Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre. And today we're going to find out what this sound is.

If you are giving that much money, you have that much power, and you shape policy.

Right after this ad.

You're listening to Giraffe King's Network.

Okay, so today's episode is about how the biggest and most shocking story of the NBA Finals is not the Celtics going up 2-0 or Chris Dapps for Zingas' return or Drew holiday being really great at defense or any of that stuff. It's something that isn't happening. The story I want to tell you about is something that nobody else seems to even really be talking about, which is crazy. Because you may recall that when the Brooklyn Nets traded Kyrie Irving to the Dallas Mavericks in February of last year, he was more or less the biggest PR headache in the entire NBA, if not all of sports. He was infamously trafficking in insane and bigoted conspiracy theories. He tweeted out a link to a flagrantly anti-Semitic film on Amazon that featured, among many other things, a fake quote from Hitler. Kyrie refused to apologize. He got suspended. He eventually posted an apology on Instagram, and then, of course, deleted that apology not that long after. But I want to be as fair as possible to Kyrie here in that brief summary, because I do believe he has a sincerely held position about world affairs, and it's pretty simple.

It's that his conscience could not possibly allow basketball to be his number one priority. It's something that Kyrie explained himself at a postgame presser back in May of 2021, after a major spike of violence in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I'm not going to lie to you guys. A lot of stuff is going on in this world, and basketball is just not the most important thing to me right now. There's a lot of stuff going on overseas. All my people are still in bondage. All across the world, and there's a lot of dehumanization going on. So I apologize if I'm not going to be focused on your questions. It's just too much going on in the world for me to just be talking about basketball. I got focused on this 24/7 most of the time, but it's just too much going on in this world not to address. It's sad to see this going on. And it's not just in Palestine. It's not just in Israel. It's all over the world, man. I feel it.

I'm very compassionate. But with the Mavericks this season, it's very clear that Kyrie public priorities have concretely changed. One Maverick source told us earlier in this postseason, when we started looking into this story, that, Kyrie has expressly focused on basketball and especially the need to do it as we near the finals. Quote. And so we've seen Kyrie Irving smile at pressers. We've heard him compliment the Boston Celtics and even their fans. He's been behaving, in so many words, like a media training dream.

I don't ask for the ball. I demand it. I will play defense. I will do all the other things that don't show up in the stat sheet. And that's always what I wanted to be remembered as. Everything else that people have thrown on my career has been up to them and what they've seen. And I have to take that. I have to take that fair criticism. But how I feel as a person when I go out there is a confident MF that will play with the best of the world. I don't care who's out there. It could be Will, MJ, Steph.

And this level of discretion, this restraint and discipline, as Kyrie himself explained to Yahoo's sports recently, is nothing short of strategic. The basketball answers are media-trained answers, so they're very safe. They're very middle ground. But to me, the The reason Kyrie's strategy is even more conspicuous isn't just because media training previously seemed antithetical to his entire ideology. It's not just because the number one news story in the world since October seventh, 2023, has been the aforementioned Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Kyrie's strategy has been so wildly conspicuous because in November, weeks after October seventh, this happened. One of America's most famous professional sports owners is selling his beloved team. Mark Cuban may be selling the Dallas Mavericks to Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson's widow Miriam for three and a half billion dollars. In a head scratcher, Cuban will apparently remain a minority owner of the Mavs and in control of the team's basketball operations. Now, since buying the Mavericks- And that news clip is more or less how the sale of the Mavericks has been covered. It's the story of how Mark Cuban is still very involved with the team, but he sold it to this widow, this 78-year-old woman who is married to a Las Vegas casino mogul, some woman, in other words, who isn't as famous as Mark Cuban, the guy who is on Shark Tank and tweeting all sorts of anti-Trump stuff all of the time.

But the first thing that I need you to know about Miriam Adelson, the subject of today's story, is something that I found out while reporting this episode, which is that her political reputation was apparently so radioactive that the NBA and Commissioner Adam Silver would not allow her to be the governor of the team, the controlling owner, in other words, the face of the Mavericks, the person who would show up to these Board of governors meetings, even though, of course, the league would happily take the money of the fifth richest woman in America, who is now the third richest owner in all of American sports, right behind Steve Ballmer, who owns the Clippers, and Rob Walton, of the Walmart Waltons, who owns the Denver Broncos. And so Miriam's son-in-law, Patrick Dumont, an executive at her casino company, was appointed governor of the Mavericks instead. And the reason why the ostensibly left-leaning NBA insisted on this is obvious once you step just a foot outside of sports. Because nobody donated more money to Donald Trump in 2020 than Miriam Adelson, it turns out. And few people in right wing politics, period, are as powerful as she is.

