that does it for me. be sure to catch my show weekends at 8:00 a.m. eastern right here on msnbc. "the reidout" is up next. tonight on "the reidout" --

>> look, i think it's highly unlikely donald trump has ever read mine comp. >> they attack what he said, but if you come back to the root of the issue, it's what a lot of american people agree with him on. >> remember when trump's first wife said he kept a book of hitler's speeches by his bedside? now he's echoing nazi rhetoric, and as unusual, republican politicians are coming to his defense. >> also, new reporting on justice clarence thomas, and his quest to live like the jones while serve on the court, which could go a long way to explain why he allowed his wealthy friends to give him such lavish, lavish gifts. >> and fresh off their 148 million dollar court victory over rudy giuliani, the women he defamed, ruby freeman and shaye moss, are now filing a new lawsuit against rudy. but we begin tonight with the phrase, poisoning the blood

of our country. if it sounds like nazi talk, it's because it is. in chapter 11 of adolf hitler's fascist manifesto he writes, all great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning. that little turn of phrase has since been parroted by other autocrats like the far right leader of hungary, viktor orban, has described muslim, middle eastern asylum seekers as a poison. this is the same guy who said he opposes immigration because it leads to, quote, mixed race europeans. now the phrase is being repeated by the leading republican candidate for president, donald trump. he had a rally, we wasn't quoting vladimir putin, praising orban, or praising insurrectionists as hostages, had this to say about

immigrants. >> they let, i think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country, when they do that, we have a lot of work to do. they're poisoning the blood of our country. that's what they have done, they have poisoned mental institutions and prisons all over the world. not just in south america, not just the three or four countries we think about, but all over the world, they're coming into our country from africa, from asia, all over the world. >> this is, of course, not the first time trump has used this phrase. he also said it back in september. >> nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons, from mental institutions, insane asylums. we know they're terrorists. nobody has ever seen anything like we're witnessing right now. it is a very sad thing for our country. it's poisoning the blood of oufr country. >> now, if you think that is just a coincidence and donald trump couldn't possibly have known he used a line straight

out of hitler's book, recall that according to his first wife, trump kept a book of hitler's speeches in a cabinet beside his bed. not to mention, in the book frankly we did win this election by journalist michael bender, trump reportedly praised the nazi leader, telling then white house chief of staff john kelly during a 2018 visit to europe, well, hitler did a lot of good things. and before you dismiss all of that as just more that's just trump shenanigans, remember that this kind of rhetoric about immigrants is also very similar to some of what we have seen in manifestos written by mass shooters. last year, the shooter who killed ten african americans at a buffalo supermark laid out specific plans to attack black people and repeatedly cited the great replacement theory. the false idea that a jewish kabal is trying to replace white

folks. and in 2019, the gunman who killed 23 people at a walmart in el paso, texas, posted a manifesto that spoke of a hispanic invasion of texas as well as a plan to separate america into territories by race and warned that white people were being replaced by foreigners. now, i know that you are all probably exhausted from talking about the crazy things trump says. whether it be cruel or racist or just plain stupid. and as of late, increasingly authoritarian. but what we cannot do is let this become normal. we cannot look away from this. because two weeks from today, it will be 2024. less than one month from today is the first nominating contest in the presidential primary. a race that trump is leading at the moment by a huge margin. and less than a year from now, there is a very real chance that this man becomes the next president and ends democracy as we know it. but perhaps even scarier part is that the people around him will let it happen. he's already promised to

surround himself with sycophants like steve bannon, kash patel, and stephen miller. who are ready and willing to enable his worst impulses. and the rest of the republican party will fall in line behind him. don't believe me? take a listen to some of the responses on the right to his hitlerian speech. >> they wanted to focus all the sunday shows on the word he used, poison. he's just trying to say we want to keep america america. we want to build up the border and find out who is coming in and out. >> you have endorsed former president trump. are you comfortable with him using words like that? >> you know, we're talking about language. i could care less what language people use as long as we get it right. >> i'm from east tennessee and we don't usually talk like that. he's from new york and that's the way folks -- he's trump being trump. >> joining me now is jelani cobb, staff writer for the new yorker and dean of columbia

