Trump Bombarded by Epstein Q's in Scotland, MAGA “Caddies” Provide Cover Back Home | Peter Beinart

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Speaker 2 You're listening to Comedy Central.

Speaker 3 From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central.

Speaker 4 It's America's only source for news. This is the Daily Show with your host, John Stewart.

Speaker 4 Sometimes I forget.

Speaker 5 I forget sometimes.

Speaker 6 I have no band.

Speaker 4 I do the band thing.

Speaker 4 Boom.

Speaker 7 Welcome to the Dev Show. My name is John Strew.
We got a show for you tonight.

Speaker 8 A great show.

Speaker 9 A great show for you tonight.

Speaker 10 Author Peter Biner will be here later to discuss.

Speaker 6 We will be discussing Israel and Gaza.

Speaker 3 So, you know,

Speaker 5 start your angry emails now.

Speaker 13 But let's begin tonight with a young man by the name of Donald Aloysius Krump.

Speaker 10 As you know, this young man has been embroiled in the Jeffrey Empstein sex trafficking scandal and did what anybody

Speaker 16 who is innocent

Speaker 20 when facing an accusation of this type, did what anybody who is innocent would do.

Speaker 11 He fled the country.

Speaker 9 He fled the country taking a jaunt to bunny old Scotland.

Speaker 6 That's probably not the right accent.

Speaker 19 To leave his troubles in the United States behind and finally gain

Speaker 23 an ocean's distance between himself and the Epstein scandal and focus on his new trade deal with the EU.

Speaker 24 I'm sorry, yes, you there from the Inverness Castle Times.

Speaker 25 Mr. President, it was part of the rush to get this deal done to knock the Jeffrey Epstein story out.

Speaker 24 Oh, you got to be kidding me.

Speaker 8 Donald Trump, he's all like, how did you even hear about that?

Speaker 8 I thought you guys just got Baywatch like three months ago.

Speaker 8 Doesn't anybody here have a question about this trade deal sinking both of our economies with tariffs?

Speaker 8 How high do I have to make the tariffs before you guys shut the f ⁇ up about Epstein?

Speaker 13 But of course, how do you expect the media to move on when even Trump has trouble doing so?

Speaker 9 So it was, on the day of striking a trade deal with the EU, Donald Trump presented once more, this time for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, his classic Epstein defense, 13 Reasons Why

Speaker 5 I'm Not Involved with a pedophile.

Speaker 29 Those files were run by the worst scum on earth. If they had something, they would have released.
Now, they can easily put something in the files that's a phony.

Speaker 12 Which is why I can't release it.

Speaker 9 It's simple.

Speaker 5 If I, Donald Trump, was in the files, they would have released it. So clearly I'm not in the files, but of course, I'm clearly in the files.

Speaker 5 Which makes them phony.

Speaker 24 I mean, what do they even have on Trump? A creepy drawing Trump gave to Epstein?

Speaker 4 Please.

Speaker 29 I don't do drawings. I'm not a drawing person.

Speaker 15 Your Honor, I submit to the court. If there is one thing I would never do, it is

Speaker 4 draw.

Speaker 10 As you know, I suffer from tiny hands.

Speaker 15 I cannot physically even perform the task of drawing. I do not possess the motor skills and muscle strength required.

Speaker 5 Oh,

Speaker 15 I cannot draw, not now,

Speaker 15 not ever.

Speaker 4 Although.

Speaker 29 Sometimes people say, would you draw a building and I'll draw four lines and a little roof, you know, for a charity stuff.

Speaker 29 But I'm not a drawing person. I don't do drawings of women, that I can tell you.

Speaker 9 I mean, sometimes people would say, would you draw a woman?

Speaker 6 I draw a parentheses for breasts and and a triangle for bush for charity.

Speaker 15 For charity.

Speaker 26 I wouldn't call them drawings, more of a cubist pastiche

Speaker 28 of punctuation and geometric shapes to trick the eye.

Speaker 28 Some would see a naked woman, of course.

Speaker 27 Others would see an old woman.

Speaker 28 holding a falcon, riding a hoverboard

Speaker 28 with a triangle for a vagina. Look, the point is this.

Speaker 5 I don't draw.

Speaker 27 In Trump's defense, he did end his relationship with Epstein

Speaker 5 in the alts.

Speaker 34 Perhaps a look into why he ended it will exonerate Trump.

Speaker 29 That's such old history.

Speaker 29 Very easy to explain, but I don't want to waste your time by explaining it. He did something that was inappropriate.

Speaker 35 What he said was, Epstein had done something inappropriate, and that's why they're no longer friends.

