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It is around that time in an election year where the typical platitudes and ultimatums exclaiming it is “do or die,” “now or never” are being thrown around. The overarching narrative from the past two elections remains the same: the Democrats are not great: they bolster the military industrial complex, make empty promises to working people and maintain sometimes identical policies to their right wing counterparts on issues like immigration … but we must choose them or face the wrath of Donald Trump and the Republicans.
In this spirited debate on the Scheer Intelligence podcast, host Robert Scheer spars with Jeff Cohen—author, co-founder of RootsAction.org, founder of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), and retired journalism professor at Ithaca College. The two butt heads around the issue of lesser evilism, questioning whether this year will bring actual change from the Democrats in their support for Israel’s suppression of the Palestineans alongside a range of other pressing issues.
Cohen stresses that while the Biden administration’s actions involving Gaza, Ukraine and its saber-rattling of China and Russia are “inexcusable,” a Trump reelection will prove to be worse on all fronts. “Trump’s second term will be very, very different than the first. He had no plan, it was chaotic. They [now] have a plan,” Cohen tells Scheer. “They’re going to implement ‘Drill, baby, drill!’ which threatens the whole planet. And trust me, they have a plan to suppress progressive dissent.”
Scheer fires back, arguing that this is the exact same argument that has been heard not only in recent elections but for most of his long life. “What we do is we center most of our political discussion, knowledge in this country around the character of the president and these periodic elections: who are the virtuous, who are the evil?” Scheer retorts. “Whereas, in fact, we face very profound, systemic problems that the election tends to obscure.”
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This transcript was produced by an automated transcription service. Please refer to the audio interview to ensure accuracy.
Robert Scheer: Hi. This is Robert Scheer with another edition of Scheer Intelligence where the intelligence comes from my guest, in this case, it’s somebody I have admired for a number of decades now, Jeff Cohen. And I knew him in many incarnations, but Jeff, you were a Professor of Journalism at Ithaca College. And I remember, because you administered the Izzy Awards in memory of a great journalist, I.F. Stone, fiercely independent. And I first was introduced to him hanging on a subway strap and on the IRT in the Bronx, reading him when he was in the PM or Compass or New York paper, and I just admired him, and I followed him over the years. And then when I was editing ramparts, I was actually able to commission him to write about the Six Day War, because he had been on one of the first ships taking refugees in to what became Israel and and he wrote a quite independent article raising some serious questions about this preemptive war that ended up giving Israel the West Bank, Gaza, part of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. And so I want to, I guess what I want to talk to you about today you’ve been on the progressive side of things. We’re talking in the middle of this democratic convention, the coronation of Kamala Harris. And you were, I was at the 216 convention when Bernie got pushed down by the party establishment and Hillary Clinton got the nomination. And you and Norman Solomon, a colleague and activist friend of yours, in Roots Action, a grassroots group, were very instrumental in organizing a progressive coalition that raised a lot of questions, and then you were a delegate to pandemic got in the way, and so it was by virtual to the 2020 convention. And I want to know, yeah, I want to do a check in with you on what’s going on. We were now, you know, we heard from the Clintons and Barack Obama and everybody else. You know how great the Democratic Party is… And, you know, but the Democratic Party we’re in the middle of, you know, what the UN is now calling a genocide, and horror in the Mideast wing, dangerous situation in Ukraine, all these armaments going in and what’s going to happen there. The Democratic Party also strikes me as kind of the war party. Now, Kamala Harris has said some things critical about the treatment by Israel of people in Gaza. But nonetheless, you know, I noticed in Joe Biden’s speech down there, he didn’t even, I don’t think, endorsed the two state solution. It was kind of, you know… So what’s your take on what’s going on? And where is the progressive block here in the Democratic Party? Are they being co opted? Are they getting their wish? Is Kamala an improvement? She at least talks about working people well, and she doesn’t call them the deplorables, right? Well, go ahead.
Jeff Cohen: I think it’s a complex issue. But Rootsaction.org for 20 months, had a campaign originally called “Don’t Run Joe,” changed its name after he announced he was officially running to “Step Aside Joe.” Our goal was to get Biden out because he couldn’t defeat the Neo-fascist threat represented by Trump and the Maga movement. We hope to get him out months and months ago so there could be an open primary process. That horrible debate performance that he turned in led to us, all of a sudden not being alone, and there were all these other people saying he should… he should step aside. By the time he did step aside, it was so late there was no way for an open process to happen, and we end up with Kamala being coronated. Is she an improvement on policy? Maybe a tiny bit, but in terms of taking the fight to Trump and being able to articulate the basic issues of freedom, freedom of press, freedom of choice. She’s so much better than Joe Biden as a candidate. That’s why there is all this enthusiasm. Because five weeks ago, most progressive people, liberal people, thought Trump was inevitable, that a Trump second term was going to happen, that Biden couldn’t win. It was the argument we made month after month after month. And so getting rid of- getting Joe Biden to step aside and Kamala Harris to ascend, and then the choice of Tim Walz, which I think was an excellent choice. And Norman and I and Roots Action, we waged a campaign against Josh Shapiro because they were leaning toward taking the governor of Pennsylvania as the VP running mate for Kamala, Josh Shapiro, who had compared ceasefire, you know, Gaza protesters and encampments to KKK and white supremacists! So Josh Shapiro would have really been a divisive choice. We’re happy they chose Tim Walz. It was the best thing, one of the best choices Kamala Harris has ever made. So on the number one issue, are we more optimistic that the Trump and the Maga movement can be defeated in November? Yes, I think it’s 50-50, now, if you’d asked me five weeks ago, I would have said it’s a 90-10 chance that Trump was going to win. So it’s a big improvement on policy, she’s slightly better. Tim Walz is much better. The beauty of Tim Walz, unlike you know, he’s only been a politician for less than 20 years, and when he first ran for Congress in a pretty red or purple district, rural district. Jim Hightower was out there, the Great Texas populist campaigning alongside Tim Walz and so Walz doesn’t have these years of rubbing shoulders with the richest people in society. Joe Biden does, Kamala Harris does. But the reason Tim Walz is so… has been sort of a shot in the arm is he doesn’t come across as a corporate politician. He comes across as someone who was a school teacher, was an assistant football coach, you know, and and doesn’t talk with the pomposity of a politician. So, I’m more optimistic on the number one issue of, can Trump be defeated? And as we’ve done it, Roots Action for months and months. You know, it’s the it’s the issue of Gaza that could bring down the Democratic Party. We have written column after column, including one that was just in The Hill, “Kamala Harris, you’re too close to AIPAC. You’re too closely tied to Biden’s Gaza policy.” And we pointed out in that column that 700,000 people voted uncommitted Democrat – these are Democrats – voted uncommitted in Democratic primaries, including 100,000 in Michigan, a large number in Nevada, another swing state, a large number in North Carolina, another swing state, a large number in Wisconsin. So you know, these elections in these swing states are often determined by 5-10, 20,000 votes, and if you’ve got all of these people, rightfully, protesting this horrendous policy of arming the slaughter of civilians in Gaza while pretending that you’re working for peace when you’re not. The way to work for peace is to stop the arms. So I am concerned that in the swing states there will be a lot of Democratic leaning voters who are going to vote third party or stay home and Trump could narrowly get reelected, and that would make it very, very difficult for any of us to do the organizing that we do, whether it’s for peace, whether it’s for Medicare for all, green New Deal, whatever our issue is, Trump does not respect democratic norms. And he’s talked about military, you know, calling up the troops and invoking the insurrection act. It could be very, very difficult for progressives to organize. So our like, you know, in 2020 we had a campaign that was pretty effective in three swing states, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona, and it was the campaign was called “Vote Trump Out, Then Challenge Biden.” Now our view is we got to keep Trump out, but from day one or before day one, we challenge Kamala Harris, and we have a great track record of fighting Biden, even before he took office on his crazy appointments, Rahm Emanuel, his US ambassador in Japan. He wanted Michelle Flournoy, a warmonger, as Defense Secretary. So you know, we have to stop Trump, and then we have to organize. Around and against Kamala.
