Christian Zionism and American Imperialism

Hey, it's Micaah. It's been a minute since our FEMA series came out, and I want our New York listeners to know that we're having an in person event in a couple of weeks. I'll be joined by former FEMA official Mar Anne Tierney. We'll talk about the history of the agency, how it's being reshaped now under the Trump administration, and some other fun stuff we couldn't fit in the show Join us in person at WNYC seven PM on june twenty fourth. You can get tickets at wnYC dot org slash events. It's a great opportunity to meet other OTM listeners. We'd love to see you there If This this way if it works out I'm gonna take the credit. If it doesn't work out, I'm blaming JD. You better be careful, JD. It happens all the time with Trump. He can never fail. He is only failed by others. It was the MOU heard round the world fromr WNYC in New York. This is on the media. I'm for Gladstone. And I'm Michael Ooinger. Also on this week's show, Israeli media tries to thread the needle on the Israeli PM's Iran policy. Netanyahu says The goals are to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons and topple the regime. And now people realize that it's not what they were sold. pllus the ideological and theological rifts tearing MAGA apart. The Christian Zionist crowd want violence directed at America's enemies abroad and at Israel's enemy And the America first crowd wants the violence directed at America's internal enemies, migrants. It's all coming up after this WNYC Studios is supported by proof on Broadway Only five weeks left to see the Pulitzer and Tony winning play, the Chicago Tribune says, is one of the best American dramas of the twentieth century, brought thrillingly back to life, Deadline declares. Iowa Deborie is utterly captivating in her roaring Broadway debut, leading one of the best casts on Broadway right now. and entntertertainment Wekly raves, Don Cheetle's portrayal is filled with sparks of genius On Broadway through july nineteenth Tickets available at proofbroadway. com OaMedia is supported by Eagle's Crest advisors, taking a holistic approach to financial planning, helping you create strategies that align with your goals Whether you're saving for retirement or purchasing a home, they help to guide your decision making with personalized advice. More at eaglescrestadvisors. com From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. I'm Michael Loinger. And I'm Brooke Gladstone This week saw the long awaited sort of framework of a deal to halt the Iran war and reopen the Strait of Hormz. A U. S. official tells CBS News, President Trump signed the fourteen point memorandum of understanding with Iran today in Versailles, France, and it's now in effect So what's in this MOU as they refer to it? Well it is vague in a lot of its terms, particularly when it comes to Iran's nuclear program. The final agreement will confirm the provisions of this article. And so it is what we expected, it's punting the really thorny issues about enrichment, around the fate of Iran's nuclear stockpile to these future technical negotiations The deal's financial terms are also raising eyebrows. It does specify, for example, that Iran will be able to gain access to a three hundred billion dollars development fund. American officials have been explicit that the US will not provide the funding for that, but that three hundred billion dollars figure is included in this document The details that I've seen so far look like look awful. Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, unshackled now after his primary loss. This will go down as a tremendous foreign policy blunder. Iran ends up stronger. Our allies in the region are weaker And Iran has learned that if they're willing to grab that strait of Hormuz and choke it off, they can get the Western world to dance to their tunes and Republican Senator Ted Cruz. History teaches that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is a really, really bad idea. Now most conservative critics shrewdly stop short of blaming the president for the MOU's deficiencies, but they do drop another name. The Vice president was here did a wonderful job on every outlet, but this is his deal. It's not the president's deal. Brian Kilillmeade, co host of whats said to be Donald Trump's favorite show, Fox and Friends. He can't do everything himself I just hopeed they didn't let him down. And here's prominent far right pundit, Ben Shapiro. This MOU appears to be just from the text, a disaster that does not achieve any of the actual signal goals that were set by the administration at the beginning. The Vice presresident of the United States, the chief negotiator on this particular project has not well served the president. Joe Pertticone, a national political reporter at the Bulwark says it's clear that in selling this deal to the American public, JDie Vance is being set up as the Iran deal fall guy. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me So tell me about the line in the Dark Night Rises that this US Iran tentative non binding memorandum of understanding reminded you of. I thought of the opening scene in which the villains take over a plane while flying another plane above it. and before they let it fall to the ground, all of the henchmen are linking them up to the cables to escape And Bane puts his hand on the shoulder of one of them and says, no. No. They expect one of us in the wreckage brother. They expect one of us in the wreckage brother. And he just kind of nods and falls down with the plane. And this is what's happening here. It happens all the time with Trump is that He can never fail. He is only failed by others Somebody either willingly becomes the fall guy. Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro literally went to prison for Donald Trump or They become the fall guy because they accidentally walked into it and then they find themselves with no way out. And it was very apparent early on this week when details of the deal started leaking. And you could tell senators, most of whom are longtim Iran hawks who probably wanted this war to continue despite the economic pain that they didn't like it. And so I started noticing very quickly Lindsey Graham, who's chief among these hranhawks said Well, the architect JD Vance and others That struck me as odd because no one thinks of the vice president Be the architect for this major deal, you would think, if it's anyone other than the president, it' be the Secretary of state And you also have observed that, you know, when these narratives come out clelearing the president of any blame for what he himself said in motion It generally begins on Fox or on one of the far right wing podcasts or something, and then it gets picked up. But you say that this particular narrative Pinning this whole thing on Vance actually did begin with Graham in the Senate by others in the Senate and then traveled ono the media outlets. Yes, we've seen it a million times over when Trump decides he no longer likes someone in his inner circle It originates On Fox Most of the time on Fox and Friends, The Morning showow which he watches religiously In this case, it was senators quickly moving to describe this as JD Vance's baby. And if we recall in March, JD Vance was being reported as the lone skeptic of this military engagement. Yeah, very consistent with his own America first policy. Yeah, exactly. and this whole thing kind of came together really quickly and it happened at the same time JadD Vance is out plugging his book. So Jie Vance is making the rounds everywhere on all these different TV interviews, but because this is happening at the same time, every interview ends up being about this deal What did Vance have to do with this MOU? Vance have any input into this document at all Oh, he absolutely did. I just don't think it would be at all accurate or fair to describe the vice president as the architect of this deal the way the senators have. This is a team effort Ultimately, the buck stops at the president, but When Donald Trump is president and Republicans control Congress, the buck does not stop with him. It stops with whereever. they decide it's stopped with Trump has been dropping Vance's name a lot when asked about who's responsible, even when Trump was asked if he would be at the signing, which ultimately he was this week Trump said Well, it depends. JD's coming in for it. He was originally going to do it. I'll probably be gone by then we're having Dinner and this isn't going to fit requirements Previously, senators like Graham and John Cornan said would be necessary to stop the war, right? Yes. I mean, before this war was started The strait was open. and now we're looking at the possibility of Iran receiving passage fees or whatever ticket mastersque language they come up for tolls of whatever they want I spoke to John Cornan at the beginning of this war, and he said, yes, gas prices are bad, but we need to make the case thoroughly to the American people that a little pain is worth it if it means eliminating the prospect of nuclear Iran, if it means removing their ballistic missile capabilities. Well, now we're seeing as a result of this MOU Okay, they have to eliminate their currently enriched stockpile, but it doesn't necessarily impose strict enforcement of future enrichment of uranium, it doesn't necessarily address Their ambitions for a civilian nuclear program. It just ends the current hostilities. For sixty days. Yes. mayaybe extended to ninety. They can keep extending it as long as they want, technically. It's just kind of Public relations bandaid for this thing. are the Senators who have loudly said that Iran needs to do this. Iran cannot be allowed to do that. Iran can't get any money Are they going to be able to maintain that position without condemning the president? I mean, I spoke to Lindsey Graham before we saw the text of this deal and he said, You know, I sort of like what I've heard so far while he was pinning it on JD But then he said very clear, If they can enrich nuclear material, it's not a good deal. Reporters were given the text by the administration prior to Congress The details leaked out, which they said was fake. and then When they finally gave the official details of word for word the exact same And we've seen that actually there is this possibility that they can enrich nuclear material in the future So these hawks now have to deal with, well, do we review this P of that component of it is the language of it, a memorandum of understanding is very particular wording to avoid requiring congressional advice and consent And you suggest there's nothing that Congress would like more than not having to weigh in. You've said there's nothing legislators, at least in this Congress, hate more than actually legislating No, it's their least favorite thing. They like confirming nominees. they like renaming post offices. Sometimes they like doing tax cuts through reconciliation. But beyond that, it's difficult to get them to really do things, especially this close to the midterm elections. Anything they do can be turned into an advertisement A lot of senators I spoke to said, well, yes, you know, ideally you would want Congress to review this by law The Iran Nuclear Agreement Act of twenty fifteen forces them to. Well, that's if it's an agreement. In the MOU, we see, oh, there's a relief of sanctions. It's not clear that the administration can just unilaterally issue sanctions relief. That