Glenn Greenwald
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Michael Tracey LIVE at RNC in Milwaukee
Interview
July 18, 2024
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Michael Tracey LIVE at RNC in Milwaukee

 

All right. Our good, good friend of the show, Michael Tracey, who is, as I always say, a very independent, sometimes annoyingly independent, roving journalist, is in Milwaukee covering the Republican National Convention for us. He's there with our social media manager and producer, Meagan O'Rourke. They have been doing a great job covering the convention, doing interviews with all sorts of people. Rumble has a booth there, that's how we were able to get credentials. 

The last couple of days. Michael has talked to several different people with really interesting interviews. One of them is Mayor JonDavid Longo, who was present at the assassination attempt. He was a mayor of Slippery Rock, a city uptown, very close to where that occurred. He also was able to speak with Rep. Mike Collins, the Republican of Georgia, and Congressman Mike Lawler, the Republican from New York, who is not only probably one of the most vocal supporters of Israel in the entire Congress, but was the sponsor of that law that made it illegal in the educational sector to express all sorts of criticism to Israel that had been very common, the H.R. 6090, which passed the House and Senate by an overwhelming majority and went to the president, who then signed it, because pro-Israel views speed through the Congress with overwhelming majorities, for reasons we've covered many times, and hat was one of the gravest assaults on free speech in many years.  

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Michael was able to talk to him about that as well. So, we're going to show you these interviews. 


M. Tracey: All right. We are on the floor of the Republican National Convention right now. Gaze out at the amazing sights. I've never had more fun in my life. I guess what we're going to do is just kind of poke around and see if there's anybody of note to speak to. Let's see who I can spot. 


Congresswoman Victoria Spartz of Indiana

 

M. Tracey: Oh. How are you, Ms. Spartz? 

 

Rep. Victoria Spartz: How are you? Good. 

 

M. Tracey: What's your reaction to JD Vance getting the nomination? 

 

Rep. Victoria Spartz: That's good, you know. But I think, you know, we have a lot of great candidates, we have a very long bench, but it's all about President Trump and Make America Great. 

 

M. Tracey: What do you expect for a second term for President Trump in terms of, Ukraine and Israel as compared to the Biden administration? 

 

Rep. Victoria Spartz: I think, you know, as President Trump said, you know, we need to restore peace. We need to restore our economy so that we have the ability for people to get wealth back and have growth in the economy because right now, inflation and this pattern is going to destroy a lot of people. And I think this is something about the future of the country and strengthen the country's sense of the borders, strengthen the people and really brings peace around the world. We have a disaster right now. It's awful what's happening. 

 

M. Tracey: President Trump has said that he has a good relationship with Zelenskyy, and some people question that because they think he's Putin's puppet or this kind of thing, which is silly. So, what is this relationship with Zelenskyy and Ukraine? 

 

Rep. Victoria Spartz: Listen, it's not too bad because […]

 

M. Tracey: Representative Spartz, you are Ukrainian, correct? 

 

Rep. Victoria Spartz: I originally grew up there, but I'll tell you, it's about peace through strength. And President Trump had a lot of peace around the world and aggressors didn't move. And his policy it's to bring peace and actually put pressure on countries like Russia and China. He never gets too much credit but what he created in the Middle East was the Abraham Accords, headed to Russia to move further. He was the one who actually put sanctions on North Stream 2, and forced more production of energy. He has put pressure on China, not to […] 

 

M. Tracey: Put any sanctions on Russia. 

 

Rep. Victoria Spartz: That's right. And he is the one who actually forced Europeans, Canada to step up to create more deterrence, to spend money to deter Russia. He doesn't get credit for that. But his foreign policy was pretty powerful. 

 

M. Tracey: Well, Trump continues supporting funding for Ukraine? I've spoken to other members of Congress, in the Senate, who said that he supported the National Security Supplemental in April to send many billions to Israel and Ukraine, will continue supporting that? 

 

Rep. Victoria Spartz: Listen, it's not about – We cannot be stupid how we spend money. We need to have strategy and oversight. The Soviet Union was defeated not by weapons, but by smart strategy, by smart energy policy. And that's what it takes. And financial policy. And that's what he can bring to the table. Not to have never-ending wars that cost a lot of money and a lot of lives. And that's what you have to be much smarter. And he's – it's he's a very smart man. 

 

M. Tracey: What about the Biden administration policy, where they allow Ukraine to use U.S. weapons to hit certain targets within Russia? But it's never clear what the parameters are. 

 

Rep. Victoria Spartz: It's all politics. And ultimately, you know, we have a serious war and we shouldn't be doing it. Biden. You know what? They did it and threatened Putin over Twitter or X and in reality, slow walk at the aid. Okay. We need to have a serious conversation that Putin understands he shouldn't have advanced and he can not what he's going to do but force Europeans to step up. 

