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New York Times investigative reporter Ken Vogel’s new book, Devils’ Advocates: How Washington Lobbyists Get Rich Enabling Dictators, Oligarchs, and Arms Dealers, unearths the shrouded power that lobbyists hold over the US government, from AIPAC, Soros, and Kushner to powers you’ve never even heard of.

We begin with the president’s son-in-law, who was just revealed by Vice President JD Vance to be the “investor” behind the ethnic-cleansing “reconstruction” of Gaza.

Useful Idiots: Jared Kushner doesn’t have an official role in this White House, but yet is overseeing arguably the biggest geopolitical issue in the world, and that is the crisis in Israel-Palestine. Steve Witkoff made a reference to a “master plan” for Gaza devised by Jared Kushner.

Talk to us about how Kushner has gone from serving in Trump’s first term to his time out of the White House, making a lot of lucrative deals, including in the Middle East, and now being described by J.D. Vance as the “investor” in Trump’s peace plan in Gaza.

Ken Vogel: You’ve got to go back even before he entered the first Trump administration when he was in New York real estate. And his biggest project was a massive boondoggle, giant building in Manhattan. And he got bailed out by the Qataris.

And then he comes into the Trump administration and he’s helping to navigate this blockade that the Saudis and the Emiratis had on the Qataris. They don’t shy away from it. Maybe in the first term they were a little bit more bashful, but then as soon as the first term ends, Kushner hangs out his shingle, Affinity Partners, and gets a $2 billion investment from the Saudis.

On 60 Minutes [this week], Leslie Stahl asked Kushner and Witkoff, “Isn’t this a conflict of interest? You have all this business in the region.” And Kushner said, “Well, we actually consider it a strength. We consider it experience and trusted relationships.” There’s certainly plenty of situations where there is US policy being set in a way that favors business partners of the Trump family or the Witkoffs or Massad Boulos and his family that is arguably not in the best interest of the American people and does seem to be a conflict of interest in the favor of the people who are putting money in the president’s family’s pockets.

There are laws and norms that are intended to prevent that kind of thing. And the Trump folks in the second term seem to be fairly emboldened to just test those norms and openly defy them.

Useful Idiots: Trump recently gave a speech at the Israeli Knesset where he openly flaunted the fact that he did the bidding of Miriam Adelson, who gave him more than $100 million. How does a group like AIPAC, whatever you think of them, how do they avoid registering as a foreign agent?

After claiming that Donald Trump’s son-in-law no longer has a role in the current administration, JD Vance went to Palestine this week to announce the new “investor” of his ethnic-cleansing plan for the reconstruction of Gaza: Jared Kushner. Which means that after killing or removing every Palestinian from their home, it will be Trump’s own family that profits off the new resort, or “freedom place” as Trump called it, once known as Gaza.

Interestingly, Kushner noted that “no reconstruction funds will go into Hamas-controlled areas” of Gaza. But by the administration’s logic, isn’t that all of Gaza? Sorry Jared, we guess you can’t build after all.

But Kushner and Vance aren’t the only ones spewing insanity over Gaza, which means this Thursday Throwdown is gonna be a headache. NYC Democratic Congressman Dan Goldman (heir of the Levi Strauss family) claims he isn’t ready to endorse Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. His reason? Mamdani has done too much to speak out against Israeli violence.

But he’s in good company! We also watch clips from Muslims Against Mamdani and the even more powerful Hot Girls for Cuomo. Just don’t try going to hotgirlsforcuomo.com.

It’s all this, and more, on this week’s nightmare episode of Thursday Throwdown. We’re releasing this one free for everyone, because sometimes everyone needs a good headache.

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This week we’re speaking to two Useful Idiots return guests: Mouin Rabbani, co-editor at Jadaliyya and non-resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, and human rights attorney Craig Mokhiber, who resigned from the United Nations over its failure to act on Gaza.

Useful Idiots: What is your response to Trump’s so-called peace plan?

Mouin Rabbani: Well, just to say it’s not a peace plan. It’s a proposal to achieve a ceasefire. If you look at the proposal closely, it doesn’t include any enforcement mechanisms, even for those elements that have been agreed. And most importantly, it doesn’t say anything about Palestinian rights. And therefore, if it’s entirely successful, it will at best take us back to October 6 [2023].

Craig Mokhiber: It’s not a peace plan. It’s not a plan for ending the conflict. It’s not a plan that responds to the genocide. It addresses none of the root causes of the situation in Palestine. It is absolutely lawless.

This was created in the dark back rooms of Washington. It makes no reference to international law, and some of the provisions of the plan actually violate international law. Things like conditioning humanitarian aid, implicit threats of collective punishment if Hamas doesn’t agree to something, the explicit denial of Palestinian self-determination, and restrictions on political rights for some Palestinians. It tries to return to a situation where Palestinians have to negotiate for their human rights with their oppressors. And it fails to seek any accountability for Israeli crimes, including genocide.

This ceasefire has been repeatedly violated already by Israel. They immediately destroyed the water treatment plant, they killed several Palestinian civilians, and blocked some of the aid that’s supposed to be coming in.

It is a certain relief in terms of the amount of bombs and bullets that are flying in Gaza, it allows some aid in, and it has allowed for some Palestinian prisoners to be released from horrific Israeli torture camps. But beyond that piece of that ceasefire agreement, there is nothing here to celebrate.

For the full interview with Craig and Mouin debunking terrible takes from Katie Miller and Kamala Harris and explaining the real reason why Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, please subscribe to Useful Idiots.

You’ll also get our Thursday Throwdown: Cory Booker’s Israel Panic Flub Turns Into An ‘Arrested Development’ Moment

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