4 Talking Points Used to Smear DNC Gaza Protesters—And Why They’re Bogus AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Citations Needed

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Episode: 4 Talking Points Used to Smear DNC Gaza Protesters—And Why They’re Bogus

Author: Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson
Duration: 00:29:27

Episode Shownotes

In this public News Brief, we recap the ready-made talking points used to smear DNC Gaza protests, detail why they don't add up, and discuss how the best way to avoid the appearance of party infighting is for VP Harris to Simply Do The Right Thing. This News Brief is

based on an article published today in In These Times.

Summary

In this episode of 'Citations Needed,' Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson analyze the talking points used to discredit protesters at the DNC Gaza protests, stressing the misleading nature of Vice President Harris's position on Gaza amidst her alignment with party policies. They discuss the shift in activists’ demands from a ceasefire to an arms embargo, arguing that the latter provides a more credible approach to enforcing peace. The hosts emphasize the need for political accountability, particularly from leaders like Harris, to address alarming humanitarian issues rather than deflecting with whataboutism. Overall, the episode critiques the Democratic Party's inaction regarding Gaza and underlines the significance of young voices in the protests.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (4 Talking Points Used to Smear DNC Gaza Protesters—And Why They’re Bogus) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:04 Speaker_03
Welcome to a Citations Needed news brief. I'm Nima Shirazi. I'm Adam Johnson. You can follow Citations Needed on Twitter at CitationsPod, Facebook, Citations Needed, and become a supporter of the show, if you are so inclined.

00:00:16 Speaker_03
And we hope that you are through patreon.com slash citations needed podcast. All your support through Patreon is so incredibly appreciated as we are 100% listener Funded. Citations Needed is currently on our end of summer break.

00:00:29 Speaker_03
We will be back very soon next month with more full length episodes of Citations Needed. But in the meantime, even though we're supposed to be on a break, Adam, the DNC is coming up. And guess who's going?

00:00:42 Speaker_01
Me, I will be attending along with Sarah Lazar, friend of the show, wife of me, to do reporting and video content for The Nation magazine. So we'll be there all four days inside and we'll be covering the protest outside.

00:00:54 Speaker_01
The basic premise of our reporting will be we will be representing the Gaza protesters outside. There is a large march on the DNC. Chicago and Cook County in general is home to the largest Palestinian diaspora in the country.

00:01:08 Speaker_01
Obviously because harris is we talked about on the show is not changed her policy from the biden white house the protests are still going there still happening and so this is kind of a i think what resistance liberals would call during the trump years a pre bottle or kind of pre bunking.

00:01:24 Speaker_01
Basically, the talking points against the march in the DNC, the talking points, in many ways, are already codified. And so I wrote a piece about that that has just recently come out.

00:01:33 Speaker_01
And it'll be about the four talking points used to disparage the march in the DNC.

00:01:37 Speaker_01
Again, these are groups, these are almost all Palestinian-led groups, people who have loved ones who've died in Gaza, who are continuing to be displaced and starved in Gaza, and also, of course, the West Bank, who are trying to get the Democratic Party to take a position on this.

00:01:50 Speaker_01
And then inside the convention, The Uncommitted Movement has 30 delegates representing the Uncommitted Movement that received hundreds of thousands of votes, primarily in Michigan, Minnesota, New York State, Rhode Island, other places.

00:02:05 Speaker_01
And so we will be shadowing them as well, reporting on their activities within the convention, and then of course, the protests on the outside. And I say we, Sarah will be doing the reporting. I don't really do reporting in case you haven't noticed.

00:02:15 Speaker_01
I'm more of a pundit. You'll be doing more of the vibes checking and the grumping around. I'll be doing interviews with people who are supportive or indifferent to the genocide and then asking them what their thoughts are.

00:02:26 Speaker_01
And of course, some of these will be covered. Some of the talking points we'll be going over in this particular episode will be part of that rebuttal.

00:02:32 Speaker_01
Now, one of the things that did push Biden off the top of the ticket, aside from his obvious cognitive decline, was this idea, which of course is related to his declining poll numbers.

00:02:42 Speaker_01
There was this broad sense, according to one memo leaked to CNN, that Kamala Harris was seen as better or more liberal or more left-wing on Gaza. not based on any substance, just kind of vibes.

