Useful Idiots

It’s a great day to be a Useful Idiot because Chuck Schumer’s got a new book out! Katie already has her copy and we’re ready to read this thing cover to cover. It’s called Antisemitism in America: A Warning.

It should be a great read, especially coming from one of the world’s leading spreaders of antisemitism. Just this week, as the Jewish-supremacist state of Israel killed hundreds of children in its latest attack on Gaza, Schumer went on The View to sell his book and spread blood libel against Palestinians.

“All of a sudden,” he says, “when the Jews were attacked by Hamas initially and the women raped and the little babies heads chopped off and all of that brutally, all of a sudden, antisemitism developed.”

These lies, which are used to dehumanize Palestinians and justify the mass murder of children, have been debunked. Even Joe Biden was told by his staff that he had to stop claiming Hamas rape and beheaded babies because there was no evidence for it. So why is Chuck Schumer still lying, and why does The View let him do it so easily?

We’re watching you Chuck, but don’t worry, we’re watching Trump too. Also this week, one of Trump’s DOJ officials announced that he would be “eradicating antisemitism” on college campuses and cracking down on protesters. This comes as ICE arrested and detained Columbia grad student and green-card-citizen Mohammed Khalil for leading protests against the genocide of Palestinians. Trump campaigned on being better than the Democrats on free speech. So far, they’re neck and neck for who’s the most terrible.

Also on this week’s Saturday Shitshow: Trump’s commerce secretary openly tells the public to buy Tesla stock in one of the biggest examples of corruption in the administration yet, Boris Johnson once again proves himself to be a useful idiot by claiming that Zelensky was pushed by the Ukrainian nationalist right to block a peace deal with Russia, and UI-guest Scott Horton went on Piers Morgan to crush the writer of the Steele Dossier.

There’s so much to make fun of on corporate media this week so we’re calling it a shitshow. Thanks for supporting independent media, subscribe to watch the full episode here:

Watch the full, unpaywalled interviews with Diana Buttu and Abubaker Abed here:

According to western corporate media, the Israel-Hamas ceasefire was firmly in place until the events of this week. Just look at this Guardian article from March 15:

It is reported that at least 150 Palestinians were killed during the ceasefire, and that Israel’s continued blockage of humanitarian aid has led to the deaths of many more in that time. Somehow, this still fits into corporate media’s definition of a ceasefire.

This week, however, Israel ramped up it’s mass assault on Gaza, wiping out huge areas of people, including hundreds of children. The attack was too deadly even for corporate media to whitewash. So we have shameless headlines like this:

To discuss this, we are joined by Haifa-based Palestinian-Canadian human rights lawyer Diana Buttu and Gazan journalist Abubaker Abed. They explain the devastating destruction by Israel this week, why there was never a ceasefire to begin with, how Trump has been pushing forward this violence, and the genocidal flyers that Israel dropped over Gaza.

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Palestinian voices are nearly completely censored in western media. This episode is free to all so that they can be heard.

And stay tuned for this week’s Saturday Shitshow, the weekend edition of Thursday Throwdown. Thanks for supporting independent media, subscribe to watch full episodes and bonus content here:

Useful Idiots is an audience-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:

“There have been widespread massacres along the coast of Alawites,” reports Professor Joshua Landis, Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. “This is a religious minority in Syria. They're also the community that backed Bashar al-Assad's regime. Most of the top officers in his security forces and intelligence service were Alawites. And so for that reason, the entire Alawite community has been labeled as guilty and is accused by these Jihadi militias of being guilty.”

We don’t show the videos coming out of Syria this week in this episode, but Professor Landis describes the disturbing footage he’s seen.

“They just slaughtered every Alawite male they could find along the coast. And not just men, although the vast majority were men. But in many instances, entire families were killed in their apartments. And we have a number of videos of mothers showing you their kids and their entire household who have been shot. A hundred and forty people were just slaughtered in the main town on the roads and the square. And you can see just horrible videos.”

The narrative that we've been told in the west is that regime change is necessary to promote democracy around the world. But, Landis explains, though many Syrians justifiably hated the Assad government, the results of US foreign policy make things worse.

“Americans believe that when they overturn dictatorships, they're going to get a democratic outcome. We convinced ourselves of this in Iraq, in Libya, in Afghanistan, that we could somehow mold these societies in our own image. And we've discovered that time and time again: we're wrong. And what has happened throughout the Middle East, whether it's the Taliban or Al-Qaeda or ISIS, is you're going to get these extremist militias.”

We’re also joined by former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who has visited Syria over a dozen times and studied its history.

“This was so predictable,” he says of this week’s massacres. “The US has been involved for thirty years in an effort to take over Syria.” Kucinich explains the US role in Syria since his time serving in Congress, when he saw firsthand how Bush administration officials focused on helping Israel by employing disruption tactics throughout the Middle East.

“The ongoing humanitarian crisis and severe sectarian violence in Syria are direct outcomes of policies dating back to the Clean Break doctrine of 1996, by a D.C. think tank which counseled Benjamin Netanyahu.”

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“The Clean Break doctrine laid the groundwork for aggressive policies toward Syria which emerged through an effort coordinated by the Bush White House as several authors of the Clean Break strategy ascended to federal government policy-making positions.” And as always, this was a bipartisan strategy. “The "Clean Break" approach was further advanced by Hillary Clinton, who, as Secretary of State, together with CIA Director David Petraeus, proposed arming Syrian rebels.”

This, Kucinich explains, led to the CIA’s plot to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, replacing him in 2024 with a new al-Qaeda-led government.

Subscribe for the full interview with Dennis Kucinich in which he recounts his trip to Syria with now-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, what Elon Musk should be doing with DOGE, and how he would end America’s debt crisis.

Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Aaron Maté DEMOLISHES Rabbi Schmuley on Piers Morgan

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Our fan-favorite Useful Idiots feature is back: Aaron discusses his appearance on Piers Morgan this week in which he debated Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, an avid supporter of Israel’s genocide on Gaza and a mass spreader of beheaded-babies and Hamas-rape lies.

And for someone like Rabbi Shmuley who has no moral or evidence-based backings behind his arguments, it’s not easy to go up against fact-loaded Aaron Maté. It’s a fun watch to see Aaron carry the debate (especially when he calls Shmuley a Nazi).

Also in the news this week: Palestinian-American Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by ICE for taking part in anti-genocide protests. We watch as corporate media ties itself into knots trying to justify the Trump administration for this blatant crime against free speech. One CNN pundit puts it best:

“He came here on a student visa,” says Bruce Blakeman. “He's paid by a terrorist organization. I have evidence.”

But when the others on the panel ask for more information about this bombshell revelation, things got a little awkward.

“Paid by who?” asks anchor Abby Philip.

Blakeman stares back, blank yet indignant: “I didn’t ask.”

And it only gets more ridiculous from there on this week’s Thursday Throwdown. Thanks for supporting independent media, subscribe to watch the full episode here:

Useful Idiots is an audience-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Subscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:

This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a stunning and unprecedented statement to the world: he called the Ukraine war a proxy war.

Rubio’s statement makes him the highest ranking official to admit what has been happening in Ukraine since the start of this war. Adam Schiff said it: “The United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there and we don’t have to fight Russia over here.” Lindsey Graham said it: “As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons they need and the economic support, they will fight to the last person.”

Now Rubio: “I’ve been very clear from the beginning that President Trump views this as a protracted stalemated conflict, and frankly it’s a proxy war between…the United States and Russia.”

The Duran's Alex Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris join the show this week to explain the history of the proxy war, the magnitude of this unprecedented statement, and why it could represent a major shift away from the last 30 years of US foreign policy.

“Since 2014,” Alexander explains, “[the CIA] has basically been controlling Ukraine's intelligence services and has even trained people who have taken part in the assassinations of rebel leaders in the Donbas. Admissions are slowly coming out about what has preceded all of this and what helped provoke Russia to invade.”

But Rubio’s statement could be more than an admission; it could be a policy shift. “It's just so unprecedented to get at this level. The secretary of state saying, ‘This is indeed a proxy war. It has to come to an end.’ I think Rubio knew exactly what he was doing. He made this extraordinary statement a few weeks ago that the unipolar moment is over, that the United States is one great power amongst several, that it must pursue its own interests, that the entire history period of American foreign policy has essentially come to an end. Which is a massive reversal of everything that the US has been saying it's been doing for the last thirty years.”

Subscribe to hear the full interview with Alex and Alexander on whether a proposed peace deal would actually be accepted by Russia, why there hasn’t been a single US lawmaker to oppose any military spending for Ukraine, and if the Trump administration’s peace messaging will extend to their policies in the Middle East.

Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Trump Attacks Trans Mice; MSNBC Attacks a Child

Thanks for supporting independent media. Subscribe for the full episode here:

Two big blunders. Let’s start with Trump – you may remember last month when the bombshell story coming from the president’s mouth was that the US was funding $50 million of condoms for Hamas in Gaza. It turned out, after the slightest amount of research, that the Congressional budget was actually sending sexual health equipment to the Gaza province of Mozambique.

There was no correction.

Flash forward to Trump’s tumultuous joint address to Congress this week: to thunderous laughter from Republicans, he listed more “fraudulent” items that the US is funding: “$8 million to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of. $8 million for making mice transgender.”

Again, we did the tiniest amount of research, and saw that it isn’t transgender but transgenic. Transgenic mice are genetically altered to study diseases and have revolutionized pre-clinical research since the 1980s. The correction for this one likely won’t get the same laugh from Republicans.

Next blunder: Nicole Wallace at MSNBC. During a calmer moment of Trump’s joint address, he made DJ Daniel, a 13-year-old boy who is recovering from brain cancer, an honorary member of the Secret Service. Wallace struggled to find a way to attack this, but have no fear, she got her shot in:

“I hope [DJ] has a long life as a law enforcement officer… but I hope he never has to defend the US Capitol against Donald Trump’s supporters, and if he does, I hope he’s not one of the six who loses his life to suicide.”

Woah!

First of all, probably not a good idea to talk about children (especially those who have brain cancer) committing suicide. And second, that could be the most aggressive politicization of an innocent topic we’ve ever heard.

And this is just the start of a wild Thursday Throwdown: Rep. Eric Swalwell erases the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, CNN shows some interesting polling about the Ukraine War, and the Chuckster is hot now.

Don’t miss this episode. Thanks for supporting independent media, subscribe to watch the full episode here: