2/3/25: DNC Doubles Down On Identity Politics, Tucker Carlson Calls Out Shapiro, Trump Visits DC
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There was actually a crazy crash that happened in Philadelphia. Let's go ahead and put some of the video up there on the screen as I talk over it. So you can see there were these insane ring camera videos that were coming out that are just showing a major fireball that erupted literally as this plane crashed.

small plane carrying six passengers actually literally crashed there in the middle of the roads. You can see the emergency lights, the fires that were all happening. This is a particularly insane one because he's standing outside and it literally happens right outside of his front door. You can see the fireball that was right behind him. Absolutely terrifying.

What we know about the crash so far is it's a little weird, some of the details. So I'm just going to go ahead and read them to some of you. So they've named the crew, and there was actually a patient. It was an air ambulance in the northeastern Philadelphia area. So it was a medical jet, and it was including a girl from Mexico who had received treatment for a life-threatening illness

but it plummeted to the ground in Northeast Philly, causing obviously a massive explosion, killing everybody on board, and at least one person who was on the ground. We don't know anything else. What we basically know is that they left Northeast Philadelphia Airport. It was headed for Springfield Branson National Airport, stopping in Missouri before eventually traveling to its final destination of Tijuana, Mexico. The girl was returning to Mexico after receiving treatment in the United States, and the victim's

of the crash are the captain as well as several other Mexican nationals. So definitely a tragedy and still some open questions as to what the hell was happening with all of this. Can we put the next one please up on the screen? Just read some of the details out that I was talking about. It's called a quote unquote angel flight en route to Mexico. All of the occupants were Mexican nationals. Plane was headed to Tijuana. So still some major stuff there but

And a number of injuries in the area, too, just because of it being in this major urban area, which is, you know, between that and then the fact that it had just come on the heels of this horrific crash in D.C. is why it drew a lot of attention. Yeah, that's why everyone's paying attention. I mean, rightfully, right? Yeah. People are on edge. People are afraid to fly. And Donald Trump addressed some of the crash on Thursday, blaming DEI—I'm sure we'll talk about it afterwards—

Let's take a listen to what he had to say. You can't have regular people doing that job. They won't be able to do it. But we'll restore faith in American air travel. I'll have more to say about that. I do want to point out that various articles that appeared prior to my entering office, and here's one. The FAA's diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities.

That is amazing. And then it says FAA says people with severe disabilities are most underrepresented segment of the workforce and they want them in and they want them, they can be air traffic controllers. I don't think so. This was in January 14th, so that was

A week before I entered office, they put a big push to put diversity into the FAA's program. On DEI and the claims that you've made, are you saying this crash was somehow caused and the result of diversity hiring? And what evidence have you seen to support these claims? It just could have been. We have a high standard. We've had a much higher standard than anybody else. And there are things where you have to go by brainpower, you have to go by psychological

and psychological quality is a very important element of it. These are various very powerful tests that we put to use and they were terminated by Biden.

And Biden went by a standard that's the exact opposite. So there we go from Trump. I was watching it live. I was telling Crystal, and I was like, oh, he's really going to do it, isn't he? And immediately starts pulling out DEI articles. My personal favorite was a response to that question whenever he was like, so do you have any indication that it was DEI? And he's like, not at this time. We don't. So, okay. All right, there we go. That's Trump. Let's put some of the details up here on the screen about the crash, because this is what's actually important.

where we are learning a couple of things. Number one is that the helicopter, it seems, was not flying at the correct height. Now, there's various reasons for that. It could be that the screen of the air traffic controller was incorrect. It could be an instrumentation malfunction on the helicopter itself. It could be a communication error between the two. That is currently under investigation.

But the most important thing that we have learned is that FAA shortage of staffing in the tower had one person doing the job of two. And what they said is that the helicopter was flying outside of its flight path and that air traffic controller was juggling two jobs at the same time and was unable to keep the helicopter and the plane separated.

It does seem, Crystal, that this has been going on for years now at Reagan National Airport, that they have had a major shortage in air traffic control. And we have also learned of a previous close call incident between a helicopter and a plane. So unfortunately, just seems like it was a matter of time. Too crowded airport, not enough air traffic control. Again, the helicopter thing I still can't get over.

