki Haley or Joe Biden. So Trump, for sure, what we know is Trump believes Iran tried to kill him and got very close, maybe multiple times. Trump being an incredibly and unusually vindictive personality. To me, that sufficiently explains his very aggressive posture towards Iran. You combine that with the fact that he, like, built a whole identity in the 2010s around opposing, not only being a great dealmaker, obviously he's had this identity as being a great dealmaker his whole life, but around opposing the nuclear deal, right? So he wants to get some nuclear deal that's like significantly, significantly stronger, like a zero nuclear deal with Iran, which they're not going to go for. And that is sufficient to explain why Trump wants to take, why Trump sees aggressive action towards Iran to hamper not only their nuclear capabilities, but their conventional missile arsenal so that they can't become strong enough to have a deterrent from us hitting their nuclear programs in the future. All of that is like a pretty simple explanation that makes a lot of sense. It conserves a lot of the facts we know about Donald Trump's psychology and US foreign policy in the past several decades.

And to sort of drive right past that stop on the highway and say this is about Israel, because, you know, even Marco Rubio, Marco Rubio's statement had nothing to do with the influence of the Israel lobby, right? Like, let's say Marco Rubio was telling the truth there. He obviously walked it back right after, but who knows? Maybe who knows which one was a lie, right? Let's say the second one was a lie and he was telling the truth. He was not providing evidence of Israel's leverage or ability to strong-arm in any way Donald Trump's decision-making, who was the commander-in-chief. He was saying basically, we felt Israel was about to attack. We have bases in the Middle East. At that moment, it became in our interest to attack as well. That's not, that's not a point about how much Israel controls us.

And again, like, I guess the framing, I would also question the framing that all of our bases in Gulf States in the Middle East are for Israel's benefit. You know, there's one thing you could say is that they benefit Israel. Okay, well, that's one fact. A lot of things. There's many win-wins in the world. There's many scenarios of mutual benefit. But the Gulf States that we have military bases there, this is a win-win for at least in the perception of whoever in the Gulf State made those choices, it's a win-win for them too, right? So you could argue we're there for their benefit as well, right? And again, you can disagree with all of those decisions. You can say, in fact, it's not in our benefit to have all these military bases around the world. That's a totally valid claim, and you can argue for that. But I, what I don't think you can say is because I don't think it's in the US benefit for us to have a military base in such and such a Gulf state, therefore it must be the case that Israel is the reason why their influence in our government is the reason why we're there.

I mean, I presume Benjamin Netanyahu got on a plane seven times last year to fly to Washington, even though he has all sorts of extremely pressing matters at home, including a major corruption scandal where he's criminally indicted, as well as numerous wars still ongoing. I presume he went to Washington seven times for a reason. And that reason was that he knew that he's going there would be able to persuade President Trump to do what Benjamin Netanyahu has been urging the United States to do for many decades, in Israel's interest, which is go and commit regime change war in Iran. Even though the last time we changed the regime of Iran in 1953 resulted in an absolute horror show. That was the reason why Iran became so anti-American in the first place, why they held our diplomats hostage when the revolution happened, because we had imposed on them a savage tyranny in the form of the Shah of Iran. And so this idea that we're going to go and repeat our same mistakes that we've been making for the last 60 years all around the world that has produced so much anti-American sentiment and so much anger and so much animosity toward us, not for, and that it's just a coincidence that Netanyahu came seven times, and that Miriam Adelson was Trump's second largest donor, and all these other pro-Israel billionaires who jumped on the train at the last minute with Trump weren't pressuring him. Like, I think, you know, you can never prove for certain what was in Trump's mind, but looking at all the evidence, we're now in a war that Netanyahu has wanted for decades in Israel's interest against a country that cannot threaten American citizens in the United States, but can certainly threaten Israel and has threatened Israel.

Even the issue of ballistic missiles, you know, Trump last year in that 12-day war said that Israel was getting absolutely pummeled by Iranian ballistic missiles. So I understand from an Israeli perspective why you would want to destroy all Iranian ballistic missiles in their conventional arsenal, but they've never shot ballistic missiles at the United States. There's questions about whether or not they even could. And, you know, nuclear deterrence works around the world. And this, I think, is one of the main issues that we have to really consider, which is, you know, war is supposed to be a last resort. So this idea like, oh, Iran tried to kill Trump. You know, I heard that in the Iraq war. President Bush said, Iran, Saddam Hussein tried to kill my dad. This is, you know, it was obvious when these claims were being circulated in 2024 that they would have the effect of trying to convince Trump, hey, look, they tried to kill you. You should go and attack Iran. And apparently, I'm sure that did play a factor. But even there, like, why does Iran have so much animosity toward the United States? Why does Iran want to attack our military bases in the United States? Is it just because they're irrational and an apocalyptic cult and hate anybody who doesn't share their religious views? Or is it because the people in that leadership have anti-American sentiment for the same reason that people have anti-American sentiment all over the world in every continent and every region, because we've meddled for so long in their country? We've overthrown their governments. We've imposed dictatorships on them. Or maybe because Trump assassinated one of their most important military generals, one of the most beloved and well-regarded military generals in his first term, and they saw that as a fair retaliation. So we have to constantly ask, you know, why is all this happening?

