Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

Help Mohammad document settler attacks in West Bank: https://chuffed.org/project/help-mohammad-document-settler-attacks-in-west-bank
Go to our sponsor https://venice.ai/useful and use code useful to enjoy private, uncensored AI. Using our code will get you 20% off a pro plan.
Visit www.functionhealth.com/USEFUL and use gift code USEFUL25 for a $25 credit toward your membership.
Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFUL
Check out Webroot: https://webroot.com/USEFUL
Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://avocadogreenmattress.com/IDIOTS
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click here for the full interview with Jose Luis Granados Ceja: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/full-interview-maga-war-marco-rubio?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Watch this week's Friday Free-For-All: John Fetterman and Claude AI Each Just Threatened to Kill People https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/what-do-john-fetterman-and-ai-have?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Join us LIVE on Youtube every Monday at 10am EST for Monday Mourning, where we watch the Sunday morning news shows so that you don't have to.
Israel has recently announced new measures that allow it to steal more Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank. Check out how this was covered in Israeli media vs US media.
Can you guess which is more honest in its coverage?
First, Israeli media writes this:

They explain that the Cabinet intends to further their annexation, or theft, of Palestinian land, which is at least honest in its intention.
In contrast, here’s the New York Times:

Israel gives itself more control over occupied West Bank?? We’ve never seen this euphemism for theft before. It seems the subservient New York Times has become more creative than ever in its linguistic gymnastics to avoid any legitimate coverage of Israeli crimes.
Reminds us of the classic from 2014 when a missile, seemingly shot by no one, ‘found’ Gazan civilians watching the World Cup:

To check in on how things are going for the Palestinians who live in the land that Israel is giving itself more control over, we’re speaking with Mohammad Hesham Huraini, an independent journalist from Masafer Yatta, the same West Bank community depicted in the 2025 Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land.
We ask Mohammad: did winning the Oscar have any benefit for your community? With one of the directors already murdered by settlers and the rest facing constant threats of terror, his answer is depressing.
Please share this interview to get Mohammad’s reporting out to the world. Thanks for supporting independent media.

Our Sponsors:
* Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://AvocadoGreenMattress.com/IDIOTS
* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFUL
* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFUL
* Check out Webroot: https://www.webroot.com

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donations

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Go to our sponsor https://venice.ai/useful and use code useful to enjoy private, uncensored AI. Using our code will get you 20% off a pro plan.
Visit www.functionhealth.com/USEFUL and use gift code USEFUL25 for a $25 credit toward your membership.
Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFUL
Check out Webroot: https://webroot.com/USEFUL
Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://avocadogreenmattress.com/IDIOTS
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click here for the full interview with Jose Luis Granados Ceja: https://open.substack.com/pub/usefulidiots/p/full-interview-maga-war-marco-rubio?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Watch this week's Friday Free-For-All: John Fetterman and Claude AI Each Just Threatened to Kill People https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/what-do-john-fetterman-and-ai-have?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Join us LIVE on Youtube every Monday at 10am EST for Monday Mourning, where we watch the Sunday morning news shows so that you don't have to.
This week we’re looking at the intensification of the decades-old US blockade of Cuba. Trump has imposed an even harsher blockade, blocking fuel to the country, leading to an even more dire humanitarian crisis.
Just this week, a report showed that US sanctions are now reportedly killing children with cancer: “Amid worsening shortages, Cuba's rate of childhood cancer survival has fallen by 15% — from roughly 80% to 65% — according to data from Cuba’s Health Ministry.”
And this isn’t just collateral damage of US policy: kids with cancer are the targets of the murderous US sanctions, which are aimed to harm the most vulnerable in a society.
Joining us to talk about these sanctions and the history of US-Cuba relations is journalist José Luis Granados Ceja.
Useful Idiots: For DropSite News, you cowrote the article: Marco Rubio Is Deliberately Blocking Trump From Cuba Talks. Can you tell us what you discovered?José Luis Granados Ceja: What we found was that these claims that Trump was making loudly to media outlets: that they are in talks with Cuba and that they’re thinking about a deal, don’t line up with what we were hearing from people both in the U.S. and in Cuba.We were able to ascertain that these claims of secret negotiations happening in Mexico were also not true. And a source was able to confirm that the official in Mexico City from the Secretary of Foreign Relations was not actually involved at all.So when you put all those pieces together, it very much looks like Marco Rubio is deliberately lying to Trump, that the State Department is not being forthcoming about what’s actually happening in terms of high-level negotiations between Cuba and the United States.And our hypothesis here is that it’s about trying to lay the groundwork for more radical action.Useful Idiots: Can you tell us how Marco Rubio’s history with Cuba might be driving this?José Luis Granados Ceja: We have to remember, Marco Rubio is obsessed with overthrowing the Cuban revolution. Apparently in his own autobiography when he was positioning himself to be a candidate for president, he wrote that he used to dream about leading an army of exiles and installing himself as president of Cuba. He’s obsessed with this idea.Obviously, he already had to concede when it comes to Venezuela. But I’m not sure that he’s willing to accept anything similar when it comes to Cuba. So he may be deliberately misleading Trump in order to say, ‘well, talks didn’t work, right? We were at the table. Nothing happened. Guess we’re going to have to invade or bomb or do something similar to what we did in Venezuela, or possibly more drastic.’Subscribe for the full interview with José Luis where he reveals the new mafia state that Rubio wants to impose on Cuba (with himself as don), how a pan-American coalition could take on the US in Latin America, and whether recent US aggression in Cuba will push China to enter the conflict.

Our Sponsors:
* Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://AvocadoGreenMattress.com/IDIOTS
* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFUL
* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFUL
* Check out Webroot: https://www.webroot.com

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donations

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Go to our sponsor https://venice.ai/useful and use code useful to enjoy private, uncensored AI. Using our code will get you 20% off a pro plan.
Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFUL
Check out Webroot: https://webroot.com/USEFUL
Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://avocadogreenmattress.com/IDIOTS
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Watch this week's Friday Free-For-All: Jeff Epstein, the Russian Spy: Bari Weiss' CBS Brings Back Russiagate https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/jeff-epstein-the-russian-spy-bari?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Join us LIVE on Youtube every Monday at 10am EST for Monday Mourning, where we watch the Sunday morning news shows so that you don't have to.
For our recap of the week, including the new Russiagate conspiracy that Epstein was a Russian agent, subscribe to watch our Friday Free-For-All: Jeff Epstein, the Russian Spy.

Our Sponsors:
* Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://AvocadoGreenMattress.com/IDIOTS
* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFUL
* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFUL
* Check out Webroot: https://www.webroot.com

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donations

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Go to our sponsor https://venice.ai/useful and use code useful to enjoy private, uncensored AI. Using our code will get you 20% off a pro plan.
Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFUL
Check out Webroot: https://webroot.com/USEFUL
Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://avocadogreenmattress.com/IDIOTS
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Watch this week's Friday Free-For-All: Jeff Epstein, the Russian Spy: Bari Weiss' CBS Brings Back Russiagate https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/jeff-epstein-the-russian-spy-bari?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Join us LIVE on Youtube every Monday at 10am EST for Monday Mourning, where we watch the Sunday morning news shows so that you don't have to.
For our recap of the week, including the new Russiagate conspiracy that Epstein was a Russian agent, subscribe to watch our Friday Free-For-All: Jeff Epstein, the Russian Spy.
As the Trump administration turns the world into chaos, threatening to bomb Iran, killing Americans in Minnesota, kidnapping presidents in Venezuela, and gutting the nation’s already-terrible healthcare system, Israel’s genocide in Gaza has fallen out of the corporate news cycle.
Our guest, Palestinian-American law student Ahmad Ibsais, joins Useful Idiots to explain that the reports from Gaza weren’t just pushed aside to get more views from higher-performing news stories, but intentionally buried for a much more pointed and, as always, nefarious reason.
Useful Idiots: Why have we stopped seeing of coverage of Gaza in Western media?Ahmad Ibsais: Right before the ceasefire was a time where we saw so much public outrage that a genocide was taking place. And it wasn’t because Palestinian voices suddenly became credible in any way. It’s because the extremity of Israeli violence reached the Western consciousness in a way it could process.There were so many news stories about children starving to death, and people could conditionally recognize that Palestinians were dying in a way that was not their fault. And that’s where the ceasefire came.So now, any violation of the ceasefire or coverage of it, brings into question the fallacy that America was able to broker it. Like is America even a superpower anymore? Does the Israeli state even care what America says or does?Second, let’s keep up this illusion that America is not contributing to the genocide or that they’re in any way complicit. Coverage raises the question: Palestinians are still dying, so what are we doing and how are we enabling this?That’s why we don’t see it anymore. And they’ll wait, as they have done in the past, until Palestinians respond in a meaningful way. And that’s when the ceasefire ‘breaks.’Our full interview with Ahmad Ibsais is free to all. As an independent media team, we rely on your support to keep going, so please subscribe and join the Useful Idiots community!

Our Sponsors:
* Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://AvocadoGreenMattress.com/IDIOTS
* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFUL
* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFUL
* Check out Webroot: https://www.webroot.com

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donations

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Go to our sponsor https://venice.ai/useful and use code useful to enjoy private, uncensored AI. Using our code will get you 20% off a pro plan.
Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFUL
Check out Webroot: https://webroot.com/USEFUL
Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://avocadogreenmattress.com/IDIOTS
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Watch this week's Friday Free-For-All: Jeff Epstein, the Russian Spy: Bari Weiss' CBS Brings Back Russiagate https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/jeff-epstein-the-russian-spy-bari?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Join us LIVE on Youtube every Monday at 10am EST for Monday Mourning, where we watch the Sunday morning news shows so that you don't have to.
For our recap of the week, including the new Russiagate conspiracy that Epstein was a Russian agent, subscribe to watch our Friday Free-For-All: Jeff Epstein, the Russian Spy.
This week, amid volatile tensions, deadly protests, rumors of Mossad infiltration, and threats of war, the US and Iran are scheduled to have diplomatic talks, though one side pulling out would not be surprising as the US can’t seem to stop bragging about how sanctions destroyed Iran’s economy all while threatening to bomb them.
For some much-needed clarity on the issue, we spoke to Professor Afshin Matin-Asgari, author of Axis of Empire, who participated in leftist protests during Iran’s 1978-79 revolution.
He gives a history of Iran-US relations, mocks JD Vance’s obvious misunderstanding of how Iran’s government works, debates Aaron on which side is really responsible for the violence in recent Iranian protests, and analyzes Marco Rubio’s “unpredictable” diplomacy proposal.
Useful Idiots: Secretary of State Marco Rubio laid out the terms for what he says would be ‘meaningful talks.’ Do you think that Iran will accept those terms?Afshin Matin-Asgari: To go back to the background of these talks, when Trump canceled the so-called Obama nuclear deal, he said that he did it to force a better deal on Iran. That was during his first term. And that never happened. All the pressure, sanctions, threats, and assassination of Iranian military personnel didn’t work.So he joined Israel’s war on Iran.What happens at this point? The Islamic Republic is in its weakest position it has ever been because of an accumulation of a lot of problems: it has domestic unrest, the axis of resistance, including Hezbollah in Syria, is gone, it’s more vulnerable than it ever was to military attacks.So Bahrain has accepted to come to negotiations. If Trump can make the Islamic Republic accept some of his terms, he could claim victory, impose the new deal on Iran, and kind of walk away from this, which may not be a bad thing because it at least averts a full-scale military confrontation, something that everyone knows would be a disaster. But it can’t be predicted.Our full interview with Professor Matin-Asgari is free to all. As an independent media team, we rely on your support to keep going, so please subscribe and join the Useful Idiots community!
00:00 Intro
00:59 Jeff Epstein, the Russian Spy?
09:30 Afshin Matin-Asgari interview
11:43 Responding to Rubio's terms
22:56 JD Vance clearly doesn't understand how Iran's government works
43:45 US Officials can't stop bragging about destroying Iran's economy

Our Sponsors:
* Check out Avocado Green Mattress: https://AvocadoGreenMattress.com/IDIOTS
* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFUL
* Check out Quince: https://quince.com/USEFUL
* Check out Webroot: https://www.webroot.com

Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/useful-idiots-with-katie-halper-and-aaron-mate/donations

Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy