14:00

saying, hey, Trump is continuing to

14:02

essentially brag about the Supreme Court

14:04

justices he got confirmed

14:06

and what that ended up doing in terms

14:08

of overturning Roe versus Wade. But then Biden

14:11

seemed to step kind of on his own

14:13

toes and muddled his answer a bit and

14:15

tried to tie in immigration, which was interesting.

14:18

To be clear, we were talking about

14:20

fact checking. Donald Trump last night inaccurately

14:23

referred to abortions after birth. And

14:25

fantasize is criminalized in every state. No

14:28

state has passed a law that allows

14:30

killing a baby after birth. Ron,

14:33

when former President Trump makes statements

14:35

like this, how often is

14:38

we talk about the idea of sort

14:40

of fact checking and the claims that

14:42

he makes, how much do you think

14:44

these inaccuracies end up being

14:46

just sort of heard by people and getting

14:48

repurposed on social media and other places? Quite

14:51

a bit, quite a bit. And that is

14:54

perhaps at least

14:56

one of the secrets of Donald

14:58

Trump's success as a politician going

15:00

back to 2015 and his first

15:02

announcement in June of that year that

15:05

he was going to run for president. And some

15:07

of the things he said in that announcement were

15:09

kind of forehead slapping and, but people

15:11

at the time did not take Donald Trump

15:13

that seriously. Others did. And

15:16

certainly people who saw him on Twitter, known

15:18

as Twitter, that they

15:21

believed the things they saw him

15:23

say especially, especially when those things

15:25

he was saying comported with something

15:27

that they had already believed. I

15:29

mean, as people, we generally speaking prefer

15:31

what we believe in hearing it

15:33

said again to hearing something

15:35

that challenges what we believe, especially if we

15:38

find that disturbing. So it's

15:40

easy to spread misinformation when it

15:42

in a sense reinforces

15:44

the misinformation that people may already

15:47

have. Biden came back pretty strongly

15:49

on the late term abortion issue,

15:51

but overall he did not seem

15:54

to drive home

15:56

the differences between himself and Donald

15:59

Trump as effectively I think is as

16:01

some people would have liked and Trump

16:03

was good at bringing up the more

16:05

graphic image the more horrifying image and

16:09

Distracting and thereby getting the attention

16:11

and coming away having somewhat neutralized

16:13

an issue on which he knows

16:15

perfectly Well, he's at odds with

16:18

well over 60% of the people in the country. I agree

16:22

with Ron I think that Biden

16:24

could have come back He had some strong answers where

16:27

he said this has been the law of the land

16:29

for 51 years and and

16:31

that's not true Doing the fact-checking of

16:34

Trump's comments that needed to be done

16:37

But but Biden has a very good

16:39

case and it's one the Democrats have

16:41

been hammering on abortion rights which is

16:43

that this decision is between a woman

16:46

and her family and the doctor and

16:48

Government should not be involved and that is

16:50

a winning argument That is what the vast

16:52

majority of people in this country believe and

16:55

he should have just Repeated that again and

16:57

again and had there been an audience there

16:59

might have been an applause line Wendy to

17:01

that point Just perhaps

17:03

president Biden's To

17:06

your point like not answering that clearly does

17:08

it matter maybe I don't

17:10

know I think people's feelings on abortion as

17:12

Ron said are sort of pretty pretty solid

17:14

But it would have been nice to see

17:16

him fight back against the man who could

17:19

if we elect if elected to a second

17:21

term Further restrict abortion rights.

17:24

So let's Wrap up

17:26

this debate conversation with two more

17:28

highlights first this When

17:30

Donald Trump was pushed about what he did

17:32

and did not do on January

17:34

6th Here we're hearing

17:36

him blame speaker Nancy Pelosi for what

17:39

happened on that day. I Had

17:42

virtually nothing to do they asked me to go make a

17:44

speech I could see what was happening

17:46

everybody was saying they're gonna be there on January 6 They're

17:48

gonna be there and I said, you know what? That's a

17:50

lot of people coming you could feel it you could feel

17:53

it too and you could feel it and

17:55

I said they ought to have some National

17:57

Guard or whatever and I

17:59

offered it to her And she now admits

18:01

that she turned it down. She

18:03

said, I take full responsibility for

18:05

January 6th. And

18:07

this on whether the former president would accept

18:09

the result of this coming election? If

18:12

it's a fair and legal and

18:14

good election, absolutely. I wasn't really

18:17

going to run until

18:19

I saw the horrible job he

18:21

did. He's destroying our country. You're

18:23

a whiner. When you lost the

18:25

first time, you continued, you appealed

18:27

and appealed to courts all across

18:29

the country. Not one single court

18:31

in America said any of

18:33

your claims, said any merit. And I tell

18:35

you what, I doubt whether you'll accept

18:37

it because you're such a whiner. Taylor,

18:39

first, just because we are talking about

18:41

fact checking so much here, I just want to give

18:44

you a chance to respond to the actual facts of

18:46

what were said versus

18:49

what former President Trump said last night.