school of journalism. david k. johnston, author of the big cheat, and tom nichols, staff writer for the atlantic. it's good to have a historian around, and you're a good one and also a head of a very important journalism school. you also live in new york. i was born in brooklyn. we can confirm that is not the way new yorkers talk. new yorkers don't just cite hitlerian speech casually. am i right about that? >> it's about as common in new york as the so-called locker room talk from the video we heard before. i have never heard anybody use those words in a locker room. i never heard anyone in new york use those words referring to immigrants. it's a very kind of dystopian rhetoric, a world view that is probably more akin to screenplaywrighters than it is typically to civil minded

political writers. i want to add one thing here which is journalistically speaking, i covered the tree of life shooting. i was there. i went to pittsburgh to cover it. i wrote about the tops shooting in buffalo. i wrote about the el paso walmart shooting, with 23 people killed. and in each of those instances, it was that same sort of rhetoric. and this is no kind of, you know, partisan dig at a particular person. anyone who looks at the kind of weaponized rhetoric that we saw in those manifestos would see that people, that there's a very clear parallel between that kind of language and those kinds of actions. >> and just to stay with you for just one moment, because the history of journalism in this country including "the new york times" and others, i have the big screen shots of that, is in the 1930s, when hitler himself was making these kinds of claims and saying these things, and

praising henry ford, who donald trump has also repeatedly praised for having great blood lines. he's praised him, and hitler praised henry ford, and trump has as well. the media largely ignored it and brushed it off as light talk, not important, not dispositive of anything. that was a mistake, was it not? >> oh, yeah. we have a very long tradition of rounding the absurd down into normalcy. or near normalcy. or euphemizing the most dangerous things that we see in front of us because we are not, you know, we're congenitally opposed to sensationalism, at least the serious media is. what that often does is leave you ill equipped to report on things that are in their own right alarming and sensational. and so that's the kind of thing where we have seen, i think we have gone through racially charged and all of the other various euphemisms we have heard along those lines.

but that is absolutely true, and it remains a kind of danger as we think about how we're going to cover the events leading into next year's election. >> yeah. and tom nichols, it also is dangerous because there is an unwillingness to see the parallels. viktor orban, people like vladimir putin, we have argentina. i could go on. there are a number of these autokrts who say some of the same things. we're going to unleash the police in the street. this particular piece, this idea of immigrants poisoning the blood of the nation, is always about non-white immigrants supposedly poisoning white people. and essentially the fear of intermixing, which viktor orban has been very overt and blatant about. what do you make of the fact that republicans in this country refuse to see the parallels when donald trump says it? >> they don't refuse to see the parallels. they refuse to admit the parallels. they see the parallels.

they know exactly what's happening. the idea that they are in denial, you know, the clip you showed like lindsey graham, they're not -- it's not that they can't see it. it's that they prefer to stay in power. they want to win. they are basically now in the minority party and they're determined to say there so they have to explain it away. and it may well be that trump, you know, has never read -- i mean, the first time i heard vermin, i said there's no way donald trump can come up -- his vocabulary is so limited. that's even scarier because it says the people around him are not just enabling him. they are actively arming him with words like this. they are actively working on these plans. it's not like he's saying things and they're saying well, boy, we're really -- you know, i'm sorry the boss wants to go in that direction, but i guess i have to write that speech now. i think it's the other way around.

they know exactly what he wants to do and they're making him better at it. they learned their lessons from the last time around. and this time, they're going to make sure that he's a lot more focused and a lot more intent on getting things done right on to use his term, right on day one. >> let's talk trump, david k. johnston. you have known this man for 25-some odd years and covered him. donald trump seems to me, my cursory history of him when i was writing my book on him, is he is obsessed with blood purity. he is obsessed with genes and his good genes. these are things he says all the time. it's just that people didn't attach any nefarious intent to it, not sure why. is he as obsessed with blood poisoning and blood and genes and good genes and all that as i think he is? >> oh, absolutely. you absolutely have nailed it right there. what should trouble us the most, joy, is how many millions of people buy into this nonsense

