Trump EMBARRASSES Himself In DISASTER Press Conference

0:00 just generally. I mean, you see these photos of these emaciated, literally starving to death or starved to death children and it's just impossible. It's the worst thing I've ever seen. It's just it's impossible as a parent not to imagine that being your child and being incapable of protecting them. Yeah. You know, that's where my brain always goes. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favro. I'm John Lovevet. Tommy Vtor. On today's show, uh, stick around later for a big announcement about a live in-person event we'll be holding this fall. That's the teaser. Uh, we're also going to talk about Trump's new alliance with Epstein's convicted co-conspirator as a way to keep her from talking, the new taxes we'll all be paying on stuff we buy from Europe, and the 1 billion we might end up paying for Trump's new luxury jet. Then you'll hear Tommy's

0:45 interview with Herets's columnist Amir TBone about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, why a deal to end the war has been so elusive, and Trump and Netanyahu's relationship. There were quite a few developments in Gaza over the weekend. So, let's start there. Uh, if you've been following the story, you've probably seen that since the Israeli government broke its ceasefire with Hamas in March and blocked all food or aid from entering the territory, Gaza has become hell on earth. Israel has now destroyed most Palestinian homes, buildings, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, and farms. They've killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, mostly children, wounded hundreds of thousands more, and have displaced nearly 2 million Palestinians, almost the entire population. In late May, Israel started distributing small amounts of food at

1:31 four locations run by American contractors. But Israeli forces have shot more than a thousand people who've tried to get that food. And now the UN says that every single resident of Gaza is at risk of starvation. The World Food Program says 100,000 people are in dire need of treatment for malnutrition, which has claimed the lives of 48 people in July alone, 20 of them children. Israel has blamed the UN and Hamas for the hunger crisis, though senior Israeli military officials told the New York Times there is no proof that Hamas has been systematically stealing UN food and supplies. On Monday, two of Israel's leading human rights organizations said for the first time that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. International pressure from some of Israel's closest allies, like the UK,

2:17 Canada, Australia, Germany, and France, which chose to officially recognize Palestinian statehood last week, finally led Netanyahu to announce daily pauses in the fighting in three places so that Palestinians can get food. Uh, though even that small step doesn't seem to be doing too much. And none of this has stopped BB from denying the reality of the atrocities he's committing. Here he is on Sunday. Israel is presented as though we are applying a campaign of starvation in Gaza. What a boldfaced lie. There is no policy of starvation in Gaza and there is no starvation in Gaza. We enable humanitarian aid throughout

3:03 the duration of the war to enter Gaza. Otherwise, there would be no Gazins. And what is interdicted the supply of humanitarian aid is one force, Kamas. Is no starvation in Gaza, says BB. As for Israel's closest ally and largest source of military aid, us, the United States government. Here's a sampling of how Donald Trump answered questions about Gaza during his golf trip to Scotland over the weekend. Well, you know, we gave 60 uh million dollars two weeks ago and nobody even acknowledged it for food and nobody said, "Gee, thank you very much." And it would be nice to have at least a thank you. Do have to take care of the humanitarian needs at the on the what they used to call the Gaza Strip. You don't hear that

3:49 line too much anymore. You don't hear the Gaza Strip. But we're going to be getting some good strong food. We can save a lot of people. I mean, some of those kids are That's real starvation stuff. I see it. And you can't fake that. Real starvation. But, uh, no thank you notes from any of the starving children. Uh, from that was just who who did he want a a thank you from? Did some kid there have his number? Did he want like to give him a call? Fire off a thank you note. Just um maybe thank you for the bombs. Those are far more expensive than you know. You know, it's like JD Vans. They're all they they all want people to thank them. It's very weird. You know, Zilinski's got to thank them. The kids in Gaza's got to thank them. Uh let's start with you guys' general reactions to the developments in Gaza over the last week. And Tommy, maybe you can tell

4:35 us um what you think about the pause in military activity that BB announced. Yeah. I mean, I I think just generally, I mean, you see these photos of these emaciated literally starving to death or starved to death children, and it's just impossible. It's the worst thing I've ever seen. It's just it's impossible as a parent not to imagine that being your child and being incapable of protecting them. Yeah. You know, that's where my brain always goes. Um, and what is so enraging is that this was not just predictable, it was predicted. Like taking aid distribution away from the UN, giving it to this brand new organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation that just emerged out of nowhere recently was destined to fail catastrophically. And every expert said as much. Um, one example why you mentioned how the GHS GHF has four aid distribution points.

5:21 The UN had 400. Um, and so what that does, this new system forces Gazins to make these long dangerous walks through an active war zone to get food. There are all these instances of the IDF or uh contractors shooting them or drones going off, you know, near these distribution points. Hundreds of people have been killed like 6 700 800 um gazins have been killed near eight distribution points. There was a a former GHF contractor who served in the US special forces did an interview with the BBC. He said, quote, "He has never witnessed the level of brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against the civilian population, an unarmed, starving population." This was a guard for the GHF. And he and he said he fought ISIS and the Taliban. ISIS and the Taliban. And it's by the way no longer anonymous that they can claim, oh, these are fake or anony this person on the record on

6:06 camera describing this, someone who was there, US, Yeah. US special forces veteran um also describes as like amateur-ish, right? Like this is a thing that was just stood up. It just like the processes are terrible. The the individual treatment of people are terrible. So your questions about these uh the humanitarian pauses that are happening, the pauses of military activity. I mean they're good, but it's like the definition of too little too late because there's no onoff switch for a famine. Um uh Jeremy Khan Nandike uh the president of Refugees International has been sounding the alarm about this how difficult it is to control a famine once it reaches the tipping point and and the tipping point is like you sort of see clusters of deaths. That's how you know um this is happening and it will require a massive surge of aid, food, malnutrition treatment, clean water, sanitation, healthcare, not just these PR air drops or a few