And then you look at the fact, I'm sure you recall this, you know, we're, I'm just a few years older than you, like two or three, but you know, going back to like the first Obama administration, we were hearing from the US security establishment, from the Western security establishment, that the most important thing is that we have to extricate ourselves from the Middle East and pivot to China, that pivot to Asia, because China is our number one competitor or adversary or enemy, depending on how you look at that. And yet, not only haven't we pivoted to Asia, we can't extricate ourselves from the Middle East. We're actually removing anti-missile batteries that were incredibly controversial when we put them in South Korea in order to bring them over now in order to protect Israel and to protect American bases in this new Middle East war. Why can't we extricate ourselves from the Middle East, Coleman? Like, what is it that's there that is so crucial? We're a net exporter of oil. We don't need oil from the Middle East. As Trump said, we don't use the Strait of Hormuz. All those countries would happily sell us whatever oil we wanted to buy from them, including Iran. They would love to be able to sell us oil. So it's not oil. There is no vital interest in the Middle East left for the United States other than Israel. And I would submit that's one of the main reasons we haven't been able to extricate ourselves from the Middle East. And why, despite a president who spent decades and certainly the last 10 years running for president, vowing never to involve the United States in more regime change wars or more Middle East wars, we're now involved in what arguably is the most dangerous one of them all. Trump could just end it quickly. It could end up spiraling into an escalation that he can't control. It's an extremely dangerous situation. And so obviously, you know, Netanyahu thinks that his visits to Washington play a major role. The pro-Israel lobby that gave Trump so much money thinks that they're playing an influential role on behalf of Israel. And I think if you look at the kind of overall geopolitics of why we consider the Middle East so important, clearly Israel is a major factor.

>> Okay. So, a couple points to make. I mean, it seems to me a lot of the evidence you're marshalling is like, it's not evidence that Netanyahu's visits actually caused a change in thinking. It's like, obviously, when foreign leaders visit America, they're always hoping to influence, and they're going to, if they have a 10% chance of influence, they're going to visit. You know, we're the global superpower. You're still, all your work ahead is ahead of you in proving that those visits actually did cause the influence that you're alleging they did. A mere coincidence, I mean, this is like part, I think the core of a lot of my disagreements with what you're saying conceptually. The mere coincidence of two heads of state doing something, right? The coincidence of, you know, Saudi, if Saudi Arabia came out right now and said, "Oh, we are so happy that Trump is finally doing this regime change in Iran. You know, we've been visiting this X many times a year. We spend, you know, whatever it is, $50 million a year on lobbying Congress to be harsher on Iran." Well, all of that would be equally evidence, just as much evidence of Saudi influence behind this decision as the various points of data points you're pointing to about Israelis, right? Like it's like, so you're still, all your work is ahead of you when you point out a coincidence of motives and goals. And it's really, it's like the notion of a common enemy, right? Iran has had this revolutionary government. They hate America. Let's, I'll just grant you, I'll grant you the reason they hate America is the 1953 coup. But okay, we agree they hate America. They also hate Israel. One is the Great Satan, one is the Little Satan. This is their ideology. They chant it, they teach it to school children, etc.

Well, we're in a situation now where they have admitted openly, it's not like sketchy CIA intelligence and some uranium African mine or an Italian journalist. It's not like Iraq War stuff. It's like Iran has come out and said, we've enriched kilograms of uranium to 60%. The IAEA, which is the neutral UN body that looks into nuclear proliferation, not an interested party like the CIA or MI6 that can be overzealous or whatever, has said, "Yep, the Iranians are telling the truth. They have enriched kilograms of uranium to 60%." They come out and say it on state TV in Iran. Pretty much everyone agrees, including the Iranians, that they've done this. They brag about it. There are zero examples in the history of nuclear proliferation of a state that has enriched kilograms of uranium to 60% and then not gone on to get a bomb. There are literally zero. So if this were like India or Pakistan claiming we're at 60 and we've got kilograms, I wouldn't even believe that they didn't want a bomb. Obviously they're obviously they're angling for a bomb, right? And so then the question becomes, you know, is it in the US interest for Iran to go nuclear? I would argue, since they're self-identified as our adversaries, it's clearly not in the US interest for us to allow them to get a bomb. And if that's true, then it becomes a matter of, you know, when do you time the intervention, right? It's like, do we, if they're at the 90-yard line, do we wait till we detect them sprinting towards the finish to weaponize a bomb? I don't think that makes sense.

I mean, the whole, you know, obviously Americans are traumatized by the Iraq War experience where we were told there was going to be WMD Iraq. We sent our boys to die, and we spent all this money, and bam, there's no WMD. It's like this is a, this was actually, I consider a kind of psychological trauma to the American psyche. But if you actually look at the whole history of the CIA's efforts to keep tabs on nuclear proliferation around the world, they far more often have made the opposite mistake. They thought, CIA thought the Soviet Union would get a bomb in the mid-1950s. They were five years ahead of schedule. They got it in '49. The CIA was surprised in 1964 when China got a nuclear weapon. The CIA, Israel was ahead of the CIA schedule when they got a bomb in 1967. India's nuclear test in the mid-70s surprised the CIA. You know, and South Africa hid their entire nuclear arsenal from the CIA for 14 years successfully. That's South Africa. And obviously the most important example was after the Gulf War, 1991, where you discover that Saddam Hussein's nuclear program is way further advanced than any intelligence estimate had it before the Gulf War. And then in 1998, once again, the Indians test a nuclear bomb, totally surprised the CIA. Right? So there are just far more examples of the CIA underestimating and not being aware that countries have made the final sprint towards a nuclear bomb. We can't wait for that.