that if you have pink skin like me, somehow you're better. what a silly ridiculous notion. and we really, i think, are missing, and my colleagues in the news business are missing that we have a significant segment of the american public that wants white nationalist racism. i have literally had people call me on the phone and tell me what we need to do is bring back slavery. and this is not being covered the way i think it should be, to really lay this bare, and related to that are all of the jell-o spined republicans who will not stand up to this man. more than a million people died for this country. i am under law a war orphan because of world war ii and the nazis. and to see a politician more concerned about holding on to his office than the welfare of his country, we should be shaming these people. shaming them for being cowards,

for not doing what they know is right. >> you know, it wasn't long ago before republicans would shame them for it. let me remind you of steve king. remember steve king? an ohio republican who got kind of ran out of town. >> iowa. >> iowa, i'm sorry. i apologize, ohio. an iowa republican who got ran out of dodge for saying things like this. here is steve king. this was at the 2016 convention, the convention that nominated donald trump to be president. >> this whole business does get a little tired, charlie. i would ask you to go back through history and figure out where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you're talking about? where did any other subgroup of people contribute more to civilization? >> than white people? >> than western civilization itself. it's rooted in western europe, eastern europe, and the united states of america. and every place where the footprint of christianity --

>> tom, he also asked when did this phrase white nationalism get a bad rap. he's now campaigning with vivek ramaswamy. >> yeah, gosh, a couple of civil wars and a couple world wars. and a few genocides and suddenly, racial superiority gets a bad reputation. imagine. i think, again, you know. it's not that they don't know what they're saying. it's not that they mean something different by it. there are a lot of the language coming out of trump now i think has been put there not just by him but by the people who work for him, as a flag now to the base. as a flare, as a bat signal to the base to say don't worry about any of the kind of back pedal we might have to do 1 we get to the general election. we're totally with you. we have got your back. and i think particularly tragic

part of this, as david pointed out, millions of people are buying into this. but for republicans to keep on this harping on this ridiculous notion, well, that's just the way he talks. tim birch said, that's how the new york talk business. you could probably make that argument in 2015, 2016, as people did. he's just acting. it will be different when he's in office. even by 2018, 2019, he won't try to stay in office. he would never support a coup. here we are in 2023. how many times does donald trump have to simply say it out loud before people -- i think david's point about the media is especially well taken, before people say he's not joking. he's not kidding around. this is exactly what he wants and exactly what millions of his voters want. >> david, people dismissed it when his dad got arrested at a klan alley. >> even though we have solid evidence beyond any doubt of

that published at the time, we really need to focus on people who don't know the stories. which is not people watching the show, but people they know. because i think many people close themselves out. they watch news organizations or don't watch at all, or they're not hearing what's going on here. and the baseline should be it is never appropriate for any candidate for president of the united states to propose that we lock people up without trial, that we shoot people if we want to, as in the fifth avenue statement. we do other things against our constitution, and as trump said, suspend our constitution. we really need to work on making that totally socially unacceptable. >> and then why is the media not doing that? i don't see every single republican walking out of the united states senate and house building being asked, do you support the idea that immigrants

are poisoning the blood of the country? every republican ought to be asked that, not just when they're on "meet the press." why does the media still seem so timid to just confront it? >> i think there's variations and different forms of the media and different kinds, but overall, we have presumed a couple things. one is that the normalcy, the normalization thing that i talked about previously. we have also presumed a certain degree of infallibility of american democracy or impregnability of american democracy. so the alarms, and i have had these conversations publicly and privately, with various people in leadership of american media. the alarms don't ring as loudly in the ears of our media establishment as they should. and so, another thing i think is important is that we should look at not how alarmed our media is, but how alarmed the media in

countries that actually have experience with authoritarians is, because they understand exactly where this rhetoric can go, what the implications of it are, and when i talk with my colleague marisa resa, the nobel laureate from the philippines, and she's extremely alarmed about these things because she sees the parallels. >> duterte. absolutely. it can happen. it can happen here, too, everyone. jelani cobb, david k. johnston, tom nichols. thank you. new reporting shed lights on what turns out to be clarence thomas' lifelong obsession with making stacks of cash. "the reidout" continues after this. this with ring, you're always home for the holidays. shop limited-time holiday deals today at ring.com. we're traveling all across america talking to people about their hearts. who wants to talk about their heart? [honking] how's the heart? how's your heart? how's your heart?