6:52 pauses. And so I'm glad there is this like acute focus on the famine, but we need to also focus just as much on permanently ending the war because as you mentioned like the death toll before this famine has been catastrophic. Gaza Health Ministry says 55,000. Other studies say closer to 80,000. Um 70% of structures destroyed. And and so like the only way these the living Israeli hostages are going to survive and get out alive is to permanently end the war. And it's going to take a massive diplomatic push to get there because Netanyahu is extending the war for political purposes. Yeah. Look, Netanyahu blames Hamas uh for aid not reaching people and yet under international pressure, he can get more aid in to Gaza. This happened repeatedly. The the Times published this long and deeply reported story uh about

7:40 Netanyahu's conduct before and during the war. And there's this scene that describes uh Netanyahu facing pressure from the right internally to not allow aid uh into Gaza and from the Biden administration at the time to allow aid into Gaza and he ultimately relented to the pressure from the Biden administration in that instance. He responds to pressure. How can it be that it is Hamas's fault or the UN's fault uh and not Israel's fault that aid is not getting to people who need it when under pressure that policy changes? It's happened multiple uh times. Yeah. The um the propaganda and the lies in the face of like what the entire rest of the world is seeing and has been documented is just really it like drove me insane over the weekend. The um you

8:26 know like the the footage of all the UN trucks and it's like they're just sitting around and I think Apac tweeted this and Israel's been talking about this and then as soon as he announces the pause you see pictures of the UN trucks just coming on into Gaza. So, it's like, is anyone gonna You just lied to everyone and now you're just going to pretend that it was you're not going to even correct yourself or anything. They just don't care. The other the other part of this, too, is if you only allow in a fraction of the aid that is required. It is not surprising that the people who will get that aid are the people with guns. It is not surprising that you have chaotic and dangerous scenes among people who are starving and desperate. And experts in this, former envoys to the region, who work for Democrats and Republicans, people who have delivered aid to the region, will say the answer is more aid. If you have enough aid, it

9:13 can't be commoditized. If you have enough aid, if if Palestinians are no longer terrified that today's truck will be gone tomorrow, right? If people can trust that there will be enough food, then all of a sudden uh uh these these these distribution points by the UN become less chaotic. By the way, this new organization stood up by uh the Trump administration's allies, right? Like they are backing the IDF and doing these extremely controlled distribution points where they're shooting at people uh and uh uh they claim they're shooting in the air, but we lots of reports of hundreds if not a thousand people dying because of it. Um to to maintain control at these four points at other when the UN is distributing aid at these hundreds of places, there are times where people are overrunning. What do they do? They back off and let people take the food,

9:59 right? They don't shoot people under desperate circumstances. And imagine if you have a crowd of people where it's like you you literally can't move and the idea starts shooting in the air as warning shots to try to back people off, but you can't back off. Like there's massive crowds of people and people are desperate and so like but the other the thing I know that people are probably going to be tweeting at us as they listen to this is Hamas and the war right now as they release the hostages. And it's what I want to say to you is you can repeat that talking point or you can actually get them home because Hamas is a terrorist organization. They're not good actors. We should not trust them. We should not expect them to act in this, you know, act in a way that we would want them to, right? Like the hostages are their only leverage. They're the only hope of releasing the hostages is through a

10:44 deal. And that deal has to include ending the war permanently. And that is what Netanyahu refuses to agree to. And that is that there you can talk about all like air and I go through this. There's all the sequencing and you know the phasing of hostage release and prisoners from Israeli uh Palestinians and Israeli prisons getting released. The big sticking points are Hamas wants a deal that permanently ends the war and Netanyahu won't do that because it will collapse his government and he will be out of power and he is facing corruption charges and he could go to jail. That's it. The idea that if if only everyone who was criticizing Israel would call on Hamas to release the hostages, suddenly Hamas would release the hostages and all would be well. It is it is absurd that we're still doing this in July of 2025 as this war has dragged on.

11:29 Talking about what Hamas can or cannot do. You know what? We're not funding Hamas's military. Hamas isn't accepting diplomatic pressure, international pressure. The whole point uh BB stated goal when they started the the blockade was to put pressure the blockade of food into Gaza was to put pressure on Hamas. Since that time they've recovered what one hostage an Israeli American hostage and that was like a side deal with with the United States that Israel isn't. So it was a by Netanyahu's own like his own stated goals. It's been a failure um to get to pressure Hamas to release the hostages. And what what it's done instead is just starved a bunch of people and led to like a staggering loss of life. Hamas Hamas started this war. Hamas has shown

12:16 incredible disregard for the lives of the people it claims to represent. It is a monstrous organization. Uh we should demand better of Israel and that it yes Hamas does not is Hamas could could save Palestinian lives right now. So can Israel. We hold Israel to a higher standard because we uh it is an ally of ours who we fund, who we ostensibly believe uh uh has a moral and ethical compass that that it at that at some point in its history uh uh claim to believe in. So the idea that like oh well, you know, it's Hamas's fault. Okay, sure. I agree. Hamas is responsible ultimately uh for the ongoing suffering of the Palestinian people because they hold the hostages uh because they committed uh an act of

13:02 terrorism. uh that a monstrous war crime. Fine. Okay. So what? So Palestinians have to die. That's that's the answer. I Israel can do better. So can we. So can the United States. We have the capacity to go and and do something about this. So does Europe. So I mean it's just Donald Trump could end this war with one call to Netanyahu. Donald Trump has so much political capital in Israel after the Iran strikes. Netanyahu needs him. Netanyahu wants his political backing. He also wants US military and intelligence support. Um, but instead of doing that, instead of getting the Nobel Peace Prize that he wants, Trump has made things exponentially worse by announcing a few months back a plan to ethnically cleanse the entire Gaza Strip and turn it into a resort town. And what that did in practice was make it so much harder to get a deal done to end the war

13:49 because the far right in Israel was like, "That's on the table. Ethnic cleansing on is on the table. Controlling Gaza fully, permanently is on the table. We want that." You have a right. that that heritage minister uh over the weekend last week, he said, "All Gaza will be Jewish. The government is pushing for Gaza being wiped out. Thank God we are wiping out this evil." And I realized, you know, Netanyahu then later said, "Oh, he doesn't speak for the government." Blah, blah. It's like, well, he's one of your ministers. He's also the same guy that said they should consider using nuclear weapons in the Gaza Strip and then was what? Uh, suspended briefly and then reinstated. But I mean, Israel Katz, the defense minister, announced a plan to like focus everybody into one city in Gaza and then push them all out. It's it's ethic cleansing. Yeah. And they're like they're like they're advertising their ethical cleansing. Yes.

