Torrent of hate after Netanyahu interview on popular podcast
The premier is concerned that younger Americans are less supportive of Israel. The actions of the podcasters confirmed his fears.
By David Isaac
Israel Today
Jul 25, 2025
The “Full Send” podcast featuring Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Kyle Forgeard is on his left and Aaron “Steiny” Steinberg is on his right.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared in an interview broadcast on Monday on a podcast popular with young men in the United States. What emerged is how strong the hostility to Israel and Netanyahu is among a significant segment of young Americans.
While the podcasters were friendly during the interview, their subsequent actions revealed how they felt the need to bend over backward to satisfy the hostility of their audience, going so far as to invite anti-Israel and antisemitic influencers for a live-streamed conversation immediately following the interview’s broadcast.
Kyle Forgeard and Aaron Steinberg, both 30, who host the “Full Send Podcast,” understood there would be blowback.
“Probably going to be a lot of hate in the comments and stuff,” Forgeard said to Steinberg before bringing Netanyahu on. “We’re journalists, right?” said Steinberg. “How can you pass up this opportunity at the end of the day?”
Forgeard and Steinberg are part of the Nelk Boys, a group of influencers known for online pranks and interviews with athletes and pop culture figures. The group has started promoting right-wing figures and causes. They endorsed US President Donald Trump in his 2024 election bid.
The duo interviewed Netanyahu at Blair House on July 8, when he was in Washington, DC to meet with Trump.
In the live-stream after the Netanyahu interview, Forgeard and Steinberg asked the opinion of anti-Israel influencers Sneako, Myron Gaines, Hasan Piker and, most notoriously, Nick Fuentes.
Fuentes, a white supremacist, has denied the Holocaust, said “Talmudic Jews” should convert or be forced to leave the US, and rejected a papal document declaring that modern Jews bear no guilt for the death of Jesus.
The influencers criticized Forgeard and Steinberg for giving Netanyahu a platform in the first place. (Hasan Piker, who goes by the online moniker HasanAbi, said it was like interviewing Adolph Hitler during the Holocaust.)
They also criticized the two for what they considered softball questions.
Forgeard and Steinberg defended themselves, saying they would invite anyone on their podcast no matter how controversial, and soon plan to host a pro-Palestinian guest with diametrically opposite views to those of Netanyahu.
“The Full Send Podcast for me has always been about: If we get the opportunity to have someone extremely controversial on, we’re never going to turn it down,” Forgeard told Fuentes.
“We’re getting a lot of flak. People don’t care what we ask Netanyahu. It’s just the fact that we had him on in general. It’s automatically, ‘F**k you guys.’ Platforming him is the thing that people are pissed about,” Forgeard said.
“We should be allowed to have controversial people on. They should be allowed to say their opinions. Even if this guy is a f**king war criminal. That’s what free speech is,” Forgeard said.
While admitting he didn’t know much about Fuentes’s opinions, Forgeard said he’d love to have him on as a podcast guest as well.
Fuentes said, “The reason people are being critical is because, of course, the State of Israel and Netanyahu are extremely unpopular with young people.”
Forgeard defended his audience, saying that while they were young, they were intelligent, as evidenced by the comments posted about the interview.
Typical of those comments were, “You seemingly tried to humanize a war criminal who is actively committing a genocide on your podcast,” “You guys have the moral compass of a f**king rock,” and “War criminals should never get any stage to whitewash their crimes.”
While noting that there is still broad American support for Israel, Netanyahu said that he was concerned about the younger generation, which is what led him to do the interview. “I’m doing this podcast, among other things, to reach out,” he said.
Netanyahu said Americans are “getting the wrong picture” of Israel, having been fed a steady stream of demonization and lies. He said the best way to fight those lies is with the truth, telling it often and in numerous forums. He described the fight against disinformation as another battlefield.
Pro-Hamas protesters in America are not just anti-Israel but anti-American, he said. “They not only burn the flag of Israel; they burn American flags.”
Asked how an anti-Israel and antisemitic figure such as Zohran Mamdani could become the Democratic candidate for New York mayor when it has the highest population of Jews in America, Netanyahu didn’t have a good explanation.
“Sometimes folly overtakes human affairs for a while, but not for long because reality steps in,” he said.
Netanyahu told the podcasters that close ties between Israel and the US paid big dividends for both as mutual enemies, such as Iran, with its chants of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America,” are thrown back on their heels.
“All of a sudden, they’re not so intimidating. All of a sudden, we can defeat them,” the prime minister said.
Explaining why Israel struck Iran, the prime minister said that Israel faced “two lumps of cancer”—Iran’s nuclear weapons program and its ballistic missile program. Israel could have been destroyed by either—a nuclear bomb or thousands of ballistic missiles.
“Why did we have to act? Because if you don’t remove the cancer, you’re going to be dead. Now, if you remove it, as we did, it might come back. That happens in cancer, too, but if you don’t remove it, you’re not going to be there,” he said.
The prime minister said that the Iranian and Jewish people have a long history and that the relationship can be rebuilt if the Islamist regime is removed. “Ultimately, it’s up to the people of Iran to rise up against their tormentors. And I think there is a possibility it will happen, and then we can have peace,” he said.
Netanyahu noted that he and Trump have both been targeted for assassination by the Iranian regime. Trump has been targeted twice, the prime minister said, and his own private residence was hit by a drone that struck through the bedroom window. (On Oct. 19, 2024, a drone launched from Lebanon struck Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea. He was not there at the time.)
Just this month, a new fatwa, or religious decree, by Iranian clerics called for the assassination of Trump and Netanyahu.
He praised Trump as the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House and agreed with the characterization of their close ties as a “bromance.”
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