And she also happens to be one of the most powerful pro-Israel extremists alive today by any standard, even though everyone in sports seems to be ignoring Miriam Adelson right now, including, by the way, the afformention Kyrie Irving, who is the athlete most associated with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and his positions on Israel and Palestine. And so what I want to do today with Miriam Madelson's Dallas Mavericks about to host their first game of the NBA Finals and one of the most unlikely championship celebrations ever, still possible and looming on the horizon. I wanted to find somebody to help us tell a story that lots of other people, apparently, wish we wouldn't. Liz, thank you for doing this. My pleasure. Thank you for coming on to a weird show that has become obsessed with NBA owners and sports owners in general. But this owner in specific, Miriam Adelson, is somebody who is truly mind-blowingly powerful. And yet, nobody in sports, Liz, has done anything close to the reporting that you have been doing recently into her. So again, I appreciate you educating us on who this person is. My pleasure.

And it's not just sports. I feel like she's the most powerful person that hardly anybody has heard of.

Okay, so you should know that one reason Miriam Adelson has crazily low name recognition is because it's intentional. You can still find clips of Miriam online giving speeches at various conferences, various galas.

And divided world. President Tom deserves our gratitude as proud Israelis, as proud Americans, and as proud Jews, no matter what our politics are.

You may have even spotted her with her tinted glasses and her blonde bangs when Trump advisor Rudy Giuliani literally kissed her ring on CNN before the first presidential debate back in 2016. But Mariam, otherwise, doesn't really talk to journalists. Her PR team never responded to a list of questions we had submitted to her. And this, luckily, is where our guest today comes in. Because New York magazine's Elizabeth Weil reported a long cover story about Miriam Adelson, one that finally answered some of the biggest questions I've had about a woman whose wealth, according to Liz, makes her not just the richest Israeli in the world and not just one of the 10 richest women in the world. She is both of those things, but also, quote, a effectively a queen. And it also, to me, raised some other newer questions, specifically about her husband, her late husband, her better known half, Sheldon Adelson, who died in 2021 after becoming a king unto himself.

Sheldon is fascinating. So Sheldon grew up poor in Boston. His dad drove a taxi. They had no money, sold newspapers on a street corner, went to an entrepreneurial program at City College, and didn't finish. He then made his first big chunk of money with really early computer conferences. He owned this company or co-owned it called Codex. He made $500 million, which he then put into buying the Sands Hotel in Vegas.

The Sands eventually gave way to the Venetian and Palazzo, which now occupy that place on the Strip. The considered groundbreaking when it opened in 1999, then the world's biggest hotel.

Every room will be a suite. The average square footage of a room in the Las Vegas mega resort is about 400 square feet. Our room will be 700 square feet.

And then they got into the Asian market and they opened a casino in Macau, and that market became even bigger than Vegas.

Billionaire Sheldon Adelson, as he opens his third casino, Kauai Sand Central, in Macau's flourishing casino sector at a cost of $5 billion. You're witnessing the establishment of Asia's Las Vegas.

Macau, for people who are not familiar with why Macau matters, it's because of China, right? That's the gateway into the Chinese market, basically.

Yes. And it became huge, and it grew so fast. For a while, the Adelsons were making a million dollars an hour, largely off their Macau casino.

Las Vegas Sands, which has become a global company, by the way, also a Fortune 500 company, as well as, I believe, one of the top three revenue generators among casino enterprises, all of that leading to, I would say, a conspicuous way that they moved around the world, which is to say they were very obviously so wealthy without also being so obvious in terms of name recognition.

So they weren't into celebrity culture. They weren't out there trying to make friends with the Kardashians or whatever. They were very into political power, and they were very into philanthropy. And with their enormous wealth, yes, the Sands had their fleet of airplanes. They flew around the world. They flew politicians to Israel in the world, largely to Israel. They were not people who are trying to be low-key, particularly Sheldon. He was not a low-key guy.

You're the 10th richest man in the world.

But think about that. There's seven billion people. That means there's 6,999,990,000 people that are not at my level.

There's a line in your story, Liz, about how Sheldon used to introduce himself as Sheldon Adelson III. And please explain why he would do that.

I love this. It's so insane. His father was not Sheldon Adelson II. He was the third richest guy in America at some point. And so he's like, I'm Sheldon Adelson than the third. He was larger than life. He knew his money made him larger than life. He seemed to love being that guy. He's invulnerable if you're that rich.

Miriam, what was she doing before she met Sheldon? How How do their paths intersect?

Miriam was born in Israel in 1945. It wasn't even Israel yet. She was born in Palestine in 1945. The state of Israel is formed in '48. And pretty much her entire extended family was murdered by the Nazis in Poland. And this is a very common story for Israelis of her generation. Her generation had this incredible burden. They were called children of the state. They were charged with creating and defending this nation. And so in the late '80s, Sheldon gets divorced from his first wife, and he goes to Israel for the first time. And he comes home from Israel, and He starts telling people he wants to marry an Israeli woman. He ran into Miriam's childhood best friend in a deli outside of Boston. And he was like, on this mission. He just come home and he tells her, Do you know anybody in Jerusalem? And Miriam was in New York. She was a doctor. She is still a doctor. So she was doing a fellowship on addiction research at Rockefeller University in New York. And her best friend is like, well, I don't really know anyone in Jerusalem anymore, but I know this beautiful, amazing woman right here.

And Miriam, in terms of how she would carry herself, in contrast to Sheldon, how do you compare and contrast their approaches to public attention?

So Miriam does not want all the limelight on her. She is not going around introducing herself, as you know, Mary Madelsen, the Fifth. So she wanted a much lower profile. She is a much more reserved personality by nature, and she's really an ideologue. She wants what she wants, and what she wants is the safety and security of the state of Israel.

Okay, so just jumping in here to point out that this ideology is not unlike the political platform of Israel's current Prime Minister, a man named Benjamin Netanyahu. And Bibi Netanyahu, for those unfamiliar, is the same guy who's official Facebook page in 2019 had warned visitors about, Arabs who want to destroy us all, end quote. He's also the same guy who has drawn comparisons to Trump and who's re-election in 2022, marked the rise of the most right-wing and religiously conservative government in the country's history. All that, according to the Associated Press. But what you should know here is that the Adelsons weren't simply one of the most staunch families backing Netanyahu from here in the United States. Backing Back in 2007, at Netanyahu's behest, they launched a free daily newspaper in Israel with the goal of influencing elections, which they did significantly, promoting far-right positions that they believe were being neglected by Israel's mainstream media, which might sound a little familiar.

As our situation has been here in the United States, there was a rise of the right in Israel. It used to be a socialist country. It used to be very left. Netanyahu was at the forefront of security at all costs. That was always Miriam's mission. She would like the US to back Israel in annexing the West Bank, which, if you're not inside that language, is about as right as it gets. We are not here working towards peace with our neighbors. We are here protecting our borders. We are here just trying to have safety for those within our country. So they back Netanyahu. They start a paper that's like a fox-like creation that was like a mouthpiece for Netanyahu to get him elected. They brought down his predecessor through reporting about endless scandals, and it was really successful. So So they get what they want in Israel. They get Netanyahu in power, and they get someone in power who's not interested in the peace process, who's interested in security.

And also, this is key, even though Sheldon had bigger name recognition than Miriam as Sheldon III, it is important to note that she was not his sidekick. She wasn't like the Pippin to his Jordan or something. Miriam's name actually appeared first on all of family branding. It was always Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson. And if you think that's just a symbolic thing, I urge you to really take a closer look at their long history of Republican donations in the United States.

If you go and you look at all the FEC filings and all the wonky, boring stuff, she was giving right alongside him the entire time. They were always partners. She always had power in that relationship. She went with him to all the meetings. She was not the trophy wife in the corner.

Feel free to consult your papers, by the way, because these numbers are- I need to actually look at my notes here to look up the exact numbers.