14:35 Um but to your point about Trump, like what do you make of his his shifting and typically incoherent comments this just the last few days he did the thank you thing and then it seems like he had a bunch of meetings with European leaders and then we got we're recording this Monday. Then we got his comments today which was like, "Oh yeah, the starvation is bad and those kids look really hungry and we got to do something." I don't know what to make of it. Like he's just all over the place. He's seeing it on television and he knows they're bad and he is a creature of television and he watched cable news viewer Trump again. He knows he remembers nation's biggest television fan. The the the feed the children ads uh from the 80s and 90s that were all over television are seared in his memory. He knows people don't like it. Uh he knows it's wrong. Uh and uh he doesn't want to be responsible for it. He said uh he also said we're going to set up food

15:20 centers where people can walk in and no boundaries. We're not going to have fences. They see the food. It's all there but nobody's at it because they have fences set up that nobody can get in. It's crazy what's going on over there. It's so crazy. Just is just like a dispassionate observer. It's it's what it's just it's somebody who was kind of paying attention to a briefing about the facts that we were like it's like that is the transmuted version of the facts we were just describing uh that he can barely hold on to. So, he's getting some information about this and about Israel's culpability uh for the lack of it. Well, we remember uh it was either during the campaign or during the transition, but basically Trump's problem was like, I just don't want to see this on TV, you know? I want I want BB to just finish up the war because I don't I don't like the images because he doesn't like the mess. It just I think real like military experts in Israel

16:07 like the former defense minister Yo Golant said I like a year ago that like the military value of the fighting has been exhausted. You know I I heard today I was listening to like a Harets's podcast or something like I think the IDF has destroyed 25% of Hamas's tunnels. If the goal is 100% like how long are we going to be there? You know it's like the organization is is decimated. There were something like 30,000 Hamas fighters when the war started and there's been at least 55,000 casualties since. Yeah. His top generals told him a year ago that there was no longer a military advantage to continuing the war. There the the reports of them uh taking a hospital uh then withdrawing then literally going in a circle taking the

16:53 same taking the same territory back this time destroying the hospital. Uh and we there's just lots of look Benjamin Netanyahu his coalition uh depends on these right-wing ministers uh and they told him if he uh goes uh agrees to a truce or ceasefire he won't have a government and he put his own personal political interests uh get against the interest of the hostages and Israel's long-term interest and here we are a year later uh Israel's a pariah nation uh the the suffering of the Palestinians has continued uh thousands Hundreds if not thousands have died since that truce was on uh the table a year ago. Uh he lifted the short-term ceasefire. And by the way, you know, the the like it is impossible to measure uh deaths caused

17:39 by malnutrition and starvation. You will have specific numbers of people whose deaths are ascribed to that. But hospitals not having supplies, people being weakened to infection, to miscarriage, to all kinds of horrors, the the like the toll is ongoing. you will it is very difficult to measure just how many people are being hurt if not killed uh by the fact that food and medicine and aid is so scarce uh uh at least largely because uh Israel has prevented enough aid from reaching people in a sustained um in a sustained way. I got to say to I mean I you know it's my fault for being on Twitter all weekend, but you know the New York Post ran this story about uh the there's a picture that was in the New York Times about a mother holding her emaciated

18:27 starving child uh you know and his stomach was distended. It's a horrific picture. And the New York Post ran this story, you know, actually the boy is suffering from genetic disorders. And so it wasn't just starvation and the boy's going to get medical treatment. And then Israel, you know, the Israeli Twitter account tweeted out the same thing. And I saw it's not just randos and Twitter, like actual pundits, other people being like, well, the New York Times ran this picture. And I'm like, what? Where? What kind of lack of humanity do you have when you're like, oh, this kid, in addition to being hungry, also had a genetic disorder, so therefore all the other pictures we've seen of like little babies dying, like we shouldn't take seriously. I just I don't

19:13 It's a It's horrifying that this is where we are right now. This is where some people are. I'll also say it's it's it's a form of like weaponized anti-semitism unspoken because uh the it's that oh all of these people that are saying this all these reports right these are people that hate Israel hate the Jews are anti-ionist and so they're reporting on what uh the the the Hamas officials in Gaza are saying uncritically or they're uh going with anonymous sources they will drum up anything uh to attack Israel right And there is anti-semitism. There are people that are biased against Israel. There are people uh uh that um mischaracterize uh what is happening uh in the conflict. But it requires viewing

20:00 the all of these organizations as lying. It requires the images we can see with our own eyes uh uh to deny them. Uh it it just requires such a broad conspiracy uh to believe that this is all being cooked up to damage Israel. uh and uh you know they can they can try it but I I just first of all Donald Trump doesn't agree. Uh Marjorie Taylor Green doesn't agree. Uh a lot of right-wingers are starting to understand uh uh that this is wrong. So, you know, they can try, but I I just don't think it's it's working. It's all it's just dehumanization. You know, I mean, there's just so much the rhetoric. It's so dehumanizing. They treat Palestinians and Gazins like they're not human beings. Like everyone's part of Hamas. Like everyone's a target. Doesn't matter if you're Yeah. We don't feed our enemies. We

20:46 don't feed our enemies. Yeah. It's it's just it's horrific. And look, like I'll say it for the thousandth time. I think what Hamas did on October 7th was an evil act of terror. I think it's indefensible. I think that no one can ever justify harming civilians. But like the the rhetoric you always hear like when you talk about stats coming out of the Gaza Health Ministry, they're like, "Oh, you have to say that that's a Hamasrun organization." It's like, "Sure, okay, it is, but you know, the the numbers they've released have generally been viewed as trustworthy." And in fact, independent outlets think the casualty count is much higher in part because so many people are buried under rubble and this war has been raging for 662 days now. I also just like, yeah, Hamas is monstrous and you have Palestinians who have no advocate because you have uh Benu

21:31 Netanyahu who's putting his own political interest ahead of the interest of the hostages and of Israel uh at the great expense of Palestinian lives. and you have pal Palestinian lives in the hands of a terrorist organization that launched this attack on October 7th knowing it would lead to untold suffering of of Palestinians in Gaza. And so yeah, it's like Hamas is awful. These people uh uh have no one who is speaking for them and uh uh in in Gaza or in Israel. I saw uh a group of 21 Senate Democrats uh are calling on the Trump administration to stop funding the GHF, the Kaza Humanitarian Foundation that's Israeli backed and uh run by American contractors and and put the UN back in charge of aid distribution. I

22:18 also saw Senator Angus King of Maine today put out a statement. Uh he said, "I am through supporting the actions of the current Israeli government and will advocate and vote for an end to any United States support whatsoever until there is a demonstrable change in the direction of Israeli policy." I mean, good for Angus King. Um I, you know, like I don't want my taxes funding this. I don't want the people who represent us voting for that funding. I don't want the people who represent us taking money from Apac. Apac over the over the last couple days accused Bernie Sanders of blood liel just because Bernie Sanders was criticizing uh the the war and the government. Um and I don't think Democratic candidates should be should should take money from Apac or or vote to fund military support for Israel

23:03 anymore. Like I I really don't at the like it's just in this government. Absolutely not. And that especially includes I think the next Democratic nominee for president. Yeah. I mean, like the this these are tall orders in the Trump administration. But the things I want to see Democrats at least calling for is cutting off military assistance to Israel. It's a rich country, by the way. They don't need our three billion a year. And hands up, right, Barack Obama signed a 10-year for 3.3 billion a year. Like, so we are part of the problem here. Let's correct it. Uh I would like to see talk about sanctioning Israeli government officials who use genocidal rhetoric or who talk about ethnic cleansing openly. We should support a ceasefire resolution at the UN. We should demand that international press be allowed into the Gaza Strip to report on what's happening without an IDF minder. It's insane that the press still can't go into Gaza and cover what's happening. And I also think like

23:48 there has to be a total mindset change in the Democratic party. Yeah. When the war ends, we are not going back to the pre-occtober 7th status quo where because it's not where the party is. It's not where the world is. We are not going to shovel billions a year in military aid. We're not going to veto every effort uh to recognize a Palestinian state at the UN. We should not take money from Apac. Um, and like I will hold out hope for better political leadership in the US and in Israel, but we have to also recognize that the Biden era hug BB Netanyahu strategy has to be thrown in the trash can for ever. Netanyahu is a bad actor. He's continuing a war for political purposes. He bombs Lebanon when he wants to. He bombs Iran when he wants to. He bombs Syria when he wants to. The IDF, they literally bombed the Syrian army headquarters two weeks ago in Damascus. Like, this is not a partner we can count

24:35 on. This is not someone who is like leading to calm and stability in the region which should be a core interest and like the only good thing is like that you know Apac calling Bernie Sand Sanders blood label or accusing of blood label a few years ago I feel like would have been a big deal but that rhetoric has been so overused that I think the effect has worn off and it people are not scared anymore and I think that's good. They're not scared but it's it's just it's incredible to me how many Democratic politicians still haven't I mean 21 Senate Democrats wrote that letter. That's great. That's not the whole caucus. Uh Angus King, like you know how many other Senate Democrats have called for cutting off funding? Like at this point, cutting off military funding for a government that is starving 2 million people and like advertising how they're ethnically cleansing the Palestinians seems like the least we can do. Yeah. Like it just especially if we're

25:22 going to head into a primary like table stakes is going to be no more military aid for Israel. That's like, you know, I don't understand how the argument in favor of it. Uh and and beyond that, I I do think, you know, France just recognized Palestinian statehood. You know, I I went and looked at the Apac memo on why that that was so bad. And the point it makes is for 40 years uh Democratic and Republican administrations have made clear that uh recognizing uh the state of Palestine must only come uh from negotiations. Where's that gotten us? Yeah. Over over 40 years, right? are being the the staunch ally in the lone vote in the security council uh to um uh to prevent uh Palestin Palestine from being recognized. So I I do think we need to like what does it mean for the United

26:08 States to support uh Israel's right to exist and defend itself uh after this war and it will have to look very different and that will start I think by recognizing the profound shift in the power dynamic uh after Israel has leveled uh the Gaza Strip and by the way as Netanyahu has um promoted and sort of stood by as the West Bank has become uh uh even more settled over the last what how many I don't know what percent the expansion of settlements been dramatic. Yeah. And the violence and the violence in the West Bank. Yeah. Against the Palestinians. So there will just will have to be a shift. And I and I do think that will mean being uh putting far more pressure on Israel. And that's what I think Democrats want. By the way, that's what the country wants. And when you when you

26:54 pull Israelis, they say they want a ceasefire. Like is is Israelis want the hostages returned through uh uh a negotiated settlement. And by the way, that's the way in which the vast majority of hostages who were returned were able to be returned. Yeah. We'll say like it's funny talking to Amir for in the interview today. Israelis talk so much more bluntly about their criticisms of their own government than Americans do. Americans are so scared because of, you know, sort of groups like Apac accusing of blood liel or people like uh Jonathan Greenblat at the ADL who accused me of anti-semitism because I said Netanyahu started a war that he needed Trump to finish, which is objectively true. want to talk about Iran, by the way. But, you know, I do think the Democratic Party is way behind where its base is right now and needs to catch up. one. Two, I hope that in this

27:42 acute moment of interest um in the horrors of this famine and the need to end this war that we can find a moment to build a broader coalition that goes well beyond the Democratic party because the the the kind of the left got very mad at me on Twitter over the weekend for saying this. But I feel strongly that the coalition that has a chance of pressuring Donald Trump in this moment to end the war in Gaza or to force Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza has to be as broad as possible. It's the furthest left to the furthest right like kind of the isolationist Rand Paul Thomas Masty types and then everyone in between and that includes people who supported the war and now they don't. That means people who are uncomfortable calling it a genocide because of the legacy of that word and the Holocaust and how it makes them feel. And I'm talk mostly talking my tweet said people. I was talking about average people but we

28:27 should also recognize that politicians we don't agree with on like Marjorie Taylor Green could be very influential and important allies in this fight because she is Trump's ear. And so like what that means in practice is let's welcome people into the tent for the purposes of making this argument this push to end this war. Like we got to pull the same direction for a bit. That doesn't mean there's no accountability forever or buddies forever. We won't vote out. People that supported you know shoveling money uh to to the IDF through the duration of u the fighting even when it got really bad. But like just can we just I would love to see some sort of organizing effort around pressuring Trump and Netanyahu now. Yeah, you know, it's classic story of politics is you start from the goal that you want to achieve and then you work backwards to figure out how to get

29:13 to the goal, right? It sounds simple, but it's like people lose that in the social media mess, right? Which is the goal is to end the war, end the starvation in Gaza. And as you said, Tommy, Trump has a lot of power to do this. And so then the question is, how do you pressure Trump to do it? Y that's it. And then you build the coalition to do that. and and just you know right now Benjamin Netanyahu uh has Trump but Trump won't be there forever and the what Democrats are saying now about what they will do when they regain power matters. It's funny it's in the same way uh we need to be signaling to corporations uh that are capitulating to Trump that there will be an after. We need to be signaling to allies and other countries around the world that there will be an after. I think the more that Democrats now are saying that there will be uh increased pressure on Israel up to

29:59 and including recognizing a Palestinian state, right, the the the that cudgel being real like they were Benjamin Netanyahu responds to pressure in the same way people pretend Trump doesn't, people pretend BB doesn't, but he does. It's happening internationally, too. I mean, you mentioned the French example, but there's also a huge there's a letter from like 220 or 240 MPs to cure Starmer calling on him to cut off military support to Israel because David Lammy, the foreign secretary of the UK, who's a good guy, a friend, he's been on Pay the World a bunch of times, um, had some really harsh words for the Israeli government, but they need to be backed by actions. That's what we're all everybody's calling for, action. Today's presenting sponsor is Simply Safe Home Security. There's a lot of performative, tough on crime talk out there. Well, Simply Safe Home Security actually is all about being effective against crime.

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33:03 quality culinary masterpieces for a fraction of restaurant takeout prices. Subscription start as low as $11 a meal. That's the other thing. It's really affordable. Wow. Skip deliveries, pause, or cancel any time. Let me tell you about the heating up. You can heat it in the microwave, but if you have time, you can also reheat it in the oven or like in a in an air fryer. And then the quality is even. There you go. So, get what you're craving. Try the freshest, best tasting meal delivery made by your favorite celebrity chefs. Go to cookunity.com/crookedfree or enter code crookedfree before checkout for free premium meals for life. That's free premium meals for life by using code crookedfree or going to cook.com/crookedfree. Terms and conditions apply. Go to cookunity.com for details. Speaking of Kier Starmer, he was uh standing with Trump in Scotland uh during the press

33:49 conference when Trump made the Gaza comments and and then he also had to be there for Trump getting a few questions about his late friend and fellow enigma, Jeffrey Epstein. Uh here's how Trump answered. I don't do drawings. I'm not a drawing person. I don't do drawings. Sometimes people say, "Would you draw a building and I'll draw four lines and a little roof?" I don't do drawings of women. That I can tell you. Now, with that being said, they say there were many letters done by many people and in many big people, you know, big successful people because he did something that was inappropriate. He hired help and I said, "Don't ever do that again." He stole people that work for me. I said, "Don't ever do that again." He did it again. And by the way, I never went to the island. And Bill

34:34 Clinton went there supposedly uh 28 times. I've I never had the privilege of going to his island. Uh and I did turn it down, but a lot of people in Palm Beach were invited to his island. Uh in one of my very good moments, I turned it down. I didn't want to go to his island. Never had the privilege. So, you know, we went through the whole landscape there. Um first he was talking about the the birthday message. Uh he doesn't draw he doesn't draw women. Um then we got to the island where he keeps saying that Bill Clinton went 28 times which is not supported by any facts that we know of. Um he didn't have the privilege to go there. He was also talking about uh why he had the falling out with Jeffrey Epstein uh years ago and the White House

35:21 has been saying that uh that Trump kicked Jeffrey Epstein out of Mara Lago because he was a quote creep. Uh but Trump there seems to say that actually he kicked him out because he poached some employees from him at Mara Lago. I don't know guys. What do you think? Yeah. So first of all, there are always there's been these sort of unsubstantiated anonymous reports that actually Trump kicked uh Epstein out of Mara Lago because he was a creep and he was hitting on people. And Trump doesn't seem to know that that story is meant to be true because he tells this other one. It's like, "How dare you accuse me of being friends uh with this sex trafficker and pedophile? I had a falling out with that sex trafficker and pedophile over an unrelated HR map. He stole my butler." It's absurd. Uh uh absurd.

36:08 Yeah. Like Okay. Just the initial denial about the drawing in the Wall Street Journal was I never wrote a picture in my life. Remember? And then we learned that Trump donated a doodle a doodle to charity every single year and he wrote about it in his book. So now he's saying he doesn't draw women. So there's another a crisis comm's master class there. Pretty soon it's going to be I I've never drawn pubes that are also my rest. And as you pointed out, the White House has been saying, "Oh yeah, he kicked up cuz he's a creep." Now it's like then there was a report that it was a fallout over a real estate deal that they were competing over. Now he's just saying, you know, he poached my staff. So it's like, does he just forget the previous spin? You know what I mean? It's how do you not have a handle on this? Yeah. I feel like the White House probably did not really uh line up their story with him. Yeah. On

36:54 on why he kicked him out and they probably said, "Oh, you kicked him out, right?" Yeah. And then they were like, "Oh, let's just say it's cuz he was a creep." You know, like I I don't really think there's a lot of rigor going into the briefings here. Yeah. The uh the other part of this is the the letter and now he's saying, "I don't draw ladies." Uh JD Vance went on social media and said that it was that fake news and Chris Hayes got into it with him because JD Vance replies to a lot of people, present company included. Uh and Chris's question was, "So are you saying the letters are the book is fake? His letter is fake? Like what exactly is your contention here?" And all JD Vans can say is, "Well, they won't even show us the letter." which is exciting because it does mean at some point we're

37:41 going to see that letter. We're gonna they're saving it. Jeffrey Epstein's estate has the book. So DOJ reviewed it. Just waiting for that. And we know Trump is worried about this because he's starting to refer to it as a hoax. Witch hunt. Yeah. Dem Democrats Comey, Obama, Brennan, you name them. They all get together to put the fake pages in the book. So now it seems like he knows that that whatever we're going to see if we ever see it would not be good for him. It was Brennan with the Sharpie. With the Sharpie Brennan. Yeah. Comey was the one who drew the pube signature. Comey's very much very much. And then it was the the lovers who squeezed lemon juice on it and put in the toaster. Made it gold. But like it's been what, three weeks now? This has not gone away. I think Joe Rogan, there was the quote

38:27 going around today where he said the Epstein files are a hardcore line in the sand and that the administration is trying to gaslight you. Um there's like we talked about how the Congress, the House of Representatives went into recess early to avoid a vote on this Thomas Massie Roana legislation that would require the full release of the Epstein files. So that's going to kick back up when they're back in five or six weeks. Ron Widen is talking about how he's been reviewing all of these Epstein specific bank records that are really shady. Like Trump's superpower is his relentlessness and ability to repeat a line over and over and over again until he just like bullies you into submission. But it just doesn't seem like there's a process to make this go away. No. Trump said again in that press conference, too, that he's uh quote allowed to pardon Galain Maxwell.

39:12 Um he said this again he said this on Friday for the first time. Uh, this is all after we learned that Trump's Justice Department gave Maxwell limited immunity to speak freely about the crime she committed with Epstein during her two-day nine-hour conversation last week with Todd Blanch. Just just Gain Maxwell and Todd Blanch, the president's uh former defense lawyer turned deputy attorney general. That's usually what happens. I don't know if you guys know in the Justice Department uh that you send the the number two in the Justice Department, the guy who's usually running the Justice Department uh to go alone to hang out with a convicted uh accomplice to a sex predator, sex trafficker. And uh I don't know, was any were any of the career officials who

39:59 prosecuted the case there? No, doesn't sound like it. Well, also as is normal, uh then the defense attorney for that uh um that convicted sex trafficker says how great a job he thought the DOJ did in the conversation. Uh pro those prosecutors, by the way, said about Maxwell that she uh previously lied repeatedly about her crimes, exhibited an utter failure to accept responsibility, and demonstrated repeated disrespect for the law and the court. Blanch says that uh he that that he's showing great courage and for the first time we're going to get answers from Glain Maxwell. She is in prison for 20 years. A lot of these questions presumably were asked of her during the

40:45 period of time in which she was being investigated, charged, uh uh put on trial, and ultimately convicted and sentenced. Yeah, we still don't know what Maxwell said during this this two-day session, though her attorney told reporters afterwards she was asked quote maybe about a hundred different people and that she answered every single question. That reminds me of just like Joe Biden in the debate. Uh Max, she answered every question. Uh Maxwell is also asking the Supreme Court uh she filed this today to overturn her conviction on the grounds that she should have been protected from prosecution by the deal Epstein cut with former US attorney Alex Acasta, also turned Trump labor secretary briefly uh back in 2007. Uh what do you think would uh this whole idea that Trump like

41:30 Trump's going to pardon Maxwell potentially uh because like she'll absolve him of any wrongdoing or just name other people and not him. Do you think that helps or hurts his uh political problems with his base? The so the the clearly they're trying to seed this idea that she could be a victim and she's like a good guy and all this, right? Like Newsmax's Greg Kelly said on the air, she just might be a victim. Like this seems like a trial balloon. I just want to be clear for folks who don't totally know Golain Maxwell's role in in Epstein's crimes. I mean, so according to the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, Golain Maxwell recruited and groomed girls as young as 14 for Epstein. She was present for sexual encounters between minor victims in Epstein. And in some instances, Maxwell participated in the sexual abuse of

42:15 minor victims. She and Epstein would ID vulnerable girls. They would find girls who were poor or from single mother households and pray on them because they were easy to give favors to and then uh pull into their evil And this happened from '94 to 2004. Um so this was someone who is evil and very much a part of this. And Republicans have spent what the last decade I think calling all their political enemies groomers and now they are talking about pardoning a literal groomer. You see Mike Johnson said on Meet the Press Sunday that he thinks she actually deserves a life sentence and he hopes that Donald Trump doesn't pardon pardon her. Good. So that's kind of interesting. But like that's a that's a quote that seems destined to come back and haunt Mike Johnson. Well, right. Well, with Mike Johnson, it's like he'll he'll say he'll say something and then he'll just sort of be sort of smacked back into submission,

43:01 right? He also says we should have full transparency on the Epstein matter. And then has Congress leave the city uh uh to avoid having that vote. The like stepping back uh Gla Maxwell uh was charged under the Trump administration. Uh when Blanch says that we're finally going to get answers, he is saying that those answers were not gotten under the first Trump administration when William Bar was attorney general. Is he saying Bill Bar uh was in on it? Is well there's all the connection with Bill Bar's dad and Jeffrey Epste. Bill Bar's dad apparently hired him to work at this school in New York. Right. So that's all part of this conspiracy theory. And so I agree. Yeah. I think he's in on it. Yeah. That's interesting though. But but like the the like what what

43:47 makes it impossible I think for all of this to go away is that this whole story is so cons it's so right-wing shaped, right? That's what makes it so hard for Trump to get it's he's never been on the the the losing end of one of these right-wing shaped conspiracy or when he has it is sort of like uh blown up in his face, right? Like she seems on Friday he was like I don't focus on conspiracies. I'm focused on getting deals done for the American people. Yeah. There's anything we know about Donald Trump is he is not focused on conspiracies. But like fundamentally, right, Epstein kills himself and a lot of evidence and a lot of what would have come out in trial doesn't happen, right? because the trial doesn't take place and they turn this into uh a a a global pedophilia ring of of of Democrats, Hollywood

44:35 elites, deep state operatives, and the Jews. Uh and it's now sort of coming back to haunt him because it turns out nobody is more implicated in that conspiracy than Donald Trump himself. And I don't think you get out of it by pardoning a convicted sex trafficker uh and one of and and Jeffrey Epstein's chief accomplice. You guys see in the Washington Post over the weekend, we got a classic of the genre, a Trump fume story. Trump fumes over Epstein and it's got like a he's he's really angry kind of thing. Um, but there was a few tidbits in there that I think are worth mentioning. It's it just kind of slipped in. For weeks after the memo was released, Trump and Bondi spoke on the phone nearly every day as they often do. That's so weird. Is that is that normal? Just the uh president of United States just calling up the attorney general. Remember when

45:21 Remember when there was a big scandal over Bill Clinton saying hi to Loretta Lynch on the plane? Can I make a a neoliberal defense of norms? Yeah. Uh, one reason this is story doesn't go away is um because everyone understands that Pam Bondi is Donald Trump's attorney before she's the country's attorney. She doesn't have the ability to make this story go away for him. In another era, right, it could go to the attorney general say, "We're going to investigate this. We're going to look into this. It'll be completely independent and be accused of being political in all kinds of ways." But it actually would allow the story to progress, right? It would go to a prosecutor. It would go into an investigation and it would move off of like the Donald Trump plate into the legal plate. But it can't because there's only one big trough of of of Trump control. And it means Pam Bondi can't save Donald Trump from this

46:08 story because no one thinks she has credibility or integrity or any kind of uh separate political interest from him. And in that trough uh is about a thousand FBI personnel uh to in over two weeks the thousand personnel had to had to scour this is all the Washington Post story had to scour more than a 100,000 pages of Epstein related documents workers toiled around the clock and staffed mandatory weekend shifts for weeks to accommodate punishing deadlines from higherups and were told to flag any mentions of Trump and other prominent figures. Uh this is a senior bureau official said in a whistleblower report to the Senate Judiciary Committee that was obtained by the Post. After concluding that fewer than a tenth of those documents could be considered for release, staffers were asked to go through them at least four times more. Again, what is happening at the FBI?

46:53 It's crazy. And this is like the just the we'll never understand the opportunity cost. Again, a thousand FBI agents working 24/7 to review documents that they then just sit on like elves on December 22nd. just flag like again with the control F. Could we not control F? I don't I don't understand why we're not this is I look yeah I'm about to say look there many problems with chat GPT but throw this bad boy up into the cloud and get some names. Well apparently uh there's a micro Microsoft SharePoint online collaborative file that uh that Blanch's office put together of mentions of Mr. Trump uh from the from the piece. So there is an Epstein you might call it a list. It's it's a micro Microsoft SharePoint. There is a list with Trump's name on it. How many times that someone has and Dick Durban is demanding that

47:40 Dick Durban is also demanding uh the tapes of the Maxwell interviews that Todd Blanch did. Uh doesn't seem like he's going to get them, but I don't know. I think it's smart to make that part of the conversation. I wouldn't have thought that there might be tapes or might be a transcript or a record of it. I mean I I I was thinking about the Loretta Lynch Bill Clinton conversation on the tarmac however 2015 2016 u because Republicans never stopped talking about it. We need to get these meetings sort of viewed in that way. And I wondered if Ro Kana and Tom Thomas Massie can include these documents that Durban's going after as part of their release all the Epstein files legislation. It feels like it would fall under that bucket. Yeah. And then you see all these kind of ways around releasing the Epsy that would be all credible information. And I I I do like to Tommy's point too like

48:27 these were serious and disgusting crimes. And I like part of what can't be released is a lot of graphic evidence uh victims, right? like a lot of people were hurt and you know they they turned like sort of despicable crimes uh that were allowed to go on for years into this political cud and they never cared about the victims. It was never even that real to them. It was it became a kind of like um I don't know abstraction about they thought Bill Clinton was going to go down. They thought they thought they were going to get some way to like prosecute Bill Clinton. They didn't care about the victims. And this whole conversation about uh releasing Golain Maxwell or giving her a pardon. I mean, Epstein victim Virginia said of of Maxwell, "She is a monster. She's worse

49:13 than Epstein. She was vicious. She was evil. I know that woman." This is one of Epste's victims. It it reminds me too like like you know that you know they they spend all this time saying they're gonna um you know they're going after criminal aliens and then they uh uh in order to get the innocent people out of El Salvador, they release a murderer, a triple murderer onto the streets of the US. They spend all these years claiming there's a cabal of people protecting uh pedophiles and their accomplice and then they're sending the deputy attorney general down to kind of start the process of a sweetheart deal with one of like like basically a serial predator. Really really don't like them. Well uh you know Trump and uh Trump and the White House are celebrating a big

49:58 development in the president's global trade war. a new permanent 15% tax on most of the stuff we buy from Europe. The quote unquote deal Trump announced with the European Union is lower than the 30% tax he initially threatened. Uh and in exchange, the EU said it would spend $750 billion on American energy and invest another $600 billion in the US, whatever the hell that means. As a reminder, US tariffs are at their highest since the 1930s and about six times higher than when Trump took office, which is probably why the BBC went with the headline, "Winner Donald Trump, loser, US consumers." Here's what Trump said about the deal on Monday. We're going to be setting a tariff for essentially the rest of the world and that's what they're going to pay if they want to do business in the United States because you can't sit down and

50:43 make 200 deals. I would say it'll be somewhere in the 15 to 20% range. So maybe 15 or 20 or No, I said, you know, I sort of know, but I just want to be nice. First we're going to have deals all the 90 deals in 90 days. Now there's no deals. It takes too much time. So, I'm just setting a tax. What's the tax based on? What's the tariff rate based on? We don't know. Big victory because now other countries aren't paying tariffs, but we're paying tariffs here in the US. Like, I What's going on? What is the point of all this? These are not really deals. They're framework agreements. The details are just not ironed out. And then the And like you know this because the Japanese are signaling if not outright saying that Trump is team just making up. Like Scott Besson went on Fox, I think Laura Ingram, and he was like, "Oh yeah, the they're going to buy

51:29 all this stuff. We're gonna have an implementation process where we review it every three months." And the Japanese trade negotiator responded, "In my eight trips to the United States during which I held talks with the president and the ministers, I have no recollection of discussing how we ensure the implementation of the latest agreement between Japan and the United States." In other words, And the White House is saying that, "Oh, this is a $550 billion investment in the US and the US is going to keep like 90% of the profits." The trade minister from Japan said, "No, 1 to 2% of the 550 billion is actual investment. The rest is loans and loan guarantees." So, it's like it just it's Like the EU part of it is a little weird. I was surprised they didn't put up little more of a fight given that they have some real heft in terms of economic leverage, but it's probably harder to get um a big block like that to negotiate as a group and

52:16 and maybe they were just nervous or maybe it's all too. and we're going to see more details of the EU deal and and realize that I do think like big picture all these countries benefit from knowing that Trump cares about the day one headline not the implementation, right? Remember 6 months ago when Trump had that press event with Sam Alman and uh the head of Soft Bank and Larry Ellison and they announced a 500 a half a trillion dollar thing called Stargate. Remember this? So the company said uh we're going to invest half a trillion dollar on like data centers and infrastructure for AI in the US including a hundred billion right now. Well, the Wall Street Journal the other day reported that they haven't completed a single data center deal yet. It's like all scaling back the ambitions completely. In the first Trump term, Trump made this deal with China where the Chinese promised to buy 200 billion

53:01 in additional US goods and services above the level they purchased in 2017 and then China ultimately bought none of that additional $200 billion. So, I just I don't trust that any of this is going to happen or or that any of it is not investments that were already on the table. I mean, that was that like Mexico and Canada, that was their move, right? Like, just let's just label we were already doing. It's like, "Oh, yeah, Trump, you got us." Uh, and so, like, you know, we have our EU and the United States, Japan, United States, our economies are incredibly intertwined. There's billions upon billions of dollars uh moving between our countries. You can ascribe, oh yeah, we're going to buy a bunch of American energy. Oh yeah, we're going to invest in a bunch of factories. They are every day. That's why this is so stupid. Markets seem happy these days with the with the trade war. Um I think that's,

53:46 you know, maybe because the period of uncertainty uh is coming to a close here and you know, I guess Trump didn't go with the full Liberation Day tariffs, but um you know, Morgan Stanley says uh they don't think we'll have a recession, but we still believe the most likely outcome is slow growth and firm inflation. So it's like great, we're going to have inflation now. and slow growth. And you know the again, we've said this before, but a lot of these companies have so far either been eating the tariffs themselves or still have goods imported from before they went into effect. So the the price increases really haven't set they're about to set in, but they really haven't even set in yet. And um I still remember that quote from our friend Jason Ferman, who we used to work with on on Derek Thompson's

54:33 podcast. He was like, "Look, if you asked everyone in the country to come together and set fire to $1,000, it would seem like a phenomenally stupid idea, and we'd all remember forever who came up with it, but it wouldn't crash the economy. It would just be a bunch of people lighting $1,000 on fire." He's like, "That's about what's going to happen." Like, there's like a half a point of growth that we're going to lose that we would have had otherwise without without the uh without the tariffs, right? Yes. Like the United States economy is strong enough and robust enough to survive a stupid policy from Donald Trump. And by the way, uh uh you know, even as a lot of people will end up paying more for things that they need, right, for a for you know, at first it'll be washing machines, right? We've seen that before. The price of washing machine just goes up. They pass the price on to consumers, right? And then you'll see a bunch of wealthy people be like, "Hey, we they said this trade war was going to bankrupt the economy. I'm not feeling it at all."

55:18 Well, of course you're not. Of course you're not. You're not impacted by the the daily cost of necessities. That's not what you That that doesn't hit you in the same way it hits a person uh uh who will actually be impacted by this. Speaking of lighting money on fire, uh, you know what it's time for, guys? A corrupt date. Nice.Um. Oh. Uh, you guys remember the Qatari jet episode where everyone freaked out for a few days over Trump accepting a free gift from a royal family that funds Hamas? Turns out that Qatar may have built the plane, but guess who's going to pay for it? We are. Mhm. Uh, the New York Times reports that the cost to taxpayers of renovating the plane for Trump's use might be around $1 billion. And the reason we know this is because the Times discovered that the Pentagon made a secret transfer for that amount

56:05 from the program intended to upgrade our nuclear missiles to an anonymous project that's believed to be refurbishing the Qatari jet. But wait, there's more. The Washington Post is reporting that in the original draft of the agreement that transfers ownership of the plane, cutter included language that stipulated the plane would belong specifically to the Air Force. But the US pushed back and removed that language so that Trump could take the plane with him when he leaves as a keepsake, of course, from us

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