After several connection issues, we were unfortunately unable to record our interview this week. Here is our brand new Food Groups plus the previously-paywalled section of our Jeffrey Sachs interview:
“Biden’s frustrated, because someone told him he was president, and then he found out that it’s actually President Netanyahu who determines US policy.”
This is how Jeffrey Sachs, University Professor of economics at Columbia University, sees the “pathetic” administration. “The truth is the Israel lobby is very powerful. Netanyahu has gotten his way on every single thing. If the US is actually going to try to have a US foreign policy, that would be something new.”
But what about The Call, which the White House rushed to leak, where Biden supposedly urged Netanyahu to reach an immediate ceasefire? Well, once Netanyahu finishes “laughing off” anything said on this call, there’s not likely to be any change. Because the United States doesn’t have to convince Israel of anything.
“All it has to do is stop providing munitions. Biden can say ‘the munitions stop, period.’ That’s what an immediate ceasefire is. We don’t have to convince the Israeli government, we have to stop arming the war. That’s all.”
Biden is still pushing votes in Congress to arm Israel with fighter jets, weapons, and money. But while we at Useful Idiots have focused on Biden’s storied career of obsession with Israel, Sachs disagrees on what Biden’s true motive is. He says it’s not a deep, emotional attachment to Israel.
“I think he’s got a deep, emotional attachment to becoming president. And he determined early on that never show light with the Israel lobby and someday you might grow up to be president. I don’t think Biden has too many deep attachments to public policy. This was the politics necessary to get him to the presidency.”
But then he found out “being president isn’t as good as being prime minister of Israel. That’s the part that frustrates him. He found out it doesn’t have that much power for the same reason he towed the line for forty years.”
Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Sam Harris thinks Nazis are better than Hamas
Nancy Pelosi is Working for Putin + Jeffrey Sachs Unlocked