Michael Weiss

So, you know, that's interesting, too, because there's this perception that, oh, the Israelis really hated Bashar al-Assad.

I mean, well—

They didn't like him, but they preferred him.

to the collapse of the regime.

And we see that playing out very clearly now.

I mean, they have actively tried to sabotage normalizations with the Shara government.

They don't like the fact that Shara was in the White House, and they certainly don't like the fact that it looks like the U.S.

is going to lift sanctions on Syria.

Why?

Because Assad is sort of the devil we know, and they could play him.

He was weak.

He was easily manipulated.

In fact, when his regime fell, we at New Lines, the other publication I write for, we did a story on documents that were

retrieve showing that the Israelis were telling him all the time, listen, if you allow Iran to do X, Y, and Z, we're going to come and bomb these places.

So he would back off occasionally when given these sort of threatening overtures by the Israelis.

So yeah, using Epstein as a kind of

It may surprise sort of ordinary listeners, but I think this is kind of how the world works.

You know, these horrific people, billionaires or multimillionaires, but, you know, they worm their way into the corridors of power.

They leverage their contacts and their friendships with people in positions of power to acquire more wealth or to acquire more contacts of other people, including, you know,

potentates and dictators abroad, and they sort of connect people.