We begin with a rather remarkable and, actually, unexpected development today, a major diplomatic breakthrough reached between longtime enemies Iran and Syria, spearheaded and engineered by China. The deal unto itself has sweeping consequences for the region, for the increasing influence of China in the Middle East, the fraying U.S.-Saudi partnership and the competition for the U.S., always fixated on various wars in China, seemingly, always fixated on increasing its influence with other countries. We'll examine the implications of this new agreement.
Plus, Congressman Matt Gaetz had a bill this week to require the withdrawal of all troops from Syria. Yes, for some reason, the U.S. still has close to a thousand combat troops in Syria, despite Congress having never authorized war there in the first place. The resolution failed to earn a majority of the House members and thus failed. Yet it attracted four or five dozen yes votes from each of the two parties, leading one to see, at least far in the distance, the long-promised coalition between left-wing and right-wing populists, at least when it comes to reining in the U.S. posture of endless war. We'll talk about that.
We'll also examine the very revealing spectacle at yesterday's House hearing at which Democratic lawmakers and their followers praised the CIA, Homeland Security and FBI for “censoring for our own good.” And we'll talk about several other issues of note as well.
As a reminder, System Update is now available in podcast form on Spotify, Apple and most major podcast platforms. It's posted roughly 12 hours after the episode first appears here, live, on Rumble. For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update starting right now.
It's hard to overstate the importance of a news event today that seemingly came out of nowhere, despite the fact that it is receiving very little attention in our coverage from most mainstream media outlets and foreign policy pundits. And in fairness to them, it is seemingly difficult to analyze in great depth given how, as I said, out of nowhere it seems to have appeared.
The Middle East has basically been driven over the last, at least, six or seven years by a seething animus between two major countries in the region, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The tensions obviously have religious overtones – one is a Shia country, one is a Sunni country – but there are also a lot of geostrategic considerations, especially given the fact that the United States has sided so heavily with Saudi Arabia, one of the U.S.'s longtime partners. It is what has driven, among other things, the war in Yemen, as the Iranians fund and arm the Houthis, in Yemen, against whom the Saudis have been waging a very vicious war for a number of years, beginning under the Obama administration – a war supported by both the United States, all the way back to Obama, as well as Great Britain.
The potential for these two countries to be brought together and to have a cooling of tensions and to even reestablish diplomatic relations, which appears to be what happened, is of immense consequence for that region, but also for the United States and for China, given the fact that it was China that engineered this agreement.
Let's begin first with the Wall Street Journal’s account of what took place. The headline is “Saudi Arabia and Iran Restore Relations in a Deal Brokered by China.”
Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed to re-establish diplomatic relations Friday in a deal mediated by China, ending seven years of estrangement and jolting the geopolitics of the Middle East. The deal signals a sharp increase in Beijing's influence in a region where the U.S. has long been the dominant powerbroker and could complicate efforts by the U.S. and Israel to strengthen a regional alliance to confront Tehran as it expands its nuclear program. It comes as the U.S. has been trying to broker a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel, an effort now clouded with uncertainty.
China in recent years has built closer economic ties with both Iran and Saudi Arabia, both of which are important suppliers of oil to the world's second-largest economy. But this bridge-building effort is the first time that Beijing has intervened so directly in the Mideast political rivalries. It comes at a time when relations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia long aligned with Washington have grown strained, over America's diminishing security guarantees and Riyadh's decision to cut oil production to keep crude prices high during Russia's war in Ukraine. “For Iran, it's about escaping diplomatic isolation. For China, it's about deepening their engagement in the region and showing it's not just an energy consumer. And for Saudis, it's about the Americans”, said Ray Takeyh, an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations and former State Department official and former U.S. diplomat.
China's role in the talks marks a watershed moment for Beijing's ambitions in the region, a part of the world where the U.S. has waged war and spent hundreds of billions of dollars in providing security for allies. Along with Russia's intervention in the Syrian civil war, China's diplomacy is another sign of the U.S.'s waning influence.
China has stepped up its relations with Saudi Arabia and Iran in recent years as it became a major buyer of Middle Eastern oil but its ambitions had long appeared commercial, with little interest in involving itself in the region's messy disputes. Beijing has provided a lifeline to sanctions-hit Iran, becoming its main remaining crude buyer since the U.S. pulled out of a nuclear deal in 2018. But it has also sought closer ties with Saudi Arabia, Iran's regional rival, for which it is the biggest trade partner and a top oil buyer. Riyadh has also started importing sensitive missile technology from the Chinese military (The Wall Street Journal. March 10, 2023).
We'll get you just a little more detail on this in just a second, from CNN. I just want to note quickly, however, that when it comes to major news events like this, I do think, of all the largest news outlets, The Wall Street Journal tends to be the most reliable. It's the one to which I turn first. It's far from perfect, but it does seem to be less driven by and shaped by overt partisan objectives, the way, say, the New York Times, The Washington Post, and, certainly, CNN is.
We’re nonetheless about to show you an article from CNN because it contains an interesting tidbit that I wanted to include. The headline is “Archrivals Iran and Saudi Arabia agree to end years of hostilities in a deal mediated by China.” The CNN article states,
Friday's announcement is also a diplomatic victory for China in a Gulf region that has long been considered part of the U.S.'s domain of influence. Talks have been ongoing since March 6, in Beijing, between Iranian national Security Chief Ali Shamkhany, Saudi regional security adviser Mosaed Bin Mohammad Al-Aiban, and China's top diplomat, Wang Yi, according to Iranian state media.
In an apparent pushback to American influence, Wang said that “the world is not limited to the Ukrainian issue”, while emphasizing that the fate of the Middle East should be determined by the people of the Middle East (CNN. March 10, 2023).
So, there you see the Chinese perspective, or at least the Chinese public messaging, Chinese propaganda, however, you want to see it. But it's a very bold and significant move by the Chinese in what, as both articles indicate, has long been the domain of the United States.
Let's bring on Michael Tracey, who has been roving around very glamorous and fancy capitals of Western Europe, reporting on things like various NATO conferences and defense conferences. He's now back where he belongs in New Jersey, frequenting his pizzerias and supermarkets and the like.
Glenn Greenwald: Michael, thank you for taking the time to be with us tonight. It's great to see you as always.
Michael Tracey: Yeah. I've been camped out inside a bagel shop since I arrived back in New Jersey, as you can probably infer.
Glenn Greenwald: Yeah. We always have to return to our roots and your roots are not Paris or Munich or anything like that, but Newark or wherever you are in northern New Jersey.
Michael Tracey: So, where The Sopranos’ roots are.
Glenn Greenwald: Yeah, exactly.
So, a couple of things strike me about this. I find this story really fascinating. I have to say, I did not expect that. I had not seen indications it was coming. From what I can gather, very few people in the West seem to have anticipated this as well. Let's begin with the fact that we're going to talk about this in just a minute with Matt Gaetz's resolution to withdraw troops from Syria. That, of course, failed because the establishment wings of all parties united to block it. So, we're keeping troops in Syria. We're continuing to wage war in Syria. The United States, of course, notoriously waged war in Iraq and Afghanistan and in Libya. In Syria, it has poured huge amounts of money into all kinds of military operations in the region, including by helping the Saudis in their brutal war against Yemen. That has brought huge numbers of Yemenis, including children, to the brink of starvation, only for China to kind of float in without having to spend any of that money on endless warfare and imprint a massive footprint in the Middle East.
