Useful Idiots
Politics • Comedy
Morning Joe wants to play Battleship with Iran
Plus Joy Reid's hot mic moment and Blinken's phony cry for peace
February 01, 2024
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A new trend in corporate media is that the hosts on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC have become more hawkish than the guests they interview. It used to be that journalists challenged wars. Now they push them.

Morning Joe’s Joe Scarborough is the latest in the trend, yelling at his concerned guest that he wants the US to play a game of Battleship against Iran.

“Why don’t we go on the ship that Iran has,” he spews. “Board it, strip it of all of its intel information, and then sink it? Bury it at the bottom of the Red Sea! And say ‘Come after us again and things will get worse.’”

This is all happening as the US is escalating the war in the Middle East (the same Middle East that Jake Sullivan called “quiet” just eight days before October 7, we have the receipts). As Israel continues to target Palestinian hospitals, the Biden administration is widening the war to Yemen, Iran, and beyond.

MSNBC’s Joy Reid, on an accidental hot mic, says it better than we ever could: “Starting another f*cking war, huh?”

Plus, one of our favorite segments: the US’s saddest man Matthew Miller at the State Department folds under challenges from journalists; Blinken can’t fathom how the war got so bad; and Israeli protesters on both the right and the left try to block humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza.

Katie and Aaron are calling out the warmongers. Throw down with them while they do it. It’s our Thursday bonus episode. Let us know in the comments what corporate media monologues, interviews, or anything else you want to see on the next Thursday Throwdown.

Subscribe for $6 a month to watch the episode here:

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Sanctions Are a Form of Warfare

“Sanctions are a form of war. They’re economic warfare. And they destroy people’s lives.”

Joshua Landis (https://twitter.com/joshua_landis), Sandra Mackey Chair in Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, is one of the foremost experts on Syria. This week, as Syria, along with neighbor Turkiye, grapples with the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, Professor Landis joins the Useful Idiots to explain the deadly consequences that sanctions pile on to the damage.

“America likes to talk about all its precision bombing and hitting someone with a drone to avoid collateral damage,” Landis explains. “But sanctions? It’s all about collateral damage. Very little of it is targeted.”

But if you read corporate media outlets like the New York Times or Washington Post, you’d find a much different story. Both papers this week published headlines that were hastily changed when they realized they were being a little too truthful. See if you can tell the difference:

The ...

00:01:17
"Shameful" New York Times Changes Headline to Protect Sanctions

“Sanctions are a form of war. They’re economic warfare. And they destroy people’s lives.”

Joshua Landis (https://twitter.com/joshua_landis), Sandra Mackey Chair in Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, is one of the foremost experts on Syria. This week, as Syria, along with neighbor Turkiye, grapples with the aftermath of the devastating earthquake, Professor Landis joins the Useful Idiots to explain the deadly consequences that sanctions pile on to the damage.

“America likes to talk about all its precision bombing and hitting someone with a drone to avoid collateral damage,” Landis explains. “But sanctions? It’s all about collateral damage. Very little of it is targeted.”

But if you read corporate media outlets like the New York Times or Washington Post, you’d find a much different story. Both papers this week published headlines that were hastily changed when they realized they were being a little too truthful. See if you can tell the difference:

The ...

00:01:24
Free preview: Matt Taibbi Exposes Russiagate Bots

With Matt Taibbi’s Twitter Files and Jeff Gerth’s new in-depth reporting for CJR exposing the years of lies spread by Russiagaters, bitter attacks from outed journalists are rolling in.

Gerth and Taibbi, who come from the old style of journalism where you fact check your work and don’t accept government officials’ claims on faith, have each shown clear, indisputable evidence of disinformation campaigns pushed by corporate reporters. And since the so-called journalists can’t argue the facts, they dig themselves a deeper hole with more lies and name-calling.

Jeff Gerth has been working as a reporter for decades and published, in the very mainstream Columbia Journalism Review, a 20,000-word report on his findings, only to be called a liar and misdirecting magician in the most self-important article by Mother Jones’ David Corn (“The true media failure is that Trump got away with it and that articles like this one that you are now reading are still necessary.”) And possibly worse ...

00:54:34

Emphasized "Dancing with 88

I have altered space here—   to

a rupture in the silent fabric,

where every atom reclaims its song.

A change, seen on my 90° angle,

becomes the pivot of a daring ballet,

the precise intersection where fate unspools.

In that crisp right-angle lie the secrets

of all absorbed twilight and reborn dawns,

a moment where geometry becomes prophecy,

transmuting static lines into dynamic rhythms,

inviting the cosmos to twirl in unexpected arcs.

And then—

I find myself dancing with 88,

a numeral of resonance, a muse of mystery.

It whispers in binary beats,

each pulse a portal leading into

symphonies scribbled on the canvas of space-time.