So he gave gave through his 848 donations, officially, he gave $273 million. And she gave, through her 717 donations, $284 million. And of course, she's still alive. So The idea that this was him and not her is not true. And nobody who's close to them will tell you that it was.

The degree of political influence that almost $300 million each, 600 or so combined gets you. How would you just broadly characterize their level of political influence then?

It's really wild to go back and look at it. Their first big effort was giving to the second Bush inaugural. They each gave 250 $1,000 to his inauguration. So their combined half a million dollars got them an audience with Bush, got them attention. There's a story about Miriam dropping off a CD when people still had CDs. That was to inform the administration about what the jihadists were doing. And she was very public about it. She said when she was still talking to reporters, It's amazing that we have this influence. But it didn't get them the policy they wanted in that administration. Condoleezza Rice was still wanting to negotiate a peace plan between the Palestinians and the Israelis. The Adelsons were also always very explicit that they weren't for what she referred to as the so-called peace process. They didn't want that. And so they stepped up their giving. And with Trump, they were much more able to just get the actual policy they wanted, get the things done in the world that they wanted. Las Vegas gaming billionaire Sheldon Adelson gives the President $5 million. That also gave Adelson and his wife access to a private lunch with the new President and lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

They were like heads of state. And it's true when you go back and you look at photos of official events, they're sitting there in the front row. They're sitting there up on the dias when Trump is sworn in, not far behind Jared Kushner. We live in a world where where if you give that much money, you have that much influence.

With Trump in particular, what is the headline, almost back of the baseball card summary of where they rank in terms of their relationship to Trump, specifically as a benefactor.

They were his largest donors, and they shaped him that early in the 2016 campaign, they were backing Rubio. Initially, Actually, Rubio was the most pro-Israel guy, and he was just on air saying whatever they wanted him to say. Trump actually tweeted early on that he was their puppet.

If Sheldon gives to him, he'll have total control over Rubio. That's the problem with the way the system works. Nobody controls me but the American public. I'm going to do the right thing for the country.

Trump was not as pro-Israel as he became until the Adelsons got on board with him. Then he's a really transactional guy, and they were really transactional people as well. And so they understood each other, and they really shaped his Israel policy.

But along with the $25 million she and Sheldon gave to Trump's Superpacks in 2016, again, another $90 million during a three-month stretch of 2020. They gave more to federal GOP causes in 2019 and 2020 than the next three donors combined. Between 2016 and 2022, they gave $300 million to the Republican focus, Senate and Congressional Leadership Funds. And all of it culminated, by the way, in November 2018, when Donald Trump invites Miriam to receive what?

He gives her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And this image, too, I don't know if you guys have it, is amazing.

As a committed member of the American Jewish community, she has supported Jewish schools, Holocaust memorial organizations, Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, and birthright Israel, among other causes. The United States is proud to recognize Dr.

Adelson for an incredible career and record of service to her community and the country.

He's literally clasping this medal around her neck just for giving money. Like the prestige of the medal, the importance of it, it's just all diminished. This is just like, you're my biggest donor. Thank you. Period. End of story. Trump's so-called peace plan was called the deal of the century. There were items on it, and some of it's been achieved. A big piece of it was moving that US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Exactly 70 years ago, the United States, under President Harry Truman, became the first nation to recognize the state of Israel. Today, we officially open the United States Embassy in Jerusalem. Congratulations. It's been a long time coming.

That move symbolized We're not splitting the country. We are not splitting the city. We want what we want.

Well, just on that, right? Again, for people who are not familiar, this was an enormous foreign policy story. This was what Jared Kutner, of course, Trump's son-in-law, was working on. This is what his bankruptcy lawyer, David Friedmann, had been appointed to oversee, I believe. This was like part and parcel of Ivanka converting to Judy. I mean, all of this seemed to focus on action items to get what Miriam ideologically had dreamt of.

So getting that embassy moved was a huge deal. The Adelston family bought the former ambassador's house in Tel Aviv, which is like, hugely symbolic, but also meaningful. So there was no moving back. They spend 67 million dollars buying the most expensive house in Israel, which was that house. And the embassy gets moved to Jerusalem. They take out a full-page ad in the New York Times thanking Trump. There's a picture of He's got a Yamaka on his head, and they are just straight up, Thank you, President Trump, for making this move happen. I also think it's important to note that that same day that the embassy moved, there was a huge amount of protesting, Palestinians protesting, dozens of people killed. These are low-key events.