Why do we keep hearing about Biden's diplomatic brilliance? What do you make of all of this in terms of the China-U.S. perspective?
Michael Tracey: Well, one of the key planks of Biden's supposed diplomatic brilliance is how he's been able to marshal this coalition against China by tying it ineluctably with Russia, which China has been intensifying its ties with, to be clear. But supposedly Biden has exemplified this very adroit diplomatic acumen by trying to bring together this, again, a fledgling coalition to diplomatically arrayed itself against China, which is this key adversary – or the term in foreign policy jargon that's used about China, is that it's this pure competitor – and therefore, the United States needs to make sure that it always has its eye on curtailing its growing influence.
And so, here we have China, apparently brokering a fairly breakthrough diplomatic accord. Again, not just going based on the public statements like you are. I don't know the full background or details, maybe there's some skepticism that should be applied as to its full scope or what have you. But, at least, in terms of what's been reported, this would be a gigantic diplomatic breakthrough.
Remember, it was only in 2019 that Iran was accused of drone-bombing a Saudi state oil facility – do you remember that? – and that Mohammed bin Salman, who is this – basically operating or had operated as this lackey of the United States for a while, assuming that the unbridled support of the U.S. for Saudi Arabia would continue in perpetuity, had labeled the ayatollah of Iran the new generation's Hitler. So, he really sprung for a novel historical analogy there and likened the ayatollah of Iran to Hitler.
And mediating some sort of détente between these two bitter regional adversaries would be a kind of diplomatic breakthrough that has eluded the United States for quite a long time – or maybe eluded is the wrong term, because it doesn't seem like the United States has really been interested in attempting to broker very much to diplomacy lately, despite this reputation that's showered on Biden and Blinken and all these other people in the administration as very serious adults who are interested in leveraging the hegemonic power of the United States to have a glorious diplomatic kind of arrangement the world over. It seems more like, at the behest of the United States, diplomatic relations with major powers and smaller powers have frayed.
If I had told you two years ago that both Saudi Arabia and Israel would be actively bucking the United States’ chief demands, at least in terms of its current geopolitical interest, which is to unite against Russia in terms of the war with Ukraine – would you have believed me that Saudi Arabia and Israel would have been forever, ironically, united in their refusal to acquiesce to those demands of the United States? – That would have sounded rather implausible, right? – given the resources that have been poured by the United States into maintaining and cultivating those relationships. And yet that has been what's transpired over the past year and it's really just solidified now with, apparently, Saudi Arabia moving even closer into the orbit of China. And you said that you were surprised by this arrangement. I can't say that I would have predicted it necessarily that those would be announced.
But it is true that Saudi Arabia has been making movements to try to potentially even enter this BRICS formation that includes both Brazil, as you are familiar with, and China, and which is kind of just like [...]
Glenn Greenwald: and Russia
Michael Tracey: and Russia. Right. And India and South Africa. That's BRICS, right? So, they may have to change the acronym now because there are lots of countries that want to enter this new formation, including Saudi Arabia and even, potentially, Argentina.
So, to have that momentum almost explicitly counter United States diplomatic or international multilateral arrangement – would maybe give you some indication that perhaps the United States diplomacy is maybe not as sterling as we've been led to believe. And yet I don't know if this new accord that was announced today is really going to change that narrative. Well […]
Glenn Greenwald: Let me just interject what we know.
And first of all, there are a few – or more than a few – very compassionate and generous people inquiring about what seems to be some sort of eye problem that I have. I do have some just minor eye irritation. It's been dry for the last couple of days and I'm using airdrops. So, I appreciate your concern, but I don't think it's anything serious that my kids have had a great time mocking. Over the last two days for what they think is pink eye. I don't think it is but they're hoping it is. Anyway […]
Michael Tracey: Just do the show blindfolded.
Glenn Greenwald: Yeah. Or just like with like Groucho Marx’s glasses on.
Just to give a couple of details about what we do know about this agreement – and this is the reason why it does seem significant – is, at the very least, one of the things that are going to happen is both countries are going to open up embassies and consulates that have been closed for at least seven years. There was an incident after the Saudis had murdered a couple of leading Shiite dissidents, their embassy in Tehran was violently attacked. And ever since then, they've had no diplomatic connection or relationship at all. So that's going to be reopened.
There seems as well to be part of this agreement, a pledge by the Iranians to cease funding the Houthis in order to continue the war in Yemen and by the Saudis to stop bombing the Houthis as well. So that actually takes place and that is part of the deal that would be very significant.
One of the things that strikes me about this, and it always goes back to the primary question I raised about our obsession with Russia – and, in particular, the war in Ukraine – is – from the beginning, I've always been asking – what is it about Ukraine that would justify why we are willing to risk a nuclear war in order to protect or determine who rules parts of Eastern Ukraine? I've often referenced the fact that it was common conventional wisdom in Washington, including articulated by President Obama, that Ukraine is not and never will be a vital interest to the United States, but it always has been and always will be a vital interest to Russia.
And so, we spent the last year obsessing on Ukraine. We poured gigantic amounts of money into fueling the war there. We've depleted our own weapons stockpile. Meanwhile, China entered this region that is obviously a vital interest to everybody, for all kinds of reasons, starting with the oil and then you add Israel and the importance of these Gulf States countries to various economic deals and China waltzes in because they've been able to manage to maintain a distance from the war in Ukraine. They may be helping Russia in some indirect way, but by nothing, nothing even close to the level of obsession that the United States has. And it really, again, provokes the question of why is Ukraine so important to us and why are we willing to be so heavily involved in a region that offers nothing to us strategically or in terms of resources, while China is doing what they're very good at doing, which is advancing their interests by always remaining out of people's wars?
Michael Tracey: Well, William Burns, the CIA director, famously wrote, in 2008, when he was the U.S. ambassador to Russia in the Bush administration and this “resurfaced” once the war started last year and became fairly common knowledge. But of course, he sent a memo back to Condoleezza Rice, who was then the secretary of state, telling her in no uncertain terms that it wasn't just Putin who viewed the potential accession of Ukraine, anti-NATO as a “red line.” But it was pretty much everybody whom he had ever talked to in the Russian governmental apparatus, from liberal critics to Putin to the hardline hawkish opponents of Putin, and everybody in between, including Putin himself, were in a firm, unswerving agreement that for Ukraine to join NATO would be this unambiguous “red line” that would precipitate Russia taking some sort of drastic action. Remember him? He was just testifying this week before the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
Glenn Greenwald: We have these videos and I want to get to that.
Michael Tracey: Well, let me just, yeah, finish the point on the question he raised. Okay. Sorry. So, but he was asked exactly this. He was asked about Russia's strategy in Ukraine and he actually repeated this conventional wisdom that Obama had once articulated, which is that Ukraine is always going to be far more in the vital interest of Russia than it is in the United States. Burns repeated that and said that that's part of Putin's strategy, in that he's trying to ride the wave out here, just to use a confused metaphor, or basically protract the war such that the United States in the West loses interest and realizes that Ukraine is actually more in Putin's interest than it is in the U.S.
What Burns said was that the West, led by the U.S., of course, has to prove him wrong, meaning has to prove to Putin that Ukraine is just as much in the vital interest of the United States as it is Russia, which is an amazing […]
Glenn Greenwald: This is why none of this makes any sense with regard to Russia and Ukraine. And, by the way, while you were speaking, Michael, we featured one of my canine co-hosts, who usually appears only on Locals aftershow. His name is Sylvester.