18:51

Yeah, of course. I mean, on January 6th,

18:53

Trump continues to claim that he had no

18:55

ability to kind of step in and to

18:58

help stop the riot at the Capitol. And

19:00

I, along with hundreds of other members of

19:02

the press and staffers, were in

19:05

the Capitol complex that day. What Trump's

19:07

own officials have said is that in

19:09

order to deploy the National Guard, and

19:11

because D.C. is not a state and

19:13

the city kind of has to go

19:15

through the federal government, it wasn't as

19:17

simple as Nancy Pelosi's speaker saying, hey,

19:19

bring the guard here. And there were

19:21

intelligence failures leading up to how much security

19:23

would be needed. But we also know from

19:25

reporting from the January 6th committee that Trump

19:28

sat in the White House for about three

19:30

hours while his own vice president was in

19:32

the Capitol and was being rushed away from

19:34

the mob and didn't react in real time

19:36

to that. The clip he was talking about

19:38

of Pelosi speaking is a clip from her

19:40

daughter's documentary that was released later

19:43

after the fact. And she was more so talking

19:45

to her chief of staff, basically saying, as the

19:47

leaders of Congress, we should have been more on

19:49

top of this in the way that we could

19:51

be. So that's there. And then in

19:53

terms of accepting the election results, like I

19:55

said, this is nothing new in the sense

19:58

that if you go to a Trump rally,

20:00

you hear over. over and over again, he

20:02

and his campaign are pushing this narrative of

20:04

they want his victory in November to be

20:06

what they call too big to rig, but

20:08

then when you press them on what that

20:10

means, they say that we want to feel

20:12

like the election is fair, and they don't

20:15

necessarily clarify what that means, because obviously election

20:17

results are hard numbers. The GOP is even

20:19

holding training events now across the country. I

20:21

went to one in Pennsylvania last week and

20:23

one in Georgia this week, where they're trying

20:25

to bring volunteers in who can act as

20:27

poll watchers and poll workers

20:30

and lawyers to assist in legal

20:32

help, all because Trump will not

20:34

accept the 2020 election results that

20:36

his own administration, his own appointed

20:39

judges say was free and fair. And moving

20:41

forward, he's made no indication that he'll accept

20:43

the results this fall, especially if he's on

20:45

the losing end of it. Ron,

20:48

how vulnerable is the former president on the

20:50

issue of January 6? Or do

20:52

we come back to the idea like we were

20:54

just talking about with abortion that on this topic

20:56

everyone has already made up their mind about what's

20:59

happened? Perhaps many

21:01

people, perhaps most people have made up their

21:03

minds about January 6. If

21:06

they have and they do not

21:08

realize the role that Donald

21:10

Trump played in it, they need more

21:12

information. The January 6 committee

21:14

that Trump likes to run down heard

21:16

from a number of people from within

21:19

the White House of Donald Trump, including,

21:23

for example, the attorney general of that

21:25

time. And these people

21:27

looked into the allegations. They tried

21:29

to come up with some basis

21:31

to support what Trump kept

21:33

claiming, which was that the election was stolen

21:35

from him. They couldn't find anything.

21:37

They couldn't placate him. Then

21:40

Trump himself participated in an effort

21:42

to bring people to Washington to

21:44

object on the day of certification.

21:47

He sent out, among other things, a tweet

21:49

that said, be here on January 6. Will

21:52

be wild. So last night he

21:55

was implying that somehow some spontaneous group of

21:57

people just showed up on the White House

21:59

lawn. Nothing could be further. further from the

22:01

truth. These people were recruited, they were incited.

22:04

I'm using here the words of Mitch

22:06

McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, who

22:09

said the next morning that

22:11

the president had summoned the

22:13

mob and incited the mob.