Robert Scheer: So let me ask you to put on your professor hat, and I’ll put mine on. And let’s talk about lesser evilism, and let’s talk about what I would consider and some others who might use it very effectively, Trump derangement syndrome. That once again, this election, for most of the people that I run into on the campus elsewhere, will probably be, you know, and it came out at the Democratic Convention already with Biden’s speech and everything, that Trump’s a Nazi. Trump’s going to bring fascism. Trump… Well, one thing, Trump was president, and yes, you can talk about what was dangerous and wild and so forth, about his rhetoric and action so but the fact is, in terms of the pandemic, I don’t want to defend Trump here, but it was hardly much worse than what Democrats would do. You can get into the details, but basically, in terms of easing the burden, he was almost Roosevelt, like at throwing money at the problem. Unemployment insurance was quadrupled, you know, and people could get by. And, you know, when we didn’t go to wars, he actually tried, you know, with North Korea and others, to break down some barriers. So I want to put a straight question to you, are the Democrats, the party of war? Because it seems to me, in my lifetime, which is a bit longer than yours, I’m constantly, ever since I was a kid, trapped into supporting the Democrats as if not the great Savior, at least the lesser evil. And yet, most of my life, I was supposed to be scared of these Republicans, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and so forth. They actually didn’t get us into wars, in Nixon’s case, you could say expanded it Cambodia and so forth. But the fact is, where we are right now with Biden is in a horrible pre what? Flirting with World War Three situation. So the war, peace question, you can mention all the others, seems to me to be very central and, you know, Nixon turned down in the end to be in favor of detente, and he’s the one that made the peace with China. Now we’re talking about having a whole war with China, and he bragged about it at the convention! But, you know, we’ll break this hold of China. You know, fact is, the prosperity of China is the prosperity of a large part of the world’s population. They have a right to push for that. So does India, so does the global South, so does Brazil. So I just really want to question your assumption that this great evil of Trumpism. And then we have, okay, maybe not the most perfect progressive alternative, but basically progressive. Was Hillary Clinton, progressive when she went into Libya and did all this destabilizing stuff? I mean, let me challenge you on that.
Jeff Cohen: Yeah, alright, let’s go through it.
Robert Scheer: And as a journalist, I’m not saying, I’m not here to tell people how to vote, you know, and so forth. I just want to get past a certain hysteria about, you know, the Nazis are coming. And yet the- I think when, when the Nazis come, as they did in Germany, it’s usually because more enlightened people caved and did not deal with the real problems and left this vacuum. Well go on…
Jeff Cohen: Right, alright let me give you a few, a few responses.
Robert Scheer: Take your time. I’ve talked too much. Go ahead.
Jeff Cohen: Trump’s second term will be very, very different than the first. He had no plan, it was chaotic. They [now] have a plan. They have a plan that’s going to be implemented. They’re going to fire huge numbers of people. They’re going to implement “Drill, baby, drill!” which threatens the whole planet. And trust me, they have a plan to suppress progressive dissent. Are you correct that you know, Nazis and fascism comes to the fore because of the failures of what came before? Of course, that’s the reason we’ve been fighting the neoliberalism within the Democratic Party. If you get into office and you don’t deliver for working people, especially white working class people and white male working class, they’re easy prey for the Neo fascist using their wedge issues. So yes, the I think it was eight years of corporatism and hesitation and compromise on the part of Obama that led directly to a Trump. But getting to the war and peace issue… Remember, the invasion of Iraq was Bush Cheney. They were supported by all of the leading Democratic senators, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, Schumer, but it was a Republican war, and in the 1980s I can’t let it – I know you know this is true – Ronald Reagan created wars of terrorism in Central America. There were horrific wars. There was the, you know, there was the quick invasion of Grenada, but the horrific war mongering and warfare caused by Reagan, that Democrats didn’t oppose it effectively, like they should have. But there were some great Democrats, like David Bonior and others in Congress who were trying to… and even McGovern in Massachusetts got in there, I mean, tried to stop the Central America wars of terror. So on, the war and peace issue is that… are the Democrats horrifying in their arming of Netanyahu to kill civilians in Gaza. It’s completely inexcusable. It’s immoral, it’s it’s illegal, as you say, it’s a plausible…
Robert Scheer: Is it genocide?
Jeff Cohen: It’s a plausible genocide, according to the court.
Robert Scheer: What do you mean if it’s genocide, if it’s genocide, it’s not a my0 you know, it’s not something you just put on the shelf.
Jeff Cohen: I know, but you’re, you’re asking for…
Robert Scheer: And Reagan did not do, let’s be, I want to try to be objective here. Reagan… he did Grenada, and that was bad, but that’s not genocide. And what he did in South America, yes, you can criticize it, not genocide. And the fact of the matter is, we’re being asked right now, you have an incredibly frightening situation with the Ukraine, and what’s going to happen here. The F 16s that can deliver nuclear weapons. What is, what are the stakes here? You have the demonization of China, you know, for their success. And I just can’t… I’m here to discuss. I mean… No, I want to discuss. I don’t want to. We’re not here to get people to go out and vote this way or not. I just want to challenge this mythology that somehow, if you’re on the underwriting genocide, or you’re flirting with World War Three, or you’re demonizing China and saying they’re the big destabilizing force in the world when they’ve lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, for God’s sake, and you know, you say, we have to fence them in and then you have Nancy Pelosi going against what Nixon’s accomplishment was try to have peace with China, and she’s going to now get the whole Taiwan issue. I’m not accepting this benign view of the Democrats.
Jeff Cohen: Alright let me respond.
Robert Scheer: I don’t… I haven’t put forward a benign view. I mean… Well that’s what the that’s what the Trump derangement thing…
Jeff Cohen: Yeah but you have to be honest about Trump. You’re not being honest about Trump. You’re being…
Robert Scheer: Let me take a guy that you don’t like at all. Nobody seems to like him, Elon Musk, okay? And he’s backing Trump now. And I look at there’s different capitalists. You know, after all, Roosevelt dealt with a lot of capitalists. If you believe in trade, Elon Musk has his biggest factory in Shanghai, okay? And I just noticed the European Union today, they say, well, they’ll let them bring Teslas in from China with only 9% tax. But if China.. a car is made by BYD, a Chinese company, then there’s going to be a 35% tax. So you know we’re here is… we’re complaining about China messing up trade, but we have no problem with Joe Biden building up the whole chip industry to keep China out. This is serious stuff, and what I’m hearing here from a lot of Democrats is kind of a minimizing the real danger of this moment, which has a lot to do with American exceptionalism, hegemony, virtue and the denial to the rest of the world to make their own history, and the kinds of shifts that are happening in the world, where China and Saudi Arabia and India are actually getting along better doing trade is not necessarily dominated by the dollar. I want you to focus as a progressive and as a professor type and a journalist on some of these contradictions…
Jeff Cohen: Yes, and as an independent, I’m, I mean, you’re, you’re talking to someone who has criticized the Democrats and the Biden administration on every one of these counts. So you know, there’s no issue we fought harder on than to save Palestinian lives. To say Palestinian lives matter. We’ve been doing it since October 9. So it is…
Robert Scheer: This is at Roots Action?
