Glenn Greenwald
Politics • Culture • Writing
White "Dudes" and Women Rally for Harris; "Weird" J.D. Vance Attacks; Interviews with Political Analyst Bill Scher & Radio Host John Ziegler
Video Transcript
August 01, 2024
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Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the Internet. It is Tuesday, July 30. 

Glenn is once again away on vacation. So, sorry to break it to you, but you're stuck with me again. I'm Michael Tracey, inspired by Kamala Harris’s campaign, our show tonight will be limited exclusively to white dudes, so we'll discuss this sudden peculiar embrace by the Democratic Party of white identity politics. 

Then: journalist, media critic, and fellow white dude John Ziegler and I will confront our shared whiteness in relation to the new Kamala juggernaut. 

And finally, Bill Scher, editor at the Washington Monthly and yet another white dude will analyze with me how he stopped worrying and learned to love our new Kamala overlord. 

But for now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now. 


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So, the Democratic Party has taken an interesting turn. First, they seem to have collectively decided that Donald Trump is no longer a fascist: he's just weird. So, for months and years and what seems like decades, what's been slightly shorter than that thankfully, the Democrats have been histrionically shrieking that Donald Trump is this existential threat to democracy; he's undermining our democratic order irreparably and irreversibly; he wants to overturn everything great and sacred about American and liberal internationalist values, and we need to all come together as a popular front to thwart his next rise to power. And Democrats seem to have taken an entirely different course these past couple of days, and they've decided that it turns out most people don't actually believe that Trump is this existential threat to democracy. So, you could have plenty of criticisms of Trump – we've shared some on the show–, you could do critical reporting on Trump – as I've done for now, eight, nine years, whatever the hell long it's been – without endlessly lurching into this just tedious refrain that Trump is going to destroy our democratic order, which never made a whole lot of sense.  Democrats appear to have decided that, at the 11th hour, they're just going to start calling Trump weird and not explain how they made that logical transition. 

And they're bolstered in this, apparently, by J.D. Vance having said some quote-unquote weird stuff over the past couple of years. So, we'll talk with our guests about that weird shift on Democrats' part. 

What I want to get to now is an even more shocking turn of events in terms of how the Democrats are handling their current electoral argument. They've decided to embrace white identity politics. Fascinating. 

Take a look at this beautiful trucker hat

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This was developed and created by a group of Democratic operatives and strategists and they convened last night a Zoom call of lots of white dudes. So, they're having racially exclusivist gatherings, I suppose, where they're emphasizing the racial identity and gender identity of the participants. And I should note, in fairness, they did clarify at the outset of this Zoom call that everybody was technically welcome, but it was branded first for white dudes. It was for white dudes to demonstrate their racial solidarity with Kamala Harris. So, they were showing how important it was to be allies of the newly presumptive Democratic presidential nominee with their racial identity. And you can purchase that hat. Take a look at it again. Gaze at it with wonder and joy.

That is available to you for the low price of $35, I'm told, plus $7.05 shipping. So, for approximately $42 that could be yours. And you'll have an in-kind contribution to the Harris campaign. And if you're a white dude like myself, then you'll, I guess, be repurposing your whiteness toward a positive, progressive end, at least in terms of how the organizers put it. 

So, let's hear a little bit from the intro, from this magnificent Zoom call that I actually sat and watched. So, the things I do for you people. Glenn, whenever the heck he gets back, really should elevate my compensation drastically. Because what I did this afternoon was I sat through like 3.5 hours of White Dudes for Kamala Zoom call and collated all the funniest bits so you don't have to watch it all yourself. So, for that alone, man, I should be getting his entire salary, frankly. So, let's have a look at what this white dude had to say vis-a-vis the intro of this Zoom call. [Short clip version]

 

Video. White Dudes for Harris, July 29, 2024

 

Ross Morales Rocketto: And I'll start by really addressing the elephant in the room, which is a lot of people feel and felt uncomfortable about the call, and I think that's understandably so. You know, throughout American history, when white men have organized, it was often with pointy hats on. And so I think that discomfort, I think the skepticism is understandable. The reason that we are doing this is because, we've just, you know, the left has been ceding white men to the MAGA for way, way too long. You know. […]

 

So, that's the organizer of this White Dudes for Harris call, preempting whatever discomfort some might understandably have. He acknowledges the impetus for this call being shared racial and gender identity, which, at least in terms of whites, the Democrats used to be pretty aggressively skeptical of and you might even say hostile to in recent years. But they're diving into it headfirst, apparently, now, because it can be marshaled toward the self-absolving and heavily virtuous end of electing our first half Asian. And you have to go through every historic first that Kamala would represent. You can't just say, woman, it's half Asian and half Black and also woman and also first person from Berkeley, California, and almost also first San Francisco district attorney and also the first vice president to be theoretically elected president, who was picked basically as an emotional blackmail tactic by an incumbent, or by a presidential nominee in 2020, Joe Biden, who had was basically pressured into selecting a Black woman after the George Floyd uproar Emerged that year. There was some political necessity for him to demonstrate his own solidarity in that election cycle, I guess, racially or something, and pick a Black woman, and Kamala ended up rising to the top of the pack after her surrogates and supporters kind of basically kneecapped her other rivals for the VP slot. But that's neither here nor there. Let's look at what's the white dude in chief himself, Jeff Bridges, had to say. This is funny. 

 

Video. Jeff Bridges. White Dudes for Harris. July 29, 2024

 

Jeff Bridges: Kamala is just so certainly our girl. You know, I can see her being pressed. I'm so excited a woman president, man. How exciting, you know, and her championing of women's rights. But for that. 

 

 Okay, so, Jeff Bridges, I guess is just really excited about a woman president. So, would he have been excited about Nikki Haley? Perhaps. How about, I don't know, Sarah Palin? Marjorie Taylor Greene? Lauren Boebert, who we interviewed at the Republican convention recently? I mean, so much of what was discussed on this call as this rallying cry around Kamala was just pure recitation of her identity traits, which was thematically in keeping with the organizational reason for this call, purportedly, which is that these are all white dudes, and they have to stand together as white dudes and show that they will very dutifully line up behind Kamala, despite having divergent racial characteristics, and that's supposed to be very heartwarming for us all in this pluralistic democracy that we're so fortunate to live in. 

Let's go to Governor Roy Cooper, of North Carolina, yet another white dude. As I mentioned, this is a whites-only space tonight. This is a safe space for white dudes. If you're not a white dude watching, you might not even want to turn off the broadcast because maybe you'll feel uncomfortable. And frankly, you're not even welcome as far as I'm concerned, because I'm going with the vibes that have been sent forth by the Democratic Party. 

Don't turn off the broadcast! That would be bad for Rumble and our advertisers. I'm just kidding. But you get my point, right? This is all about, apparently, racial solidarity. So, we're trying to model that, we're emulating what the Democrats are doing. It's all in service of racial justice. 