22:16

And he was demonstrably

22:19

right. He was answering the question

22:22

that was posed by what we

22:24

all saw, by the scaffolding that

22:26

was raised to say, hang Mike

22:29

Pence. We

22:31

all saw that. And many people

22:33

have testified from within Trump's own

22:35

administration as to the facts. And

22:38

he continues to paint a

22:40

completely fantastic, untruthful picture

22:43

of what happened at that time in order to

22:45

encourage us, Taylor, who's saying a

22:47

campaign against this next election.

22:51

So let's have some final thoughts from

22:54

all of you on the debate as

22:56

we've talked about performance versus issues. My

22:58

last question to you all, how do

23:00

you think Democrats are feeling about this

23:02

candidate, about their candidate this morning versus

23:04

Republicans? Wendy? Well, from

23:07

what we're reporting and hearing last

23:09

night and this morning, Democrats are,

23:11

as people are saying, hitting the

23:13

panic button. Apparently

23:15

Biden has said this morning that he

23:17

is going to remain in the race.

23:20

But so many Democrats, former

23:23

lawmakers like Claire McCaskill on the

23:25

record, Obama's campaign guide, David Axelrod,

23:27

saying, you know, it's time for

23:29

a change. I'm quite sure the

23:31

Democrats who are toeing

23:33

the party line and saying, you know,

23:35

he's in it, Trump is worse. All

23:38

the things that they want to say are

23:40

privately just, you

23:42

know, terrified of what can happen if

23:44

Joe Biden doesn't perform better in the

23:46

next debate. And if he doesn't have

23:48

the next debate, I think that's even

23:51

worse. Ron? There has to

23:53

be another debate or Biden

23:56

has to make some sort of decision about

23:58

his own future. there.

28:00

This one is eight feet tall and

28:02

four feet wide and it popped up

28:04

in Bellevue, northwest of Fort Collins. Not

28:07

a surprise that multiple theories have been

28:09

doing the rounds online and there's more

28:11

than a few suggesting that this mirrored

28:13

mystery was left by aliens. Back

28:16

with more of the roundup in just a moment. Support

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get back to the roundup and take

29:50

a look at the court's second decision

29:52

of the day. The justices overrule Chevron

29:54

in a 6-3 ideologically divided majority. The

29:56

question in this case was whether to

29:59

overrule the court. Bannon

32:00

is set to go to prison on

32:02

Monday to begin his four-month sentence nearly

32:04

two years after being convicted of contempt

32:06

of Congress. But he and House

32:08

Republicans are doing everything they can to keep him

32:10

out of prison. In a legal

32:12

filing to the Supreme Court, the Justice Department

32:14

argued that Bannon's case doesn't meet the criteria

32:17

that would allow him to stay out of

32:19

prison while he appeals his conviction. Ron, is

32:21

this the kind of appeal the court would

32:23

normally take up? It

32:26

would not seem likely. Peter Navarro,

32:28

another Trump adviser who was

32:30

active at that time in 2020, 2019, 2018,

32:32

refused to

32:36

comply with a subpoena from Congress

32:39

and was sentenced to several months. And

32:42

I believe it's not quite completed that sentence

32:44

yet, but several months that

32:46

he began serving earlier this year. And

32:49

that would seem to be the more typical

32:51

way for these things to work their way

32:53

through. It took years. It took years,

32:55

and it's taken years with Steve Bannon. But

32:58

that would be what would be generally

33:00

expected. But this case, of course, has

33:02

become highly fraught because Steve Bannon is

33:04

not only closely associated with Donald Trump,

33:06

but because he remains a

33:08

very active media figure with

33:10

his podcast and his postings.

33:13

And he has quite a large following. And

33:16

so this is seen as another, in a

33:18

sense, surrogate decision on the part of the

33:20

Supreme Court as

33:22

to their disposition towards Donald Trump, who, of

33:24

course, appointed three members

33:26

of the court. And those three members are the

33:28

swing boats that give you all these six to

33:31

three decisions. And so

33:33

all of this has got the election stamped all

33:35

over it. And we will see

33:37

what the court decides and whether it decides to take up the

33:39

case. Let's turn now

33:41

to some primaries that happened this

33:44

week. In New York, Westchester County

33:46

Executive George Lattimer beat incumbent Representative

33:48

Jabal Bowman in the congressional primary.