Michael Tracey: Some subliminal message to me or something.
Glenn Greenwald: No, the audience celebrated the fact that for a few minutes, they were relieved from having to watch you, and they got to instead watch Sylvester.
Michael Tracey: I mean, I would rather look at a dog than myself in the mirror, to be frank.
Glenn Greenwald: I think that's a unanimous consensus.
But no, the point I was going to make is that the whole issue with vital interest and I think sometimes people have a hard time understanding this is the reason you define vital interests. So, one country says this is our vital interest here and this is not a vital interest. And the United States says this is our vital interest and these are not our vital interests, which is what countries do, to signal to the rest of the world we'd be willing to go to war over this, but not this. And we acknowledge that this is your vital interest, but not ours. That's the whole point of this doctrine, is to, essentially, internally amongst yourselves and then communicate to the rest of the world what you are and are not willing to go to war over because obviously war is a very serious matter and you should do that only when your vital interests are at stake.
So, Putin's thinking to himself, which is very rational: the United States has always acknowledged that Ukraine is not in their vital interest. Why would it be? It's obviously in ours. It's right on the other side of our border, the most sensitive part of our border, where twice during the 20th century the Germans invaded. Why would the United States and Europe be willing to subject their citizens to all kinds of suffering, from enormous high gas prices to freezing in the winter, to massive inflation, to funding a gigantic war over a region that is not important to them but is to us?
That's the rational way the great powers have always looked at international relations and sort of say, well, we have to pretend or act as if Ukraine is of vital interest to us just to prove Putin wrong is madness, and it overturns the entire framework on which international relations among great powers have long been based. And we're now starting to see the price of that beyond the actual price. I mean, the price tag and hundreds of billions of dollars we're going to be transferring to Raytheon and General Dynamics and the CIA before this is all over, their price tag in waning influence as well. We're obsessed with this war that nobody cares about and, meanwhile, China is running rampant through the regions that actually matter.
Michael Tracey: Well, the rational self-interest calculation dissolves in the face of what I think is actual genuine ideological zeal on the part of the people who are running the foreign policy apparatus. I think that can be easy to overlook. Meaning that we hear these platitudinous speeches delivered by Biden or Blinken or Victoria Nuland or, you know, whomever, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, and just assume that it's thiscynical show that they're putting on to sort of mask some other ulterior motive that they're not being forthcoming about. Whereas I think it stands to reason at this point that they actually believe their own rhetoric in terms of the sort of high-minded, highfalutin significance that they ascribe to this conflict on ideological grounds, not on just raw, self-interested grounds. Because if that's what they were limiting themselves to, then it would just be obvious that, clearly, just by dint of geographic proximity, Ukraine would be far more in the vital interest of Russia than it is in the United States. But if you actually have invested Ukraine with this meeting of it being this last bastion of democracy, or that actually is the case that Putin is the next incarnation of Hitler, and if the United States and NATO were to relent in Ukraine – that he would be allowed to blitzkrieg throughout the rest of Europe and it would collapse the entire global order over which the United States presides and dictates the terms of – then I actually do think that if you believe in that rhetoric – remember we talked about what are the actual implications of if these people who are opponents of Trump actually believe the rhetoric about him being this Nazi tyrant and presiding over this, you know, neo-concentration-camp feudal system or something. Oh, If you actually believe the rhetoric that's being espoused day in and day out by the people who are trying to justify this policy in Ukraine, then it makes sense that they would be so hell-bent on perpetuating the status quo policy-wise here.
Glenn Greenwald: So, let me just say.
Michael Tracey: This rational – rational in terms of like a rational, self-interested calculus – but if you look at their ideological calculation, it does make sense but that kind of brings it out of the realm of rationality.
Glenn Greenwald: Yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot going on there. And, you know, again, one of the things that I think is important to note is that the only opposition to the war, the U.S. role in the war in Ukraine, is coming from the kind of Trump populist running of the Republican Party. Unfortunately, it's a minority. The overwhelming majority of the Republican establishment is united with every single Democrat still in support of this war. But if you look at why that is, I think if you look at the Republican establishment, why they're so supportive of Biden's war policies and are saying we need to fight until the very end in that maximalist rhetoric, even though their own base is increasingly questioning the wisdom of that – why are we spending so much time, attention and money on a region that doesn't actually impact our lives? – I think for them, it's just kind of this instinctive foreign policy doctrine that the U.S. rules the world, that we should rule the world, that Russia is our enemy for some reason that nobody can articulate. That was Trump's point. And we have a chance to weaken Russia and for some reason should do that. Just I'm not sure why, but they always want to weaken U.S. adversaries. That's their view of the world.
But I actually think that while Democrats also share that fundamental foreign policy – a major reason – I would say the predominant reason why the core and crux of the Democratic Party is so willing to be so devoted to Russia's destruction is because of their residual anger over their perceived role that Russia played in defeating Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election and the role that Russia, they believe, played as a result of Russiagate. They inculcated every Democrat and every liberal in the United States into hating Vladimir Putin, not for any reasons that are geopolitical, but because that's whom they blame for Hillary Clinton's defeat, something which they have not even gotten close to getting over. Now, speaking of this […]
Michael Tracey: Really quick, I had a prominent Democrat whose name you would know, but I'm not going to say here because I'm saving it for something I'm publishing down the line, right? But a prominent House name Democrat told me directly, almost unprompted, that that was a chief motivator, meaning residual grievance over the role that Russia purportedly played in the 2016 election to deprive Hillary Clinton of the presidency. And that was a principal motivator in why they were so zealous in insisting on the maintenance of this current foreign policy in Ukraine. I hadn't heard it in such blunt terms expressed to me or expressed anywhere as I did when I heard this recently. So that's going to be […]
Glenn Greenwald: Yeah, I mean, there's so much of that. We started our show last night talking about why Democrats are so obsessed with censoring the Internet. And it was because, after 2016, they blamed free speech on the Internet and, quote-unquote, “disinformation” and realize they can no longer tolerate free speech on the Internet. If you asked why they're so insistent on keeping Julian Assange imprisoned, it's because of the role they perceive he played in defeating Hillary Clinton. And if you ask why they're willing to risk a nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine, a country that a few years ago none of them could even place on a map, let alone explain why it was important, I think the same thing is true. That 2016 election that brought Donald Trump to power at Hillary Clinton's expense was such a cataclysmic trauma for U.S. political elites that so much of the fallout of what we're dealing with still comes from that original sin. Now, let me move on, Michael.
Michael Tracey: All comes down to John Podesta's Gmail account.
Glenn Greenwald: Yeah, exactly. It really is amazing.
So, I mentioned that Matt Gaetz had a resolution in that he offered to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria. I think a lot of people don't even know that the U.S. still has troops in Syria and they're not just kind of stationed there hanging out, the way they are in South Korea or Germany. They are often involved in direct combat. They're bombing things. They're still having shootouts, occasionally, with various forces running around Syria. We're basically still in kind of a war with Syria, a war that, in the first place, was never authorized by Congress. Of course, it really was a CIA regime-change operation that Obama did the worst of all worlds, he neither stopped it nor gave it enough money to succeed. He just kind of let the CIA go there and hand out enough money and weapons to destroy Syria, but without actually ever removing Assad, who's more entrenched than ever. So here you have Matt Gaetz, not Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or any of the anti-war, self-proclaimed antiwar parts of the Democratic Left but, instead, Matt Gaetz offering a resolution to require the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Syria. And it did fail here.