 

So, here is Governor Roy Cooper, Democrat of North Carolina, we're told, just took himself out of the running for a potential VP pick for Kamala as of yesterday. But he nevertheless made time to appear on this White Dudes for Kamala Zoom call. 

 

Video. Gov. Roy Cooper (D - NC). White Dudes for Harris. July 29, 2024

 

Gov. Roy Cooper: I'm going to get right to it, guys. Real men respect women. Their decisions. Their careers. And it's pretty clear that Donald Trump and JD Vance don't. 

 

So I guess all real men out there, and I consider myself a very real man – look, you just see me radiating with masculinity, I feel like I'm going to overdose on masculinity, my muscles are just going to burst out at the seams of my shirt here and, actually, probably seductive for many of you watching – but what Roy Cooper's point is, I gather, is that real men know when it's time for them to defer to women. And the number one woman to be deferred to now is Kamala Harris. 

Notice they're marshaling this woman argument, which it seemed like it was played out with Hillary Clinton but, I guess, you know, never say never with the Democrats, it's back baby. They're saying that, you know, real men would understand that what they ought to do, what they have a moral obligation to do, is defer to the divine rights or the obviousness of Kamala Harris ascending to the presidency, again, as we've gone over many times on this show, without having won a single vote, acquired a singular delegate through a single popular vote outcome in a single state or territory in two presidential primary cycles. But that's all being swept to the side and, according to Roy Cooper, real men understand that it's our duty to defer to Kamala. 

 

Next, we have Mitch Landrieu. He's the former mayor of New Orleans. He's also a Biden campaign operative. And here's his take. 

 

Video. Mitch Landrieu. White Dudes for Harris. July 29, 2024

 

Mitch Landrieu: We need to stand in this moment. Kamala is carrying on her shoulders 248 years of pain, of agony, of hope, of frustration. And no matter how high she jumps, no matter how many degrees she has, no matter how good her grades are, she's never good enough because they're always moving the line. And I think in that idea, she holds the heart of so many people who have been left out. 

 

So, there's Mitch Landrieu. Yes, a white dude, as indicated by his participation in this call, taking it upon himself to assert that Kamala Harris as a personage, as a figure that hasn't been elected to any office in terms of this current election cycle, yes, she's the elected vice president, but nothing beyond that in terms of having acquired delegates or votes in the nomination cycle. But even if she had, it's very bizarre for Landrieu to ascribe to Kamala this, like, world-historic importance as like a racial forgiveness vessel or racial absolution vessel, where Landrieu is suggesting that she carries centuries of racial injustice on her shoulders. Really? According to who? I mean, did she carry that on her shoulders when she was locking up plenty of young Black men in California as a district attorney and then as attorney general? I'm not sure. I'm not even sure what entitles Mitch Landrieu to posit all these extravagant racial narratives onto the personhood of Kamala Harris. It's all very strange. You could easily imagine this being taken much differently if similar narratives were being concocted by Republicans where they're trying to appropriate the racial suffering of, I guess, Blacks and say that they stand for this, you know, historic remedy to the centuries-long plight of Black Americans and you can break that glass ceiling, I guess, by voting for their preferred nominee. 

 

So, here's an even funnier one. I hope you all enjoy this. I hope you go to bed tonight and you just replay this over and over again in your head because I know I will be doing so. This is from Josh Gad. I have to confess, I wasn't exactly familiar with him prior to subjecting myself to this White Dudes for Kamala Zoom call. But now I'm a huge fan of his work, so I'll be studying his filmography very closely. I have his IMDb page loaded up and ready to go. Let's hear from Josh. 

 

Video. Josh Gad. White Dudes for Harris. July 29, 2024

 

Josh Gad: I'm. I'm a white dude. That much you can probably tell by now, but I also happen to be a father of two girls. I have a ten-year-old and a 13-year-old, and I'm not sure if you guys can recall that feeling you had on the night of Tuesday, November 8, 2016. I stood over my kid's bed and I wept. I wept because I felt like I let them down. I wept because they had the chance, and we had the chance to have a female president for the first time in our lives and in the history of this nation. 

 

Isn't that wonderful? I need my tissues, where are my Kleenex and my other supplies to dab my eyes just because I'm so moved by his performance there? It really is something. I mean, what is there really to add? I like what he says.” As you can see, I'm a white dude. That much should be clear.” I think I'm going to introduce myself in every social situation from now on by saying the same thing. So, I'm just going to burst into a room and say, “I should be clear, I'm a white dude, but” then I'll make my point. I'll offer whatever greetings I was planning on offering, but I want to preface everything by announcing that I am, in fact, a white dude, again, inspired by the Democratic Party's recent turn toward white identity politics and what makes this so just unbelievably ironic? 

In 2020, you might recall, during the summer of George Floyd, you had a bevy of bestselling books, Atlantic magazine articles and viral tweet threads where white people were being instructed to, for the first time, develop a sense of racial identity that maybe they had been oblivious to or had neglected in the United States, where they have a stature of privilege. This was the theory, but they needed to cultivate a sense of white racial identity in order to recognize the racial grievances of their fellow Black Americans, or POC Americans, and to understand that they had to listen to them, value them, and allow them to take the lead in all kinds of endeavors and step back. You know, white people were being instructed “to know their role and shut their mouths,” to quote Dwayne The Rock Johnson, one of my idols. 

What was clear at the time was that what a lot of these white liberals were doing, in a fit of racial hysteria, was echoing what much of the white reactionary right like truly extreme online racialist right had been obsessed with for a very long time and were desperate to get some kind of mainstream acceptability, for which is to also cultivate white racial identity, but for their preferred ends, which is some kind of white nationalism, perhaps overblown term, but to foster a political movement around this sense of collective white identity, to preserve whites' interests or even whites' racial purity. 

So, the irony was that the white liberals who thought that they were cultivating this white identity politics to elevate Blacks or something, or to forge this new racial utopia or progressive utopia, they were giving a huge favor to the genuine reactionary, racialist right-wing types who wanted to foster this sense of identity politics for entirely different reasons. And that's continuing now because what are the white dudes for Kamala doing? Well, yeah, I mean, they are further entrenching this idea that white dudes have these distinct interests or there are distinct racial groups and there's like maybe any other racial group or ethnic group that organizes amongst themselves. I'm not even endorsing or opposing the logic of that. I'm just noting for the record that the function, it seems to me, of this new embraced by the Democratic Party and the Harris campaign of white identity politics in service of its own ends, just kind of underscores the creation of this new category of political, racial organizing. 

That can have some potentially worrisome downstream effects or it's at least something not to just be mindlessly cheered, I wouldn't think, especially if you, at least at one point pretended to be into, like, a colorblind society, like, I don't know, Barack Obama kind of was. He was into that rhetoric in the ancient days of 2008 or 2010, which I guess is an entirely different epoch in our collective history here. 