>> Okay. So first of all, you mentioned Iraq, and of course, that does shape people's perceptions, as it should, because we were lied into a war in the Middle East based on exactly the same arguments that are being made now about Iran by exactly the same people, by exactly the same ideologies. And so obviously, it's like, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. And so people are saying, rightly so, and most Americans oppose the war, I think in large part for this reason. We don't see Iran as a real threat. And it's because not just the experience in Iraq. We've been lied to into wars by our governments continually, including in Vietnam, when we were told the Gulf of Tonkin was an incident where the North Vietnamese had attacked American ships. None of that turned out to be true. We were told that in Libya that it wasn't a regime change war, it was just to protect people in Benghazi, and it turned into a regime change war that destroyed that country. There's a lot of reasons why Americans are extremely skeptical about what the US government is telling them. There's a lot of good reasons to be.

As far as like evidence for Israel's role in the decision to go to war, you know, again, I mean, other than a confession in secret by Trump where he doesn't realize he's being taped, but actually is. And I can show you a recording where Trump admits to Melania, you know what, I'm going to war, even though I don't want to, but I'm doing it for Israel. I can't show you smoking gun proof. It doesn't exist. But there's some pretty strong evidence beyond what I everything I just said, like that Joe Kent, who was appointed by President Trump to one of the most sensitive positions in the entire US government, he was the director of National Counterterrorism Center with the highest top secret clearance, resigned just last week and said Iran was never an imminent threat to us. We went to war because of Israeli influence. You can talk to people in the Pentagon, up and down the US government, who will tell you the same thing. I'm not saying it means they're telling the truth, but it's certainly strong evidence when people at the highest levels of our government who have the most sensitive access to the most sensitive data are coming and saying that this is a war for Israel and that Iran posed no imminent threat. You have to at least count that as evidence.

As far as Netanyahu's visits, yes, Trump and any American president will meet with leaders. You don't meet with a leader seven times. It's so off the charts. It's kind of like US aid to Israel that Trump didn't meet with any other leader more than twice. And the reason is because Netanyahu was coming and his mission, and it's not just last year, it's been for decades. You know, you can go back to 2003 and 2004 when we were in Iraq and there were a lot of neocons saying, once we're done with Baghdad, we're moving on to Tehran. This has been at the top of the pro-Israel agenda, the Israeli agenda for many decades.

And let me just finally address the nuclear issue because, you know, everything you said about the nuclear issue and Iran, you know, I think is very contestable. For example, Iran has the absolute right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium up to all sorts of amounts that they've never exceeded. Israel doesn't even belong to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. You want to talk about a country that has a secret nuclear weapon stash that has never been inspected, you know, start with Israel. Iran is a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and all the inspection that entails. They agreed to massive, more intrusive inspections as part of that Iran deal where the IAEA was all over the place in Iran, certifying that they weren't crossing the nuclear threshold. Unfortunately, that all went away once President Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal.

But as far as the nuclear program is concerned, two months before Trump bombed with huge bunker busters all three of their nuclear facilities last year, Tulsi Gabbard went to the Senate under oath and said the consensus of the intelligence community, the consensus of the intelligence community that she leads, is that Iran has not tried to pursue a nuclear weapon. They're not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. There's been no decision by the government to pursue a nuclear weapon. Two months later, when Trump went and bombed those facilities, and he was asked, "But your own Director of National Intelligence said they're not even trying to get a nuclear weapon." He said, "I don't care what she says." Okay, maybe Iran was, even though Tulsi Gabbard didn't know about it, even though she leads all the intelligences. Trump himself said, and you can go on the White House site right now, that that operation completely and totally obliterated Iran's entire nuclear program. So even if they were headed toward this danger zone before that, the US government itself, Trump himself said exactly that, it's still up on the website. And when journalists said to him, okay, so we've completely and totally obliterated the nuclear program. So that means like six months from now or a year from now, you're not going to come back and say, "Oh, we have to go attack Iran again because maybe we didn't totally and completely obliterate it." He said the whole, he accused the people of raising that question of like disrespecting our pilots and their bravery. He called it fake news. On the White House website, it still says it's fake news. Anyone who questions whether Iran has any residual nuclear capability. So suddenly, out of the blue, we're going to now go again and have a war with Iran over this nuclear program that we were told eight months ago the United States completely and totally obliterated. I mean, that's one of the reasons why a lot of people think Israel has such a significant role here because none of the government's claims beyond Israel as to why we had to go start a major war with Iran make any sense.

And then the last issue I'll say, like proliferation is a big concern. All these countries have got nuclear weapons, including North Korea. And to me, you know, Coleman,

This is like the hub of the issue. This is really the key of the issue is when the United States got nuclear weapons, and then the Soviet Union got nuclear weapons, and then France and the UK got nuclear weapons, and it looked like Brazil and Argentina wanted nuclear weapons because of the tensions between them, and it became a huge issue. We decided as a world that we wanted to make non-proliferation a major goal of humanity, and that's why the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was created. Unfortunately, Israel didn't sign on to it. But I agree with you completely. It is dangerous.

But this is the problem: is that we, the United States, along with Israel, but mostly the United States, has sent a signal to the world that if you are a rational leader that wants to protect your country, the only rational choice you have is to try and get nuclear weapons. Because we've created a world where if you don't have nuclear weapons, we can attack you at any time. We can invade your country and nab your president and say we have the right to arrest him, like we did in Venezuela. We can attack you in Iraq or Libya or Syria, or all over the world. But if you do have nuclear weapons, no matter how crazy you are, like North Korea, we will never mess with you. We will never ever mess with you. And I don't blame them. I think Iran made a mistake in not getting nuclear weapons and not actually making the decision, as the intelligence community said, to get nuclear weapons. So if we're worried about this threat that Iran poses, we should be asking why is it that they supposedly pose a threat to us? And especially since war is a last resort, we should be asking that question. And there's no need for Iran to be a threat to the United States. I don't even think they are.

