Speaker A
Torture does not work at all. You will get to a point where you hurt someone so bad they're going to tell you what you want to hear.
Piers Morgan discusses reports of sexual violence by both Israeli forces and Hamas during the Israel-Hamas conflict, highlighting widespread brutality and contested narratives.
Key Takeaways
- Sexual violence is a grave violation and occurs on both sides of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
- Reports from credible sources allege systemic abuse by Israeli forces and brutal atrocities by Hamas.
- Verification of such claims is difficult but essential for justice and accountability.
- Media narratives are deeply polarized, often reflecting political biases rather than objective truth.
- Condemning sexual violence should be universal and not politicized.
Summary
- The video debates two major reports on sexual violence in the Israel-Hamas war: one by NYT journalist Nick Kristof alleging Israeli abuses, and another by the Israeli Civil Commission documenting Hamas atrocities.
- Kristof's report includes testimonies from Palestinian prisoners describing sexual abuse by Israeli soldiers and prison guards, suggesting it is widespread though not officially commanded.
- The Israeli Civil Commission report details horrific sexual violence committed by Hamas during the October 7th attacks, supported by extensive forensic and eyewitness evidence.
- Both reports have been heavily contested and politicized, with accusations of propaganda and misinformation from opposing sides.
- Panelists emphasize that sexual violence in war is universally wrong and must be condemned regardless of the perpetrator.
- Emily Schrader criticizes the NYT report for relying on opinion and Hamas-affiliated sources, calling for proper investigations rather than opinion pieces.
- The discussion highlights the complexity of verifying claims amid ongoing conflict and the role of media and social media in shaping public perception.
- Piers Morgan underscores the importance of human decency over political bias when confronting reports of war crimes.
- The video features diverse panelists including journalists, former military personnel, and commentators to provide multiple perspectives.
- The conversation stresses the need for credible investigations into allegations of sexual violence on both sides.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
A lot of people in these prisons, members of the prison service and IDF officers, are completely aware of the use of dogs.
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I think it actually is an insult if there are indeed victims, as he described, who have been abused in the ways that he described.
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You are not a journalist. Can we get back to the topic of this debate? The slaughter of actual pretending to be happening on the ground, not to hurl angry insults at people acting as a think about what's actually
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happening as a propagandist for Israel. That's what you are. You're a propagandist. A bombshell report on the Israel-Hamas conflict has ignited global fury about the appalling depravity of the combatants. In lurid detail, the reporting lays bare the twisted and
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grotesque sexual violence used to subjugate victims. Those who read it and believe it emerge more certain than ever that one side's righteous and the other is evil. But there are, of course, two reports. And the chances are that your
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own social media timeline or the publications you choose to read will determine whether you believe I'm talking about Hamas or Israel. New York Times journalist Nick Kristof, twice a Pulitzer Prize winner, compiled a report which alleges the systematic rape of
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Palestinian prisoners by Israeli security. I went to the West Bank to talk with Palestinians who experienced sexual assault firsthand by Israeli soldiers, settlers, and prison guards. Their harrowing accounts, backed by lawyers, surveys, and international reports, suggest that sexual violence by Israelis
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against Palestinians is widespread. One woman, 23 at the time of her detention, told me that she was regularly stripped naked, forcibly bent over, and groped all over her body by male and female guards.
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One journalist said he had been held down and raped by a dog, a claim backed by other accounts from prisoners who report they underwent the same thing.
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Well, the reporting is based on detailed testimony from at least 14 Palestinians. It does not allege that IDF soldiers or security personnel are commanded to commit these crimes, but it does conclude that they happen so often that they are standard operating procedure in
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that it echoes reports by the UN and others. Israel's foreign ministry called it one of the worst blood libels in modern history. A flood of high-profile social media accounts have moved quickly to condemn and discredit the testimony as well as peddling a false rumor that
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the New York Times is preparing a retraction. It isn't. In fact, they've doubled down. And while this storm has gathered force, the exact same thing has been happening on the other side. Like many people, I read with horror the
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details of the Israeli Civil Commission's report on October the 7th. Heads were decapitated, it says. Pelvic bones shattered even after death. Sexual assault continued.
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He started touching me and I resisted, and then he dragged me to the bedroom, disfiguring their faces and their sexual organs. You'd see that multiple times.
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It's like they wanted to inflict pain in the cruelest manner possible. They have redefined evil.
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Well, the commission's report draws on hundreds of interviews and thousands of photographs. It too echoes work by the UN which concluded that Hamas use sexual violence, and it too has been ransacked and trashed by people who support the
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opposite cause. As far as I'm concerned, the only cause is basic human decency. If your first instinct about either report is to look for ways to smear them, you might have run out of that yourself. Well, joining me on the panel
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is US-Israeli journalist and commentator Emily Schrader, the former US Navy SEAL Robert O'Neal, the former IDF soldier and whistleblower Sha Ben Eframe, and Anakasparin, the executive producer and host of The Young Turks, and Doran Kemple, who's a former special
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forces commander in the IDF. Well, welcome to all of you. Uh, let me start with you, Anakasparin.
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Two reports have come out, one in a newspaper, one by a commission. One detailing the appalling atrocities of October the 7th and one by Nick Kristof, somebody that I know well when I was at CNN for four years. He was
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a regular on my show there. He's won a Pulitzer Prize twice. He is unquestionably one of the best journalists in the world. Now, that doesn't mean that he is not capable of making mistakes, but so far he has
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doubled and trebled down on all criticism, stood by his reporting completely, and so are the New York Times. Um, so there's a lot of stuff going on, a lot of noise, a lot of anger, a lot of rage, a lot of
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discrediting. Where do you sit in totality with both of these reports? I think it's very simple. Sexual violence carried out by any group of people, whether we're talking about IDF soldiers or members of Hamas, is wrong, indecent, immoral, and should be
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condemned. I don't know why this is such a difficult thing to do. This shouldn't be considered a one-sided thing. Okay?
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Sexual violence is often used during war. Now, in the case of Hamas, I think the argument is whether or not Hamas used rape specifically as a tool of war and it was a widespread act. And
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so that's where the debate lies on the Hamas side. On the Israeli side, you know, Kristof was very clear in noting that there's no indication that IDF soldiers are commanded to carry out rape. But what stood out to me about his
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reporting is that, you know, there were individuals quoted who said that basically no one stops them. Like it's common. It's known that this is happening. It's been happening for a long time, but no one in a position of
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power in Israel is stopping them from doing it. And so, it's just, I mean, it's so wrong. And I don't know how anyone can read the entirety of that Kristof piece and not be brought to tears over the just cruel and unusual punishment of
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individuals who were never even charged with a crime. By the way, that's the other thing. These are individuals who were arrested soon after October 7th on suspicion of doing something wrong. They were never charged with anything. They never stood trial, yet they were
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imprisoned and raped in some of the most horrific ways imaginable. So just long story short, rape is wrong. Sexual violence is wrong regardless of who does it.
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Okay, Emily Schrader, welcome back to Uncensored to you two. Um, you've posted Nick Kristof should really be fired over this. If such crimes actually occur, there needs to be a respectable investigation into this behavior, not an opinion column citing Hamas-affiliated
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sources. The NYT published an opinion column accusing Israel of systematic sexual abuse the night before a major report documenting Hamas October 7th sexual atrocities was released, not an investigation but an opinion piece built heavily on claims from Euromed
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Monitor whose leadership has documented ties to Hamas networks. If abuse is happening, it should be investigated.