00:02:52 Speaker_01
And the Harris campaign, after responding to hecklers two weeks ago, reaffirmed their position that they support endless non-conditioned arms to Israel and does not support an arms embargo or even conditioning aid of any kind.

00:03:03 Speaker_01
Now, they understand that one of the reasons why Biden was suffering is because youth turnout and youth support had evaporated.

00:03:09 Speaker_01
Now, young people don't vote in great numbers, but they do provide the social media content, the vibes, the capital, and the volunteers.

00:03:17 Speaker_01
And so after Biden dropped out and Harris replaced him, despite not changing her position on Gaza, which was one of many, not the only, and maybe not even the most, but one of the major reasons why youth support was declining,

00:03:27 Speaker_01
The subtext of her recapturing the youth vibes and the fun and the coconut memes and the brat memes was in the context of Gaza and that there was sort of a feeling that we were just going to kind of vibe through this without any kind of policy commitments and just kind of assume she would be better than Biden in some meaningful way.

00:03:44 Speaker_01
CNN has run several puff pieces on this kind of Harris really taking off with Gen Z. There was one article on August 10th that was headlined, Inside the Gen Z Operation Powering Harris' Online Remix that was about her appeal with young voters.

00:03:59 Speaker_01
And of course, it's almost entirely superficial because she has the exact same policies as Biden. And I know there's a rejoinder to that, that she has no choice, which we'll get into with point four and why that doesn't make any sense.

00:04:10 Speaker_01
But for now, what we wanted to do is sort of talk about this vibes approach, this kind of what we're calling quantum Kamala, which is to say she is said to possess many mutually exclusive positions all at once because she has no policies.

00:04:22 Speaker_01
She's everything and nothing simultaneously. Because you didn't have to run for a primary.

00:04:26 Speaker_01
There's no sense of she didn't have to articulate any vision beyond running on the Biden White House, which in and of itself would be fine, but she's also not allowed to be held accountable for what Biden did either.

00:04:36 Speaker_01
So she both cannot be held accountable for any current policy, and she can't articulate a policy.

00:04:41 Speaker_03
She is a fundamental part of the current administration and also cannot be held to anything as part of the administration because she is a kind of solo actor outside of that as well, but obviously has not articulated anything different than the inside.

00:04:57 Speaker_03
Therefore, we have this kind of quantum conundrum.

00:04:59 Speaker_01
in this superposition strikes me as a little convenient and worth interrogating and worth pinning down.

00:05:04 Speaker_01
And then that's why the activist interrupting her speech two weeks ago was important because it was actually the first time she was forced to kind of give an answer.

00:05:09 Speaker_01
And the answer was even more, I think, right-wing than even her supporters thought that she would give. And so therefore, right, this march on the DNC in Chicago is still necessary because nothing has changed.

00:05:20 Speaker_01
And if the status quo hasn't changed, the urge and the urgency around ending genocide in Gaza remains as strong as ever.

00:05:27 Speaker_03
So let's get into these four talking points that we anticipate hearing to smear the protesters outside the DNC for the march on the DNC, supporting not only a immediate ceasefire, but also justice in Palestine and end to the genocide.

00:05:42 Speaker_03
So number one, Adam, let's get into this. Number one is, you know, I see the protesters outside the DNC, but I didn't see anyone outside the RNC.

00:05:54 Speaker_01
Yeah, so this is a popular one. Again, Whataboutery was a Soviet mind trick until about 10 months ago. And now Whataboutery is back in fashion. So it's good to see it's back.

00:06:02 Speaker_01
I've always thought it was a perfectly reasonable point if it makes sense, but it doesn't actually make a lot of sense here.

00:06:07 Speaker_03
Welcome back, Whataboutism. We hardly knew you.

00:06:09 Speaker_01
Yeah, I know. Whataboutery is back. It was a Soviet mind trick and a Russian mind trick, and now it's not anymore.

00:06:14 Speaker_01
So setting aside the fact that pro-Palestinian activists did march on the RNC, it wasn't a lot of them, but there was a significant number. Case in point, there actually was a protest, so sure. In Milwaukee in July, this whataboutism kind of misses.

