thanks for joining me today. i'll see you back here next saturday at 8:00 a.m. eastern. smerconish starts now. terrorists turned tiktok influencer. i'm michael smerconish in philadelphia. against the backdrop of anti-semitism running rampant online and off, osama bin laden was trending this week. dozens of young americans have posted videos on tiktok expressing sympathy with bin laden, the terrorist who orchestrated the september 11th attacks after they discovered a two decades old letter he wrote critiquing the united states, including its support of israel. among many heinous quotes, your law is law of the rich and wealthy people who hold sway in their political parties and fund their election campaigns with their gifts. behind them stand the jews, who control your policy, media and economy. there's a lot more to it. it's about 4,000 words, but you get the gist. it began to recirculate this week on tiktok, where videos on the topic garnered 14 million views by thursday. now according to tiktok, that doesn't represent trending according to their metrics. the pllt form said that videos violate its rules against supporting any form of terrorism, but the number of videos promoting the letter were quite small and reports of it trending are inaccurate here's what you get now if you search tiktok for let tore america. this phrase maybe associated with behavior or content that violates our guidelines. why is this also concerning? new data from the research center out this week shows tiktok rapidly becoming a place where more and more young americans get their news. pugh found a third of americans aged 18 to 29 regular ly get nes from tiktok, and the share of adults who say they get their news from tiktok has more than quadrupled from 3% in 2020 to 14% in 2023. all of this came as "the new york times" reported that actors were among more than a dozen jewish celebrities and tiktok creators who had a private meeting with executives on wednesday night urging them to do more to address the surge of anti-semitism and harassment. sasha br respondent cohen said early in the call, quote, what is happening at tuck tok is that it is creating the big set mettic movement since the nazis. he criticized violent imagery on the platform claiming that tiktok could flip a switch and switch it. and over on x, elon musk agreed with an anti-semitic post saying jews push hay dread. in response to this, several companies, including apple, ibm, disney and cnn's parent warner brothers, have paused their advertising on the platform. so about that bin laden letter, it had originally been posted on a saudi arabian website and translitted into english and published in 2002 by britain's guardian newspaper. on the guardian's website, there's a statement that reads as follows. this page previously displayed a a document containing in translation the full text of bin laden's letter to the american people. the transcript published on our website had been widely shared without the full context. therefore, we decided to take it down and direct readers to a news article that contextualize it. should it be published or cent sures? they told "the washington post" that the editors of the guardian faces a no-win set nar yo once interest in the letter began to grow. if they don't take it down, it will be leveraged and discussed potentially shared and is going to go viral. if they take it down, they are going to be accused, as they are right now, of censorship. personally, i think it's got to be left up. you can't hide it. the horse has left the barn. nothing once posted online is really ever gone. if you take it down, there's more room for misinformation. i found one version online, i was about five pages into reading it when it made reference to an open letter to president biden and vice president harris. wait a minute, i said. bin laden was dead long before biden was president. i was looking at a fake. and if you remove the real one, there's even more room for kind of trouble. additionally, if you remove it, you create more curiosity and buzz about it. better i say to leave the original version, discuss it, and educate a whole generation of young americans who weren't even born when bin laden was responsible for killing 3,000 americans. i say publish. and apparently, i'm not alone. yesterday on my website on this question, 18,643 voted, 62.3% of us said publish. 39% said cent sure. you'll remember he produced the first television interview that bin laden ever did. it was in 19 the 7 for cnn. he was the only outside observer who got into bin laden's compound in 2012 after teams killed bin laden and before they raise d the building. he's the author of several books including the rise and fall of osama bin laden, and he just published this piece on cnn.com. it's great to see you. you find all of this baffling. how come? >> thank you for having me on the show. first of all, when you look at the people who are posting on tiktok, thr people in their 20s. they are either not alive on 9/11 or they were very young children. they are divorced from the history of this. it's not just the 3,000 americans who were killed by al qaeda. al qaeda was responsible for tens of thousands of deaths of other people around the world. al qaeda helped spark the civil war where iraqis died. he's not a hero. he's not some serious thinker. the letter itself, im i'm not sure was written by bin laden or he had other people helping him. because it also focused on some other issues that bin laden didn't typically focus on. he talks about american tolerance for homosexuality, the drug culture in the west, global warming, that u.s. is responsible, et cetera. these were not issuing that bin laden really cared about. he did care about the palestinian issue and that's how the letter begins. in other statements, he emphasized that. it was kind of core to his reason he was attack ing the united states. that is true. >> in your cnn.com piece, i'm going to put a photoaragraph on screen. you noted the following on what you just said. certainly, bin laden himself was very focused on the palestinian issue. as a teenager, he would gather friends to chant religious songs about palestine, his father who ran a major construction company renovated the three holiest sites, which is in territory that was taken by the israeli army during the 1967 war. it's true to say this was his driving issue. post september 11th, we were told they hate us for our l lattés. they hate us for our lap dances. they hate us for our freedoms. but it was really about foreign policy and largely on what they described al qaeda, the so-called arabian