Once again, Israeli bombs rained down on Gaza. The latest wave of strikes killed more than 100 people, mostly women and children, according to health authorities.
The bombardment marked the deadliest day since the weeks-old U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began on October 10 — a ceasefire Israel has repeatedly broken with impunity.
“As the Trump administration likes to say, the ceasefire is still in place. And the media has parroted that as well. But an overwhelming amount of people that we spoke to on the ground are saying that there is no ceasefire with killings being at this rate. This is a continuation of the genocide,” says Intercept reporter Jonah Valdez. Palestinians “have a very crystal-clear view of Israel’s policy and their goal of wanting mass expulsion from Gaza. … Those who are surviving it and living it are seeing through the propaganda that the ceasefire is still in place.”
On The Intercept Briefing, Valdez joins host Jordan Uhl and reporter Matt Sledge to explain why President Donald Trump “has a lot to gain from continuing to tell the public that there is a ceasefire” and to discuss the news stories published on The Intercept this week.
“It’s important to mention this layer of hope that exists. No one wants to call the ceasefire dead prematurely because if it surviving allows for other Palestinians and Gaza to survive,” Valdez adds, “then, you know, of course they have vested interest in seeing the truce live on.”
And back in the United States, Trump’s pay-to-play approach to running the government continues unabated. Trump recently pardoned the billionaire crypto king, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, whose company has done business benefiting the Trump family.
“Binance overnight became the biggest customer of the Trump family venture, which is called World Liberty Financial,” Sledge points out. “I think a lot of skeptics out there are saying, like, ‘Boy, this sure just looks exactly like pay to play, like quid pro quo.’”
Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Transcript
Jordan Uhl: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing, I’m Jordan Uhl.
Once again, Israeli bombs rained down on Gaza. The latest wave of strikes killed more than 100 people, mostly women and children, according to health authorities.
The bombardment marked the deadliest day since the weeks-old U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas began on October 10 — a ceasefire Israel has repeatedly broken with impunity.
Meanwhile, back in the United States, President Donald Trump’s pay to play approach to running the government continues unabated. Trump recently pardoned the billionaire crypto king and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, whose company has done business benefiting the Trump family.
Today we’re going to get into the top stories Intercept journalists are reporting, with Jonah Valdez and Matt Sledge.
Welcome back to The Intercept Briefing, Jonah and Matt.
Jonah Valdez: Thank you. Glad to be here.
Matt Sledge: Howdy, Jordan.
JU: Jonah, let’s start with you. Tell us about what is happening with the ceasefire in Gaza.
Israel said it was back in place. Is that holding true now?
JV: Question to you is, what ceasefire, right?
JU: Sure.
JV: Since the beginning of the ceasefire at least since when it went into effect on October 10, Israel has continued to kill Palestinians in Gaza almost at a near daily rate, of course, at a lower volume, if you will, compared to other parts of the genocide.
“This gave so much leeway to the Israeli government to resume military attacks, military aggression, on Gaza whenever it sees fit.”
But as we’ve seen this past week on Tuesday with the new round of airstrikes, the death toll has reached back to that 100-a-day amount of deaths. And it could be a wake-up call to anyone who had the illusion that there was a ceasefire in place. And I think it’s becoming increasingly clear that the terms of the ceasefire from the beginning and what experts I spoke to, what Palestinians have been saying is that this gave so much leeway to the Israeli government to resume military attacks, military aggression, on Gaza whenever it sees fit — and basically having veto powers.
This time around, they’re accusing Hamas of not delivering hostages, the remains of former Israeli hostages on time. And they accused Hamas of returning remains that belonged to a body of an Israeli that was already returned earlier in the genocide. And using that on top of accusations that Hamas fighters had killed an Israeli reservist in the south and Rafah, which Hamas flatly denies. And Hamas has been saying that they’re trying their best to find the bodies, but of course are buried deep under billions of pounds of rubble.
And yet Israel is looking for these excuses to restart the aggression, as we’ve seen on Tuesday. So that’s where things are. And I think this sort of start and stop bombings is going to become the norm unfortunately, for as long as this ceasefire holds.
JU: Now in the immediate hours and days after this agreement was initially announced, you saw celebration, understandably from people in Gaza. You published a piece this week that spoke to Gazans on the ground. How are they feeling now about this ceasefire agreement?
