The New Yorker interviews! lolol

I don't subscribe anymore but, I don't know, a couple of years ago I read an interview a New Yorker guy did of Alan Dershowitz, feigned sympathy ("It sounds perfectly awful") that 'witz wasn't getting invited to parties on Martha's Vineyard anymore boo-hoo-hoo lol, he skewered 'witz and 'witz barely had any idea ('witz was bragging about the Abraham Accords. The interviewer: "Call them the Dershowitz Accords!"). It was brilliant and funny. Now this.

This is Isaac Chotiner (it may have been the same guy who interviewed 'witz! He had an identifiably Jewish name) interviewing a right-wing Israeli talking-head, I had never heard of the dope, but his name is Shimon Riklin. Like with 'witz, Chotiner here feigns sympathy with subtle questions and comments that make the opposite skewering point:

Riklin: ...But why did we go into the war if this is what Trump was going to give Iran?
Chotiner: It’s a good question.

Rik: Listen, we are really grateful, in Israel, for what Donald Trump did for Israel. He gives us a lot of weapons. He gives us space to fight, in terms of the political resistance we face in the world. And then he joins us in understanding the importance of the war against Iran. ...

...

...Now what is Trump doing? Everything, or anything that Iran says, he obeys.

Chot: Some people might say [Not ME, Isaac Chotiner, but "those other people" lol) that Trump and Netanyahu started this war. They bombed Iran, they failed to dislodge the Iranian regime, and Iran decided to hold the entire global economy hostage, which has led to horrific effects all across the world. And so they had to make a deal.

Rik: Aren’t you supposed to have planned for something like this? If this is what you are going to do, don’t start the war. Don’t do it.

Chot: I think a lot of Americans would agree with that. 😁

...

Chot: You said that Israel had this brilliant plan. What did you make of the reports that Netanyahu told Trump that Iran would not close the strait?

Just as he, or whoever it was, did in the 'witz interview, Chotiner links to reports, this one in nytimes.

Rik: This is absolutely nonsense. What? What? Not only is that nonsense, but Israel took this into account. ...Everyone in Israel knew this was a possibility. 

Chot: They did close the strait and hold the global economy hostage, though, right?

Rik: Right, but, but, O.K. O.K. So, it’s your money or your life? Let’s make peace with Hitler, because the goal of the world is money? 

Rik, you DIPSHIT! LOL

Chot: [ playing dumb, asking to be educated] But when you’re fighting a new Hitler, you don’t just focus on money? 

Rik: This is what we think. ...

Chot: Putting aside the merits of this war, do you think people such as yourself and the Prime Minister misjudged Donald Trump? I know you said a joyful prayer on the air when he was elected in 2024. 😄 You must have had some sense of who this guy is—that he isn’t loyal to anyone, that he had no real core values—

Rik: Listen, I was really happy when he was elected. I admit it. I think it was good for Israel. And, in the beginning, it was. But today I don’t know what to think. I am really in shock.

Chot: It’s hard to fathom. 

"It's hard to fathom"! Mock validating Riklin's "shock", in reality pointing out how absurd a figure Riklin is.

Rik: I don’t have a lot of moments like this. I don’t remember someone in modern history who would go with you and do wonderful things, and then suddenly disappear and go against you. So now I am the bad guy? I supported you! ...

Chot: This is why I was wondering whether you had ever observed Donald Trump. 😄

Rik: I don’t know what motivated him. You know he is a Gemini? Geminis are not really ones to say the same things a lot. They change their minds. You know Geminis?

Chot: Yeah, I’m a Gemini, so don’t be too mean.

He's charming, Chotner is. He has a faux innocence.

Rik: I’m a Gemini, too. 😁

Chot: But you feel like, at first, when Trump came back to office in 2025, for a while, it was actually better? A year ago, the Gaza war was still going on, there was a total cutoff of humanitarian aid, and Trump was presiding over it all. So you think those were better days?

Riklin, you non compos mentis BOOB, DO YOU NOT SEE HOW YOU SHOULD ANSWER?!?!

Rik: Right. In the past, it was really better days. Israel changed their borders with their enemies.

NOOOO!!!!! Riklin, if you weren't so loathsome I might feel sorry for you!

Chot: You control seventy per cent of Gaza now, too.

Rik: It’s more like sixty per cent, but I don’t care. I wish it was seventy. It’s not enough.

Chot: Have faith in the future. 😆

Chot: What do you think Netanyahu will do now with an election coming up?

Rik: I think he is in shock. In shock. In all the years that I have known him, he has never been in shock like now. Not with Obama. No one has caused a shock like Trump. And it’s because you couldn’t predict it.

Riklin, you FOOL!

Chot: The unpredictable nature of Trump turning on you is what makes it so sad. 😇😆

Rik: True. You are right. [Oh my God, Riklin, you are bleeding out on the floor, do you not see your own blood?!] In a few months, we have an election, and one of the most important parts of his campaign was going to be his friendship with Trump. Now what is he going to say? It’s a problem.

Rik: ...What happened? What happened? We succeeded. Everything we said would happen happened, even more quickly and acutely than we thought.

Chot: Except for the strait being closed and the Iranian government not falling. Except for those things, right?

OH I CAN HARDLY TAKE THIS WITHOUT LAUGHING ALONE TO ELEVEN!

Rik: No, no. You keep saying it, and that’s your privilege. That wasn’t a surprise. But we thought a blockade to their blockade was genius. And they were really close to a collapse.

Chot: It was close to succeeding, and then you guys were stabbed in the back. LOLOL

Rik: Exactly. And we don’t understand why. You understand that they are Nazis. What happened to you?

-30-

As I said, I don't know if Isaac Chotiner was the New Yorker interviewer who shivved 'witz, this reads like that interviewer--no matter, I nominate Isaac Chotiner for the Nobel Prize in Interviewing! 

BRAVO IKE! WE LIKE IKE!