From The Hill, you see the headline “Gaetz Resolution to Withdraw U.S. Troops in Syria Fails in the House Vote”,
A resolution to force the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria within six months failed to pass the House on Wednesday. The resolution, sponsored by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R- Fla.), and emphatically backed by several more conservative lawmakers, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) was rejected on a 103 to 321 vote (The Hill. March 8, 2023).
So, a pretty lopsided defeat. It lost by 219 votes.
Michael Tracey: 218.
Glenn Greenwald: 218. All right. Thank you. My God.
The resolution was supported by 56 Democrats and 47 Republicans, while 150 Democrats and 171 Republicans voted against the resolution.
Roughly 900 U.S. troops remain in Syria, where they carry out operations to counter ISIS. Although the U.S. designated terrorist group has lost much of its territory, it still has a presence in Syria and maintains sleeper cells.
On the House floor, Gaetz said American troops in Syria were trapped in a “hellscape” of war and meddling from various foreign nations and the American counter-terrorism operations of the country have no end in sight. The Florida lawmaker also argued the ISIS forces in Syria do not represent a serious threat to the U.S., and so the soldiers should be withdrawn.
“So often we come to the floor and we debate frivolities. This is one of the most important things we're going to be talking about”, Gaetz said. “How we use the credibility of fellow Americans… how we spill the blood of our bravest patriots. We have stained the deserts in the Middle East with enough American blood. It is time to bring our servicemembers home.”
Opponents of the legislation [meaning the establishment names of all parties] said it was vital to review the U.S. presence in Syria, but that withdrawing from the country would threaten Americans by allowing foreign terrorist groups like ISIS to strengthen. Some House members noted the chaotic withdrawal of Afghanistan in 2021, which led to the swift takeover of the Taliban. [Apparently, we're back to the idea that we didn't stay in Afghanistan long enough].
Rep Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Relations Committee, said he does not support an “indefinite” presence in Syria. [Perish the thought, Michael. They're not saying they want an indefinite presence in Syria. It's just that nine, ten years is not enough]. But the resolution was “premature” and would leave partner forces “out to dry.”
That was what they always said about Afghanistan. We all want to get out of Afghanistan. It's just premature. It's not time yet.
That argument was backed [that argument by Jeffrey Meeks, the Democrat from New York], was backed by the Republican […]
Michael Tracey: Gregory Meeks. Get the dope’s name right, Gregory Meeks. People should be able to Google him and send him nasty tweets.
Glenn Greenwald: Totally.
That argument from Gregory Meeks, the Democrat of New York, was backed by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) [Beautiful bipartisanship. Who said a withdrawal would lead to a much larger, more complex problem at a higher cost, a threat to Americans worldwide”. “We don't need to repeat 9/11”, Wilson said. Peace is best maintained through strength” (The Hill. March 8, 2023).
Michael Tracey: That’s the best because the United States, maybe Joe Wilson was never briefed on this, but I seem to recall the United States ending up funding al-Qaida and arming al-Qaida in Syria and then rebranding them as “moderate rebels” or whatever, “freedom fighters”, because it would seem a bit odd to most Americans that, you know, ten plus years after 9/11, we're actually funding and arming and supporting an offshoot of the same group that knocked down the Twin Towers.
Glenn Greenwald: But I don't think you could argue that, prior to 9/11, the U.S. had insufficient interventions in various countries in the Middle East. In fact, al-Qaida cited the constant U.S. interventions in the Middle East as one of the reasons why they felt the United States was a primary or a valid target for attack.
The left-wing, anti-war foreign policy group called “Just Foreign Policy” – I've known them for a long time; they're definitely on the left. – posted a tweet that read the following
Thank you to @RepMattGaetz for leading the largest number of House Republican members to vote yes on a War Powers Resolution since @Dennis_Kucinich, in 2011 Libya WPR ( March 10, 2023).
What they're referring to there is a very interesting event from history. In 2011, Obama wanted to involve the U.S. in the regime-change war in Libya. The House effort to vote no was led by Dennis Kucinich, the left-wing congressman from Ohio, and he mostly got Republican votes for it. The authorization failed. The House refused to authorize the military involvement of the U.S. in Libya. Obama ignored that and went to war in Libya anyway. That tweet then goes on.
Thank you as well to @Ilhan Omar, @USProgressives and Amb. @fordrs58 for bringing along an even larger number of House Democrats ( March 10, 2023).
Just to conclude this story, which I think is really interesting in terms of the breakdown, former Congressman Justin Amash, who has been on our show before, said the following. He obviously would have been one of the people voting yes to withdraw troops from Syria. And he said the following,
Think about the insanity of voting no. There's not even authorization for troops to be in Syria. And still these members of Congress refuse to bring them home (March 8, 2023).
And I just wanted to highlight what I thought is the very interesting breakdown of some of the votes that Matt Gaetz was able to attract in support of his resolution. It included every member of the Squad who voted with Congressman Gaetz, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. It also included Ro Khanna and several of the more liberal or left-wing members of Congress, including Pramila Jayapal, the chairman of the House Progressive Caucus. And then, on the right, it attracted some of the most impressive foreign policy experts in the House, like Jorge Santos, the Republican from New York, but also Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Thomas Massie, Lauren Boebert, Rep. Colmer, that of Kentucky, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee. Richie Torres, as well.
And so, what you see, Michael, is I know you're kind of jaded about this but, at least, in this particular case, and I'm the first to acknowledge that the Squad was willing to vote no only when it's sure that their votes won't matter and the Democrats will get what they want.
So I understand that in one sense it's kind of illusory, but at least, we have here an example of concrete, in the real world example, of members of the more left-wing or more populist left-wing of the Democratic Party joining with the MAGA right-wing antiwar populists led by Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie and Lauren Boebert, coming together in a coalition that, though it failed, did actually get more than 100 votes in favor of a War Powers Resolution, requiring the withdrawal of troops from Syria.
Is this just some trivial illusion or theater, or is this something reasonably significant and encouraging?
Michael Tracey: I think it's rather illusory and trivial, frankly. I mean, not to diminish the efforts of people who might want to work toward securing votes for resolutions like this. But I guess, if I'm jaded, it's because I've seen enough partisan fluctuations on these sets of issues at this point that it's not really my inclination to ascribe a whole lot of significance to them.
So, for example, in 2019, and this is after Trump had been in power for two plus years when the Republican Party had supposedly undergone this great realignment, and the populists, “antiwar” segment had been empowered or what have you, I just looked it up. Now, just to refresh my memory, just to make sure I was recalling this correctly, only 16 Republicans voted in favor of a War Powers Resolution to remove troops from hostilities with regard to Yemen, in the Saudi war that the U.S. was funding and orchestrating the combat operations, at that point, over four years. And almost all Democrats, I think actually all 231 Democrats, voted in favor of this Resolution, under Trump, in 2019. So, what explains the unanimous Democratic desire apparently to invoke Congress’s worst war powers authority in 2019 to withdraw American military engagement in that particular conflict versus today when the partisan balance has shifted somewhat? Well, it's just that probably partisanship is the main driver.