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But regurgitating absurd claims such as that Israel trained dogs to rape Palestinians does not help victims of sexual violence. It makes a mockery of them. Shame on the New York Times. So my first question is I presume that you
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found everything in the—I don't want to speak for you, but you can clarify quickly—did you find everything in the Hamas report credible and entirely accurate and would you just take it unquestionably as fact?
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We have no way of knowing if every single claim that's made in the civil commission's report is accurate. I personally, of course, have no way of knowing that. But what we do know from the civil commission report is that it
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relies on 1,800 hours of footage. It relies on more than 10,000 photos. It relies on forensic evidence that was collected from dead bodies that were there, as well as eyewitness and survivor testimony from the hostages who returned. So, there is a lot more
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evidence that's provided in that report, which
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there most certainly are, as I think there are in most countries that have a prison system, especially one involved in a heavy conflict like we see here. I think this might be the first time on Pierce Morgan. I actually agree with
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Anna Kasparian. It doesn't matter who did it. If it's happening, it's wrong. It deserves a thorough investigation.
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Uh, and I don't believe that Kristoff did them a service in this article. I think it actually is an insult if there are indeed victims as he described who have been abused in the ways that he described. There needs to be a much more
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impartial investigation and furthermore the sources that he used. I mean the way that he didn't disclose the associations between Eurommed monitor and Hamas between what Ramy Abdu has said and stood for what the chairman of the board Mazen Kah has stated they have both
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explicitly supported the actions of October 7th on social media themselves. Eurommed itself has been a denier of sexual assault and rape on October 7th by Hamas. So there's a lot of complications and problems that simply were not disclosed in this piece. But
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what is interesting, Emily, okay, here's what I would say. What is interesting to me is your mindset about these two reports because on the first one, you conceded immediately that you don't know for sure if it's all accurate. And yet, you're
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not calling for anyone to be fired. You're not throwing rocks at the the quality of the reporting. You're just accepting you don't know it's all true, but you 100% support it and endorse it.
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Whereas with the Kristoff report, and again to remind viewers, this is not just any old journalist. He is one of the most experienced and highly awarded journalists in America. He's won two pullet surprises. He's not he just didn't lob this up as a piece of
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opinion. As he says himself, he def. But the sources he relies on the sources he rely, 1800 hours of raw footage, photos from actual dead bodies.
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Okay. He as he says I deeply believe the most the best opinion journalism is based on new reporting. So my columns are rooted in travel and reporting. In this case I saw a story and pursued it and because I'm a columnist it ran in
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the opinion section. What was intriguing to me, and maybe you can shed some light on this, but within minutes there was this bombardment of people on social media, high-profile, Bill Aman and others piling in to Kristoff, denouncing it all as just complete nonsense,
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fantasy, blood liel, and so on. How could they possibly have known? In the same way that you were open and honest enough to say you don't know if everything in the Hamas report is actually correct, why did you not
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collectively apply the same view to what Nick Kristoff did given his background as a award-winning journalist?
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Because the civil commission was based on evidence. It wasn't compiled by a journalist and it wasn't published in an opinion section. In fact, I would probably have been more likely to believe some of the claims that were made by Kristoff it had if it had been
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done as a news article. And frankly, I think the New York Times has their resources. They have the time. They have the ability to conduct a thorough investigation about this. And they didn't. And I think that that actually
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does a disservice to any of victims who who actually have suffered from sexual harassment or abuse uh in captivity or otherwise. It's a huge problem journalistically. That said, I'm not denying that something could have occur.
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BUT WHAT? WE DON'T REALLY KNOW. You're using sources that are praising Hamas that have affiliations WITH HAMAS.
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WE ALL witnessed We all witnessed an IDF gang rape of a Palestinian hostage in one of these.
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You didn't you didn't witness that because that's not what the footage shows and that actually has been investigated in the court.
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I watched the video myself. I watched the video. You interrupted me as a matter of fact.
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And what you saw is not what you think you saw. This has already been debunked.
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The victim, by the way, I just want to be clear that this woman is not a journalist. She's actually a spy who works for uh the 8200 uh group within the By the way, that is legal defamation. I
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have never worked for the Israeli government in any capacity and I also have never served in the Israel have posted about it on X.
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No, I didn't. I have problems reading a screenshot. I have a screenshot. I have a screenshot. I'll share it.
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I have a screenshot, too, Anna. In fact, I have a screenshot of you defaming me on social media, calling me a traitor to the United States when you have no such evidence.
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You are a traitor to the actual conversation here, which is not about my background. Can we not talk over each other? All right. Don't witness it. If you talk over each other, if you talk over each other, no one can hear. And
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let's not get into the tit for tat on who's suing who about what. Let's stick to the the story itself. Can I finish my point?
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The point you're making is what? The point I'm making is there was a group of IDF soldiers who were caught on surveillance footage. This is a video I watched. This is a video that many people have seen themselves. The gang
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rape happens. Okay. The Palestinian man who suffered that sexual abuse had internal injuries that were so bad that he had to be in the hospital for weeks upon weeks. Okay. They used objects uh to to to rape him anally. I mean, it was
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one of the most horrific things I've ever witnessed myself. And you know what happened, Pierce? After there was some indication that maybe, just maybe, these IDF soldiers would suffer some punishment for what they did. There were protests in Israel. There was rage over
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the notion that they would ever suffer any consequences for what they did. And later, they were made to be uh television stars. They were brought on interview shows, celebrated. There is an a sickness in the society right now that
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needs to be addressed. If you see anyone being raped like that and you think the rapists should be let off with not even a slap on the wrist, there is something wrong with that society.
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Okay, let me bring in uh some of the other guests. So, Sher Ben Efra, welcome to you to uncensored. Uh you're a former IDF soldier and whistleblower. I believe you spoke to Nick Kristoff as part of the reporting he did for his piece. So,
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you know, give me your view of what he published. Yeah. So, I I think it's important to move away from this attempt to compare what Nick Kristoff did to this commission, right? Nick Kristoff is working in in an environment where he
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can't investigate properly because the authorities aren't letting him. So, he's doing the best he can as a journalist in order to force the authorities to investigate it. That's the whole point here. There have been absolutely no convictions, no serious investigations
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into any cases of wrongdoing. Not only has no one been imprisoned, but no one's even been removed from their jobs despite one investigation into a murder and another investigation into a brutal sexual assault. So what Kristoff is doing is he's going into an environment
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where the authorities are in no way willing to cooperate and breaking the lid of silence. And that's not the same as a commission that has the cooperation of the authorities that has the cooperation of the military that's in
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control of the area and is able to do that kind of forensic evidence. So of course the forensic evidence is much more impressive um in in that that committee. The two are just completely unrelated. Now, what's most striking and
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amazing about what Kristoff did is that he managed to get the survivors of sexual abuse to talk on the record with their faces exposed in some cases in the video, which to me was absolutely incredible because you have to keep in
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mind that in Palestinian culture, if you've experienced sexual abuse, that has a stigma of shame that is far far greater than in Western society. I mean, we have it too in the West. We in Israel, in the United States, but
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there's no comparison to the Palestinians, and I know that their families are being harmed in their status as a result, but they felt that they needed to speak out despite the incredible damage that this could do to them personally. And the fact that Nick
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managed to get that done is an absolutely incredible piece of Now specifically Sh the the the most contentious allegation uh that's in Nick Kristo's report is this suggestion that is Israeli guards used dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners. Now you I believe
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uh can corroborate that from your own personal uh work. So tell me about that side of it.
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Yeah. So, when I first read about um dogs being used to sexually assault um victims in in these prisons, I didn't believe it. Of course, at the time, I didn't believe that Israel was committing many of the crimes that it
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later turned out that it was. Uh so, I talked to guards in det. But then I kept hearing more and more reports of this and I talked to someone in Gaza who had been in one of these camps and they told me that this had
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occurred. So I asked the two um guards that I had talked to if that had actually happened. One of them said he'd heard talk about it, hadn't seen it. The other one said that he had seen it. Now
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it has to be said that the guard who said that he had seen it wasn't speaking about penetration or anything like that.
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They were talking about um having the detainee be sort of um exposed and having the dog sort of seem like it was about to mount him. So, a very disturbing threatening kind of thing.
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So, all this talk about whether there's been penetration or not, I I don't know if there has been or hasn't been, but this guard saw them using a dog in a sexually threatening way. And the other one, it was it was just hearsay. Um when
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Nick was doing the the article, he asked me to put him in contact with them and uh one of them immediately said no. The other one chickened out in the last minute. So that's why you don't have any
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corroboration unfortunately from uh from guards. But a lot of people in these prisons, both uh members of the prison service and IDF officers and people who served on the ground there, one of them was just a reserve officer serving there
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who usually did combat uh duty are completely aware of the use of dogs. And uh you know, Kristoff said that there's no evidence that there's orders from above to do these sorts of things. But honestly, I would be shocked if they
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weren't getting orders from their immediate superiors. I don't I don't think any of this is coming from Netanyao, but I'd be shocked if this it wasn't coming from their immediate superiors.
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All right, let let me bring in Let me bring in our two other guests now. Rob O'Neal, welcome back to you. Always great to have you on Uncensored. You I've got a long memory. I remember in the Iraq war in 2003, the Abu Grae
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scandal where a lot of Iraqi civilians were being abused by American forces in that case and it turned out quite a few rogue elements of the British armed forces were doing similar things and some of them got caught marshaled. I was
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personally involved. I lost my job over it for pictures which were alleged to have been faked. But actually interestingly regardless of the rusty of the pictures the reports that we published alongside them were never denied. So clearly there has been a
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history of rogue elements of armed forces both in the US and other countries including mine uh and guards in prisons. We read about this a lot uh abusing detainees in some capacity. So when you've seen these two reports and
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let's take the the New York Times report first, Rob, what is your view about this? Because a lot of people are like, "No, none of this happened." Others are like, "I believe every word of it. Where do you sit with it?"
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Well, like anything else, Pierce, and thanks for having me. Um, like anything else, that's the extremes on each side.
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It didn't happen or everything happened and somewhere is the truth in the middle. you're going to see with uh prisoners and guards, there's always going to be there there was a famous uh test. Um I should have researched I
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didn't know I'd be talking about this, but that there were students that were volunteered to be guards, volunteered to be prisoners, and it turned into debauchery after like 12 hours. This happens all the time. I remember when I
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was uh in high school with the first time, well, when Saddam invaded Kuwait and there were stories of mass rape and all this stuff that turned out to be true or untrue or whatever. It's always happened. I mean, I'm not saying it's
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always happened. There's always stories of this. Now we're at a place where, well, yeah, I saw a video of it. Well, there's deep fakes everywhere.
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Everything you hear, most of it's not true. Everyone's got an agenda. They're all doing stuff. I mean, I was I was happy at first. Uh Emily and Anna were on. We all agreed rape is bad. I'm like, "Wow, this is going to be a great
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Wednesday. We all agree rape is bad." Then you get the human element involved and you don't know what's happening. You don't know what's true. I mean I mean, okay, we saw it on TV. I saw a tape.
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Yeah. Well, I also saw weird footage. I wasn't there when they landed on the moon, but somehow it panned up as the thing took off. I saw it on TV. It must be true. the the Exorcist the movie
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scared the [ __ ] out of me because I saw it on TV. It must be true. Got to take a wrap off and realize not everything's true and everyone does everything.
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In a way, Rob, I think look, I think everything you just said I completely agree with. It's becoming increasingly difficult to get to the truth because AI in particular is so sophisticated and will get more so that the fakes are just
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everywhere and it's very very hard to sort the wheat from the chaff. But that's why actually I put an even higher premium on journalists like Nick Kristoff who I personally have known a long time who has won two Pulit
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surprises. If we can't believe the reporting of somebody as good as him and as experienced as him particularly in the area of sexual violence and I'll read the the statement from the New York Times after all the Fiori yesterday that
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said there's no truth at all to any retraction being published. Nicholas Kristoff is a two-time Pulit surprisewinning journalist who's reported on sexual violence for decades and is widely regarded as one of the world's best on the ground reporters
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documenting and bearing witness to sexual abuse experienced by women and men in war and conflict zones. He traveled to the region to report firsthand on the stories of Palestinians who suffered abuse and his article collects accounts and the victim's own
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words backed by independent studies. You know, he's he's not a fly by night guy.
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He's not a guy with a litany of big mistakes or fake news or any of these things. And I just think we've we've got to somehow separate the reporting and journalism of people like Nick Kristoff from the kind of stuff you been talking
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about. Well, I'm assuming you heard of Seymour Hurst. Yeah. Right. He won a couple pollsters, didn't he?
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I think so. But he he wrote a I was there for the Bin Laden raid. He wrote a horrible article about how we were cutting up his body and throwing it over the Hindu Kush. 100% [ __ ] But hey,
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it's Seamor Hirs. He wrote a great article in the 60s. He's full of [ __ ] That's it. I mean, guys can lie. Just because they have awards given to them by other guys who write [ __ ] doesn't
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mean they were there. Do you know why do you know why I like having you on the reason I like having you on Uncensored is because you are the epitome of uncensored. Rob O'Neal, you always say exactly what you're thinking
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and I appreciate the can. Yeah. I'm trying to tell the truth as I know it is. That's all I'm trying to do.
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Seriously, and if I'm wrong, I'll admit it. I just think that's the truth. You're making you're making a valid point based on your own personal experience. So I completely understand the passion that you're making it and I actually met I meant what I just said as
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a a compliment. Oh no, I know. Let me bring in um let me bring in Doran Kemple, former special forces commander in the IDF. Doran, what is your what is your view of this? I mean I look my view
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of the IDF generally since October the 7th is they've obviously been waging an incredibly difficult uh war against Hamas. They've obviously had uh a lot of losses on their side. They've they've inflicted a lot of losses on the other
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side, including many civilians. That's been very contentious. It's led to all sorts of global debate about whether the proportionality of Israel's response has been correct or not. We've debated that on this show many, many, many times. But there have been a few things that have
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popped up which have to my mind questioned the the constant refrain that the IDF is the most moral army in the world. you know, one very recently of the IDF soldier desecrating a statue of Jesus Christ, for example. That's not
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the actions of the most moral army in the world. Now, I accept there are rogue elements of any army. Okay? So, I'm not pretending for a moment they're not, but I think when you make a claim like that,
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it can sometimes be used be used by people as an all-encompassing kind of protective shield to any legitimate criticism. You know, similarly, when I see members of the Israeli government like Ben Gavir being given by his wife on his 50th birthday last week, a cake
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with a noose on it, that makes me think, wow, maybe you're just as psychopathic as the people you're going after. So, there's a lot of stuff here which I am uncomfortable with. Whilst at the same time, as I did many, many times from the
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start of the war in Gaza, for example, I've always accepted Israel had a right to defend itself. So, I'm not one of those people who says everything Israel does is wrong. uh I have nothing against the country or the people. I have a
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problem with elements of this government and with the actions that have been going on particularly in the last year or so. So in the context of of my positioning of that, what is your view here of this series of revelations from
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Nick Kristoff? Do you think as some people do that none of it can be true?