peninsula. >> absolutely. bin laden, the interview referred to his first television interview with cnn, it was really a foreign policy critique of the united states and his policies in the middle east. he didn't mention any cultural issues or any of the that he hated our freedoms or some of the things we heard from the bush administration after 9/11. and for him the palestinian issue was front and center. it sort of receded for groups of late. you think about isis, isis was focused on killing shia. for them, the issue was marginal. it's come back front and center. since october 7th and the attack on israel, they have been putting out a fair amount of propaganda, sort of against israel and this issue is front and center for jihadist groups around the world. >> what do we do? a whole generation that we're not alive on september 11th, now finds this fascinating perhaps for all the wrong reasons. but what's the answer? surely you have thought about this. >> that's a really good question. why don't you educate yourself about osama bin laden? he's not some sort of heroic figure. he's not some great thinker. he calls a great deal of misery in the world. there are a number of books by others, a great book that won a pulitzer prize. there are so many good books out there, it's not like you can't find actual information rather than this letter. which is without any context and also seems to just feed into the idea that the united states is responsible for all the bad things that happen in the world, including in israel. >> i had a radio listener call me a hypocrite because my perspective is one of leave the letter up, but police the anti-semitism. there's anti-semitism within the bin laden letter, and therein lies the claim of hypocrisy on my part. but i'm troubled by the move to scrub it from the internet as if it's going to go away, because it's not going to go away. something else is going to fill that void. do you see that issue the same way i do, the publication v inves censorship issue? >> the story has more legs because the guardian chose to take it down. as you pointed out in the introduction, they were sort of really no good choices here. they made their choice. but a bad choice would have been to leave it up and put more context and in general, we both work in the news business. we're in the business of letting people decide based on what is out there and not in the business of censorship. >> you met the man. you interviewed him. you were there after he was killed. he looks up and he thinks what as he's witnessing this? >> i'm sure he's very happy. were he able to see this, for a lot of people, go back to the people in the tiktok videos. for them, 9/11 is like the vietnam war or even the korean war for me, which is something that happened either when i was a child or before i was born. and so i teach at arizona state and realize the students i don't really know much about 9/11. that's an event that ended in history, not in memory. and i think it's important for us to understand what happened on 9/11 and the united states made some mistakes after 9/11. president biden has said that himself publicly. when he's talking about what israel should do in the gaza strip, but the fact is that bin laden attacked us on 9/11 without warning. and culled a lot of our citizens. and he chinged history in a way that i think he was surprised by ultimately because he believed his own narrative that the united states would sort of pull out of the middle east instead. he became more involved in the middle east than we have in our history. >> i know from your analysis that bin laden believed that his attack would be vietnam for us and we fwould fold our tent and there was support. peter bergen, thank you so much. >> thank you. >> what are your thoughts? i'll get to some throughout the course of the program. what do we have? while i voted for publish, i think they should be mandated to add historical context to the letter. this should be the case for every extreme document. i'm fine with that. context is what i'm eded a vo caughting. if you're going to publish the bin laden letter, and i think you should, there has to be other materials there available to tell a competing narrative. one more if we have time for it. what is it? no more. more later. up ahead, he became the face of the january 6th breach of the u.s. capitol. jacob, known as the qanon shammen, pleaded guilty. he's bye-bye released. he's planning a run for congress. he's here to discuss. and israel's justification for its attack on the largest hospital in gaza was that hamas is using it as a large-scale command and control center. so that are that remains unproven. a in analysis indicates the idf moved weapons before international news outlets a awe arrived. could that hurt their credibility? it's also the focus of today's poll question a at smerconish.com. go there and answer this question. given the evidence available so far, was the idf justified in entering the hospital. by the the way, when you're there, register for my newsletter. you'll get the work of political cartoonists. i love this. look at what steve drew for my website. does that not sum up the political week just ended. gaza's hospital has become a flash point in the war and all depending about it. it launched a targeted operation claiming that hamas has been using the site as a large-scale command and control center. palestinians say it's the largeest hospital is proof of the disregard for civilian life. israel defense forces, the idf claimed they found a tunnel shaft under the facility and, quote, technological assets and military equipment. a new cnn analysis finds the idf video of the weapons found shot on november 15th shows less weaponry than in less footage indicate it may have been moved or placed there prior to crews arriving. they have not commented on this. the military says they also have found two bodies of hostages in the structures near the hospital, but it's not yet shown proof of its claim of a large-scale command and control center. the commander of israel told "the new york times" that the israel forces fearing bobby traps had not ventured down the shaft. the white house has backed the claims citing u.s. intelligence that it says shows hamas is storing weapons and operating a command known. the united nations is calling for access to inspect the hospital. richard clark joins me, a former counterterrorism adviser who advised three presidents including george bush when september 11th happened. he's also spent ten year as chair of the middle east institute. he's written ten books. recently penned this piece, "the war 50 years after the war." great to have you back. how important is it that israel make a discovery of evidence this was indeed a command center or node? >> michael, israel gay us the impression that there was a command post. now when we hear command post, we expect to see something. senior leaders, they haven't shown any proof of that yet. but we have to look at this in the larger context. i always thought with terrorism, you're fighting two the battles simultaneously. ones of the battle against the terrorists and the ore was the battle for public opinion. and both matter. and the israelis have given up on the battle the for public opinion or surprisingly, they are not very good at it. i'm not sure which it. >> the united states also has skin in this game in so far as admiral kirby said we independently have evidence of that which the iz realliys have been saying. >> well, yeah. admiral kirby said we had our own intelligence. what that probably means is we had intelligence that there were people there in the facility who were hamas and who were communicating from there. i have no doubt that hamas had people in the hospital. that those people had weapons. and no doubt there's a shaft that leads to the tunnel system. but you could do that in almost any building in gaza. find hamas people with weapons and find a shaft leading to a tunnel system. so the israelis have to provide a lot more proof if they are going to win this part of the public diplomacy. the public opinion battle. why does the public opinion battle matter? because there are people in the united states and western europe and even in the arab world who want to support israel. but may not support it enough if the israeli action is seen to be abhorrent. and is seen to be violations of international law. it is against international law to attack a hospital, unless that hapt hospital has been changed entirely into a military facility. this was clearly a hospital. benjamin netanyahu said yesterday it wasn't still a hospital when the israelis attacked. sure, it was. the israelis knew it was. because they went in with doctors and incubators to try to keep the babies alive once they took control of the building. the other reason that public opinion matters here is the next generation of arabs are watching this. and the hatred for israel, which has subsided somewhat in the arab world, is growing to incredible proportions. that means 10, 15 years from now, there are people whose opinions are being tomorrowed now as young men, who will be terrorists and who will hate israel for the rest of their lives. so how you handle the public opinion battle matters a the lot. >> tunnel access, the bodies of two hostages, uniforms, if that's not the showing, have you thought about what it would take, what do they need to present to the public that would be convincing? >> maybe they need to drop a robot down the tunnel shaft, they have robots designed for this, and see what's down there. maybe they have already done that and there's not much down there except tunnels. i think the important thing here is for israel to not stretch the truth. they are under a microscope. when they set themselves up by say saying it's a command post, there were heavy weapons there, they have to produce that. they haven't been able to produce that. >> a final thought. >> i want to know -- go ahead. i'm sorry. >> my final thought is the united states has rules of engagement for when it fights. and under our rules of engagement, this would never have happened. the israelis have rules of engagement that are far different from ours. they are getting them in trouble. >> i was skpoing going to say, i want to know when the evidence is. you want the to know what the evidence is. for many, it's a test. people are dug in and already drawing conclusions based on what they hope the evidence might show. you get the final word. >> there are some people in the united states and europe and the arab world, whose opinions haven't really geled yet. and for those people, things like this matter. most of the people who are looking at this have already formed their opinions and it doesn't matter. but the future matters. the next generation matters. and the israelis losing the battle for public opinion. >> richard clark, thank you for being here. we appreciate your expertise. on social media, i want to remind you, let's see what you're saying so far. then i want to remind you about the poll question. the question is premature. why don't you wait until after all the evidence is presented. this is a misleading poll. it's not taken into the account that responsibility that hamas has. let me put the poll question up on the screen. you say it's premature. i was deliberate. i wrote it myself. given the evidence available so far, i'm asking you as of today, recognizing that we still don't know all the facts as of today, would you say the idf was justified in entering the hospital. go vote at smerconish.com. and you'll sign up for the daily lose noouz letter. the prize winner sketched a great cartoon that looks as follows. funny stuff. so much truth in what these artists are able to do in such a quick glimpse. up ahead, so far, artist sketches of donald trump are all the public has been able to see from inside federal courtrooms. but media outlets have petitioned the judge to overrule the ban on cameras in federal court and allow them in the d.c. election subversion trial. would doing so help or hurt donald trump? would it help prosecutors? plus jacob chansly became the piece of the breach of the capitol. he was the first person involved to be indicted. he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of obstructing an official proceeding, having served his time. he's planning a run for congress from arizona. he's here to discuss. the power goes out and we still have wifi to do our homework. and that's a good thing? great in my book! who are you? no power? no problem. introducing storm-ready wifi. now you can stay reliably connected through power outages with unlimited cellular data and up to 4 hours of battery back-up to keep you online. only from xfinity. home of the xfinity 10g network. he was the face of january 6th and the first person indicted and now he's planning a run for congress and will joint me in a moment. jacob chancely, he wore face paint and a head dress. he carried a bull horn. he stood at the senate that had recently been occupied by mike pence, left a note that read it's only a matter of time justice is come ing and calling pence a traitor he was known as the qanon shomen. he was arrested and held without bail. his attorney asked for a p