And so, given that these votes tend to be very predictable on the basis of just sheer partisanship being who controls the White House, goes back to even Libya in 2011, which you referenced when Republicans were a lot more desirous of voting against war powers authority when it was Obama who was going to be wielding them. And then, when Trump was wielding the war powers authorities, Democrats were much more desirous of trying to restrain his ability to engage in that warfare. I mean, it's just hard to really characterize this as some sort of bona fide ideological transformation when it really just does fluctuate back and forth on the basis of partisanship.
I know people think you can't go back any further than like 20 years or something because 9/11 was this watershed moment, which it was, but people don't even remember, they never knew, that in 1999 when Bill Clinton bombed Serbia and, under the guise of some sort of humanitarian mission, as usual, the House never approved that action – that was similar to Libya when Obama justified Congress there as well and continued dropping bombs on Libya despite the lack of congressional authorization. Similarly, Bill Clinton had never had the authorization to bomb Syria. Do you know why? Because the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives, including, John Boehner and the most establishment of establishment Republicans at the time, names I can't even recall to my head because they're so banal and bland but, Bob Ney – you remember that name? – they all voted in unison against authorizing Bill Clinton's ability to bomb Serbia. And I'm sorry, was that because there was just some grand ideological coalition that the Republicans had cultivated against the war in 1999? Or was it because of, like fundamentally some sort of partisan grievance? I think probably more of the latter.
Glenn Greenwald: You know, I got this argument, and I think it's undeniable that partisanship plays a role in everything that takes place in Washington. Nonetheless, it's true that there are still four dozen, five dozen Democrats in the House who voted no, notwithstanding the fact that this is President Biden, whose war powers they were willing to restrict. It's also true that there has always been a strain in the Republican Party that has been isolationist, pre-9/11. There was the sense that the bombing of Yugoslavia, of Serbia, and this whole obsession with Kosovo was about distracting Americans from the Lewinsky scandal. The reason why Ron Paul was able to have such remarkable success in 2008 and 2012, going deep into precincts in Iowa and South Carolina that were very far to the right, denouncing the War on Terror and urging that Americans stop funding the military-industrial complex is that there has been this strain in the Republican Party among voters. That is very real. A lot of this emerged during the Trump presidency and even the Trump campaign. He was the one who ran against things like the war in Syria and even questioned the viability of NATO. And, you know, it was Trump who negotiated the withdrawal deal with the Taliban of troops from Afghanistan. I remember very well watching Matt Gaetz in the Trump presidency arguing vehemently in the House that the best day to get out of Afghanistan was the first day and the second best day would have been the second day. And the best day we have now is today. And it was Liz Cheney and the kind of pro-war Democrats who united against the coalition he was trying to build in order to block that from happening. So, of course, there is a partisan element to it. There might even be a significant partisan element to it. But I think that simply kind of, in this jaded way, snidely dismiss all of these movements. No one argues that this anti-interventionist, populist movement on the right is the dominant force in Republican Party politics. That's why Mitch McConnell […]
Michael Tracey: I deny that.
Glenn Greenwald: I am saying nobody argues that they're the dominant force. I mean, everyone acknowledges there's still a minority wing in the Republican Party. That's why Mitch McConnell is still the Senate minority leader […]
Michael Tracey: Leader McCarthy is the speaker of the House.
Glenn Greenwald: Yeah. Why? Kevin McCarthy is the speaker of the House. Exactly. Exactly why you saw Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert and the rest withholding their votes from Kevin McCarthy because they know that the establishment still is the dominant force in Republican politics. Everyone gets that. But there have been incursions made that are evidenced in polling data among Republicans – that are evidenced – and where the no votes come from in terms of war that maybe are explainable in some way by partisan loyalties and the like. But not only. And I think this vote is a good example of people who have come together because they do have a more isolationist bent to them. And I think they – most of them will – have this bent and have had this bent, regardless of which party controls the White House.
Michael Tracey: I just question how sizable or significant those supposed incursions are, because if you contrast this with that 2011 Libya vote, which the just foreign policy group, which is run by people who I also – there was greater Republican opposition in 2011 to the Libya war than there was today to the continued authorization of the Syria intervention.
And so, if anything, Republican anti-interventionist sentiment has declined relative to 2011 and 2013, when Obama was proposing this idea of bombing Assad – remember he was saying, we're going to go before Congress and they're going to have to authorize it before we actually press forward with this. I went around myself to the town hall meetings that were held over, I think it was Labor Day that year, and there was mass opposition to the authorization of that potential war that Obama was potentially going to initiate. And what ended up happening was that the administration withdrew the vote or it ended up not even being put up for a vote in Congress, in part because there was overwhelming Republican opposition in the House and in the Senate, including for people like Marco Rubio, who is not really seen as an anti-interventionist, but nonetheless concocted their argument as to why he was not going to vote to authorize that particular intervention. So compared to 2013 and 2011, there's less anti-interventionist sentiment that's observable within the Republican Party today, at least if we're going to be bad […]
Glenn Greenwald: Bad, bad, bad. I don't think you could just group every single one of these operations under the guise and make no distinctions. I mean, for example, the attempt to remove Muammar Gaddhafi from power in Libya had no bearing at all, even arguably, on the security of the island states. That was a word that the British and the French wanted because they needed Libyan crude and Gaddhafi was threatening to nationalize Libyan oil and to use the resources not for the benefit of Western Europe, but for Northern Africa. And that was something that the French and the British desperately wanted to do under David Cameron. And I forget who the French president was at the time. Sarkozy, exactly. And then it was Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice who convinced a very reluctant Obama to get involved. Whereas the current justification for why we have troops in Syria is that there's still a presence of ISIS in Syria that's part of this kind of War on Terror that a lot of our public support, not on the kind of grounds of liberal interventionism, but on the grounds of just sort of basic self-defense. And as long as there are al-Qaida and ISIS forces anywhere, the United States should be going after them.
So, I mean, you can't just take every single one of these proposed wars and treat them as exactly the same. Some appeal to people more as a self-defense war than an intervention in the war. But at the end of the day, Michael, for people like us, what you want to do is to take these changes, and I don't think it's possible to deny that they're real at all. We can argue about the extent to which they've thus far succeeded and encourage them to provide growth to them and water them and provide nutrients to them and not kind of dump all over them and deny their viability.
I mean, the argument that you're making, which is that it's not yet big enough to matter, I think the response to that is to say, let's make it bigger, let's encourage it to thrive, not to try and demean it as something artificial or nonexistent.
Michael Tracey: Okay. But what does it tell you then, that Republicans were near unanimous in opposing, in 2019, the invocation of their war powers authority with regard to Yemen? Why wasn't this anti-interventionist revolution apparent then, and why are we supposed to all herald it now, if not partisanship? And the reason why I'm dumping on it is not that I'm just cynically trying to stand in the way of these cross-partisan coalitions. But because there is a sick cycle here and there's this cyclical evidence of just kind of circumstantial partisanship that I think – if it's allowed to be kind of mischaracterized as sort of genuine ideological alignment – and I'm not denying that there are certain actors who might have actually had a genuine shift in their views. That's probable and almost certain to have happened. But in the aggregate, if the main variable here that explains the difference between that 2019 vote and this vote today is just partisanship, then why should we pretend that it's something of greater weight than it actually is?
Glenn Greenwald: I think there are two things going on in Republican politics that are the primary impediments to having this anti-interventionist sentiment take hold in a comprehensive way. One of them is Israel and the fact that whether for political reasons, namely, that Republican politicians are eager to please their pro-Israel constituents – meaning both Jewish voters as well as evangelical voters – and therefore anything involving Iran, including, for example, the involvement of United States in Yemen – which is all about Iran and trying to weaken and defeat Iran in the same way that we're in Ukraine in order to defeat or weaken the Russians – anything involving Israel will automatically be a hot button issue when it comes to Republican politics. They'll be very reluctant to support non-interventionism if it's perceived that an intervention is necessary to promote Israeli interests. That is a huge hurdle.
But I do think I think you mentioned what is it – there were 16 Republican votes, even under Trump, in favor of limiting his war powers to remain in Yemen. That is the foundation. And I'd be willing to bet that they were people who are more the kind of MAGA crowd of at least some legitimate, principled presence. And given the fact that these are the people who tend to have the most influence and trust and weight with Republican voters, like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz and those people, I think that that provides a significant opening to convince Republican voters even more so, even when it does involve Israel. Now, this is not the United States is a business to be controlling these regions. The other impediment is the question of China. And I did want to show you something that you […]
Michael Tracey: Actually, these are two big impediments.
Glenn Greenwald: Fine. I agree they're big impediments.
So, let's look at this video that you flagged. That is from Rep. Tony Gonzalez, he's from Texas, is he not?
Michael Tracey: Yeah. Yeah. He represents Texas.
Glenn Greenwald: Exactly. So here he is. It's from the House Intelligence Committee Risk assessment hearing this week.
Michael Tracey: It's hard to target this committee, the committee from which this clip derives was actually the Oversight Committee on Homeland Security, a subcommittee within that. I mean, I know you love committees, and being very precise with the nature […]
Glenn Greenwald: All right. Well, let's listen to what he said, regardless of what subcommittee in which he said it, though, I appreciate your attempt at accuracy. But, you know, in support, I guess, of your argument that, look, there are very severe limits on this alleged noninterventionist revolution within the Republican Party. Well, let's listen to what Congressman Gonzales had to say about China.
Rep. Tony Gonzalez: My first question is for you, General, I just got back from a trip from Taiwan, the second trip to Taiwan in the past 14 months. I spent 20 years in the military, as my good friend August Pfluger pointed out, our chairman pointed out, I know what war looks like. We're at war. I mean, this is a war. It may be a Cold War, but this is a war with China, with the People's Republic of China every single day are invading Taiwan via their cyberspace. Not only that, but the question I have for you is, in particular, your expertise is in the air. I spent five years as an air crewman flying against China. I know exactly when they come out and they intercept our aircraft. They're doing that every single day. And there is a danger in that, right? Because everything is fine until there is an accident, a spark if you will, that turns a Cold War into a hot war. Can you speak just to some of the dangers which playing this game of chicken brings up in particular to Taiwan?
LT. Gen: China has demonstrated significant aggression in the air by penetrating Taiwanese airspace, and it is a violation of Taiwan’s sovereignty […]
Glenn Greenwald: So, let's just leave aside all the craziness about how dare the
Chinese intercept American airplanes flying right close to their country, as if the U.S. wouldn't do the same to the Chinese. We had a week-long meltdown of hysteria over what may have been a weather balloon, what might have been an intelligence-gathering balloon flying over the United States. Everybody celebrated the great heroism of the U.S. military when it went and shot it down which we all got to watch on TV.
Michael Tracey: The people on the beach chanting “USA” in South Carolina when the fighter jet went and shot down a balloon.
Glenn Greenwald: We proved that we could shoot down an unarmed balloon –- and people celebrated over this remarkable display of violence showing that people really do love watching their governments blow up things, which is concerning.
But for all this talk about how much up there is, this is kind of anti-interventionist. Let's stop our endless posture on war. You have the majority of the Republican Party supporting Joe Biden's war with Russia, which is what that is in Syria – it's a proxy war with Russia. Absolutely supporting that. And then you also have a much larger part of the Republican Party, even people in the Republican Party who are against the U.S. war in Ukraine seem to be in support of rhetoric like this, which basically declares that the United States is at war with China.
So, we're at war with Russia, a proxy war with Russia, and we are simultaneously at war with China, which is what Rep. Gonzales said, or willing to go to war with China over Taiwan, or over incursions into the South China Sea and other parts right close to the Chinese mainland, very, very far from the United States. And it seems pretty close to what you would define as World War III, is it not?
Michael Tracey: Yeah. I mean, it's at the very least, the contours of what I think could only be described as World War III or some sort of global conflict that is reminiscent of what one would anticipate a World War III to look like.
I mean, you must resist even trying to envision what the full character of that potential conflict would be because it would be so unfathomably cataclysmic. But that sounds about right. And what Tony Gonzalez said there, Glenn, correct me if I'm wrong or tell me if you disagree with this, his rhetoric with regard to China in the proclamation of a war against China already being underway – according to him – is not really defined by association with just the Republican establishment, right? You would expect to hear very similar rhetoric, even identical rhetoric, across virtually all factions of the Republican Party as it stands today, meaning that there's not some kind of easily definable distinction in terms of rhetoric on China that separates the “MAGA anti-establishment wing” and the Kevin McCarthy, whomever establishment wing. I don't even really accept those as significant distinctions at this point, really, or like a meaningful kind of demarcation between these different factions. But let's say you do kind of buy into those factional differentiations, that rhetoric would not be associated with one or the other wing, right? It would be, and if anything, a unifying force within these allegedly disparate forces within the party.
Glenn Greenwald: Just to be a little bit grimmer about it all, is that, at least, over the last 6 to 9 months, I think what we've seen is a significant escalation in the eagerness of the Democratic Party and its leaders to demonstrate that they are not, in fact, “weak on China”. There has been an aggressive escalation in the rhetoric coming from the Democrats as well. They're kind of playing catch-up. They now, for example, support the banning of TikTok from all of the United States on the grounds that we need to protect ourselves from the nefarious Chinese Communist Party. There is, I think, an emerging bipartisan consensus that China needs to be talked about. China needs to be treated as a long-term enemy.
I don't think anyone except the most kind of deranged people is ready for a hot war with China, though people have increasingly said, led by Joe Biden, that if the Chinese were to make incursions into Taiwan, we would have a hot war with China. But I don't think anyone wants that. But at the very least, there seems to be an emerging Cold War, emerging bipartisan consensus that it's time for, at the very least, a Cold War with China.
That's the reason why I began with this story about China engineering this diplomatic breakthrough between the Saudis and the Iranians because the United States has nowhere near the diplomatic weight to sustain that. It couldn't even really unite the democratic world behind isolating and sanctioning Russia. Major democracies in the world like South Korea and Indonesia and Brazil have refused to sanction Russia or side with the United States behind Russia. All of these countries in Africa, Latin America, in the Middle East have all kinds of critical ties with China. Where is this” Cold War” going to come from?
You have the Chinese also playing this peacemaking role with Ukraine as well. I mean, they just recently created a kind of outline for what a peace plan would look like. How is the United States possibly going to simultaneously fight a war with Russia and do a 30 to 40 or 50-year sustained Cold War against China when China is doing nothing but growing and developing allies and relationships and the United States can't even clean up the chemical spills and chemical explosions in Ohio.
Michael Tracey: Well, I wouldn't be too complacent about this being limited to some sort of manageable Cold War, right? Because there is this huge intractable consensus emerging across pretty much every faction of the American political scene. So, let me give you one example of that.
When the United States Senate, last August, voted to approve the accession of Sweden and Finland into NATO, there was one senator, a grand total of one senator, who voted against that. It was Josh Hawley. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, ]they all voted totally unanimously in favor of expanding NATO, including to hundreds of miles along the border with Russia with respect to Finland. But Josh Hawley did vote against it. What is his rationale for voting against it was telling because he had voted for previous rounds of NATO expansion that people don't even know happened, like, you know, Montenegro and North Macedonia and so forth. He was in the Senate for at least one of them, and he voted in favor of it. But he did vote against this. And his rationale was that look, the resources that might be expended in Europe, this expansion of NATO would be better expended in East Asia to prepare for what inevitably is going to be not just a Cold War, but a hot war with China. And I'm paraphrasing there. I don't know if he used that exact phraseology, but that was the thrust of the message.
And so, when you talk about how nobody wants a war with China, I don't know. I mean, they seem to be doing a lot of what you might expect to precipitate a war with China. Whether they consciously, or intentionally, want to, is almost like a weird psychological question that we can't really fully know unless we get access to the interior monologue of some of these people. But they're doing everything in terms of action that you would expect them to do if they did, in a sense, want it. And that intractable consensus, I think, is very necessary to dwell upon, because one reason why the Ukraine policy was able to proceed with so little dissension and so little debate was that, basically, the bait was almost circumvented. And there was an air of inevitability around the policy and around this, just sort of inescapable confrontation with Russia that we all had to buy into that allowed for debate to basically just be bypassed. And I think they're doing a similar thing now – they in this kind of royal sense – with China by just making it seem like it's this inevitability, it's unavoidable, that there's going to be this hot war eventually with China, or at least that hot war needs to be something that the U.S. is actually preparing for, whether it's regarding Taiwan, whether it's these new bases they're establishing in the Philippines or these new defense arrangements with Japan or this Orcus alliance with Australia and the UK, and on and on and on.
They're preparing for it in a way that would, I think, force you to conclude that they do in a sense want it, even if they wouldn't articulate it in quite those terms because it's incredibly jarring to just contemplate this idea of being in a hot war with China, which is a global superpower, obviously means it would be a nightmare like beyond comprehension.
Glenn Greenwald: The thing that alarms me the most is I recall during the first and second week after the Russian invasion of Ukraine – and I wrote articles about this and I did videos about this as well – you could see in real-time this kind of intense hate session against Vladimir Putin in Russia being disseminated and almost everybody being consumed by it, instantly, overnight, everybody who wanted to remain in good standing about the Democratic and Republican parties with a very few numbers of exceptions was […]
Michael Tracey: Donald Trump, who supposedly leads this, you know, anti-interventionist insurgent movement. I mean, you could find clips of Donald Trump going on Sean Hannity’s show and declaring that Putin was guilty of genocide, which is kind of why I wrote […]
Glenn Greenwald: But he's also been for that very for long time now, outspoken about the recklessness of having the U.S. be involved in the proxy war. I know you're obsessed with proving that there are no real changes in the Republican Party […]
Michael Tracey: I am not, […]
Glenn Greenwald: […] politicians at that moment, you know, don't stand in front of freight trains. That's the reason why when there was a time to vote in the House and the Senate – in what turned out to be a disastrous policy which was authorizing the war in Afghanistan – every single member of the House and Senate, except one person, Barbara Lee, stood up and voted yes – and she had armed security for the next three months because of the hatred that was generated against her. In those moments of intense consensus, which is what I'm arguing, it is almost impossible to prevent this kind of unleashing, of this very instinctive, tribalistic war fervor that quickly gets out of control.
And I said, early on, that all of the limits that the United States was insisting it would abide by in terms of its refusal to get too involved in the war in Ukraine were likely, one after the other going to fall.
Michael Tracey: Oh, my God!
Glenn Greenwald: Because you could see that when people join in, we're still, you know, shaped by our DNA and our tribal evolution that when you just get in this kind of tribalistic mindset of feeding on hatred of a foreign enemy, an external threat, anything becomes possible. And that's why we're now on the verge of actually sending F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine after sending tanks and long-range missiles and all these other things we swore we would never do.
So, if you look now at what's happening in China, which is, again, I'm sure there are people in our audience right now who are feeling this and who think that when you start connecting into this kind of unlimited, irrational sense of hatred when the only thing that one is permitted to say about another country is they're evil, they're our enemy, they're trying to destroy us, we have to destroy them, you're unleashing these very powerful, instinctive impulses that can very easily lead to horrific outcomes that are not intended in the first instance and […]
Michael Tracey: Not just that. The claim is that China's trying to corrupt the United States from within, via TikTok, via the purchasing of farmland, via all of this like subterfuge and like ideological subversion that […]
Glenn Greenwald: That's very similar to what Democrats are saying about … That's very similar.
(overlapping voices)
Glenn Greenwald: Very similar to what Democrats spent four years saying about Russia, that Russia was infiltrating our country, that they were taking it over. That's the same rhetoric that came during the Cold War. And when you convince people of that, that there's no reasoning with those people, there's no diplomatic possibility – that there's no way to treat them as just a competitor or an adversary, they need to be treated as an enemy – very dangerous things can happen.
All right, Michael, just as for the last topic, I just want to touch on it quickly with you because we're running out of time. We did our entire show yesterday on the utterly absurd spectacle of how the Democrats behaved themselves at the hearing on the Twitter Files and their treatment of the two journalists who had the reporting, Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger.
So, I don't want to go over all of that. But there was this emergence of this person that a lot of people were unaware of and I think one of the things – the reason they were unaware of – is because she's not actually a member of the House of Representatives, even though she calls herself Congressman Stacey Plaskett. Instead, she's just a delegate representing the Virgin Islands. She's not considered a member of the House. She is not even allowed to vote on bills. And yet they pretend that she's some sort of congresswoman. They give her these […]
Michael Tracey: The defenders will clarify very quickly that she can vote within committees, like on procedural votes within committees, but she can't vote on the floor of the House, which is like a crucial distinction that they'll make sure that you're aware of whether you continue […]
Glenn Greenwald: Right. But this is the idea of having these delegates. Washington, D.C. has a delegate as well that for a long time was Eleanor Holmes Norton. The idea is you need somebody there to advocate for the people who live in these places that don't have full representation like Washington, D.C., or the Virgin Islands and Guam. Exactly. Puerto Rico. So, you give them kind of a voice, and yet she never uses her voice, it seems, to advocate for the people of the Virgin Islands. She uses her voice to build on social media stardom as some sort of resistance, slay queen hero. And not only was she incredibly obnoxious and tyrannical […]
Michael Tracey: Partner of Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell.
Glenn Greenwald: Exactly. She was incredibly obnoxious yesterday. And you were the one who reminded me that she was the house manager for the second impeachment proceeding. That, I don't know, doesn't seem to have a great deal to do with the people of the Virgin Islands, right? Against Donald Trump. Here she is in February 2021, giving this unbelievably unhinged speech. Let's listen to what she said about Donald Trump on January 6 and the rest of it.
Del. Stacey Plaskett: When I first saw this model that was created for this, I thought back to September 11. I know a lot of you senators were here. Some of you might have been members on the House side. I was also here on September 11. I was a staffer at that time. My office was on the west front of the Capitol. I worked in the Capitol and I was on the House side. This year is 20 years. Since the attacks of September 11. And almost every day I remember that 44 Americans gave their lives to stop the plane that was headed to this Capitol building. I thank them every day for saving my life.