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It's all fantasy. He's made it all up. Or do you think there's a more nuanced way to respond to this?
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Thank you for having me, Pierce. Uh let's start with what I think we all agree about which is that any type of rape doesn't matter if it's women or men any type of torture or abuse is bad. We
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agree on that. Let me add one more thing that I'm sure Pierce you agree with and also brother Robert from the seals. There is no excellence in an organization without having moral excellence at the core. the seals and I'm sure that your program uh
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Pierce starts with the fact that there's moral clarity and from that let me get to the most important point the survival of Israel is should not be taken for granted not in the past 50 years and not in the next 50 years. And if Israel
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wants to survive, it needs to maintain that type of excellence that starts with morality through intellectual integrity and then operational excellence, which includes courage. And I'm sure that the Israeli pilots over Iran that are sacrificing their life have this type of
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courage and has that morality across these three layers. And for that reason, and of course, I don't know what has happened in those prisons. I have no idea. But Israel should investigate this professionally and fairly and to the
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extent that anybody is to blame, they should suffer the full extent of the law or there's going to be no Israel in 50 years. I think those are the core points that I wanted to communicate. I can double click on any of them. Pierce.
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Yeah. You know, it's interesting because one of my big problems, for example, with the war on Gaza, my one of my big critiques of the Israel position on it and the way it was conducted was to this day the Netanyahu government bans
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international media from going into Gaza, even though there is supposedly been a ceasefire for many months. None of that makes sense to me. If you have nothing to hide, if you genuinely have waged this war in the most moral way
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imaginable, as they keep claiming, then let the international journalists in to do their job, unfettered, you know, untied to uh government walking around with them and allow the top journalists in the world to go in and investigate whether those claims are true. And the
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other part of the Gaza story was that there were repeated allegations of outrages, the killing of innocent journalists. Not all of them, I'm sure, were innocent. Some probably were attached to Hamas. I don't know because I only know the claims come from IDF and
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where there appears to have been some atrocity or some wrongdoing. They immediately announce an investigation and then some people have gone back and gone, well, what happened to all those investigations. Most of them we never get any conclusion, you know, and we're
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seeing a similar pattern, for example, in Iran with the killing of the school, with the 200 school girls or however many it was who were killed. We still don't know apparently who fired that missile. And yet every part of my
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journalistic gut tells me of course they know who fired that missile. So why aren't we being told? Similarly, with all the investigations the IDF have done into all the alleged wrongdoing as it was happening in real time, well,
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where's the results? Where are the where are the published statements about all these things? A lot of them just disappear from public view and public purview. And I have a problem with that.
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you know, I have a problem with the lack of transparency and the apparent lack of accountability. What would you say to that?
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Well, a lot of very important uh points. I think that all of this should be investigated and uh published. And again, I believe that no organization or society can survive without a kernel of morality, legality, integrity, etc. And
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for that reason, all of that should be investigated and whoever has done something wrong should be uh suffering the full extent of the law. Having said that, you also said something about allowing journalists everywhere. That's not really possible in the time of war
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because war includes a lot of elements that are under ceasefire and for instance. Yes. But uh you know that the MSAD and the CIA are not on vacation right now in Iran. But where there is a ceasefire historically is historically in modern
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times where there's a ceasefire journalists are allowed to do their job. And I I cannot get a straight answer out of why the Israeli government continues to ban international journalists from doing their job. It's it makes no sense.
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It's an infringement of of their uh freedom of speech and expression to do it. It's a failure of accountability, a failure of transparency. And you know, my message to Prime Minister Netanyahu, if you have nothing to hide, then let
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the journalists in. let them report, you know, and that's, you know, it's not connected directly to the New York Times. In general, I agree with that.
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If you don't have reporting like like Nick Christos, I'm not sure where it comes from.
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In general, I agree with that. It's part of democracy. The only point that I was making is that if Robert's SEAL team had a journalist with them on their way to Bin Laden, it wouldn't have worked in the same way. So, there should be some
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areas that are concealed. But when there is But hang on. But Doran, but Doran, on that point, but journalists did go to the compound afterwards. They were allowed to go and investigate what had happened after it was all over. So
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that's that's the analogy I would use. Of course, you don't want to have journalists on the actual missions or during combat operation. I get that. Uh but once it's over, once there's a ceasefire, even if there are, you know,
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breakouts from that ceasefire, the journalist should in the end it's down to the journalist down to the journalists and their and their bosses to determine the risk assessment. It shouldn't be down to a government to say none of you are coming in. Um I mean I
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mean Emily, let me ask you that question because you know you're a US-Israeli journalist and commentator. As a journalist, do you feel comfortable that journalists are not allowed into into Gaza unless they're taken by the IDF and are perceived to be friendly?
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Yeah, I mean, I think we're on the same page. We have been for some time. Even while there was no ceasefire, I argued that international media should be allowed in at their own risk. And I say that with the caveat that I know uh why
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the army doesn't want and it's not because of hiding something or not hiding something. the equation here is that they consider the risk to be too high uh too much operational activity occurring within a very small area. It's
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not unheard of for certain zones to be off limits for journalists. We see it in Ukraine with zones that journalists can't enter. That being said, I agree with you. I think that should be up to the journalist to assume that risk uh
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and that's who should be making the ultimate decision. I just want to add one more comment about what you mentioned with the accountability. Uh, I think that's the case in many countries, especially when it comes to war, that we
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don't really hear about the followup. This is a problem. Uh, but I do want to say, at least in some of the more recent examples, including one that you brought up, that disgusting uh behavior from one of the soldiers in Lebanon mocking the
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uh statue of of uh Jesus uh that was in one of the the villages there. Uh there was a response to this. He was removed from operational duty and those who stood by doing nothing were also suspended. In addition to that, we also
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had condemnation from right to left, from the very top of the government with the president and the prime min community leaders.
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Okay, Emily, but I would I my response to that would be yes, you're right.
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Because there was widespread condemnation all around the world and because I think the Israeli government panicked and realized how bad it looked particularly with Christians in America who are their biggest pay masters and supporters. But then it begs the
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question, if they can respond that quickly and with such clarity and authority and decisiveness and take disciplinary action, why couldn't they do the same when you had people being killed wrongly in Gaza? As happened multiple times, including, in my
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estimation, a number of journalists who were just doing their job. Over 200 journalists were killed in in that war.