JV: Yeah, in, in the story I co-wrote it with a Palestinian writer in Gaza, Taqwa Al-Wawi, and she basically interviewed over 40 people, I think was the count. Of people living in Gaza, whether they actually feel, if the ceasefire exists, if it’s in place. As the Trump administration likes to say, the ceasefire is still in place. And the media has parroted that as well. But an overwhelming amount of people that we spoke to on the ground are saying that there is no ceasefire with killings being at this rate. This is a continuation of the genocide.
And they have a very crystal-clear view of Israel’s policy and their goal of wanting mass expulsion from Gaza. I think it’s clear that the tactics have changed, but the goal remains the same. And those who are surviving it and living it are seeing through the propaganda that the ceasefire is still in place.
But I think it’s important to mention this layer of hope that exists. No one wants to call the ceasefire dead prematurely because if you know it surviving allows for other Palestinians and Gaza to survive, then you know, of course they have vested interest in seeing it — seeing the truce, the so-called truce, live on and to get to the second phase of the Trump plan.
The Trump plan lays out so much about development and rebuilding, but what Palestinians want right now is at least an end to daily slaughter. So right now, I think we should at least start with the minimum of peace.
JU: Of course. Now, Matt, I want to bring you in here. You’ve been reporting on a lot of the shady dealings of the Trump administration.
Last week, Trump pardoned a billionaire crypto king, who he said had been “persecuted” by the Biden administration because of their “war on crypto.” Could you tell us about this billionaire and the actual facts of the case?
MS: He runs a company called Binance, or he did run a company called Binance and he’s known to a lot of the crypto faithful as “CZ.” Those are his initials.
A couple of years ago, the Biden Justice Department, after an investigation, declared that Binance was essentially this global hub for money laundering and violations of anti-money laundering rules. They said that Binance had facilitated all sorts of nasty stuff ranging from drug trafficking to the arms trade, to even child sexual abuse material.
“This pardon, it seems, will allow him and his company to do business in the U.S. again, which is huge for them.”
And under this pretty carefully choreographed deal, both CZ and Binance pleaded guilty. CZ wound up spending four months in a federal low-security prison in California, and then he was out. But he still had this felony on his record. And under the terms of the plea agreement, he’s nominally not supposed to actually run the company day to day, even though he controls almost all of its shares. So this pardon, it seems, will allow him and his company to do business in the U.S. again, which is huge for them. Binance is the biggest cryptocurrency trading platform out there, but it’s excluded from the U.S. market right now. So it has a lot of room for growth here.
And what a lot of people pointed out is that Binance did a major business deal earlier this year — denominated in the Trump family’s stablecoin. And it’s complicated. But basically this deal is putting about $80 million a year directly into their bank account.
And Binance overnight became the biggest customer of the Trump family venture, which is called World Liberty Financial. I think a lot of skeptics out there are saying, like, “Boy, this sure just looks exactly like pay to play, like quid pro quo.”
“Binance overnight became the biggest customer of the Trump family venture.”
JU: Is what they’re doing illegal? Have you talked to anybody who said this certainly violates a regulation or a law? Or is it another instance of them just going right up to the line without fully crossing it?
MS: Yeah, I think we’ll never know, or we will most likely never know what was actually said behind closed doors.
But it seems like from a strictly legal perspective, they may be on OK ground as long as they never said, “Do this business deal, and you’ll get a pardon.” They may have been smart enough not to say that, but to everybody with a head on their shoulders who’s not one of the MAGA faithful, this whole deal just stinks to high heaven.
Just the timeline of events is bad enough. And then the Wall Street Journal on Thursday came out with reporting that essentially said there had been this concerted effort inside Binance to cultivate the Trump family business. They were really trying to do some kind of business deal, any kind of business deal, that would benefit World Liberty Financial and the Trump family — at least according to the Wall Street Journal.
JU: Well, it seems like a common theme when these areas overlap Trump’s executive power and influence in the crypto world. Of course, Justin Sun, the founder of TRON, was under federal investigation, acquired a massive amount of Trump’s meme coin and suddenly that investigation was over. So we appreciate your reporting on that. It looks suspicious at best, so adding clarity there is of great value.
Now, Jonah, I want to bring it back to you. Trump, of course, has a real vested interest in making sure the ceasefire continues to be thought of as successful since he was instrumental in brokering that deal. But is it still a ceasefire if innocent Palestinians are being killed and Israel can declare when it’s on and when it’s off? Doesn’t seem to work like that.
