Useful Idiots
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Kushner’s “Investment” EXPOSED: Is Gaza Under New Owners?
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October 24, 2025
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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?

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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.

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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 ...

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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,

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In that crisp right-angle lie the secrets

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I find myself dancing with 88,

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It whispers in binary beats,

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but a wild, liberated waltz

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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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Antisemitism Czar Claims Macklemore is HIJACKING Concerts in Plot to Destroy Israel
Plus, JD Vance begs voters: “Give us another chance”

The rapper Macklemore said “Free Palestine.” It set off a Zionist meltdown.

This week, after pressure from New England Patriots owner and sex-worker employer Robert Kraft, Ed Sheeran proved himself a coward and removed Macklemore from his tour. The move led to widespread backlash against Ed Sheeran and Israeli power, but Ed can rejoice that he’s got at least one friend in his corner:

That’s right, it’s Donald Trump’s former antisemitism czar and CEO of the Adelson-funded Israeli-American Council Elan S. Carr!

In an interview, Carr gave some wild takes that certainly fit in with the Zionist stereotype of tone-deaf insanity:

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Hillary Clinton Claims Netanyahu KNEW About October 7 Before Attack
Plus, Hillary compares the DSA to neo-Nazis and Morning Joe gets in a Zionist screaming match with Donny Deutsch over Israel
A telling screenshot of today's episode
A telling screenshot from today's episode

Meet Hillary Clinton: tin-foil hatter!

During a crazy episode of Morning Joe (which had so much ridiculous content that it takes up the majority of this extended Friday Free-for-All), Hillary Clinton made the astonishing claim that Netanyahu (much like 9/11 theorists believe about George W. Bush) KNEW about the October 7 attacks BEFORE they happened and still let them occur.

Which begs the question:

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JD Vance just admitted Iran was NEVER a nuclear threat in a desperate attempt to cover for Trump’s economic meltdown
Plus, Fox News pictures Hasan Piker and Abdul El-Sayed getting married in what’s DEFINITELY NOT a closeted fantasy

After over 6 months claiming that Iran was an existential threat to the US, consistently being “only two weeks away” from nuclear capabilities, JD Vance had to suddenly admit the US was lying about its war-of-choice on Iran.

“If you look at the Iranian ability to disrupt the normal lives of Americans,” Vance says meekly during a press conference, “I think it’s quite limited. It’s not zero, but it’s quite limited.”

So how did the “terror regime” that would surely destroy the West if not stopped suddenly become a “quite limited” actor? Simple: the global economic broke down and JD’s looking for an escape hatch out of this disastrous war.

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