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and and you know I'm afraid obviously you know I'm going to dispute you on that figure but well no it's not disputable the only the only dispute is whether any of them many of these journalist journalist it's not disputing that
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you're not a journalist you are not a journalist okay you born and raised background noise now you're a lot of background noise that you're genocidal regime in the Middle East that's what you are your propaganda for a genocidal regime in the
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Middle talking about. Can we get back to the actual topic of this debate, please? No, we're we're focusing on the topic. Can we get back to the topic of this debate? The slaughter of actual people.
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I'm making the Okay, look, I'm making a propagandist for Israel. You can respond in a moment, but I'm making the point which I think is a valid one, which is why is it why is it the IDF and the Israeli government could
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respond so quickly to the desecration of a statue of Jesus, but cannot respond with anything like the same speed to the killing of journalists, many of whom were genuine journalists doing their job.
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Probably Rob and Don can answer this even better than me, but I think the most distinct and obvious difference is that one occurs in the fog of war and it takes time to be able to determine who was where when, what footage is there,
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what information is there available uh versus a photo where you can clearly see who it was and what happened and they evaluated that fairly quickly. Now, that said, I agree with you. I think there needs to be more transparency and there
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also needs to be more speedy answers to a lot of these things. We're on the same page on this. I'm not disputing you at all on that front.
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And on the question of the 9,000 or so Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, why is it that so many have not had a free and fair trial yet?
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Good question. Under administrative detention, Israel does reserve the right in order to preemptively harass people up to 6 months uh with court permission. And that is what's happened. All of those 9,000 are not under administrative detention. But we know that after
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October 7th, there were thousands of arrests in order to determine who was a part of what happened. In fact, I would go even further than that and point out that a lot of the Palestinians who were arrested, we didn't know because we
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didn't know on October 7th who had entered Israel. There were people they found many months later that were involved in the October 7th massacres who had been hiding inside of Israel. So there is an over response to what
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happened in order to get control of the situation to Israel. Let me bring Rob O'Neal. Let me be bringing Rob O'Neal back on on that one because of course, you know, anyone who's watched the great, you know, Zero Dark 30 about your
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incredible raid, uh, which is a brilliant movie, but of course it shows a great movie.
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Yeah. And it shows a lot of the a lot of the detention, uh, scenes are pretty harrowing and you see people being held at Guantanamo Bay and being, you know, effectively tortured for information.
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And the thread in the movie shows that ultimately a piece of information that was elicited that way leads to identification of a compound and so on.
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So you can see a thread through that movie and that narrative that in a way justifi you know means justifying the ends. But of course the argument against it is uh particularly when Barack Obama himself being a lawyer is that if you're
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fighting to defend democracy including the rule of law then is it right that you should hold people in detention for sometimes in quite a base case there were people there for 12 years or more without ever being brought to trial. I
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had a real problem with that. It's like if we're fight we're fighting for freedom and democracy, we should be fighting for the rule of law and it should be the rule of law. It shouldn't just be well we're going to ride rough
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shot over that when it suits us. What do you think? Yeah. I mean it's uh I'm going to start this off by saying I'm not a journalist either. Uh I'm fortunate though over 400 combat missions I was what we called the
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battlefield interrogator until we've softened it to tactical questioner which means after we take down a house, after we killed people and there's people still alive, I'm the one that gets to interrogate them. So I get to talk to
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him face to face. And I'm going to tell you from the time I had from the first time I did that in Iraq to the last time I did it probably in Afghanistan or Pakistan, I learned along the way
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torture does not work at all. You will get to a point where you hurt someone so bad they're going to tell you what you want to hear. So what works is just catching them in lies. And the easiest
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way to catch them in a lie is ask them a question that you know the truth to.
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Whose house is this? Who are the men of the house? What if their names? If there's five guys you ask that three guys have the same answer, guess what?
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They're not the bad guys. And I mean, look, I've been in places before after a gunfight questioning someone and I had to smack the taste out of their mouth.
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That's fine. But the torture stuff, I was never into that. I never saw it.
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None of my guys wanted to do that. I like to say we're the good guys, but again, unfortunately for me, no one on the battlefield thinks they're the bad guy. I'm just telling you right now, if you can catch them in lies, that's good.
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You're going to get a lot further with rapport than torture. Anyone that tortures is wrong, and it's not up to me to judge whether or not you cut down a picture of Jesus. Someone else will do that eventually. So, I'm just saying
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what's right or wrong there. there. It's it it is bad on the battlefield, but it's also really bad on what gets reported because not everything is the truth. What I found, it's a hard truth.
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And anyone who's listening who's never been to combat, I'm going to tell you, everyone in a war zone, about 99% are not combatants. Not everyone's fighting.
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The ones who are bad. You try to get the truth. You try to get the targets however you can. But I'm going to save if anyone's a young soldier right now, I'll save you about 17 years of experience. Torture doesn't work. Try
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another way. See, that's that's a really fascinating and honest answer. And and on the particular point that I amazed which triggered that amazing response by the way um holding people in detention whether it's in Guantanamo Bay whether it's in Israeli jails for years at a
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time without giving them a trial it just it seems to me the antithesis really of what a free democracy should be doing.
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It should be setting the moral and legal code for especially if you're going to, you know, take a morally superior view of the way you run your country. We hear all the time, Israel says, "We're the only democracy in the region." Okay,
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well then behave like one. You know, having having all these people in prison without ever giving them a trial seems to me that's not democracy. But what do you think?
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Well, no. I mean, you're going to be uh if you keep someone un especially if it's unlawful. If you just thought there's something and you lock them up, you're going to make a a bad guy. And again, both sides of it. You're I
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thought one thing, now I think another because they've locked me up for a decade. I don't like them. Uh I again, I wish I had all the answers because this would be a much shorter show. I don't.
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And I'm I'm still I just turned 50. Thank god I can learn for hopefully another 50. But it's like I mean, and people throw democracy around like it's anything else. Like if you say, "Hey, I don't want my borders open. Let 20
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million people in." Well, if I don't do that, I'm not I'm against the Constitution. It's like you're we're losing a lot of definitions because we're bringing too many lawyers and politicians into it. That's I mean it's it's a lot of stuff in life I think is
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simpler. We love to make it complicated. I mean I I'm just again I'm going to refer back to the beginning of the segment. I'm glad this entire panel is in agreement that rape is bad.
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Yeah. Anna I I think we really need to to to look at the comparison of what we're talking about here. On the one hand, people who commit crimes in Israeli jails, it's fog of war. We can't arrest. There's no way
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of knowing. And then in Gaza, you have this massive net where you arrest every single man you see, lock them up, torture them, possibly kill them, and then see what happens later. All of a sudden, the fog of war doesn't matter.
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You have the widest net possible. And when it's Israelis committing these crimes, no one gets arrested. No one gets investigated. It's fog of war. What can you do? But with Gaz, you can bring everyone in. It just shows you that Jews
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are not held accountable in Israel and Palestinians are held accountable whether they committed crimes or not.
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Every Palestinian is seen as So on that point that's why all the journalist on that point and Anna I will come to you in one moment but on that point Emily for example the the the thing that precipitated Ben Ge getting this cake
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from his wife with the noose on it was the scene from the Knesset of him celebrating wildly with champagne after winning a new policy going through in the Knesset to uh have a two-tier system of death penalty policy now where if
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you're a Palestinian that the Israelis deemed to be a terrorist, then you can be executed. But the same law doesn't apply to Israelis who may commit an act of terrorism. And you know, this is a country where you've had prime ministers
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killed by right-wing Israeli terrorists. Okay? So, it's not like it doesn't happen. So, what do you say to that? Are you comfortable with a two-tier legal system about things like the death penalty?