00:06:26 Speaker_01
Of course, it's in bad faith, I think, for the most part. But I do think a lot of kind of low information, for want of a less condescending term, people kind of fall for this, because it does sound superficially true.

00:06:34 Speaker_01
Like, why would they not march on the RNC? You know, Trump is just as bad on Gaza.

00:06:39 Speaker_03
And this really comes down to the kind of fundamental point of what organizing is, how communications work, and how political pressure works.

00:06:46 Speaker_01
Right. So let's say, for example, let's just use a non-Gaza example. Let's say there's five members who are on a city council and there's a plan to remove cars from a street, right?

00:06:55 Speaker_01
And let's say two of them are funded by the car industry and reject the plan out of hand, and the other two support the measure already. So there's a fifth who is undecided, but markets themselves as pro-safe streets and anti-car.

00:07:07 Speaker_01
If I'm a lobbyist and I have limited resources and limited time, which of those five members am I going to lobby, Nima?

00:07:12 Speaker_03
I would say the as of yet uncommitted council member, right? The idea of who you might be able to move and motivate, where you can actually, for want of a less kind of jargony nonprofit term, like where the return on your action can come, right?

00:07:31 Speaker_03
Where that ROI is going to be.

00:07:33 Speaker_01
So the Liberal Party, the Democratic Party, right, which calls itself progressive, which is in the wake of the DNC is having a ton of

00:07:39 Speaker_01
Events with the union so-called progressive groups move on you know all the sort of a nominal progressives pro human rights pro racial justice right this is the part of the supposed to represent these anti genocide ideals right.

00:07:52 Speaker_01
They therefore have a disproportionate amount of responsibility. to abide by the principles they nominally campaign on and nominally stand for. That party is also currently in charge of the executive branch of the government.

00:08:05 Speaker_01
And currently in charge of the actual genocide. Right. Doubly important. That's the party actually in power and whose coattails

00:08:11 Speaker_03
Politicians and supporters attending the RNC don't pretend to think that Palestinians are human. Protesting outside the RNC is basically just like hoping that you can appeal to a humanity that is explicitly, expressly stated is not there, right?

00:08:31 Speaker_03
Whereas the DNC, the vibes, again, this is all vibes, the vibe is that this is the pro-human rights, this is the anti-genocide.

00:08:39 Speaker_01
This is good vibes, this is coconut memes, this is

00:08:41 Speaker_03
yeah right this is the kumbaya convention and therefore putting your energy and your effort into actually showcasing that double standard or pressuring someone who like you said adam didn't have to go through a primary is being anointed to the top of this ticket

00:09:02 Speaker_01
This is the only possible avenue for pressure right at the convention there was no primary which okay need circumstances whatever but there was no no one had any say the fact of genocide is not allowed to be litigated in the public visa be a primary which normally would have been.

00:09:17 Speaker_01
other than the uncommitted movement, which of course dealt with the unmovable force of incumbency. And again, this is just a variation on, why don't you condemn Hamas? Or why don't you go protest Hamas? Or why don't you go protest Iran?

00:09:28 Speaker_01
It's like, well, my government doesn't fund Hamas. Ostensibly, the Democrats are supposed to be speaking for progressives and liberals, right?

00:09:35 Speaker_01
So this moves us to number two, which is what I assume I'm going to get quite a bit when I do ask people about this at the DNC.

00:09:41 Speaker_01
And this is something, of course, we've talked about ad nauseum on the show for good reason, because basically, very few people talk about it.

00:09:47 Speaker_01
And I've written about it at least, you know, half dozen times, if not more, which is that Vice President Harris already supports a ceasefire, the White House supports a ceasefire, there's some mysterious ceasefire negotiation going on that they support in principle, and that all the outrage is actually misdirected and pointless.

00:10:02 Speaker_03
Why are you protesting she already agrees with you? Well, this is clearly patently false.

00:10:08 Speaker_01
Right. Again, this is entirely a ceasefire in name only, which is to say what used to be called a temporary pause for the purposes of exchanging hostages has been rebranded as a ceasefire with the explicit promise by both Israel and the U.S.