Jonah Valdez: Yeah, that’s just not how ceasefires work. It’s like if a ceasefire calls for an end to hostilities, anything hostile any military aggression is just a blatant violation of that. We’ve seen, as I said, at the top, Israel is just blatantly violating the ceasefire all throughout.
I don’t think it’s accurate to say that there is, technically, a ceasefire in place, at least as it’s spelled out in Trump’s 20-point plan, which he made in coordination with Israel and leaving out any Palestinian voices. It’s worth reminding.
Trump “has a lot to gain from continuing to tell the public that there is a ceasefire.”
And, Trump has, as you mentioned, he has a lot to gain from continuing to tell the public that there is a ceasefire. He himself has supported Israel’s recent strikes that killed 109 people on Tuesday and Wednesday. Throughout his second term, he’s positioned himself as a so-called peacemaker in the Middle East. And so he really wants this ceasefire to hold as a sort of foreign policy win so he could, you know, check that box, but also so that he and his inner circle — including Jared Kushner or Steve Witkoff, which helped with the ceasefire negotiations — they all want the further normalization of Israel’s relationships with Arab countries through the Abraham Accords. They see that momentum from the ceasefire deal can lead to normalization with Arab countries. And of course, a lot of those policy goals are wrapped up in personal financial interests.
Connecting it with what Matt was saying about crypto: Steve Witkoff’s family and the Kushners are very invested in, or at least are receiving billions in investments from countries like the UAE and Qatar into their crypto ventures. And this idea of maintaining peace in the Middle East is directly tied to these financial interests.
And of course going back to why the ceasefire even took place, a big part of that was Israel deciding to bomb Qatar’s capital, Doha, in an attempt to assassinate Hamas negotiators. So it was really whenever Israel’s aggression finally rubbed up against Trump’s own personal interests, is when he started to care about people in Gaza.
So it got us to this point, and he’s still being pretty obvious about where his intentions are. And I spoke with someone, a source who described it as, what matters is the appearance of a ceasefire. They’re saying that no one should be surprised that Israel’s continuing to break the ceasefire.
It’s still within the Trump administration’s bigger picture. As long as they could say the ceasefire is in effect, and as long as they aren’t returning to the volume of killings that we’ve seen at other points of the genocide, it’s palatable for the international community to still let Israel function under this sort of diplomatic cover.
“It was really whenever Israel’s aggression finally rubbed up against Trump’s own personal interests, is when he started to care about people in Gaza.”
[Break]
JU: Jonah, I’m curious, as we see that Gazans are slowly returning home, what are you watching as they try to begin to rebuild their lives? What are a few markers of progress that you will be looking for?
JV: Some of the people in Gaza that we talked to have been using these last two weeks within the so-called ceasefire period to return to normalcy and try to resume parts of life that they hadn’t been able to like: finish their degrees, actually be able to buy food at the store, and afford to do with increasing aid coming into the territory, have weddings, get married, fall in love, the basic things of life.
We spoke to one person who actually had to cancel their wedding because of Tuesday’s airstrikes. It hit their neighborhood and their neighborhood has now been targeted, I think, three times. And so they think it’s too dangerous for them to continue with the ceremony. So it’s tough.
This idea of rebuilding is still stunted by ongoing violence or the threat of violence from the Israelis. And I think with so much attention also on the recovery of Israeli hostage remains. There’s still, as many as some estimates put 14,500 missing Palestinians under the rubble or at least, some are under the rubble. Some are disappeared under other circumstances, or sometimes detained, or abducted by the Israeli military and are unaccounted for. So I think finding people’s missing, on top of the 66,000 that are already accounted for, I think allowing families to bury their dead properly and grieve properly is what we’re beginning to see a little bit of now.
And there’s all this talk about delay of return of the hostage remains to Israel. But Palestinians are rightfully focused on recovering their own dead. They just haven’t been able to even do basic ceremonies for their loved ones, throughout the last two years.
The idea of rebuilding is difficult. And I think it’s worth mentioning that the Israeli government still controls more than 50 percent of the territory, and within those territories have been just undergoing a pretty mass demolition campaign of any living structure that still exists within that 53 percent it still controls, whether that’s using their own military ordinance to demolish buildings.
There’s been reporting over this past week indicating that there’s Israeli contractors that are making thousands of dollars just being shipped into Gaza to lend their demolition equipment, their tractors, to take part in just making that part of the Strip completely unlivable.
“If anything, we’re only seeing investment in the continued destruction of any structures that still exist.”
When you talk about rebuilding, it’s with what and where and how, I think, is still a major question. Again, like this, Trump plan calls for reconstruction, but there is no avenues for that reconstruction right now. If anything, we’re only seeing investment in the continued destruction of any structures that still exist.
And that’s on top of the humanitarian issues of lack of aid still entering. Israel is continuing to restrict aid into the territory. 12 major international NGOs just wrote a joint letter this week accusing the Israeli government of not allowing them to deliver aid.
And again, that’s another violation of the ceasefire. The ceasefire calls for aid to be delivered into the territory at the same rate it was at the previous ceasefire, which is 600 trucks per day. It’s my understanding that that’s not happening, and even that 600 is the bare minimum. So people are continuing to have shortage of food, have shortage of medical supplies. The hospital system is still barely functioning, with the bare minimum. This idea of rebuilding is pretty tough right now to even imagine, when the basic necessities of life are still not being provided or not being allowed in — I think we should be clear — are being deprived of at the hands of the Israeli government.
JU: It’s absolutely heartbreaking and tragic.
Matt, I want to go back to Trump benefiting from his position, from his office and from his relationship and influence over the crypto industry. Trump and his family have raked in almost $800 million in the first half of the year just from cryptocurrency, according to Reuters. You’ve been digging into the world of crypto for many months now. Could you tell us about the Trump family relationships in that world and what you think comes next?
MS: There are just a dizzying array of ventures that the Trump family has gotten involved in the crypto world over the last year. I think it’s always really important to remember what a complete 180 this is for Trump, from saying just a few years ago that crypto is a scam to jumping headlong into it. I should note, of course, that the official White House line is that Trump is no longer directing these businesses, that they’re under the control of his sons and the Trump organization and various other entities and so on. I will leave it to the listener to decide whether that’s credible.
“It’s really astounding … how much their money just comes from crypto now. Whereas traditionally, Trump had been a real estate guy.”
But you’ve got this stablecoin, you’ve got a Bitcoin treasury company, you’ve got the Trump meme coin, you’ve just got this perfusion of various different ventures. And it’s really astounding, as you were saying, how much their money just comes from crypto now. Whereas traditionally, Trump had been a real estate guy. He was a hard asset, real estate guy to varying degrees of success. And then he was, “I will lend my name now that I’m famous from ‘The Apprentice’ to other people’s real estate projects.” And now we have taken this complete jump away from the physical, tangible to these other kinds of business where you can get money just essentially for being who you are. It’s pretty mind-boggling.
And I think one thing that’s really important to note is that, what it means is that Trump and his family’s finances are now intertwined with the world of crypto. They will rise and fall with the overall market’s fortunes. So I think everybody has to be concerned about whether Trump is putting crypto first or putting what a president is supposed to put first, first.
JU: You’ve also recently reported on a few programs hidden in plain sight that the Trump administration has been using. Could you tell us about the 1122 program?
MS: Sure. At The Intercept we’ve covered a lot this disturbing trend of police militarization, of warrior cops, and a lot of the focus there has been on this program called 1033 that allows the military to send surplus equipment to local cops.
I reported this week on another program that essentially allows local cops to buy military style equipment at a discount. And a nonprofit group put out a report finding more than $100 million worth of purchases, and they say they’re concerned that this program is poised to grow under Trump as so many local police departments team up with ICE and DHS to aid in mass deportation, and this police militarization is put on steroids in places like Los Angeles and Chicago.
JU: And could you tell us what you found about the Quiet Skies program?
MS: I did a little reporting this week on TSA watchlists and Sen. Rand Paul, who’s a libertarian leaning Republican, announced last month that he’s going to do an investigation of the George Washington University Program on Extremism, a program affiliated with the university that says it’s looking for domestic extremists and Islamic extremists and so on. What Rand Paul is investigating is whether George Washington was actually feeding names to TSA and DHS during the Biden administration to be put on watchlists.
I spoke with some representatives of Muslim and Arab American advocacy groups, and they’re really concerned that Muslim and Arab Americans were wrongfully put on these lists, potentially on the nomination of this George Washington program.
JU: Thank you for your reporting and to both of you for joining me. We’re going to leave it there. Thank you, Jonah. Thank you Matt, for joining me on the Intercept Briefing.
JV: Thanks so much.
MS: Thanks, Jordan.
JU: And that does it for this episode of The Intercept Briefing.
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This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Sumi Aggarwal is our executive producer. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Fei Liu is our product and design manager. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton mixed our show. Legal review by David Bralow.
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