might also fall under Congress. Democrats have said this is an illegal war Nothing's illegal if Congress isn't willing to enforce the laws to begin with. It's really important for Trump to make sure that the world believes Obama's nuclear agreement was terrible Just this week at the G seven summit, he was railing against that terrible deal. What Obama did was He loaded up a plane with One billion, seven hundred million dollars in green cash from banks all over Washington. Milyland and Virginia, they were stripped of all their cash. They had no cash to do payrolls. They all went into a Boeing seven hundred fifty seven, a wonderful plane and they flew it to Iran So I made it very tougher then when I terminated the Barack Hussein, Obama catastrophe. JC, POA, one of the worst deals? Trump kind of does this thing where he just replays many of the things he criticized Obama for He regularly said that Obama's golfing too much. Trump has golfed more times in his first year back in office than I think all the presidents combined since Eisenhower. Now with this, he's embarking on this deal, which the JCPOA was about one hundred and fifty pages, took years, had serious Enforcement mechanisms, though not as much as at the time Republicans said they would have liked And this is just more of a public relations document to end this war quickly because it is becoming a massive problem, both financially for the United States in terms of how expensive it is, but also in how it's affected the global economy and gas prices, and you name it The JCPOA was a economic and nuclear agreement in a de escalation This is a end this war and stop the bleeding in the president's approval numbers And JD is just the guy who gets to be in the wreckage Yeah wrong place at the wrong time Many have observed that it didn't help Kamala's presidential run that she was mislabeled the immmigration czar when she was actually just charged with trying to find out what the roots of the problem were Selena Meyer, on Vep, she's told that she's going to be dealing with a very special thing for the president. Potis would like you to head up a program that is very important and very dear his heart. No. No, no, no, no You do not do this to me Do not say that it is obesity. Do not say that to me. obesity. I'm sorry, manaam, but you have drawn the fat stra. So what do you think the consequences for Vancear of becoming the accidental architect. So being the face of anything that is this monumental and horribly unpopular can be Dadley for a career. And we can just look at Marar Rubio, the seecretary of State. He became the face of the twenty thirteen gang of eight immigration initiative that failed It was a major point in the twenty sixteen presidential campaign, which Trump and others used against him. And he spent the past decade in political rehab to make his image better again. and it's working. So Vance getting slapped with the label of architect here can really hurt his political chances in a Republican primary If it works out I'm going to take the credit. If it doesn't work out, I'm blaming JD. You better be careful, JD. These things usually originate as jokes and then they turn into Oh, we gott to get this person out. And We saw it with Pam Bondi Oh She She very quickly gone You can't really cut a vice P president Lse like he can, a cabinet official, but you can relegate them to the obscurity of being vice president. He certainly did that last time around. I think Vance is still in a much better position than Mike Vence We've been talking about GOP legislators. What about the Democrats? So I spoke to Tim Kanaine earlier in the week. The junior senator from Virginia. He said This has gotten so out of hand. was not a direct quote, but he did say they're happy there's an off ramp And so their first thing they're going to do is he said, we're going to compare this to the deal that Trump just tore up, which is the JCPOA but also they are very optimistic about the prospect of bringing an end to hostilities as soon as possible. He also made a kind of darkly hilarious comment where he said, the Democratic Caucus is extremely unified with the exception of Senator Fetterman. That this is an illegal war. Yesterday, I spoke with Bernie Sanders and he said It's been my longstanding position that this war is unconstitutional, it's illegal. I'm happy that we can end this in any possible way I also asked, if you codify an end to this war, does that negate the claims that it is an illegal war And he said, I'm not I don't know about that One can say that almost every conflict in the last half century has been illegal in the sense that Congress has ducked having to authorize it. It's a military operation, it's a brief incursion, whatever you want to call what looks and smells and quacks like a war, that certainly does not originate with Trump Yes, and there's the sixty day limit of military force to which the administration responded, well It's not a sixty total d because some of the days we weren't dropping bombs They constantly find these loopholes and it keeps getting allowed because of the permission structure that Congress has created, and you can trace this back to Vietnam. But if you look at since the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, where declarations of Congress became authorizations for the use of military force. And now it's president just kidnapped the head of state in Venezuela. R. And it's just like, well, that actually that was a DOJ operation. A DOJ operation. notot on US soil, okay The constant, well, let's see how this plays out. It creates new precedent every time they do it. And each new president rolls back their Article O powers and grants more to the president, which the other party's never