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. leonard leo has worked diligently to craft a supreme court of his dreams. and his work and investment has paid off. leo is the beating heart of conservative jurisprudence. he recommend that trump nominate neil gorsuch, brett kavanaugh, and amy coney barrett. he helped pick clarence thomas and samuel alito. he's close with justices thomas and alito. thomas is a godfather to one of leo's daughters. these relationships seen innocent enough untilio remember leo's goal is to undermine legal

progressive victories which can only happen with their compliance. in trying to achieve that goal, he's cultivated a coterie of welty donors like harlan crow and the koch family, familiar names that i will come back to in a brief moment. but first, back in 2020, thomas would openly complain about how civil servants, which he had been most of his professional life, don't make much money. >> the job is not worth doing for what they pay. it's not worth doing for the grief. butt is worth doing for the principle. >> today, propublica is reporting those complaints were far more serious. so serious that justice thomas reportedly said if congress doesn't give justices a raise, that one or more justices will leave soon. this is according to records from the time- i'm sorry, records obtained by propublica, including a confidential memo to

william rehnquist. thomas made that complaint to iff stearns, a vocal conservative who told propublica that thomas' importance as a conservative was paramount and that republicans wanted to make sure he felt comfortable in his job and he was being paid properly. you would also understand how thomas' complaints might trigger the same level of concern with leonard leo, who invested so much in these people, and the outcomes they could deliver. congress never changed the law. but a couple years after those comments, thomas struck up a lucrative friendship with texas billionaire harlan crow, a friend of leo's. this helped thomas pay for his mother's house, luxury vacations, and tuition for a grand nephew. later in 2012, leo also directed thousands of dollars in fees to the justice's wife, who needs a raise with friends like these? joining me now is the coauthor of that report, published today in propublica, brett murphy. thank you for being here. this was a fascinating report that actually kind of answers a

question that i think a lot of people have had. what is kind of the motivation, the underlying motivation for clarence thomas? you know, blatantly and flagrantly violating what seemed like ethics rules. talk a little bit about clarence thomas' complaints. these date back to the year 2000 when he had only been on the court for eight years. >> that's right. yeah, so this was in 2000. justice thomas was on his way back from a conservative conference on the plane ride back, he was talking with cliff stearns, and he told him if there's not a pay raise for justices, multiple justices might soon return. this he took to mean as justice thomas might be one of the resignations. so when he got back to washington, he set off sort of a flurry of activity there, where he wanted to raise this. he wanted to raise it on the house floor, he wanted to

introduce a bill. thomas had also at the same time been raising concerns about the lack of speaking fees that justices could take. he wanted that addressed as well. there was a bill introduced to that effect. so this period of time is very important because there was some financial strain in his life at the time, he had just taken on a nephew and he was sending him to private school. it was around the same time as you mentioned, joy, where these relationships with these benefactors were budding. so this is important context to some of our other reporting all year, because a stream of gifts including tuition, following this moment in 2000. >> so let me play quickly, just to put a pin in that, let me play a thing from pbs front line that did a great documentary on ginni and clarence thomas. >> clarence thomas wasn't getting the offers he expected from prestigious law firms.

>> he was saying that he wasn't getting the kind of offers that other students were getting. and we couldn't understand it. we thought that, well, you know, you're at yale. and if you're not getting offers, something is wrong. you know, because that's the whole purpose of going to those schools. >> so now, let me read some of your propublica reporting about leonard leo and george conway, federalist society guy, sayg it was leonard leo's job to keep the justices happy and keep them on the court, quote, there was always a concern that scalia or thomas would say f it and quit the job and make way more money somewhere else. conway said, referring to the powerful conservative law firm. part of what leonard does is keeps them happy so they stay on the job. does that confirm with your newest reporting, that essentially people like scalia and people like thomas and maybe people like alito weren't in