Michael Tracey: I wish there was a laugh track on this clip.
Glenn Greenwald: You don't believe that she spends every day for the last 21 years thanking the 44 people on the plane who saved her. Well, it wasn't the rest. Let's go back.
(video continues)
Del. Stacey Plaskett: … for saving my life and the life of so many others. Those Americans sacrificed their lives for love of country. Honor, duty […]
Glenn Greenwald: But just, by the way, this is about January 6, just so everybody understands all.
(video continues)
Del. Stacey Plaskett: … all the things that America means. The Capitol stands because of people like that. This Capitol that was conceived by our founding fathers, that was built by slaves, that remains through the sacrifice of servicemen and women around the world. And when I think of that and I think of these insurgents, these images, incited by our own president of the United States, attacking this Capitol to stop the certification of a presidential election […]
Glenn Greenwald: Almost more melodramatic than AOC. But anyway, I just let […]
Michael Tracey: What was the term insurgents predominantly used in American discourse in reference to? It was in Iraq when the U.S. military was fighting what were called” insurgents” who were attacking U.S. soldiers and needed to be […]
Glenn Greenwald: They were Iraqis. They were Iraqis defending their country against a foreign invasion that was also used for people in Afghanistan doing the same.
The hearing yesterday, Michael, was just so extraordinary because there should not be this intense partisan divide on whether or not the CIA, Homeland Security and the FBI should be playing an aggressive and active role in trying to censor the Internet when it comes to political opinion. I mean, I understand that there's going to be some disagreement on that. But the idea that every single Democrat found this reporting deeply offensive, infuriating and enraging – she, this woman, called Matt Taibbi a “direct threat” to American citizens who disagreed with him. And one after the next, they all stood up and defended the U.S. Security State, saying that the CIA and the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI are censoring not for nefarious reasons. They said you have to be a tinfoil hat-wearing, a conspiracy theorist, to believe that this is some deep-state plot to control our discourse. These are the men and women of our U.S. intelligence agencies who want to keep us safe, who are censoring in order to keep us safe from dangerous speech and to protect our democracy. That is the view of the Democratic Party that the U.S. Security State, including the CIA and FBI, censors the Internet for the good of the United States. And they were enraged that this censorship regime was brought out into the open by these two journalists on whom they spent the day heaping all kinds of vitriol and hatred.
Michael Tracey: Well, again, I mean, just going with the heuristic that I'm increasingly inclined toward, which is to believe that the rhetoric that's being espoused by these people, unless you have evidence to the contrary, is reflective of their genuine beliefs.
If what that woman, Stacey Plaskett, said when she was a House manager during the impeachment trial in 2021 of Trump, if that is reflective of her genuine beliefs – that her overriding imperative in life is going to be warding off these dangerous insurgents, as she called them, meaning right wing interlopers who are looking to destroy the American constitutional order – and given her background as someone who grew up not in the U.S. Virgin Islands, but in New York City – and then basically carpet bagging the U.S. Virgin Islands so she could get some elected position somewhere in Congress and, you know, gallivant around and act like she is this like leading mellow dramatist – if this is what she actually believes, than it makes sense why she would view someone like Taibbi as a “threat” to her interests – at least her interests in so far as they amount to perpetuating this narrative which she articulated during that impeachment trial and which is this like of cosmic massive importance and on which the entire faith of the United States supposedly hinges.
So, if she's viewing Taibbi in his exposure of information related to the security agencies as antagonistic toward her pursuit of that goal, you can see why she would denigrate him and call him a “so-called journalist” and claim that he's somehow a danger or a threat. Well, he is a dangerous threat, but it's to the perpetuation of her preferred narrative, which I think is […]
Glenn Greenwald: I think this is the key to everything. You know, again, I've been involved, heavily involved, in the controversy, in the debate here in Brazil about a similar censorship regime that was imposed not by the Brazilian intelligence services, but by the just the judiciary. And I kind of appreciate the Brazilian left to hate me here in Brazil because they're much more honest in their arguments where they don't pretend even to believe in free speech. They say, yes, we don't actually believe in free speech. We think that's a fascist value. We think censorship is urgent. And the censorship imposed by this judge noble because they […]
Michael Tracey: You can't just outright denounce the First Amendment.
Glenn Greenwald: Right. You have to pretend that you believe in free speech because it's been inculcated in us since birth. So, they say we want censorship. We believe it's necessary because the people we're fighting against are fascists. They're so evil and threatening that anything that we do is justified in the name of stopping them. That was what made that Sam Harris clip – where he defended the lies told in the censorship about the Hunter Biden laptop to be justified on the grounds that the evil of Trump is so much greater than any of these evils, that anything and everything that you can do to stop Trump, including lying and censoring, is justified – that's what made it so important.
This really is the mindset of the Democratic Party now, over the last six years. It's just that Donald Trump and the Trump movement are such a singular and existential evil that anything and everything that you can do – from censoring to denying due process, denying political rights, to aligning with the CIA and the FBI and the Homeland Security to interfere in U.S. politics – is justified and, in fact, not just justified but morally necessary in the name of stopping this greater evil.
So, the fact that she compares the riot of January 6 and the people behind it to those who perpetuated 9/11 or to “insurgents” absolutely reveals this incredibly dangerous mindset that these Democrats have, which is that they're basically in a war on terror, a war against al-Qaida. This is what the Brazilians were saying, too, that this is a war on terrorism, that the people who broke into those government buildings on January 8 are terrorists, like the people who attacked the U.S. on 9/11. We all know what happened after 9/11, which is civil liberties were destroyed in the name of stopping this existential threat. And every time that authoritarians want to wield authoritarian power, that's what they do, is they create a narrative that we're fighting the terrorists. And now the terrorists are our fellow citizens who support Donald Trump. She considers them similar to, if not worse than, the people who did 9/11 and therefore all the things that we did after 9/11 – the destruction of civil liberties, the denial of privacy rights, the implementation of censorship, probably the institution of torture, which is kind of been what's done to the January 6 defendants in a way of keeping them in prison without trial and in solitary confinement in harsh conditions – that everything and anything is justified in the name of stopping the Trump movement. That really is the view of the Democratic Party, and that's why they're allied now with the security services who see things the same way.
Michael Tracey: Oh, and by the way, per this narrative, guess who is aligned with Trump in attempting to promulgate this insurrectionary fervor of the world over whether it's South America, Europe, or North America? That's right. Vladimir Putin! And so, the foreign policy status quo must be upheld because that's just another front on which this insurrectionary extremism must be combated, which is very convenient given the multifaceted prongs of this narrative and what it seems to justify.
Glenn Greenwald: Absolutely. Michael, thanks so much. You were on the top of your game. I think it does you well to be where you belong, in New Jersey. It's where you always clearly seem to thrive most. So, try and stay there for […]
Michael Tracey: My stuff, my fat face with enough bagels ahead of the appearance that it really gives me, like a superpower. Like locution.
Glenn Greenwald: Exactly. It really enlivens the most authentic part of you. So, thank you so much for joining us, Michael. We're going to say goodbye to you finally, thankfully, and we're going to say goodbye as well to our audience.
That concludes our show for this evening. Thank you so much, as always for watching. We will be back on Monday at 7 p.m. EST, which is our regular time, as well as every night, Monday through Friday at that same time with our live show on Rumble.
Have a great evening, everybody.
