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!

 On our program last week, we asked whether there was anything really authentic or meaningful about various reports suggesting a growing rift between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. There was some evidence to substantiate that suspicion, but as we noted last week, far more than that would be required before believing that there has been a split between any Israeli Prime Minister and any American president, let alone one as surrounded and funded by Israeli loyalists, as Donald Trump has been and still is. 

Now, this is still my view: I want to see far more proof before concluding that this divergence or even animosity between the two governments is both real and enduring. But the evidence for this view is now far more ample and concrete than it was when we reviewed it last week. This split extends to several different Middle East regions and a variety of different agenda items for both Washington and Tel Aviv. 

We'll show you all of that evidence and also review the latest in the U.S./Israel relationship, including what that might mean for Gaza, the West Bank, Iran, and beyond. 

Then, we’ll have Matt Stoller, one of the most knowledgeable analysts on the U.S. government's fight against Big Tech's antitrust violations, to discuss President Trump’s executive order reducing the price of medication and other pharmaceutical products for Americans, who have long paid significantly more than anyone else in the world for pharmaceutical products. 

In terms of the U.S. role in the world and its foreign policy, there have been few aspects or components of the U.S. government more significant than its relationship with Israel. You can certainly make a case that the relationship with Israel, that inextricable link with Israel, has brought the U.S. into numerous different wars over the years. 

It has also resulted in a contract of dependency by which the United States not only gives Israel $4 billion every year, in a deal negotiated by Obama on his way out the door with Netanyahu, most of which is spent on buying U.S. weapons – so it's like a gift certificate to the Israelis – but not all of it. 

So, if that were ever to change in any way, it would be momentous. The consequences would be difficult to overstate. Yet, that's precisely why there's so much money, so much power, and so much organized pressure brought to bear on American politicians to make sure that doesn't ever happen. And it hasn't happened for decades. 

The last time it happened was in the Bush 41 administration, which had Bush's Secretary of State James Baker, who was just an old foreign policy hand and very much believed in a realist view that U.S. interests should come first. He worked with the national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, who was also a realist, about whom Obama once said was one of his favorite foreign policy officials, because Obama wanted to adopt a realist view of foreign policy as well.

Both of them understood that one of the main problems for the United States in the Middle East, and generals have said this over the years, all kinds of national security officials, was the fact that the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is ongoing. The United States is so overwhelmingly, exclusively on one side of that conflict, namely fueling and funding Israel, that the entire Arab world always watched the Israelis killing innocent Palestinians, blowing up their children, Israel bombing Lebanon, Israel bombing Syria, taking land, and that entire part of the world understands that we're at fault for that because we're the ones enabling it with our arms and money. 

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!

 The headline news in most countries in the world is the selection of Cardinal Robert Prevost to be the new leader of the Catholic Church, replacing the prior Pope, Francis, who died late last month. Prevost is now known as Pope Leo XIV. 

Born in Chicago, he is the first-ever American Pope in the history of the Catholic Church, though, as a fluent Spanish speaker, he has also done substantial work in the church in Latin America. He's widely viewed as a close ally of Pope Francis and, to some extent, at least likely to follow in his footsteps. 

I do think the reaction of political and media figures in the U.S. to his selection is worthy of attention. As is true for almost everything now, his life and worldview were instantly reduced to a handful of tweets, and then grinded through the ideological and political prism to instantly determine whether he's good or bad – a very strange discourse, especially for someone that nobody who was commenting on him knew anything about prior to the moment he was unveiled. We'll tell you all about it. 

Then, we have several other topics. It was a big news day including all sorts of significant movements and events taking place in the Middle East with reports of a clear split between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and thus between the U.S. and Israel and Trump's selection of the close RFK Jr. ally Casey Means as Surgeon General, which caused far more indignation and accusations than, at least, I expected. Time permitting, we will also explain the withdrawal of Ed Martin to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Moments ago, Trump announced his new selection and that person is Jeanine Pirro, better known to Fox News viewers as Judge Jeanine. So, we'll tell you about all of that. 

Early this morning, white smoke emitted from the Vatican, which, as most of you know, signifies that the conclave of cardinals assembled in the Vatican has chosen a new pope. The new Pope that they agreed on is the first-ever American pope. He was born in Chicago, he is fully American, he obviously speaks English in an Americanized way, which would be very strange hearing the Pope speak in Americanized English, but, obviously, that's his first language – although he speaks several others as well. 

