Tucker interviews Thomas Massie

Rep. Thomas Massie is in big trouble with the media after this tweet:

But it’s hard to know exactly what Massie meant by this, but presumably it is linked to the Republicans’ attempt to tie aid to Israel to securing the southern border. But of course, Jewish activists saw it differently, likely thinking that it resurrects the old charge of loyalty to Jewish interests trumping loyalty to American interests. The White House called it “virulent anti-Semitism, and Chuck Schumer tweeted (Xed?), “Rep. Massie, you’re a sitting Member of Congress. This is antisemitic, disgusting, dangerous, and exactly the type of thing I was talking about in my Senate address.” His Senate address included statements such as:

While the dead bodies of Jewish Israelis were still warm, while hundreds of Jewish Israelis were being carried as hostages back to Hamas tunnels under Gaza, Jewish Americans were alarmed to see some of our fellow citizens characterize a brutal terrorist attack as justified because of the actions of the Israeli government.

The problem is that the actions of the Israeli government are also brutal, on the West Bank and especially in Gaza. And it’s not at all clear what the Palestinians are supposed to do about it short of armed resistance.

Massie reposted Schumer’s criticism Tuesday and tweeted, “If only you cared half as much about our border as you do my tweets” implying I suppose, the Democrats’ open border policy bringing in millions of people with no attachments to America but are likely future Democrat voters is anything but patriotic.

All this occurred in the context of a House resolution that basically equated criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. Massie was the sole Republican who did not vote in favor of it. Al Jazeera’s summary of the bill:

The symbolic resolution was framed as an effort to reject the “drastic rise of anti-Semitism in the United States and around the world”.

But it contained language saying that the House “clearly and firmly states that anti-Zionism is antisemitism”. It also condemned the slogan “From the River to the Sea”, which rights advocates understand to be an aspirational call for equality in historic Palestine.

Instead, the resolution described it as a “rallying cry for the eradication of the State of Israel and the Jewish people”. It also characterised demonstrators who gathered in Washington, DC, last month to demand a ceasefire as “rioters”. They “spewed hateful and vile language amplifying antisemitic themes”, the resolution alleges.

Husam Marajda, an organiser with the US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), said the resolution is an effort to “cancel” Palestinian rights advocates by accusing them of bigotry and labelling their criticism of Israeli policies as hate speech.

“It’s super dangerous. It sets a really, really bad precedent. It’s aiming to criminalise our liberation struggle and our call for justice and peace and equality,” Marajda told Al Jazeera.

Mr. Marajda is quite right. Schumer’s tweet it typical of Jewish commentary on the war: no context—nothing about the blockade, the reality of Gaza as an open-air prison, apartheid on the West Bank, and the implacably hostile attitudes of the present Israeli government.

So Massie really stepped into what he must have known would be a deluge of hatred against him—and likely a brimming war chest for whomever runs against him in 2024.

So aid to Israel is being held up by Congress. But no problem. The neocons who run the Biden administration easily found a way to get around it:

The State Department is pushing through a government sale to Israel of 13,000 rounds of tank ammunition, bypassing a congressional review process that is generally required for arms sales to foreign nations, according to a State Department official and an online post by the Defense Department on Saturday.

The State Department notified congressional committees at 11 p.m. on Friday that it was moving ahead with the sale, valued at more than $106 million, even though Congress had not finished an informal review of a larger order from Israel for tank rounds.

The department invoked an emergency provision in the Arms Export Control Act, the State Department official and a congressional official told The New York Times. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivities over the sales. The arms shipment has been put on an expedited track, and Congress has no power to stop it.

The Defense Department posted a notification of the sale before noon on Saturday. It said Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken had informed Congress on Friday that “an emergency exists that requires the immediate sale.”

So Tucker’s December 5 interview with Massie is quite timely. From the Zero Hedge article (emphasis in original):

“But you gotta wonder like, why is the leadership of your party, the Republican party, in favor of this? Why the new speaker — seems like a nice guy but also like a child — why would his first act as speaker be to endorse this? I’m confused,” said Carlson.

To which Massie replied: “Well, I hope he doesn’t. But you know, Biden’s budget director, the head of the OMB sent a letter yesterday to Speaker Mike Johnson, imploring him to spend more money in Ukraine. And what they said is they want to revitalize our defense industrial base.”

“And they sent a list of states that would get money when we spend, you know, money on deadly munitions because they have to be manufactured in Alabama or Ohio or Texas,” Massie continued. “And so, you know, they’re saying the quiet part out loud that congressmen tend to vote for this stuff because a lot of this federal spending that goes to Ukraine is actually laundered back to the military-industrial complex. And in some ways, not very efficiently, but in some ways, it enriches people in their districts and the stockholders, some of whom are congressmen.” …

The two also discussed US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and her influence in Ukraine, with Carlson calling her “the single most consequential voice” in the Ukraine debate.

(Nuland’s husband, [neocon] Robert Kagan [tapped by Hilary Clinton as a top foreign policy advisor in 2016], notably penned a ‘Trump Dictator‘ piece in the Washington Post last week). [From 2016: Kagan has advocated for muscular American intervention in Syria; Clinton’s likely pick for Pentagon chief, Michelle Flournoy, has similarly agitated for redirecting U.S. airstrikes in Syria toward ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.]

Carlson notes that she was a “driving force behind the war in Iraq, which was of course a disaster and hurt the United States,” and now “she has far more influence on it than the entire United States Congress put together.” “How do we allow unelected lunatics like ‘Toria Nuland who clearly hates the United States, and always has, to have this power over our lives and our children’s future?”

[Neocons would be apoplectic at the idea that they hate the U.S.,  but Tucker’s claim seems a transparent attempt to paint them as having loyalty to their ethnostate, as implied by Massie’s tweet.] …

Carlson then asked if the people advocating for more war have ever apologized for “the killing of an entire” generation of Ukrainians who are fighting a “war they cannot win.”

“That’s all so grotesque, but it’s also straightforward. You know, people are getting rich, so let’s do it. Okay — that’s an argument. It’s an immoral argument but it is one. But that’s not the argument they’re making in public. They’re saying we have a moral obligation.”

“You’re a bad person, you just heard the national security advisor say it, you’re a bad person if you’re against this. But no one ever mentions that we have abetted the killing of an entire generation of Ukrainian men that will not be replaced. To fight a war that they cannot win.” -Tucker Carlson

Carlson also pointed out that the Biden administration “prevented a peace deal and we extended the war, and we killed all these people,” adding “And so all the ones running around with their little Ukraine flag pins, they’re implicated in that. Has anyone apologized?”

To which Massie replied, “No, to support this money you have to be economically illiterate and morally deficient.”

Other things that stood out to me:

• Jake Sullivan: people who vote against Ukraine aid are Putin puppets in a war Tucker said was a “war they cannot win”;
• Tucker on Victoria Nuland: “You can make the case she should be in prison”;
• Massie: if border security is part of Ukraine aid bill, it will just give Biden (i.e., Mayorkas) more money to process more illegals;
• White men not wanted in the armed forces, likely to be replaced by military-aged illegals with no allegiance to America;
• requiring covid jabs in the military as a litmus test for allegiance to the liberal agenda;
• proposed expense for additional Ukraine aid is equal to the entire U.S. spending on infrastructure;
• interest on the debt more than the military budget; covid spending as obviously causing inflation.

Ep. 45 How could Washington possibly send tens of billions more to sleazy oligarchs in Ukraine now that the whole enterprise has been revealed as a , corrupt and incredibly destructive disaster? Because that’s what they always do. pic.twitter.com/Cn6SMHcqcr

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) December 5, 2023