And so, yes, this is not definitive proof that we did it for Israel, but it's not a coincidence that we're at war with Israel's greatest enemy, and the enemy that Israel has wanted the United States to go and take out for many decades.

>> Okay. Yeah, I want to address point by point. Um, you started by citing Joe Kent as, you know, basically the extent of the actual evidence that exists uh on on Trump's motives in these actions. Joe Kent resigned. He he made these allegations that Trump was influenced by the Israel lobby and so forth. Um, Joe Kent went on Tucker Carlson in the aftermath of that and speculated that Israel was the one that tried to kill Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. Now, to understand how absolutely stupid and insane that conspiracy theory is, you just have to consider what we talked about earlier of how aggressively pro-Israel Trump has been. Like, he is, um, he is singular in that respect. He is. He is. There's a town in Israel named after Trump. They like Trump much more than they like Netanyahu in Israel. They like Trump. They might damn near like Trump more than they like Ben-Gurion at this point. So, the idea that Israel would have tried to kill Trump on the on the campaign trail, to me, tells me that something is going seriously wrong in Joe Kent's mind. I don't know if it's mental illness or something like that, some kind of paranoid tendency, but I, for that reason, I do not view him as a credible source of information alone.

You add on top of that, I know damn well if I was resigning from counterterrorism, I was that high up in power, and I was saying, "I know for a fact the the the United States president was influenced by lobbyists," that statement would be followed by a whole bunch of receipts. "I was in this meeting, and this is the name, this is the name of the lobbyist who said this." You know, zero receipts we've gotten from Joe Kent. It's, um, it's impossible for me to think that he has all this evidence and he's withholding it. And that, in combination with his weird conspiracy theories, makes me just totally discredit him as a source. Um, so, as far as I'm concerned, there is zero credible evidence at this point that Trump made this decision because of Israel. And as an evidence-based person, I, I have to be like, "Show me the evidence."

So secondly, you said, uh, the the Tulsi, you referenced the Tulsi Gabbard testimony last year about Iran, where she said that, you know, um, Iran has not made the decision to to get a nuclear bomb. I noticed, though, that you left out the sentence she said literally right after that, which is, she said two things right after that. One, she said that Iran has the highest level of uranium enrichment in its history, and that its level of enriched uranium is, quote, direct quote, "unprecedented for a country without nuclear weapons." In other words, there is no, there's no purpose to have this amount of of of uranium enriched at this level unless you have a medium or long-term goal to get a nuke. Right? And then the other thing she said, again, like within 30 seconds of the part you quoted of her testimony, is that in recent years, the taboo in Iranian politics on openly discussing pursuing nukes has weakened, which makes the pursuit of a nuke more likely. And so, when you put all of her comments in con in context, it seems like what she's saying is, uh, Iran is on the 10-yard line. They have not yet made the decision to sprint to the end zone, which is very different than saying Iran is in general not angling for a nuke. Right?

So, uh, another thing I would say that's I think really important to keep in mind about Iran is, is I guess, I guess two things. One is, I, I very much question the rationality of, uh, the Iranian regime. Um, there are many data points I can bring up. You know, if I have no reason to disbelieve the ASF Merchant jury conviction, which found that Iran supported an attempt to assassinate Trump or Joe Biden or Nikki Haley, uh, in around 2024 or whenever it was. Um, you know, that that's an extremely stupid decision to make, um, purely from a rational self-preservation point of view, because, you know, successfully killing Trump potentially could have led to a regime change war that could have led to the deaths of everyone at the top of, you know, there's like a definitely non-zero chance America would have responded eventually, um, um, in w with overwhelming force. You look at some of the other decisions the Iranian regime has made over the years. 2018, Iran has one of its own diplomats in Vienna, like smuggle bombs into Paris at this rally with that has like 100,000 people at it and British members of parliament and try to detonate a bomb, right? That could have killed 100 people, incl a a British diplomat. I mean, that's the sort of thing that rather backfired on ISIS when they did it in France, which led, uh, the world to form a coalition and take all of, you know, much of ISIS's territory in in Iraq and Syria. You know, you add to that the example from 2011, when, uh, the Iran, the Iranians hatched a plan to, you know, murder-for-hire plot, uh, in Washington D.C. to kill this Saudi diplomat by blowing up a restaurant in Washington D.C. Now, again, I put myself up in the IRGC. I'm an Iranian loyalist. I love Iran. Whatever, but I'm being rational. What do I say when I'm in that room? "Hold on, guys. Are are you really telling me we're going to blow up a restaurant in the capital of the United States in order to kill one Saudi diplomat and and and kill who knows how many American civilians? Don't you think this could backfire on, don't you think this could lead to all of us dying?" This is not a, a regime. I mean, and then finally, the the sum total of the Iranians' actions have led to like half of the regime leaders being killed recently, right? So, if you're, if you're talking about deterrence and the psychology of whether like heads of state or regimes are rational, rationally interested in their own self-preservation, I really don't see that as being true, uh, of of the Iranian regime.