00:10:20 Speaker_01
to continue the quote unquote war in Gaza, which is to say the continued bombing and displacement of Palestinians in Gaza indefinitely for as much as years, according to some within Israel itself.

00:10:30 Speaker_01
And this is why activists, since they co-opted the term on the eve of the Michigan primary back in late February, early March,

00:10:36 Speaker_01
because the first time Harris used the term was the week after Biden used the term on March 4th, after the Michigan primary, when they decided to rebrand the temporary pause, which they had been pushing as a ceasefire.

00:10:45 Speaker_01
This is why the activist demands from Palestinian organizations, humanitarian organizations, anti-war coalitions, and seven major unions representing 6 million workers, the Association of Flight Attendants, the American Postal Workers Union, the International Union of Painters, the Service Employee International Union, SEIU,

00:11:03 Speaker_01
UAW, the United Auto Workers, United Electrician Workers, UE, and the National Education Association, NEA, which is the largest union in the United States.

00:11:10 Speaker_01
The reason why they pivoted to demanding, in a letter to Joe Biden on the eve of Netanyahu's visit in late July, the reason why they demanded an arms embargo

00:11:19 Speaker_01
which is another way of saying a conditioning aid in line with international law, rather than calling for a ceasefire, the term had lost all fucking meaning, which has again been evident for months now.

00:11:29 Speaker_01
The implied mechanism with which one would enforce a ceasefire in Israel from the beginning, based on previous Gaza bombing campaigns in 2012, 2014, 2009, 2018, 2021, the implied mechanism was the threat of an arms embargo or a credible threat to that effect or an actual arms embargo.

00:11:45 Speaker_03
Biden has not been interested in that right now.

00:11:48 Speaker_01
They played stupid and say, oh, there's ceasefire talks, which is really just, again, what they're actually calling a hostage deal within Israel itself, because that's really what it is, which is fine enough. Right. It's better than nothing, I suppose.

00:11:57 Speaker_01
But it's not a ceasefire. Right.

00:11:59 Speaker_03
And when you murder the lead negotiator, like the political head of one of the party's two discussions, maybe those talks are not being conducted earnestly.

00:12:09 Speaker_01
Nobody believes Israel is negotiating anything meaningful because they say so themselves. This is the thing.

00:12:14 Speaker_01
When Biden gave his May 31st speech supposedly calling for a quote-unquote end of the war, hours later, Netanyahu said, no, no, no, this is not what we agreed to. We're going to fight to the end, quote-unquote total victory.

00:12:24 Speaker_01
Israel is not operating in good faith even if you accept the premise that there is some actual negotiation ceasefire. Everybody knows this. Again, you don't negotiate a ceasefire in good faith while assassinating the person you're negotiating with.

00:12:34 Speaker_01
It's completely not credible, but it does provide this rhetorical thing people can say, and you see this all the time on social media from confused people who sort of don't know better. And again, I understand why they're confused.

00:12:43 Speaker_01
They say, well, Harris supported a ceasefire. She supported a ceasefire before Biden, which is, by the way, not true. Vice President doesn't just unilaterally break from the party anyway.

00:12:51 Speaker_01
She did it after he did it, and she did it in the same superficial, irrelevant, co-optive, cynical PR terms, which again was why these groups who are legitimately trying to end genocide in Gaza have switched to an arms embargo.

00:13:04 Speaker_01
This is now the demand of the uncommitted movement. It's the demand of a number of Palestinian groups, human rights groups. It is the demand of seven unions representing six million workers, including NEA, which is the largest union in the country.

00:13:15 Speaker_01
And so this idea that, oh, why are they protesting? Hara supports a ceasefire. is utterly, utterly meaningless because ceasefire means either unilateral surrender by Hamas or Israel just wins the war after five years.

00:13:27 Speaker_01
It is not an actual ceasefire in the traditional sense that it's been used in the context of Gaza for 20 years, which is US makes a phone call to Israel to wrap it up and go home, which is what people are demanding because they've now killed, again, probably north of 100, 200,000, who the fuck knows how many people are dead, which moves us to number three talking point.

00:13:44 Speaker_03
If you are protesting outside the DNC, you are being disruptive, and ultimately, you're just trying to help Trump win.

