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tv   Alex Wagner Tonight  MSNBC  October 12, 2023 9:00pm-10:01pm PDT

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>> welcome back. we ran out of time this evening. but tomorrow -- tomorrow -- you better come back, because we are going to bring you reporting from jerusalem about how israelis are dealing with the loss of their loved ones, how they are being remembered, and how they are being honored. it's pretty extraordinary. and on that note, i wish you a safe night. hug your kids, love your neighbor, care about a stranger. from all of our colleagues across the networks of nbc news, thanks for staying up late. i will see you at the end of tomorrow. ♪ ♪ ♪
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>> there has been unprecedented upheaval in congress, specifically among the republican majority in the house. the parties nominee for speaker of the house, congressman steve scalise has just announced that he is dropping out as a candidate. >> i just share what my colleagues that i withdraw my name as a candidate for the speaker does a country. as you look at over the last couple of weeks, there is still work to be done. >> we are going to have more on that story in just a bit. but we continue our coverage of the israel hamas war which is about to enter its seventh day of fighting. a number of dead from this conflict has now reached more than 2800 people. among that number, israel reports at least 1300 israeli lives lost, including over 200 israeli soldiers. the palestinian health ministry reports more than 1500 palestinian lives have been lost.
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those same authorities report that the number of injured israelis is more than 3300. the number of injured palestinians as more than 6000. the number of americans confirmed to have killed in this conflict is now 27. today u.s. active state antony blinken arrived in israel where he met with survivors of the outdoor concert which was among the deadliest sites of hamas's attack. secretary blinken also met with the newly formed unity government of prime minister netanyahu, and he reaffirmed u.s. support for israel. >> you may be strong enough on your own to defend yourself, but as long as america exists, you will never ever have to. we will always be there. by your side. >> but in those same remarks, secretary blinken also issued a note of caution for israel. >> it's so important to take every possible precaution to
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avoid harming civilians. that is why we mourn the loss of every innocent life, every faith, every nationality who have been killed. >> right now the israeli military has been amassing troops and trunks along the gaza border, preparing for a possible ground invasion. nbc news as richard engel is on that border, and is reporting from there this evening. >> israel's military is amassing tanks and troops along the border with gaza. its chief of staff is saying now it is time for war and the head of hamas and all those who operate under him deserve to die. 22 year old -- lives in gaza. >> the media is barely covering any news because of the situation. there's no electricity. there is no connection. israelis are literally bombing everywhere. nowhere safe. >> 2 million people live inside gaza without the freedom to move beyond its borders. half of those people are
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children, and israel has now blocked access to food, fuel, electricity, and water. to that, and the united nation is warning of a severe shortage of potable water, a crisis affecting more than 650,000 people. the u. n. also reports that 300,000 people in gaza have been displaced, as israeli airstrikes continue to destroy entire neighborhoods, and overwhelmed gazis emergency services. sky news's john sparks filed this report from one of gaza's main hospitals. and just a warning here. some of what you are about to hear is graphic and involves children. >> the seas al-shifa, the territory central hospital, where they have treated nearly 45,000 patients in the past
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four days. -- al-shifa, ran out of bids days ago. the ferocity of the attack, the number of patients, the children brought in or brought in from crush injuries from collapsed buildings or shrapnel or debris. there needs to be a stop to the bombing and their needs to a humanitarian corridor. >> that hospital, al-shifa hospital-esque specks expects it will run out of fuel and less than three days. in the meantime, hope for some kind of humanitarian corridor remain distant that best. today the president of egypt, gaza's best hope for that corridor, said that palestinians must stay steadfast and remain on their land. joining me now is ali velshi, msnbc chief correspondent, reporting from ashkelon, israel, neatly near the gaza border. ali, what is the latest as it concerns the situation on the ground there? >> well, we're hearing, as you are introducing the show, we heard more bombing in gaza,
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it's two and a half miles in that direction, and hearing fighter jets overhead right now. this is been continuous for the last several hours. little breaks in between, but you're hearing that bombing, and those are bombs and missiles that are coming from aircraft or naval vessels off in the mediterranean. here, two and a half miles for the border, there are rockets and mortars, and rockets could go a little farther. mortars can go about five mile. so something is hit here in ashkelon. you can tell from the shape of this crater. this is the point of impact. what it does is, it breaks up the ground. pieces like this of the ground becomes shrapnel. in your report about shrapnel, here's what happens here, this whole building, everything's been wiped out. there are holes all over it, the windows are gone, all the ceilings are gone. if it were bullets, you might think you were bullets, but they would all look like that, right? but his shrapnel. so this is rocks, this is part of whatever it was, rocket or mortar. take a look at this. you're sitting in this office. he goes to the window. that's obvious.