Speaker 24 You see, Donald Trump recognized that Epstein had finally crossed a line.

Speaker 36 Now, if it were me, obviously, giving this explanation in front of reporters, I probably would have stopped there.

Speaker 36 But

Speaker 9 since I am not,

Speaker 30 and Trump went on to describe Epstein's inappropriate behavior, and wait till you hear what was the Rubicon that Epstein crossed.

Speaker 29 He hired help

Speaker 29 and I said, don't ever do that again. He stole people that work for me.

Speaker 29 I said, don't ever do that again. He did it again.
And I threw him out of the place. Persona non grata.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 9 You all know him as Jeffrey Epstein, the sex trafficker.

Speaker 17 But I knew his his dark side

Speaker 12 he was

Speaker 12 I mean the sex trafficking I was like okay

Speaker 37 but he was also a low-level employee poacher

Speaker 37 And that

Speaker 37 I cannot add.

Speaker 10 Anyway, Mr. President, do you want to slice this bologna any thinner?

Speaker 29 By the way, I never went to the island, and Bill Clinton went there supposedly

Speaker 29 28 times.

Speaker 12 You expect me to believe that Bill Clinton went to the island only 28 times?

Speaker 4 No way.

Speaker 7 I mean, if anybody had VIP Diamond Island status,

Speaker 9 there's probably still parrots alive on that island

Speaker 8 going, hey, Bill, back again. Hey, Bill.

Speaker 8 Hey, Bill.

Speaker 8 How you doing, Bill? What's up, Bill?

Speaker 8 But here comes.

Speaker 8 Yeah, all right. That's okay.
That's okay. I'm okay.

Speaker 24 That is truly the best parrot impression you'll hear.

Speaker 28 Here comes my favorite part of the defense.

Speaker 35 Trump's ego and narcissism are so central to his being that even his denial of going to the island comes with a caveat.

Speaker 29 I never had the privilege of going to his island and I did turn it down.

Speaker 29 The privilege?

Speaker 29 The f?

Speaker 15 Hey Donald, want to go to the island this weekend?

Speaker 4 Well,

Speaker 28 first of all, Jeffrey,

Speaker 24 thank you for thinking of me.

Speaker 6 Unfortunately, that's the weekend that the teen pageant that I bought

Speaker 12 is installing the indoor security Valka Room Caverns.

Speaker 12 Really?

Speaker 38 But luckily for Trump, it wasn't all Epstein-related pressers.

Speaker 24 He was able to get in some of his beloved whack-a-ball.

Speaker 40 Mr. Trump, are you enjoying the Scottish hospitality?

Speaker 40 Are you enjoying the Scottish hospitality?

Speaker 40 See?

Speaker 8 There you go. Are you enjoying?

Speaker 15 Give in Mabelli, are you enjoying?

Speaker 3 There you go.

Speaker 9 That's what it's about.

Speaker 12 That's got to soothe Trump's soul.

Speaker 40 Mr. Trump, can you escape the Jeffrey Epstein crisis?

Speaker 12 Is Epstein what they yell in Scotland instead of for?

Speaker 12 Epstein!

Speaker 10 Boy, this is, you know, but this is tough.

Speaker 28 To extend the golf metaphor, Trump finds himself in the rough.

Speaker 17 But he's a championship caliber golfsman, battle-tested.

Speaker 28 And I think we all know how the best golfers in the world get out of a bad lie.

Speaker 42 Donald Trump being busted cheating at golf. We can see a caddy dropping a ball there for the president while he played at one of his courses in Scotland.

Speaker 42 When the going gets tough,

Speaker 24 the tough pay someone to cheat for you.

Speaker 43 But this moment on the course, seemingly random, could not be more representative of Trump's entire existence.

Speaker 17 He moves with complete confidence in this world because he requires that everyone in his orbit do whatever they can, including cheating, to ensure that things go Trump's way.

Speaker 4 This has been his whole life. Don't want to go to Vietnam?

Speaker 10 Get a podiatrist, friend of the family, to bone spur you up.

Speaker 8 Your casino is failing?

Speaker 33 Perhaps daddy can illegally float you 3 million in chips to try and save it. Impeached for an attempted coup?

Speaker 20 Your caddy today is the Kentucky Fried Reaper.

Speaker 20 Never like to speak ill of the dead.

Speaker 20 Why would you even say?

Speaker 10 And obviously, for the Epstein case, Trump has no shortage of caddies willing to shame themselves.

Speaker 35 Here's Congressman Tim Burchett, pre-Trump being named in the files.