I have no idea why they are constantly doing helicopter training exercises over one of the most crowded, busiest, and difficult airports to land in in the entire United States. It's crazy. I've been landing there for my entire adult life since I moved to Washington, D.C. when I was 18. I didn't even know that was a thing. It's probably better that we didn't know. But now, you know, they suspended the flights, luckily. But it just—

It's like, how much is this happening all over the country? It's completely insane. I had no idea that this was a thing that happened. And it seems completely insane. A lot of conspiracy theorists are making out a lot of the fact that the helicopter Pete Hegseth, our Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, said was on a continuation of government.

Training mission. But that is a little weird, right? So what is that continuity of government mission? Is it, you know, for what purpose? What were you doing flying in the middle of the night? I'm with you on that one. I'm with you on that one. But the factors that we know. So first of all, nationwide, there's a massive air traffic controller shortage. Some 3,000 air traffic controllers we are short on. There's an airport in the Bay Area that's about to have zoned out.

zero air traffic controllers, very close to San Francisco, not actual SFO, but a smaller airport.

This is a crisis because you can see potentially the results here because what happened at Reagan is that, like you said, Sagar, for years they've been operating in this shorthanded position where one person has been doing the job of two having to both direct the passenger jets in and also manage the helicopter traffic. I mean, that seems that's insane.

But they were only doing it, not only, they shouldn't be doing it at all, okay, but they were forced into this situation from a shortage. They were doing it after 9.30 p.m. because that's when the traffic really starts to ease up. On this particular evening, the supervisor had allowed someone to leave early so that the

one man band situation began much earlier in the evening. So the crash occurred just before 9:00 PM. This should have been a time when typically they would have had two people in, you know, each doing one job. So that was unusual.

You also had, as you mentioned, the helicopter flying above its approved path. The fact that there are helicopters flying through here is insane to begin with. But these are some of the factors that go in. The other thing is, you know, I learned a lot about DCA. It sucks because this is actually my favorite airport in the region. Oh, it is the best airport. It's close.

It's easy. It's not that big of an airport facility, so it's very easy to get around in, et cetera. But the main runway there is actually the busiest runway in the entire country. And the reason is because there's only one real runway. It's already shorter than most airports.

you know, major runways and major airports, but there's only really one main runway that larger jets can land on. So that primary runway is the busiest in the country. Then you couple that with the fact that you have all of these sensitive areas around here. You've got the Pentagon, you've got the White House, you've got all kinds of monuments and other facilities that are nearby. So it effectively forces all of the air traffic in.

into a very narrow corridor, predominantly just right over the Potomac River, which anybody, again, who's flown into that airport is kind of familiar. So it creates this really dense and very busily trafficked area. And those are some of the factors that seem to have contributed to this horrific, horrific death. But one indication we got is that the airport

that the air traffic controller was monitoring and using to keep everything safe, etc., may have misread the level that the helicopter was flying at. So the NTSB has determined the Black Hawk helicopter was flying at 325 feet. It was supposed to be at 200 feet. There is some indication maybe that the technical controls for the air traffic controller were misread.

reading the height, that could have been a factor. But to go back to like Doge and all of this sort of stuff, the air traffic controllers got the same fork in the road email pushing them to retire as everybody else in the federal government did. Then there was another Q&A email that went out that even more aggressively pushed everyone in the federal government, including air traffic controllers, hey, now would be the time to take this buyout and go on like the dream vacation.

This shows you, right, federal government is not a business. Okay, maybe it made sense at Twitter for Elon to just like ax, however, whatever, 80% of the workers, etc. But I'm sure there are some areas in the federal government where you could definitely trim the staff back and where it wouldn't make that much of a difference and it wouldn't be that impactful. This is not one of them, right? This is a place where we need to hire staff.

thousands more air traffic controllers. Instead, they're getting the same emails that are like, hey, take the buyout and go on vacation and enjoy living your life and double dipping on your federal government salary and whatever new gig you're going to take up as well. So that is where the sort of rubber hits the road in terms of what we actually need and rely on the federal government.

to do and this just let me take a hatchet to the whole thing approach that we are seeing from our new god king Elon Musk. I have no disagreement on that and I think that is the absolute danger that they will fall into. I'll remind people that the lowest point of approval rating actually for George W. Bush unfortunately was not Iraq even though it should have been. It was FEMA and New

and New Orleans. Yeah, that was Hurricane Katrina. When people, they feel like a disaster is not properly handled, they do not take kindly to it. And so that is of course the major caution for people who are supportive of Doge and others is look,

Like I said, I'm not going to sit here and cry about USAID or NGOs in California or anything like that. But if you find yourself in a position where you're either tangentially or somewhat to blame for a major disaster or something else like this happens and they can trace it back to you, it can cause you some serious, serious problems. Last thing on this is that we are learning that this was just the latest announcement

that a previous incident like this had happened. So let's go ahead and put C8, please, on the screen. A helicopter and an FAA plane actually almost collided in 2018 right next to DCA. The near collision was almost identical to Wednesday night's crash. The controller, in that case, working both helicopter, local traffic at the time.

