The Unraveling of Debra Messing and “Liberal Zionism”

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein

Matt Bernstein

Society & Culture, News Commentary, News

4.9 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2025

⏱️ 100 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For the last two decades, Debra Messing — the star of early 2000’s hit Will & Grace — has been something of a liberal Hollywood icon, courting an adoring gay audience and getting into public feuds with Donald Trump. More recently, she’s become the face of Liberal Zionism, an ideology which believes in human rights in the US while supporting Israel’s flagrant violation of them in Gaza. Sound confusing? The contradictions inherent to Liberal Zionism are too big for anyone to hold onto — even, it turns out, the winner of a GLAAD award. Listen to bonus episodes on Patreon! Thanks to today’s sponsors! Join the fight to get religion OUT of public schools at www.ffrf.us/school or text FREEDOM to 511511. Start managing your money better and cancel unwanted expenses at https://www.rocketmoney.com/fruity. Listen to Emma on The Majority Report. Follow Emma on Twitter. Listen to Matt Lieb on Bad Hasbara. Follow Matt Lieb on Twitter. Find me on Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/mattxiv/ Find A Bit Fruity on Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/abitfruitypod/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I mean, to say out loud, the same people who did 9-11 did October 7th is just so monumentally stupid and ignorant that the fact that she continues to be a public figure that is sought after by anyone.
0:13.9	Not that she's that sought after, but, you know, still.
0:25.3	Hello, hello, and welcome back to a bit fruity.
0:26.4	I'm at Bernstein.
0:27.5	I'm so happy that you're here.
0:29.2	It's been a really weird week.
0:31.8	I don't know if you guys saw the White House thing.
0:33.1	Which White House thing?
0:34.5	Sorry, there's a lot of White House thing.
0:55.8	Ariana Grande, like, shared my Instagram post and the White House got really mad. Oh, shit. That was your post? Yeah, that was my post. Oh, my God. Which it's like, it's all good. But then it's like, you know, like my mom calls me. And she's like, she, she quote asked me if the White House has me on a hit list. More like a hit tweet list.
0:56.4	Right.
0:57.2	Hell yeah.
1:01.6	In all seriousness, they may have you on a hit list.
1:04.8	They had you on that list before, though.
1:06.6	So take comfort in that.
1:09.8	God, you know, I hope that people listen to this one.
1:29.4	It's not like Deborah Messing is like the most salient figure in our culture. Like I'm really, I'm really aware of that. And I think I just want people to know that I'm aware of that up front. And that like despite spending months and to a greater extent years in the depths of Deborah Messing's Instagram content.
1:32.1	Being the foremost Messing scholar.
1:33.3	Yeah, I'm like this.
1:36.9	I'm a scholar of Deborah Messing's social media posting, which like it's actually kind of hard to do because she posts 50 times a day.
1:39.6	Oh my gosh.
1:41.0	Like literal?
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Matt Bernstein, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Matt Bernstein and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.