Speaker 2 Congressman, why do you think so many Democrats are committed to protecting the list of a dead pedophile?

Speaker 46 Too many of my colleagues, I'm afraid, are compromised in this area for whatever reason. The trash can is very deep.

Speaker 46 It's not a swamp. It's an open sewer.

Speaker 15 It's a sewer.

Speaker 9 Democrats are all over the plane logs.

Speaker 10 It's an open sewer.

Speaker 38 I'm sorry, Trump was also on Epstein's plane.

Speaker 24 Need a ball drop over here?

Speaker 45 You know, President Trump admitted that he flew on his dadgum plane. Just because somebody flew on a plane doesn't mean they're a dadgum pedophile.

Speaker 5 Wow. You know what?

Speaker 11 I always find that the worse it is, the folksier they get.

Speaker 4 Well, well,

Speaker 5 Mr. Trump, he's not a daggone, gosh darn

Speaker 5 dagnabbid pedophile.

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 26 kiss my grits.

Speaker 7 I'll guarantee you, he's not using that terminology in other sex offender cases.

Speaker 9 Well, gosh darn, if Diddy ain't two biscuits short of a country biscuit.

Speaker 15 He's two biscuits short of a country breakfast, but that don't make everyone at the freak off crack a barrels

Speaker 10 I honestly think my favorite thing about this is watching conspiracy theorists have to unravel the red string that they themselves originally strung out.

Speaker 18 Here's the OG conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck at his excitement for Trump's beginning of the second term.

Speaker 48 The only thing I care about is the

Speaker 48 scandal of the pedophiles. And in the next 10 days, you're going to see the Epstein file released.
Day number one, Cash Patel walks in. By the end of the day, it will be released.

Speaker 15 Day one.

Speaker 8 Deep state exposed.

Speaker 17 Oh, I'm sorry, Trump's in the rough.

Speaker 24 I'll get right on that ball drop.

Speaker 48 What the left is saying, and some people now on his team are saying, he's in the report.

Speaker 8 With 15-year-olds?

Speaker 50 Really?

Speaker 31 Do you actually believe that?

Speaker 27 I have seen some clips that would be consistent with

Speaker 32 didbuya teenage beauty pageant.

Speaker 7 But listen, Beck, you're the master at making connections, so let's see you unconnect it.

Speaker 48 I mean, let's be honest, 20 years ago, if you know this was like, hey, he was on an island with 25-year-old models,

Speaker 49 I would be going,

Speaker 47 probably.

Speaker 22 Okay.

Speaker 8 15, 16-year-olds, that's not Donald Trump.

Speaker 49 It's not Donald Trump.

Speaker 31 I don't believe that.

Speaker 32 Do you?

Speaker 5 I say

Speaker 49 that's no way that's true.

Speaker 49 You can't. What? No!

Speaker 5 You're not, there's no magic X.

Speaker 9 You can't just magic X conspiracy theories. White people being replaced by voting illegal immigrants.

Speaker 4 No!

Speaker 3 The X has spoken.

Speaker 10 But of course, Trump's caddies can't do everything, and it's given Democrats hope that they finally have Donald Trump. For so long,

Speaker 20 the Democrats have been wily coyote

Speaker 28 to Donald Trump's roadrunner.

Speaker 14 The Democrats thought they had Trump with the felony convictions.

Speaker 8 They thought they had Trump with the access Hollywood tape, but every time he got away.

Speaker 17 But now, With the reporting on the Epstein files, the only way that this guy wiggles out of this one is if, for some reason, convicted sex trafficker Ghillaine Maxwell swears under oath that Trump had nothing to do with it.

Speaker 32 But why would she do that?

Speaker 24 Coyote, you finally got the roadrunner.

Speaker 50 Mr.

Speaker 25 President, if we're going to completely rule out a pardon for Ghillene Maxwell, who landed, is that something you would ever consider? And why?

Speaker 29 Pardon for who?

Speaker 25 For Ghillaine Maxwell.

Speaker 29 Well, I'm allowed to give her a pardon.

Speaker 52 Me, meep.

Speaker 52 But now, of course,

Speaker 52 of course,

Speaker 10 until the pardon happens, there is other stuff Trump can do.

Speaker 53 President Trump went on Truth Social last night and said that Beyoncé, Oprah, and Vice President Kamala Harris should all be prosecuted for receiving or giving endorsement money during the last election.

Speaker 15 That's right. Trump is now calling for for the imprisonment of all the most popular people in the country and Kamala Harris.

Speaker 26 And

Speaker 4 the most concerning thing about this is that

Speaker 26 no, oh, no, no, no.