lucrative law jobs that they thought maybe they would be in when they went to law school, and they job was to make them feel rich so they would stay on the court and vote the way they wanted them to. >> leo's sentiment underlines what clef sterns was saying at the time, this was a concern for people like him because they appreciated thomas' reading of the constitution and they wanted him to be comfortable on the bench, so much so he wouldn't think about resigning. it's worth noting that justice thomas, justice scalia did not come from money. they were not independently wealthy like several of the other justices. thomas had worked in government his whole career. and in the private sector, you know, lawyers can make much more money. and this sort of specter was hanging over washington a lot at the time. justice pay, federal judge pay had stagnated for years. people had pointed out this is a hot button concern for a long time, really since '89. so this was front of mind to a lot of folks worried about

resignations. >> take a thirsty man, match him with your rich friends, and voila. you get the court you want. brett murphy, great reporting. congratulations. very important stuff. thank you very much. still ahead, rudy giuliani has been ordered to pay $148 million to ruby freeman and shaye moss, and now their attorneys are doing everything in their power to make sure that happens. we'll be right back. i figured it out why i never actually made the football team. yeah, because you're 5'8”. wait robbie, go look at the sprinter gene. i wonder if you have it or that's why you didn't make the team. let me see. let me pull it up. don't have it. yup, i knew it. what else does it tell you? no, hold on, i'm going to find some athletic gene in here. endurance, no. speed, average. i would say below average. give the gift of family heritage with ancestry.

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fresh off last week's jury verdict that rudy glaup pay nearly $150 million in damages to the two former georgia election workers he falsely accuse said of election fraud, giuliani now faces a new complaint. ruby freeman and shaye moss are seeking an injunction barring giuliani from repeating his false claims again them. something they say he h continued to do even while the trial was under way last week. the complaint reads, defendant giuliani's statements coupled with his refusal to agree to refrain from continuing to make such statements makes clear he continues to insist in his campaign of defamation and harassment. it must stop. joining me is glenn kirschner, msnbc legal analyst, and host of the justice matters podcast. glenn, my friend, let me play some of the alleged defamation. here is rudy giuliani repeating his claims about ruby freeman

and shaye moss last week. >> when i testify, you'll get the whole story, and it will be definitively clear that what i said was true, and that whatever happened to them, which is unfortunate for the people overreacting, but everything i said about them is true. >> do you regret what you did to ruby freeman -- >> of course i don't regret. i told the truth. i have no doubt my comments were made and they were supportable and are supportable today. i just did not have an opportunity to present the evidence that we offered. >> if the injunction is granted and he did that again, what would happen? >> you know, hopefully, at some point, joy, some court, some judge, somewhere will actually hold these folks accountable for just thumbing their nose at the law, for continuing to endanger

witnesses and we should talk about the intersection of what's going on in that courtroom in washington, d.c. and rudy's defamation case as it dovetails with rudy's pretrial release in the georgia rico case in which he is a charged defendant. at some point, ultimately, a judge will have to hold rudy in contempt. if a conjunction is put in place and he continues to violate it, he should be held in contempt, and penalties could go up to jailing him. shaye moss and ruby freeman who just won a nearly $150 million judgment, shouldn't have to go back to the court seeking an injunction to say please, judge, get him to stop lying, defaming, and endangering our lives, because rudy is on specific notice right now, courtesy of that jury's judgment, that he was lying. he was defaming, and he was

endangering these election workers. >> yeah, and intersection you say. here's rudy on saturday making an even more bizarre claim. >> even the discovery, i was being discovered for other cases because these people are working for the bidens, not for the women. they were asking me questions that had to do with trump's liability, other people's liability. pacically, they wanted me to rat. that's what's going on. they offered me settlements and i told them to go to hell. this was a stalking action. for biden. >> glenn, at this point, is this man faking mental incompetency to try to wriggle out of this? i ask that because this is a former u.s. attorney. this is not like a nobody lawyer. this was a top u.s. attorney in the united states who is now acting like he doesn't understand the law, and lying and claiming that ruby freeman and shaye moss' lawyers are