 

Let's go to Scott Galloway, who I'm told is some kind of internet celebrity. I don't understand the appeal, I have to say, every time I see him on some program, he just looks entirely dour, you know, he's, like, lecturing in this really morose way. Apparently, he inspires a lot of people to listen to it like marketing podcasts or something, but, hey, different strokes for different folks, right? And I'm certainly a different folk myself. So, I'm not one to judge. He graced the White Dudes for Kamala Zoom call with his presence as an internet celebrity. That's how he was introduced actually. And here's what he said. This is amazing. 

 

Video. Scott Galloway. White Dudes for Harris. July 29, 2024

 

Scott Galloway: Thanks very much. My name is Scott Galloway. I teach at NYU. I consider myself a man and I think my job is to provide and protect and the way that manifests in this age is to ensure that Vice President Harris is in the White House. 

 

So, Professor Scott says how he manifests his masculinity at the moment is to elect Kamala Harris. Again, so selfless. You could tell why he's such a popular internet celebrity, that he's willing to put it out there for anyone to see, that he is of the belief that what his commitment to true, pure and righteous masculinity entails in this moment, in this trying moment when the soul of America is once again at stake in the most important election of our lifetimes – which is the case for every election, we're told, right? I mean, 2016, 2020 and even go back. I mean, I would love to resurrect the ghost of Bob Dole, or at least go through the archives from the 1996 election, because I'm sure there are some schmucks who said that the election of 1996 between Bob Dole and Bill Clinton was the most important of all time. They say it every election cycle. And it's always a bit of a ruse because. It's all about just inflaming Partisan sentiment to get people rushing out to the polls, marching dutifully to the polls to pull the lever, checking the box or mailing the postcard or what have you to keep in power the two major parties, and then they can just usher in their respective professional classes who get empowered as a result of the voter going and voting in the Republican and Democratic Party, and then look forward to next election cycle also being the most important of all time. 

So, in light of that, I'm very thankful for Scott Galloway instructing us, or lecturing us because he's such a brilliant NYU professor and he really has the academic expertise to inform us what it means to be a man in this moment is to ensure that Kamala Harris is in the White House. Isn't that inspiring? 

 

Next, let's go to Eric Swalwell. Always a fun guy to hear from. 

 

Video. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D - CA). White Dudes for Harris. July 29, 2024

 

Eric Swalwell: And you know who's tough? It's Kamala Harris. And so, she's tough. She's real. She's ready. She's smart. And something that we're all starting to really see that I really like is that she's fun, and she's a person who can be serious without taking herself too seriously. But what I was hoping to impart onto everyone tonight, in my experience of like telling the story of why Kamala and not the past president, is a few things. And so, I wanted to just give you kind of three things that we all can do. And something that I've found helpful in my messaging is these three things. And if there's anything that us white dudes like to do it's to have a good hot take. 

 

I couldn't agree more, Eric. Congressman. If there's anything that we, white dudes, love to do more than rattling off hot takes. I don't know what it is. I know I associate my whiteness and my white dudeness intrinsically with the art of the hot take. Like the Art of the Deal, written by another infamous famous, depending on your point of view: white dude Donald J. Trump. We, white dudes and our hot takes, you know, it's just, something we're born with. I'm once again very inspired by Eric Swalwell, marshaling his inborn propensity to muster hot takes in service of what is now all our righteous and collective duty, which is to elect Kamala Harris, apparently. 

 

One more of this stuff, but this one also tickles me. This is another actor who I have to familiarize myself with because I'm just so moved by his thespian skill. 

 

Video. Rory O’Malley. White Dudes for Harris. July 29, 2024

 

Rory O’Malley: For having me. What's up, my white dudes? Ross, it was my honor to do anything for this call. I want to thank you and everyone who's been a part of it, and all of you who are on the call and will have donated that crazy amount of money. I'm in shock that this is happening. I'm here because I'm a dude. I'm clearly very white. I'm representing the pasty white contingency of the delegation, and I'm voting for Vice President Harris because she is the candidate who stands for justice, freedom and the future. She's the embodiment of the backbone of the progressive movement. She's a woman. More specifically, she's a Black woman and Black women have been showing up to elect progressive white dudes for generations. And it's time we show up for […] 

 

Okay, so there is, there's Rory fellow of White Dudes for Harris, one of the organizers, saying “It's time we, white progressives, show up for Black women.” Have you heard, like, one statement of a policy stance associated with Kamala Harris over the course of any of these declarations? I heard very little in sitting through that 3.5-hour session. It's all about how white progressives – I have to say, many of them seem like gay men – which is fine, not that there's anything wrong with that – who feel like they have some extra identity-based obligation to defer to Black women and show how supportive they are of Black women and how they're going to leave everything out on the field for Black women. Because Black women, as Rory said, are the backbone of the Democratic Party. And it's time for white dudes to show their appreciation electorally and get to work and sacrifice for others for once. Just like Black women have always sacrificed for white dudes. So, it seems like it's more like a racial karma ritual for a lot of these people than it is about governance or policy or anything that would really substantively relate to Kamala Harris's conduct in the office of the presidency, the most powerful position in world history. I mean, forget foreign policy, forget national security. They don't give a crap about that, as far as I could tell. It's all about, like, this racial trade-off, mystical kind of conception of how American politics works. That's what they're most fixated on by far. And as a white dude, I know I'm here for it. 

And just to end this tantalizing monologue, let's hear from our gender compatriots. I'm gonna make one exception. Okay? This was a white dude-only session tonight inspired by the Democratic Party, but I couldn't resist. White women also held their own Zoom and it was also a joyous occasion. I want to share this with you because I feel like this will really ring in your heart for some time. So, let's hear this. 

 

Video. Arielle Fodor. White Women for Kamala. July 29, 2024

 

Organizer: Arielle Fodor, affectionately known as Mrs. Frazzle to her combined audience of over 1.5 million followers, is here to help gently parent us through this election. 

 

Arielle Fodor: Thank you. Hi everybody. I am so honored to speak today. I am like shaking to just be among such incredible company. We are here because as if you were here earlier you've heard, Bipoc women have tapped us in as white women to step up, listen, and get involved this election season. This is a really important time, and we all need to use our voices and influence for the greater good. No matter who you are, you are all influencers in some way. So tonight, I'm going to share some do's and don'ts for getting involved in politics online and navigating the toxicity that comes with it and spoiler alert; as much as the toxicity […] 

 

Okay, I'm pausing because, honestly, I think I would blow my brains out if I listened to that full clip. So, I apologize to our production team but I really cannot bear to listen to that full thing. But you get the idea. She says she’s shaking because she's so honored by being in the presence of all these illustrious people who are on the call. I'm shaking to listen to that, but for much different reasons. I do appreciate, though, that she says we're all influencers. She's a TikTok influencer. She is a teacher, I guess, and she makes cute little videos about her classroom experiences. But now she's a political mogul, I guess, or something, and she wants to give us all tips on how we can best share the message of Kamala in these tumultuous and turbulent political times. And I know when I'm listening to that, I really do feel like I'm in a third-grade classroom. And I guess that's what a lot of people in the Democratic Party like now. They want to feel like they're being educated in a third-grade context, because that's about the level of sophistication with which they're approaching this stuff, which is why identity politics, I mean, if this is up your alley, then I don't know. You guys are on a different wavelength than me. I find that really repulsive. But now let's move on.


Interview: John Ziegler

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 All right, so I want to welcome John Zeigler. He's a long-time media critic, I think it's fair to say. Also, I would call him a journalist. I'm not sure if you would appreciate that designation or not – sometimes journalist is not the most flattering title. I'm even inclined to reject it myself – and also a long-time radio host, he's a podcaster, and so forth. So, let's go to John Ziegler. 

 

M. Tracey: John, how are you? 

 

John Ziegler: I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. 

 

M. Tracey: So, John, I recall hearing of you first back in the day when you were a staunch defender for Sarah Palin, the vice presidential nominee in 2008 with John McCain. So, in light of that, I do want to get your take on something to do with J.D. Vance, obviously, the recently named vice presidential nominee for Donald Trump. And let's go to this clip. This is JB Pritzker. He's the governor of Illinois. He was on ABC's “This Week”, this past Sunday. I want to get your response to it. 

 

Video. JB Pritzker. ABC This Week. July 28, 2024

 

JB Pritzker: […] They're just weird. The differences between these two candidates, I mean, on the other side, they're just weird. I mean, they really are. The things that they stand for. Donald Trump, of course, is afraid of windmills. And, you know, he talks about, all kinds of crazy. You know, his running mate, as you probably have heard, is, you know, getting known for his obsession with couches and somebody who is hiding his views on a woman's right to choose, and then just broadly, the attack on people […] 

 

M. Tracey: So, John, as best I can tell, when JB Pritzker is invoking JD Vance, having some weird fixation with couches, what he's referring to is a fabricated internet meme that people just outright made up, that then got turned into a new story about J.D. Vance, like, having sex with a couch. I'm sorry I'm even having to say it here, but that was the genesis of what Pritzker is alluding to and you know notice, Martha Raddatz, who I think was the anchor of ABC News’s “This Week” on the Sunday show this past weekend, she doesn't catch it. She just lets J.B. Pritzker make this allusion to some literally made-up claim about JD Vance to underscore this newfound Democratic talking point, that J.D. Vance is weird. And I'm sure he is weird in certain respects. In fact, I'm pretty certain that he is weird in certain respects, but, you know, so am I; so are most Democrats. John, I'm sorry to say you might be weird in certain respects as well. A lot of us are weird, but to just let fly that fabricated claim about Vance and having some sexual liaison with a couch, I don't know. This seems like it could raise your hackles a bit, given your experience in 2008 with Palin or am I drawing too loose of a connection there? 

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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.  

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We are not necessarily a fan of corporate media in general, as you may have heard, but some reporters actually do the kind of work one really needs reporters to do. One of them is Dave Weigel, who has cycled through numerous outlets and now covers politics for Semafor. He was present today in Minneapolis for a meeting of the Democratic National Committee, where, among other things, they rejected a resolution that would have called for an arms embargo on Israel: even though their party members overwhelmingly, according to every poll, support such a plan. We'll talk to Dave about this specific vote as well as other ongoings at the DNC and what it all bodes for the future of this sputtering and sick party, including for 2028. 

Before we get to that, there are ongoing questions from our Q&A that we were going to do on Friday night, and we didn't get a chance to do it. As always, there's a very wide range of questions about censorship and entrapment in police stings of the kind that we saw in Las Vegas, where that accused Israeli pedophile was allowed to walk. There are questions about Lula and Brazil and a whole bunch of other topics as well, some of which we cover, some of which we often don't, that I am anxious to address.

All right. I've really been enjoying doing as many of these Q&A sessions as we can because oftentimes it gets us on the topics that we wouldn't otherwise cover or even on topics from a perspective different than the one that we might approach from. I think it diversifies the range of topics we cover and the way we do it, but also, I think it’s important to have interactive features with our members, and this is the way that we provide them. 

So, if you are a member of our Locals community or you want to become one, definitely keep submitting your questions and we're always going to get to as many as we can. 

The first one is from @Diego-Garcia. It's an interesting name. A lot of interesting names chosen.

It is an interesting question. As someone who began by studying the Constitution and becoming a constitutional lawyer and wanting to focus a lot and focusing on First Amendment litigation, my focus has always been on the negative aspect of this liberty of free speech, which is the Bill of Rights, which essentially, and we've talked about this before, when it comes to people who are non-citizens who are in the country, or even people who are non-citizens and in the country illegally, the reason why everybody on U.S. soil has the right to invoke constitutional protections is because it's not, as this question suggest, a gift of certain privileges and liberties to a certain group of people, citizens or whomever. What they are are restraints on what the government can do with regard to everybody on its soil. 

I was just thinking about this the other day, this ongoing insistence by a lot of people, especially on the right, that people who are non-citizens don't have constitutional protections or even that people who are in the country illegally don't have any. We've shown you before, even Antonin Scalia, as far right of a justice as it got for many decades, said, “Of course, everybody in the country, no matter how you're here, no matter what class you are, has constitutional rights.” The reason for that is that it's a restriction on what the government can do. It's not a privilege that is given to you. 

So, exactly as the question suggests, the First Amendment does not say that you're entitled to equal platforms with somebody else. If your neighbor can attract more people to listen to them because people find him more interesting, and he can attract 1,000 people to come to a speech that he gives and all you can do is stand on the street corner and stand on a cardboard box and have two people listen to you, obviously in one sense, there's not equal speech because the reach is much different. And then if you take that even further, someone who can buy a big corporation the way that Larry Ellison's son just did – bought Paramount and CBS News and now has control of it essentially – obviously, he can have his messaging disseminated in a much more extensive way than someone who's not born to a billionaire and inherits all of that unearned wealth the way that David Ellison did. 

There are obviously different levels of reach that people have. Some people have big platforms; some people have small platforms. As a result, obviously, there's a differing impact on the speech. So, I think the first part of this, the negative part, is extremely important, which is you don't want the government picking and choosing who can speak and who can't, or punishing certain views and permitting other views. That's what the First Amendment is designed to achieve, and that is applied equally and should be applied equally. And that is an extremely important part of the picture.

The argument that I think is being raised is, well, that only gets you so far because in a capitalist system, especially one with vast inequality, the reality is that if you have more money or if you have other assets, if you more charisma, if you have more charm, if you have more innate talent on a camera or in a microphone or on radio, the amount of reach that your speech will have will be far greater than somebody who doesn't have as much money or doesn't as much skill or doesn't have much ability to have others find them interesting and so you get this gigantic gap, this massive disparity in the actual impact and value of people's speech from one person to the next. 