Speaker 26 Not Beyonce, John.

Speaker 55 That is some bullshit right there. Oh, my God.

Speaker 15 And ladies and gentlemen, it's Jessica Williams.

Speaker 4 I can't believe it.

Speaker 4 This is so exciting. My God.

Speaker 4 It's ME nominee Jessica Williams.

Speaker 8 Wait, Jessica, where are you?

Speaker 56 I'm in Scotland, John.

Speaker 56 And I am here because I have had it with Trump. He's got to come clean about Epstein.
I am sick of this.

Speaker 9 I agree. He's been doing this for weeks, though.

Speaker 8 How much longer can he avoid talking about it?

Speaker 56 I mean, obviously, it depends on how many black people he has left.

Speaker 16 Black people, why do black people matter?

Speaker 55 Why do black people matter, John?

Speaker 55 What the f, dude?

Speaker 15 Well, John, we still got a lot of work to do.

Speaker 4 I know.

Speaker 31 And I will take this time to listen.

Speaker 47 Reflect.

Speaker 6 I meant, why do they matter to the Epstein story?

Speaker 56 It's because Trump is trying to throw every black person he can think of in front of this scandal to distract us. First, he released the Martin Luther King Jr.

Speaker 57 files.

Speaker 56 Then he accused Obama of treason.

Speaker 55 And now he wants to prosecute Oprah and Beyonce.

Speaker 55 The nerve, John.

Speaker 15 The nerve.

Speaker 52 He's coming after all of our greatest black people.

Speaker 56 Who's next? Michael Jordan? Michael B. Jordan?

Speaker 26 Michael C. Jordan?

Speaker 4 I'm sorry.

Speaker 28 Who is Michael C. Jordan?

Speaker 55 I don't know, John, but he better watch his back.

Speaker 26 I'm scared for him.

Speaker 56 Trump is going to target every exceptional black person he can think of. We're about a week away from him saying that Urkel did 9-11.

Speaker 4 Urkel!

Speaker 4 Did he do that?

Speaker 55 No, John. No, he didn't.
He was nowhere near the towers that day. He was nowhere near them.

Speaker 57 Honestly, like, seriously, I just hope this whole thing wraps up before Trump gets to me.

Speaker 4 Jessica, don't...

Speaker 11 God, I hate to even hear you talk.

Speaker 38 Don't be nervous, Jessica.

Speaker 16 Trump isn't going to come after you.

Speaker 55 Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 26 Excuse me?

Speaker 26 He won't come after me?

Speaker 56 What? I'm not an exceptional enough black person for Trump?

Speaker 56 I'm not famous enough to be publicly accused of treason or doing 9-11. You don't know where I was that day.

Speaker 55 You don't know me.

Speaker 4 I'm sorry, but I'm nominated for an Emmy for supporting actress in a comedy.

Speaker 4 Okay, you're very good.

Speaker 28 You're very good in that show.

Speaker 57 I can at least be accused of misdemeanor election fraud, you butthead.

Speaker 56 What?

Speaker 9 I'm sorry. Of course you'd be on that list.
Aw,

Speaker 47 okay.

Speaker 57 But like where on that list?

Speaker 47 Above Urkel?

Speaker 5 Technically, I'm just below Urkel for now.

Speaker 38 Look, Jessica, and I mean this sincerely, you are notable enough for Donald Trump to accuse you of treason to distract from a pedophilia scandal.

Speaker 50 Oh, John, that is just so sweet.

Speaker 6 Thank you so much.

Speaker 4 It's really nice.

Speaker 33 Doesn't that make you nervous? No.

Speaker 50 We have a fail-safe.

Speaker 57 Trump is so desperate for black approval. One compliment: we're off the prosecution list and in the Oval Office being named Secretary of Hood.

Speaker 56 Because if there's one thing old white guys love, it's getting a compliment from a black person.

Speaker 5 I'm not sure you can generalize all old white people.

Speaker 52 Wait, oh my god, John, I meant to say, I like love your haircut.

Speaker 4 Are you serious? Yeah.

Speaker 12 You know, I asked for a fade.

Speaker 4 Did you ask for a fate?

Speaker 28 You proved your point, Williams.

Speaker 4 Did I do that? Take that, Erkel! Jessica Williams out of the body!

Speaker 4 Nico Mark Hugh Biner will be joining us. Don't go away.
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Speaker 54 Terms apply.

Speaker 54 Oh, here we go. Welcome back to the Daily Show.

Speaker 54 My guest tonight is the editor-at-large of Jewish Currents.

