It is not a good time to be Convicted Felon Donald Trump. He is too old to get erect. His family does not care about him. Vice President Kamala Harris has pulled ahead of him in the polls. And now we learn that prosecutors have gotten a witness to flip on him. Jacques Billeaud (LOS ANGELES TIMES) reports:
Former President Trump’s campaign attorney Jenna Ellis, who worked closely with Rudolph W. Giuliani, will cooperate with Arizona prosecutors in exchange for charges being dropped against her in a fake electors case, the state attorney general’s office announced Monday.
Ellis has previously pleaded not guilty to fraud, forgery and conspiracy charges in the Arizona case.
“Her insights are invaluable and will greatly aid the State in proving its case in court,” Atty. Gen. Kris Mayes said in a statement. “As I stated when the initial charges were announced, I will not allow American democracy to be undermined — it is far too important. Today’s announcement is a win for the rule of law.”
On top of that, he is now accused of taking bribes:
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we turn now to a major investigation by The Washington Post into Donald Trump’s relationship with the Egyptian government, which reportedly tried to funnel $10 million in cash to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The cash weighed about 200 pounds when it was withdrawn from a state-run bank in Cairo at the request of an organization linked to the Egyptian intelligence service, just five days before Trump took office as president in 2017. The Post reports Trump earlier gave the same amount to his own campaign, and investigators suspected Trump expected to be repaid by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. But questions about the transaction went unanswered by the Justice Department under Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr, who closed the case, citing, quote, “a lack of sufficient evidence” — a decision one DOJ official called “jaw-dropping.”
For more, we’re joined in Washington, D.C., by one of the reporters who broke this story. Carol Leonnig is the national investigative reporter for The Washington Post who focuses on White House and government accountability. Her new piece is headlined “$10M cash withdrawal drove secret probe into whether Trump took money from Egypt.”
Carol, thanks so much for being with us. Why don’t you start off with how you began this story in The Washington Post?
CAROL LEONNIG: My colleague Aaron Davis and I began this work while we were doing research for a book about the Justice Department under Donald Trump and under President Biden. In that research, we discovered far more details than we expected about an incredibly secretive probe. This probe began in early 2017 with what investigators at the Department of Justice called “jaw-dropping intelligence.”
The CIA alerted the Department of Justice days after Donald Trump was elected that they had what they considered pretty reliable information from an informant indicating that the president of Egypt planned or wanted to or ordered $10 million injected into Donald Trump’s — then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign to help him get reelected. That would be illegal, and hiding that money would be money laundering. And if Donald Trump had taken that money, it would potentially be bribery and compromise of a sitting president by a foreign government.
DOJ investigators saw this as extremely disturbing and worrisome and eventually alerted top officials at the department who decided that Robert Mueller should take on the investigation. He had just newly been appointed in May of 2017 and was looking into foreign interference by Russia in the 2016 election, and now they wanted him to also look at this secret matter. Nothing about this was ever known to the public at the time.
What happened next, in the next phase, was that Mueller’s team, almost as they are shutting down their office in 2019, finally win a lengthy appeals court battle, a secret one, that closed down the federal courthouse in D.C. to sort of conceal the nature of the debate inside the hearing room. They obtain a record that seems to corroborate the intelligence. It shows that there was a $10 million cash withdrawal, very mysterious, people walking out of a bank branch near the Cairo airport with a large portion of all the U.S. bills then in the entire Egyptian banking system in duffel bags. No one signs for it. It comes out of a spy-linked account. And the reason this was so important, Amy, was, obviously, $10 million in cash walking out of a bank is a big deal, but it came out of the account linked to Egypt’s spy agency, essentially Egypt’s CIA. And that is what the original intelligence suggested, that el-Sisi, the president of Egypt, wanted to use his spy agency to get the money to Trump.
So, these things were lining up, but Mueller is leaving the building. He is now closing shop in early 2019 and hands off this investigation to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. The boss of this investigation ultimately is the new attorney general, Bill Barr. It’s run by the U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu, who tells her investigators, “This is pretty impressive stuff,” but she wants to brief Barr on the matter. An investigation of a sitting president has to be briefed to the attorney general. But she returns from meeting with him and reviewing the evidence at the CIA with a different posture. Investigators feel that she’s done a 180. She was supportive of them continuing this investigation, and now she is telling them she doesn’t want to approve their subpoena for Trump’s bank records. These records were key, in their view, to determine: Did the money from Cairo that was mysteriously withdrawn five days before Donald Trump was elected, did it somehow return in some form to any of Donald Trump’s personal or campaign accounts? And they were blocked from doing that.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Carol Leonnig, talk about the meeting that at-the-time presidential candidate Donald Trump had with Sisi on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly that took place in the fall, months before President Trump took office.
CAROL LEONNIG: Yes. This meeting was very interesting to investigators later. And here are the two reasons why. Donald Trump was trying to burnish his foreign policy credentials and bona fides. He didn’t have a lot of experience in government, as he has already acknowledged himself, and so he wanted to show that he could make deals with foreign governments and foreign leaders, he could establish important relationships.
He meets with el-Sisi on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, which is held each year, and it’s September 20th, 2016. At that time, Donald Trump’s campaign was cash-starved. He was running out of money, and his advisers were trying to convince him to cut a check from his own accounts to help fund the last little bit of media buys that the campaign needed to purchase in order to stay, you know, vibrant and alive in the race. And he did not want to put any more of his own money in the campaign, because he thought he was going to lose. But after he meets el-Sisi — and he does this privately, Amy; some of it’s public, but some of the meeting is just him, el-Sisi and an interpreter from Egypt. And investigators found that very curious, because then, on October 28th, a month later, Donald Trump does agree to write a check to his own campaign, after much, much pleading from his advisers. Investigators saw this as an important moment: why, if Donald Trump had been absolutely insisting he wouldn’t donate to his campaign anymore, he finally did.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Carol Leonnig, you write in the piece — this would be an answer to the question: Well, why would Sisi want to have sway over President Trump? You write, “Over the course of his presidency, Trump shifted U.S. policy in ways that benefited the Egyptian leader, a man he was called 'my favorite dictator.' In 2018, Trump’s State Department released $195 million in military aid … the [U.S.] had been withholding over human rights abuses — a move that had been opposed by his first secretary of state — followed by the release of $1.2 billion more in such assistance.” Carol Leonnig?
CAROL LEONNIG: You know, Donald Trump really flipped the switch on U.S. policy towards Egypt. You may and your listeners may know that el-Sisi was viewed by the United States as both an ally, but a worrisome ally. Egypt is very important to the United States’ position in the Middle East, but el-Sisi had risen to power through a violent coup, a military coup. And in the wake of his rise to power, it became known that he was suspected to have played a key role in the military killing of supporters of his opponent, who had been democratically elected. He was also viewed as very comfortable with a host of human rights abuses against opponents and critics in his country and trying to violently shut down that opposition, using military and spy power to do that. So the United States viewed him with a little bit of remove and had put a hold on this very valuable military aid and had asked him and pressed him numerous times to do better on human rights at home.
But when Donald Trump got into office, he didn’t have any of those restrictions. He insisted that one of his first officials that he was going to meet as president was el-Sisi, something his own advisers encouraged him not to do, because that was showing too much support to the Egyptian president. Rex Tillerson, his then-secretary of state, counseled Trump not to release this military aid, that it would be too generous, and el-Sisi had done nothing to improve his record on democracy and free and fair elections and human rights record. Nothing. And so, Trump fired Tillerson and ordered the release of this aid.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Carol, “In the years since the Egypt case was closed,” you write, “the Sisi regime’s ambitions to influence senior U.S. government officials have been laid bare by the bribery conviction of [New Jersey Democratic] Sen. Bob Menendez, the former [chair] of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.” Can you draw that line, a man who was about to be sentenced in October, just before the election?
CAROL LEONNIG: Well, the key thing to know here is there was a very full and expansive investigation, with no holds barred, to figure out: Was Senator Menendez a foreign agent of the Egyptian government? There were records searched, encrypted signals, communications gathered, and what they found was he was. He was receiving money from an Egyptian national who was doing the bidding of Egyptian spy and military leaders, and ultimately from the Sisi regime. He was giving information to the Egyptian officials at high levels, including information that was deemed secret by our U.S. government, about our U.S. personnel in the Egyptian Embassy.
And what is also, to me, really striking, Amy, is el-Sisi has relied on his Egyptian version of the CIA, called the General Intelligence Service, to push his agenda abroad in the United States and to tamp down criticism at home. And here, the General Intelligence Service was a critical feature of reaching out to and intervening and directing Senator Menendez. And it was the General Intelligence Service accounts from which the $10 million in the Donald Trump investigation had been withdrawn five days before Donald Trump was elected. The same agency, the same government account was, according to the intelligence, at work trying to find a way to get money to Donald Trump. But that investigation was not allowed to proceed.