00:13:54 Speaker_01
Yeah, this was the line that Kamala Harris was criticized heavily for, which she reflexively told protesters who disrupted her back in early August.

00:14:03 Speaker_03
If you want to keep talking like that, then you're just going to help Trump win.

00:14:05 Speaker_01
Right. And this is obviously deeply offensive. These were women who were Muslim who protesting Palestine. These weren't like some weird LaRoucheites or whatever, right? These were people who had a vested stake in ending genocide. And that's the thing.

00:14:18 Speaker_01
Thousands of protesters that are marching on DNC this week A great number of them have loved ones who've died in Gaza. Chicago and Cook County are home to the largest Palestinian diaspora in the country.

00:14:29 Speaker_01
This is personal for them, and they want their voices to be heard. Again, they were not permitted to be heard in any kind of meaningful primary.

00:14:36 Speaker_01
And the idea of dismissing this as pro-Trump or a pro-Trump PSYOP, and we see people say, oh, it's a chaos agent, which is the most, is a deeply glib and psychotic and mean thing to say, an insensitive thing to say to people who are protesting for literally all the right reasons, right?

00:14:49 Speaker_03
trying to end a genocide, like if you're saying that actively trying to end a genocide and being unapologetic about that, who are not cowed by this idea of, you know, unless you fall in line, then you're helping, you know, this kind of like fascist opposition, like, well, no, because protesting genocide is a good thing to do and a vitally important thing to do as the Harris campaign continues to gain support.

00:15:15 Speaker_03
It is essential that

00:15:18 Speaker_03
This pressure is made that this conversation does not end at this time, especially, I mean, not that it ever should, but at this time, especially around the convention, around this kind of, you know, last 90, 80 days of the campaign, and the idea that saying anything out of lockstep

00:15:38 Speaker_03
with the Kamala Harris campaign talking points is somehow a disruption, a distraction, and a deliberate attempt to elect Donald Trump is completely psychotic.

00:15:49 Speaker_01
Well, this kind of standpoint of epistemology has totally gone out the window. These were two, again, young Muslim women protesting Kamala Harris.

00:15:57 Speaker_01
Remember when the party used to say, listen to women of color and listen to oppressed and marginalized communities? Well, that all went out the window and they became pro-Trump, right? And this is the thing.

00:16:05 Speaker_01
So there's this sort of urge to say, well, we don't need to divide the party. We don't need to kind of have disruptions because the goal of a DNC is unity, and this will cause disunity. Great.

00:16:16 Speaker_01
There's a simple solution to this, and only one person and one person alone could fix this, and her name is Kamala Harris. Obviously, Biden could as well, but he's obviously not the nominee.

00:16:25 Speaker_01
And to the extent to which there is disruption and there is division, it is not the fault of obscure powerless protesters who have loved ones dying in a genocide and their allies.

00:16:34 Speaker_01
It is the person in power who's chosen to triple down on a deeply unpopular, and morally depraved military campaign by a totally unhinged ally in the Middle East.

00:16:45 Speaker_01
So to the extent to which there is divisions, and there continues to be divisions in the party, this is a problem imminently solvable by Kamala Harris, which leads to talking point number four, which is when all else fails, and you can't really argue an ideology, right?

00:16:56 Speaker_01
This is back to the toddler and the popsicle. My toddler says he wants a popsicle. I don't want to argue with him. I just say we're out of popsicles. It's much easier.

00:17:03 Speaker_01
And he understands that, that way we're not having to debate the ideological contention of the popsicle. So whenever liberals run out of arguments, what do they do? They do the process. It's out of my hands. The hands are tied, right?

00:17:12 Speaker_01
It's actually my boss's boss boss.

00:17:15 Speaker_03
Right.

00:17:15 Speaker_03
So the talking point here is that Harris can't support the activists' demands for a ceasefire or, more explicitly, an end to the genocide, even if she wanted to, Adam, because, after all, she is still currently the vice president of the United States in the Biden administration and therefore is a representative of and must maintain President Joe Biden's policies.

00:17:39 Speaker_03
That not doing so would be anathema to her role as VP.

00:17:44 Speaker_01
Right, so here we have a situation where the candidate, one of two candidates that have been put in front of us for the President of the United States, simultaneously cannot be held accountable for current policy and also cannot be held accountable for any theoretical policy moving forward.

00:17:57 Speaker_01
That she literally is unable to articulate any policy. We're just supposed to go on pure vibes. This strikes me as a little convenient and I would say deeply anti-democratic.

00:18:06 Speaker_01
And this is a popular talking point with people who'd rather just kind of avoid the issue of Gaza when some vague hope that either it goes away or they just, well, really they don't give a shit. It's really not important to them. Like, let's be honest.

00:18:16 Speaker_01
partisan expediency is more important. And I'm sure they've rationalized it themselves by saying, well, Kamala may or may not do this, but Trump is worse. So let's just kind of vibe our way through it. She doesn't need to make any commitments.

00:18:26 Speaker_01
Again, even though Biden, people have had that same vibe with Biden for 11, almost 11 months and nothing has changed. So again, I'm not clear on what basis this statement is being made.

00:18:35 Speaker_01
And I understand the game theory involved in this, but let's listen to a segment with Ben Rhodes, former Obama National Security Advisor, Ben Rhodes and Chris Hayes on MSNBC, where they kind of just accept that she can't have any position as if it's some hardened, fast norm that we just simply can't violate.

00:18:50 Speaker_03
Yes, this is from the August 8th edition of All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC.

00:18:55 Speaker_02
But to me, there's just a much deeper question here, which is, what is the policy of the Democratic presidential nominee who is now Kamala Harris and not Joe Biden?

00:19:04 Speaker_02
And a second question, which is as important is, is it even possible to run on a policy different than the sitting president of the United States when you are the sitting vice president?

00:19:14 Speaker_02
Ben Rhodes serves as Deputy National Security Advisor of President Obama. He's co-host of the podcast Pod Save the World, and he's just the person I want to talk to you about all this.

00:19:23 Speaker_02
I want to start on that first question because it is a strange position. I was sort of going back and looking at some of the stuff from You've got 2000 and you've got 88. George H.W. Bush sitting vice president, Ronald Reagan.

00:19:34 Speaker_02
You've got Gore and Clinton in 2000. That's not unprecedented, the sitting vice president running.

00:19:40 Speaker_02
But on something like this, it just strikes me that the nature of the job of being vice president, in some ways, in a deep sense, your duty is that you kind of can't criticize the president's policy on this publicly or break with him.

00:19:55 Speaker_00
Or am I wrong? Can you? No, I think you're right, Chris. I mean, this happened in the past.

00:20:01 Speaker_00
I mean, just to go into the archive, George Bush was the only Republican candidate who supported Ronald Reagan's nuclear arms control treaty, the INF Treaty with the Soviet Union. All the hawks were attacking Reagan from the right.

00:20:14 Speaker_00
The reality is that she's a member of an administration that is carrying out a policy.

00:20:19 Speaker_01
All right so this is a very very popular rejoinder because again it avoids the ideological issue it avoids the unseemly reality the kind of anti vibes anti brat summer reality.

00:20:30 Speaker_01
That she for all intents and purposes every statement she's made and of course her history of speaking at a pack every year until she ran for the twenty nineteen twenty twenty primary. that she pretty much agrees with the Biden policy.

00:20:40 Speaker_01
Again, they talk about tone shift, but the tone shift she used was the same as Blinken.

00:20:44 Speaker_01
The reason why Biden didn't do this, I see you, I hear you kind of nonprofit speak is because he's just constitutionally incapable of doing it or didn't have a cognitive function to do it.

00:20:52 Speaker_01
But I guarantee we would have because several members of administration did the crocodile tears routine, Samantha Power, Jake Sullivan, Tony Blinken.

00:20:59 Speaker_01
And so there's no evidence she's not met with any of these groups, not met with Uncommitted, not met with Palestinian organizations, not met with any any of the relevant organizations at all to discuss this shifted policy.

00:21:11 Speaker_01
So she had an accidental or incidental rope line meeting with some uncommitted people, made some, again, nonprofit speak about how sad she is, didn't commit to any policy changes, certainly didn't commit to any conditioning of aid, certainly didn't commit to any embargo.