working for joe biden. he was asked, moss and freeman's lawyers say they asked giuliani to enter into an agreement to stop publishing these false claims about them. he refused to do it. is he fakes mental incompetency thinking it will get him out of this judgment, in your view? >> i don't think he's feigning incompetence, and incompetence to stand trial is a hard bar. i have litigated those cases. here's the part where we're talking about the intersection. you know, he is on release in the georgia case. i have his release conditions right here, and joy, number five is that the defendant, giuliani, shall perform no act to intimidate any person known to him to be a codefendant or witness in the case or to otherwise obstruct the administration of justice. what is he doing? after that jury award in d.c., he's intimidating and endangering the living of the witnesses in the georgia case, shaye moss and ruby freeman. they will almost certainly testify in georgia. you know, when harrison floyd,

another defendant down in georgia, was alleged to have intimidated witnesses, he found himself on the receiving end on a motion to revoke him on bail and jail him. a hearing was found and the judge found he probably technically violated a condition of release, but judge mcafee opted not to order him into pretrial detention. how about rudy? it feels like rudy should now be up because it sure looks like he's violating the conditions of his release in the georgia case by continuing to intimidate, lie about, defame, and endanger shaye moss and ruby freeman. >> i will note for our audience that giuliani, an intentional tort and therefore for the audience' knowledge, he can't get out of it using bankruptcy. glenn kirschner, thank you very much. >> coming up, human rights watch accuses israel of using starvation as a weapon of war, as they call for humanitarian cease-fire grows louder.

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we're traveling all across america talking to people about their hearts. who wants to talk about their heart? [honking] how's the heart? how's your heart? how's your heart? - it's good. - is it? - i don't know. - it's okay. - it's okay. - yeah. - good. - you sure? - i think so. - how do you know? it doesn't come with a manual and you're like oh, i got the 20,000 day check up, right? let me show you something. put two fingers right on those pads. look at that. that's your heart. that is pretty awesome. with kardiamobile, you can take a medical grade ekg in just 30 seconds from anywhere. kardiamobile is proven to detect atrial fibrillation, one of the leading causes of stroke.

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dire, with israel hitting hundreds of targets over the past few days, with the teth toll there rising to over 19,000 according to gaza's health ministry. a large portion of the region is displaced and starving. you can see the rush toward aid trucks this weekend, with h rights watch stating that israel is using starvation as a weapon of war.

despite a new aid checkpoint between israel and gaza opening last week. israel is facing growing international condemnation over civilian casualties, with the pope callingor an end to, quote, terrorism in gaza, and condemning the israeli military's attack on a christian church. the french ministry for europe and foreign affairs condemning israel's bombing of a residential building that killed one of its staff and both the uk and german foreign ministers calling for a path towards a, quote, sustainable cease-fire. israel continues to maintain its goal is not to hit civilians. meanwhile, the israeli government is facing growing backlash after defense forces shot and killed three israeli hostages in gaza who they mistook to be a threat. that sparked large protests against netanyahu in tel aviv this weekend. we're learning more about what happened from the military, including that the hostages were shirtless and holding up a white flag. my colleague hallie jackson

spoke with the father of one of the hostages who were killed. >> i want to say to this government, you murdered my son twice. you let the hamas take my son on october 7th. and you killed my son on december 14th. they cannot save us. they don't deserve us as a country, as a community. they are not our leaders. they are thinking only of themselves. on their chairs, on their salaries, they are not thinking about the hostages. they are not thinking about us. >> today, u.s. defense secretary lloyd austin walked into this fraught environment with israeli officials, navigating the u.s.'s relationship with israel and also stressing the need for reduced civilian casualties.

as "the new york times" reports, austin's message of late has become more blunt. israel, mr. austin recently predicted, could face strategic defeat that would leave the country less secure if it does not do more to protect civilians. we'll have more of that reporting and show you what secretary austin said in israel today, after the break.

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defend itself. we will also continue to urge the protection of civilians during conflict, and to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into gaza. the ongoing instability and insecurity only playing into the hands of hamas. we must think together about what lies beyond this terrible season of terror and war. >> that was defense secretary lloyd austin today in a news conference after meeting with israeli government officials. joining me now is helene cooper, but again correspondent for the new york times, and an msnbc political analyst. great to see you. your piece is excellent on the defense secretary, on mr. austin. talk a little bit about why he has become more visible in the back and forth between the u.s. and israeli government over what they're doing in gaza. >> hi, joy, thanks for having me. it's been really interesting watching lloyd austin evolve into this moment, in a lot of ways, i think this is a moment

that will, sort of, made from. he is uniquely qualified to perform right now. he is a very low-key defense secretary. he doesn't like the limelight. he really took the backseat to general mark milley when he was chairman of joint chiefs of staff. you didn't hear as much from austin. the reality is, general austin and save 41 year army veteran. he fought in afghanistan, he led in iraq, he was part of the surge, he lead in the battle of thunder run to baghdad in 2003. he was the head of united states central command during the campaign to liberate iraq and syria from the islamic state. when it comes to fighting in this particular type of battlefield, in the middle east, he knows what he's talking about. he -- what he brings to the table, which is so interesting, it's the ability to tell the idf,

the israeli defense forces, look, you guys, for every one hamas we insurgent, one hamas militant that you are killing, you are creating five more because of how indiscriminate the idf has been in the bombing campaign in gaza. that is the message he brought to israel today, something he warned them about back in october. he was there, october 13th, six days after the hamas attacks that launched this latest crisis. he told him, he warned them then, be careful. what the united states, what the pentagon was trying to get the idf to do, is to do a much more limited type of campaign, a precision aerial campaign that was making very targeted position airstrikes on specific hamas targets, and then trying to get them to send in special

operations troops, sort of the way the united states did in iraq and syria with the iraqi led troops, doing the de-i.s.i.s. campaign. that is harder, it is really hard to do, to fight were like that. it means risking more israeli soldiers on the ground as opposed to if you go in, not in a big bulk, as they did, but in a much more targeted sense. it's harder and riskier to do. israel hasn't taken this advice so far, which brings us to the moment we are at right now, where he aimed to israel today specifically to tell them both the u.s. and pentagon thinks it's time for them, past time for them to turn to a different phase in the war, but also that they're risking, what he calls, a strategic defeat because if they are not -- they're going to have to, at some point, live with these people, and if they are creating more militants than they are destroying, there's no

way this could end well for israel. >> the reality is, you know, he comes at a time when it doesn't appear the israeli government is listening at all. you've seen an explosion in settler violence, and attempting to displace palestinians in the west bank, and you just had three israeli hostages shot dead by the idf, even though, when mark greg, of the -- mr. netanyahu's spokesperson was on with us, he said district pausing its ends at them on the ground because they fear they'd have to decided vests on. in this case, the three israeli hostages took off their shirts, or shortness, and were literally waving a white flag, which suggests the rules of engagement are, and rules of engagement being used against palestinians, are to shoot first and ask questions later. the question is, what is the level of u.s. influence over the netanyahu government at this stage? >> there is enormous influence, it's a question of whether president biden decides he wants to use it. that is the fundamental question. there is no question the united

states has influence over israel. if president biden makes the decision that he wants to turn it off, he probably can because we supply israel with all of their weaponry. we back israel in the u.n.. we are the ones backing israel before these u.n. votes. we are the ones we're sending the pentagon is sending all of this weaponry. it is a political question as opposed to a defensive one. that is something we have to ask one is president -- at one point does president biden decide he is going, he is ready to put more muscle behind -- we think -- we started to see some daylight between president biden and bibi netanyahu. you know, are we going to get more daylight? the u.s. does have influence. it's a question of whether or not it decides to use it. >> does the sending of lloyd austin there, as opposed to kirby, or someone else, does it indicate that that turn is

being made? he is something that republicans don't like. he has too much confidence, he's too woke, et cetera. sending this guy into indicated change of strategy from the white house. >> it's such an interesting question. i don't think so because they are asking austin right now -- they are still doing -- you know, it's not a question of good cop bad cop at this point. they are asking austin to, sort of, reason with them, and say, this is still the -- look, listen to what we say, i have experience in this. i know what it's like. i fought i.s.i.s., i know how hard it is to do this. he is coming to them and saying, you know, listen to what i'm warning you. i am bringing you warnings at this point. he is not bringing -- this trip was not meant for him to be bringing the stick. istiljust in the morning phase. he does -- he is able to say, people who don't take my warnings and up in a bad place. look at ukraine, for instance.