Crazy. And the reason why, again, is the short staffing of the FAA. Yeah, and that's another thing that you raised. You know, 9 p.m. is one of the busiest times on the runway at DCA. Tons of flights land. Those are usually the very last ones that come in. Honestly, I feel so bad for this person because they never should have been put in this aircraft controller. Oh, the treft? Maybe. Maybe.

They never should have been put in this situation, and now they have 67 lives on their conscience. Yeah, they've got it. The helicopter pilot. I mean, look, we've got to learn. It may turn out that the guy didn't do it, or the woman, whoever, the air traffic controller, didn't do anything wrong. If it's instrumentation failure on the helicopter, well, that's on the military, right? Because why are you not expecting her?

equipment before that happened. Or, and this is the other one, the helicopter pilot. I mean, if anybody's to blame, it's probably her because if it's not instrumentation failure, then it's about communication. And also, a lot of people have been raising a lot. They're like, what, you really miss a passenger jet? I mean. The video is insane.

Yeah, the video, it's like... It looks like they go right for it. Look, I'm not a helicopter pilot, so I'm trying not to pass judgment, but to any layman who's watching that, I mean, it's basically a beeline, right? The thing that's crazy to me is you see all these helicopter pilots that are like, just imagine, like, it's at night, and you're just looking out this little tube, and you see these license, like, okay, well, if it's that difficult, why are we doing this? Right? If it's like you can't see anything, and you have no idea there's a regional jet right frickin' there that you're flying into...

maybe we shouldn't be having these helicopters flying all around one of, you know, an incredibly busy airport at nine o'clock at night. Like you said, they're wearing night vision, the allegation is they may have been wearing night vision goggles. So it's, and they're like, oh, it's really hard to see. I'm like, okay, fine. But do that in Iraq. You don't need to do it over here. All right.

Like, what are we training for? Exactly. It gets to the whole continuity of government thing. What are we training for, guys? I would like to know. What was that crazy thing in the Obama administration? Oh, something. Yeah, down in Texas. Jade Helm? Was that it? I think that is it. Someone's going to remember. That was a whole thing. Texas mobilized the National Guard. Actually, as a Virginia resident, we should mobilize our National Guard to protect us from the United States military, protect our airspace, keep the government off our runways.

All right, everybody gets super excited. We got a new Democratic National Committee chair. Big deal. Ken Martin, the former Minnesota state chair, has won that contest over the weekend as a reminder of what this guy is all about. He is the one who said that, oh, we should absolutely continue as a party to take money from, quote unquote, good billionaires. We should just avoid those, quote unquote, bad

billionaires in one of the DNC candidate forums. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. There are a lot of good billionaires out there that have been with Democrats who share our values and we will take their money, but we're not taking money from those bad billionaires. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and listen, obviously,

His definition of a good billionaire is just someone who gives the Democratic Party money. So that just frees you up to take money from whoever, whenever. Like, I'm sure they would be happy to welcome Mark Zuckerberg back into the fold, et cetera, et cetera. Let's put the vote totals up on the screen. Ken Martin won with 246.5. I don't really know how the .5 works, but anyway. Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. Yeah. Not important. Ben Wickler, who is the chair of the...

Wisconsin Democratic Party won 44.5. Martin O'Malley, former Maryland governor, got 44. Faz Shakira, who is Bernie's chief of staff who we interviewed here, who jumped in late, gets a whopping two votes. Jason Paul, don't even know who that is, gets one vote. And then no votes for anyone else. So Marianne Williamson was running. No votes for her. No votes for anyone else. I mean, to me, this is just part and parcel of the Democratic Party is so lost.

Right now, they are so lost. They have no idea how to handle this Trump 2.0 administration. They have no idea how to be able to offer some sort of an alternative vision, like, for example, actually standing against all billionaires, not just the quote unquote bad billionaires, and taking a clear stance against all.

oligarchy and seizure of our country by a band of robber barons. That would require them to, you know, totally remake their own party because that is how many of all of their leaders effectively have come into power as well. And so what you have seen after Trump getting reelected, Sagar, is, you know, Chuck Schumer still the head of the Dems in the Senate.

You've got Hakeem Jeffries still head of the Dems in the House. No one could tell you who the actual leader of the Democratic Party is. They're going with this very standard issue guy as DNC chair. And you even had Jamie Harrison,

The outgoing DNC chair say that he actually still thinks that Biden should have maybe stayed in the race. That's the state of affairs right now. The Democrats are praying for the scenario that I laid out in our previous block to happen.

They want the public to freak out about the tariffs. Then they just nominate some replacement level Democrat and he wins as opposition to Trump. That is the most politically convenient, and by the way, that's actually a very likely outcome. I just want people to understand that. It's extraordinarily possible that that could happen.

But the reason why they should really try and do something else is if it's 1984 and Donald Trump is Ronald Reagan, who becomes massively popular even more over his second term, and then you have his vice president waiting in the wings, what happened in 84? Mondale, who had – I mean, if you think Democrats are bad now, think about back then.

in terms of who are we, what do we stand for. They had zero policy position. Eventually, it consolidates very late into the new Democratic Party, the DLC and all that, under Bill Clinton in 1992. But they were out of power for 12 years. So they easily could find themselves, this could just be year number four at the end of the Trump administration. You could have a two-term J.D. Vance or Trump Jr. or somebody's presidency before they can actually get their act together.

So they really are banking on Trump screwing up, and that's not a strategy. That's not a movement. That's not something that you believe in. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And they also just, like, they have no idea how to deal with the speed of news and the current media environment either. Yeah, you're definitely right. So, you know, I mean, they're, like, still processing things that happened on Inauguration Day, and here we are, like, 10 crises later, and they, you know, they just, they don't have...

by and large, I mean, this is where like whatever you think of AOC, she at least understands the new media environment. And the fact that, you know, one of the few people that they have on their side who actually can garner media attention and track controversy and like start a conversation, et cetera, they also go out of their way to like bury and keep from any sort of a leadership position also tells you where they are. So they have a myriad of problems. Their approval rating is like

has never been lower effectively because I think not only do you have people who are normally opposed to Democrats opposed to them, but then you have the rest of the country and even people who may be sympathetic to Democratic-type principles, just looking at them and like, you are so pathetic in this moment. You have no idea how to meet the moment. You have no idea how to articulate a different vision.

You're just going along and like doing the same things that you've always done, reelecting the same people, same type of people, et cetera. And it is not a terribly inspiring situation for them right now. And I think you're right, Zagar. I think they don't know what to do.

They don't understand how to do it. They had Cory Booker give some like social media seminar to everyone. I don't know if we talked on the show or not. Cory? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if we talked about this on the show or not, but they had some meeting, I think, of the Democratic senators trying to brainstorm how to like go viral. And they're like, oh, Mark Warner made a tuna melt. No way. I swear to God you didn't see this. No.

Mark Warner made a, you might have been like, I think you were off during that time, made a tune-a-melt during COVID that went, Supervisor was like,

- Maybe he did that, but no one remembers that. - I'm like, I literally have no idea what he talked about. - That's your answer to Trump 2.0 and Elon Musk taking over the government and all this stuff is like, maybe we should do some more online cooking. It's like, oh Jesus Christ, they are so lost. - And they've also, they're not ditching their cartoonish identity politics either. There were a lot of great clips coming out. Let's take a listen to one of them. - Rules specify that when we have a gender non-binary candidate or officer,

The non-binary individual is counted as neither male nor female and the remaining six officers must be gender balanced. With the results of the previous four elections, our elected officers are currently two male and two female. In order to be gender balanced, we must elect one male, one female, and one person of any gender. So again,

This is what we have to do for this vice chair race. We have to elect one male, one female, and one person of any gender. To ensure our process accounts for male, female, and non-binary candidates, we conferred with our RBC co-chair, our LGBT caucus co-chair, and others to ensure that the process is inclusive and meets the gender balance requirements in our rules. Any candidate, male, female, and non-binary can be elected on that ballot.

After a candidate is elected on the first ballot, we'll have one officer of the three

So then we will know which position is filled of the one male, one female, and one vice chair of any gender. Oh my God. Who is this even for at this point? So that's where we're at. And Faz Shakir said, this is the kind of identity politics in fighting that I was urging us against. We should focus on fighting against oligarchy through solidarity. He got two votes. So that's the decision. There was a land acknowledgement too at the DNC. So, you know, good luck.

Good luck, folks. I want to give Faz credit, even though, you know, whatever. I don't think he ever had a shot, even if he got in early, et cetera, because this isn't like, you know, a Democratic base elect. This is literally just DNC members. These are, I mean,

I mean, they're not like, some of them are insider insiders, some of them are just like local county chairs. But these are just, you know, these are Democratic Party operatives, whatever. But he got asked at one of the forums, you know, do you think we should have a, I can't remember what identity group caucus it was. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Maybe a Muslim caucus. I can't, I think it was a Muslim caucus. And he was like, no, I think we need to stop doing this.

doing this like division by identity. I think we need to focus on like class solidarity and delivering for all people. And he gets two votes. We have a DNC vice chair who was elected as well. We can put D4 up on the screen. David Hogg, who is, you know, gun safety activist. And one

thing I will say here to defend David a little bit is at least David understands new media. Like at least he knows how to communicate on social media platforms. By tweeting? Yes. That's not a... Of course it is. That's how J.D. Vance got to be vice president

President of the United States. Yeah, that's right. He also became a senator. So I haven't seen David win anything. The Democrats need more posters on their side. And at least he understands the social media landscape. Yeah, okay. Mr. David, I can show you. David is... He has had more fight in him than, like,

99% of Democrats. Having the fight in you is not a skill. Having the fight in you in the right direction is an appropriate skill. He has some of the right direction. He's been some. No, for real. He has... I agree. The bar is on the freaking floor. But at least he has been forceful, aggressive. Some of his post-election analysis has been correct. He does understand at least the new media landscape. So...

Yeah, it could be worse. Okay. Could be worse. I think they should hire Parker, Parker Short, the kid who's been on our show. Oh, I love him. That would be good. Yeah, see, he's the type of person. Hey, David, if you're listening, you should hire Parker Short. That is an immediate endorsement as far as that's going to carry from me.

All right, let's get to Tucker Carlson. He had an interesting exchange with Piers Morgan where the topic of Gaza and Israel came up. Calling out Ben Shapiro on the topic of war. Let's take a listen. If you're intentionally killing civilians,

You probably shouldn't beat your chest and brag about it. You know, maybe you can make the case. I agree with that. Maybe you make the case that we had to do it or whatever, but you should. I agree. You should weep. And that's evil. And you should just say it's evil. And I know it's really threatening to Ben Shapiro to say that or whatever. Is it evil? To kill civilians on purpose? Yeah, it is. I think it is. Really? Kids and children. Well, how is it not, actually? In a war?

Well, you can call it whatever you want. How is it right to kill women and children? I didn't say-- Well, because I think there's a moral right behind you if you are literally-- To kill women and children? If there's a world war that threatens the entire-- How would you want it? It threatens the entire world? Yes. Some people killed your kids like your eight-year-old? How is that morally justifiable? Well, because actually you have to-- Well, by your criteria-- That's disgusting. OK, so no war is morally justified? I mean, I think it's pretty hard to justify-- I mean, yeah, I'm sure-- Any war? You know, a pure defensive action, sure.

But all I'm saying, look, it's all ugly. It's all hard to stomach. I've actually seen some of it up close. It's super ugly. You can say you hate it. The fact you quibble with it being morally justified. To intentionally kill noncombatants, women and children, I think we can say that's wrong. In fact, I thought that was the thing we were fighting against.

- Hmm, very interesting. This is of course invited now some serious pushback from the Daily Wire. Let's put this up there on the screen. CEO Jeremy Boring, "Anyone still blind to what Tucker is doing is willfully so. He isn't hiding it. When a man has worse things to say about Winston Churchill and Ben Shapiro," notice the Churchill and Ben Shapiro in the same sentence. - Those are equivalent figures. - They're very good.

Vladimir Putin, a Nazi apologist, he's making his position pretty clear. Somebody followed up and replied to him saying, Tucker is actually spot on. Any life lost in war is a tragedy. That's what he's trying to express. Jeremy says that is not what he's trying to express. Tucker is one of the most gifted communicators of his generation. He isn't just misunderstood. And anyway, yeah, this is just the latest in this break between the two. But

I thought it was fascinating to see peers there. I guess it actually fits with his British heritage. They are the people who really were the original pushers of area bombing, otherwise known as strategic, sorry, the counter to strategic bombing, which is bombing a bunch of people in World War II in the middle of the night. They stuck by that position. Bomber Harris and their admirals and others, it's something, or sorry, their generals and others, they're very proud of that position.