going to like when the opposite is in the White House It keeps happening. Joe, thank you very much Thank you for driraving me on. Joe Perticon is a national political reporter at the Bulwark Coming up, we look at how the Israeli media are covering the deal. This is on the media On the Media is supported by Eagles Crest Advisors. Eagles Crest Advisors works to take a holistic approach to financial planning, helping you create a comprehensive strategy that aligns with your life goals whether you're saving for retirement, purchasing a home, or funding your children's education, they help to guide you in making informed decisions with personalized advice and ongoing support, ensuring that your plan evolves as your needs change. Learn more at eaglescrestadvisors. com Hey, it's Maren Nosa. If you like Salsa music as much as I do, I know you're going to want to join me in person at WNYC. Rosie Perez is going to be joining me to celebrate the release of a new podcast that goes deep into the history of Salsa in Rayor and we'll get a special live performance from Latin Grammy winner Ella Brg That's june thirtieth at the greenpace at WNYC tickets at wnYc dot org slash events. Not vas. seeee you there This is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. and And I'm Michael Loinger As we just heard, the vice president is being forced into the role of spokesperson for the Iran deal On his recent media tour, he tried to put an America first spin on it. Now I think it's important to say that while I do believe that this deal will be good for the entire world, fundamentally, We're worried about what's in the best interest of the American people. Vance' here on a New York Times podcast this week, responding to criticism from Israeli officials. You've seen people in their system Ben Gveere and Smootrich who've attacked the deal And I guess my response to them would be What is your exact proposal? You're a country of nine million people You can't just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have. The deal and this new tone have shaken Israelis and Benjamin Netanyahu's government which has seen its relationship with Donald Trump deteriorate over the past few months. We've had an amazing partnership. He's been an amazing prime minister We have a little dispute over Lebanon. The president at the G seven summit in France this week. I say you can do a little softer touch, Pabbe You don't have to knock down a building every time somebody walks into it that's from Hezbollah. The MOU calls for an end to Israel's combat in southern Lebanon, which is still occupied by Israeli troops It also doesn't lay out a plan for regime change in Tehran or stymy its use of ballistic missiles and proxy militias A far cry from the total victory over Iran that Netanyahu promised earlier this year By and large, there's a disappointment. Orin Persico is a staff writer for the Seventh Eye, an independent website devoted to journalism and freedom of the press in Israel He's been tracking the Israeli media's response to Trump's rhetoric and the Iran deal, and what all this tells us about Netanyahu's political future. The pro Netanyahu media and the anti Netanyahu media were convinced and portrayed to the public that we actually want on the first day, it's going to change the Middle East We will remove all the threats from Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, And now that Trump has pushed for this deal, people realize that it's not what they were sold. All the horrible times that Israelis suffered for the past year were for nothing It's hard to spin this as a success for Netanyahu and his followers Over the last few weeks, President Trump has visibly been souring on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu This week at the G seven Smmit in France, Trump said, Israel iss fighting Hezblah too long and too many people are being killed And you don't have to knock down an apartment house every time you're looking for somebody. there' are a lot of people in those apartment houses, and they're not all Hezboah that I can tell you. And I suggested to Israel to let Syria take care of Asb. Just to be honest with you, I think they do a better job of doing it. And earlier this month, when Iran threatened to abandon negotiations with the U S over Israel's actions in Lebanon, Trump lashed out at Netanyahu over a call. and reportedly said, you're crazy, you'd be in prison if it weren't for me. I'm saving your ass referring to his ongoing corruption trial. Everyone hates you now Everyone hates Israel because of this. What the f are you doing end usually the Netanyao trial past year and a half, he's been interrogated Usually there is a pr Netanyao crowd that when the court adjourns take advantage of the situation and shout to him, we love you. everybody loves you Last week, I shouted to him, Trump says everybody hates you. Wow. What was the reaction to that? They were just stunned and he left, like always It does shutter the image of Netanyahu that he's this leader of international stature. Previous elections, they had banners of him and Trump holding hands as a sign to the voters that if Netanyah wins, we'll have the biggest ally possible That is just not the case anymore I want to talk about Channel fourteen, a pro Netanyahu propaganda broadcaster According to a recent piece in The New York Times, the leading figures of Channel fourteen been ardent admirers of Trump But lately, they've dramatically shifted their tack and have started openly criticizing Trump in ways they never have before. For example, Jakov Bardugo, a political commentator who's known to be close to Netanyahu, described Trump and Vance on air as modern chamberlains. a reference to Neille Chamberlain, the former