New York Representative Ritchie Torres—one of AIPAC’s strongest soldiers—left
Jewish comedian and talk show host Adam Friedland stunned by the soulless,
robotic talking points he kept leaning on to justify Israel’s abhorrent
genocide of Palestinians.
“Hamas murdered thousands of people so,” said Torres in one of the multiple viral clips the interview generated.
“So what does that mean?” Friedland asked.
“That Hamas is a terrorist organization for murdering innocent children and civilians.”
“How
many civilians have been killed in this war?” Friedland asked
earnestly. Torres went quiet for a beat, as if trying to remember how
AIPAC taught him to respond to good-faith questions about the carnage
Israel has unleashed on Gaza.
“The war is a tragedy—” said Torres.
“Ninety percent of them have been civilians!” said an exasperated Friedland, referring to an IDF database
that confirms over 80 percent of the Palestinians murdered by Israel
have been noncombatant civilians. “They’ve killed, they’ve killed
journalists!”
“People have been killed in a war, it’s been a tragedy,” Torres said emotionlessly.
‘They’ve killed people waiting for aid.”
“But
you’re suggesting that it is the policy of the Israeli government to
murder civilians, and that’s, that is a notion that I reject.”
Be Human | Season 2 Episode 10 | Ritchie TorresOut Now On YouTube@adamfriedland @ritchietorres #tafs #ritchietorres #adamfriedlandshow pic.twitter.com/UsFz1QT9PJ
— The Adam Friedland Show (@adam_talkshow) August 27, 2025
“You gotta like, listen man, you gotta be like a human being about this,” Friedland replied.
“People who are dying in the war, which to me is a tragedy because war is a tragedy—”
“Do you feel in your heart that what you’re saying is right?”
“If Hamas, if you remove Hamas—”
“You don’t actually think that—”
“I
told you what I believe,” Torres said sharply, the monotone cadence
slipping a bit. “Don’t tell me what I believe, I’ve told you what I
believe.”
“Why would you believe that?”
“Because there are people who see the world differently.”
Multiple
other clips of the interview also went viral, as Torres struggled to
respond to Friedland’s earnest concerns about the genocide, and the
impacts of Israel’s actions on the Jewish community worldwide.
“What does it look
like to have a flag with a Jewish star, and I’m Jewish, for kids to be
starving right now?” Friedland asked Torres.
“It just sounds like you’re justifying antisemitism,” Torres said. “Are you crazy right now?”
How @RitchieTorres can sit there and argue with a jew, who lived in israel, comes from a family who went through appartied in SA and was also a Middle Eastern studies major in college, and is crying from his soul and say this is wild. He’s a fucking robot. Adam Friedland 2028 pic.twitter.com/rXMp8MPHeo
— Rob (@chudmuffin0) August 27, 2025
The conversation continued, and tensely.
“If
you have disagreements with the Israeli government, you should voice
your criticism of the Israeli government,” Torres said in a later clip.
“But there is no justification for intimidation or harassment against
American Jews.”
“I’m telling you as a Jew
right now that we are receiving a lot more hate because of what the
people with the flag that has a Jewish star on it are doing to other
people right now,” Friedland responded
passionately. “As a Jewish person … how painful it is for us to say,
and it hurts my stomach to say this—and you’re gonna say ‘I disagree, I
disagree’—that this is a genocide. And that hurts to say that a Jew
could do that. It hurts because we grew up with learning about what
hatred is. We grew up learning about this. And the same year the state
of Israel was established, 1948, the world saw the Holocuast, and they
established standards for what a genocide is. It was the same year. And
the world said this shouldn’t be a thing that happens.”
I’ve never seen anything like this. How is Adam Friedland making me emotional right now. pic.twitter.com/Kc01cb0ZwM
— Hispanic Shaun King (@okimstillhungry) August 28, 2025
Torres has been an empty-headed AIPAC mouthpiece for some time now. His first time truly criticizing Israel’s actions over the last two years was last month, and it was uninspiring. His mind-numbingly obtuse interview with Friedland only reinforces just how far gone he is.
Torres can say the word tragedy as much as he wants, it only makes his loyalty to AIPAC and the other Israeli lobbies that line his pockets that much more obvious. Torres can say that this genocide is so unfortunate, and it’s always so sad when people die, but he still refuses to say anything bad about Israel, no matter how many men, women, and children they bomb and shoot and brutalize, no matter how many hospitals and mosques and churches and schools they destroy.
And frankly, it is Israeli policy to murder civilians. How could it not be when an overwhelming majority of those killed are just that? IDF soldiers have admitted to being ordered to open fire indiscriminately at Palestinians desperately rushing to aid sites. Just two days ago Israel bombed Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, waited for aid workers to get there, and bombed it again ten minutes later. 20 people were killed, including journalists, workers, and doctors. Israel simply called the very deliberate bombing of the same spot twice a “tragic mishap.” And yet Torres remains unflinching in his defense of the genocidal government.
The interview has resonated deeply across the internet.
“This
interview is insane. Adam Friedland wrestles with the profound inner
conflict and shame of being raised Zionist and opposing the Israeli
genocide while Ritchie Torres sneers at him through the most banal
talking points and accuses him of doing a ‘gotcha’ interview,”
journalist and podcast host Alex Goldman wrote on X.
“Ritchie
Torres defending Israel by telling Adam Friedland he doesn’t know the
Jewish experience is one [of] the most antisemetic statements I have
witnessed in recent memory lol,” wrote another user.
Others pointed out the cold, eerie mannerisms that Torres addressed Friedland with.
“One
thing that struck me abt the Adam Friedland interview with Ritchie
Torres is how deeply, unsettlingly strange Torres is as an individual,”
another popular account said.
“His movements, his expressions, his terrible timing, the way he sits—it’s almost as if he’s literally an alien. disturbing, in many ways.”
“How
Ritchie Torres can sit there and argue with a jew, who lived in Israel,
comes from a family who went through [apartheid] in [South Africa] and
was also a Middle Eastern studies major in college, and is crying from
his soul and say this is wild. He’s a fucking robot. Adam Friedland
2028,” another account wrote.
Friedland’s full interview with Torres can be found here.
The post Adam Friedland Rips Ritchie Torres in Damning Interview on Israel appeared first on New Republic.
