Useful Idiots

This week, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani gave an exclusive interview for Meet the Press where he proved that he’s been watching Useful Idiots by reciting Aaron’s favorite lyric:

“I wish the words of Tupac from the 90’s weren’t still prescient,” Mamdani told Kristen Welker. “But they continue to be true for too many which is that we always have money for war and not to feed the poor.”

This quote comes on a day when the corporate Sunday shows were flooded with US politicians defending Trump’s disastrous war-of-choice on Iran.

The UN’s Mike Waltz, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Skeletor Senator Rick Scott, and even former Biden official (and IDF soldier) Amos Hochstein packed the Sunday shows to claim why this expensive war that’s splintering the global economy is so necessary, and why blowing up civilian infrastructure is not only “not a war crime,” but necessary.

It’s this bipartisanship that helps us remember that we really do have a strong uniparty in the United States, all united in one goal: to make money off war instead of feeding the poor. And speaking of Zohran Mamdani, he met up this week with the king of bipartisan warmongering, Barack Obama:

It’s a jam-packed episode, and that’s not even getting to the ELECTRIC debate between Jake Tapper and Rep. Elise Stefanik, where two of the most annoying people in the world fight live on CNN. It’s the kind of stuff Useful Idiots was made for.

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We’ve got another Useful Idiots Double Header this week: Second Secretary of the Cuban Embassy to the US David Ramirez Alvarez, as well as the Palestinian-Lebanese hosts of the Makdisi Street Podcast Professors Ussama and Saree Makdisi.

And while their respective topics take place a world away from each other (Cuba and Lebanon), a common theme connected both discussions: the US and Israel are losing global support rapidly as they kill and starve innocent people for sinister political reasons.

Saree Makdisi: There’s a fundamental split taking place before our eyes. The recent polls show this very, very dramatic shift in American negative perceptions of Israel and Zionism. It’s most pronounced on the left of the spectrum, eighty-plus percent of Democrats. But when you look at people under fifty, even on the right, even among Republican Evangelicals, they’re souring too because they’re like, ‘What the hell, what are we supporting?’

Ussama Makdisi: I mean, you can’t slaughter children. You can’t starve a population the way they did in Gaza.

David Ramirez Alvarez: We don’t say that the US has sponsored terrorism against Cuba. What we say is that many of the terrorist actions that have been executed against Cuba have been financed and organized from the US. And polls have shown that the American people don’t even support the US blockade. They’re losing support as they make [the people of Cuba] suffer.

The US and its Israel arm have been increasing their attacks against civilians, schools, hospitals, and children, either through outright war crimes and terrorism or a brutal criminal blockade. Subscribe for the full hour-long interview with Saree and Ussama Makdisi for a debate on whether the US is being controlled by Israel or if they have their own motive for following Israel into war.

You’ll also get our Friday Free-for-All: "Step Aside!": Chuck Schumer LOSES Dem Support as Israel Opinion Plummets

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This week, two lists were published which outed the biggest Zionist tools in US office: one for Republicans and one for Dems, because here in the US we have a bipartisan array of political suckage.

First the Dems: Bernie Sanders introduced a bill in the Senate that would block the sale of bombs to Israel. It failed, in part because of seven Democrats who betrayed their base to side with the AIPAC lobbyists who own them:

The list includes arch-Zionist / Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who, as the the plummeting of Israel’s reputation spreads to the Senate, has begun facing calls from his colleagues to resign in shame.

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The second list shows, after years of being called a foreign agent in the pocket of Putin by corporate spokespeople at CNN and MSNBC, that Donald Trump really is a foreign agent. It’s just not the Russians who own him.

Of this list of Trump owners, 4 of 5 are Jewish and all are radical Zionists. Which is how Epstein-lawyer Alan Dershowitz has now begun blackmailing the president, saying that Israel will “fight, even if it means confrontation with President Trump. We will take care of Trump. I met with him…and he was very receptive about Iran…and Miriam Adelson has met with him…”

Join Katie and Aaron for a deep dive into the Zionist lobby’s dealings with Trump and greedy Dems, plus Stephen Miller nearly slips up and calls for a “final solution” carried out by Israel, and Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo uses ChatGPT to get some questionable information.

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This week, after it went unreported on mainstream media that Israel destroyed a synagogue in Iran, Trump doubled down on the US-Israeli threat to Iranian civilization:

“I could take out Iran in one day. In one hour, I could have their entire energy, everything. And the other thing you take out are their bridges. I took out one just to show them."

Which means that this week’s Sunday shows have Republicans scrambling to cover for Trump’s increasingly unpopular war of aggression that has set fire to oil prices and the global economy.

In one of our favorite clips from last week’s Friday Free-For-All, a CNBC anchor asked her guest: “President Trump has threatened to destroy a civilization. How does an investor process that? Is it a bigger upside risk or downside risk?”

So to answer this ridiculous question comes a cavalry of panicked Republicans like Mike Turner, who once again sputters through an interview, managing to get enough words out to claim that Americans wouldn’t prefer “lower gas prices” to the made-up threat of “Iran becoming a nuclear state,” Tim Burchett, Ron Johnson, and more hapless Republicans who aren’t doing much to help sway the voters.

Plus, we’re making fun of Israeli Ambassador Michael Leiter who’s now attacking the loyal New York Times, former Secretary of State Antony Blinken who’s trying to slip out of the blame for enabling Israel to begin it’s genocidal tirade, and NBC’s Kristen Welker for getting absolutely wrecked by Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel in an embarrassing exclusive interview.