Speaker 14 He writes the Beinert Notebook on Supstack, and he's the author of Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, A Reckoning.

Speaker 28 Please welcome to the program, Peter Beinert, sir.

Speaker 9 Thank you for joining us.

Speaker 12 You are Jewish.

Speaker 18 I am Jewish.

Speaker 22 People yell at me about what I say sometimes about Palestine and what's going on in Israel, and they call me a bad Jew.

Speaker 30 Apparently, you can lose points.

Speaker 59 What are you experiencing as someone who is writing very clearly about your upset at what is occurring in Gaza?

Speaker 50 Well, I have lost, you know, some pretty close friends over this, but I also don't worry about having to feed my kids. They're not starving.
They're not being killed. I have freedom.

Speaker 50 I really have an incredibly fortunate and blessed life.

Speaker 50 And even though, you know, it's hard sometimes to have other Jews really not like like me because Judaism is everything to me it's at the center of my life I've also met so many other people from so many different walks of life who who care about the same things that I do who believe that all human beings are created in the image of God and I know a lot of people caricature a lot of these people who care about Palestinian rights and freedom as like being anti-Semitic but to be honest The vast, vast majority of people I meet, they strike me as like the kind of people who would have stuck up for us when we were in trouble.

Speaker 50 You know, the kind of people who are willing to risk something because when they see people suffering and being abused, they act. And those are the people who I want to be around.

Speaker 35 You know, you bring up such an interesting point because

Speaker 34 it does cut to the idea of who qualifies as a good Jew and a bad Jew.

Speaker 21 And

Speaker 34 admittedly, I don't know all the different things in the nuance of the history here or what happened in 93 at the agreement that might have turned, but I know what I'm seeing.

Speaker 24 And I have a moral clarity about what I'm seeing.

Speaker 22 And what I'm seeing,

Speaker 34 I think, as someone who was raised in Judaism, that's what taught me that this is wrong.

Speaker 22 What I'm seeing happening in Gaza is wrong.

Speaker 24 You know, we learn in Judaism, it's funny.

Speaker 21 You know, you learn that you're the underdog. That's kind of the history.

Speaker 50 Right, right.

Speaker 24 You know, I always looked at the chosen people as kind of a wry, you know, when you read the history of the Jews, you're like, you're the chosen people, and you want to say to God, like, if you could choose someone else.

Speaker 44 But

Speaker 24 what happens when David becomes Goliath? Yeah.

Speaker 59 And the responsibility there, is that what troubles you?

Speaker 50 Yeah, I mean, our responsibility is to remember. is to remember what was done to us, to remember what we would have wanted people around the world.

Speaker 50 I'm not saying that what's happening in Gaza is the equivalent of the Holocaust or anything like that, but what's happening in Gaza is

Speaker 18 fine enough.

Speaker 43 It may be a slum.

Speaker 24 You know, I saw an article in the Times, Brett Stevens, I think, and his argument was this can't be a genocide because Israel is so strong they could kill them much quicker.

Speaker 24 And I thought, well, that's the most cynical description of a military siege and a purposeful starvation that I've ever seen in my life.

Speaker 50 Right. I mean, even Israel's leading human rights organization, Betselem, has just come out with a report saying they believe this is genocide.

Speaker 50 So it seems to me: if we want to remember our history, if we want to honor those in our own families and of our people who were slaughtered and who were genocided, who were starved to death while nobody in the world cared, our obligation is to care.

Speaker 50 Our obligation is to risk something.

Speaker 52 I've been listening.

Speaker 38 This has rocked my, I feel like a crazy person.

Speaker 58 I feel feel like I'm watching something that is so self-evidently inhumane and horrific

Speaker 41 and to be told that I have to shut up because

Speaker 23 I risk the Jewish state by speaking out, I would say the opposite.

Speaker 24 I think they're putting the likelihood of a surviving Jewish state much more at risk with this type of action.

Speaker 30 I think they're the ones that are

Speaker 18 being anti-Semitism. If you want to define Netanyahu,

Speaker 19 with the definition of anti-Semitism, would probably have to bomb himself.

Speaker 4 I mean,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 50 Martin Luther King said that white and black Americans were bound up in a single garment of destiny, right?

Speaker 50 Palestinians and Israeli Jews, and in some ways Jews around the world, were bound up in a single garment of destiny.

Speaker 50 If we want Israeli Jews to be safe, and I care passionately about the safety of Israeli Jews, in the long term, Israeli Jews are only going to be safe if Palestinians are going to be safe.

Speaker 50 And Palestinians can't be safe unless they're free.