And it seems that that's trickled here into some of these debates. But I think it's fascinating to watch for peers and others whenever they get pushed on that position, especially with that last thing that he said. He goes, I thought that's what we were fighting against.

And you're like, oh, hold on a second. It's like, well, actually, you know, you can be, quote, pro-Israel or whatever and also just be like, hey, some of the way that this war has been conducted is totally outside of the norms of the way that any modern Western power fights. But that situation, like, you know, you and I have experienced this. If you talk about that, you're really smeared as an anti-Semite. The whole thing is crazy. Well, Pierce has really tried to hold on to this sort of like,

both sides, middle ground in the post-October 7th world. And you can see pretty clearly there how that just falls apart. At this point, really, all of Gaza is destroyed. We have no idea how many people were killed. The majority of them were women, children, and the elderly. It's just undeniable at this point. I mean, he says this thing that's so preposterous that the entire world was threatened. Give me a break, please.

What happened on October 7th is the absolute maximal amount that Hamas would be able to ever pull off. They were, by a lot of reports, like stunned at what they were able to, you know, the damage they were able to inflict on that day. So the position is just preposterous. I guess what I'll say is it's good Tucker is very influential on the right. It's good that you have a very influential voice on the right who is –

expressing concern about women and children in Gaza. It would, if, I think this is a big if, I think it's unlikely, but we'll see. And we're about to talk to an Israeli journalist from Haaretz talking about the ceasefire deal and what Trump is likely to do, etc., etc.,

If he were to further buck the, like, pro-Israel hardliners, many of whom are in his own government now by his choice, by the way, and, you know, push Bibi to continue with this ceasefire deal, it's good that there will be people like Tucker that are there to back him up. I just, you know...

It's always irritating to me. It's easy to go after Ben Shapiro for his pro-Israel position. Like Trump has already rolled back the restrictions on the use of 2000 pound bombs, rolled back the restrictions on the sanctions on the violent settlers, said we're going to clean that whole thing out, referencing like infinite cleansing of all of Gaza. And you never hear any criticism of him. So, you know, Ben Shapiro is ultimately powerless really in this

He's not in government. He's not the president. He's not Elon Musk.

So, you know, I will have a lot more respect if there is actually some criticism that's leveled at the guy who actually has the power in the situation. What I am worried about, here's the thing right now. And Tucker did this, luckily, with my friend Kurt Mills. He did a video. Remember we were talking about the Mike D'Amino thing and the attack on him and Steve Witkoff? They did a whole podcast actually defending the two of them. Steve Witkoff is the key. I am the most worried about him. The amount of fire.

that the pro-Israel lobby in Washington has on him right now is insane. They are trying to smear him as a Qatari agent. They're literally calling, which again, we're talking about the pro-Israel lobby is accusing somebody else of being a foreign agent. - Of carrying water for a foreign government. - Should we talk about that? Do we all wanna settle on that? You guys wanna talk about foreign influence? Should we start talking about and go through your 1099s and your NGOs and who's donating to all of you? If you guys wanna play that game, we can play that game.

That's that. And then Mike Domino, Mark Levin literally called him a creep. I think he called an anti-Semite creep Mike Domino for saying that we should not want to go to war with Iran. That's what it is as currently the state of things. Where things fall, I have no idea. My hope

is that because Witkoff and Trump are such old buddies, Trump will hopefully not let Netanyahu and his government sway him to fire Witkoff. But let's all be honest about Miriam Adelson is there. She didn't give you $100 million for free. There's a lot of people who are in this government right now who have the ear of the press. Marco Rubio. I mean, look at all the stuff that the guy's

said previously about Israel. Mike Waltz, the stuff that he said previously about the war. - Hegseth. - Hegseth, exactly. - Stephanie, I mean, her position is not that important, but the whole reason she got the position is because of her crazy McCarthyite smears of pro-Palestine demonstrators. - Oh, Stefanik. - Yeah, Stefanik. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - And Mike Huckabee is the ambassador to Israel. I mean, you could not find a more psycho, like end times Israel no matter what kind of a guy. So there's a lot there. - Yeah, I don't know.

I am not optimistic that any of this will happen. We're about to talk with this Israeli journalist about the PSYOP and all those. But in general, it is good at least that somebody is calling some of this stuff out. I really, truly hope so, because if not, we all know what the path of that looks like. Basically, the Biden path with even more just open and pro support, which I don't think is good for any of us. Let's get to the Israeli journalist who's going to talk to us about Netanyahu in Gaza.

We are very fortunate to be joined this morning by a journalist for Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper. He's reporting, by the way, we have relied on quite a bit throughout the coverage post-October 7th. Amir Tibon, he is also the author of a book called The Gates of Gaza. Great to see you, Amir. Good to see you.

Hi, thanks for having me. Yeah, it's our pleasure. Let's go ahead and put your reporting here up on the screen. Prime Minister Netanyahu is traveling to the U.S. He will be the first foreign leader to visit Trump in his new term. And your headline here is Netanyahu comes to Washington to kill Trump's Gaza deal. Will the president let him? So what have you been able to learn about the dynamics between Trump and Bibi in advance of this meeting? Well, it's clear that President Trump

takes great pride in getting the Gaza ceasefire that the previous president failed to achieve for more than a year. And President Trump secured a ceasefire and hostage release deal even before entering the White House. He and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, who has earned a lot of respect here in Israel, did a lot of hard work to get this deal.

But this deal is built in a very, very sophisticated, perhaps too sophisticated of a way. And a month from today, it is supposed to move from the first phase of the deal, during which Hamas is supposed to release 33 of our hostages. They've already released more than 10. We are waiting for more and more of the hostages to arrive.

But then we're supposed to move into phase two, during which all the remaining living hostages, more than 20 of them, including two personal friends of mine, are supposed to be released and Israel is supposed to complete its withdrawal from Gaza.

And this phase of the deal threatens the survival of Netanyahu's governing coalition, which relies on several extremist fanatic parties that are threatening to blow up the governing coalition and basically end Netanyahu's hold on power if he goes through. So he's caught in a situation where on the one hand, there is the survival of his coalition.

On the other hand, the survival of the hostages. And smack in the middle is President Trump, who wants this deal to continue and wants it to be the basis for a broader Middle East agenda centered around Israeli-Saudi peace that, first of all, requires an end to the war in Gaza.

So, Amir, can you pair this with some comments you've reported on there that Trump had floated? For example, he's like, oh, well, maybe the Palestinians can temporarily go to Jordan or Egypt. And I believe since that comment, the governments of all of those countries have come forward and said that's an absolute nonstarter. So in terms of the fork in the road, I guess, if you will, for the actual decisions that the Trump administration has to make,

They have to decide whether Steve Witkoff and others will continue negotiations and push for a phase two or to support a continuation of the war in Gaza. Are there any other options on the table, realistically? I think the idea that Trump floated, that some of the Palestinians in Gaza will, from my understanding, temporarily...

seek residence in a neighboring country until all the destruction in Gaza can be removed and new housing can be built. And the reconstruction in Gaza from this war is going to take years. This is a very difficult situation. That's obviously a suggestion that none of the neighboring Arab countries like Egypt and Jordan are willing to hear about right now. But if it is presented as part of a package that ends the war,

that moves us toward Palestinian statehood, that includes guarantees that all of these people will be able to return to Gaza, no Israeli settlements built in Gaza, complete Israeli withdrawal, maybe then it will sound different. Obviously, when he just says it on the plane and, you know, with some reporters who don't really know the nuance of this issue. And to be frank, I'm not sure he knows all the nuance at this point either. But Canada says, oh, we want...

And to move to Egypt, of course, everybody's rising up and saying, no way we're going to accept that. The Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Palestinians. We saw over the weekend the Saudis and the Qataris, you know, very important countries in this whole process also coming out against it. So I think if Trump has a real idea here that he wants to sell to the relevant Arab countries, it needs to be part of a broader package.

And it needs to be explained as part of a move to end the war, reconstruct Gaza, and put us on a path to Palestinian statehood, which is supposed to be part of this grand Israeli-Saudi deal that he's trying to do. So there's a lot of diplomatic ideas floating around right now. And I think we should read every statement we hear with a bit of caution at this moment.

Yeah, we can put F2 up on the screen, which underscores what you all were saying, that there was a widespread rejection from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, and the Arab League all said in a joint statement they oppose President Trump's plan to move Palestinians from Gaza under any excuse

The language, of course, that he used saying we need to, quote, clean that whole thing out, something along those lines. That's like real estate language. That's not diplomatic language. Right. Well, I mean, it's ethnic cleansing language is effectively what it is. And how could anybody, given that you have within, you know, the Netanyahu coalition, Netanyahu himself...

These extremists who are quite open about we want to push out the Palestinians, we want to completely settle and take over not just Gaza, but also the West Bank. How could you ever have any assurance that this wasn't just, you know, an attempt at a final, complete ethnic cleansing of both Gaza and the West Bank? I think...

One of the things President Trump is going to learn as he navigates this issue is that the current coalition in Israel is not going to make his life easier in any way, because that's just the example you gave now, where an idea that could be presented with the right language, with the right assurances, with the right funding, as a temporary solution that allows to rebuild Gaza and then prepare bigger housing for all the people who lost their homes in this war. And we're talking about

hundreds of thousands, potentially more than a million people who lost their homes

That kind of plan will immediately run into a wall of suspicion because it is being associated with people like Bitzalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister of the current Netanyahu government, who is openly celebrating the idea of emptying Gaza from its residents. And once he makes that kind of statement, then automatically you're going to see all of the relevant Arab countries coming and saying, we want nothing to do with it. And Smotrich is right now pressuring Netanyahu.

As we were speaking, he put out a statement that if Netanyahu agrees to end the war so that we can go into phase two of the hostage negotiations and save the remaining hostages, he's blowing up the government. And it's important to understand that for the hostage families in Israel, and I know many of them personally, and I'm talking here about friends of mine and their families, they see President Trump

And Stephen Witkoff as their last source of hope, literally, literally the light at the end of the tunnel. Because we know some of these hostages are being held in inhumane conditions in tunnels underground, being starved, being tortured. And then comes President Trump and Stephen Witkoff, and they put together this deal that says within three phases, all the hostages are released, the war ends, Israel withdraws from Gaza, and this is over.

And instead of saying, well, okay, this is the way to do it, now we're seeing politicians from within our government pressuring Netanyahu to say no. And not only that, to try to convince Trump himself to disregard the deal that he was so proud of just two weeks ago when he entered office. So, Amir, this is my big question then, is does Trump have the political ability to

Steve Witkoff and others who are by the way, I'm not sure if you're aware are under major attack in our country also people who are aligned with these with the Israeli far-right Well, do they have the ability to force any of that because as you said if the government falls there's no guarantee what comes next what does that scenario look like or is there some thread-the-needle scenario where Trump does force Netanyahu to take this deal

continue the Steve Witkoff and other negotiations that does not lead to the falling of the government? Or is that just simply inevitable?

So I think President Trump is surrounded by a lot of people who are blind admirers of Netanyahu and are perhaps not giving the president the best advice possible. For example, Netanyahu and his right-hand man, Ron Dermer, will probably tell President Trump that we can't follow through with the ceasefire because the government will fall apart and that this is bad for Trump because it will cause a stalemate in the Middle East. But if you actually check

very simple press statements being made out in the open in Israel, you will see that the leaders of the important opposition parties today, today, not a month ago,

came out and said that if Netanyahu loses his majority because of the hostage deal, because of the ceasefire, they will give him temporary support for at least several months so that he doesn't lose power and the hostage and ceasefire deal collapses. Wow. Which means that any other claim is a lie. Now, Netanyahu prefers the far-right coalition that is against the hostage deal because that gives him

for the potential to hold power for another two years. That's why he prefers it. But from President Trump's point of view, he should know that if Netanyahu comes and says, "I can't do this deal for political reasons," that's not true. He will get a few months of support from the opposition to complete the hostage release and ceasefire deal, because for the vast majority of Israelis, the release of the hostages is today the number one priority.

This is something that unites a huge percentage of the population. We want to see them come back home and end this night. Now, I don't know.

if there will be enough people around President Trump who are strong enough and knowledgeable enough about our internal politics to present the facts to him in a way that overcomes the spin and the excuses that he will hear from Netanyahu. But I'm confident that if President Trump insists on this, we will see the deal come through. There will be ceasefire. The hostages will return. And Netanyahu will find a way to manage it politically with the opposition parties here in Israel.

He seems to always find a way to survive one way or another. Amir, thank you so much for your analysis today. Thank you, Amir. Very helpful. Thanks for having me. It's our pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching. We'll have a great show for everybody tomorrow and we'll see you all then.

My name is Paola Pedrosa, a medium and the host of the Ghost Therapy Podcast, where it's not just about connecting with deceased loved ones. It's about learning through them and their new perspective. I think God sent me this gift so I can show it to the world. And most of all, I help people every single day. Listen to the Ghost Therapy Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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