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you've been kind of on the lonely end certainly on the Republican side of several votes pertaining to Israel this is but one example house resolution 771

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which is entitled standing with Israel as it defends itself against the barbaric War launched by Hamas and other terrorists and what I'm displaying here

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is a tweet from APAC which is the Israel Lobby saying that you Thomas Massie are siding with the squad with AOC and

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Rashida Talib been Anan Omar and opposing supporting Israel opposing condemning Hamas uh you also were the

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sole vote against kind of a symbolic uh recognition of Israel and uh saying that

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anti-Semitism uh or sorry anti- Zionism equates to anti-Semitism could you just explain your stance on Israel where

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you're coming from and what some of these you think some of these critics might be missing about your position sure that was the first of 19 votes

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today we're going to take our 19th virtue signal vote here in Congress um but I guess I got off on the wrong foot early and have been voting consistently

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ever since the title of that bill is wonderful I have no disagreement with the title of that bill but there are four or five pages that go after that

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title and um that well it's a resolution the the first you know uh object ction I have to it was there was inside of that

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an open-ended uh pledge of military support for Israel okay we've we never declare Wars anymore the administration just

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kind of goes and does it and Congress keeps funding it but they find the impera moer for their activity right there in these resolutions so the

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open-ended guarantee of um support for that war that's contained in the text of that bill but not the title could have

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implied boots on the ground and that may be the only vote we get to take in Congress on on whether we're going to do that or not so number one I don't

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support that that notion um number two there they were in that resolution they mentioned

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Iran okay in the very first resolution they're already trying to expand the war and incorporate as much of the Middle

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East as they can there's some people that just can't wait to attack Iran and they want to use this as the Nexus to get there so that was in the resolution

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a condemnation of Iran I think we should be trying to constrain the conflict not to expand it in the first resolution of support that we passed there were also

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um there was a a part of that resolution wanted uh Stronger sanctions on Iran and

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I don't support s sanctions never voted to sanction a sovereign country in the 11 years that I've been in Congress I think it leads to war sanctions actually

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create crimes only for US citizens because we're not going to go put somebody in jail in In Another Country who trades with Iran what we're

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proposing to do when we pass a sanction is to make a federal law that would result in the imprisonment of a US citizen who who trades with Iran and it

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hurts the people who are in the country I think it actually es us closer to war instead of getting us out of War so that and there were even more reasons to vote

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against that um even though I support Israel and I condemned Hamas I did that on my own I may I put out a statement I support Israel's right to defend itself

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and I condemn these attacks but that wasn't enough one that you took even more heat for was this one where you you were the only vote against it and it was

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what I guess you would describe as a virtue signal bill where um the essentially it's the house reaffirming the state of Israel's right

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to exist and two recognizing uh that denying Israel's right to exist is a form of

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anti-Semitism um where are you coming from on these sorts of bills that aren't even really directly tied to any sort of

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military aid or anything like that well I I recognize Israel's right to exist okay yeah uh have to preface all of this

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stuff with that because people would imply from a vote that I don't but um when they passed that I said you're basically saying that anti-zionism is

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anti-Semitism and people argued with me that that wasn't Zionism you know that that those words weren't a

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proxy for Zionism well what's interesting is the next week they passed almost the same resolution and they

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replaced Israel's right to exist with Zion ISM so maybe I'm just giving them clues for how to write their bills more directly um because the next resolution

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said that anti-zionism is anti-Semitism and there are hundreds of thousands of Jewish people who disagree with that statement in fact Gerald Nadler who's

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the most senior member of Congress who's Jewish went to the floor and gave a five minute speech um which is a long speech in the

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House of Representatives this isn't the Senate but he gave a five minute speech on why that's untrue to say that anti-zionism is anti-Semitism now there

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are a lot of people who are anti-semitic who are also U against the state of Israel but you can't equate the two and

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I think these uh 19 votes after today are sort of a it's a it's part of the war effort for Israel to make it hard

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for the for anybody in the United States to criticize what they're doing like you

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every two or three days here in Congress you have we're taking these votes that a lot of what's in the resolution is just

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obvious and doesn't need to be stated it's kind of like black lives matter okay you have to say black lives matter now they're making they're doing the

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equivalent with Israel now Israel matters and so I agree that Israel matters but we don't have to take all these votes and and some of them are

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going into campuses and trying to limit free speech um by withholding Federal money if you uh if if you allow anti

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things that are considered anti-semitic by the way let's take a second just to talk about that word I've been called anti-semitic for

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merely not supporting the money that goes to Israel APAC ran an ad uh they spent 90,000 th000 in my district

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running ads um implying that I was anti-semitic and then in a tweet said that I was anti-semitic for not spending not voting

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for The 14.3 billion dollar to go to Israel even though I've not voted for forign a to go to anywhere ever do

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people do people buy that talking point of Apex um the ad was not effective like when you when they run an ad in my

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district that says Thomas Massie was the Lone Republican to vote against this resolution and um people are like back in my district they've I have a history

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of being the only vote like that was a no vote like on the cares act and explaining why it's a bad vote and then a couple years later they you know they

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find out wow why weren't why didn't everybody vote the way he did so I've developed some trust with my constituents on those loan votes I mean

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Chuck Chuck Schumer has accused you of being being anti-semitic on he's blasted you on Twitter Ian here's the Tweet he said rep uh representative Massie you're

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a sitting member of Congress uh this is anti-Semitic disgusting dangerous and exactly the type of thing I was talking about in my Senate address take this

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down and what he's referring to is the uh Drake meme where he's uh saying uh you know no no to American patriotism yes to uh Zionism con Congress these

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days um I mean were you what was your reaction to having you know the well someone as prominent as

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Chuck Schumer uh accusing you of anti-Semitism well we ratioed him on that pretty soundly um I quote tweeted him and said if only you cared about

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half as much about our border as you care about my tweets and um he he's got like over 10,000 comments now on on his

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tweet to me um it's I mean it's just is simply not true by the way in the replies to him you'll find somebody who

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pointed out that of of all 535 members of Congress he rece this cycle he received more money from pro-israel

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Lobby according to ops.org than any other member of Congress so um it just it rings Hollow when he says that and

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even he's even in disagreement with Gerald Nadler for instance on equating anti Zionism to anti-Semitism and I'll

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admit memes are not the the most precise way to convey um a a point but they can

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be effective and there you know that Meme it doesn't imply that there there's nothing in that Meme that implies those two things are mutually exclusive and

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that wasn't my intent I was just pointing out that you could you could it's okay in Congress to be patriotic for Israel but you can't be patriotic

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for America that's considered nationalism which is American nationalism is a dirty word and I know it's loaded and there are a lot of

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people that have attached themselves to it but if you take it the generic sense it's you know pride in your country so I use the word patriotism pride pride in

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America is is looked down upon right now it's out of fashion but pride in Israel is something we have to vote on two or three times a week now in Congress hey

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