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Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

The Commencement Speech Israel Doesn't Want You To Hear

Useful Idiots with Katie Halper and Aaron Maté

Useful Idiots, LLC

Politics, News Commentary, News

4.54.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2026

⏱️ 86 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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Watch the Friday Free-For-All: Is Genocide Worth It If We Get To Have Cherry Tomatoes? https://www.usefulidiotspodcast.com/p/is-genocide-worth-it-if-we-get-to?r=je5va&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Join us LIVE on Youtube every Monday at 10am EST for Monday Mourning, where we watch the Sunday morning news shows so that you don't have to.

Watch Rami Elghandour's full uncensored commencement speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcP9wnphWAg&t=1s

Follow Wyatt Reed on Substack: https://wyattreed.substack.com/

It’s another classic Useful Idiots double header!

First up we’re speaking with Rami Elghandour, biotech CEO whose company is developing transformative immunotherapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases. He’s also executive producer of the Oscar-nominated film The Voice of Hind Rajab and The American Doctor. (note to other CEOs: it’s possible to do good things with your money)

Rami was scheduled to give the convocation speech at Rutgers this week but was abruptly canceled, being told by a dean that “we’ve had a few students who feel that your social media posts are opposed to their beliefs.”

Here is the tweet that got Rami canceled:

“Forget a free ride. They’ve committed genocide. They’re running dungeons where they train dogs to sexually assault prisoners... Weapons embargo is the absolute minimum. Sanctions and diplomatic isolation are beyond justified. This we’ll sell them weapons won’t fly…”

Rami reveals his full conversation with the dean and shows us a clip of the speech he would have given, which is now available on YouTube.

We also speak with Wyatt Reed, journalist at the Grayzone who is currently reporting in Lebanon and Iran. As one of very few western journalists to actually go to Iran, Reed’s reporting is crucial to understanding what’s really happening on the ground, what actual Iranians feel about the US and the war, and how Trump’s attacks inadvertently pushed Iranians to rally around their own government.

“Every night in cities all across Iran, there are pro-government protests in the major squares and town centers. This is happening throughout the entire country.
Before the war, the die-hard support for the government was relatively limited to people who tended to be more conservative or more religious.
After their country came under an existential threat, an existential attack that sought to topple not only their government, but clearly was not distinguishing between their government and their civilian population at all, this expanded to include a huge part of the population.
So, the irony is that if they wanted to overthrow this government in Iran, they’ve done basically the opposite. They have solidified support for it through every segment of Iranian society. Iranians came to understand that basically their choice was between ruling themselves in a somewhat authoritarian manner or being ruled by an occupying foreign power which clearly seeks to conduct basically a genocide against them. It’s not hard to understand why more and more people began to side with their government.”

Wyatt also shares footage of his reporting of the US bombing on the Minab elementary school, as well as the Israeli bombings of a hospital and synagogue in Tehran. It’s tough to watch, but Wyatt’s journalism is some of the only western journalism we’ve seen from Iran. Help to share his reporting!

00:00 Intro

01:09 Worse than 9/11??

03:08 Let's raise gas prices so that they don't go up!

06:06 JD Vance just figured out the REAL villain behind everything

06:49 Rami Elghandour interview

10:26 Rami vs Rutgers

19:31 Michigan Commencement goes viral

41:58 The speech Rami would have given

44:49 Journalist Wyatt Reed interview

49:09 Visiting the elementary school the US bombed

55:25 ...and the hospital Israel bombed

1:08:46 ...and the synagogue Israel bombed



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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello and welcome to Useful Idiots. I'm Katie Halper.

0:07.6

I'm Mary Mate. Thanks so much for being here. Our website, It's Useful Idiots Podcast.com.

0:12.2

Go there to support the show and get bonus content. On this week's show, a classic

0:17.6

useful idiots double header, Rami El Gondondor who recently was canceled at ruckers from giving a commencement speech of ruckers for the crime of recognizing palisines as human beings imagine that how dare he so he was canceled he also by the way is the executive producer of the oscar nominated the voice of Hind Rajab, another cancelable

0:38.7

offense. So Katie will be speaking to him, as well as to Wyatt Reed, Gray Zone reporter who's

0:44.6

been on the ground in Iran documenting the reality for everyday people in Iran under U.S.

0:50.8

Israeli aggression and going to the scene of some of the war crimes that the U.S.

0:54.6

and Israel have committed.

0:55.6

But before that, we have a great segment called Friday Free For All, which is a segment

0:59.9

for our paying subscribers, but we always bring a preview to our non-paying subscribers.

1:05.1

So here is that preview.

1:09.1

Let's kick it off with what's happening with the Iran War. And it's kind of on pause,

1:14.5

especially with Trump going to China and trying to make nice with Xi Jinping and asking for his

1:19.9

help. And Xi Jinping, as far as I can tell, is not really reciprocating. So with the war kind of

1:25.3

still on this awkward pause, Trump not sure what he's going to do.

1:29.9

It's getting harder on Fox News to justify it.

1:32.2

But here is Larry Cudlow of Fox Business doing his best.

1:36.4

Democrats do.

1:37.1

I don't understand.

1:37.9

This is, look, this is worth 9-11 in a sense.

1:40.9

It's not really worse than 9-11 because we lost almost 3,000 people. I don't want to go down that road. But everybody was united in defense and patriotism of the United States. It's gone now. How can that be? Iran is in some sense worse, bigger than al-Qaeda. They haven't done us direct damage yet, but we're risking, you know, Boston, New York, Chicago,

2:06.1

you name it, that kind of thing.

...

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