British Pime Minister, who was known for appeasing Hitler. An leading star on the channel Shiman Ricklin wrote that Trump represents total surrender to the Ayatollahas in Iran Tell me a little bit more about this sudden shift and what you think it reveals about the changing relationship more broadly between the US and Israel. So you have Inon Magal he's the biggest star of channel fourteen. And he called Kushnir and Witkov Two boys That's a really offensive anti Semitic word And he called JD Vance a scumbag. There's a chief diplomatic correspondent for Israel Hayom, the Miriam Edelson. free newspaper And his profile picture on Twitter X used to be a picture of himself with Trump On the morning of the agreement on Sunday, it was Trump's birthday And he published a double spread in the newspaper celebrating Trump. stating that Trump has really put America back on track And later that day, when Trump announced the deal He made a hundred and eighty degree flip. He took down his profile picture with Trump even took the effort to tweet again, I changed my profile picture. Eough is enough. If you look at another editor who edits an Ultra Orthodox magazine, published on TwitterX, an AI caricature Trump accepting bags of money from emirighty looking people. And turning his back to the poor Israeli Jew. sitting in the ruins of his house They're really portraying Trump as a villain now either so stupid that he was duped by his advisors or that he is really a corrupt villain and we were mistaken about him What they don't do. is blame Netanyahu. Yet I don't think that Netanyahu was wrong to gamble really the strategic future of the state of Israel and its geopolitical standing on this president. JD Vance said this about the anti Trump turn in Israeli politics. To some of these cabinet members in Israel who are attacking the president of the United States, the other thing that I would say is that over the last three months Two thirds of the defensive weapons that have protected your homeland, have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars. The problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump. And anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the president of the United States needs to wake up. If you look at the next president, it doesn't look like There will be anyone like Biden, like Trump in the White House in the context of supporting Israel And that might be even a good thing for Israelis in the long run They might force Israelis to deal with the core problem which is not Iran, It's the Palestinians. We might have to reconcile the Israeli Palestinian conflict without the blind support of the US and that might force Israeli governments to do things that they're not willing to do right now and we're not willing to do for the past generation You mean making meaningful concessions to the Palestinian people? Yeah. It sounds out of touch of current Israeli government plans and actions. we might just not have a choice When we spoke to you in january twenty twenty four for the first time You talked about how the Israeli mainstream media barely mentioned any of the devastation and carnage in Gaza Now nearly two and a half years later I know there's a ceasefire. There continues to be bombings and violence. Many more Palestinians have died since. What does that look like in Israeli media The Gaza Strip is still a non story on Israeli media It's very difficult to even get basic information about what's going on there This indifference to human lives has replicated itself also in Lebanon When the IDF entered Lebanon and about a million Lebanese Civilians had to flee their homes in southern Lebanon Israeli media didn't cover it at all, even though there was nothing like the relationship with Gaza. I mean, these people from Lebanon didn't go into Israeli communities and massacre people just because they were Israeli There were plenty of international journalists in Lebanon that Israeli media could rely on for good unbiased reporting And still it was a non story A million of them suffered greatly from the invasion of Israeli soldiers and had no empathy in Israeli media or the Israeli public You're talking about the one million Lebanese who have been displaced since Israel's bombing campaign began, including three thousand four hundred people who've been killed in southern Lebanon. Yeah, if you look at what's going on in Gaza, Israel is supposed to be in control of sixty or seventy percent of the area, so have a couple of million people very who are crammed into a very, very small part of the struct. Thank you. They were crammed to the strip when it was all under their control because it's not a large area. And now they have to suffice with thirty percent of what they had And of course, there's no infrastructure No housing, no education, no medical facilities If I'm just looking at the Israeli TV channels and the Israeli websites, If it's not Alalit, I wouldn't know anything about what's going on there And because Israeli soldiers have stopped dying in Gaza The coverage has become zero Let's talk a little bit about Netanyahu's political future On Monday, he announced that he'd be running for Prime Minister again in the upcoming November election. But in a recent piece in The Financial Times, a columnist wrote, quote, Trump's Iran deal is likely to be a political death sentence for Netanyahu He thus has every incentive to reignite the Third Gulf War. He has bet his own and Israel's future on getting Trump to bring about regime change in Iran that has exploded in his face. rarely has a geopolitical roll of the dice gone so rapidly wrong Do you agree that it could be a turning point for Netanyahu who's managed to kind of wriggle his way out of almost every