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but it went through the wall behind it as well. it's not just that. it goes through all of these types of things and right now the place is entirely deserted, no one is here, but look at this car in front of me. another example. it looks from the front like bullet holes or it's riddled by -- riddled by machine gun fire. it's not. this is the shrapnel that came from the very crater. take a look inside of what you see see. you can look inside the car. if you have been sitting inside the car, when a mortar or rocket hits you, this is what happens. it destroys everything around you. so this is what example. obviously we saw the ferocity and the massacre that happened at the nova festival, where we saw the things that happened on the kibbutz's, the savagery, the impersonal savagery, but there were 2100 rockets fired friday night and saturday morning, and this is a kind of damage that is done. all across israel, but mostly here in southern israel, you see places that look like this. >> ali, are you sensing there's
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a lot of widespread expectation that the ground invasion is going to begin any time soon? what can you tell us about the encourages you see as it concerns israel to gaza. >> yeah, so, yes. it sounds like, and richard has been reporting, he's closer to the border than i, am he's been reporting that they've got everything they need in position to go into gaza, and what they're waiting for at the moment is the hostage situation. there are 150, 100 250 hostages that israel believes have been taken by hamas. they're using the were taken because they don't entirely know where they are or what condition they are in. about 100 families will probably get an update on that shortly, forum confirming that their loved ones have been taken, but for those families, they are very worried that the minute israel crosses into gaza, their leverage is gone. the value of those hostages has expired. so they want israel to concentrate on a negotiated
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agreement, some way to get as many out as they can and then deal with hamas and do whatever is necessary to do from israeli perspective in gaza. but for the moment, while much of israel's anxiously awaiting this ground incursion to root out whatever is going on in gaza, the hostage families are very worried about that. and they are pleading with the government, saying to more, whatever you're doing, two more. the secretary of state, anthony blinken, who was here by the way, he's gone to a man amman, jordan, where he's going to to qatar, where he's going to negotiate with the qatari, to negotiate an humanitarian corner corridor or hostage release, so you have people in gaza were struck there, as you said 300,000 who don't have homes, no power, no water, is running out in food is running out, and then you've got a hostage situation. so a lot to deal with on day six. we are no closer to a resolution to this one. alex. >> ali velshi, thank you so much, ali, please stay safe.
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we appreciate you. now i want to turn to carlstrom, and middle east correspondent for the economist, who joins us tonight from dubai. greg, thanks for being here. i just want to get your reaction to the statistic we have today that israel has dropped 6000 bombs in less than a week on gaza, which is more than the united states dropped in on afghanistan in less, in a year. beyond the endgame of complete and utter leveling of gaza, what do you interpret in terms of israel's strategy, it's broader intentions in that kind of initial show of force? >> i think israel has thrown out some of the rules that it has around restraints over the past week. i think the reaction to this, both the public reaction in the political reaction israel, was one of shock and anger after the attack on saturday. we have heard some incredibly harsh and sometimes dehumanizing rhetoric coming
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out of the israeli government. so i think the approach to gaza has been where in past conflicts in 2014, 2008, there have been some restrictions, or some safeguards around the way the israeli militants use air power. i think they've thrown those out the window. they have been much more willing to use military force. >> i wonder if you could talk a little bit about the reverse of, that which is hamas. its reaction to what, i know you termed on a podcast that i'm a big fan of, the catastrophic success of this mission. to some degree the initial reports were brutalizing enough, but the staggering brutality that it's been real revealed invasive is unlike anything we've seen from anyone, with maybe the exception of isis. do you think hamas ultimately believed it would be, for a lack of a better term, successful in this mission? >> i'll say first, no one knows
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for sure. this seems like it was planned by a handful of senior hamas leaders in gaza, none of whom have given interviews, none of whom have talked about. so there's still a lot we don't know about the planning, but i have heard, over the past week, talking to both israelis and talking to palestinians, including members of hamas, a belief on both sides that yes, this may have been, to term use the term, a catastrophic success, something that went further than hamas expected. there is a strategy to carry out an attack on israel, but nobody expected it would go this far, no one expected that the defense is on the israeli side would fall as quickly as they did. we heard yesterday, speaking with hamas official in gaza, who said morales that. there's no expectation that the israeli army would be caught as unaware as it was. there was no expectation that hundreds of militants would be