AMY GOODMAN: Carol Leonnig, we just have 20 seconds. Could this bribery investigation into Donald Trump be reopened?
CAROL LEONNIG: The information could be gathered. There could be an investigation that looked more deeply and looked at the actual records the original investigators wanted to. But the chances for prosecuting anyone who played a role in this and committed a crime are extremely low. The statute of limitations is over, and it’s unlikely that that could change.
AMY GOODMAN: Carol Leonnig, national investigative reporter for The Washington Post. We’ll link to your exclusive report, written with Aaron Davis, “$10M cash withdrawal drove secret probe into whether Trump took money from Egypt.”
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot" for today:
As the Biden administration and its allies try to secure an elusive cease-fire in Gaza, Israel appears to have gone rogue.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, came to Washington last week to give a defiant speech. Despite international condemnation, he vowed to continue the war against Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, where Israel is killing and imprisoning scores of Palestinians each week, without any clear idea of its endgame.
The assassinations of senior Hezbollah and Hamas figures abroad have now sharply raised the risks of a larger regional war as Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah prepare retaliation, analysts say.
On Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a strong warning to Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, according to Iraqi sources. The message addressed concerns over potential escalations by Iran-aligned armed factions targeting US forces in Iraq and the broader region.
The source, in a condition of anonymity, told Shafaq News Agency that during a phone call, Blinken informed the Iraqi Prime Minister that "the US administration is prepared to take any measures necessary to protect its forces and interests and that any escalation by these factions would result in a more severe response than in previous instances."
The source also noted that al-Sudani assured Blinken of his efforts to "prevent any new escalation between the factions and US forces in the coming period. In exchange, al-Sudani requested US assurances against launching new attacks on members of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) and affiliated factions, aiming to maintain control over de-escalation between the two sides."
Amid mounting fears of a regional war in the Middle East, a pair of Democratic congressmen joined the growing chorus warning against the U.S. engaging in an armed conflict with Iran.
In response to U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) introducing a
resolution to authorize the use of U.S. armed forces against Iran,
Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said on social media Saturday that "the U.S. must not be dragged into a war with Iran."
"The Iraq War was the biggest American blunder of the 21st century," Khanna added. "Every candidate running this cycle must be clear on where they stand on this."
U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said early Sunday: "I agree with Ro Khanna. No war with Iran! Let's all get on record with this."
Hassan El-Tayyab, legislative director for Middle East policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, urged Khanna to introduce a related war powers resolution, arguing that "we really could use a clear vehicle like this to increase the pressure for no U.S. military intervention in a disastrous war with Iran."
Since Hamas, the Palestinian political and militant group that has controlled the Gaza Strip for nearly two decades, led the October 7 attack on Israel, Israeli forces—backed by diplomatic and weapons support from U.S. President Joe Biden and Congress—have killed at least 39,583 people in the coastal enclave and injured another 91,398, according to local officials.
The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—which faces
a genocide case at the International Court of Justice over Gaza—has
elevated fears of a regional war this week with an airstrike targeting Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut, Lebanon and the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh at his residence in the Iranian capital of Tehran.
By killing Haniyeh, "Netanyahu has systematically sabotaged cease-fire talks because ending the war will likely end his political career," Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said Wednesday.
"Here we go again. Scrambling to prevent total war by pressing Iran not to retaliate," Parsi said Sunday, pointing to the final paragraph of a New York Times opinion piece he wrote in April about a conflict
that began with an attack on Iran's diplomatic compound in Syria. "Had
Biden forced a Gaza cease-fire, we wouldn't perpetually be on the
precipice of war."
Parsi had argued earlier this year that "Mr. Biden has pursued policies that have pushed the Middle East to the precipice of war. His tactical successes in avoiding the worst outcomes of his policies should not be belittled. But they can never make up for his government's broader failure to pursue a strategy that brings real security to America and real peace to the Middle East."
In just the last 10 months of its genocide, Israel has damaged or destroyed nearly 9 out of 10 schools in Gaza, the UN has reported.
According to assessments by the UN-backed Global Education Cluster, almost 85 percent of school buildings in Gaza have been directly hit or damaged, as the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) highlighted on Friday.
“Some of these schools will need full reconstruction. The war is destroying the present and the future of Palestinian children,” the agency wrote, calling for a ceasefire.
This is an astonishing proportion of school buildings in Gaza, and is emblematic of Israel’s campaign to destroy all sense of structure and community for Palestinian children — in addition to blowing off their limbs, orphaning them, and killing them through bombs, bullets, disease and starvation.
School has been suspended throughout the genocide, meaning that Gaza’s 1.1 million children haven’t gone to school in nearly a year, severely hampering their development amid a time of extreme trauma. The UNRWA announced this week that it is launching a “back to learning” program this week in Gaza that will raise awareness of unexploded ordnance, among other things; but children’s development has been so violently disrupted in the region that this will likely only be a bandaid on the crisis.
Saturday, the assault on schools continued. Nidal Al-Mughrabi and Ali Sawafta (REUTERS) note, "An Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced persons in Gaza City killed at least 15 Palestinians on Saturday, hours after two strikes in the occupied West Bank killed nine militants including a local Hamas commander, Hamas said." CNN's , , and Footage obtained by CNN revealed a grim aftermath, showing the bodies of residents and injured children at the site." THE NATIONAL adds, "Earlier on Saturday, Israeli bombing killed six people in a house in the southern area of Rafah and two others in Gaza city, Gaza health officials said."
Sunday saw more schools attacked. ALJAZEERA notes, "Israeli forces bombed two more schools in Gaza City, killing at least 30 displaced Palestinians. Paramedics said 80 percent of those killed and wounded at the Hassan Salama and Nassr schools were children." REUTERS adds, "Footage circulated on Palestinian media showed bodies scattered inside the yard of one of two blast-wrecked schools as residents rushed to carry casualties, including children, and loaded them into ambulance vehicles that took them to at least two nearby hospitals." Kareem Khadder, Ibrahim Dahman, Eyad Kourdi, and Three floors of the northern wing of Al-Nasr School were destroyed, as was the ground floor of the adjacent Hassan Salama School, a local journalist told CNN. The two school buildings housed hundreds of displaced people, primarily women and children, according to the local journalist. Both schools were in a densely populated residential area." BBC NEWS observes, "The strikes were the third time in a week schools in Gaza have been hit by Israeli strikes."
Reporting from Deir el-Balah, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said that the schools, which have been used as shelters by displaced Palestinians, have been severely damaged.
“This is the same exact scenario that we’ve seen in the past few days. What we know for a fact right now is that there is [a] concentration of attacks on evacuation centres. What’s really concerning about that is … that the Israeli military is not giving any prior warning to people inside these evacuation centres,” Mahmoud said.
The correspondent noted that most of the buildings used as shelters for the displaced in Gaza are schools, as they are the only large spaces available now to house a significant number of people.
Dropping back to last week, Thursday's snapshot noted that the Israeli government murdered journalists Ismail al-Ghoul and Rami al-Rifi. On Friday's DEMOCRACY NOW!, Amy Goodman noted:
In Doha, Al Jazeera journalists gathered at the media network’s headquarters to condemn Israel’s targeted killing of their colleagues Ismail al-Ghoul and Rami al-Rifi while they were reporting in Gaza Wednesday. Al Jazeera refuted Israeli claims that it targeted al-Ghoul because he was a Hamas operative. Al Jazeera said the claim “highlights Israel’s long history of fabrications and false evidence used to cover up its heinous crimes.”
Saturday, Reporters Without Borders issued the following statement on the murders:
An Israeli strike killed Al Jazeera journalist Ismail al-Ghoul and photographer Rami al-Rifi on 31 July while they were on assignment in the north of Gaza. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) expresses outrage over this latest attack and calls for increased international pressure on the Israeli government to immediately halt its forces’ massacre of journalists.
Al Jazeera journalists Ismail al-Ghoul and Rami al-Rifi were reporting live from the al-Shati refugee camp, west of Gaza city, shortly before an Israeli strike hit their car, killing them both. Footage published by their colleague Anas al-Sharif shortly after the strike at around 4PM on 31 July shows both reporters killed inside an isolated white car in the middle of an empty street, visibly damaged by a direct strike. Al-Sharif said both reporters were found decapitated. They were wearing their press vests, according to RSF’s information.
A statement by the Al Jazeera Media Network called the killings a “targeted assassination” by Israeli forces and pledged to “pursue all legal actions to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes.” According to the media outlet, the two reporters had contacted their news desk 15 minutes before the deadly strike. During the call, they reported on another nearby attack and were advised to leave the area. Ismail al-Ghoul, one of Gaza’s most recognisable reporters, had already been arrested by Israeli forces in al-Shifa hospital on 18 March and released 12 hours later.
Al-Ghoul and al-Rifi were on assignment along with other reporters in the al-Shatti refugee camp, near the house of Hamas political leader Ismail Haneya. They were covering the aftermath of Haneya’s assassination in Iran the night before. The Israeli army did not comment on the strike that killed the two reporters, but constantly denies targeting journalists in Gaza. According to RSF’s information, however, more than 120 journalists have been killed by Israeli forces in the strip since 7 October 2023. At least 29 of them have been killed in circumstances that point to intentional targeting, in violation of international law. RSF has filed three complaints with the International Criminal Court (ICC) since then, calling on the court to investigate these war crimes against journalists as a matter of urgent priority.
“We are appalled by this violent attack on two prominent Al Jazeera journalists – the latest incident in nearly 10 months of crimes against journalists in Gaza, where more than 120 journalists have now lost their lives. RSF urges the Israeli government to immediately commit to ending the violence against journalists that continues to be mercilessly committed by Israeli Defence Forces, constituting flagrant examples of war crimes. We also call for increased international pressure to ensure journalists still working in Gaza are able to safely do their jobs, and to secure justice for the far too many already killed. This massacre must stop now.
With the killing of al-Ghoul and al-Rifi, the number of Al Jazeera journalists killed in Gaza rises to five, all targeted by direct strikes according to RSF’s information. Journalist Hamza al-Dahdouh – the son of Wael al-Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s bureau chief in Gaza – and his colleague Moustafa Thuraya – were killed by a targeted Israeli strike at the start of January. A month later, Wael al-Dahdouh was himself injured by another targeted drone strike that killed Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa.
These deadly attacks against Al Jazeera personnel coincided with a steady defamation campaign by Israeli authorities, which accused Al Jazeera of being a “spokesperson for Hamas” that “threatens the Israeli military,” and which resulted in a temporary ban of the broadcaster enforced in Israel and Palestine. The ban was renewed for 45 days on 5 May, then for another 45 days on 9 June. RSF has repeatedly warned that the campaign against Al Jazeera, as well as the relentless conflation of journalism with “terrorism,” endangers reporters and threatens the right to information everywhere.
Gaza remains under assault. Day 304 of the assault in the wave that began in October. Binoy Kampmark (DISSIDENT VOICE) points out, "Bloodletting as form; murder as fashion. The ongoing campaign in Gaza by Israel’s Defence Forces continues without stalling and restriction. But the burgeoning number of corpses is starting to become a challenge for the propaganda outlets: How to justify it? Fortunately for Israel, the United States, its unqualified defender, is happy to provide cover for murder covered in the sheath of self-defence." CNN has explained, "The Gaza Strip is 'the most dangerous place' in the world to be a child, according to the executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund." ABC NEWS quotes UNICEF's December 9th statement, ""The Gaza Strip is the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Scores of children are reportedly being killed and injured on a daily basis. Entire neighborhoods, where children used to play and go to school have been turned into stacks of rubble, with no life in them." NBC NEWS notes, "Strong majorities of all voters in the U.S. disapprove of President Joe Biden’s handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The erosion is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza." The slaughter continues. It has displaced over 1 million people per the US Congressional Research Service. Jessica Corbett (COMMON DREAMS) points out, "Academics and legal experts around the world, including Holocaust scholars, have condemned the six-week Israeli assault of Gaza as genocide." The death toll of Palestinians in Gaza is grows higher and higher. United Nations Women noted, "More than 1.9 million people -- 85 per cent of the total population of Gaza -- have been displaced, including what UN Women estimates to be nearly 1 million women and girls. The entire population of Gaza -- roughly 2.2 million people -- are in crisis levels of acute food insecurity or worse." THE NATIONAL notes, "Gaza Health Ministry on Monday said that at least 39,623 Palestinians have been killed and 91,469 injured since Israel started its military offensive on the Gaza Strip in October. At least 40 people have been killed and 71 others injured in the past 24 hours, the ministry said." Months ago, AP noted, "About 4,000 people are reported missing." February 7th, Jeremy Scahill explained on DEMOCRACY NOW! that "there’s an estimated 7,000 or 8,000 Palestinians missing, many of them in graves that are the rubble of their former home." February 5th, the United Nations' Phillipe Lazzarini Tweeted:
AMY GOODMAN: So, you mentioned pro-Palestinian protests. Kamala Harris is expected to announce her choice for running mate any day now, by Tuesday, it’s said. Potential candidates include Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro is reportedly at the top of her list. Many progressives are raising alarm about Shapiro’s record on, oh, promoting corporate tax breaks and school vouchers, raising issues about accelerating climate change, and demonizing pro-Palestinian protests. Earlier this year, Governor Shapiro called on the University of Pennsylvania to disband a Gaza solidarity encampment. He also supported the dismissal of the University of Pennsylvania’s president, Elizabeth Magill, amidst that firestorm fueled by right-wing politicians and media over free speech and support for Palestinian rights on campus. This is Governor Shapiro speaking in May.