And so, you can call it free speech, but if somebody who's extremely wealthy can buy TV time to disseminate their views, and people who are working-class or poor or middle class don't have that ability, then this question suggests the premise of it, that free speech is really kind of illusory until you address this more positive aspect of it, this guarantee of reach, or at least an attempt to eliminate that disparity, you don't really have free speech. 

I think it's extremely difficult to try to address that disparity because any attempt to do so would almost automatically involve the state having to regulate how you can be heard, who can be heard. I've talked about it in the context of campaign finance before, and in the context of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United, issued in 2009. It was a five-to-four vote overturning certain campaign finance restrictions because they violated the First Amendment. It essentially involved a case where a group, an advocacy group, a nonprofit, had paid for a film that exposed what they believed were serious ethical shortcomings of Hillary Clinton right before the 2008 election. The FEC tried to intervene and say, “No, this violates federal spending, and you cannot disseminate this film.” And the Supreme Court said, “This is classic censorship. If you're saying you can't disseminate a film that this person wants to pay for about a presidential candidate before an election to inform their fellow citizens what they think they ought to hear, of course, that's political censorship.”

 A lot of people are upset with that decision because it permits those with money to be heard more than those with less money. And I understand that concern, I understand that objection, especially as more and more money pours into our elections, we have billions of dollars being spent in our politics. You have Trump and Kamala Harris, whose entire campaign is basically funded by, you could call it, 10 billionaires, maybe add to that, I don't know if you really want to expand it, another 30 almost billionaires. So, we're talking about a tiny handful of people who are meaningfully funding political campaigns at the national level and even on the level of the Senate. And then you have what we're going to talk to Dave about once he's here, you have major, massive super PACs like AIPAC intervening in various races, putting $15 million behind a single congressional candidate to try to remove somebody from Congress who's insufficiently supportive of Israel. And then it does sort of become illusory on some level, like this whole idea of free speech. It's a nice-sounding concept, but it doesn't really mean much if the only people who can be heard are people with money or, as I said before, other talents that enable you to break through and find a big platform. You're still not going to have as big a platform, though, as billionaires, obviously, who can spend endlessly. 

I always thought the problem with that was exactly what Citizens United presented, that the only way to really address that disparity is by having the government regulate the reach of everybody's views, to try to either limit the reach of certain people by preventing them from spending money on the spread of their messaging. And you get into the whole question of, is money speech? And that was wildly misunderstood. Of course, it's not that money is speech, but how you use your money to promote your political views. If you want to pay for fires that call for an arms embargo against Israel and distribute them on the street corner, the government can't come and say, “We're barring you from doing that.” And then if you go to court and say, “My First Amendment rights are being objected,” the government says, “No, no. This isn't about speech. This is about how they're spending their money. They paid for these fliers, so we have the right to stop it.” Obviously, your right to free speech includes your right to use your money to print fliers or to disseminate your views, to travel somewhere, to pay for a conference room, to have a gathering. And all nine members of the Supreme Court Agreed with this notion that the fact that money is being spent doesn't remove it from a free speech context, even though that became the primary objection of the liberal left: “Oh, the Citizens United found that money is speech, that's not really what was at stake in that case.” 

So, I'm uncomfortable with any government solution because I think to invite government into regulating how speech can be heard, the reach of it will automatically result in abuses. They'll crack down on speech they dislike, they'll ignore it, or promote speech they like, and then you're right back into the problem where you no longer have that negative liberty of the government regulating the speech, which to me is always the greatest danger. 

In a political context, I can imagine a program that we're starting to get now that tries to address or at least mitigate the disparity between, say, the ability of an extremely rich candidate or one backed by a lot of money to be heard versus one who is representing, say, working-class and poor people and therefore doesn't have billionaire donors. But the way to address that disparity is not by limiting the ability of the candidate with wealthier backers to be heard. It's to boost the ability of the candidate without the money to be heard through things like public financing of campaigns. And that, I think, presents far fewer problems from a constitutional perspective in terms of addressing this disparity. 

But in general, the fact is that in a capitalist system, which is the system in which we currently live and are likely to live for the foreseeable future, having more money means that you're probably going to enable yourself to be heard. Although there are people who start with nothing and create big, gigantic platforms on the internet, and are able to be heard that way by increasingly large numbers of people.  So, I think that problem is also being mitigated by the leveling of the playing field as opposed to even 10 years ago, when you knew a giant corporation behind you who could pay for a printing press, a television network, or a cable network; you now no longer need that. And so that disparity is automatically working itself out. 

But outside of the campaign context, I can't think of a way for the government to address that. Even though the last point I will make is that the founders were very aware of this problem. The founders of the United States were all capitalists. They were all quite wealthy. They were all landowners, aristocrats, for the most part. And the reality is that the Bill of Rights was ultimately a document that is about protecting minorities from the excesses of a democratic or majoritarian mob. That's what they were worried about. They were worried that majorities were going to form against elites and the wealthy in society and say, We passed a law, 70% of people to take away big farms and distribute them to workers, that's why they inserted a clause saying you cannot deprive somebody of property without just compensation and due process of law. Or they were worried that 80% of people would say we don't like this political view, we want to ban it, we want to ban this religion. And that's why it was designed to say it doesn't matter how many people want to ban a certain religion, or ban a certain view, or ban the media outlet, even if you get 80% of members of Congress to do it, the Constitution supersedes that and says Congress shall make no law, even if huge majorities want to. 

So, the Bill of Rights is a minoritarian document. It's designed essentially to limit what democracy can do, to say that majoritarian mobs can't infringe on basic rights, no matter how big the majorities are that want to do that. So, they were definitely capitalist, but they were also very aware, and you find a lot of this in Thomas Paine's writing, as even some of the debates in the Federalist Papers and some writings in Thomas Jefferson, about how if economic inequality becomes too extreme, it will spill over into the political realm, which is supposed to be equal. In capitalism, you have financial inequality, but in a system governed by rules and constitutions, you're supposed to have political equality between citizens. They were very well aware that if financial and economic inequality becomes too severe, it will contaminate the political realm, and that same inequality will be reflected in the political round, rendering all these nice-sounding concepts, written on parchment, illusory, and they were concerned about that, and you can make the argument that we've arrived at that point. 

And I do think that is a huge problem, the amount of money in politics, the ability of the extremely wealthy to dominate the two parties. I think it's a big reason why the two parties agree on so many things, because the donor base of each party overlaps in so many ways and has the same interests. The question, though, becomes, what is the more dangerous path? Is it to permit this inequality of reach of speech to continue, or is it to empower the government to intervene and start regulating how often or much people can be heard in the name of trying to reduce that disparity? And of course, if you have a very benevolent and ideal government, they would do so in a very noble way. They would just try to level the playing field. But typically, that's not the kind of government we have and we have to assume that we don't have a perfectly pure and well-motivated government. We always have to assume the opposite if the government is eager to abuse rights or corruptly apply laws. So, to empower a government to be the regulator of this disparity, to address this disparity, and no one else can really do it besides the government, is, in my view, to invite far more dangers in terms of censorship and things like that than it is to allow this inequality to continue. 