The contrast could not be starker or more deadly.

Palestinian protests in the West Bank and the storming of an Israeli security fence in Gaza, leaving at least 52 dead and 1,700 injured while in Jerusalem.

Today, we open the United States Embassy in Jerusalem, Israel.

Just to give some statistics here, 58 Palestinians were killed in protests, 2,700 injured as a result of what you just described. They're protests because the Jerusalem Embassy was now going to be officially, finally to Miriam a thing.

And she sits in the front row and Ivanka presides, and It's an amazing achievement.

So this takes us to October seventh. And after that all happens, what is Miriam's perspective?

That was such a trauma. More than 700 Israelis are now feared dead after unprecedented attacks by Hamas militants.

It represents the biggest loss of life in a single day in Israeli history.

Her parents weren't themselves Holocaust survivors, but her mother's entire extended family was killed. If you were born into that, October seventh was so triggering of, We're going to have another Holocaust this This is another Holocaust. If you actually believe this is an existential crisis and your country is going to be destroyed, and your family, and your neighbors, everybody's going to be destroyed, you do whatever it takes. And she gets into a very, very us against them. What she wants from the state of Israel is to destroy Hamas. If you are not with us, you are against us.

And so as Maria Madison is urging violence, is urging war, and this is the mindset that she brings to the way Israeli politics has been trending. She is simultaneously, very conspicuously to a sports fan, doing something else in the United States. In November, Liz, as the majority shareholder of the before mentioned Sains Corporation, she sells $2 billion in stock to buy the Dallas Mavericks. Got some breaking news in the world of sports. A little bit of breaking right now. Billionaire Mark Cuban, obviously well known to the CNBC audience, is selling his majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks to the Adelson family. I can And so now we are back at the Venn diagram between sports and geo-politics and war. And why does Miriam want to do this? Is she a basketball fan? What's her motive here?

The real play here has always to bring gambling to Texas. That's a plan that they've been working on really aggressively since 2020. And they don't want sports betting where you sit on the couch and you're betting on your phone. They want you to come to a casino. So in particular, In particular, that's what they're lobbying for. And they're spending tons of money all over the capital, all over the state, not hiding it whatsoever.

The Texas Sands Pack Political Action Committee in 2023, your report, spent $6 million on 63 lobbyists trying to legalize gambling in the state.

So I think buying the team, of course, it gets you a tremendous amount of political capital. It gets you a tremendous amount of publicity. You become an important face, and especially this year, beloved face of your state. I think that there's part of a feeling that you get power by being very publicly hospitable, very publicly fun and entertaining in a place that people want to be.

A useful thing about sports, Liz, is that you get fans. This seems to be a place where maybe the Adelsons weren't so rich in. The idea of you get adoration from people who don't actually share your ideological goals, if you were.

It's a brilliant investment. I mean, honestly, you make this investment, yes, you have fans, you become relatable. Particularly for her, you become You become more American. You become just more fun and likable. And also then you're sitting courtside. There's this really funny clip of Shaq. Queen Latifah is on one side of Shaq, and Mary Madelson is on the other. And it's just the most American, most fun thing you've ever seen. I'm like, here's this guy, and he's singing to her. And you can't buy that with your millions. You have to somehow be that.

Correct. It is a better seat than even the one that you get at an inauguration. There is one video that we saw of a speech that Miriam gave in Texas. And the speech, Liz, I feel like we should play it for everybody just so all of us can appreciate how it is that Miriam actually does exercise her voice from time to time.

Shalom, friends and colleagues. Maybe being in Austin, I could say Hody Partners. Did I say it correct? Hody? Hody? Howdy. Howdy, partners. For partners, we truly are Christians and Jews, Conservatives and liberal, Coming together and advance the special relationship between the state of Texas and the state of Israel. Like Texans, Israelis cherished their roots and their religion and their rights. Like Texans, Israel defends their sovereignty. Like Texans, Israelis stick to their guns and stand up for their principles, and don't give a damn if that means standing alone.

So that was the Texas Association of Business Policy conference. And what would you say that you saw there?