GOV. JOSH SHAPIRO: By their own admission, the leaders at the University of Pennsylvania have made clear that those protesters, those who are living in these so-called encampments, are violating the rules of the university and, in some cases, the laws of the city of Philadelphia. It has — the university has tried to negotiate and discuss the matter with those protesters. That has proven to not be effective. Over the last 24 hours at the University of Pennsylvania, the situation has gotten even more unstable and out of control. More rules have been violated. More laws have been broken. That is absolutely unacceptable.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro speaking in the rain in May. Marc Lamont Hill, you’re joining us from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. You’re co-author of Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics. You’ve covered these protests extensively, as well as the Middle East, as a host on Al Jazeera. Your response?
MARC LAMONT HILL: There are so many things here. There’s a really good chance that Kamala Harris is going to choose Josh Shapiro to be her running mate. In some ways — in the most obvious way, I oppose that. Josh Shapiro challenges democratic practices. He doesn’t believe in free speech. He has warned, you know, state employees here in Pennsylvania about how they respond to the genocide in Gaza, questioning their behavior, policing their behavior. He very clearly supports Zionism. He very — political Zionism. He very clearly supports the genocidal war in Gaza. He’s been actively and vocally supportive of Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7th and prior. We can also get into school vouchers. We can get into climate justice. In every conceivable way, Josh Shapiro is not a progressive candidate. And it would be very frustrating to see her make that choice.
But in some ways, it would make our political reality much more clear. People right now are trying to project a green screen onto Kamala Harris, the same way they did to Barack Obama, meaning they want to project their radical ideologies and their progressive ideologies and imagination onto her. That’s not who she is. She very clearly supports AIPAC. She very clearly is a liberal, but certainly not a progressive or a radical. So, what Josh Shapiro as a choice would do is it will remind us of what we’re dealing with. If you’re voting for Kamala Harris, it’s not because you’re getting a radical or even a progressive. You’re voting for her because you want to keep Trump out of the White House. You can make your own political decisions about what that means, but we need to be very clear about what we’re getting and about what we’re not getting. But if you were somebody who was not voting for Biden because of him underwriting this vicious war in Gaza, then there’s absolutely no way you could justify voting for Kamala Harris if she chooses Josh Shapiro. And the two of them — it’s not just Shapiro — the two of them are just as supportive of this war machine as every other mainstream corporate Democrat.
AMY GOODMAN: And to those who say to your response that you can vote for Kamala Harris if you want to keep Trump out of the White House, that Governor Shapiro, you know, presides over a state that is a key battleground state that she would need to win?
MARC LAMONT HILL: Well, that’s the argument — right? — is that it’s — but it’s also — it’s Trump’s argument for choosing JD Vance, which he probably regrets at this point. If you want to keep Trump out of the White House, Josh Shapiro does help. I mean, that’s a great point.
But the question is: When you win the White House, what do you get? Right? There has to be a way to keep Trump away, to keep Trump out of D.C., which I support, but still not compromise all possibility of actually meeting our collective needs. Again, I’m not talking about pie in the sky. I’m not talking about an imagined future a hundred years from now. I’m saying right now we have to challenge Kamala Harris to be better. We have to challenge Kamala Harris to meet our needs. And if we don’t even hold her accountable for the vice-presidential choices she makes right now — and there are clearly more progressive options on the table — then we’ve forfeited our own kind of agency here. Let’s do both. Let’s keep Trump out of the White House, but let’s also apply some pressure. That’s all I’ve got to say.
AMY GOODMAN: Marc Lamont Hill, I want to thank you very much for being with us, member of the National Association of Black Journalists, host of UpFront on Al Jazeera English and a nightly YouTube show called Night School, also professor of anthropology and urban education at the City University of New York Graduate Center, speaking to us from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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