As I said at the start, he was a close ally of Pope Francis who was regarded as a reformer or on the more progressive wing of the Catholic Church, although the progressive wing of this Catholic Church is still quite conservative, it's a very conservative institution by its very nature, by its age, by its function, by its purpose, by its dogma. But one of the things that Francis did was he was very, very outspoken about the growing income inequality in the world, the need to be humane to immigrants. He was also, I suppose I could say, a critic of the destruction of Gaza, but certainly a defender of the rights and suffering of the Palestinian people. Whether Pope Leo XIV follows some of that or all of that remains to be seen; he's been a little bit of a cryptic figure, not really seeking out those kinds of controversies. It's a little bit unclear, I think, even to Church Insiders, where he stands on them. 

Here is the scene at St. Peter's Basilica early this morning, you see the new Pope standing on the balcony with people cheering. This is his first public appearance as the new Pope. 

Video. Pope Leo XIV, St. Peter’s Basilica. May 8, 2025.

The faithful of the Catholic Church are always going to welcome a new pope with that sort of extremely happy, welcoming, loving and positive emotion, and that's what you saw today. 

I'm not a theologian, I'm by no means a historian of the Catholic Church, but the pope always does have this religious role. Obviously, he's the head of the Catholic Church, this 2,000-year-old institution, but he also typically has a political profile. I mean, he's the head of the Vatican, which in theory is an independent state inside of Italy and popes have always played a significant political role. I talked about some of Pope Francis's views. I remember growing up in the 1980s when Pope John Paul II was aligned very much with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. 

There were times when the pope followed the Church's longstanding opposition to and contempt for communism, given that communism, by its dogma, seeks to eradicate religion, it's the opioid of the people, as communists see it. So, there was always a strong political alignment between some popes and conservative politicians. Then, recently, there has been a greater alignment – I don't want to say with left-wing politicians because certainly on social issues, the Church still has very positions widely considered conservative on things like abortion, which they vehemently oppose, as well as same-sex marriage which though they've softened a little bit the rhetoric about obviously they still oppose that but they also have been traditionally associated with certain I guess you could say left-wing positions. After all, if you read the gospel, the gospel is not a teaching of support for elites or for venerating the wealthy. Jesus spent his time, according to all four books of the gospel, ministering to prostitutes, lepers and the most downtrodden, so that has always been part of the church's mission: to minister to the poor, to care for the poor. 

Then, also the same position that makes them so opposed to abortion, namely the sanctity of human life and the sin of extinguishing it, has also led them to be opposed to the death penalty. That was certainly Pope Francis' position, and I believe it's Pope Leo XIV's as well. 

Here is Donald Trump's reaction, because, again, I understand why people want to put him immediately through a political prism of saying, Oh, is he like MAGA, is he like Republican, is he Democrat, is he liberal? Even though the Church really does transcend those kinds of characterizations, especially just trying to reduce someone who's been in the Church their whole life to a few tweets you found and then want to place them on the political spectrum. It almost is like a non-sequitur, but that's what a lot of people were doing. Donald Trump did not do that. He posted this:

I saw somebody satirizing Trump by saying, “Tomorrow he's going to say, ‘Hey, there are a lot of people who are saying the reason an American pope got chosen for the first time is because of me. I don't know if it's true, but it probably is.’ That's a very Trumpian way to say it, but obviously that was satire. What I just read to you is what he said, I would say very proper and well-crafted congratulations that were appropriate for a president. 

His Vice President, JD Vance, interestingly, is somebody who this new Pope has criticized on social media, at least twice in the last six months, and here is what JD Vance said, also an appropriate statement, no acknowledgement of the fact that the Pope has criticized JD Vance personally and things he believes in and things he has said, JD Vance is Catholic and so, obviously, he is expressing the sentiments of what I would assume are the sentiments of most Catholics around the world, where he said, quote:

 I was online when this happened. I went online, actually, when I heard that there was a new pope selected. It's a significant moment for anyone who pays attention to world events, world politics and also religion, obviously. 

There was this hour period between when the white smoke was emitted, signaling the selection of a new pope, and before the pope was announced, during which a very conservative cardinal, for whatever reason, people started assuming that that's who was selected and in the betting markets, he just skyrocketed to like 70%, 80%, and everybody else who were the favorites or dark horses started dropping. And so, people were very happy because he was a conservative choice. But then, when they unveiled the pope, it wasn't him. It was instead Robert Prevost. And at first, American politicians and pundits were celebrating the fact that we now have an American pope for the first time in the history of the Catholic Church and the history of the United States. 

Immediately, people started to find tweets. He didn't tweet often about non-Church matters. He tweeted very sporadically about the Pope, the Pope's health and just generalized kind of conventional sentiments that cardinals express in behalf of their Catholicism, but he did actually have some political tweets as well that, one after the next, every sort of 20 minutes, emerged and a lot of MAGA people, a lot of right-wing people went from celebrating this choice to immediately panicking almost, or at least denouncing the choice on the ground that this is not somebody who aligns with their political ideology. 