All right, I think we have time for one more before our guest is here. This comes from @Nelson_Baboon. As I said, people choose very interesting names, so welcome @Nelson_Baboon to the show and your question is:

So, on the question of these kind of sting arrests for pedophiles, this recently came up in the context of the story we covered with that high-ranking Israeli official in the cyberwarfare unit of the Israeli military who was charged with luring a minor or trying to lure a minor to have sex with him using the internet, which is a felony in all 50 states, including Nevada, where he was charged. Yet, he was somehow permitted to be released on bail without any seizure of his passport or ankle monitor or any measures to prevent him from just leaving the country that he has no ties to and going back to Israel. And of course, that's exactly what he proceeded to do. And so, Michael raised the issue, which is unrelated to the issue that I just described, which is my concern about why this person was allowed to get out on bail without any kind of precautions to prevent them from returning, which I've seen in many instances are used in exactly these circumstances. Otherwise, you just have foreign nationals coming to the United States and committing felonies. And when they're caught, they just say, “All right, here's $10,000 in bail, and now I'm out. I have no ties to your country. I'm going back to my country, where I'll never have any consequences.” 

Michael was raising the question of whether these kinds of sting operations are justified at all, because the way the sting operation worked here, and they caught eight people, was that there was no proof that any of these people were seeking out minors to have sex on the internet. They used an app, a sex app, or a dating or hookup app for straight people. None of them is gay; all of them are straight. They were all accused of trying to lure underage girls to have sex with them. And there was no evidence they were looking for minors, but the police created profiles pretending to be a 15-year-old girl, or a 14-year-old girl, or a 16-year-old girl. And then they initiate a conversation with their target. And say, “Hey, I'm 15, and here are some pictures.” And then if the person responds positively, even if they're prodded, like, “Hey, do you want to meet? I find you hot.” And the person says, “Yeah, that'd be great, let's meet,” the police can swoop in and arrest them. And the question is, was that person really inclined to commit that crime? Were they going on their own to seek out minors to lure them to have sex so that the police were preemptively catching those who would do such things before they did them? Or were the police creating a crime that otherwise wouldn't have existed by essentially entrapping somebody, by kind of luring them into committing a crime? 

And I definitely see both sides of that. I mean, it seems like if you are a law-abiding, responsible, mentally healthy person and somebody appears in your DMs or your dating app messages and says, “Hey, I'm a 15-year-old girl. We should meet.”  Your immediate answer ought to be, “No, I'm not interested in that,” and block them and move on. But at the same time, I think there's a legitimate law enforcement effort, I guess, that you could argue for. On the other side, you can definitely end up sweeping up people that you've provoked into committing a crime who never would have committed that crime in the first place and never intended to. That's what entrapment is. And that's obviously a defense that people would raise: the police entrapped me. I would never have committed this crime on my own. I've never done anything like this in my life, but they kind of lured me in. 

I think the reason why a lot of people don't want to enter that argument, and Michael doesn't care about this, is that the minute you start questioning police sting operations, you seem like you're defending the rights of accused pedophiles. As soon as you do that, you yourself get accused of being a pedophile, which nobody wants. Very few people are indifferent to that false accusation. Michael Tracey happens to be one of them for very Michael-Tracey reasons that I think are commendable. I mean, I remember I defended Matt Gaetz on due process grounds alone. I just said, “Look, he hasn't been convicted of anything. He's accused of having sex with a 17-year-old woman. A 17-year-old girl is called a 17-year-old woman in many jurisdictions. In a minority of jurisdictions, 17 is under the age of consent.” And all I did was write an article saying, until he's guilty, we shouldn't be assuming that he's guilty. That's what basic due process means. And I got widely called a pedophile. Why are you defending Matt Gaetz? He must be a pedophile. 

So, I understand the reluctance most people have to enter that debate. So, let's take it out of the pedophilia debate. And you, the questioner, raised this issue, which is the issue of, in the terrorism context, which I wrote about for many, many years. You could find articles of mine with titles like “The FBI once again creates its own terrorist plot that it then boasts of breaking up.” And this is what the FBI would do constantly during the War on Terror. The whole War on Terror, the massive budgets that were issued, and the increase in spying and surveillance and police authorities justified in its name depended on constantly showing that there was a real terrorist threat. And they didn't find many terrorist threats, meaning terrorist plots that were underway. So, they would go and manufacture them, similar to these kinds of stings. And what they always did, in almost every case, the FBI would go to a mosque, have an undercover agent there. Often, these guys were scumbags being used as their agents provocateurs. They were people who were already convicted of financial crimes, trying to get out of prison and agreeing to work for the FBI to get benefits for themselves. They would go to the mosque, and they would look around for some vulnerable young person who was financially struggling or often mentally unwell or intellectually impaired, and the FBI would create a terrorist plot.  And they would pay for it. They would provide equipment, and they would say to the guy, this 20-year-old kid at a mosque who's from a very poor family or, as I said, has mental or intellectual impairments, “Hey, if you join with us, we'll pay you $50,000. We're going to go blow up this bridge.” And he’s like “No,” A lot of times they say no, and they pressure and pressure him. And then the minute he finally says, yes, they swoop in and arrest him in a very theatrical way and charge him with conspiracy to commit the terrorism act. A lot of these people went to not just prison, the harshest prisons the United States has at Terre Haute, Indiana, or even Florence Supermax, in Colorado, where the restrictions were incredibly inhumane, because they were charged with terrorism offenses. After 9/11, all these laws were severely heightened for obvious reasons, and in most of these cases, the FBI created its own crime. These were kids who were never going to, on their own, embark on some terrorist plot. They didn't have the ability to, they didn't have the thought in their heads to. Sometimes they would hear of a 20-year-old or a 22-year-old in a dorm criticizing U.S. foreign policy in a very harsh way, and they would target those kinds of people, just like normal young people exploring radical ideas, and they would then lure them into a terrorist plot. So, I am deeply uncomfortable with all of these sorts of sting operations because of the concern that the police are creating their own criminals; they're turning law-abiding citizens into criminals by luring and provoking them in a way that they wouldn't have done absent that provocation. And that's what entrapment is. 

Ultimately, the question of entrapment is this person would have committed this crime absent the undercover police sting? Or were these people on the path where they were going to commit this crime, and the police intervened before they let it happen and saved victims and saved society from these crimes that were about to happen? And I think in most cases, the police are trying to justify their existence and their budget, just like the FBI was trying so hard to justify its huge surveillance authorities. They constantly had to show the public, look, we caught another group of Muslims trying to blow things up. And so often there were plots that the FBI created. 

So, I think there are a lot of reasons to be concerned. I'm glad Michael Tracey is out there doing his Michael Tracey thing of not caring what kind of bullets get thrown at him. I don't agree with everything he says. We argue about it in private, but I think it's always important to have someone willing to take those bullets and say, “I don’t care what you call me. I'm going to stand up and question these orthodoxies and this conventional wisdom.” And in the case of sting operations, whether they happen in the terrorism context or any other context, and I criticized harshly every one of these cases, I reported on them and interviewed the lawyers and the accused and would write months of articles dissecting the entrapment. It's the same thing if you do it in any other context, including pedophilia, just people are very reluctant to do it, for the reason I said, but it's extremely important to because I agree that these sting operations have a lot of not just unethical components to them or morally dubious ones, but I think very legally dangerous ones as well, where you take law abiding citizens and for the interest of the law enforcement officers or agencies, you convert them into criminals on purpose because you can't actually find any on your own. 

I have no idea if that's the case, obviously, with this Israeli cyberwarfare official, my reporting and analysis was simply about the oddity, the extreme oddity that, after meeting all week with NSA and FBI officials, he was permitted to just waltz out of jail, get on a plane back to Israel, which he admitted he was going to do. And now he's just back home in Israel with no obligation to return and face the charges against him. So, I have no view of his guilt or innocence. I don't know the details of what the police did there. But in the abstract, I think there are a lot of reasons to be extremely skeptical and always question these kinds of sting operations where the police don't catch anyone in the course of committing a crime or plotting a crime, but are the ones who lure the person into doing so. 

The Interview: Dave Weigel

Dave Weigel covers American politics for Semafor, where he's done some of the, I think, most tireless reporting on our political scene. I'll just give you, instead of reading this introduction, my mental image that I always have in my head whenever I hear somebody mention Dave, or whenever I read one of his articles: I always picture him kind of like on a regional jet in like a middle seat going to like Cincinnati or Toledo in order to stay at some like mid-range Hilton, where he's going to be in a conference room for three days, drinking plastic cups of coffee, covering meetings of politicians or party officials and doing the kind of reporting that you need reporters to do, not from a distance, but by being there. 

That's what he's currently doing today. He's in Minneapolis. I have no idea if that mental image is true or not. I'm going to ask him, I bet it is. But he's at the Annual DNC Meeting where there was a lot done by a party that's obviously struggling to determine what its identity is, what it stands for, and tried to make some progress today. I'm not sure if it had progress or if it went backwards, but that's part of what I'm excited to talk to Dave about. 

G. Greenwald: Dave, it's great to see you. Welcome to what is weirdly your debut episode, your first appearance on System Update. I appreciate the time. 

Dave Weigel: It's good to be here. And you called it. This is a mid-range Hilton, but the conference is in a higher-range Hilton. So they're not out of money yet. 

G. Greenwald: I see the mid-range Hilton photo behind you. This is exactly how I picture you. I hope you have enough miles to avoid the middle seat on the regional jets at least, but otherwise, I'm confident. 

Dave Weigel: I got a window seat. Thank you for checking. 

G. Greenwald: Good, good, good. I'm glad about that. I feel a lot better now. All right, so let me ask you, first of all, just before we get into the specifics, what is this DNC meeting? I mean, what is it designed to do? And what are the proceedings about? 

Dave Weigel: Well, this is their summer meeting. It happens every year, as you might guess. Republicans just had their summer meeting last week in Atlanta. Republicans these days do not let the press cover much of their business. I wasn't at that despite the intro. The Press wasn't allowed in anything but an hour-long ending session where they confirmed that Joe Gruters would be the new RNC chair, Trump's choice. Democrats opened this up to the press, and I do thank them for that because it's not like we're out here trying to write the most negative story we can. We just want to see what is happening inside the guts of the party. They are open, they're accessible, and they're struggling. This is not something they deny. Ken Martin, the chair of the Party, I saw him speak to a number of the caucuses here and his pitch is, yeah, it's tough. I'm not going anywhere, even though a lot of people want me to go. This is going to take years to build back from. 

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Israel Slaughters More Journalists, Hiding War Crimes; Trump's Unconstitutional Flag Burning Ban; Glenn Takes Your Questions
System Update #504

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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As we have unfortunately said many times over the last 22 months, whenever you believe that Israel's atrocities and crimes against humanity in Gaza cannot get any worse, the IDF finds a way to prove you wrong. Earlier today, it did just that when Israel slaughtered another 20 people in Gaza after it bombed Nasser Hospital, the only functioning medical facility in all of Southern Gaza. 

When medical workers showed up to treat the wounded, and journalists appeared on the scene to document the latest Israeli horror, Israel bombed that gathering, as well – in what is known as "a double tap" strike, widely considered to be terrorism. In that massacre were five dead journalists, including ones who worked for AP, NBC News and Reuters, as well as other medical professionals on the scene to help the wounded. 

As Israel always does when they murder people who are connected to important Western institutions, they had Benjamin Netanyahu express very sincere "regret" and he vowed to have Israel investigate itself. But this is who Israel is, what they do every day in Gaza, and there is nothing they regret about it. Yet, the United States continues to force its citizens to finance and arm all of it. 

 Donald Trump once again assaulted the First Amendment by doing something American demagogues including Hillary Clinton and many others, have long vowed to do: criminalize the burning of the American flag, despite clear Supreme Court precedent holding that such expressive action is protected by the free speech clause of the First Amendment. 

Also: we usually do a Q&A session on Friday night, but because I was really under the weather last week, we didn't do a Q&A. So, each day this week, whenever we have time permitting after the first couple segments, we're going to try to answer a couple of Q&As questions that have been submitted by our Locals members. 

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Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza, and that is what it is: genocide. There's just no avoiding that word, as Israeli scholars of genocide themselves have now said it in mass, including many who resisted that word for a long time because of the force that it carries, especially for Israelis, but that's certainly what it is. 

It really presents a dilemma if you're somebody who covers the news, because on the one hand, there's not much more you can say about the horrors, atrocities and crimes against humanity that are being committed on a daily basis –, the unparalleled suffering and sadism, the imposition of mass famine, and just the indiscriminate slaughter of turning people's lives into a sustained and prolonged hell, as could possibly be imagined for those who are lucky or unlucky enough to survive it. 

A population of 2.2 million, where half the population are children – half, fully half of the people enduring all of this are children – and on the one hand, you feel like, look, I've said everything there is to say about it. I have expressed my horror, my disgust, my moral contempt, not just for Israel, but for the United States that's funding and arming it, as well as Western countries like the U.K. and Germany. And there's not a lot more to say. On the other hand, it is ongoing, and every day brings new atrocities. And there's public opinion still forming and still molding and still changing. You feel still compelled, I'm speaking for myself here, to do everything you can to try to keep the light shining on it and to ensure that people who haven't yet been exposed to the full truth of it, or haven't been convinced of it, become convinced. 

Although it seems repetitive, the reality is that the inhumanity on display only gets worse and worse. It's an ongoing atrocity. Today in particular, when things happened that are of significance and of high consequence – that you hope at least are of high consequences – I think it's particularly important to cover what is taking place because that's when the world pays most attention. 