33:51

Bowman's part of the left-leaning group of congressional members

33:53

known as the Squad. What

33:56

money did special interest groups play in

33:58

this race and how much money was

34:00

spent that might have persuaded primary voters

34:02

to go for Latimer over Bowman. Well,

34:04

this was the most expensive House

34:07

Democratic primary in history, and

34:09

that money largely came from

34:12

APAC, the American-Israel Political Action

34:14

Committee. Bowman was,

34:17

like I believe all members of

34:19

the Squad, a deep

34:21

critic of Israel's conduct

34:23

of the war in Gaza and of

34:25

the Biden administration's support of Netanyahu and

34:27

his policies, excuse me, Israeli Prime Minister

34:30

Benjamin Netanyahu. And

34:33

so APAC basically wanted

34:35

him gone, and they gave

34:37

Latimer, the 70-year-old white Westchester

34:39

County executive, a

34:41

tremendous amount of money

34:43

to campaign. The thing

34:46

is, I'm not sure whether that

34:48

money was necessary, because what Jamal

34:50

Bowman, despite his position on

34:53

the Israel-Gaza war, represents a sliver of

34:55

the Bronx and then a lot of

34:57

Westchester County. It's one of the most

34:59

Jewish districts in the nation. And

35:02

he would often say things like, it's

35:04

bigger than the New York 16th congressional

35:06

district, but his constituents wanted

35:08

it to be a New York 16th

35:10

congressional district. Exactly right. Right. Exactly

35:13

right. And then Bowman had some

35:15

other things going against him. He's the guy who

35:18

pulled the fire alarm during the debt ceiling crisis

35:20

when Democrats are trying to present themselves as the

35:22

party of grownups against the MAGA Republicans. And

35:25

he's dabbled in 9-11 conspiracy theories, which for

35:27

a member of the New York City delegation

35:29

is surprising. And

35:32

so, yes, APAC poured a lot of

35:34

money into the race, whether it just

35:38

hastened the inevitable is maybe

35:40

what happened. So, Taylor, do you think this

35:42

may not imply much else for other Democrats

35:44

who might criticize U.S. support for Israel in

35:47

the war in Gaza? Well,

35:49

Bowman is the first to lose

35:51

a primary. We saw Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

35:53

easily win hers. She was facing

35:55

a challenger. We've seen Rashida Tlaib,

35:57

the only Palestinian American in Congress.

58:00

the United States is still arming Israel.

58:02

And oh, by the way, in all

58:04

of this, we're still hearing that it's

58:06

Hamas that's holding up the ceasefire deal.

58:08

And that's not to say that Hamas

58:10

is like a good faith actor in

58:12

these negotiations, but it is to say

58:14

that the United States and Israel are

58:16

doing this very strange dance, where

58:20

we're hearing that they're nearing a deal or

58:22

a partial deal, and we're saying, oh, the

58:24

fighting is going to wind down. But on

58:26

the other hand, the weapons are still being

58:29

provided. And in fact, Netanyahu is complaining about

58:31

the rate at which they're being provided. Right.

58:33

And so to your point, Emily, about the

58:35

partial deal and that same TV appearance, Israeli

58:38

Prime Minister Netanyahu said he was ready to

58:40

make a partial deal. I

58:45

am not ready to stop the war and for Hamas to

58:47

remain. I am ready to make a

58:49

partial deal to return some of the people to

58:51

us. But we are forced to continue this war

58:53

after the truce to reach our goal, which is

58:55

removing Hamas. I'm not ready to

58:57

compromise. So Alex, what is

59:00

that? That sounds a little like I'm ready to

59:02

make a partial deal. I'm not ready to compromise.

59:04

So what does that mean? God

59:07

knows. But I mean, look,

59:10

I mean, Biden, excuse me, Bibi has his

59:12

own politics. Right. I mean,

59:14

back home, he has not only is

59:16

he facing a backlash from hostage families,

59:18

you know, families of hostage who want

59:20

them returned, but he's also got a

59:22

far right coalition government that keeps threatening

59:24

to quit on him. His

59:27

defense, you know, one of his war

59:29

counter members has left because of his handling of it. I

59:31

mean, he's really kind of getting

59:33

it from all angles. And he has to, in

59:36

every single statement, kind of appeal to eight

59:38

different sides, which makes it really hard to kind

59:40

of understand where he's coming from. So is

59:43

he making the statement for his politics? Yes

59:45

and no. Is he making the statement

59:47

by politics, you mean internal politics? Yes, internal politics,

59:50

yes and no. Is he making it perhaps as

59:52

like a maximalist position in terms of negotiations with

59:54

Hamas? Yes and no. Is it possibly some sort

59:56

of message to the US like you can't push

59:58

us around? We want yes and no, and that's

1:00:01

sort of where we're at. But the interesting thing

1:00:03

is, you know, when he

1:00:05

says this partial deal, which leads to

1:00:07

some hostages returned for not

1:00:09

the, you know, for not an end to the

1:00:12

fighting, you do have hostage families who want them

1:00:14

to accept the deal that Biden laid out in

1:00:16

May, the bigger deal overall. And they've now, you

1:00:18

know, calling for a meeting with him. They are

1:00:20

making a big fuss about this, as they have

1:00:22

been for a while. There's been critiques of this,

1:00:25

of this Netanyahu government that he hasn't

1:00:27

prioritized the hostage return issue that much.

1:00:29

So anyway, all this to say is

1:00:31

that, as Emily rightly

1:00:33

pointed, this is yet another twist in

1:00:35

a very weird situation in which Netanyahu

1:00:37

is just constantly all over the place.

1:00:40

And James, to Alex's point about the

1:00:42

U.S. back deal, what has Netanyahu said

1:00:44

about Israel's commitment to that? You

1:00:48

know, it's very strange because it was an Israel proposal.

1:00:50

They had agreed on it. You

1:00:52

know, our secretary of state was over there, came back.

1:00:55

Biden comes out with this deal. Israel

1:00:57

has signed on to it. And Hamas

1:00:59

was the only actor that needed to

1:01:01

agree. And as soon as he

1:01:03

said that, Netanyahu backs and says, no, no, no,

1:01:05

I'm only for partial of that part of that

1:01:07

deal. I'm going to

1:01:09

continue the fight. The essential problem with

1:01:12

Netanyahu, besides having steered Israel down this

1:01:14

dead end that they are now in,

1:01:16

is that he cannot describe what Gaza

1:01:19

will look like the

1:01:21

day after hostilities stop. And

1:01:23

that requires him to really give up on it. Which is

1:01:25

the question the U.S. and other countries are asking. Right. And

1:01:28

we're trying to say it's got to

1:01:30

be Palestinian civilian leadership because Israel forces

1:01:32

don't want to be there. He's the

1:01:34

Israeli military is broken with Netanyahu on

1:01:37

this issue, saying your total victory is

1:01:39

unachievable and we don't want to be

1:01:41

stuck in Gaza for decades

1:01:43

to come. They had that in

1:01:45

Lebanon in the eighties. It didn't work out so well for

1:01:47

them. So we're trying to point him

1:01:49

to a direction where we could get to a

1:01:52

day after, you know, major hostilities.

1:01:54

And still run counterterrorism operations against

1:01:56

Hamas ad infinitum. And they should, given

1:01:59

how horrific that is. attack was on October

1:02:01

7th. But there needs to be a day

1:02:03

after strategy and he refuses to even consider

1:02:05

one because he knows the

1:02:09

solution there is going to nix his dream

1:02:11

of putting

1:02:13

off a two-state solution for Israel's

1:02:15

history. So he's got a right-wing

1:02:17

government that wants to reoccupy Gaza.

1:02:20

He's got a right-wing government that

1:02:22

wants to increase Israeli settlements in

1:02:24

Gaza. No one who can help

1:02:26

Israel is going to agree to

1:02:28

that, including the its

1:02:30

Arab neighbors who are very much on the

1:02:32

cusp of actually normalizing relations with Israel. But

1:02:35

this has nixed that deal until

1:02:37

they come up with a day after strategy.