So, here's something he posted in February of this year, so just two months ago. The tweet that he wrote says:

And then it links to an article that he didn't write, that's not his sentence, that's really like the headline to the article, but he's obviously endorsing it. 

What happened there was that JD Vance had given an interview where I think somebody asked him about the religious mandate, the Catholic imperative, to care for immigrants and to care for people who are expelled from the country or stateless. To defend on a religious ground why he believed in a hardline stand, JD Vance said there's a Catholic doctrine that says, first, you take care of your family, then you take of your community and then you take care of your city, your state, your country and then after that, only then, you care about the rest of the people in the world. 

There is a Catholic doctrine that was affirmed more or less that way, but it's been rejected by the Church, it's not the prevailing view of Catholicism, it doesn't really reflect Catholic action in terms of how it reacts in world and this is what the new Pope was pointing to, an article arguing why JD Vance's views of what the teachings of Catholicism are when it comes to prioritizing who you care about and who you don't is Catholic dogma. The new Pope said Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others; your love for humanity, for other human beings, is just the love of Jesus. That was his view. 

In 2015, when Donald Trump was running for the first time on a very anti-immigrant platform – not just a platform, but the way he was speaking about immigrants, it didn't sit well, apparently, with the new Pope either – because, on that date, he cited an article by Cardinal Dolan. 

And then Laura Loomer, the quite effective influencer, I guess you could call her Trump whisperer, I mean, she's one of the few people who gets away with constantly bashing the administration of the White House. Still, the more she does it, the more her influence and credibility seem to grow with Trump. When she complains about people, they often end up being dispatched or fired in the case of some people as well, but she replied to that tweet today with this comment:

So, I guess she thinks the Pope is both woke and Marxist. She's Jewish, but within like, I guess two hours, she was able to summarize his entire worldview based on a few tweets. And she's here to say that this Pope is both Marxist and woke. It's kind of odd for a deeply religious figure, someone who's devoted his entire life to spreading the word of Jesus, to simultaneously be a Marxist. It's sort of an incompatible doctrine, but who knows, maybe she's right. I don't think there's a lot of evidence for that, but she seems to think so. 

Here's Sean Davis, a very smart right-wing commentator and analyst who is also Catholic:

Which, again, if you look at just these disconnected tweets, you could put those together and make a lot of leaps of reasoning and maybe assume that. But certainly, he's pro-immigrant. I mean, the Catholic Church has always been pro-immigrant, and you can go back hundreds of years and you're going to find that. 

Megyn Kelly, who is also Catholic, said after all these tweets emerged:

That doesn't seem likely to me, to put it mildly. And again, I'm not really sure why people are finding these sentiments surprising; they seem to align extremely well with what the Catholic Church is often – I don't want to say always, but often –represented. 

Mike Cernovich, another right-wing influencer whom I also often find insightful, said:

There has been this sense for some time – again, I’m not a theologian – but there has been this sense that the Catholic Church, since the reforms in the early '60s, has basically been sacrilegious or even satanic, not true Catholics. Those sentiments have sometimes grown among the Orthodox wing of the Catholic Church. I guess that's what's being channeled there. 

Here is Jack Posobiec. He is Catholic. He was in the Vatican, and he said this:

And I do think that's an interesting observation because, as I said, the Pope in the modern world and actually in the ancient world going back many, many centuries to the time it began, always had this dual function of being the interpretive body that defines the meaning of God's word through Jesus Christ. But then, also obviously playing a very political role, the Church is very powerful, it's very wealthy and it influences a lot of people. It's inherently a political position as well and this is what you often hear from Catholics. If the pope says something they dislike, they're like, “That's political, that's not canon. You don't have to assume that's the word of God.” 

Amazingly, a lot of this was based on a handful of tweets that they were trying to reduce this Pope to being, oh, he's not MAGA, he is anti-Trump. They found some voting records that they claimed proved he was a Republican, so maybe he was like an anti-Trump or a never-Trumper. But then, obviously, some of them thought he was a woke Marxist as well. 