All right. Uh, a few things about this. Actually, start with the last point, but I'll just go in order so, so I don't forget things. Um, you said, "Look, Trump is singularly pro-Israel." So, it makes, uh, so it makes sense that, um, he kind of like stands out, that there's streets named after him in in Israel. And to that point, I would say you're absolutely right. The Israelis absolutely worship Trump. There are signs all over Israel venerating him, saying that he's the greatest friend Israel has ever had. They want to give him awards that aren't even supposed to go to non-Israelis, but they're so enamored of how dedicated he has been to Israel. And I don't blame them. If I were Israeli, I would also love Trump. Now, he's not nearly as loved in the country that he's supposed to be representing, among the population whose interest he's supposed to be serving, because he has been very devoted to the interests of Israel and to Israelis. And I don't blame him. Now, I would say it's, I don't blame them for for loving Trump. Now, I will say that it is kind of odd because back in 2016, when this whole Never Trump movement emerged among lifelong Republicans, if you go and look at what the catalyst for it was, Trump had made several statements about Israel and Palestine that really disturbed the hardcore pro-Israel neocons who became the Never Trumpers, like Bill Kristol and David Frum and that whole crowd. And he was saying things like, "We've been way too pro-Israel. We have to be more even-handed in the relationship between Israel and Palestine because otherwise we can't arbitrate a two-state solution, which is in our interest." That's what really alarmed these these neocons. And Trump learned, especially when he was running for president in 2024, when he wasn't just running for president, he was basically running to stay out of prison for life. If Trump had lost that election, the Democrats had won, Trump was going to prison for life. He needed to do whatever he could to curry favor with the pro-Israel crowd, and he did. And that's why so many of them were so devoted to him, even though they began by backing Ron DeSantis, who they viewed as a much more natural ally. And so Trump sold himself to the Israel lobby. He was desperate to win that election, not just because he wanted to be president, but because he wanted to stay out of jail. And from the start, you look at this agenda. You know, we go back to what we're talking about: instituting speech codes on American universities to protect Israel, task force to combat antisemitism, this and this and this for Israel, meeting with Netanyahu more times than than anybody else, bombing Iran twice in conjunction with Israel. It has been an extremely pro-Israel agenda, which is precisely why there are signs in in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv that say, "Thank you, Trump, for making Israel great again." Because they understand how devoted to their interests he's been.

Let me just say something about Jack, Jack Joe Kent, because like I said, I don't think Joe Kent's statement should be taken as gospel. They're not dispositive. The idea that he's supposed to present evidence, I think, is a bit unreasonable because whatever evidence he could present, by definition, would be top secret. And they're already looking to imprison him, the way they do with every whistleblower, from Daniel Ellsberg to Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Anyone who has ever been in government who reveals government wrongdoing or government secrets that they don't want the public to know, they try and destroy and imprison them. Excuse me. So, I don't blame Joe Kent, who is already under FBI investigation, for not showing us all the top-secret documents that he pilfered from the government when he left. But, as I said, this is somebody who devoted his entire life to defending America. He went and fought in all of these wars that the people who are now attacking him and demonizing him wanted to happen, but wouldn't put themselves or their own kids or their own family in harm's way. He went and fought in these wars. He lost his wife in these wars. He then went to work because Trump appointed him at the highest levels of the federal government. The minute he says something about Israel, now we're supposed to say he's mentally ill. He's a sick person. He has some kind of dark heart, and all these other attacks. You go back and look at what has been said about every American whistleblower. They immediately, when Daniel Ellsberg revealed that the U.S. government was lying about the war in Vietnam, said he's a Kremlin agent. They broke into his psychoanalyst's office because they wanted to present him as some, you know, degenerate who is psychosexually twisted. This is the playbook on every single whistleblower. And I'm going to need a lot more before I conclude that J Joe Kent is mentally ill, before I completely discount what he says. And like I said, Coleman, he is not the only one who has been saying that America goes to war for Israel, that American foreign policy is dominated by Israel. American politicians at the highest level, including presidents, have been saying that for decades. Scholars have written books on this. This is not something that Joe Kent woke up and invented one day. And I think these kind of character attacks on him as a way of disproving what he has said are a bit ugly.

Um, let me just address the final point, which is about the irrationality of Iran, because this is something that we've been told forever. Iran is like this religious, religiously fanatical, doomsday, apocalyptic cult. They don't really care about their own lives. They're willing to sacrifice their own lives because they believe in the afterlife is is much better and that they become martyrs and they're willing to engage in mass suicide. I personally haven't seen any evidence of that. In fact, if you go and talk to foreign policy experts throughout the West, or even military strategists now, they will tell you how smart and strategic and cunning and pragmatic Iran has been, not irrational and suicidal. When the Israelis assassinated people on their own soil that they invited to Iran for their inauguration, and then when Israel bombed their consulate in Syria and blew the whole thing up, their response was incredibly restrained. They used their slowest missiles, their oldest missiles. They didn't punish Israel in the way they did during the 12-day war and that they're doing now. They purposely held back because they didn't want to spiral up the escalation ladder. You look at who's been fighting wars and bombing people throughout the Middle East. It's not Iran starting wars. It's been Israel starting wars. It's been the United States starting wars. We invaded a country right on the Iranian border. And all this stuff about, oh, Iran wanted to use violence here. I mean, are you kidding? You you know the history of the CIA. I don't need to go through all that. And not just the distant history of the CIA or of the Mossad. We've blown things up all the time. Israel began as a country through classic acts of terrorism. They blew up the King David Hotel, led by Menachem Begin, who became prime minister of that country, and killed dozens of British people and all sorts of innocent Palestinians as well, because they were engaged in classic acts of terrorism. We've funded groups all over the world that engage in exactly these kind of tactics of blowing things up, of killing people. The contours in Nicaragua. We were even on Al-Qaeda and ISIS's side in the dirty war that we waged against Syria. This is not evidence of irrationality. This is evidence of a country willing to use violence. But there's no way you can be an American citizen and point to some other country and be like, "Look at how much violence they use. Look how irrational they are," when everything that you've said about Iran is something the United States and Israel has done a thousand times over, and even far worse. I don't think Iran is is, uh, an irrational country. I don't think they want to be nuked off the face of the earth. I think even if they got nuclear weapons, which again, I, if they were rational, they would have gotten nuclear weapons. I think the one irrational thing they've done is they didn't get nuclear weapons and are as a result are left defenseless. But if they had nuclear weapons, the idea that they would commit mass suicide instantaneously by using it against Israel or the United States, knowing it would ensure their complete obliteration, there's nothing in the Iranian behavior that suggests that they're eager to to die in mass like that. This is what we were told about Iraq. They would pass nuclear weapons to Al-Qaeda because they don't care about their lives. And then even if the United States retaliated and destroyed all of Iraq, they wouldn't care. This is the kind of fear-mongering and war-mongering rhetoric that we've been subjected to for a long time, and it merits extreme amounts of skepticism.

>> Okay, so first off, my point about Joe Kent, um, not really a character character attack, but like, I don't know what he's what he's like personally, but if I hear anyone say that they think Israel tried to kill Donald Trump, immediately my opinion of their intellect and sanity and in their the the degree to which they're in touch with reality would go down. Not. And I'm not saying that because I don't have sympathy for whistleblowers. I do. I actually do have a lot of sympathy for whistleblowers. Uh, if they blow the whistle responsibly on government overreach, I'm I'm totally for that. And I'm against character assassinations. I'm against what they try to do to Ellsberg. So don't let me in with that that motive. What I'm saying is anyone who who says something as as insanely illogical as Israel tried to get Trump killed, clearly there is something going on making that person irrational. Right? So that that's my point about Joe Kent. It's not like a character assassination per se.

Um, when I, my point about, you know, Iran is irrational. Well, yeah, they are. I'm not, I'm not making a moral point. I'm not saying that. So, like, for instance, um, if Mike Tyson goes up to a guy in a bar and picks a fight, that's not necessarily irrational because he's Mike Tyson, right? If I, all 5'7" of me, no training in martial arts, go and pick a fight with a guy in a bar, that's incredibly irrational of me vis-à-vis my own self-preservation. So, my point in pointing out all of the terror attacks that Iran backs all over the world is not to say that like we don't, we haven't done bad things, right? My point is irrational irrationality from the point of view of the person, right? The the head of MI5 recently said Iran has tried to to consummate like 20 terror attacks on UK soil in the past 3 years. I mean, this is extremely optional behavior to put it mildly. Most most countries around the world that are in in Iran's position in the global dominance hierarchy would not dream of doing such things because it would be so irrational of them to pursue given the backlash it would yield. And again, I would I would submit to you the the very fact that the sum total of Iranian, the Iranian regime's actions has led to so many of them being killed basically for doing all of this extremely optional behavior, backing terror attacks all around the world, funding and arming proxies all over the Middle East, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, when they're like not the richest country to be able to do this thing to to do all this to begin with, uh, is it all speaks of of a level, a certain level of irrationality that that actually most regimes around the world don't exhibit. North Korea doesn't exhibit that level of irrationality. I don't think we can let that have a bomb.

And a final point I'll make, and I, I've taken a lot of your time, so we can wind down to a conclusion. And, um, I have one question to ask you before before I I let you go, and I'll give you the last word. I, I, you know, like, forget the point about are they a jihadist death cult for a moment and just focus on the point of command and control and nuclear proliferation. Right? You and I both know, and I've heard you talk about, during the Cold War, there were extremely close calls between America and the Soviet Union where we almost went to nuclear war by accident. Right? And and those were the modern most advanced countries in the world with redundant systems of warning, uh, really tightly knit command and control operations. Um, look, that's happened. There was the, the event in Hawaii a couple years ago where a systems operator in Hawaii thought that he was seeing a missile launch from North Korea to Hawaii, and, you know, like that ended up working out because we have so many redundant systems of warning. I absolutely do not trust the Iranian regime, even from the point of view of accidental firings, accidental, um, signals to to not accidentally start a nuclear war. If, if the U.S. and the Soviet Union could come that close, um, obviously Iran can. And from the U.S. point of view, like, I agree with you, it's in, it's in the Iranian regime's self-interest. It's in, it's in any of our adversaries' self-interest for regime preservation for them to snap their fingers and have a nuclear weapon and insulate the regime. It's not in the U.S. interest for, as an American, it is not in our interest for nuclear weapons to proliferate to our adversaries or even to our allies. It would be better if Israel didn't have a nuclear weapon. And, you know, we, we, we persuade South Korea and Japan not to go nuclear because they're under our umbrella. From my point of view, the fewer potential points of contact between nuclear states, basically the better. And so it absolutely is in the American interest to prevent this from happening. And, um, I, I just don't think that we can trust, uh, there's no ideal time to do it, and I don't even know if it has a high odds of success. So, from that point of view, I'm not a cheerleader for it. But I do think that overall, um, that's my view of it. And, and, and so respond to that, and then I'll ask you one more question and give you another chance to respond, and then let you go.