Jeff Cohen: At Roots Action and in my column, writing, and Norman Solomon’s column writing and our writing together. But let’s, let’s keep in mind what’s going on here. The Biden policy has been horrendous. It’s inexcusable. It is plausible, genocide. What’s Trump’s position? We need to let Israel finish the job. He literally called Biden a Palestinian. The last thing we need to do is put pressure on Netanyahu. So it’s hard to imagine Gaza being worse when Trump becomes president, but Gaza will be worse. And when it comes to China, see, I get every right wing email. I watch Fox News, so you don’t have to. If you watch Fox News, you see Joe Biden week after week was called an agent of the CCP. He’s a, he’s an agent of influence for the CCP, every Fox News viewer knows that means Chinese Communist Party. So they believe when they talk about being- having a different policy with regard to Putin on the right wing, it’s because they want to send – and they say it explicitly on the right wing – we need to be sending… we need to be polarizing with China. So… So don’t say that the Democrats are a war party. We have two war parties, but in one party, we can actually fight dissent, make demands, win some demands, and in the Trump cult known as the Republican Party, it scares the hell out of me about World War Three. Are we currently facing a crisis, two crises that could lead to world war three? There’s no doubt about it. Has Joe Biden inflamed the situations, both in Europe and in the Middle East. Yes, he has! And Trump would be worse. So we have two war parties, let’s never forget that, but there is a big peace faction in the Democratic Party. And while Trump is always bragging about how he’s going to clamp down on journalists and the fake news media, at least during the Biden administration, none of us who are independent journalists have feared that we’re going to be silenced and…
Robert Scheer: What?! What?
Jeff Cohen: And that’s a big difference.
Robert Scheer: Wasn’t it Biden that imprisoned, kept Julian Assange in prison?
Jeff Cohen: Who brought the prosecution? Who brought the prosecution?
Robert Scheer: No, but come on. We would say under Biden. Look, you know, obviously I’m in a really weak position here, because everyone I know, and they’ll all object to this conversation, and they’ll all say, I’m apologizing for Trump and so forth. And you know, you I mentioned I.F. Stone when we first began this discussion, my great hero in journalism, I.F. Stone, was willing to challenge even the Korean War…
Jeff Cohen: No, I’m…
Robert Scheer: Which we now remember somehow a virtuous war. He challenged the Democrats when they were in and as the Republicans. And by the way, I don’t accept the idea that somehow Trump represents a more war like manifestation of the Republican Party than say, George Bush. You know, after all, the so called moderates in both of these parties managed to wage war with abandon. Lyndon Johnson. Was he a moderate? But he killed, by conservative estimates, 4 million innocent people in Indochina. So I just don’t want, I’m trying to… The reason I do these shows. I’m trying to have a serious discussion. I’m not trying to win anybody over to my position.
Jeff Cohen: Yep.
Robert Scheer: You’re, you’re an important person in my mind in terms of your commentary, so is Norman Solomon. I’m not picking a food fight here. I just want to have an open discussion about the risks, the risks of lesser evilism.
Jeff Cohen: Yeah.
Robert Scheer: You know. And, you know, and it’s true, on a number of issues. The income inequality equality say, let’s switch it to domestic. Who gave us the biggest income inequality? It wasn’t Ronald Reagan. It was Bill Clinton! And it happened with his deregulation of Wall Street, the Financial Services Modernization Act, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Let these swindlers destroy the income of you know, people, working people, what have you– hitting, by the way, brown and black people, college graduates, more than any other group you know, in terms of the housing swindles. So really, I want just… you know, let’s just,
Jeff Cohen: Yeah, I…
Robert Scheer: Forget about affiliation. I just really wonder about this trap, and I’m not telling people how to vote. You know that most of us don’t even live in an area where it’s going to matter in terms of the outcome. What I am concerned about is what some people do call Trump derangement syndrome. That, my God, you know the Nazis are here, and if you don’t do exactly this and support the rest and give us all money, then it’s coming. Well, we had four years of Trump. There were bad things and so forth, but my God, it was not… and it’s just not fair to say he brought us to a more dangerous moment in towards terms of international politics than Biden. It’s just not true.
Jeff Cohen: Well let me respond, and I’m trying to be I’m trying to be analytical. I don’t want to push people in any direction on where to vote or how to vote. But I just, I don’t like your conception of Trump derangement syndrome. We watched him for four years, and we saw the chaos. We saw him hire people that often resisted his worst tendencies, did not carry out his orders, and he’s telling us, listen to what he’s telling us Trump is going to have an administration. It will be a retribution administration, and they have 1000s of names of people that they’re going to put, not only into political positions at the top of the government, but into civil servant positions in the middle levels of the government. It’s going to be very, very smooth. So, yeah, I’m not saying the Nazis are coming, but if Trump wins re election…
Robert Scheer: That’s what Biden did say. Didn’t he say? Well,
Jeff Cohen: I’m not Biden. I mean…
Robert Scheer: Okay but this is what when you object to this Trump derangement syndrome, they are using this against…
Jeff Cohen: Oh, that’s all they’ve got. But that’s not you.
Robert Scheer: I’m talking about the Democrats.
Jeff Cohen: That’s all the Democrats have. But you and I are independent, progressive analysts and journalists, so we can see the distinctions. We can see that yes, Biden, Biden administration kept Assange in prison, but it was the Trump administration that prosecuted him. And and it was the Trump justice department that’s going to come after you and me in the second term, because they now have the names and they’re now serious with Project 2025. I think comparing Trump second administration say, “Well, he didn’t really cause all that much damage…” The “drill, baby, drill” is sickening, and that can endanger the whole planet. You know, the only problem I have when you bring up lesser evilism is the people who don’t tell the truth. The people who exaggerate the goodness of the Democratic Party, that kills me. That’s not what you should do. If you’re an independent, if you’re a journalist, if you’re a serious academic, a serious analyst, you tell the truth about both parties. You don’t minimize and so if you’re talking about these Democrats that all of a sudden want us to forget about Gaza or forget about all of the promises that Biden made that he broke. And by the way, if Biden had kept 1/3 of his domestic policy promises, there’d be a landslide. We wouldn’t… Trump would be a joke, but the Democrats get into power with all these great promises, and then they don’t deliver. It’s the way that neoliberalism of the Democrats leads to Neo fascism, not only in our country, but around the world. So if all I was doing was trying to hype up the Democrats in an effort to engage in, “Well, you know, they’re actually quite good on war and peace.” No, they’re not. Joe Biden promised in 2020 to cut the military budget, and they’ve increased it every year, just like Donald Trump did every single year. What did Martin Luther King Jr say about the taking of resources by the Pentagon from money that should be going to healthcare, housing, education, the poor? He said, “It’s a demonic, destructive suction tube.” And Joe Biden has continued that. So when I hear, I’m watching the Democratic Convention all week, and you’re hearing all the promises, you know, those promises cannot be fulfilled unless the Democrats cut the military budget, you know. So we need an arms embargo. No more arms to Gaza to the Israelis. Start encouraging peace negotiations with Russia over Ukraine, instead of blocking them, as the Biden administration has done. And if you can cut the funding that goes to this demonic, destructive suction tube that’s called the military spending, the military budget, than like other advanced industrial countries, we could have free or inexpensive higher education. Other countries have it. Why? Because they don’t spend most of their discretionary budget on war or war preparation. Other countries have universal health care. Why don’t we? Why do we have millions without health care? It’s because of the military budget. So yes, my view is the Democrats are by far a lesser evil, but they still have some evil policies that have to be resisted every day that we breathe.
Robert Scheer: Okay but you know, what do you mean? The Democrats… I mean, let’s be serious here. The Democrats have pushed a policy of NATO expansion and these very countries, you know, Germany with France, Italy, that were able to devote more resources because they didn’t have such a big military budget, have now been pressured by the Biden administration, and they think it’s, you know, great achievement. He bragged about it at this convention, that they’re now increasing their military budget. They’ve cut off reacting to- I won’t go through the history of how we got involved in Ukraine, but there was a possibility going back to 2014 of not having Ukraine and Russia at each other’s throats. I just think we lose our critical ability to see what is going on when we get involved in the seductions of electoral politics and and, you know, other people will do that, and what you and I are trying to talk about here will not be heard anyway by a significant number. Our audience is not so extensive, though. The future of the Republic does not depend on you and the two of us getting this straight, I am simply trying to have an honest discussion about this. And the fact of the matter is, Trump did go to North Korea. All we’ve done is ever and I.F. Stone actually wrote a book “The Hidden History of the Korean War” to try to explain- I.F. Stone that you gave out these prizes, and by the way, you gave me one
Jeff Cohen: Well deserved.
Robert Scheer: Let me show that it was well deserved. And I remember as a kid reading I.F. Stone and thinking, and I was just a kid in the Bronx, you know, reading them in the newspaper, and I thought, Hey, there’s this thing called the Korean War, and everybody’s all agitated. We even got the UN to fly the flag and go there. And was it necessary? Well, the same thing I felt about the six day war with Israel, and Egypt and so forth that ended up being, was a preemptive war, and that’s how they get the West Bank. And in my lifetime, I’ve been lied to as if, certainly as effectively, maybe more effectively, by Democratic warmongers who have controlled the Democratic Party than Republicans. I look back on it, and I remember as a kid, I actually wore an “I like Ike” button. I think I might have been under I.F. Stone’s influence.tone influence,
Jeff Cohen: Yes.
Robert Scheer: It was so I here I was as a kid, taking an abuse from everybody I knew. How could you like Ike? And I said, “Well, the guy was a general who saw war, and he’s actually more inclined…” He ended up warning us about the military industrial complex. And I remember saying, “You know, no, I think Ike’s better than the Democrats.” And every bowler around, “No! The Democrats, they’re clearly better.” And the fact that matter is Reagan. And I interviewed Reagan, and yeah, he could sound very warlike, but he’s the one that reached out to Gorbachev. He’s the one that that said, “Wait a minute maybe we can get rid of these weapons,” and he didn’t get us into a lot of big wars. And so I just don’t, I don’t want to see where we are not allowed to discuss, you know, our own capacity, meaning that yes, we vote for the lesser evil. And I think that the Biden administration, in terms of its reaction, and, you know, I think his personal financial involvement of his son, so forth, does bear question…
Jeff Cohen: Yes.
Robert Scheer: What were they doing in Ukraine?
Jeff Cohen: I agree. I agree! Yeah.
Robert Scheer: And we are, and let me, just as a person who cares about peace, ask you, are we not in one of the, maybe, I would argue, the most dangerous time we’ve ever been in? With these two major wars going on in Gaza, Israel’s a nuclear armed nation, and with Russia now it, and you know, how, where is it going to end? And there’s no intention, really, to have negotiations about it, or what have you. And when somebody like Trump says, “I can settle this by reaching out to these people,” and he did go to North Korea, you know the what… The very thing I.F. Stone thought you should do, because we leveled all of Korea, in the Korean War destroyed every single building. And he wrote about that, you know… I just wonder whether we’re doing people a service as journalists or as professors or as intellectuals, to at least look at it from the other side. And where is virtue here?
Jeff Cohen: Let me respond. I believe I agree with every single one of your criticisms of the Democratic Party. That’s not the issue. I think you’re… that’s not a problem I have with anything you’re saying. I think the Ukraine policy, that war should never have happened. The US should have simply said, “No, Ukraine isn’t joining NATO.” That war could have been avoided. Everyone knows that, the general secretary of NATO admitted it, that the war could have been avoided, but they insisted on Ukraine coming into NATO. The Gaza policy is outrageous. Trump is worse on that issue. So my… there’s no doubt about it, Trump would be sending even more arms. It seems unimaginable, because Biden’s policy has been so sickening, but Trump would be worse. So my my criticism of your analysis is not that you’re exaggerating what the Democrats did in Vietnam up through 1969 what the Democrats did, you know, in Gaza are doing today in Gaza, what the…
Robert Scheer: Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a democrat.
Jeff Cohen: I understand that. But what I think you’re doing is you’re minimizing the history of not only of Trump, but of the Republicans in general that they were… It was that was a terrorist war in Nicaragua and in El Salvador. Were there US troops? No. But when you’re killing 100,000 or more civilians in a very, very small country like El Salvador, that is a huge war crime, and the United States is responsible for it, and that was Reagan, and there were some Democrats that opposed it. So I think you and I have to be as objective as we can when we look at these war and peace issues, we’re talking about a country, the United States, that has been a militarist power since Martin Luther King, Jr, in 1967 said “That the greatest purveyor of violence in the in the world today is my own government.” And so are we closer to nuclear war? And is Biden partially responsible? Yeah, in both theaters, as they like this, by
Robert Scheer: And by the way, that was the Democratic government, it was Lyndon Johnson’s government that he was talking about in his Riverside Church speech in 1967.
Jeff Cohen: Of course, of course he was. And then Nixon continued the war for years. So and and Reagan wouldn’t even come to the table for years with the Soviet Union. And, you know, he was, he was really a danger, Reagan, in the first years of his administration. Things changed with the rise of Gorbachev and with the rise of Nancy Reagan and Reagan’s daughter, you know, bringing some sense to him. And as you say, they eventually eliminated a bunch of these weapons. But if you look at the Union of Concerned Scientists today, you know the Doomsday clock. How close are we to the end of the planet? It’s never been closer, and that’s because of the polarizing with Russia over Ukraine, which was eminently avoidable. And the Middle East. So my my concern with what you’re saying isn’t that you’re exaggerating the horrific war record and militarist record of the Democrats. It’s that you’re for some reason, minimizing the horrors of the Republican administrations, including Trump. I mean, Trump was ready to, you know, he ultimately went to talk to North Korea. But prior to that, he was talking about blowing them up in a way that was as wild as how Nixon kept threatening the Vietnamese. And I know you’ve written all about that as well. So you and I know this history, and I’ve read your reporting going back decades on foreign policy, but I feel you’re, for some reason, you’re minimizing the threat of the Republicans, not only as militarist powers, but the threat that the Republicans represent to us as journalists, as those of us who are dissenters. Trump is ready to clamp down on us. He’s told us that, his allies have told us that Project 2025, tells us that. I want the ability to keep writing – as long as the world survives – keep writing and keep dissenting. And I really fear it’s not Trump derangements syndrome. Trump is telling us what he’s going to do.
Robert Scheer: Well, okay, so you made your pitch to people, and by the way, I see, just so I you don’t put me into a box here. I certainly think Kamala is an improvement over Biden, at least what she has said. I think not always. As a prosecutor, I think you’re familiar with it, that she had not a very good record, and a lot of people suffered as a result. On the housing meltdown and the need for an opposition to the deregulation that the Democrats actually were backing… As Attorney General, she joined with other progressive attorney generals and took a very principled, important stand against bailing out the banks, which, after all the Democrats did under Obama, and she said, “No, you have to be accountable to the people.” I think in her speeches now, she’s stressing that the white working class that might be supporting Trump is not deplorables. They’re not all crazy. And she’s saying very sensible things about the suffering of American people under policies that the Democrats have supported, after all. So I’m not saying that you can, people should figure things out in this election. What I am objecting to, and I we’re going to extend this just so we make it clear what the real issue here is. And the reason I like this idea of Trump derangement syndrome, it could be Nixon derangement syndrome, or from the Republican side, it could be Obama derangement syndrome. What we do is we center most of our political discussion, knowledge in this country, around the character of the President and these periodic elections: who are the virtuous, who are the evil? Whereas, in fact, we face very profound, systemic problems that the election tends to obscure. That is really where I’m coming from. And and certainly basic to our problems is this need for American hegemony over the world. That’s what Martin Luther King was talking about. That somehow we know what the world should do, and we always do it for their interest. And I think that’s garbage, you know. And the interesting thing is, the people pushing back on that often are capitalists! Who actually have to be out in that world doing business. That’s why Elon Musk – and God, I’ll never hear the end of my defending Elon Musk and so forth but let me push that – he has to do business out there. He has to make cars and sell them and so forth. So he’s against the China bashing, right by the European Union, by the United States, because, after all, we’re really bashing China because they’re better at making cars now than we are. I noticed Ford just today said they’re pulling back on electric cars. They just don’t know how to do it well and so forth. You want to talk about “drill, baby drill,” the best way you can cut out some of that drilling is to have a more environmental means, a friendly means of transportation. You know, for instance, China is very, very good at developing solar panels. They’re very good at developing alternative energy sources. They do these things cheaply. We’ve demonized China and the Democrats and, you know, Nancy Pelosi and others… They’ve taken the lead on this at the Democratic Convention. They attack China even more than they do Russia, and the reason is they’re attacking. China, because China has been successful as a capitalist entity, right?
Jeff Cohen: Let me respond, you’re making some important points. China has has beat us economically, and so both parties are… The leadership in both parties are trying to polarize with China and turn it into a military confrontation. It’s inexcusable when you say that Musk, though you know he has to deal with China, he believes in trade, he’s supporting the worst China basher that’s ever lived! TrumpTrump is, talk about China derangement syndrome. Trump is crazy when it comes to China, and…
Robert Scheer: I know, but why are you bringing it back to the election?
Jeff Cohen: No, I’m not. I’m not. I’m…
Robert Scheer: Let’s move on.
Jeff Cohen: No, I’m trying to talk about the two parties. Put the election aside, and talk about the two parties, which is what we’re analyzing…
Robert Scheer: No, but maybe that. Let me push it a little further. Let’s drop at the party thing. Let’s… you know, the thing that happens in our country is we have this illusion that these elections really are decisive, and everybody has to wear “I voted,” everybody has to, otherwise you’re responsible. What if the elections are a charade? What if, in fact, the real struggle are these power… we used to say, “Oh, money that determines it, and it goes to the Republicans.” Now, money goes quite a bit of it to the Democrats. Maybe the elections are a trap. We’re going to talk about them. People should vote. Yes, it does matter. But how does that become the whole focus when it in fact, what we decided these elections seems to settle very little. We don’t have a choice in this election about a sane policy towards the Palestinians.
Jeff Cohen: Correct.
Robert Scheer: Nobody advocates it. We don’t have a sane policy towards China being advanced. We don’t have a sane immigration policy. Look at the Democrats won the last election. Have they done anything for the dreamers? Have they done anything really to improve the…
Jeff Cohen: Let me get in here. Let me get it. Again, I agree with every single criticism you’ve lodged against the Democratic Party leadership. What’s wrong is you’re never willing to say what’s obviously true, and it’s true to many of these critics. You’re worried about, who are going to, you know, send you an email after they hear this show.
Robert Scheer: I’m not worried. I’m not that worried.
Jeff Cohen: All right, what you’re doing wrong is you keep minimizing the Republicans! You act…
Robert Scheer: And you could offer the example of the case of Netanyahu visit to make your argument. No, no.
Jeff Cohen: Yes, you do. You accurately describe the awful policies of Democrats, and then like you bring up Nancy Pelosi and her polarizing with China, you don’t watch Fox News like I do. You don’t see one Republican senator after another, or Trump or Vance. That’s all they do is call for more military surrounding of China period. Of course.
Robert Scheer: Netanyahu visit both times, and he came before…
Jeff Cohen: Yes, but all of these issues first…
Robert Scheer: Wait a minute let me endorse what you’re saying. There’s no question that the Republican Party, and this you can’t really blame on Trump. This was the Republican Party that included people who don’t like Trump, but yes, they gave all those standing ovations and whatever. And so what you’re not addressing, because the reason I’m cutting interrupting for a minute, I want to address this question. Look, by all means, if you ask me right now, you know, yes, Kamala Harris seems to be a very big improvement over Donald Trump. Okay? I’m not going to… certainly for the things that I care about. That’s not- but what I’m saying is the trap here is that we focus on these elections that, in fact, do not settle these questions. We know. Let’s take Nixon again. Nixon, God, if Nixon’s in, it’s the end of the world. Okay. Nixon did terrible things. The fact of the matter is, and I remember because I wrote about, I did a retrospective on Nixon. The only person the country who liked it was Nixon himself. He wrote me a very nice letter. But the fact of the matter is, Nixon’s administration was arguably better than Lyndon Johnson’s administration, even on a lot of domestic issues. He started the Environmental Protection Agency. He actually, you know, did under with Daniel Moynihan, a number of progressive things. He actually, yes, he did terrible escalation to war in Vietnam, but he ended the war in Vietnam. All I’m asking you to do, let’s just think about this. We only have a few minutes. Isn’t it possible that this whole focus on the elections is a trap?
Jeff Cohen: Yes, it’s a trap, if you if. If people are dishonest in boosting the Democrats and ignoring all of their warts, that’s something…
Robert Scheer: Is it a trap of whether the elections is the arena, and this is heresy, I know. Oh, people died for the right to vote. And yes, it’s very important. But is it not really a way of diverting attention from when how decisions are really made.
Jeff Cohen: Yeah.
Robert Scheer: You know, what are the real power interests? And in fact, every four years, we get all excited in this way. And like, immigration is a very good issue, and yet nothing happened about immigration that was a great improvment, and certainly on the war peace situation, I would argue we’re worse off now than we were after Trump. And so, yes, it’s a playoff, you know, if Nixon had won, you know, earlier, or if the Republicans had defeated Johnson, yeah, Barry Goldwater, maybe. But you know, I think that what I’m asking you to do is address, can we really think about social change and the correlation of forces in the terms of electoral politics, as we’re forced to do constantly, while ignoring, where is the money? Where is the power? What are the real decisions? How are they being made? And that’s what I’m concerned about.
Jeff Cohen: Yeah, if you focus only on elections, and you don’t focus on these big issues of how corporate power is being exerted over the leadership of both parties. And how working class people have been driven down for 40 years of Neo-liberalism, no matter which party was in office. If you ignore the big global issues and the big economic issues, and all you talk about is, “Well, the Democrats aren’t as bad as the Republicans,” that’s that’s inexcusable. That’s not what I’m doing. That’s not what I’ve ever done as a journalist or as an activist. You’ve got to tell the truth the whole way. You tell the truth even up to the election. You know, I grew up in Michigan, which is a swing state. I live in New York, I’m going to vote for a peace candidate. I’m going to cast a protest vote because I don’t care. I just can’t bring myself to vote for the Democrats after what you and I agree is horrific policies in the Middle East and Europe and all these broken promises. But if I lived in Michigan, yeah, I’d vote. I wouldn’t take up my life. I wouldn’t spend month after month after month telling people the Democrats are great. That’s dishonest, but on election day in those seven swing states, of course, I’m going to vote for the Democrats. I wouldn’t do it in California, I cast my protest vote. Or in New York, where I am, I’m casting a protest vote, as I always have. But you and I as analysts, we can’t get into this, and we can’t get into this situation where in order to criticize the Democrats, we minimize the threat of the Republicans. Because Nixon is not Trump. Trump is someone who has said and more and more in the last year what he’s going to do if he gets back into power, and it would make all those issues you care about a struggle for peace, a struggle against Wall Street, a struggle for working class people, instead of more wealth and income floating upward, gushing upward to the richest 1%. All of those issues that we organize around are going to be prevented. And let’s say one other big difference. You have written a book, and we gave you an Izzy award for it, about how the Democrats deregulated Wall Street, it led directly to all of the suffering in 2007 and 8, where, as you said, black families, Latino families, so many families lost their homes, including my next door neighbor. I live in a working class area, my next door neighbor lost their home. So we understand how the Democrats have served corporate power, but it’s – and we should say that – but it’s also important for us to understand that while the Clinton administration was basically run by Wall Street economists, and then Obama brought these people into his administration as his top economic advisors, what we have in the Biden administration, to the degree they’ve been better than Obama and Clinton on domestic policy, is because you have actual progressive economists as his economic advisors. You have this woman, this woman, Lena Khan, who runs the Federal Trade Commission who’s actually trying to stop monopolization process, something no Republican administration had done since Teddy Roosevelt and no democratic administration had done since Franklin Roosevelt and Truman! So and the National Labor Relations Board that Biden has appointed, who ran it under Trump? Scalia’s son! Who’s running it under Biden? It’s people that are pro worker and pro union. So yes, let’s criticize the Democrats on all of these bad things that they’ve done, especially the horrific war mongering foreign policy. But let’s also tell the truth about both parties, the good and the bad.
Robert Scheer: Okay look, first of all, let me I just want to be clear about something. I understand the trap of these elections, and you say you didn’t… It turns out I voted for Biden in the last election. I didn’t do it consciously. I told my wife I was running around. We’re waiting. I said, “Yeah, yeah, just fill it out.” I thought I told her to write in a peace person, but no, it ended up Biden. I voted for every, practically every, lesser evil Democrat my whole bloody life. Okay, so I understand the trap. I understand it, you know, but I’m trying to put on another hat as a journalist or as a professor and think about, wait a minute, what really happened? Okay? What went on? You know, and and people I voted for caused as much trouble in this world as the Republicans, you know, and the lesser evils, my God, you know, dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was that minor. Is that unimportant? We’ve now whitewashed Harry Truman. Wasn’t that one of the most, not only greatest acts of terrorism in service of killing civilians, but it ushered in a whole new acceptable weapons. We’re the only ones that have thought it was legitimate to use these weapons so far, since then. Now, let me put it very pointed way. I’m talking about the trap, not that people shouldn’t vote and care about it and everything. I’m talking about a trap of attaching great importance to it, because I think the real power in this society is in the hands of people who have the wealth, own the major institutions and control it, and then suckers like us get all involved in arguing about these elections. And I know, you know, I know these seductions of it. Well, I got invited to the last White House dinner by Hillary and Bill Clinton, and they thanked me for my columns in the LA Times. And Hillary Clinton even said, “Oh, Bob, Scheer my favorite columnist in America,” no! “In the world.” I know the trap. I know the whole thing. I know our side. What I’m asking is that real question the world is, is on the edge now, of absolute disaster, the possibility of world war three. What if you’re sitting in Michigan, and let’s say you’re a person that has relatives who are Palestinians, whether they’re Christian, Palestinians, whether they’re Muslim, would you ask that person to vote for Kamala Harris now and or what? To withhold their vote? Or could you understand? Would you understand why, even though it’s a swing state, that if you’ve seen your family massacred, with US supplied weapons and this Democratic Party, and Kamala was part of that party. She’s the Vice President, but just gave 20 billion more and these weapons and what have you you know, would you really tell that person that they, “No you have to vote for the Democrats?” Could you, in good conscience, tell somebody in Michigan now that they should do that because it’s the lesser evilness. Say my entire family, going back, has been killed, and you’re telling…
Jeff Cohen: You’ve raised a great question. I saw one of the uncommitted- remember, 100,000 people voted uncommitted. These are normal democratic voters on the single issue of Gaza. They organized this huge movement. One of the leaders was Congresswoman Rashida Talib’s sister, and so they unfurled a banner on Monday night inside the DNC, you know, “Stop Arming Israel” and and they got thrown out. And one of the delegates who was elected as part of uncommitted he was a Jewish individual. His first name was Liano, and he had a Palestinian keffiyeh on his shoulder. And he was talking about, “This is why we did it. It’s a plausible genocide.” He was very articulate. I saw Ryan Grim and other independent journalists talking to him, the mainstream media didn’t seem to give a damn about him. And at the end of his- you know, he was blasting Biden, talking about the genocide, and then someone asked him, “Well, you’re in Michigan. Are you going to vote for Biden? Are you going to vote for Harris?” And he said, “I’m going to vote for Harris. Many of my colleagues are not,” and that’s the best one can do. If I was in Michigan, and that’s where I grew up, I’m a proud Detroiter, I would say “I’m going to vote for Harris Walz for this reason, and if you can’t bring yourself to do it, I understand totally.”
Robert Scheer: But what about “Never Again?” See, never again means…
Jeff Cohen: For everyone.
Robert Scheer: Well, I’ll be very clear about this. You know, as a Jewish person, you know, my mother’s family was totally eliminated in Lithuania. I’m not indifferent to this issue. I’ve written about it. I have German relatives who are not Jewish, who I’ve confronted them after the war. I’ve spent a lot of time on this, but “Never Again,” is not a light slogan. It means not genocide for anybody, right? It means there are certain universal values. Well, would you really, do really have confidence that the Democratic Party?
Jeff Cohen: Yeah, I don’t.
Robert Scheer: Yes, Trump is probably unquestionably, rhetorically worse, unquestionably, and says insane, dangerous, provocative things and so forth. That’s that is a horrible, terrible choice, though! Do you really have confidence that this administration in which Kamla Harris is a part of it, which is just given this blank check, Biden went over there, embraced Netanyahu, you know? And so forth?
Jeff Cohen: No I don’t, actually, I don’t have confidence. No!
Robert Scheer: Well but so then, why? Why are we honoring this track of this election?
Jeff Cohen: I don’t think we’re, I don’t think we’re…
Robert Scheer: This is real heresy. You could get fired for saying this. You know, are you questioning the sacred act of voting? When, in fact, it’s a charade. We have no choice here to vote for a sane foreign policy. We have no confidence that the Democrats and Republicans would do anything very different about Ukraine or about Gaza. They still would service the military industrial complex. They still would engage in American jingoism and hegemony. They still would whitewash anything our power elite does. And so the reason I wanted you, to have you come on, and we’re now going, you know, very long on this I respect very much what you’ve done with your political life. You know, very much. I just wonder, why at this advanced age, are we even honoring this process which will not bring us to a point of greater sanity? It’s, and in fact, if we withhold our support, which is what people used to do in Germany, they said “Own owns.” You had when the Green Movement, party movement, was actually in favor of peace. Now it’s seems to be in favor of war. When people around the world, in Sweden, for example, Olive Palmy [inaudible], they used to say, “No, we don’t want to be swept up by this.” Now, everybody is swept up. There is no peace movement in the United States or in Western Europe. There’s nobody seriously objecting to this path of madness. And so the reason I wanted to have you on today is not to denounce you or tell you can’t vote for who you want to vote for. I just want to talk about, you know how desperate this situation is, where this election really is not presenting us with a profound, serious, clear choice about this disaster that is unfolding.
Jeff Cohen: Yeah and you, you of course, know that Obama negotiated the Iran nuclear deal and then Trump tore it up. And if you watch Fox News and all the Republican leadership, all they ever talk about is, why aren’t we going after Iran?
Robert Scheer: So you’re bringing it up again…
Jeff Cohen: You’ve got to talk about both parties and what they’re doing and what they’re saying, and you only…
Robert Scheer: Why not? Why not reach for a more, different point? Let’s okay, let’s just stipulate go vote for the democrats…
Jeff Cohen: That’s not what I’m saying…
Robert Scheer: No, no, what I’m asking you is this, in fact, to consider that the real horror of our situation is that we may not have, in the electoral system, an effective mechanism for getting – forget about left or right or progressive – adult behavior. Let’s just assume for foreign policy, what you want to lose is some sense of what it means to drop bombs and kill people. I was in Vietnam. I watched what those bombs did in both the north and the south. I was at, in Israel after the Six Day War, right after went into Egypt, and then I was in West Bank and Gaza. And all my life, I have visited war scenes. I’ve done it in other places. I’ve reported on it, you know. And what I’m concerned about is we sort of get involved in this now, okay, we’re gonna, but are we really? Do we have a choice? Should it not be better maybe to say whatever you do, get involved in other actors?
Jeff Cohen: Yes.
Robert Scheer: Nonelectoral activity.
Jeff Cohen: I mean, you know, clearly, you and I agree that the mainstream media and the parties, they sanctify this election process because it’s part of a charade. You and I agree on that. Do we have a great choice? No, have we ever had a great choice? Well, maybe Bernie, but you know, normally you don’t have a great choice. But when you say that there’s no peace movement in this country or in Western Europe, there clearly is a peace movement in this country, and I’m part of it. I was at rallies in one place on Saturday, at rallies at another place on Sunday, about Gaza in upstate New York, huge, spirited rallies. We’ve got half, half a dozen of our comrades who are on our, sort of our payroll. They’re in Chicago, you know, covering the protests. So, yes, there is a peace movement. Yes, people should focus on peace and justice organizing more than you know, spending a year- these elections are endless in our country, peace and justice organizing is far more important than election organizing, especially if it goes on for months. You and I agree on all of that, but it I want the right to organize. I want, in January 2025, to be able to write as a journalist. I don’t to want to see these websites closed down. I don’t want to see people put in concentration camps. You know, it is not Trump derangement syndrome. They’re talking about implementing the Insurrection Act. They’ve said it over and over. He talked recently about deploying US troops to bring law and order. He’s gone much further than anything Nixon ever dreamed of saying. So it’s not Trump derangement. I want the right to fight for the kind of world you agree on, that you and I agree on. Which is a world where our country isn’t known all over the world for dropping the most bombs, exporting the most weapons. I, so yes, I want the right to fight for that kind of a society, and I don’t believe I’ll have that right if Trump wins in January and takes office. Can I respond?
Robert Scheer: But you bring okay… But let me ask you, this is my last shot okay? And I think these are things that people have to talk about and so forth. But let me just question sometimes when, when the Democrats do it repress, as in the case of Julian Assange, if you know, if the Republicans do it, there seems to be more resistanc. Now here, Julian Assange was treated in just the worst way. I mean, I would say that we didn’t have a more valuable journalist in the most traditional sense of journalists than Julian Assange, in terms of what he revealed about what really goes on. That’s what journalists should do. And Julian Assange, and sometimes he embarrassed people on one side or the other. But the fact of the matter is, and this is a statement you can have to find there’s a statement that the publishers of Le Monde, The New York Times, The Spiegel, I think, or, you know, five major publishers, all said that Julian Assange should not be in jail. Not should be jail. They published his material. It had news value. Okay? Clear news value, alright? And that, and what he was charged with was precisely giving information that showed that war crimes had been committed by our government, so forth, okay? Yet, while Julian Assange was in jail, and I know, and you know, because I, I brought his father and brother to speak, where I teach and talk to my students and so forth. There was very little attention to getting him out of prison, and it was only when it became something of an embarrassment, now that somehow a deal was made and a… But the fact of the matter is, he was in prison largely because he had embarrassed the Democratic Party. Circling back to your being a Bernie person and your being [inaudible], it was revealing that, in fact, the Democratic Party leadership had undermined Bernie, that the process had been distorted. He also told us what Hillary Clinton said. We’ve talked about income inequality and hurting people. Hillary Clinton’s outrageous remarks talking to Goldman Sachs and other bankers about wanting to bring them with her to Washington so that she could set things straight, and promising them that a Democratic administration as her husband, Bill Clinton. He’s the one that pushed through the legislation that, you know, this is why you gave me a prize once, because I wrote a book revealing that. And so, you know, here’s a situation where you can talk all you want about the the Nazis are coming and concentration camp and terrible they are. The fact is, it’s a Democratic administration that was just cheered. Here is Biden being cheered by all these delegates at that convention. He’s the one who decided to keep Julian Assange in prison all this time… And bring the guy close to death in the most terrible circumstance, and yet you say, “Oh, but it’ll be even worse with Trump, he’ll cut his head off.”
Jeff Cohen: Let me respond.
Robert Scheer: But you get my…
Jeff Cohen: Yes, but there, there, while you’re referring to these people that are clapping like seals for Joe Biden when he lies about Israel, Norman wrote a column. I know you published it on ScheerPost…
Robert Scheer: I also, I also publish you on ScheerPost.
Jeff Cohen: But I mean, Norman wrote this column then within a few hours, because Biden was talking about how he worked for peace, he’s bringing peace to Gaza. It was absurd. And there’s people inside clapping, but what you’re forgetting is there were 1000s of people outside!
Robert Scheer: Of course.
Jeff Cohen: And those activists. That’s where we need to be with the peace movement. And when you said the Democrats…
Robert Scheer: Who arrested those people? Who broke them up? It was a Democratic administration in Chicago because they were an embarrassment to the Democratic Convention!
Jeff Cohen” Well you’re talking about ‘68 or today?
Robert Scheer: No, now!
Jeff Cohen: Yeah, some people were arrested who… Again, I’ve got my finger here. My people are reporting on it. The people that knocked down the barricade, about 12 of them were arrested, but the others are protesting and all they want. And when you make this point that sometimes when the Democrats commit overseas crimes or civil liberties abuses, there’s less dissent. I will say that we Assange, who Roots Action, has campaigned for for years, to the degree that anyone was writing letters to get Assange out of prison in England. It was coming from Democratic lawmakers in the House. It wasn’t coming from any Republicans. And so what you need is independent movements for peace and justice, independent movements for civil liberties, that will stand up to power no matter whether the Democrats are in the White House, or the Republicans. I think you know that in 2011 when Norman Solomon and I started Roots Action, it was because we were so furious that these big online groups like Move On, that had been against war when Bush was in power and for civil liberties when Bush was in power, they changed after Pelosi became the speaker in 2007 and Obama became the president 2009 and they didn’t talk about these issues anymore! That’s the reason we formed roots action. So where you and I agree is the role of journalism and the role of activism and the role of engaged citizenship has got to be independent of the party leaderships, both party leaderships. That’s where I think you and I agree.
Robert Scheer: Okay, and we we agree on most things. So let me just ask you one little question, and we’ll have a brief answer. We’ll keep this down to an hour and 15 minutes, hopefully, but just one little, simple question. “Never Again,” because I take it seriously. I’ve thought about it all my life. I’m old enough to have been alive when the worst barbarism in human history was visited upon the Jews, the worst barbarism and and most Jewish people that I knew thought the message “Never Again” was universal. It means you never do this to any people. This is why I was always very proud to be Jewish, that it was universal. And then we extended it to the civil rights movement and treatment of Black people in America and so forth. Jews were disproportionately by their number represented and so forth. So never again. We’re in a situation right now where this man that was cheered Joe Biden, and he made some noises about, we want a ceasefire, but he knows damn well, as the words were coming out of his mouth, that Netanyahu was not going for any meaningful ceasefire, and that peace was not going to prevail. So let me ask you, if we look back on this period of history at that convention, and let’s assume that the facts that the UN courts come up with show that it is, it is genocide in the sense of dismembering a people, genocide, how it’s defined in international law and so forth. And that these innocent babies, children, people and a whole culture, the universities, their schools, everything, and that it will extend to the West Bank cause Israel clearly is extending it. And the Israeli ambassador to the UN just made a statement about “annihilating,” I mean, and “conquering them all” and so forth. And condemning the UN, by the way, said it should be disbanded. That, I think, is today’s statement, or no, maybe a few weeks ago, I don’t know. He makes these statements. He’s leaving the UN for being substituted by someone else. So let’s say this is genocide, okay? And yet, here we had a Democratic Convention in which the person who paid for, authorized, supplied the munitions basically looked the other way when it was happening. This president and his vice president, who, yes, she said some strong things at the Selma march, but nonetheless, she’s vice president of the U.S. government. You know, with power comes responsibility. How will history look back on this?
Jeff Cohen: As a crime, as a crime committed by the U.S. government.
Robert Scheer: And they must say, when they’re writing the history, but the Republicans would have been worse? Because this is a democratic crime. This is under a Democratic president, and will they say the Republicans, would they… Would you say that about Vietnam? That the Republicans would have been worse, so Lyndon Johnson didn’t commit genocide? He didn’t destroy millions of innocent people?
Jeff Cohen: He did. He did, and the Republicans said, “He didn’t do enough.”
Robert Scheer: Oh, why you keep bringing that up? I’m talking about the crime.
Jeff Cohen: Of course, it’s a crime.
Robert Scheer: When Truman, when Truman dropped the bombs right on Hiroshima and Nagasaki… Is it fair to say a Republican, let’s say it had been Eisenhower or somebody, and Eisenhower opposed dropping the bombs as a general, he opposed it. But is it fair to then shift the argument and say “No, the people who dropped the bomb are responsible, and we have to say…”
Jeff Cohen: Yes.
Robert Scheer: To the degree that they are people we might have voted for. We are responsible.
Jeff Cohen: Yes.
Robert Scheer: Would I not be responsible for the continuation of genocide if I just sat here and said, “Hey, the real issue now is defeating Trump, and I’m going to not…. And you know, if…
Jeff Cohen: If that’s all you said, if that’s all you said, Yes, you would be a criminal yourself. If all you did was apologize for the Democrats, not call them criminals when they commit crimes. Then yes, but that’s not what I’m doing. And when you ask me about “Never Again,” at every protest I’ve been at, and I’ve been at a dozen around Gaza, people are holding the sign, “Never again for anyone.” And this guy I mentioned to you, who was elected as a delegate from Michigan to this convention, and he was one of those unfurling the banner, “Stop Arming Israel.” He’s Jewish. His name is Liano Sharon, and he was asked, “Why are you here?” He said, “I’m Jewish. I believe never again for anyone, anywhere.” That’s what he told reporters. He could have been speaking for me. So yes, you’ve got to stand up against a criminal foreign policy, no matter which party is in power. That’s that’s number one. That’s why I’m for independent journalism. We gave you the award, and why I’m for independent political activism. If you get sucked into the Democratic Party machinery so that you’re lying about what they’re doing, or you’re pussyfooting around what they’re doing, or you’re prettifying what they’re doing. That’s criminal, but that’s not anything I’ve ever done. And you know, I couldn’t put it better than you just did. Thank you.
Robert Scheer: So seriously, I’m not interested in having an argument for the sake of arguing. I think that the last statement you just made is one that I want to vote for. I would support, and I appreciate that we could come to that point. But you know what? We both can agree, and the way politics works, we’re distracted,
Jeff Cohen: Yep.
Robert Scheer: Just by the way, the great, and let me just one, maybe little more philosophical orientation. The great challenge of the Holocaust was, why, after the Holocaust, was there not a serious examination of how this happened? Because, and the reason I say there wasn’t, it would require looking at… this is what I did when I went to Germany. You know my non Jewish father, my Lutheran father, who was very much against the war, but he was here when I went back to find my relatives. And how did this come from the most advanced educated population with the highest level of science? And by the way, the situation of Jewish people in Germany was better than in France or in Poland or some other places. And not to examine the question, how did it really happen? That this, you know, the country that had, by the way, more immigrants, than the United States, more German Americans than any other group you know, the largest, including in places where you grew up and so forth. How did this happen? We never examined that question. Instead, we shifted responsibility to people had nothing to do with it, the Palestinians.
Jeff Cohen: Yeah.
Robert Scheer: The Arabs, you know, Muslims had nothing to do with it.
Jeff Cohen: You’re right.
Robert Scheer: Okay? And so what I’m saying now is this crime is of such severity that to watch a Democratic Convention, and yes, the Republican Convention, or the Republican in the House, when plenty of Democrats boycotted it, not enough. But plenty did. And to say, this is happening in our time, but in the name of lesser evil, and I’m not saying you’re saying that, okay? In the name of, we have to win this election, or what could happen, or the choice issue, or so forth, you can’t do that.
Jeff Cohen: Yeah.
Robert Scheer: It’s just illogical. It’s just…
Jeff Cohen: I agree with you. I agree with you.
Robert Scheer: All right, on that note we’ve taken… hopefully people will listen to this end. I want to thank you really for coming. And if I were giving I.F. Stone awards, I certainly would give you for your your work and Norman Solomon as well. I’m not trying to
Jeff Cohen: Thank you, Bob.
Robert Scheer: … fight. Yeah. I want to thank Christopher Ho and Laura Kondourajian at KCRW for posting these shows and appreciate the station carrying them, this podcast. Joshua Scheer, our executive producer, who found our speaker today and insisted I talk to you because he admires your work. Diego Ramos, who writes the introduction, Max Jones, who does the TV layout. The JKW Foundation in memory of Jean Stein, one of the rare writers in America who worked very closely with Edward Said, a very famous Palestinian intellectual, Columbia University professor, one of… and comes from a long line of Jewish family, very important, Jean Stein and MCA and all that… Nonetheless, was very early speaking out about “Never Again” applies to the Palestinians as well. And I want to thank the Integrity Media Foundation, which has a similar trajectory of demanding and supporting journalism that is independent and willing to challenge policies and actions that even happen from our own nation, tribe, or what have you, that are horrendous. They have to be opposed. See you next week with another edition of Scheer Intelligence.
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Robert Scheer
Robert Scheer, publisher of ScheerPost and award-winning journalist and author of a dozen books, has a reputation for strong social and political writing over his nearly 60 years as a journalist. His award-winning journalism has appeared in publications nationwide—he was Vietnam correspondent and editor of Ramparts magazine, national correspondent and columnist for the Los Angeles Times—and his in-depth interviews with Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev and others made headlines. He co-hosted KCRW’s political program Left, Right and Center and now hosts Scheer Intelligence, an independent ScheerPost podcast with people who discuss the day’s most important issues.
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