1:02:39

And he can't do that because it goes

1:02:41

against everything he has stood for in 30

1:02:43

years as a leader in Israel. So

1:02:45

meanwhile, as we're talking about all of that,

1:02:47

Alex, to your point of all of the

1:02:49

different dynamics that are happening here, you

1:02:52

mentioned Lebanon, James. And this week

1:02:54

Netanyahu suggested more of the country's

1:02:56

troops could soon be transferred

1:02:58

to the northern border with Lebanon

1:03:01

to confront the Iran-backed Hezbollah. A

1:03:03

few days later, CNN reported Israel

1:03:05

was actually moving its iron dome

1:03:07

equipment in preparation for a possible

1:03:09

war with Hezbollah. So far, both

1:03:11

sides have kind of prevented this

1:03:14

tit-for-tat attacks from escalating into

1:03:16

a full-blown war. We have

1:03:18

talked repeatedly about fears of

1:03:21

a wider regional war. Where are

1:03:23

we with that? Well, this is another

1:03:26

thing that is very concerning to the

1:03:28

to the Biden administration. You know, there

1:03:30

is 60,000. He's again facing a lot

1:03:32

of internal pressures. There's 60,000 Israelis who've

1:03:35

been displaced from their homes in

1:03:37

northern Israel because of rocket attacks

1:03:39

from Hezbollah in Lebanon. We

1:03:42

have said, you know, to

1:03:44

avoid an escalation, you need to get to a

1:03:46

day after, and then we can

1:03:48

get a ceasefire, and then we can start tamping

1:03:50

down on this war. And if

1:03:53

he if if if we

1:03:55

let this escalation continue in Lebanon,

1:03:57

that's a two-front war. Israel's already

1:04:00

stretch then that could easily draw us

1:04:02

into because Hezbollah is much more powerful

1:04:04

than Hamas got many many more rockets

1:04:07

precision rockets drones so

1:04:09

we were trying to say you know get

1:04:12

get one of these fronts settled ie Gaza

1:04:15

and then yes you're probably gonna have to

1:04:17

put troops up there but let's try to

1:04:19

avoid an all-out war and escalation that could

1:04:21

drag the United States in as it happened

1:04:23

when Israel invaded Lebanon in the 80s we

1:04:25

ended up losing 240 Marines in Beirut because

1:04:30

of Hezbollah and we want to avoid

1:04:32

that at all costs one

1:04:35

more note before we move on in

1:04:37

Gaza Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed

1:04:40

more than 37,000 people

1:04:42

since October 7th that's according to

1:04:44

the territory's health ministry which does

1:04:46

not distinguish between combatants and civilians

1:04:48

in its count this week a

1:04:50

new report from the human rights

1:04:53

organization save the children found

1:04:55

that more than 20,000 children are estimated

1:04:58

to be lost disappeared

1:05:00

detained or buried under the rubble

1:05:03

or in mass graves before

1:05:06

we move on this week the

1:05:08

United Arab Emirates instructed mosque preachers

1:05:10

around the country to limit the

1:05:12

duration of Friday sermons and prayers

1:05:14

to maximum 10 minutes as searing

1:05:17

heat continues to engulf the region

1:05:19

last week that searing heat

1:05:21

led to the deaths of more than 1,300

1:05:23

pilgrims performing the

1:05:25

Hajj in Mecca Saudi Arabia let's

1:05:29

turn now to France that country's first

1:05:31

round of voting and snap elections for

1:05:33

Parliament is on Sunday a second round

1:05:35

will take place on July 7th President

1:05:38

Emmanuel Macron called the elections two years

1:05:40

ahead of schedule in the aftermath of

1:05:42

the EU's Parliament elections in early June

1:05:45

France's rising far-right National Rally

1:05:47

Party placed first in that

1:05:50

election winning 30 out of

1:05:52

France's 81 seats Emily

1:05:54

you covered the elections on your

1:05:57

podcast this week since Macron's gamble

1:05:59

to dissolve parliament and send the country

1:06:01

to the polls early, what's happened here? Can you

1:06:03

catch us up? Yeah, we did.

1:06:05

I can now at the risk of being gauche.

1:06:08

As you mentioned, we did cover this on our

1:06:10

podcast, the election tricycle. This week we had Art

1:06:12

Goldhammer, who's a close observer of French politics on.

1:06:14

So if you're interested in greater detail, I recommend

1:06:16

you listen to that listeners. But

1:06:19

speaking of gauche and Dua, basically these

1:06:21

elections were a gamble on Macron's part,

1:06:23

right? He was saying, okay, the far

1:06:25

right just did well in the European

1:06:27

parliamentary elections. I'm going to call everyone's

1:06:29

bluff and call French parliamentary elections and

1:06:31

see if France won't stand up to

1:06:33

the far right and the far left,

1:06:36

these two extremes, they'll vote for my

1:06:38

party, which is now called ensemble after

1:06:40

having been on March and Renaissance. It's

1:06:42

now ensemble. It's really, it's really, you

1:06:44

know, Macron centrist amalgamation. Now, what he

1:06:46

did not totally calculate into this gamble

1:06:49

were three things. One, the extent to

1:06:51

which people do not like him and

1:06:54

are sick of him and think that he's arrogant and are

1:06:56

just over it, right? Two, the

1:06:58

extent to which the far right has

1:07:00

sort of moderated its appearance, to

1:07:03

be clear, not its content on xenophobia or what

1:07:05

it takes to make a French citizen, but

1:07:09

the appearance of it. And there are those who point

1:07:11

to Prime Minister Maloney in Italy and say, well, look,

1:07:13

it hasn't been that bad for foreign policy to vote

1:07:15

for the far right. The other thing he did not,

1:07:18

the third thing that he did not count on is

1:07:20

that the left, like sort of the central left and

1:07:22

the far left came together. So

1:07:24

they're now a more powerful block. So Macron's gamble

1:07:26

right now, at least, does not look to be

1:07:28

paying off so well for him. It does

1:07:31

look that it does look like it will

1:07:33

benefit the left and the right in France.

1:07:36

So James, if the far right national

1:07:38

rally does secure enough seats to form

1:07:41

a government, what are the implications for

1:07:43

France domestically and for the EU? So

1:07:47

this party has anti-EU sort

1:07:49

of DNA and it has

1:07:51

for a very long time. So it's not going

1:07:54

to be good news for the European project and

1:07:56

the European Union. And it's not going to be

1:07:58

good for NATO either, because it also has in

1:08:00

its DNA anti-NATO. of sentiment. So it's very much

1:08:02

as many of these populist movements are, instead of

1:08:05

France first, if you will. And so

1:08:07

it's not going to be good news. And

1:08:09

you've got to say Macron's a riverboat gambler to

1:08:12

do this right before the Olympics. I mean, if

1:08:14

you can imagine the chaos

1:08:16

that's going to ensue if the far right,

1:08:18

which has been on the fringe of French

1:08:21

politics for decades, finally gets into power and

1:08:23

he has to deal with them in a

1:08:26

power-sharing agreement government right before

1:08:29

the world is focusing on Paris with

1:08:31

the Olympics. I hope it works

1:08:35

for him, but it is, a number

1:08:37

of people said it's a heck of a gamble. So

1:08:40

let's move across the English Channel where another

1:08:42

election is fast approaching. The UK votes for

1:08:44

a new parliament on Thursday, July 4th. Conservative

1:08:46

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is trying to win

1:08:48

a new term for his party, which has

1:08:51

been in government for 14 consecutive

1:08:54

years, but the Labour Party has

1:08:56

pulled well ahead with some surveys

1:08:58

projecting it could win a majority

1:09:00

in parliament larger than any since

1:09:02

World War II. Alex, how significant

1:09:04

is that? Quite.

1:09:06

My goodness. Blimey? I don't know. Is that

1:09:09

the right term? The

1:09:12

Conservative had such a lock over

1:09:16

British politics for a decade and a half. And

1:09:18

you can really trace this downfall

1:09:21

from David

1:09:23

Camars' decision to pursue Brexit and

1:09:25

then just a decline in austerity

1:09:28

measures to the NHS, the healthcare system,

1:09:31

declining standard

1:09:33

of living, worsening economy. And

1:09:36

you're just now at this point after basically 15

1:09:39

years, if you're a British person going,

1:09:41

what did we get for all of

1:09:43

this conservative leadership unless we also forget

1:09:45

that there was a prime minister who

1:09:47

lasted less than a head of cabbage.

1:09:50

So I mean, the British people are

1:09:52

basically now gambling on the Labour Party

1:09:54

because you're not getting anything with

1:09:56

the Tories. So it's a massive

1:09:58

shakeup. fact, if the election

1:10:01

goes as it's expecting, Cara Starmer will

1:10:03

be the new prime minister and he

1:10:05

will be there, I believe, two or

1:10:07

three days before he has to travel

1:10:09

here to Washington for the

1:10:12

NATO summit. And he's going to be asked, okay, so what do you

1:10:14

guys want to do? And I'm like, I don't know. I just got

1:10:16

the briefing books, you know? So like, this is going to be a

1:10:18

pretty major shift, not

1:10:20

only in the domestic politics of Britain, even though

1:10:22

Starmer is charting a semi-more

1:10:24

centrist course, but also in the foreign

1:10:27

policy of Britain, which will likely still

1:10:29

be the same, but it will be

1:10:31

led by someone who has just happened

1:10:33

in the game. Emily, Alex mentioned Brexit.

1:10:35

Nigel Farage's reform party

1:10:37

has risen in the polls recently

1:10:39

as conservatives sink farther. If

1:10:42

you don't remember, he and his previous

1:10:44

political movements were instrumental in arguing for

1:10:46

the Brexit vote. How has he been

1:10:48

able to pull support from the Conservative

1:10:50

Party? He's

1:10:52

an interesting figure in that he's sort

1:10:55

of like, he cuts up a foonish

1:10:57

figure and yet has had tremendous influence over the

1:10:59

Conservative Party, which, you know, part of the reason

1:11:01

that David Cameron put up a Brexit referendum was

1:11:03

to, I mean, it's like we've seen

1:11:05

throughout Europe and arguably in this country too, right?

1:11:07

Like the center right tries to take on some

1:11:09

of the right wing policies, thinking that that will

1:11:11

moderate it and ends up becoming farther right itself.

1:11:13

But anyway, as Alex said, the

1:11:15

main issue with this election is that the conservatives have

1:11:18

been in power for 14 years and people are sick

1:11:20

of it. They're tired of it. They don't want the

1:11:22

Tories in power anymore. So for most people, that means,

1:11:24

okay, I will now vote for the other major party,

1:11:26

Labour. But for some people, i.e. people who think that

1:11:28

immigration is the reason for all of the problems that

1:11:31

Alex listed and the housing shortage in London and this

1:11:33

and that, you're going to

1:11:35

vote for the new, the newly formed reform party,

1:11:37

which basically blames all

1:11:39

of that on immigration. Right? So,

1:11:41

so I would say most,

1:11:45

obviously because they're, it looks like

1:11:47

they will win, most votes are going to

1:11:49

labor. But if you're, if you're doing an

1:11:52

anti-Tory vote from the right on immigration, you'll

1:11:54

vote reform and that's how far that's how

1:11:56

Faraj has managed yet again to stay relevant.

1:12:00

are upcoming. On Friday in Iran,

1:12:02

citizens went to the polls to

1:12:04

elect its successor to former president

1:12:06

Ibrahim Raisi, who died in a

1:12:08

helicopter crash in May. The race

1:12:10

is largely between three candidates, two

1:12:12

hardliners, and a reformist. We'll continue

1:12:14

to follow that story. Let's

1:12:17

go down to the northern Mariana

1:12:19

Islands, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

1:12:21

accepted a plea deal with the

1:12:23

U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday. It

1:12:25

ended his 14-year legal battle with

1:12:27

the U.S. over the release of

1:12:29

classified military documents. Assange traveled to

1:12:31

the island of Saipan, capital of

1:12:33

the U.S. territory, to adhere before

1:12:35

a U.S. District Court judge. After

1:12:37

the hearing, he was allowed to

1:12:39

return to Australia as a free

1:12:41

man. James, what were the terms

1:12:43

of the deal that Assange and

1:12:45

the U.S. government finally came to hear? Let's

1:12:49

get this off the table, basically, is

1:12:51

the deal there. I mean, time served.

1:12:53

This is

1:12:55

going on for a long time. He

1:12:57

was seven years in an Ecuadorian embassy

1:12:59

in London, which he couldn't

1:13:01

leave. And finally, they got so tired of him.

1:13:03

They surrendered him to the British authorities, who

1:13:06

gave him five years fighting extradition to

1:13:08

the United States from there. I

1:13:11

think the Australian government really

1:13:14

lobbied on his behalf. He basically has

1:13:16

served enough time as if he had

1:13:18

gotten originally charged and found guilty way

1:13:20

back when. This would have

1:13:22

been the end of his sentence anyway. So I think it was

1:13:24

a way for us to do a favor

1:13:28

for our close friends in Australia, get

1:13:30

rid of this issue, and finally

1:13:34

resolve it. I

1:13:36

think as a journalist, I

1:13:39

think we can all agree it's probably better than

1:13:42

not having someone who's basically a

1:13:45

whistleblower of sorts, having to go

1:13:47

through a big espionage trial in

1:13:49

the United States, because there

1:13:51

are elements of his case that remind

1:13:53

me of the Pentagon Papers, where classified

1:13:55

material was leaked to the press, the

1:13:58

Washington Post,