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I am not a supporter of this law. Uh, in principle, I don't have a problem with the death penalty being applied.
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However, I do want to clarify just for the viewers that the law that was passed, the one that we saw Bener celebrating, um, is less about being two-tier. What it states isn't that anyone who's a terrorist can qualify for
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the death penalty. It's that anyone who is convicted of murdering people. So, it has to be a capital offense. Uh, and it also has to be uh, of a nationalistic nature. That's what it it's classified as. Now, how that affects Palestinians
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differently is because Palestinians are prosecuted in military courts. So, it it operates through a different system because they are an active combatant.
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They're considered an active enemy uh entity to the state of Israel. Uh I do have a problem with the application of it. But all of that being said, it's not going to stand. It's going to get struck down or at least modified by the courts.
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And frankly, it should. I think we need to be very smart about how we deal with such situations. We don't want to see people like Yahi Sinir spending time in Israeli prison, being treated by Israeli doctors for brain cancer and then being
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released and planning things like October 7th. We need to be intelligent about how we're dealing with murderers with blood on their hands. Uh and I don't believe that this law was the best way to do it, but I do think that we do
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need to revise how we review some of these cases. All right, Anna, your response.
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I mean I obviously it is a two-tier justice system when one group of people and I I want to note Emily Schrader didn't say Hamas she said Palestinians are seen as enemy combatants. Uh but yeah, the application of this law is
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obviously meant to excuse me. You murder someone, you are a terrorist. Including Jewish Israelis, you think they should if if Jewish Israelis carry out murder, you think they should Okay.
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All right. As long as you're committing equally. Absolutely. As long as But okay. So, can I can I finish my point without Emily and her screeching voice interrupting me constantly? Let me just finish my point. Okay. The issue is
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the fact that Palestinians are tried in a military prison or I'm sorry military courts as opposed to uh you know Isra Jewish Israelis. I mean this law is an extension of the apartheid system that Israel has been operating under for
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decades now. That is the problem. This law is yet another symptom of that deeper foundational problem within Israeli society. Israelis would like us to believe that they're the only democracy in the Middle East, that it's a a wonderful utopia that Americans
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would love. It's very much in line with the Western world. It is not in line with the Western world. It is very important for the American people to understand that our special ally operates in ways that we would find
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absolutely horrendous. We would consider it treachery. And the idea that we continue to fund that government, fund that military despite all of the atrocities that have been committed in Gaza, in the West Bank, now in Lebanon, uh also in Iran. By the way, quickly
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going back to your point about we don't know who bombed the school in Manab. We do know uh sadly it was the United States because we're the only ones who have tomahawk missiles and Tomahawk missiles were used to bomb that school.
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And it wasn't simply one strike. It wasn't two strikes. It was four strikes. Okay? So, that was a horrific situation.
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And I hate the fact that we as Americans have blood on our hands for carrying out that atrocity. But atrocities happen.
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It's one thing to realize you've committed an atrocity. Uh use actual punishment to prevent it from happening again. But that's not what's happening here. It's certainly not happening in Israel. It's not happening with our government. certainly under the
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leadership of Donald Trump. I mean, the guy thinks that we're winning the war in Iran. He keeps telling us that he's decimated their military. We just got New York Times reporting yesterday saying that uh Iran was able to access
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uh most of their mobile um you know, missile launchers along the straight of Hormuz. 70% of their missiles are still intact. Just it's lie after lie after lie, PICE. We have to be honest about what's actually happening right now or
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we're going to keep compounding the same mistakes. I think in a way in a way this plays back to what Rob O'Neal said which is there's a lot of lying goes on in wars.
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Yeah. Iran's out of the fight. Their entire navy's on the bottom of the ocean. Jesus.
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But isn't the truth but Rob isn't but is but Rob isn't the truth isn't the truth about the Iran war. Rob that that what the Iranians have discovered is they can get their they can get pounded militarily but as long as they can they
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can control the straight of Hmoose in the way they have done as long and that's pressure on the Chinese Pierce there's there's logic to all of that there are so many points here let me come to you in a moment I just just
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want Rob to to I mean it's no I'm just I mean I'm just saying with all due respect Anna just said the New York Times says yeah okay I I didn't know Baghdad Bob from the first war and
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I Iraq had a job again. The Americans are committing suicide by the thousands. Their navy sunk. Their army doesn't matter. They've been physically destroyed. It's a matter of you and the media waiting out.
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Then why haven't we opened the straight of Hormuse? If their military's been decated to holy land and then Iran and Straits of Hormuz are going to be obsolete.
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That's why we're giving them a chance. Do you want to still be in Iran? If not, fine. Beat it.
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I think the problem with giving them a chance is that Donald Trump has constantly set new times timelines for this. is going to be over in two or three weeks. Then it was six weeks. Then it was eight weeks. And I think the
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problem is if I was advising President Trump, it would be like maybe less is more in the constant announcements about all this.
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Well, I didn't I didn't want to start a war on Iran. I'm just saying Iran is not in this militarily. They're decimated.
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They don't they don't even have leadership. These are some of these guys are just death spots because they have some missiles or launching them because they want to die because they believe in their version of heaven. It's get your
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head in it. They've lost. It's it's a matter of the media holding out then us being weak again. That's it.
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Suicide bombings are carried out by Sunni Muslims, not Shia, not Shia Muslims. Sunni Muslims.
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Let me bring Doran in. Doran, you want to comment on that? Just on the point of Iran. The tactical goal has been to eradicate their military. That happened very quickly.
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The strategic goal is to get the Iranians who work for the Chinese and the Russians to collaborate with us.
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that calls regime change or having some friendly general lead the uprising. I believe that this is still being pursued. As I said earlier, the Mossad and the CIA are not on vacation right now. And we have already demonstrated.
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By the way, I'm a US citizen. Just to be clear when I say we, we've already demonstrated that we can take any piece off the chessboard when we choose. Which means that if we're okay with the people that we're negotiating with, we probably
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decided that these are the people we want to speak with with regard to the straits of our moose. That's a strategic choke point relative to the bigger chess game which is China US. President Trump is on his way to speak with she when the
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oil that typically China gets from the Gulf is not coming there. 50% of the oil that goes to China comes from the Gulf.
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So I think that we're comfortable as Americans with that particular leverage points that we have over China. There's no other way to interpret why President Trump is okay with this futile negotiation because there's no rush until he completes the negotiation with
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sheep. We have accomplished the tactical objective of eradicating the military in one week. Yeah, look, I don't agree necessarily with all your characterization of the current state of what's happening there.
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But I totally agree that what is happening right now in Beijing or tomorrow morning actually I think they're all asleep now but tomorrow morning when they have their first meeting I if if some of the reports are right that President Trump is thinking
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of offering a gigantic trade deal to China to build factories in the United States for Americans to have product. Um it will be a very contentious thing with his base. It would be very contentious with the conservative right in America.