Here from the Financial Times

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So, I just want to spend a second talking about double-tap strikes. They are things that we actually saw the United States do during the War on Terror. For a long time, they were the hallmark of groups we consider terrorist groups, like al-Qaeda. 

The essence of a double tap strike is that you bomb a certain place, kill a bunch of people, wound a bunch people and then you wait for other people to show up to start rescuing the wounded, to start treating the wounded, to start reporting on what happened, and then you do your double tap, your second strike, so that you kill not only the initial people that were in the vicinity where you bombed, but you kill rescue workers, aid workers, physicians, ambulance drivers and journalists. And that's exactly what happened here. 

And there's footage of what is considered to be the second strike, the double tap, where you see these rescue workers in a place that Israel had just bombed, on the fourth floor of this hospital. They are looking for the wounded, they're treating the wounded and then you'll see the strike – because there were journalists there filming it, including several who were killed. 

I think the video is pretty graphic; it's kind of horrifying. You see the people as they're working on the wounded, and then, the next second, you see the Israeli strike that was clearly very deliberate. So, watch it based on the use of your own discretion, but I think it's important to show it because so many repulsive supporters of Israel constantly, instinctively, automatically claim that every event that's reported that reflects on Israel is a lie, including Bari Weiss, who's engaged in an unparalleled act of genocide denial and atrocity denial masquerading under journalism. 

She published an editorial today justifying herself and the rag that serves the Israeli military, and it mentioned us and several other people. We'll probably respond to that tomorrow. But that's the nature of the evil we're dealing with: people who are loyal, primarily, or solely, to Israel, and will simply deny every single act of evil Israel engages in. 

It's important to show the truth, and here's the video from Al-Ghad TV at the Nasser Hospital overnight, in Southern Gaza. 

Video. Al-Ghad TV, Nasser Hospital. August 25, 2025,

It was a precise second strike. It happened at the same place as the first strike. Those are the 20 people who ended up being killed. That's how five journalists died because they knew that when there's a bomb, journalists, brave journalists – not like Bari Weiss, who runs a rag that denies everything from afar while she shoves her face full of food and publishes one article after the next denying that people in Gaza, including children, are dying of starvation. These are actual reporters, very brave reporters who have been doing this for 22 months, even watching their colleagues deliberately targeted with murder, one after the next. And Israel knows that when there are these strikes, the journalists go there, the rescue workers and the aid workers, as well as doctors, go there. And that's who they intentionally sought out to kill, and that's exactly who they killed. 

You have journalists from all over the world who want to go into Gaza. They want to report on what they see there. They want to report on starvation. They want to report on the number of children in danger, dying of malnutrition and famine. They want to report on the destruction in Gaza. They want to document what they're seeing, but Israel doesn't let them in. They handpicked a couple of puppets, like Douglas Murray, or a couple of people they pay. They take them on little excursions for three hours in the IDF. They show them something they want them to see and say what they want them to say, and then they bring them back to Israel, and they go on social media or shows and say it.

They don't allow real journalists from any media outlets into Gaza, independent journalists who aren't dependent on the Israeli government or the IDF. Why would you do that? Why would you ban journalists from the place that you're operating, especially when you're disputing what's taking place there, except that you fear the world seeing the truth and the reality of who you are and what you've done? 

There are journalists in Gaza, Palestinian journalists, who, as I said, have done an incredible job, remarkably heroic and admirable, of documenting under the most difficult and dangerous circumstances everything that's taking place in Gaza. So, we have had journalists document it. The problem is that Israel and its supporters don't just immediately call them liars, but accuse them of being operatives with Hamas, which then by design is justifying their murder – and they're often murdered. 

There's a huge number of prominent journalists who have been the eyes and ears of the world in Gaza who have been deliberately murdered by the IDF. On the one hand, they are preventing independent media from entering, and then, on the other, slaughtering all the people who are documenting what's taking place inside of Gaza. The message that they're sending is obvious: if you want to show the world the reality of what we are doing inside of Gaza, you are likely to be the target of one of our missiles or bombs as well, and not just you, but your family will blow up, your entire house with your parents and grandparents and siblings and spouse and children, as they've done many, many times. 

The Western media has been, shamefully and disgracefully, relatively silent. There have been a few noble exceptions. I've said before, Trey Yingst with Fox News, especially given that he works at Fox News, a fanatically pro-Israel outlet owned by Rupert Murdoch, the fanatically pro-Israel Murdoch family has been loudly protesting the number of Gazan journalists being murdered by the IDF. But very, very few others have. 

The Foreign Press Association today issued a statement, given the five journalists who were killed, and it says this:

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This must be a watershed moment, and that's what I was referring to earlier as to why I think it's so crucial to cover the events of the last 24 hours. Unfortunately, what happens is the world pays most attention when the dead who are part of Israeli massacres and genocidal acts and ethnic cleansing are not just ordinary Gazans, but are people who, for some reason, have value to Western institutions. Each time Israel has killed somebody with a connection to a Western institution, Benjamin Netanyahu has to come out and do what he did today, which he did only because the people he murdered worked for AP and NBC News and Reuters. He doesn't care about Al Jazeera, and so he must pretend that he feels bad about it because he knows the West is enraged by it. 

Here's what Benjamin Netanyahu said:

TextoO conteúdo gerado por IA pode estar incorreto.

The hostages' families know that that's a lie. They don't care at all about the hostages. They've had many opportunities to get the hostages back. In fact, just last week, Hamas agreed to a cease-fire agreement that the Americans presented that would have let half of the living hostages go back, and the Israelis just ignored it because they just want to keep killing. The hostages have nothing to do with this war other than serving as a good pretext. 

So, Israel does this every day, and then they feign regret and remorse when they know that Western governments and Western institutions have to object. 

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Israeli Official Caught in Pedophile Sting Operation Allowed to Flee; Israeli Data: 83% of the Dead in Gaza are Civilians; Ukrainian Man Arrested over Nord Stream Explosions
System Update #503

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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A top official of Israel's cyberwarfare unit was arrested in Nevada on Monday night after police say he tried to lure what he thought was an underage child to have sex with him. The Israeli, Tom Alexandrovich, was let out of jail on bail and then – rather strangely – had no measures imposed on him to ensure that he did not simply flee the country and go back to Israel. As a result, the accused pedophile did exactly that – after telling the FBI that he intended to get on a plane to go back to Israel, that is what he predictably did. 

Why were no measures undertaken to prevent that, whether it be the seizure of his passport or wearing an ankle bracelet, or monitoring? We'll examine the latest about this increasingly strange case, as well as one of the officials, the U.S. attorney for Nevada, who has her own background. 

Then: a harrowing report from Israel's own intelligence units’ documents that an astonishing 83% of the people the IDF has killed in Gaza are civilians, all this revealed today, as Bari Weiss' Free Press continues to engage in some of the most brazen atrocity and genocide denialism imaginable in service of the foreign government to which they are loyal. We'll examine these latest revelations and what they mean for U.S. policy. 

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