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This week, after Trump threatened to wipe out Iran’s civilization, he backed down and announced that he was instead accepting a two-week ceasefire with Iran. Israel responded to the ceasefire announcement by going on a rampage in Lebanon, killing well over 200 people, attacking civilian targets, including apartment buildings inside Beirut.

When Iran claimed that the U.S. is in violation of the ceasefire because of Israel’s continued attacks on Lebanon, Vice President J.D. Vance, touted by corporate media as a “skeptic” of Trump’s war, gave this response:

“There’s a lot of bad faith negotiation going on. I think the Iranians thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon and it just didn’t. We never indicated that was going to be the case.

What we said is that the Israelis offered, frankly, to check themselves a little bit in Lebanon. Look, if Iran wants to let this negotiation fall apart, that’s ultimately their choice. We think that would be dumb.”

It’s just not factually true that Lebanon was never part of the ceasefire: Pakistan, the government that brokered the ceasefire, said explicitly that the ceasefire applies “everywhere including Lebanon.”

But Vance is pretending that Lebanon wasn’t included and then scolding Iran for daring to want to spare Lebanon from relentless Israeli attacks. So with Vance now joining Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff in negotiations, what is the expectation for this team to be able to produce diplomacy?

To analyze this, plus why Iran is emerging from these ceasefire talks with “a superior strategic position” while the United States “is greatly weakened from a strategic point of view,” we spoke with two guests: Iranian-American journalist Séamus Malekafzali, who was formerly based in Beirut and co-hosts the podcast Turbulence, and former State Department Official Alan Eyre, who was part of negotiating the Iran nuclear deal under the Obama Administration in 2015.

To see the full interviews with Séamus and Alan, including a full analysis of what happens next in the Strait of Hormuz, whether this ceasefire is legit, and why the US secretly armed protesters in Iran, please subscribe to Useful Idiots.

You’ll also get our weekly recap of the worst people in corporate media, the Friday Free-for-All: Dana Bash’s Obsessive Hatred for Hasan Piker Reveals CNN’s Fake Journalism Mentality

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Instead of reporting on the US and Israel’s mass assault this week on civilian infrastructure in Iran, Lebanon, and Palestine, CNN’s Dana Bash decided to give a rant about leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who has been campaigning in Michigan for Democratic Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed.

"Hasan Piker is excusing sexual violence by Hamas terrorists,” claims Bash. “In 2024, he said, quote, ‘It doesn’t matter if f***ing rapes happened on October 7th. Like that doesn’t change the dynamic for me… the Palestinian resistance is not perfect.’”

As you can imagine, Katie and Aaron have a lot to say to this.

First, for the millionth time, Dana, there is no documented evidence of any rape by Hamas on October 7th, let alone the mass rape hoax that you’ve regularly used as atrocity propaganda. If there was, surely you’d have pointed out even a single verified case and broadcast it endlessly on CNN.

What there is documented evidence of, and a lot of it, is the rape and torture of Palestinian prisoners by IDF guards. One such instance was even caught on video and the guards were arrested for their crimes. This led to ‘Right to Rape’ protests across Israel, and the rapists were eventually cleared of all charges by an Israeli court. Has Dana reported this on her show?

She has not.

But second, more to Hasan Piker’s point, is that even if there had been sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th, it would not justify committing a genocide against the Palestinian people. This is the law of proportionality under international law.

But Dana Bash clearly thinks otherwise.

Katie and Aaron flash back to a clip from 2023 where Rep. Pramila Jayapal tells Bash that “15,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, three quarters of whom are women and children.”

“And it’s horrible,” Dana responds. “But you don’t see Israeli soldiers raping Palestinian women.”

Katie and Aaron go all in on Dana Bash’s psychotic Hasan Piker rant, plus we watch Dems Chris Murphy and Chuck Schumer give the worst possible critiques to Trump’s so-called ceasefire deal, Trump’s top economic advisor accidentally admit that this war has been an economic disaster, and the funniest corporate media reaction to Trump claiming that he is going to “destroy Iranian civilization.”

It’s a crazy week on corporate media. Watch with Katie and Aaron to laugh instead of cry at all of it. Thanks for supporting our work, subscribe to watch the full episode here:

"Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell," wrote President Trump on Truth Social on Easter as he threatened to destroy more civilian infrastructure in Iran. Targeting civilian infrastructure, of course, is a war crime against international law.

But pro-Israel activist Jake Tapper spins the post to defend his partner-in-US-Israeli-crime Donald Trump:

“We should note,” he says on CNN, “that destroying civilian infrastructure and power is generally considered to constitute a war crime under international law, THOUGH the president could argue that the infrastructure has dual use and also is utilized by Iran’s military.”

1. There is no evidence that this civilian infrastructure is utilized by the Iranian military.

2. Even Trump himself isn’t arguing that it is. But since Jake Tapper is tasked to defend any attack on the enemy of his allegiance (the state of Israel), he must bend over backward to defend even President Trump in his deranged and illegal post.

On the same Easter morning, Fox News reported that Trump told their reporter that the US did in fact arm anti-government protesters in Iran, which is what the Iranian government responded to in January. The Iranian response to these armed protesters was called unprovoked. Trump now accidentally proves it was not.

There’s a lot unfolding this week, and corporate media is going wild trying to whitewash it all. Katie and Aaron won’t let them.

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