Here's Matt Walsh, who is not just Catholic but someone who speaks a lot about the Church and Catholicism. He did not react well to this attempt to reduce the Pope to nothing more than someone who you can just place on the American ideological spectrum. And he said this:

And there were other tweets as well that we didn't include here. The new Pope retweeted a tweet from Democratic Senator Chris Murphy from 2017 when Trump just got elected, where Chris Murphy was basically saying, “We need to do everything possible to fight against and resist this new authoritarianism,” so the new Pope retweeted Chris Murphy, the Democratic Senator. He also retweeted very recently, I think it was one of his last tweets, a different cardinal who was reacting to the meeting between El Salvador’s President Bukele and President Trump in the Oval Office where they kind of mocked the whole notion of court-stopping immigrants being sent to El Salvador. The cardinal reacted with horror and indignation that they seemed to be so cavalier about the fate of these people, who hadn't even been given due process, that they were just putting them into dungeons for life in a country they'd never been to and the new Pope retweeted that indignation from a cardinal in response to that policy of sending people to El Salvador. 

Again, I'm not surprised personally that the Pope is conservative on social issues, anti-abortion, opposed to same sex marriage, opposed to the death penalty, which is not a conservative view. I'm not surprised that he teaches compassion and empathy for immigrants, including people who are illegally entering countries. This seems very consistent, very compatible with the Catholic Church to me, as somebody who has not paid the closest of attention in a scholarly way, but certainly as someone who understands Catholicism to the extent I do, so, I don't really understand all this acrimony, all this kind of panic, this antagonism.

Also, when you're a cardinal or when you were within the Catholic Church, he rose pretty quickly as a result of his relationship with Francis, there's not always total freedom to express your worldview or who you are and what you believe and what your priorities are. And so, we'll see with this new Pope what he decides to make of his position and I think only then will we really know his ideology or place on the ideological spectrum if a pope can even be placed on that.  I think as Matt Walsh actually said, and I basically agree with it, in a way, the idea of the pope and the Catholic Church transcends modern political debates, even though they sometimes have an impact on it. 

All right, let's move to the next topic, which is these reports that there has been a breach in the relationship between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. 

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!

Tonight: Regardless of what you think of him or really about any issue, there's no denying the profound influence that tonight's guest, Christopher Rufo, has had on conservative politics and state and federal policy more broadly, though he has often focused on educational debates and educational institutions – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, for example, appointed him to a key position to transform that state's New School from an institution largely producing left-wing thought to one that is more aligned with conservative educational dogma and policy. He was also instrumental in publicizing the plagiarism of Harvard President Claudine Gay, which, along with issues regarding campus Israel protests and antisemitism, led to her firing after only six months in that position. He has become one of the most influential voices shaping the views of leading conservative politicians and media figures. 

Rufo appeared on our program once before: back in 2023, where we spent an hour exploring his core beliefs and goals, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not. The conversation was spirited but unfailingly civil, and I think, illuminating of some of the controversies surrounding his work. 

What promoted Rufo's appearance tonight were comments that I had made about him and other right-wing figures in an interview I gave about the Trump administration to Reason Magazine. Rufo saw those comments, noted them and objected to them on X. It led to a back and forth but it became rapidly apparent - at least to me - that social media was the absolute worst venue to try to sort through those issues we were discussing, some of which have a lot of complexity and nuance to them: things like the core values of the American Founding, the values and views that most influenced the founders and how all of those questions apply to our current political debates, especially over civil liberties and the freedom of academic institutions. 

So, I suggested that we remove the conversation to a platform more suitable for a constructive exchange and he quickly agreed to come on this program for us to do so. 

His official biography does not really capture Rufo's influence and accomplishments, but for those unfamiliar with it, he is a senior fellow and director of the Initiative on Critical Race Theory at the Manhattan Institute. He is also a contributing editor of City Journal, where his writings explore a range of issues, including critical race theory, gender ideology, homelessness, addiction, crime, and the decline of American cities. He has been published in Fox and the New York Post and has been the subject of numerous corporate media profiles, the most recent of which is a lengthy interview he gave to the New York Times just last month. He's the author of the New York Times bestselling book, “America's Cultural Revolution,” and as a filmmaker, he has directed four documentaries for PBS, Netflix, and international television, including America Lost, which tells the story of three forgotten American cities. 

The issues we hope to discuss are, in my view, some of the most consequential for American politics and the West more broadly, and I'm very much looking forward to our exploration of our agreements and our disagreements on all of those questions. 

G. Greenwald: Chris, good evening, it's great to see you. Thanks so much for coming on and agreeing to do this.

So, it's interesting, when I was thinking about how to do this, how to conduct our discussion, the issues that we discussed, even though it was just a few tweets, were so far reaching and kind of complex that I had so many things I wanted to talk to you about, so the hard part was figuring out what to kind of focus on. 

There was a series of tweets that you posted in response to that interview I had given in Reason, where I basically said, and it was part of a larger conversation, I was asked specifically about you, that I think you're very shrewd and influential and successful operative and journalist but, to me, it seems like you've gotten to the point where you care more about this kind of Machiavellian quest for power than you do about principles. 

And in response, you said this: