Ami's House

Shana Tova, everybody. We're in the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur a good time to reset, reevaluate, and apparently talk about Macklemore getting dropped from the Ed Sheeran tour. Honestly? Best thing that could have happened for him. Nothing makes you a martyr faster than getting kicked off a tour. But to the people celebrating it as a truth-telling moment, you might want to ask yourself where your information is actually coming from before you're that certain about your moral stance. I got into the difference between left-wing and right-wing antisemitism this episode — right-wing is like male aggression, they'll tell you exactly what they think. Left-wing is the feminine version: I love you, I love the Jews, Shana Tova, here's a video with Jewish kids eating apples and honey while everything coming through the gates is trying to destroy you. That's Mamdani. And then Norman Finkelstein sat down with Tucker Carlson this week, which is the horseshoe theory completing itself in real time. I also finished the new season of Fauda, if you need a reminder of why Israel is fighting this war, just watch it. It's incredible and it'll hit close to home. We closed with some AI optimism and a Trump impression on data centers, because why not. Shana Tova. May we all be written in the book of life.
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Abdul El-Sayed made the rounds on The Breakfast Club and said absolutely nothing. No limiting principles, no prescriptive ideas, just platitudes, it just shouldn't be this way, we need to do better, working people, disrupt the system. I broke down why this empty left-wing MO never goes away and why the podcast circuit has become exactly what it replaced. Then there's Brad Lander, who showed up to a Palestinian rally and got called a ball sack. I can't make you love me, Brad and they never will. We got into JD Vance at the Republican Jewish Coalition dodging the Tucker question by condemning Fuentes and defending Rogan, which completely misses the point. Fuentes never had influence over you. Rogan is besides the point. Tucker is the issue. Norman Finkelstein was on saying Jews who support Israel deserve the antisemitism coming their way, I addressed why that starts from a false premise. And I did the Milo Yiannopoulos deportation impression, a Mamdani breakdown on his "death just kind of happened on 9/11" tweet, plus impressions of Tucker, Gavin Newsom, Ro Khanna, Andrew Wilson, Jordan Peterson, and a very honest attempt at Hassan Piker that I'll admit didn't totally land.
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I jumped on for a bonus live stream because this couldn't wait. A clip of JD Vance at the RJC is circulating, he's asked about Tucker Carlson and his answer is that we should be able to remain friends with people we have political disagreements with. I have a problem with that framing. The objections to Tucker are not political disagreements. We're not arguing about tax rates or military policy. We're talking about lying, simping for Putin, calling Hamas a political organization, smearing Ben Shapiro as a dual-loyalty Jew who can't be trusted, Holocaust revisionism, confusing an entire generation about who the good guys are. Those are ethical disagreements. Behavioral disagreements. And framing them as simply political is either deeply confused or a deliberate dodge. I also get into what happens to a movement when it refuses to draw ideological borders, look at what happened to the left and the rise of the DSA. Conservatism means conserving something. You can't do that while giving cover to the people actively working to destroy it. This one had to come out. I'll be back for a full episode soon.
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Tucker Carlson doesn't know if algebra is real. I'm not joking, the same guy who constantly talks about the decline of Western civilization and how China is beating us in STEM isn't sure if math was invented by humans. Meanwhile, Macklemore performed at MetLife calling for a free Palestine. This is the Same Love guy, the one who built his career on LGBTQ anthems. Macklemore, the people you're covering for throw gay people off rooftops. We also broke down the settler violence narrative and why the Western media's outrage is perfectly calibrated to miss the point entirely, the UK sanctioning Israel this week while ignoring the jihadis operating inside their own borders, and I gave Foreign Minister Miliband an honesty translator he desperately needed. Keir Starmer apparently thinks the best way to discourage terrorism is to reward it. And we closed out with something I'm genuinely excited about, I figured out how to use ChatGPT for bedtime stories with my kids, and they loved it more than any screen time we've ever done. Jonathan Haidt, if you're watching, I think I cracked it.
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I'm coming to you remotely today, it's that limbo week between camp and school. Two stories I had to get into.
First, the JD Vance Hamptons fundraiser. A lot of people in the Jewish community reacted as if Vance was raising money at the home of a Tucker Carlson investor. I get the alarm bells, but I want to get it right: it was an RNC fundraiser, Omid Malik's involvement with the Tucker Carlson network ended a while ago, and mischaracterizing it costs us credibility when it actually matters. That said, Tucker Carlson IS the core issue, and the refusal of anyone in his orbit to draw clear lines is a real problem.
Second, Mark Ruffalo used the Hollywood merger story to call the Ellisons genocide supporters because they back Israel. Here's what I think everyone misses: the hate comes second. The lie comes first. Before Hitler convinced anyone to harm Jews, he had to convince them Jews were evil. That's exactly what the genocide accusation against Israel does, it gives otherwise good people permission to hate. Mark Ruffalo may love Jews in his heart. It doesn't matter. He's handing out licenses.
Plus: Jordan Peterson as Candace's therapist, PBD selling esrogim for Sukkot, and Chang.
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