Speaker 50 If they're under oppression, if they live under conditions that even Israel's own human rights organizations called apartheid, they are suffering radical amounts of violence all the time, even before October 7th.

Speaker 50 Do we think when we think about all these kids in Gaza who are watching their parents starving to death, who are watching dozens of their family members being killed, is that good for Israel?

Speaker 50 Is that good for Israeli Jews in the long term? How you treat people has an impact on how they treat you, right? And if you want Israeli Jews to be safe, Palestinians also have to be safe.

Speaker 12 How does...

Speaker 3 And look, listen,

Speaker 8 this is a tough conversation because

Speaker 14 we are two people that I think

Speaker 38 see this situation very similarly.

Speaker 22 I obviously see it from a more secular perspective because I am even before

Speaker 34 Gaza a bad Jew.

Speaker 31 Like first night of Passover for me was like meatball parmesan hero.

Speaker 21 Like I was not good.

Speaker 27 I was not good.

Speaker 24 But you see, you know

Speaker 24 all of our holidays, the entire ethos for me of being Jewish, and I don't doubt that there are people that have a radically different interpretation than I do.

Speaker 20 But it's all about like, we were about to be wiped out. We were in a cave.
We had three days of oil.

Speaker 24 And then suddenly the Maccabees overcame it all. Or Purim, you know, Esther, she was almost destroyed by Haman and the Jewish people were, but she went to Mordecai.

Speaker 27 And now we wear costumes and do, like, it was always like, oh.

Speaker 9 They almost got us, but wait!

Speaker 47 Right, right.

Speaker 24 It's more complicated than that, isn't it?

Speaker 50 It's true, because if you really, if you read, if you read the Hebrew Bible, if you read the Talmud, what you see is that our religious texts

Speaker 50 describe us in the full range of humanity. We're human beings.
Nothing human is alien to us. We can be horribly victimized, and our texts talk about that.

Speaker 50 But the end of the book of Esther, from which the Purim story comes, also ends with a massacre by Jews of the Jews' enemies.

Speaker 50 The story of Hanukkah doesn't, and the story of the Hazmanaim, who became, the Maccabees became in power, it moves from them liberating the Jewish people to them becoming oppressors themselves.

Speaker 50 So part of recognizing us as human, as Jews, as fully human, is recognizing that we are capable of being victims and being victimizers.

Speaker 50 And we have to recognize that in order to prevent us from falling into the trap of thinking that every single situation is the equivalent of what was happening in

Speaker 50 the Tsarist Russia or in Nazi Germany. In some situations, the power dynamic is reversed.

Speaker 50 In Israel-Palestine, it's Jews who all enjoy legal supremacy and citizenship, and Palestinians who are denied basic rights.

Speaker 50 And we have to recognize that that's possible, and we have to fight against it for our own sake and for the sake of our honor.

Speaker 11 How do we get past

Speaker 24 those conversations with fellow Jewish people?

Speaker 23 Like,

Speaker 24 it's been, I feel like it's been shut down, that they're horrified by

Speaker 24 things that I would say about the injustice of it all and and I feel like I don't know how to talk to even friends of mine that have gone there and and I imagine they feel the same way about me but there's an urgency about it now because

Speaker 37 like

Speaker 13 you right now in this situation we can't be like but Jews are not getting along with other Jews like that's not the important thing right now how is the world not stepping in right

Speaker 17 and and stopping this atrocity I don't understand this in any way, shape, or form.

Speaker 9 I mean, it's not boggling my mind.

Speaker 50 It's worse than just not stepping in. It's our weapons

Speaker 50 that are enforcing this siege, that is enforcing this mass starvation.

Speaker 50 In November of 2024, something like eight months ago, the International Criminal Court

Speaker 50 issued a warrant for the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu for the war crime of starvation, right?

Speaker 28 Eight months ago.

Speaker 50 Eight months ago. And the United States responded by trashing the International Criminal Court, even under Biden, and then under Trump imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court.

Speaker 50 And so the message to Israel was very clear. You can get away with worse.
And so then for almost three months

Speaker 50 early this year, Israel cut off all food, all medicine, all water into the Gaza Sea.

Speaker 28 It's a siege.

Speaker 38 It's a military siege.

Speaker 50 Yes, that we are deeply complicit in. It could not happen without us.

Speaker 7 Then why can't we use our leverage?

Speaker 32 Surely, the United States can't believe that this is in the best interest of the region.

Speaker 38 And when Donald Trump says something like, finish the job, what job is he talking about?

Speaker 16 What does that mean?

Speaker 50 Well, I mean, the Trump plan made it pretty clear. The mass expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza.
And that is official Israeli.

Speaker 27 But do you believe the people of Israel would

Speaker 7 second that?

Speaker 11 There must be a robust...

Speaker 50 There are many Israelis who are appalled by this, absolutely. But the problem is,

Speaker 50 when a leader like Netanyahu can get away with this again and again and again, it actually makes him stronger.

Speaker 50 The way to weaken Netanyahu at home will be to show Israelis that when Netanyahu does these brutal things to the Palestinians, that it actually

Speaker 50 are consequences. Not consequences in human lives.
I don't want an Israeli to die. But there have to be some consequences so Israelis see that this is not good for them.

Speaker 36 But it feels like they are not capable of being the arbiters of this dispute.

Speaker 24 It feels like the occupying power is not allowed to dictate the terms of freedom for the people they occupy.

Speaker 30 That seems inherently illegal.

Speaker 24 I don't understand how the world doesn't step in and separate these two

Speaker 43 factions.

Speaker 43 I don't even want to call it a war.

Speaker 30 It's a guerrilla operation facing an actual army with planes and bombs.

Speaker 47 Right.

Speaker 50 And to to be clear, I know you agree. What Hamas did on October 7th was despicable.
These were war crimes. But the thing we have to ask ourselves is, how does Israel react?

Speaker 50 How do America react when Palestinians fight for their freedom in an ethical way, in a way that respects the lives of Israelis? In 2018, there was a mass march, overwhelmingly non-violent, in Gaza.

Speaker 4 Palestinians did exactly what we wanted them to do.

Speaker 50 They behaved like Gandhis. And did people applaud?

Speaker 50 No, Israel put sharpshooters with American weapons on the fence and shot shot thousands of people, so many people that the Gaza had to start an amputee soccer team after that.

Speaker 50 When they do nonviolent boycotts, we criminalize the boycotts. When they go to the International Criminal Court, we sanction the International Criminal Court.

Speaker 50 We essentially send the message to Palestinians that nonviolent protests, that ethical protest resistance doesn't work, and that makes it easier for Hamas to commit the crimes that they did on October 7th.

Speaker 21 You know,

Speaker 28 it's a situation, and look, and I know what the pushback is, like

Speaker 38 Israel, Israel ceases to exist if this doesn't occur.

Speaker 22 But

Speaker 30 I remember, look, I was raised in the

Speaker 36 story of Israel being necessary for the safety of Jews, which by the way, if that's the case, we have a much bigger problem in this world than anything else.

Speaker 59 The idea that a people have to have

Speaker 24 an armed fortress of a homeland just to be safe living in this world is an absolute failure of humanity in the first place.

Speaker 21 But I remember Ariel Sharon withdrew from Gaza and Hamas took over.

Speaker 24 And I remember thinking like, oh, this is going to be what an interesting moment of opportunity. You almost have an experiment set up.

Speaker 31 You have, here's what happens to the Palestinians if they choose a radical route, Hamas.

Speaker 34 But in the West Bank, here's what happens to you if you choose a more moderate.

Speaker 39 And what happened in the West Bank then was not the flourishing of rights.

Speaker 24 It was the building of more settlements.

Speaker 22 It was the empowering of settler violence.

Speaker 24 It was the crushing of the Palestinians' authority to do anything. And I understood, you know,

Speaker 24 it felt like that was the moment that hope was removed in any real way.

Speaker 30 For me, that's when I went, oh.

Speaker 24 I think I don't believe anymore.

Speaker 50 I mean,

Speaker 50 the Palestinian politician who Israelis loved the most was a guy named Salam Fayad. He was the most moderate Palestinian leader, the most opposed to any armed resistance at all.

Speaker 50 And when he left Palestinian politics in 2013 he did an interview and he basically said, Israel has defeated me. I did everything they wanted.
I couldn't stop settlement growth for a single day.

Speaker 50 And he said, you know who's going to be empowered by this? Hamas, right?

Speaker 50 If you actually want to keep Israeli Jews safe and you want to weaken Hamas and you want to make sure that a terrible day like October 7th never happens again, you need to stop criminalizing and killing Palestinians who fight for their freedom in accordance with international law in an ethical way.

Speaker 50 But our government and the Israeli government do exactly the opposite.

Speaker 11 How, Peter,

Speaker 24 to me, like, I can, if there's a, there are Jewish people who are conservative or thinking a different way out there, who are right now boiling with rage at us.

Speaker 43 And I truly do want to understand,

Speaker 37 like,

Speaker 58 is it that they think

Speaker 24 their existence and the existence of Israel is fragile to the point where that disagreement puts them at risk or that we're not understanding just how hard they've bent over backwards to make this work?

Speaker 27 Because that's the part that

Speaker 14 I don't see like, well, we gave the Palestinians every chance and they didn't take it, so now we get to do whatever we want.

Speaker 50 Right. I mean, what I would say to those people that are living in the United States is like, what are we basing our safety on, the safety of our children?

Speaker 50 We're basing our safety on the idea of equality under the law, the idea of a government that treats people equally, irrespective of their religion or ethnicity or race.

Speaker 50 That's what most Americans believe keep us safe. So why would we not believe it was right for Jews in Israel as well?

Speaker 50 When you treat people equally under the law, and you don't submit one group of people to brutal racism and oppression,

Speaker 50 everybody is safer because everyone can participate in government.

Speaker 50 And I don't understand why it is that some American Jews think that equality under the law is right for us, but but wrong in Israel and Palestine?

Speaker 28 They would say that they have it.

Speaker 4 They would say that they have it.

Speaker 9 I've heard them say. They've said it to me.

Speaker 17 They've said to me, you don't understand Arab-Israelis, they're doctors.

Speaker 50 I know, right, but this is why we need to listen to Palestinians. Right.
This is why it's such a problem that Palestinians are so rarely on the mainstream media.

Speaker 50 It's why it's a problem in our community that Palestinians are not invited to speak in synagogues, that kids aren't given books by Palestinians in Jewish schools and Jewish camps.

Speaker 50 Because when you listen to Palestinians, you stop just talking always about Palestinians and telling them, and listen to Palestinians talk about their own lives, you realize how brutal the experience has been, and you also begin to understand how dehumanizing the discourse of always talking about them without listening to them.

Speaker 24 Have you ever been able to broach this with someone who believes as vehemently on the other side as Jewish? Have you ever found a way in that allowed you to

Speaker 59 fully explain the passion that you feel for this and why you think it's so devastating, and have you had them hear you with

Speaker 24 not necessarily changing of the mind, but with a grace that doesn't accuse you somehow of undercutting the entirety of our people?

Speaker 50 I would say the thing that I've seen has the biggest impact on people is not anything that I say. It's actually going and seeing for themselves.

Speaker 50 And it's actually encountering what it's like to live for Palestinians their entire lives under the control of a state that has life and death power over them, but over which they have no influence because they can't be a citizen.

Speaker 50 They can't vote. They need military permission to travel around.
They live under military law with a 99%

Speaker 50 prosecution rate.

Speaker 50 When you stop just talking about Palestinians and you go and see and you listen to them and you face their humanity and you could imagine yourself being in their shoes and you see what Israel has done to them, that's what I find changes people.

Speaker 50 Right.

Speaker 41 Well, Peter, I tell you,

Speaker 5 it's a painful book, not gonna lie.

Speaker 10 It is a painful book, but I think it's an important book, and I think people should read it.

Speaker 58 And look, make up your own minds. You're not going to, you know,

Speaker 13 us two talking about it is not going to do that much.

Speaker 38 But being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza is available now.

Speaker 39 Peter Biner, thank you for being here.

Speaker 4 It's amazing.

Speaker 4 That's our show for tonight. But before we go, we're going to check in with your host for the rest of the week.
Desi lydic. Desi, what's on deck? Come on!

Speaker 60 Tell the people what's on deck for next week. Well, John, we'll be breaking down President Trump's outrageous 15% tariff on Europe.

Speaker 60 Americans will now have to pay more for their European products we love. French wines, German cars, Romanian butt cream, Italian olive oil.
It's absurd.

Speaker 43 I'm sorry, I don't want to drink.

Speaker 39 Wine and the olive oil.

Speaker 21 Did you say Romanian butt cream?

Speaker 52 Yes, yes, I did.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 60 Why, do you use American butt cream?

Speaker 5 I don't use any butt cream.

Speaker 52 And it shows.

Speaker 5 Does he lie to ladies and gentlemen all the time?

Speaker 4 Here it is in the music. Is it true?

Speaker 40 He trundled over the golf course here to a soundtrack, a number of songs that he had picked. Let me tell you, we heard Uptown Girl at first as he stood right there teeing off.

Speaker 40 Then we had Elaine Page from the musical Cats with the song Memories. And then probably the most eyebrow-raising moment of all was Bridge Over Troubled Water.

Speaker 61 Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 61 Watch the Daily Show weeknights at 11:10 Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Fairmount Plus.

Speaker 2 This has been a Comedy Central podcast.

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