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able to stream across the border fence, essentially uncontested. people of hamas are now trying to suggest that hamas attacked military posts and other people stream across to carry on atrocities. i think that's trying to shift blame. but that is what we are hearing from people and hamas and also from some israeli observers. >> what do you think the effect of that is in terms of how this plays regionally, especially with arab countries, the idea that israel's overwhelming response here, the leveling of gaza would seem to sort of stir support for the palestinian cause at the same time the brutality, the horror of these videos that the world are seeing in terms of what these
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hamas terrorists operation -- counteract that -- potential alliances that israel was building with, say, saudi arabia? >> i think it's a bit of a different reaction, and it's very hard to say how 300 million people across more than a dozen arab countries feel about something, but it's a different reaction than i remember in 2014, for example, during that war. there certainly has been an outpouring of sympathy for the palestinians, and i think that will grow as we see increasing scenes of devastation in gaza. but there also has been a good deal of horror in the region, that these atrocities that were carried out in israel. i think for governments in the middle east, that has put a lot of them in what feels like a difficult position. so saudi arabia, for example, which has been talking throughout the year about a possible normalization deal with israel, about establishing diplomatic ties with israel, the saudi government initially
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came out with quite a her statement, essentially blaming israel for what happened on saturday, blaming the israeli occupation and its violations toward palestinians for the massacre that we saw on saturday. the saudis will tell you privately that they don't think that this is the rails the normalization efforts. but they would still like to move ahead. but they feel like they are caught between, on the one hand, leading to show support for the palestinians, and on the other hand, many governments of the region, countries in the region, not supporters of hamas privately would not be happy if there was, would not be unhappy if there was some kind of political change in gaza. >> talk about the politics domestically in israel, netanyahu's form this unity government. it is fragile. there is already fracturing there. and i wonder, the latest polling shows that 56%, a very slim majority of israelis, believe that netanyahu must resign at the end of the war.
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i wonder how you think this campaign of extensive bombing and potential ground invasion factors into all of that in his political future. >> i think this unity government, no matter what, it will be short lived. it's meant to be their only for the duration of the war and i think it's quite likely that israel will head to a snap election after the wars over. i think for netanyahu, for his political future some of that will depend on the outcome of the war, whether israelis feel that is a successful campaign, whether israelis feel that something dragged on, didn't achieve its goals, cost significant number of lives of israeli soldiers, so that piece of it will have to wait and see. i think the other thing that is going to happen in the weeks and months ahead, is that netanyahu is going to try and shift blame for the profound security failure here on saturday. he's gonna want to put that blame on his of the military,
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the heads of security services, which is something he has always done throughout his political career. he has shifted blame to the military and the defense establishment. i don't think israelis are going to accept that argument this time. i think they're going to hold netanyahu responsible. he is someone who, throughout his career, has made his whole pitch to voters, security, his handling of his really israeli security. now he has presided over the greatest security failure of israel's history, and so never count him out. he is the consummate political survivor, but i think it's very difficult to imagine surviving this political. >> gregg carlstrom, middle east correspondent for the economist. thanks so much, gregg, we're staying up late. your thoughts are invaluable here as we work through just an unbelievable moment moment in a global conflict. thank you. when we come back, we will turn to the other major story breaking this evening, the catastrophic dysfunction of the house republican conference, which is just lost its candidate for speaker of the
