Robert Licuria

Somebody asked me why I stopped listening to the Pod Save universe, and turned me from almost a daily listener to one of their biggest critics. I think you should know, Jon. Perhaps you are too far gone to care, but your team should know. Because I cannot be the only person who stopped listening because of your team's obsession with condemning Israel. In May 2021, I was listening to Pod Save the World. Prior to that time, Israel was only mentioned sometimes. I did not always agree with the analysis, but nothing that was said ever really bothered me or made me rethink my listening habits. I was driving a lot for work during that time. I liked keeping up with foreign affairs. I loved the podcast because the format was informative on topics that most other outlets did not cover. There were two events in Israel at the time that Tommy was covering: the bombing campaign in Gaza and an eviction in East Jerusalem. He condemned both in extremely strong terms, with loaded language, accusing Israel of promoting apartheid, ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, and targeting the freedom of the press in Gaza. Tommy was not often that vehement, and my curiosity followed. What he was alleging sounded serious, but it did not quite fit with the pattern of behavior I knew of Israel, from talking to Israelis. So I thought, well, perhaps I should look into this. Perhaps the Israeli administration has taken a really dark turn. What I found is that Tommy lied, he repeated antisemitic tropes against Israel, and he never corrected himself. The AP Bureau in Al-Jalaa Tower that was bombed in Gaza was alleged to have Hamas operatives in the building. The AP said that they knew nothing about it. Perhaps, but they also said they had never worked with Hamas. Now that, I found, was 100% a lie. I found accounts of AP journalists, specifically, dating back ten or more years openly confessing to sharing space with Hamas there or elsewhere, running stories by Hamas, knowing that they would lose access to Gaza if they did not print what Hamas wanted them to. Why would Tommy say that Israel had no evidence, and was just animated by the desire to attack the freedom of the press, if so many journalists believed that it was plausible or probable that the AP knew Hamas was in the building? But one error, even that bad, was not the real turning point. No, it was the complete inversion of the truth of what was occurring in Sheikh Jarrah concerning the evictions there. Tommy accused Israel of being an apartheid state with the goal of ethnically cleansing Palestinians from East Jerusalem by allowing a Jew to evicting a Palestinian family from their home. But I knew, from my own time in Israel, that that area is predominately Arab. If they were doing ethnic cleansing, they were doing a very bad job. So I decided to look into it. What I found was so shocking that I never took anything any of you said as the truth again. The Palestinian family had STOLEN that house in 1948 when Jordan ethnically cleansed all Jews from Jerusalem, just as Germans stole Jewish homes during the Holocaust. The Jews had deeds to the house dating back to 1875. They even proposed having the Palestinians pay them rent, even though they had no right to be there. On the urging of all of Palestinian society, they refused to pay any rent, or acknowledge Jewish title to the home in any way. Legal proceedings dragged on for years, and eventually, correctly, the Palestinians lost and were evicted. All of which could have been prevented if they paid rent for the house they opportunistically stole from ethnically cleansed Jews. But no, they refused, and instead, inverted reality and accused Jews of ethnically cleansing them. And Tommy just uncritically repeated it. I was appalled at the lack of integrity with your programming. Once I saw it, I could not unsee it. I began fact checking more and more of your coverage in all of your pods, and I found so many errors, so many mistakes, half-truths, and misrepresentations. I was ashamed of myself for listening to you for years. How many times had I been duped simply because I lacked experience in the subject matter? Would I ever have discovered it if Tommy had not made the mistake of speaking about something I actually did have some knowledge of, if I was not tipped off by the strange claim that Israel was ethnically cleansing East Jerusalem? Your obsession with Israel has only gotten worse since then. But I will say that I have your podcasts to thank for creating in me a strong sense of shame for taking anyone's news coverage as the gospel truth. I no longer do that. So thank you, Jon, for allowing Tommy to be so pigheadedly antisemitic on air. I have learned so much about Israel, myself, and American progressives as a result. I thought you should know.

It’s 4:00 PM on a Saturday, and President Trump has been working hard at the White House since early this morning. This man is focused and determined.

The deal being floated with Iran seems straight out of the Wendy Sherman-Robert Malley-Ben Rhodes playbook: Pay the IRGC to build a WMD program and terrorize the world. Not remotely America First. It’s straightforward: Open the damned strait. Deny Iran access to money. Take out enough Iranian capability so it cannot threaten our allies in the region. Overdue. Let’s go.