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But if it takes that for this Iran war to be resolved to give him enough time to maybe repair the damage in time for the midterm elections, he may well take that deal. So I think there could be
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some massive announcements coming out of Beijing and it could precipitate the end of the war, which I suspect everybody would like to happen sooner rather than later. Uh we've run out of time, but thank you all very much indeed. A very
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interesting debate. Uh and I really appreciate all of you coming on. Thank you. Well, legions of fanatical followers are not something normally associated with CEOs. But rebel entrepreneur Ryan Cohen is no ordinary suit. Cohen is the boss of GameStop, the once ailing bricks and
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mortar video game store, which became a 10 billion business as the original meme stock. He made global headlines this month by launching an audacious $55 billion bid for eBay and his first interview since that bid was emphatically rejected when he now joins
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me. Uh, well, welcome Ryan Cohen to uncensored. Nice to see you. So, you uh pulled off this extraordinary move where you made this gigantic bid for eBay, one of the biggest tech firms in the world. Um, you tried to buy it
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and people immediately said, "Well, where's the money going to come from?" And I want to play a clip from an interview you did with CNBC that went a bit viral when you seem to struggle to give the answer. Maybe we can get some
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clarity. Let's take a look. I'm I'm just trying to understand where the the rest of the money would come from.
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It's half cash, half stock. I I I'm I'm I hear you. I'm just saying that that math doesn't get you to the to the price that you're offering.
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Ran, that's a pretty straightforward question. I don't get it. Like, where's the rest of the money coming from?
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Andrew laid it out pretty clearly. I I don't understand your question. We're offering half cash, half stock, and we have the ability to issue stock in order to get the deal done, but the full details of the offer
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on our are on our website. So, they seemed a bit baffled um to be honest, Ryan, as did some other people.
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So, Michael Bur, famous of course for uh the depiction of him and his uh shorting in the big short after the 2008 global financial crisis. He sold his entire position in your company GameStop immediately after that interview. He
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said, "Never confuse debt for creativity." He called the potential deal a road to capitalist hell. So, look, you've got the opportunity now in a very uncensored environment to clarify things. First of all, were you surprised by the reaction to your CNBC
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interview and not least Michael Bur immediately uh selling his entire position? I was surprised by their lack of understanding um of uh of the structure because it's very simple. It's half cash, it's half stock. We have the ability to issue stock. Uh essentially
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the eBay shareholders are going to continue owning eBay except it's going to be run by an owner operator as opposed to an entrenched management team um that has zero invested and zero skin in the game. And the other half of the
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structure we've got 9 billion of cash on our balance sheet and our bankers have advised us that they feel confident in our ability to raise 20 billion. Uh, so it's a straightforward deal, but um, you know, it was it was too complicated for
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them on CNBC. Yeah. I mean, look, they I know those guys at CNBC. They're extremely smart, particularly when it comes to business.
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They seem completely baffled and didn't think your maths added up. You make it sound very simple. Why are they so beused?
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I don't know. Maybe they spent uh too much time uh in college or something. I have zero idea.
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Michael Bur is no fool. I'm sure you'd agree with that. He was the guy that predicted the crash in 2008. They made a movie about him. Um, is he completely wrong as well? Why is he just bailed out
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completely following that interview? You'd have to ask him. Um, I can't speak for him.
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uh there's going to be leverage, more leverage than he likely uh anticipated, but I don't want to run a leveraged business. And um I feel very good about our prospects to cut $2 billion of costs out of the
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business and uh and likely a lot more than that. And so, um, but I can't speak for Michael.
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I mean, look, I'm you're obviously extremely smart business guy. You've made billions doing what you do, and we'll come to some of the things you've done. Um, so I'm not, you know, I'm not putting myself on your level at all
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here, but the CNBC people aren't stupid, nor is Michael Bur. And the general reaction has been one of severe doubt that you can finance this deal in the way that you are making sound. so simple. What do you say to everyone who
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doesn't think this adds up? Well, first of all, in terms of skepticism, there's uh always been a lot of skepticism around GameStop. It's a business that was highly shorted um and everyone was betting against it and it should have gone bankrupt many times
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over and it didn't and now it's highly profitable. Shuy, there was a lot of skepticism going head-to-head against Pets.com and then competing against Amazon. In this case, uh there it's less about the actual financing and it's more about dealing with uh an entrenched
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board and management team that ultimately if this transaction goes through, they rejected it. And overall they were right. It's not attractive to them because if this deal goes through, the board that made $4 million in director fees last year is kaput and
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they're gone. And the management team that's making hundreds of millions of dollars in ris risk-free compensation and has never the CEO has never invested a dollar of his own money since being CEO. So that's the problem. And the
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problem is we need to go, you know, we need to we need to deal with the owners of the business as opposed to a management team and board that has perverse financial incentives and they're just employees. It's a paycheck.
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They're not the owners. The eBay response from their chairman Paul Presler in a letter to you was, "We have concluded that your proposal is neither credible nor attractive." And they laid out six factors affecting their decision. One, eBay standalone
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prospects. They said e eBay will do better going it alone. Two, the uncertainty regarding your financing proposal. In other words, they don't think you have enough money uh via GameStop. The impact of your proposal on eBay's long-term growth and
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profitability. In other words, concerns for the future success of the company due to the talk of cuts. Uh the leverage, operational risks, and leadership structure of the combined entity. In other words, you might damage eBay in the long term by combining it
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with GameStop and poor management. the resulting implications of these factors on valuation. You might make eBay less valuable due to your management style and GameStop's governance and executive incentives. In other words, they don't think you're fit to run eBay. What is
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your kind of overall response to the eBay management team? I'm not like them. Uh I'm an owner operator. I'm not a uh I'm I'm not the one of the country club executives that uh get recruited through uh these
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professional agencies. So my incentives are aligned with maximizing shareholder value and the way to do that at any company is to make the business stronger and much more profitable. So I mean they're going to throw up every single
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one of these excuses. The bottom line is we offered shareholders a 46% premium to uh when we originally started buying it and they didn't even take me up on my offer to meet with them and they did all
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this BS stuff with their adviserss and issued a public press release but didn't set up a meeting with me. So ultimately it's up to the owners of the business.
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They're um they're just in the way. On the specific point that people who are criticizing this have made, my understanding is the cash part of the offers expect to be funded by, as you've illustrated, a combination of cash and
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liquid investments on your balance sheet at GameStop, which total $9.4 billion as of January 31 this year, and third-party acquisition financing with up to$20 billion in debt financing from TD Securities. Now, people have said that with GameStop currently valued at $10.69
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billion, assuming GameStop's providing all its stock for the deal, you're looking at a $16 billion shortfall. So, purely, you know, for viewers who don't want to get too much in the weeds, that is the weeds of this and why people are
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skeptical. To that specific point, what do you say? Well, there's dilution, but there's two kinds of dilution. There's dilution.
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That's dilutive earnings per share and there's dilution that's accreative earnings per share. So ultimately this is not the first scenario where a smaller business has combined with a larger business. Ultimately here what's changing is the management team uh and
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the board and it's it it would be run by me as opposed to a bunch of professional directors.
Speaker A
And you want eBay ultimately as you've put it to be a legitimate competitor to Amazon. So obviously they operate in a similar kind of marketplace way. What would be the first things you do? I mean Poly Market at the moment uh the
Speaker A
prediction market has a 16% uh possibility that you will still acquire eBay. So clearly and certainly from your rhetoric and this interview you're not giving up uh at all in your pursuit of it. if you were to get your hands on it,
Speaker A
what would be the things you would immediately do to try and be more competitive with Amazon?
Speaker A
Well, when I say Amazon, it's not going head-to-head in uh in first party large categories like consumables and eBay is the place where you go to buy uh a rare pen or a trading card or something like that. Amazon is the place where you go
Speaker A
to buy a phone charger. So, it's not to beat Amazon at its own game. When I say when I say Amazon, it's building something that's much larger. Um and uh I believe that the business I don't believe I would make the business much
Speaker A
much more profitable get by getting rid of the bloat and running it more like a family business as opposed to a gigantic corporation and moving much more quickly and uh focusing going deep into other categories like live commerce where eBay
Speaker A
has not been able to compete and has all of the assets in order to compete and there's a lot of other categories where eBay can do a lot better. So the web they're spending, by the way, they're spending over 50% of their
Speaker A
revenues on operating expenses and the website still looks like it did in 1995. So it's a great business. And if you look at the financial performance of the company over the past 5 years, it's done terribly. And if you look at since the
Speaker A
financial crisis, there's been a lot of competition in e-commerce by way of uh from the Shopifies of the world to social commerce to to Amazon. And yet eBay is still there in spite of having a really shitty management team. So I love
Speaker A
the asset. It's run by a bunch of losers. And it's something that can be a lot more successful if it was run by an owner that's an op an an entrepreneur that has not just a much larger vision
Speaker A
but knows how to run a business and make a lot of money and cares because I have my own money on the line.
Speaker A
You sound I don't like the management team. I don't like the board of directors and I have such disdain for these people that make hundreds of thousands to 10 mill tens of millions of dollars in risk-free compensation and
Speaker A
everything is done in uh in the name of corporate governance and all stuff like that, but they don't give a crap about shareholders.
Speaker A
You're sounding a little bit like Elon Musk. Would you take that as a compliment?
Speaker A
I mean, uh, Elon has made history multiple times. So, uh, you know, he's, uh, he's one of the greatest entrepreneurs of of our time.
Speaker A
Do you know him? Did you speak to him? Uh, we've we've uh we've messaged, but we don't have a personal relationship.
Speaker A
And what about Jeff Bezos? I mean, the moment he hears someone say, "We're going to compete with Amazon," he might take a view. We're going to crush you.
Speaker A
What would you say if he decides to try and crush you? Uh, well, um, we went head-to-head against Amazon selling 30 lb bags of pet food and we did okay and, uh, he's no longer running the business, you know, he's, uh, so
Speaker A
that's okay. Competition is good, but but eBay has a mode and and they're not going headtohead against Amazon. I my my my vision is not to go head-to-head against Amazon. It's to run eBay and to make it a much better, more profitable, larger
Speaker A
eBay. And it's something that should be worth a lot more than it's than it's worth because it can grow a lot more and it's going to make a lot a lot more money. So, if you type your name into Google, there
Speaker A
are lots of variants of Ryan Cohen, a genius. Ryan Cohen, a halfwit, and everything in between. You've probably seen it all yourself. You probably Google yourself like all good public figures. Um, but you know, for viewers who are not familiar with your story,
Speaker A
you founded an e-commerce pet food company called Chewy. Uh, and it did fantastically well. You sold it for $3.35 billion in 2017.
Speaker A
Conversely, you had a 10% stake in Bed Bath and Beyond. Uh, in March 2022, you called for changes at the company as you are doing now with eBay. um you sent shares up as much as 70%, five months
Speaker A
later you disclose you'd sold your stake and the shares spiral. So people look at the first one and think genius. Second one think sharp operator can we really trust him? What would you say to people that have that view of you?
Speaker A
Uh I've done two things. I built and was the CEO of Truly and I'm the CEO of GameStop. So those are those those were the companies where I was involved personally building and running those companies in in terms of other stuff and
Speaker A
investments in Bed Bath. Uh I wasn't running that business that was uh uh again a professional management team that remarkably ran a business that was a great business into the ground very very very quickly. And it it's remarkable what they did. Not in a good
Speaker A
way, but you know, they ran the business to the ground and they were buying back stock while losing hundreds of millions of dollars. So, uh, but I wasn't running that business.
Speaker A
There are lots of top business people who were on Air Force One with President Trump flying to Beijing where there's expect to be a lot of activity in the next few days. Obviously, you weren't on the plane. Uh, would you like to have
Speaker A
been because I understand you are quite a supporter of Donald Trump. Uh, I am, uh, but I am focused on running GameStop and I'm focused on taking over eBay.
Speaker A
Have you spoken to to Donald Trump at all about any of this? I have not.
Speaker A
Do you anticipate doing so? I I mean, if it if it's uh if it's if it's appropriate and it makes sense.
Speaker A
Right now I'm dealing with um a bunch of professionals that are in the way.
Speaker A
You're sounding quite pumped up and ruthless, Ryan. I mean, if the eBay executives are watching this, should they be quivering in their overpaid, bloated boots?
Speaker A
Um, they're going to do whatever they need to do to protect their jobs. I I understand it's survival. it's a paycheck for them. But um I want to run that business. I'm passionate about e-commerce.
Speaker A
That's my core competency and I want to make it a much larger business. So, I would like for them to engage with me constructively as opposed to giving me a BS response and not really understanding the components of the deal because it's
Speaker A
attractive to shareholders and that's their job is to be a fiduciary of money that really they're not the owners.
Speaker A
They're far from the owners. They they don't they don't invest their own money. They're milking it. So they have a job to do the best for shareholders and engage on this and if they don't then we'll do whatever we need to do.
Speaker A
I mean that sounds almost mafioso uh it's business poly market as I said have you at 16% to be successful in acquiring eBay what would you put the percentage at?
Speaker A
What were the what what did they say the odds of uh Trump winning the presidency were?
Speaker A
Probably the first time less than 16% at the end actually. If we ask them going headtohead against Amazon selling 30 pound bags or turning around GameStop for that matter actually I mean everyone in the mainstream media most investors were betting against
Speaker A
GameStop and look at the financial performance of the company. It went from losing hundreds of millions of dollars to now it's making hundreds of millions of dollars. And everyone makes fun of GameStop. No one takes it seriously.
Speaker A
All of Wall Street wrote it off. But it's a real business. Not It's not a good It's not like eBay. It's not a great business. It's physical retail.
Speaker A
It's tough. It's dealing with a lot of headwinds. But I'm uh skepticism is okay. It's good. It's normal. Do you have a favorite GameStop meme yourself?
Speaker A
There's a lot of them and there's a lot of funny ones. Well, Ryan, it's good to talk to you.
Speaker A
It's going to be fascinating to see what happens. Uh, and I'll send your regards to the CNBC guys who I'm sure will be most entertained by your description of them. But, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
Speaker A
Yes, definitely. Nice to talk to you. Morgan Sensson is proudly independent. The only boss around here is me. You enjoy our show. We offer only one simple thing. Hit subscribe on YouTube and follow Piers Morgan Uncensored on Spotify and Apple Podcast. And in
Speaker A
return, we will continue our mission to inform, irritate, and entertain. And we'll do it all for free. Independent uncensored media has never been more critical. And we couldn't do it without you.
Topics:Israel-Hamas conflictsexual violencewar crimesNick KristofNew York TimesIsraeli Civil CommissionHamasIDFPiers Morganhuman rights