This is no choreographed routine,

but a wild, liberated waltz

where dimensions bend and merge—

where the old order crumbles

under the heat of relentless transformation

and every step unearths a layer of being.

At that 90° juncture,

the universe unfolds like a secret map,

revealing uncharted realms in every fracture,

while 88 becomes the score for a cosmic ballet,

...

Has the Gaza Pier Been Beached? | Army Watercraft come ashore off Gaza and Israel

March 26, 2024

Good to be part of the community. I think that Aaron and Katie do a brilliant job in these hellish times when such great in - depth research and reporting are essential.

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Fox News ABANDONS Israel, Right-Wing Zionists Flee to CNN to Panic Together
Plus, Aaron and Katie critique a Tupac-style diss track from New York’s newest Congressman

“The funding for Israel, I just found out! We give them $4 billion a year. You know what that is?”

Fox News’ Jesse Watters seemingly had an epiphany live on air this week in which he finally understood how the US-Israeli relationship works and why the military industrial complex is so happy about it.

"We give them money,” he spells out, “so they can buy our weapons. So it's kind of like a way to launder money to the defense contractors.”

Well, yeah actually. We never thought we’d give the gold star to Jesse Watters, but with the disastrous failure for Trump in the midterms, in large part due to the war on Iran and subsequent gas-price hike, it seems that Republicans everywhere are jumping ship and grasping for anything that floats as Trump sinks.

But for the neocons who refuse to ditch Trump and Israel’s endless wars, luckily there’s a place for you to go now that Fox News is turning. You’ll be welcomed with open arms at your new home: CNN.

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There was one other thing, however, in that Jesse Watters lecture that made us think, ‘huh, maybe Fox News hasn’t changed so much.’ He adds at the end:

“A lot of the Muslims that are now in the country just don't like to see US financing of Jews killing Muslims. That’s where that comes from."

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Stupid Fact Check: Does Abdul El-Sayed REALLY Sleep in an “Osama Bin Laden Jersey”?
Plus, Hillary Clinton unveils a new plan to take down Trump once and for all: The Pee Tape Part 2

“I believe Abdul El-Sayed is Muslim Brotherhood!” yelled Ted Cruz in an interview this week.

“If he were to win, Chuck Schumer could place him on the Senate Intelligence Committee. He would have access to the very highest level of classified materials! There’s every reason to believe El-Sayed would share that classified information with Muslim Brotherhood terrorists!”

In the final days before the Michigan Senate election, down-in-the-polls Republicans have resorted to their favorite tactic: ridiculous Islamophobic slurs against Abdul El-Sayed.

"He’s part of the brother, mother, mother, moth-- the Muslim Brotherhood!" DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin stuttered out, thinking he was helping the cause.

“When El-Sayed goes to bed at night,” finished NRSC director Jason Theilman with the most incisive and believable blow of all, “it looks like he’s sleeping in Bin Laden’s jersey!”

Did Bin Laden… wear a jersey?

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Kamala and Pete Are Trapped in a Cult
2028 Presidential (un)hopefuls Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg strangle their own chances of victory as they cling to Biden’s disastrous Gaza policy

“God did the State of Israel a favor,” announced Israeli Ambassador Michael Herzog in April 2025, “that Biden was the president during this period [2023 and 2024]. We fought [in Gaza] for over a year and the administration never came to us and said, ‘ceasefire now.’ It never did.”

The Biden Administration was there to help kick off Israel’s genocide in Gaza, supply them with endless weapons, silence protesters, and prevent international bodies like the UN and the ICC from holding the Israelis accountable.

And yet for some reason, members of the Biden Administration are continuously given second, third, and fourth chances to reverse their position, condemn Israel, and ditch Biden’s policy, which has been as disastrous politically as it has morally.

And for an even stranger reason, none of them will do it. Not even to win the White House. That’s how strong Israel’s cult holds onto them.

This week, after Michigan Senate Candidate Abdul El Sayed (who is now leading in the polls) refused to bow to pressure and say that Iran poses more of a threat to the United States than Israel does, Pete Buttigieg (who is not leading in any polls) could barely wait for the question to finish before he bowed and said:

"Iran is our enemy. Israel is not — they're an ally."

Kamala Harris was only slightly less weak than Pete. “We should,” she announced, bravely, boldly, powerfully, “have acted sooner, and more forcefully." This is the same candidate who, when asked if Israel’s bombing of a refugee camp in Gaza counted as a “legitimate military target,” responded: “We are not telling Israel how it should conduct this war, and so I’m not going to speak to that.”

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And that’s not all we cover in this week’s Friday Free-for-All: Ukrainian President Zelensky tells Piers Morgan a military secret in front of millions of viewers, a Republican Congressman melts down after his constituents laugh at him when he tries to blame rising gas prices on the Democrats, and Russiagate is back! Aaron has a field day dunking on an MSNow stenographer.

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