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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.

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 ...

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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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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.

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I find myself dancing with 88,

a numeral of resonance, a muse of mystery.

It whispers in binary beats,

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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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Even Hillary Clinton is Turning On Israel
After Trump makes tentative peace with Iran, the walls crumble around Israel and Netanyahu

When you’ve even got arch-Zionist Hillary Clinton making fun of you and throwing you under the bus, the ride is over.

This week marked a historic moment as Trump finally struck a peace deal with Iran in which the US gives up a whole lot more than it gets in an apparent admission of losing the war they started. But somehow even more striking has been the turn against Israel.

After weeks of rumors that Trump’s relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu has become tumultuous, JD Vance came out and said what the admin’s clearly been thinking.

“You have seen people within Bibi’s cabinet who have come out and attacked the deal and in some ways very personally attacked the President of the United States. My message to them would be twofold.

Number 1: If I was in the Israeli cabinet, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have left anywhere in the entire world.

Number 2: What is your exact proposal? You’re a country of 9 million people. You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have.”

And after Vance shocked Israel and the world with this statement, other former Israel cronies followed suit. Even Hillary Clinton.

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Trump Accidentally Tells Iran He's Secretly Stealing Their Oil
Plus, a grown adult congressman pretends to be on the phone to avoid a question (and gets caught)

“Are you concerned, Mr. President, about the latest inflation number which came out this morning?”

A simple enough question from a reporter unravels Trump into first ripping off a line on inflation that is now haunting every Republican member of Congress in press conferences, and then into a somehow worse slip of international piracy secrets.

“No, I love it, the numbers were great,” Trump says. “You know what I really love? I love inflation. You know why? Because as soon as this war is over, you know I can say it now… something you didn’t know…”

At this point you can see in his eyes that he considers the moment. It’s not too late to stop himself, but the thrill of spilling is too good.

“Did you know we’ve been taking out millions of barrels of oil? Nobody knows it. You know who doesn’t know about it? Iran.” He thinks quick. “Until right now.”

And the fallout’s been immediate. Mike Johnson and Republican congresspeople all the way down are being forced to dodge questions from reporters about why Trump loves inflation (we watch one guy embarrassingly get caught faking a phone call while running away). And even worse for the MAGA camp, Energy Secretary Chris Wright got blasted in Congress when pressed on whether he was aware that the US has been illegally stealing millions of barrels of oil from Iran:

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The Most Antisemitic Event of the Year? Watch the American Jewish Committee's Global Forum With Us!
Plus, former Biden and Obama official Brett McGurk wants you to "put aside the horrors of Gaza" for a while...

Subscribe to support Useful Idiots and watch our Friday Free-for-All:

Did you know that Congress is working on a new plan to “distance” the US-Israeli relationship by slowing US aid to Israel and replace it with a “financial partnership”? A partnership which has the power to not only increase the amount of money and weapons the US sends to Israel but also future-proof it from being dismantled by future presidents and lawmakers?

And do you know who invented this plan that allows members of Congress to become more independent from Israel?

Let the words of GOP Rep. Marlin Stutzman speaking on CNN enlighten us all: “This was actually something that came from Prime Minister Netanyahu.”

This, and a whole slew of other remarks that will make your skin crawl were topics of what many people are calling the antisemitic events of the year! The American Jewish Committee’s Global Forum, where Zionists gave speeches on and cheered for things that, if we had said them, would get us immediately kicked off YouTube for being antisemitic.

From bragging that the “Jewish coalition” spent five million dollars to oust Thomas Massie and control US elections, to explaining that Jews can now use AI to “manage and control” social media content, to laughter at John Fetterman’s celebration of Israel’s pager attacks in Lebanon that killed and blinded children and civilians, it was one antisemitic trope after another.

And no condemnations from the Fraudfather over at the ADL yet…

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