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and there is still a long way to go. i just told my colleagues that i am withdrawing my name as a candidate for the speaker. this country is counting on us to come back together. this house of representatives needs a speaker and we need to open up the house again. but clearly, not everybody is there. >> that was house majority leader steve scalise, just a very short time ago breaking the news that he is dropping
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out of the race for speaker after failing to secure the 217 votes needed to win the gavel. it has now been nine since kevin mccarthy's ouster and nine days of the u.s. house of representatives has been paralyzed, unable to function without a speaker. republicans met behind closed doors for several hours this afternoon and then again late this evening to try and break the impasse. instead tonight's meeting ended with a leading candidate dropping out just one day after being nominated. joining me now is brendan buck, former top aide to top republican speakers, paul ryan and john boehner. brendan, thank you for being here. help me understand. is there any sort of to jim jordan's benefit or even kevin mccarthy's benefit? >> it is possible. at this point you can throw out any name and i would tell you it's possible. we have never seen anything
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like this. the problem here is, you have a house republican conference that doesn't want to be led. so you can't elect a leader there was a reason people were having problems with steve scalise, but the biggest one was he hadn't sufficiently laid out a plan for how to move forward, from the government. he couldn't indulge in their fantasies about things they wanted to do, spending cuts, things that were there were never gonna happen. it just shows you that no matter who you have in this position, you're never actually going to be able to be in charge. people are gonna be shooting at you no matter what you do. i certainly think jim jordan is a possibility at this point. but this is not a job worth having under the circumstances. these people are not reasonable. they don't want to be led. we don't want to government. they want to play games. it would be funny if there weren't such serious consequences for what could potentially happen in the next few weeks if we're not able to
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get the house back up and running. >> it's tragic on a certain level. there are 36 days before the government shuts down. funding for israel. and its work in terms of fighting against hamas. there are massive questions about how we move forward as a country, as a governing body, and republican party has created a logjam of epic proportions. i have to ask you, is this crisis, in particular the scalise crisis, the fault of any particular faction in the party? or is it just everybody deciding that he is not their man? >> this is a conference that's dysfunctional when the adults are in charge. but right now it has been a jailbreak. everybody is a free agent right now. nobody is in charge, and everybody feels like they have their own certain leverage. that's what's so hard about scalise and why i think he dropped out so quickly. he had some conservatives who
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did not like him. he had some more mainstream members who had issues, mccarthy allies who didn't like what would happen here. so it's all over the place. nobody feels any real obligation to anybody. that's why i struggle to see anybody moving forward and getting 217 votes. maybe this will become just so unbearable and painful that they will throw in the towel and rally around somebody. i use rally around maybe too loosely, because i don't think anybody's gonna have any real legitimacy in the conference. but there's no real clear path ahead. you may end up having a situation where the house just has to act without speaker. patrick mchenry is effectively empowered through a vote or on his own, taking action to do some of the things that you said have to be done. look, if we don't have a speaker in a month, we have from the government somehow. they'll figure that out. but in the meantime will just continue to be an embarrassment because nobody feels any responsibility to the team or to their basic fundamental obligations, which is to fund the government to do the work. they want to play their games instead. >> does trump matter here?
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i mean he endorsed jim jordan as speaker. he lost effectively in the secret vote to steve scalise. but a lot of folks are citing trump's comments yesterday, talking about steve scalise's serious trouble relating to his blood cancer treatments and casting aspersions on his health. do you think that factored in at all here? >> leadership elections are really member to member. they're really inside baseball kind of stuff. i don't want to say don trump doesn't matter in the republican conference. he's the biggest voice. but i don't think this is what took down steve scalise, by any means. i think it's members don't feel any obligation. they don't fear anybody at this point. i don't think they fear donald trump. he endorsed jim jordan and jim jordan lost. but it just shows you how chaotic it is. he got people trying to nominate donald trump to be speaker, and as far as i can tell they're serious about it. there is no order here. we could be looking at this chaos for weeks, i think.
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>> do you think there's any sort of shame or embarrassment within the party? you say there's no allegiance to the party, no allegiance to doing one's job. but it's so obviously a disaster for the party should not be able to pick its own leader. do you think there's any contrition here over what's happening? >> in my long history of working with house republicans, one thing we are really bad at is learning lessons. i don't think there is. the reality is, we've talked a lot about the broken incentive structures. for a lot of these members who are blowing the place up, they don't pay any price for it. it's good politics where they are. all of them have convinced themselves that they're doing the right thing. they're standing up against the swamp. whatever language they used to justify it to themselves. he would take, in the context of what's going on in the world, everything that you just talked about, that you would stop for a second and think, gosh, we are being really patty. look at the scale of the problems in the world and look
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at how we are responding. but i don't think a lot, i mean, certainly there are people who are saying that those aren't people who are causing travel. trouble. the people causing trouble think they are crusaders, they think they're on the right side of history somehow. they'll never learn their lessons. i think at some point it will just come down to pure fatigue. they'll just be so tired of being in the situation and want to do things that they will allow somebody to have the gavel. but again, that person won't actually be in charge. whenever we have to fund the government and 36 days, i assure you, whoever is holding the gavel at that point will have the job corrected. threatened. >> they sure are exhausting all of us in the process. brendan buck, thanks for joining me tonight. i appreciate it, my friend. >> thanks. >> when we come back, as we await israel threatened ground offensive in gaza, we will hear from the mother of an israeli hostage. that is next.
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and desktop devices. unlike chrome, the duckduckgo browser has privacy built-in. it comes with a private alternative to google search, which doesn■t spy on your searches, and it blocks cookies and creepy ads. and there's no catch. it's free. we make money from ads, but they don't follow you around. >> before he was taken hostage join the millions of people taking back their privacy by downloading duckduckgo on mobile and desktop today. by hamas, he texted his parents. he sent a series of heart emojis and wrote, in hebrew, what translates to, mom, i love you. that's it. they are here. it's over. and that is the last his parents have heard from him. 19-year-old ron sherman is an israeli soldier serving his mandatory military service. but his role is not to fight. sherman helps local palestinian traders move goods from israel into gaza.
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he doesn't speak much arabic. he talks with the palestinians in english. his mother says he loves his job. his post is at a base by a border crossing at the northern edge of the gaza strip. as you can see in this video released by hamas, which blurred the faces of the attackers, just after daybreak on saturday hamas terrorist bomb that base and then attacked, killing some soldiers and taking others hostage. including ron sherman. but ron's parents have hope that he is still alive. a few hours after that robert saw another video, filmed by hamas. again a blur the faces of the terrorists kidnapping their son, but the image shows iran ron sherman after his capture, still alive and uninjured. that all happened nearly a week ago, and now all runs ron's
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parents can do is -- joining me now is ron sherman's mother, maayan sherman. -- what kind of conversations are you having with the israeli government? >> none. if you can say, just none. we have a really good support from around but not directly from the government, no, nothing. >> did they give you any information about your son, or has you reassessment of his condition, from what you've heard from other networks? >> they don't know anything. they know exactly like i do, and probably i will know, you know, before them. this is something that, today was all the media at the social media and the videos that you get, you know everything before everybody else. the government tells us nothing
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at this stage. >> what do you make, or what are your feelings as you watch the israeli government and the bombing of gaza, the destruction of the buildings and the water and the food and electricity crisis, with the idea that your son may be in gaza? >> you are right, this is now our second concern because we have so many concerns. first, we are here because we just live 40 kilometers from the gaza strip. all the time we have our house just moves from the bombings, from what we are doing. our army does now in gaza strip. we are very worried because we are he is inside with other hostages inside the gaza strip. and we can do nothing, just hope that he will survive it somehow.
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by the way, our first concern is that iran's asthmatic. this is the reasons why he wasn't a combat soldier. he can hardly be breathed, even in his own house. he needs his inhaler. we're very worried because we assume they are inside the tunnels underneath the gaza strip, and he wouldn't be able to survive without his medicine. we are trying to get to the red cross, just to solve this problem, this first problem, in order to survive the first week. we don't know we didn't receive, we don't think the terrorists will let terrorists cross inside the gaza strip.
