Useful Idiots
Politics • Comedy
Fox News Somehow Hits New Low on Israeli Hospital Strike Justification
Plus, Charlamagne tha God's Useful Idiot-level nickname for Hakeem Jeffries
August 28, 2025
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Useful Idiots is heralded for it’s scathing nicknames of politicians, pundits, and organizations (see: the Fraudfather, the Apartheid Defense League, BlueAnon, and on), and it’s not often that others can match our witted brutality. So when we come across a worthy opponent, we have no choice but to give them credit:

Charlamagne tha God’s new nickname for the whining, rhyming, Israeli agent from New York known as Rep. Hakeem Jeffries is close to perfect. Subscribe to hear the nickname and Aaron and Katie’s reaction to it.

But first on this cringe-worthy Thursday Throwdown, we’re watching Trump’s Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff go on Fox News to discuss Israel’s “double-tap” attack on a hospital in Gaza, which killed 20 people, including 5 journalists. Double-tap means Israel bombed the hospital, waited for rescue workers, doctors, and journalists to arrive at the hospital, and then bombed it again.

In a mealy-mouthed defense, Witkoff pulled out all the Israeli talking points to cover for their war crime, but the real kicker comes when Fox News’ Bret Baier goes beyond what even Israel has said and comes up with a new lie of his own:

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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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Fascist Israeli Minister Taunts Palestine’s Mandela
An interview with the son of Palestine's most popular political leader, Marwan Bargouti, who has been imprisoned by Israel for 23 years

This episode is free to all. Please help us share Marwan Barghouti’s story:

This week, we’re looking at the case of Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian political prisoner widely regarded as the most popular Palestinian political figure alive. And for this reason, Israel has kept him imprisoned for more than two decades.

Useful Idiots is proud to be joined by his son, Arab Barghouti.

Throughout an unimaginable 23 years in prison, Marwan Barghouti has been subjected to brutal abuse, and evidence just emerged in a recent video of fascist Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who went out of his way to visit Marwan Barghouti in his prison cell and film himself threatening Barghouti and the Palestinian people.

Ben Gvir tells Barghouti that Israel is going to “wipe out the Palestinian people.”

This is the first image that we've seen of Marwan Barghouti in many years, looking visibly gaunt from years of Israeli abuse and torture. This was a provocative move by Ben Gvir designed to further humiliate Palestinians at a time when they're enduring a genocide in Gaza and routine pogroms and terror in the occupied West Bank.

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Everyone in the world should know the name of Marwan Barghouti. He cuts through so many of the caricatures that we get of Palestinian resistance in the West: he's a longtime advocate of a Palestinian state, thereby accepting the fact that Israel stole Palestine, but he's willing to compromise and accept 22% of Palestine’s historic homeland. And even though he supports the Palestinian right to armed resistance against occupation, Barghouti still advocated nonviolence as a tactic and opposes attacks that target Israeli civilians.

The fact that Israel has made such a dogged effort to silence him, to keep him behind bars, and recently humiliate him, speaks to the power he has and the fear in the heart of the Israeli government of the Palestinian struggle for freedom.

Check out the documentary Tomorrow's Freedom about Marwan Barghouti, and please share our interview with his son Arab Barghouti.

Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Fox News Somehow Hits New Low on Israeli Hospital Strike Justification

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Trump’s Plan: Genocide in Gaza, Peace with Putin?
Watch a free preview of our episode and subscribe for the full chat with Richard Sakwa on the extent of Biden's Ukraine lies

Subscribe for the full episode at the bottom of the page. Watch a free preview here:

Useful Idiots has another Double Header this week: we’re looking at Trump from two angles as decision time nears and he’ll be forced to come clean about his motives on Israel and Ukraine. Which side are you on, Donald?

First up we’re speaking with Dr. Omar Abdel-Mannan, founder of Health Workers 4 Palestine. The news out of the Trump Admin this week is that Jewish-supremacist, right-wing-conspiracy-theorist, and self-described “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer influenced Secretary of State Marco Rubio to stop all visas for people from Gaza, including wounded children in need of medical care.

Dr. Omar explains how his organization has fought to help Palestinian children reach medical care, how the draconian shift in policy signifies Trump bowing deeper than ever to Israel, and how media propagandists like The Free Press are complicit by fueling lies about the children suffering the worst:

 

Plus, we ask Dr. Omar: is Palantir selling your health data to Israel?

Next we speak with Professor Richard Sakwa to discuss the latest in Russia-Ukraine after Trump’s controversial summit with Putin.

We ask Sakwa: what are Putin’s true motives? Does he see Ukraine as a real country? Does he want revenge on the US and UK after Biden and Boris Johnson colluded to push Ukraine out of peace talks? And is Trump treating Putin as his equal, conning him into taking a worse deal, or bowing down to him just like he does with Netanyahu?

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MSNBC Claims It’s Now Independent Media
After getting booted from NBC, Morning Joe is struggling to spin the split

There’s a new crew in the independent journalism space: the corporate media conglomerate formerly known as MSNBC!

After NBC announced that they would be splitting off from MSNBC, a new logo and name were announced, with the stragglers on the network left swimming in the open seas of independent media. It’s going to be called MS Now, which Joe Scarborough says through clenched jaw and held-back tears stands for My Source Now.

But it’s good, he forces himself to say, no really it’s good. It’s BETTER this way actually. Yeah that’s right, yeah, no yeah, yeah yeah…

It hurts to even imagine a world where MSNBC could be considered independent journalism, but Aaron says there is ONE WAY that the network could prove itself, ONE THING they could do that would get him to accept them:

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