00:21:23 Speaker_01
And then the next day, her policy at Philip Gordon took to social media to clarify that she absolutely does not support any kind of conditioning of aid, which is the only demand of uncommitted.

00:21:31 Speaker_01
So meeting with uncommitted, but preemptively dismissing their Demands out of hand, I'm not sure what the point of that would be, but I guess it's nice. Maybe it's a good photo op.

00:21:39 Speaker_01
So there's all this kind of tea leaf reading and meta commentary about how vice presidents can't undermine their current position. Now, it's important to understand that, well, first off, this dissent would exist on a spectrum.

00:21:50 Speaker_01
I don't think anyone's calling for Harris to do a struggle session with Joe Biden where she publicly disagrees and humiliates him. But the idea that somehow this norm is unassailable and can't be violated is just something that's made up.

00:22:02 Speaker_01
It's not real. Certainly when it comes in the context of a genocide and committing to ending one vis-a-vis conditioning aid in line with international law, in line with the ICJ's injunction. No one's asking for some extra thing, right?

00:22:17 Speaker_01
They're just asking for the US to abide by its own laws and international laws, which clearly state you cannot continue sending arms to Israel as it uses food as a weapon of war, bombs civilians, and unleashes disease and death on Gaza for months on end.

00:22:31 Speaker_01
And so there's this idea that somehow, oh, well, it's the norm. Well, she can't do it. Why not? What's Biden going to do? Take away her birthdays? Really, what's going to happen?

00:22:38 Speaker_01
The idea that we have to wait out for the next three to six months, then vibe, assuming that she's going to somehow change her policy after years and years and years of being a staunch pro-Israel supporter, because of vibes, that seems like a huge gamble to take when there's thousands of people are dying a month, and the US just last week sent another $20 billion almost.

00:22:58 Speaker_01
in arms to israel the urgency is now the situation has to be decided now she has to make commitments now people are dying now and the idea that someone running for president is not required to make any commitments because of some norm especially when the commitment is on the fact of genocide something that again multiple scholars of co-founder of human rights watch numerous aid organizations have called genocide or genocidal or genocide like or whatever.

00:23:23 Speaker_01
Seems like a pretty good time to buck a norm that is not really a thing like again chris is like well and you know nineteen eighty eight george bush had to support reagan's what the fuck does it have to do with anything it's made up it's not real again when people act like there's a sacred north the democrats just pressured out the presumptive nominee.

00:23:40 Speaker_03
off the ticket in july and literally everyone forgot about it 10 minutes later like it's a made-up thing it's not a real thing we should also point out adam that part of the legend of jill biden is bucking that exact norm when he came out on meet the press

00:23:58 Speaker_03
in 2012 supporting gay marriage that then was used as a way to then pressure the Obama administration to change course on its official policies and talking points.

00:24:08 Speaker_03
So the idea that Joe Biden is this hero for bucking that trend, for actually saying something different than the official administration line, when he was vice president of the United States, just like Kamala Harris, is Joe Biden's vice president of the United States.

00:24:26 Speaker_03
The idea that what was good for Joe in terms of, you know, pressuring a change based on just, you know, what has sometimes been called a gaffe or Joe just speaking from the heart, right?

00:24:38 Speaker_03
His comments on gay marriage have been pointed to again and again as being a catalyst to change the Obama administration's position on that.

00:24:47 Speaker_03
However, now, whether that was a gambit or whether that was a genuine thing that happened, he has been praised for it. And now we hear time and again that Kamala cannot possibly break with what Biden is doing.

00:25:03 Speaker_03
because she is a part of the administration presents this exact catch 22 where she has to be beholden to a policy she knows is terrible and unpopular because doing so would somehow strengthen the opposition because then it wouldn't look like a unified administration but then she also can't be held accountable for joe's policies because hey she's just the vice president

00:25:25 Speaker_01
Right and this is the perfect place liberals like to be records liberals feigned powerlessness is the liberal brand you can't can't stop danielle is gonna do it anyway no choice but i'm still gonna send a weapons right now the republicans won't let us with the constant bumbling around powerless writing as a client of the green lantern theory they can't do anything right.

00:25:41 Speaker_01
And so the quintessential place to be is to have absolutely zero policy commitments and to not be held accountable for anything currently happening right.

00:25:49 Speaker_01
And it's important to understand that the savvy ivy league intellectual regime of liberalism is built around inserting powerlessness and telling people they're powerless oh and by the way the other guys worse that's all they have.

00:26:01 Speaker_01
And this is the thing that i find grading more than anything is that nobody wants to commit to the fact of genocide or to support it or rationalize it again us government white house just want to send eighteen point eight billion more dollars to this genocide but nobody will actually defended no no actually peacemakers over doing a ceasefire

00:26:17 Speaker_01
As if funding genocide is just part of the weather. It's just the way the world turns. And it's, yeah, it's just the way it is. And nobody wants to defend it as such.

00:26:26 Speaker_01
Again, say what you will about the right-wing wackos in Israel, but at least they'll be openly genocidal.

00:26:30 Speaker_01
But these liberals who keep arming and supporting these right-wing lunatics in Israel who are committing ungodly crimes on a daily basis, it's just, ah, you know, I don't know what's going on. I just got here. I'm a glorified intern.

00:26:42 Speaker_01
What, you know, I guess we got to send them $18.8 billion, but nobody wants to sort of own it.

00:26:46 Speaker_01
And so when you say like, well, Harris has these pro-Israel comments, instead of saying like, yeah, because she's, you know, she supports the war and wants to defeat Hamas and thinks the death count deaths are worth it.

00:26:54 Speaker_01
And here's why they're worth it. And here's why all the crying kids you see on your social timeline are, you know, are worth, the juice is worth the squeeze. Here's the moral calculus I've done. I'm going to defend this.

00:27:02 Speaker_01
I'm going to defend this horrific fucking crime. You see, it's just, oh, you know what? She's, she can't, there's a norm. Sorry. Vice presidents can't say there's a norm.

00:27:09 Speaker_01
Oh, you know what, Netanyahu, if we didn't give Israel munitions, they'd get it from somewhere else, right? Drug dealer logic.

00:27:14 Speaker_01
And it's like, there's a pathological cowardice and an avoidance of the discussion of the fact of what they're actually supporting, and nobody wants to commit to it.

00:27:23 Speaker_01
And there's just a fundamental dishonesty with that because, again, because they know they can't, right? It's sort of indefensible.

00:27:29 Speaker_01
This is why it's always been, that's why there's these elaborate regimes around fake humanitarian and building a peer that doesn't do anything and airlifting and aid to get around your own blockade.

00:27:37 Speaker_01
I mean, you have all these objectively nonsensical, illogical,

00:27:43 Speaker_01
Workarounds because they have to maintain this pretence that the us some third party neutral observer now we're getting this on steroids with harris because she's not only acting like she's powerless but she's not even being held accountable for the current policies either such as kind of in this perfect liberal sweet spot of having to absolutely have zero commitments to anything.

00:28:01 Speaker_03
Well, we will see how these anticipated talking points play out in reality, Adam, when you are on the ground at the DNC. So stay tuned, everyone, for Adam's reporting and Sarah's reporting from Chicago.

00:28:15 Speaker_03
We may be able to do some news briefs here and there while Adam is at the convention. We will see about that, but a possible teaser there. I hope it happens. But that will do it for this Citations Needed news brief. Again, we are on our official

00:28:28 Speaker_03
end of summer break, but have no fear, plenty of content still coming. And definitely in September, when season eight of citations needed will begin. So stay tuned for that.

00:28:39 Speaker_03
But until then, of course, you can follow the show on Twitter and citations pod Facebook citations needed and become a supporter of the show through patreon.com slash citations needed podcast, all your support through Patreon,

00:28:49 Speaker_03
is so incredibly appreciated as we are 100% list refunded. You can also pick up some citation swag if you care to through bonfire.com just search citations needed. But that will do it for this news brief. I am Nima Shirazi. I'm Adam Johnson.

00:29:03 Speaker_03
citations needed senior producer is Florence burrow Adams producer is Julianne tweet and production assistant is trend a light burn in the newsletter is by Marco Cartolano transcriptions are by Machner Imran the music is by granddaddy.

00:29:15 Speaker_03
Thanks again, everyone. We'll catch you next time.