Transcription
But how can we have good relationships with Iran when the American government is controlled by the donor class, uh, which is a basically foreign lobbying group for Israel? Well, we can't. That's the problem.
I mean, if you think about the situation we're in, okay, here we have this situation in Gaza where we are basically backing a genocide. Then we have terrible relations with Iran, and we stand a chance of getting into a serious war with Iran in the fall of 2025, and this is in large part driven by Israel. Then you look at Ukraine, we're in a total, disa, totally disastrous situation there. We ended up, as a result, pushing the Russians into the arms of the Chinese. And then with regard to India, as we were talking about before, with these secondary sanctions on India, we've pushed the Indians into the arms of both the Russians and the Chinese. None of this makes any sense. And we're in this situation that is, I think, strategically disastrous.
Wow. I've noticed some, uh, public, uh, criticism of Prime Minister Netanyahu's, um, efforts to invade, destroy Gaza City, take over Gaza, however you want to characterize it. And they seem to be coming from some significant people: the head of the IDF, the head of Shinbet, uh, Netanyahu's own head of national security, whoever that is, and Netanyahu's own foreign minister. Are these performative or substantive? Can, can any amount of domestic pressure, short of the collapse of his government, stop Netanyahu from his continued slaughter, genocide, and starvation?
Well, there are substantive concerns because the chief of staff understands full well that Israel cannot defeat Hamas militarily. And the chief of staff surely understands that what Netanyahu really wants to do is he wants to drive all of the Palestinians who are in the northern part of Gaza, that's Gaza City. He wants to drive them southward, get them concentrated in the south, and then eventually ethnically cleanse, uh, Gaza or murder most of them, either way. And the IDF chief of staff understands that that is a logistical nightmare. Uh, so again, it's not only impossible from the IDF chief of staff's point of view to defeat Hamas militarily, but the idea of moving all those Palestinians, concentrating them, and then getting them out of Gaza is not a feasible alternative at this point in time. So the chief of staff says, "Let's have a ceasefire now. Let's work out a deal." But that's the last thing that, uh, that Netanyahu could do because it would represent a failure of his policy, because his principal policy goal here is to ethnically cleanse Gaza and then eventually to ethnically cleanse the West Bank. And if he accepts a ceasefire now and that turns into a permanent ceasefire, he's failed to achieve his principal goal. And moreover, his secondary goal, which is defeating Hamas, has not been achieved either. And then furthermore, he'd have to face the music once he, uh, left office, and he would surely leave office shortly after that. And he would have to face the music both on the legal front and the fact that he was in the driver's seat on October 7th when Israel was attacked.
What is the, um, likely geopolitical effect, maybe pushback or blowback is the wrong word, to the president of the United States, uh, carrying out, uh, a public execution of someone never charged or convicted of a crime and then boasting about it and saying more of this is going to come? I speak, of course, of the, uh, murders of these people in a speedboat 1,300 miles, uh, from the United States, outside the waters, international waters, but close to Venezuela.
I actually find it shocking, uh, in a certain sense, that Trump would do this. Uh, I mean, we don't even know who those people were on that boat and what they were doing on the boat. Uh, he tells a story that these were drug dealers and these were drugs that were headed towards the United States. Uh, he has provided no evidence to support that argument. And as you point out, there is good reason to think, uh, that that's not the case. Uh, and since they were so far away from the United States, wouldn't it have made more sense to board the ship and or board the boat and find help? Of course. I mean, suppose they made a mistake. Suppose they're wrong. I mean, the New York Times, I realize it's the New York Times. Maybe they have an axe to grind, but they interviewed the former head of drug interdiction for the Justice Department, a person who presumably knows what he's talking about. And he said the gang that Trump identified, Trenda Aragua, that he said was carrying fentanyl, does not deal in fentanyl. When these gangs carry, uh, drugs on the high seas, they only have two people, not 11, because they're concerned about exactly what happened happening. This was more likely than not either human, uh, smuggling, voluntary or involuntary, meaning these people paid to get from one country, uh, to the next. Where's James Madison's ghost? This is why you have due process so the wrong people are not killed. Moreover, even if they were what Trump said they were, and even if they were doing what Trump said they were doing, the penalty for that is not death.
I agree completely. I've heard that the Navy said that what should be done here is that those ship, the ship, the boat should have been boarded. That's what the Navy was in favor of doing. That would have been absolutely lawful if in United States waters. Yes. And, and, and Trump overruled them. But I'd make a more general point, one that should be music to your ears, but the more time goes by, the more I've come to appreciate the importance of laws and rules. It's very, very difficult to run a society, to run a country, if you don't have a set of rules and laws that almost everybody respects almost all of the time. And even at the international level, you need certain rules and laws. I understand that they're not going to be respected anywhere near as often as national law or domestic laws are. But nevertheless, you need international law. Uh, you need laws on the home front, and it's important that people obey those laws. But we have a president who believes he's above the law. He just doesn't care about the law.
What do you think the reaction in the Kremlin and Beijing was to this type of public execution and boasting? I think it's something that they've come to expect. I think that they recognize, just like you and I recognize, that this is what the United States has become. Uh, it's really a thoroughly depressing story. Look, I'm a realist. I understand that the world is a nasty place and sometimes you have to do, uh, really hard-headed things. I, I understand that. But we are so far beyond that, so, so reckless, so lacking in any sense of common decency.