>> Okay, great. Uh, she, I'll try and be brief, but I do, since it's the last point, I do, I do want to make just one point, uh, in general, but just quickly on a couple things that we've been talking about, uh, as far as Joe Kent is concerned, I mean, I, I listened to a Tucker interview. I, I, maybe I just didn't hear it, and I tried Googling it while, while, uh, you were talking to see if I could find it, where he suggested that Israel was behind the assassination of Trump in Butler. Maybe he did. Um, I know he insinuated or said that he wasn't allowed to investigate whether Israel was involved in the, uh, assassination of Charlie Kirk, who was a very, very outspoken critic of.

>> I'll double-check it, and if I'm wrong, I'll cut it out.

>> So, so anyway, I just, but I'm not denying it. I'm just saying I didn't hear that and I couldn't, I couldn't find it. Uh, the other thing I would say is, you know, there are a lot of people who spout a lot of crazy conspiracy theories who are very respected and platformed constantly and treated as credible experts in our discourse. The people who said that Saddam Hussein was in bed with Osama bin Laden, that he would give nuclear weapons to Al-Qaeda, that he had weapons of mass destruction. The people who said that Trump and Russia colluded in order to hack into the DNC emails, which turned out to be a complete fantasy. All the people who lied about COVID. Lots of crazy conspiracy theories that go around, and some end up being disqualifying, and others, for whatever reasons, don't. And and that is one of the double standards that has long concerned me, um, about Iran, and this idea that they're irrational, because look, they just did something that resulted in a bunch of their leaders being killed. I don't think rationality means that you engage in full-scale submission and surrender to whoever happens to be stronger than you. And I do think this has become kind of an American ethos recently, that, oh, anyone, the only rational course is just to avoid conflict and stay alive and never fight with anybody as strong as you. That's why we only go to war with with weaker countries. But the American founding was based on this idea that we were going to go to war with the most powerful empire in the world, which was an incredibly risky thing. A lot of Americans, uh, revolutionary fighters died in that war, and they started that war knowing they were going to die, because the ethos is captured by Patrick Henry, which is, "Give me liberty or give me death." Iran is an extremely proud culture. The Persian civilization has been around for thousands of years, basically where they are. And this idea that, oh, because the United States is stronger or Israel is stronger and can attack them, they have to swallow whatever they're given, they have swallowed a lot. Um, I mentioned a few examples, but I don't think the fact that they're defending themselves and they're not on their knees begging for surrender is proof that they're irrational. I mean, some of the most heroic and noble acts in history have been from people who were willing to give up their own lives for a cause that they believed in. And Persian sovereignty and Iranian sovereignty is a cause that a lot of Iranian leaders believe in and have given their life for, and I don't think that makes them irrational.

The final point I want to make, Coleman, is just like on foreign policy in general. I do think one of the biggest problems we have as Americans is that we naturally see the world through an American prism, which is true of every country, and as a result, we often don't see ourselves in the way that the rest of the world sees us. And that is real. A lot of the violence and aggression and evil in the world just has come from the United States. I mean, Martin Luther King said in his famous 1967 speech on the Vietnam War, he said, "The United States is, quote, the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." And it's the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. I just want to leave you with one point, uh, about why countries feel a need to get a nuclear weapon, why we end up in so many wars. Um, there's this woman named Fiona Hill, who's like a longtime Washington foreign policy advisor. She's also British, very, very hawkish on Russia, on China. And she gave a speech to the EU in 2023 or 2024 where she said, "China is rapidly increasing its influence in places where Europe and the United States have long exclusively dominated, like in Africa and Latin America, all over the world." Basically, China has not fought a war since 1979. That's 47 years that China has emerged as this massive military power with influence all over the world where their interests are protected, and they don't go and fight wars. They don't see wars as an important part of their national survival or self-interest. And I think that model has proven correct. And what she said was the reason so many countries prefer now to go to China to deal with China and away from the United States and their servants in Europe is because they perceive that we are a bully country, that we believe in might is right. That we go around the world attacking people at will. We don't care about international law. We don't care about anything other than the fact that if we can do it and we're stronger, we can attack you at any time. And nobody wants to live in a world with a country that is dominating the world that has that mentality. And I think with this Iran war and the idea that we pay lip service to that war is a last resort, we ought to think about what we ourselves are are spawning, um, and whether or not a lot of these quote unquote threats that come from anti-American sentiment could easily be eradicated if we stop the aggression that sponsored in the first place.

>> Okay. So, I'm going to ask you one last question, and you can have the last word. And I want to thank you again for, you know, being civil, that that we can have like civil and but but strong disagreements is something that I think is is increasingly lost.

>> Totally agree.