political bind he's found himself in to this point. Yeah, I agree, but I have to add that he has to win in order to get out of jail. I mean, if he wins the next election, he'll be able to fire the attorney general. and get a dismissal on his indictment The thing is he is a great politician. The days after october seventh, twenty twenty three, his closest advisers and allies thought that we'll have to quit. He won't be able to survive this horrible catastrophe And yet more than two and a half years later He did I wouldn't put it past him that he would be able to win this selection. If he does win, it looks like What remains of Israel democracy would be destroyed Be that's the only way for him to survive politically. According to the Fancial Times, Netanyahu's opposition has taken advantage of this moment to publicly scold him Nftali Bennett, the right wing former prime mininister, who's one of Netanyahu's biggest rivals in the election, said that he was quote losing control over Israeli sovereignty A Vigor Lieberman, the former defense minister, called him Trum's puppet, forormmer Prime Minister Ahouud Barack said in an interview with Israel's public broadcaster this week, quote, Israel is paying the price of Netanyahu's hubris and blindness and the price of the manipulations that he tried to pull on Trump Iran emerged stronger, Israel emerged weaker That is Netanyahu's strategic responsibility. He failed Who are some of these opposition figures and How seriously are you taking them in their chances in this election Most chances is neither enoughfali Bennett or Gaddi Isisenct, the former chief of staff, will be the next prrime mininister But they are not very different from Netanyahu vis v the Palestinian issue or Iran They have been critical of the Iran war because it didn't succeed Not because it was started to begin with. When it comes to a post Netanyahu Israel, You don't see significant changes for the government. Well, there is one significant change. Netanyahu is a populist autocrat He was trying to destroy any checks and balances that might diminish his power Napali Bennett, when he was Prime Minister, he didn't the same way Gadia Eisenko doesn't seem like an autocrat so far It looks like they might be willing to reverse the course of Netanyahu brring back some more independence to the judiciary, the Supreme Court incighting against the press. So in that sense, there might be a change. And that is an important step towards maybe changes that might come later If you do have a vibrant press and independent Supreme Court and judiciary A free academia. Those are the pillars that you need for even further democratic ideas to flourish that might be a step in the right direction We'll be following along. Thanks for your work and thanks for joining us, Oureren. Thank you, Micah Orren Perisico is a staff writer for The Seventh Eye, an independent Israeli website devoted to journalism and freedom of the press As of this recording, the next round of talks about the peace process have been postponed after Israel and Hezbollah traded strikes on Friday Coming up, the ideological and theological rifts tearing MGa apart This is on the Media. On the media is supported by Eagles Crest Advisors. Eagless Crest Advisors works to take a holistic approach to financial planning, helping you create a comprehensive strategy that aligns with your life goals. whether you're saving for retirement, purchasing a home, or funding your children's education, they help to guide you in making informed decisions with personalized advice and ongoing support, ensuring that your plan evolves as your needs change. Learn more at eaglescrestadvisors. com. WNYC Studios is supported by Con Edison New York, it's hot out there, and you're probably relying on air conditioning to keep cool But if your AC is always turned up Well, your energy bills are likely to go up too Luckily, Con Edison has ways to help Try their energy saving tips, which are personalized to you, or explore budget billing, which helps you spread your biggest payments out across the year Visit coned. com slash Bill helpelp to get started because taking control is New York One of the most consequential and least understood moments in American history is reconstruction This is a radical restructuring of American democracy. That's a big deal. We're weaving together a living breathing account for historians, journalists, and novelists, not year by year, but story by story This process of perfecting the union is not this static project Reconstruction, the unfinished prromise. Listen wherever you get your podcasts This is on the media, I'm Michael Oinger. And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Earlier we heard about how conservatives dissatisfied with the Iran deal are channeling their discontent toward JD Vance. But there's another group of far right wingers who have been critical of US support for Israel and the war in Iran from the beginning, and they' I more than happy to dunk on President Trump take Meghan Kelly. Even when we launched this war, people like me said Benjamin Netanyahu talked Trump into it, but Trump had agency. Trump made the call. He's overselling this. Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson L likeike it said, all you can keept buffet at Atlantic City. Oh, it's gonna to be the best. And then there's content creator Candace Owens, who often leans in on antiemitic Donald Trump is treacherous He is engaged in treachery with his Zionist Cabal This group of Trump critics prefer to label themselves America first to distinguish themselves from the Christian Zionist MAGA cohort This current conflict, according to Matthew D. Taylor, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University's Center on Faith and Justice has ancient theological roots, which are deeply revealing Welcome back to OTM Matt. It's great to be back, Brooke You saw the assassination of Charlie Kirk as an accelerating factor in this rift. because he was kind of a bridging figure among these camps And he was really respected by both of these kind of factions actually He was very pro Israel, would take meetings with Netanyahu, but he was also friends with Tucker Carlson. Candace Owens was actually the communications director for Turning Point USA and a very close friend of Charlie Kirk's until she got in trouble for some anti Semitic comments and had to leave. But they remained friends even after that Charlie Kirk was also very opposed to Nick Fuentes And Nick Fuentes who is Catholic and is an outright Nazi. I mean any other way to talk about Nick Fuentes. that was the barrier, the line that had been drawn in the sand of what was respectable within the Maga cooalition And then Tucker Carlson brought Nick Fuentes on his podcast. Nick Fuentz, thank you for doing this. Yeah. thank you for having. I wanted to meet you. I've heard about you I've heard about you. So O America first anti Semitic influencer invites another America first anti Semitic influencer on his podcast. News at eleven, right Wh cares, right? But actually in far right circles, this was a huge deal because again, Charlie Kirk had drawn this line to say Tucker was inside the Mga cooalition And Fuentes was outside And Tucker, even though he was close friends with Charlie Kirk until hiss death violated the Kirk line, moving the oververton window of what was acceptable to talk about in public. I've also wondered how the Heritage Foundation fits in with some of these factions. Well, I view the Heritage Foundation and some of these other institutions less as players in this civil warar and more as the battlefield in this civil War. So fascinating backstory, Heritage actually convened this task force comombat anti Semitism orrganized by Christian nationalists and Christian Zionist. then they produce this report called Project Esther. It's the little sibling to Project twenty twenty five. It was published a year after the october seventh attacks right before the twenty four election And Project Eester outlines a plan It says, you know, Jews have not really done a very good job of eradicting antiemitism. so we're going to fix this for them. And we're going to get rid of all this antiemitism on the left. And it outlines a plan that describes how we need to label anyone who is critical of Israel as part of the Hamas support network, this kind of mythical network. That's a huge problem Criticism of Israel is not the same as anti Semitism I totally agree. And yet Project Esther was this force in American politics that became policy in the second Trump administration. Some of the planning team of Project Esther has said, you know, we talk quite a bit about whether we should confront Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, these kind of anti Semitic voices within our political camp And we decided not to do that. We wanted to focus on antiemitism on the left. And in the process, they label any criticism of Israel as anti Semitism. They muddy the waters on what antiemitism is. And in the end, the antiemitism task force that created Project Esther has to separate itself from the Heritage Foundation Because the Heritage Foundation is run by Kevin Roberts. Kevin Roberts decides that he's not going to give up his friendship with Tucker Carlson, and they're worried that anti Semitism is making its way into the Heritage Foundation And then all these staffers start leaving the Heritage Foundation over concerns that it has become anti Semitic. And so that is the terrain. of this battle or these institutions that have been part of this coalitional mindset of holding together the different factions of Mga The war in Gaza, the Charlie Kirk assassination, the war in Iran have just driven the wedge deeper and deeper into the very base of Trump's support You say that the path that led us here is long and starts with the birth of Christianity Yeah, you could start with the birth of Jesus if you wanted, right? Jesus? born a Jewish man in the first century Almost all of his early followers were immersed within Jewish, cultural and religious life. I mean, they go to synagogue, they follow kosher The major argument in the New Testament is Are we still Jewish? Do we need to adhere to all the trappings of Jewish religious life, especially around Torah? And this becomes then over time and it takes a couple centuries The fracture between Judaism and Christianity, what we often would call the parting of the ways A lot changes when the Emperor Constantine converts to Christianity Suddenly Christianity goes from being this kind of persecuted minority religion in the pagan emmpire into becoming the imperial religion. And over the course of the fourth century, Christians are in the position of power And the elements of Christianity that really love Judaism, that want to attach to Judaism, they are given an amount of power over Jews that they can exert coercive control. And the elements of the Christian community that have deep antipathy and resentment towards Jews, well, they're also given more power and control. And this develops over time into these kind of two trajectories, both of them, I would argue, quite toxic in Christian Jewish relations, this kind of trajectory of hatred and resentment ultimately we come to talk about as anti Semitism You say that This group that comes to hate and fear Jews develop a formulation that Christianity has inherited God's covenants with the Jews. Therefore the Jews are unnecessary and the ongoing existence of Jews you wrote was a threat to this supremacist vision Yeah, the formal theological term is super sessionism It is an idea of replacement, that Christianity takes over all the promises that God had made to the Jewish people. So Jews become perceived within the late Roman emmpire and then into the kind of medieval period in Europe as an enemy within, and that's not really to be trusted and this refrain, this accusation, Well, the Jews killed Jesus. He was their Messiah and this charge of deocide then spirals out into all of this Christian animosity and fear towards Jews I mean, the other kind of psychological fixation that early Christianity has about Judaism, partart of it is this fear, this animosity. Part of it is also this attraction to Judaism, right? Becauseuse Judaism is still the religion of Jesus, right? These are the practices we see Jesus participating in. The stories of the Hebrew Bible are infused with this sense of Jewish identity, of Jewish practices, and of Jewish sensibilities. And so that's all also baked in early Christianity. And so there's this other trajectory that emerges from that era of fracture between Judaism and Christianity that we ultimately come to call philoemitism, a seeming love, an embrace of Jews. But again, because Christians are in the position of power It becomes a kind of desire to control or direct Jews. And it often throughout Christian history has manifested in Eaborate efforts by Christians to convert Jews, to try to win over some of the chosen people, and then to hold them up as trophies and say, seeee, we got one. we got one of Jesus' own people. So that legitimates all of our claims and makes Christianity clearly superior and supreme. And the major manifestation of that in the modern world is what we call Christian Zionism and Those are the people who are closest to Trump now Yeah, this is the new breed of Christian Zionism that has really grown up in the last thirty years or so The major person that we have to talk about would be Paula White Kaine, Donald Trump's closest religious advisor, an independent charismatic televangelist and megaurch pastor. There's a kind of infamous video of Paula White Cain on her televangelism show having a Messianic rabbi, a rabbi who identifies as Jewish but is also a Christian raapping Hollllow White came in a giant Torah scroll. And the school that we wrap around you is symbolic how God has right now protected your life. You are hidden in the worord of God. You are hidden in the Torah, God's teaching and instruction. There is absolutely nothing Paula in your life that will ever, ever, ever touch you. And I this to my Jewish friends, they're just they're horrified. You're convinced that it's largely because of this extreme group of Christian Zionist advisers that Trump has been arguably the most pro Israel president in U. S. history. if you say we define pro Israel as giving Netanyahu everything he wants Until recently becausecause of the position that Paul White Caine has been in as Trump's foremost religious adviser, as the gatekeeper of the White House faith offffice, She has stacked Donald Trump's evangelical advisers with people that I don't know another way to describe them other than to call them Christians Zionist extremists in the sense that they are far outside the standard distribution even of Christian Zionism in American evangelicalism. So how does this relate to this other faction, the hardline Calvinists? That's Pete Higseth and his ilk They also support the war in Iran. What's their theological reason for that I would not call Pete Higseth a Christian Zionist. What Pete Higseth lacks in theological love for the state of Israel, he more than makes up in theological hatred for Muslims Peg Seth embraces more of this idea of Christian power and Christian warfare. The idea of crusades. He wrote an entire book titled American Crusade. I don't think that he is invested in the state of Israel per se, because that's not the strand of theology comes from What about the reactionary Catholics You wrote that a remarkable number of prominent America first figures associated with anti Semitic content are Catholic who have been major drivers of this rift within the Trump coalition, right Steve Bannon, Candace Owens, Nick Fuentes, Megan Kelly are Catholic. American Catholics make up like twenty percent of the population. It's a diverse spectrum. But within that, there is this faction that has these more traditionalist sensibilities that often accompanies indulging in anti Semitism Christian Zionism is basically a Protestant fixation Certainly, there are Catholics like Joe Biden who are Zionists who support Israel for geopolitical or personal or friendship reasons. but it's not theological. In the teachings of the Catholic Church There just isn't really a role for Israel to play. There was this real moment of reckoning in the Catholic Church in the nineteen sixties in the aftermath of the Holocaust to try to grapple with the role the Catholic Church that Catholic theology had played in fostering anti Semitism And this all happens at the Second Vatican Council. And one of the documents that comes out of the secondecond Vatican Council is called Nostra Tate And it's really a re envisioning of Catholic Jewish relations. There are elements of even kind of repentance that made a huge impact in mainstream global Catholicism The challenge is a lot of these reactionary Catholics that are more affiliated with Opus Day or the kind of America first influencer crowd They don't really like this set of modernizing reforms in the nineteen sixties. They're hoping to push the church back into more of a pre Vatican I mode. Bring back Latin. Oh yeah, I mean, the Latin mass. And so it's not coincidental, I think