 

M. Tracey: Do you think Trump would remove some of the constraints that Biden has tried to impose on Ukraine? 

 

Rep. Victoria Spartz: Trump will do whatever it takes to bring peace back and that's what we need. And he will stand with allies like Israel. He won't put pressure on a lot of countries like Europeans that actually being not serious about this situation and now it's become a problem for all of us. And also seriously dealing with China, playing games with Iran and Russia to destabilize the whole world and come here. So I think he's very serious and he's brilliant on his foreign policy because he's unpredictable. That deters a lot of aggression. 

 

M. Tracey: All right. Thank you, Congresswoman. 


Congressman Mike Lawler of New York

 

M. Tracey: So, I want to ask you a couple of questions about a forthcoming Trump administration and Israel policy. You spent a lot of time on that. Also, issues around antisemitism. Do you expect to for Trump to be more aggressive in combating antisemitism, using the mechanisms available in the federal government to pursue some of the initiatives that you've tried to advocate in Congress? What's your general synopsis of that? 

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U.S. Bombs Iran: Live Reaction & Analysis SOON

Glenn will be livestreaming on YouTube around 1:30pm ET. You can watch live here: https://www.youtube.com/@GlennGreenwald. The reaction will also be posted on Rumble later today.

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Trump Declares the War in Iran to Be His Own; Journalist Ken Klippenstein on Trump's War Plans, DC Dems, and More
System Update #470

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

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Ever since the Israelis attacked Iran on Thursday night, many of Donald Trump's most passionate supporters have raised questions about the extent to which Trump knew or was involved in this new war. In one sense, that concern is understandable. Many of them believe Trump's repeated promises for years to keep the U.S. out of new wars, especially new wars in the Middle East, and they did not want to believe that he had violated that promise so radically and so quickly, less than five months in office by sanctioning and involving the United States in a new war with Iran. 

But those denials have grown increasingly implausible every day as Trump has now boasted of his involvement and repeatedly made clear the central role that he and the United States played in the planning, launching and coordinating of this war. Whatever remaining doubts still lingered about whether Trump's role was as significant as he claimed were completely crushed by Trump himself today, as the President issued a series of tweets – one more unhinged and war-drunk than the next – proclaiming that we – "we" meaning the United States – now dominate and control the skies over Tehran. He also ordered the Iranians to accept the deal that he told them to sign, threatening them with serious devastation if they refused. 

We’ll also talk to the independent journalist Ken Klippenstein, who breaks many stories, genuinely breaking stories on his Substack, where he went after wisely deciding to quit the Intercept last year. He receives many leaks from sources inside the intelligence community – not the official and authorized leaks: those are for Barack Ravid at Axios – but he gets the unauthorized ones from mid-level or even low-level employees of the U.S. Government. 

Ken has a new story out tonight about war plans of Trump for Iran that were leaked to him, regarding the Israelis and the Americans' designs on Iran. We’ll discuss that as well as a variety of other issues concerning this brand-new war, various happenings in Washington, and more. 

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U.S. and Israel vs Iran: Repeating War on Iraq Scripts; Overwhelming Bipartisan Consensus for Israel's Wars
System Update #469

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The war initiated by Israel against Iran last Thursday was dangerous from the start and has each day only become more dangerous. President Trump has boasted of his pre-war coordination with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He's already been using U.S. military assets to protect Israel. He's now even re-deploying aircraft carriers in the Pacific, where we're told they are guarding against America's greatest enemy – China – now to the Middle East, where Israel has demanded they go to support its war. 

Just a few minutes ago, President Trump ordered the 16 million people who live in Tehran to immediately evacuate a city where it's now 2 a.m. 

With Israel, as always, demanding more. Now, they want the U.S. planes and bombs to destroy Iran's underground nuclear facilities for them. The former Israeli defense minister went on CNN just an hour ago and told President Trump in the U.S. that it's our obligation to fight this war with them. And for them, President Trump has repeatedly opened the possibility of even greater U.S. involvement in the war. 

There are so many aspects of this new conflict worth covering and dissecting –and we will do so throughout the week – but tonight we want to focus on the amazing ease the U.S. government has in convincing its population to support whatever new war is presented to it. Over four years ago, intense war propaganda from the U.S. political class and media persuaded Americans to want to fund and arm the war in Ukraine – a war that is still dragging on with no favorable end in sight – and overnight huge numbers of people in the United States have suddenly become convinced without having ever said so previously that war with Iran is some sort of moral imperative as well as a strategic necessity for the survival of American citizens of the United States. 

No matter how debunked, discredited and disgraced that Iraq war narrative has become, as long as one just waits 20 or 25 years, then, apparently, that same script just works like magic all over again. You just haul it out, fearmongering, and huge numbers of people respond by saying, "Yes, let's go to war, let' kill people." 

We'll examine all of that, as well as the standard bipartisan unity in support of new American wars and especially wars involving Israel, you hear Democrats almost unanimously, either staying quiet or praising President Trump, with just a few exceptions from both parties. And we'll look at that as well. 

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If you're an American citizen as an adult, you have seen the United States repeatedly go to war. Anyone 18 or over has seen the United States involved in all sorts of wars and that's after the Iraq war, which is now 22 years ago. Essentially, if you're American, it means forever, for a long, long time, for many decades, that you are a citizen of a country that's always at war. 

After World War II, there was a very visible and clear pattern, which is that the U.S. government convinces its citizens, enough of them, to support the war at the beginning. They deluge them with war propaganda, which is extremely strong, primal, tribal and enough Americans initially support the war to let the U.S. government politically go and drop bombs or finance some other country to go drop bombs for it. Then, after six months, a year, or two years, or four years, polls show that Americans overwhelmingly oppose the war that they were convinced to support. Going back to the war in Vietnam, throughout the 1980s’ wars, the War on Terror in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Syria, in Libya, the financing of the war in Ukraine, Israel's destruction of Gaza, bombing Yemin and now this new war that the United States is becoming increasingly involved in, in lots of different ways and we're only on the fifth day.

You just see so many Americans on a dime the minute a new war is presented to them, with whatever pretext can be conjured, even if they're exactly the same pretext that most Americans lived through watching proved to be complete lies the last time it was used in 2003, even though it's exactly the same script, exactly the same pretext, coming from exactly the same people. You can get enough Americans to immediately stand up and start cheering for death and destruction and bombing. Not all, a very substantial minority oppose it, I think if the U.S. overtly gets even more involved in the war in Iran, obviously anything resembling ground troops entering Iran, but even perhaps prolonged bombing of Iran as well through U.S. jets and bombs, as President Trump has indicated and Israel has demanded, maybe some of that will erode, that support will erode. But all that's needed is enough support at the beginning of the war to let the government start it. And once the U.S. government enters the war, it doesn't matter anymore whether the people continue to support it; then it's just already done. All the normal arguments are assembled about why we can't stop, why we can't cut and run, why that would be appeasement, etc., etc. All the same scripts all the time, used over and over, and even though they get proven to be discredited, or unpersuasive, or full of lies, you just use the same ones each time. And that's how the United States stays as a country at war.

We've been hearing a lot of people saying, “Look, I'm happy that Israel is bombing Iran, as long as the U.S. has no involvement in the war, we don't enter it, we don't have to pay for it. As long as it's not our war, I'm fine with it.” But, of course, the entire Israeli military is funded by American taxpayers. Every time Israel has a new war, the weapons that it uses come from the United States, transferred to Israel. We pay for their wars, we arm their wars, we support diplomatically those wars and we use our military assets every single time and our intelligence apparatus to support and enable the war, as the United States is already doing. We already have multiple new U.S. military assets ordered to the region by President Trump. They're already active in protecting Israel from retaliation. President Trump openly said that he is considering the possibility of involving the U.S. even more directly in this war with Iran: "We're not involved in it. It's possible we could get involved. But we are not at this moment involved," the president said. (ABC News. June 15, 2025.)

That all depends on what you mean by ‘involved.’ We're paying for the war, we're arming the war, we've deployed military assets that are actively now trying to shoot down missiles coming from Iran as retaliation for the Israelis launching a completely unprovoked attack on Iran, based on the claim that Iran was about to get nuclear weapons, just weeks away, something they've been saying for 30 years, as we've shown you many times, same thing that was said in 2002. 

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U.S. Involvement in Israel's Iran Attack; the View from Tehran: Iranian Professor on Reactions to Strikes; CATO Analysts on Dangers and War Escalations

The following is an abridged transcript from System Update’s most recent episode. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.  

System Update is an independent show free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!

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Today's most important news is obvious: Israel last night launched a major military assault on Iran, targeting residential buildings in Tehran, where military commanders and nuclear physicists live with their families, as well as bombing multiple nuclear facilities throughout the country. 

Triumphalist rhetoric flooded American and Israeli discourse almost immediately, until just a little bit ago, when a barrage of Iran's ballistic and hypersonic missiles began hitting Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and other major population centers. Escalation seems virtually inevitable at this point. The level of escalation – always the most dangerous question when a new war has started – is most certainly yet to be determined. 

Then there's the question of the role of the United States and President Trump in all of this. News reports from both the U.S. and Israeli media suggested this morning that Trump was working hand-in-hand with the Israelis to pretend that he was still optimistic about a diplomatic resolution with Tehran, but did so only as a ruse to convince the Iranians that Trump intended to restrain Israel and thus lure Iran into a false sense of security when, in fact, Trump was not only green-lighting the attack but actively working with the Israelis to launch it. President Trump's own statements today proudly boasting of the success of the attack, along with his own concrete actions such as ordering U.S. military assets into position to yet again defend Israel, strongly bolster those reports and clearly indicate a direct U.S. involvement in this war between Israel and Iran, a U.S. involvement that already exists and will almost certainly continue to grow over the next few days and perhaps few weeks and even months. 

We’ll speak to Professor Mohammad Marandi, who is in Tehran and has heard and witnessed a lot of what happened but also has some unique analysis from his role as an American Iranian scholar of foreign policy and to scholars Justin Logan and Jon Hoffman, from the Cato Institute, one of the very few think tanks in the United States, which has long counselled restraint and non-interventionism in U.S. foreign policy. 

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