>> In the in like the shouting match orgy of of what media has has become, or maybe it's always been that. Um, I want to ask you about your relationship with Tucker Carlson. So, I, I, I, I, uh, watched all, all of your recent episodes in preparation for this, and, you know, I know you as a journalist, and I've seen you say many times that you believe a journalist's job, at least one of a journalist's job, is to hold powerful people to account. In my view, Tucker Carlson is a fairly powerful person in the following sense. He is close to power. He seems to have J.D. Vance on speed dial, right? And probably many other members of of the administration. Poly market right now has him like neck and neck with Ron DeSantis to be the next, uh, Republican nominee for president. Right? So, is he the most powerful guy in the country? No. But he's, he's a hell of a lot more powerful, uh, than than you and I. Um, and routinely in the past 5 years, I've heard him say and promulgate lies to an extent that is really shocking to me. Like, whether it's "2020 election was stolen," or in his words, "Pizzagate is basically real," "alien entities live underwater and they're spiritual beings and they've been here for 50,000 years and the government has been covering it up," "Alex Jones is a supernatural prophet who, uh, predicted 9/11." Now, these are not jokes, by the way. Like, these could be made as funny jokes by a comic, and I would have no problem with it, but he's saying these things with a furrowed brow as totally true, not hyperbole, not not jokes. And so, do you, as a journalist, feel that you have a responsibility to hold him accountable for the lies that he's promulgating to millions in his audience?

>> So, I, I won't dispute, I won't dispute any of the examples, um, except to say that on the Alex Jones one, you go back and look what Alex Jones was saying in the '90s, and I, I, there's a documentary about him that's fantastic by Alex Lee Moyer, um, that documents his his work in the 1990s. And he, he, I'm not saying he predicted 9/11 like in some clairvoyant sense or with a Ouija board, but the the conflict that ended up resulting, he predicted with extreme precision in a way that I think anybody who listened to it with an open mind would would give him credit for having done, which doesn't take away from all the other things that he's done. Um, I would also say that we really pick and choose like when we ex, I mean, we talked before about what kinds of people who remain in good standing in the discourse who have spouted the most insane conspiracy theories, but because they serve the U.S. foreign policy interest or agenda or the U.S. security state or some other powerful interest, we we don't consider them disqualified. I gave a bunch of examples. And yet then when we pick and choose like, "Oh, look, this person has said something that seems unproven or weird or conspiratorial." Suddenly we're supposed to denounce them and and and kick them out of the public discourse, or at least announce them for that particular lie. You know, our country is is founded on the idea that there's a lot of truths that are unknown, that we can't prove, that are supernatural, that come from God, that aren't visible, that are unexplainable by science. We have lived in a country that has been the byproduct of serious conspiracy theories, not just imaginary ones, that has caused people to lose trust and faith in the government. And I do think you can go too far on a spectrum where you're too cynical about the U.S. government and start disbelieving everything it says. But I, but I think there's far less of that, and it's far less dangerous than the other side of the spectrum where people just recite U.S. government claims as gospel and believe everything they're being told by the government, because that's proven to be far more dangerous.

In Tucker's case, um, you know, if you go and ask Tucker, he will tell you that, you know, for a long time, I was his harshest critic. He said I wrote, you know, the meanest things about him. Um, but I actually, in the last decade, absolutely consider Tucker to be an overall force for good. I mean, in obviously, if you're opposed to the Iran war, as as most Americans are, um, Tucker's efforts to stop this war were herculean, and he sacrificed his relationship with President Trump, who ended up denouncing him publicly. He did not get his way. That that war did start. There's been many other instances where where Tucker did not get his way. Um, and President Trump, you know, most people would not jeopardize a relationship with President Trump for a cause because of how valuable that relationship is. Tucker has repeatedly done so. I'm not saying everything Tucker has said has been in agreement with me. I'm not saying it hasn't deviated from the facts. I'm not saying that, um, he doesn't occasionally wander into conspiracy theory. I think that's true of a lot of people, in fact, most people. But I don't feel a part, you know, my my reporting, my journalism has focused on the people who can start wars, like the U.S. security state, and the people who can spy on us, like the NSA, and the people who go around the world killing people, like the CIA, and the president who can start wars and has, in every instance of my lifetime except Trump's first term, started wars all over the world. That's my focus. There are a lot of people who say crazy things in in in our culture and in the environment, but until people can show me that Tucker Carlson is responsible for wars and death, you know, this is, I actually, when when someone asked me why I interviewed Nick Fuentes on my show, I was on Piers Morgan's show, and and that question came up, and I, you know, I said, "Look how many people you interview who who have actually have huge amounts of blood on their hands, people who supported the Israeli destruction of Gaza or the invasion of Iraq or all these assassinations around the world or coups and funding of of horrific militias. Like, I'm going to, in that list of priorities, suddenly decide that Tucker Carlson, who I do think has done far more good than harm on free speech, on foreign policy, on wars, on economic populism. That's going to be the target of the person I'm going to bicker with about things that he said that I don't disagree with. No, that's, he's not even close to the top of my list. The fact that I have, I consider him a personal friend probably weighs into that as well. It's one of the reasons why I try and keep a distance from political and media circles, and living in Brazil has helped me with that. But the much bigger factor is on my list of things that I think need checking. There's no shortage of people attacking Tucker Carlson every single day. Um, but there's a shortage of people attacking all the other institutions, the much more damaging and powerful ones that I that I listed.

Okay, Glenn Greenwald, thank you much for. Thank you so much for doing the show. And, um, is your show still called Systems Update, or are you doing something else?

>> I basically have stopped that daily show is just too much. You probably empathize with how many shows you do. So we're back at Substack, but, um, yeah, I do want to just take the time to thank you, Coleman. It's always been a pleasure to talk to you. We definitely have disagreed more than agreed in the last couple years, but I anticipated this would be a good, civil, and yet very spirited conversation, as you said, and it was. And I'm always really happy to to talk to you whenever you want.

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Glenn Greenwald vs. Coleman Hughes Debate: Does Israel Control U.S. Foreign Policy?

Transcription