Having spent a long time reading her speeches and watching her talk, I can see how shaken she is from October seventh still, that this was a speech she gave in December. So I feel like I can hear that and see see that in her. And I can also hear and see her making her argument, bringing these things together. I make sense to be here in Texas. I make sense as a leader here in Texas. It makes more sense than a casual observation whoever might think that the evangelical Zionists are a huge movement and a huge part of the Israel lobby. So all these things she's saying, they're true. She's not making them up. She's just connecting the dots for people and saying, okay, I'm It might not look like what you think the owner of this team should look like. I'm a woman, I'm Israeli, I'm older. I have all of these things that you're not familiar with. But I think she's trying to create comfort, and I think she's trying to say, I'm not as foreign as I sound. I'm not as foreign as you think.

It seems like an example, at the very least, of one of these coalitions that on the surface are incredibly strange to an observer and And yet when you realize the aligned incentives here actually do add up. And add up, I guess, on a political giving balance sheet, if nothing else. There's a detail here about Lindsay Graham, of course, another very important figure in the portrait of American conservative politics. This is last October. He's at the Republican Jewish Coalition conference, and he's giving this keynote. And Lindsay Graham says to Miriam Adelson, I didn't know where the Zionist was, but after the trip, I did. Miriam, I want to thank you for all you've done for the State of Israel, for our country. We miss Sheldon. We love you. So folks- And this year in particular, to put an even finer point on it, we're in 2024, obviously, but in 2020, they had donated, I believe, 91 million dollars. Liz, is that right? To Trump's campaign, which is, according to our accounting here, almost twice as much as all of the owners in all four major American sports over the six years leading up to that campaign combined.

And so now in 2024, there's a lot happening. Liz, in no particular order here, we have the Israel Hamas war, as before mentioned, with thousands upon thousands of dead Palestinians in and around Gaza. You have, of course, the 34 felony convictions of Donald Trump. You have, of course, the backdrop of an election year. And you also have the person who ranks as the most extreme Zionist and political donor to Trump, bank rolling so much of everything I just said.

It's wild how many things are coming together. When I was reporting this story, it was before the finals, obviously, but it still felt like, okay, here's this woman who has a hand in campus politics, which was blowing up. Yes. She has a hand in the war, as you mentioned. She has a hand in the presidential race, and she wasn't giving for a long time. She sat out of the primary, and there was this looming question of, is she going to give? How much is she going to give? Is she going to be upset with Trump for mouthing off and saying the wrong thing at some point? Is she just too upset? Are things going to be different now that Sheldon has died? She had been giving a lot less money across the board philanthropically and everything else. Right. And now here we are in this moment. And just like the past week, Trump is convicted. And she said she's giving him $100 million. And she's not the only billionaire who immediately announces They're going to back Trump this cycle. There's obviously tremendous rallying behind him right now. This conviction is not going to deter anybody.

We are behind you. We are going to close the funding app. Biden had had raised more money. We're not going to let that happen. Adelson Superpack is called Preserve America. When if you go to their website, it is just an image of Biden looking really old, basically saying, We can't let this man run our country. That's it. That's the whole message. There's nothing even about Trump. It is just anti-Biden.

I'm looking now. I had not visited this website before. Joe Biden is too weak to lead America. Help Stop Joe Biden. Give your name, email address, phone number. The radical left's goals for America and the free market system that has defined our Republic. Rewrite and change the Constitution. Make government not the family, the central focus of American life. Notably, and perhaps tellingly, on this front page, Israel is not mentioned. And so it just- Israel is not mentioned, and Trump is not mentioned. And it speaks to, again, a coalition building seemingly, maybe a marketing savvy when it comes to who she needs to help enact her even larger goals.

Yeah. The war is incredibly contentious. Trump is a complicated guy.

Complicated and yet simple is what I'm realizing more and more.

Yes. Or people's feelings about him are not monolithic. People have a lot of feelings. And this seems to be a very safe, conservative message.

The messaging here, there is a part of your story that staggered me because you talk to somebody who I believe is part of a moderate pro-Israel lobbying group in which they were able to characterize who else in American life at all has been as influential on, again, shaping a political spectrum of an issue. How did they characterize it to you with Israel as a metaphor?