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-- we worked across inside the gaza strip. we don't know if ron dead or alive right now, but as you can clearly see in the video is the hamas filmed, he was seen, as you said, alive after the kidnapping. >> how are you making it through these days? are you speaking with the families of other hostages? as a mother myself, i cannot imagine what you are suffering through. how do you find the strength and the resilience to go on and to continue to talk about this? >> because this is the only thing i can do. i really think that there is a -- weariness among the world. other people around the world to see what is going on here in
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israel. i'm talking to the press all day. my husband talks to the press all day. we are having conversations with other hostages, families. this is what we are doing all day. we are trying our best. we cannot sleep, we cannot eat. it is an unbearable situation for us. the worst of the worst, it's something that i wouldn't even think about in my worst dreams this could happen to us. but we still have hope. this is why i see our family. we see ourselves as lucky at this stage because other families i've already received that their loved one is dead, and we still have hope. >> well, mayor hope be met with
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good news, maayan sherman. thank you so much for telling us your story. we wish you strength during this awful time. joining me now is someone who has some idea of what the hostages and their families are going through. david rohde was reporting on the afghanistan more for the new york times in 2008 when he and several others were kidnapped outside of kabul. they were held for seven months and ten days before escaping. and david is now, i'm happy to say, a colleague. he's a national security editor for nbc news. david, i was listening to some of the accounts of people who have lost their children, either as hostages or who have been killed. clarissa ward spoke with a father this morning who said, and this really stuck with me, he told her, they just found his daughter, emily, she is dead and i said yes. i smile because that was the
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best possibility that i was hoping for. she was either dead or she was in gaza. if you know anything about what they do the people in gaza, it is worse than death. what do you make of that just unbearable logic there? >> it shows that the victims and the people who suffer the most in many ways including the hostages but it's the families. you saw that with mrs. sherman. this is such a cruel and cowardly clot crime. i'm clearly biased about it, but my mother, my spouse, i had just gotten married at the time, my siblings, my editors, when i was kidnapped, it puts the family in an impossible situation. the father would rather have his daughter pass away. the sherman's are doing tv interviews, talking to these other families. it creates this false sense. they literally hold the lives of their loved ones in their hands. if they can just get prime minister netanyahu to see me on tv, he'll do the prisoner
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exchange. the families feel like they can save the life of their loved one. they don't really have that power. american families trying to get an oval office meeting with president biden. the fault here the problem here, and you'll see families get very angry with the u.s. and the israeli government. but the party at fault here is the kidnappers. >> of course. >> it's a slow motion cowardly crime. and it plays out over months and years and it's obviously tortures the hostages, but it tortures these families. >> do you feel like, you look at absolute destruction in gaza. i wonder what you, as a former hostage they get that, given the fact that there's no food, no electricity, no water. that's for the people of gaza. what does that mean for the hostages. the absolute leveling of that strip. how can that pretend anything
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but the worst news? >> this sounds awful, but they consider these hostages incredibly valuable. they are underground, they are very deep bunkers. i think there is food and water that hamas has stored for a long time. so they will keep them alive. it became very clear to me in my kidnapping that they wanted, they're asking for millions of dollars, and all these prisoners from guantánamo. so that's on the positive side. the other thing, also, there's a large number of them, it's obviously not a good thing, but they least had each other. and still in touch with the afghan journalist was kidnapped with me and the driver, the afghan journalist helped me escape. so that's a positive thing. but this could go on for a very long time. the last time hamas had a hostage was one israeli soldier. they held him for five years in gaza. israel could not find him. and eventually they traded 1000 palestinian prisoners for one soldier. so that's what hamas expect. >> and we're looking at maybe 100, 150 people. >> it's extraordinary.
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i'm extraordinarily sad. >> david, you are sort of assessment of this isn't valuable. i can only imagine difficult to talk about it, given your own experience. but thanks for sharing tonight. thanks for coming on the set. i appreciate it. david rohde, national security editor, nbc news. when we come back, as images of the continued destruction in israel and gaza spread across the globe, so our concerns about a spike in hate crimes and threats. what authorities here are doing tornadoes fears. that's coming up next. 's coming up next.
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♪♪ cargurus. shop. buy. sell. online. >> last night, at 5:40 pm, a 19 year old allegedly assaulted the 24-year-old israeli student outside of columbia university's library in new york city. the -- fires around campus with the names and photos of israelis reportedly held hostage by hamas. the victim alleges that they saw the suspect ripping those flyers off the wall and confronted the suspect. they say the suspect then yelled obscenities at them and beat them with a stick, breaking one of their fingers. the victim told the columbia student newspaper, this is because of me being israeli these days. then, at around 8:00 pm last night, a 34-year-old man holding a palestinian flag was attacked in south williamsburg in brooklyn. he claims that two men wearing
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traditional jewish clothing grabbed the flag from him, tore it up, and then hit him with the pole that was attached to the flag. after that, at around 11:30 pm in bay ridge, brooklyn, 15 israeli flags allegedly shouted anti-palestinian epithets at three young arab men who were standing on the side of the road. the men shouted back something to the effect of free palestine. some of the men in the cars got out of the cars and attacked the youngest arab man, punching and kicking him repeatedly. the conflict has heightened tensions that transcend borders. there is now heightened concern about an uptick in hate based violence against jewish and muslim americans'rights here in the united states. particularly tomorrow. a former leader of hamas issued a statement this week calling for a global day of rage, urging followers to protest against israel around the world on friday. law enforcement across the u. s. is increasing patrols of
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jewish houses of worship and jewish owned businesses. police in new york city and los angeles have been instructed to report for duty in uniform tomorrow as protests or large gatherings. and washington d. c. the police, the fbi, homeland security, the secret service, and capitol police are all stepping up their monitoring a potentially vulnerable sites, including the israeli embassy and capitol hill. the hope is that increased police presence will be a deterrent and tomorrow will pass peacefully. let's hope it does. we are better than this. still ahead tonight, more than a week after republican congressman kevin mccarthy was booted from house speakership, republicans just lost their top candidate to replace him. what happens next? we're going to discuss it, after the break. the break. like somebody's poking directly on the nerve. i recommend sensodyne. sensodyne toothpaste goes inside the tooth
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steve scalise announced that he is withdrawing from the race for speaker in the house, just one day after winning a narrow conference vote to become the party speaker-designate. so what? now joining me is nbc news capitol hill correspondent. thank you for hanging with us in this late hour. it sounded like steve scalise's support eroded over the last 24 hours. is that accurate? >> it definitely didn't go near to the 270 number he needed. he spent several hours today meeting with folks who were either never going to vote for him or said they were never gonna vote for him but just hadn't spoken to yet. those meetings didn't yield are. frankly so reporters. when scalise dropped out tonight. that does put republicans back to the drawing board.
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no official names in the mix now tonight. the first person we off thought of who was judiciary chairman jim jordan, because he was the person who garnered 99 votes behind closed doors yesterday when they all met and ultimately made sculley's the speaker-designate. jordan told me that out of respect for scalise he wasn't gonna make anything official. no announcements tonight. but we widely expect jordan to be the person to beat the next man on the chopping block, if you will. everyone here has a math problem. when members go going in a first meeting they had today, one of the joke with me that if i saw smoke coming from the room, it wasn't because they elected a speaker. it was because they elected to burn the place down. that's a bit of gallows fume, humor. or but ultimately it does feel like where we landed. complete chaos, and no idea what's next. >> it sounds officially like the house republican conference is ungovernable. my question to you is, giving given the looming government shutdown, given the international situation that we have, that we are all
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witnessing unfold in the israel hamas war, is there going to be a conversation with house democrats anytime soon? it does not look like the republicans could do this on their own. >> i have been so struck those conversations haven't even been happening sooner. i'm talking to several democrats who would at least be open to that. quite frankly, the leadership offices are surprised that republicans have at least on some cursory outreach in a real meaningful way to try to get democrats on board for something, whether it's making the pro tempore speaker patrick mchenry, a more efficient speaker so he can move legislation on the floor condemning hamas we're giving more military aid to israel. all those things you would think are being talked about, but republicans would other would rather argue among themselves then look across the aisle and try to do something to fix this moment of chaos. it's sort of make sense as to
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why, when you consider the fact that the only reason they are casting about for a new speaker right now is because mccarthy ended up having to do the thing republicans will do now, which is look across the aisle and avoid a government shutdown. democrats, more than republicans, voted to avoid that shut down a few weeks ago. another one is looming. i think the lesson for republican congress was look bipartisan, it was we have to stay with in our own ranks for someone within our house is gonna try to oust us from our job. not a great lesson to learn, and houses more functional, but it looks like the lesson they're going with. >> house of delusions. ali vitale, thank you for your time tonight, my friend. that is our show for this evening. our coverage continues with the last word with lawrence o'donnell, good evening lawrence. >> good evening, alex. we are going to continue our coverage from israel. thank you. and we kissinger was the 56 secretary of state, and he became the first jewish secretary of state when he was sworn in in 1973. when meeting with israel's prime minister, golden mayer, secretary kissingeid

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