Former President Bill Clinton (I voted for him) and novelist James Patterson on Thursday night were guests on The Daily Show, possibly the funniest late-night show on television these days, despite its acerbic and often repulsive leftist POV. Being one of the last living liberal Orthodox Jews, I can still enjoy a comedy show with which I disagree. In that sense, last night’s TDS was a challenge. Having crossed off John Oliver and Keith Olbermann over their regurgitation of tired old 1960s diatribes and dumping them on my country, I will now have to give up Jon Stewart and his minions, making Yinon Magal’s Patriots my only late-night respite. War is hell…
Here’s the exchange between host Jordan Klepper and Bill Clinton that came almost before the end of the interview (I watched the full, 30-minute version on YouTube). Mind you, the text below was recorded by the YouTube AI and then streamlined by ChatGPT. I checked it for bizarre stuff, so this is as accurate as it gets. Feel free to compare it to the enclosed video.
JORDAN KLEPPER: Before I let you guys go, I do want to get your thoughts on what’s happening in the news today. I think we covered this in the first act, talking about Iran. You’ve sat at the table. You’ve tried to negotiate peace in the Middle East. And now we have Donald Trump talking about whether he’s someone who can summon that—bring that forth. There’s a lot of uncertainty around what the next steps are going to be. As someone who’s been in similar positions, what do you hope for? What advice do you have?
BILL CLINTON: First of all, they’re not talking about negotiating peace in the Middle East—because the Israelis, under Prime Minister Netanyahu, have no intention of giving the Palestinians a state. And now, the Palestinians are too divided and crushed to organize themselves to achieve it. President Trump, apparently, agrees with that—that they shouldn’t have a state. But you don’t want a disaster either.
So far, it’s a fair depiction of what I, and my prime minister uphold, and 90% of the Knesset voted on, which is, you’ll never have a Palestinian State, not ever, because on October 7, 2023, we here in Israel have lost all of our delusions regarding who and what you are, and what your true designs are against us. We’ll never walk into this pit ever again.
But then came the ugly part—remarks from someone who knows better, yet chose to feed a New York City leftist audience the kind of drivel they came expecting to hear.
BILL CLINTON: Mr. Netanyahu has long wanted to fight Iran, because that way he can stay in office forever. I mean, he’s been there most of the last 20 years.
You get it? Every time Hamas or Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets at Israel – Netanyahu fired back because that’s how he could stay in office. Every time Iran fired 300 ballistic missiles in one night on Israel – Bibi recognized an opportunity to win the next election. In that case, the October 7 atrocities must have been a bonanza for the Israeli PM, the more dead Jews, the better it was for his political chances.
What happened to you, Bill Clinton? Is this how far you’d go to sell a book? Weren’t you there at the 2000 Camp David Summit, when Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the PA Chairman 95% of his demands, including eastern Jerusalem, only to be rejected and for Arafat to fire off the bloodiest Intifada, murdering more than a thousand Israelis – yes, you were there, and yes, you described just what I’ve written here, in vivid color.
BILL CLINTON: I think we should be trying to defuse this situation, and I hope President Trump will do that. I hope anybody there will do that. We’ve got to convince our friends in the Middle East that we’ll stand with them and try to protect them.
But choosing undeclared wars, in which the primary victims are civilians—people who are not politically involved, who just want to live decent lives—that’s not a very good solution.
Do I think we have to try to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon? I do. I tried at that, and we had some success.
But we don’t need this constant, outright killing of civilians who can’t defend themselves. They just want a chance to live.
[Crowd Cheering]
You lying [enter your favorite expletive]. For one thing, the Iranians danced around their nuclear agreement with you like drunk Polaks after a pogrom – that is to say, they fooled you and your successor, GW Bush, and you knew and did nothing about it. You couldn’t “defuse this situation,” Obama couldn’t, you can’t defuse barbarians who hate not just Jews, not just America and the West, but conspire to murder their own kind, Muslim Arabs, who happen to be Sunni. But you know all that, and you’ve emerged now as precisely the callused narcissist Republicans have been saying you were all these years.
I used to consider you one of the sound, moderate pillars of the Democratic Party of which I am still a member. But you’re not. You’re just a flippant cavalier selling his best friends for a book campaign.
JORDAN KLEPPER: Well said.
You know, Jordan Klepper has made a career over the past decade over making fun of MAGA folks who aren’t well read and love and admire Donald Trump without knowing much about him. Well, it’s time somebody did the same to TDS audiences, find out exactly what they know about left-wing reality.