They characterized the Israel lobby as basically being like the NRA and its ability to part public policy from public opinion, particularly in the Jewish community. Most Jews do not support Trump. The right wing Jewish Billionaire Caucus has shaped policy. They're incredibly powerful. We're all familiar with this with gun policy of just like, why can't things change? Why if there's public support for a gun control, do we not have gun control? And it's the same dynamic of just like, if you are giving that much money, you have that much power and you shape policy.

But as for where all of that money and that power brought Sheldon at the end of his life, you should know that he died in January 2021. At age 87, the Monday after the unhinged supporters of his preferred candidate stormed the Capitol, trafficking along the way, incidentally, in rank anti-Semitism. But as for Sheldon's funeral, by contrast, this was a small and quiet and private event. His coffin was decorated with both the Israeli and the American flags, and only close family was present alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Her late husband is buried in Israel on the Mount of Olives, and he was not Israeli. He was born in Boston. But Israel became his adopted home. It became the center of meaning in their lives. And when he died, Miriam wrote this elogy about him, about all their love and all of that. But also she says of him, he crafted the course of nations, which is 100% true and was a big part of their union. That was a project they had together that she is carrying on now. And people like Lindsay Graham are basically saying, We pass the torch. We see that you are now in charge of this family, and we will also defer to you.

Just what we're finding out here today is that these are some of the most powerful people on the planet as defined by their impact on how actual nations, governments, are litigating and pursuing some of the most contentious issues with human life lives at stake.

And part of what was so mind boggling to me in the reporting is that there's no hiding the ball. There's no pretending. There's no faking anybody out. It is just on the surface, this is what we're doing. This is the play. This is our game. This is how we win. We are giving this is what we want and it works. It's mind-blowing how well it works.

So at the end here, Liz, what I want to imagine with you is the scene we might be watching on television at the end of these NBA Finals. On stage at this trophy presentation may well be the Commissioner of the NBA, Adam Silver, may be shaking hands with the woman he did not want to be the face of the Mavericks, Miriam Adelson, because she was the most powerful Trump donor in America. And standing right there as well will be Kyrie Irving, a potential finals MVP who previously had been condemned as the most notorious anti-Semite in American sports and is now an avowed defender of the victims in Gaza while also working for this woman whose life mission has been the security of the state of Israel. And all of them in this scene would be forming a truly unthinkable coalition of human beings who have come together under a common self-interest at the very time in world history when that specific diplomacy seems unlikely.

Yes.

Which feels like a perfect picture of the fucked up coalitional politics that maybe only sports in this case can provide.

Absolutely. And then one sense, you can say it's beautiful. These people who disagree with each other to their core are going to manage to stand there together because they all love basketball. And in other sense, your head just wants to explode. Just like, okay, money, power, whatever has brought all these people together, and they can't stand each other, but they're going to do it.

Diplomacy may well be found at the end of this NBA Finals. And what it costs, I think, I hope everybody who's listening to you, Liz, now has a better sense of. So thank you so much for joining us here.

Thank you for having this conversation. I really appreciate it.

So as I sit here at my computer getting ready to watch game three of these NBA Finals, I am still thinking about Myriam Adelson's epitaph for her husband, how he crafted the course of nations. But the reason this epitaph is going to keep sticking with me is not because it reads like a goodbye. It's because it reads words like a vow, a preview of what Miriam herself will continue to do. And I'm not saying that the NBA backs her personal brand of extremism, obviously. I'm also not saying that the league loves how she basically buys world leaders, entire nations, like they are franchises up for sale. Again, Adam Silver, I understand, insisted that her son-in-law had to be the controlling owner of her Mavericks instead of her. And Kyrie Irving, even as he focuses on basketball, has liked lots of tweets in support of ending genocide in Gaza. And Mark Cuban has also long been on the record as a huge anti-Trump critic. But ever since Cuban sold Adelson the team last December with the conspicuous caveat that he would remain intimately involved with basketball operations, everybody that I've mentioned has pretty much all shut up and dribbled, mainstreaming the image of Miriam Adelson and partying with her courtside, laundering her extremism to the world.

She, I know, is busy crafting the course of nations. They, I presume, are busy cashing her checks, which are just big enough to pretend that they actually are the ones using her. This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Metal Art Media production. I'll talk to you next time.