10/24/25: Venezuela Regime Change, Trump 2028 Run, VA Delegate On Dem Future & MORE!

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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We need your help to build the future of independent
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Speaker 3 (00:30):
Good morning everyone, Happy Friday. We've got a full pack
BP crew here. We got Crystal, we got Ryan, we
got Saga, and we've got I can't tell who that is?
Is it a young Republican?

Speaker 4 (00:41):
Max Republican representing the youth here? Yes, that's right, gen Z,
gen Z youth right, that's right. We're not ready for
Jen Alpha. So we got gen Z here today, and
we got a bunch of stories. We've got Trump talking
about more Venezuela strikes.

Speaker 5 (00:59):
We've got a bunch show other stories.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Eric Adams has endorsed Cuomo in the New York mayor race,
and a bunch of other fun stuff. But first we're
gonna go to Ryan and Sager, who's been doing some
gum shoe reporting, some reporting exclusively released here.

Speaker 5 (01:15):
First, saga, Ryan, why don't you take it away? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Ryan and I've been working on this for a couple
of days. Tease it yesterday, So I'm gonna go ahead.
It hasn't actually even been published, so this is exclusive
literally to our entire breaking Points audience. I'll just read
a little bit from what I wrote at the top,
and then I'm gonna throw off to Ryan who, by
the way, Ryan did the bulk of the actual bulk reporting,
so I do want to shout it out to him.

Speaker 6 (01:38):
I was just simply the phone, Hi. Sager raced it
back up, got back on the journalistic field.

Speaker 5 (01:42):
I love it. I appreciate it, right.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
I appreciate every opportunity you give me for a byeline.
So it is good to get the dusty fingers off,
all right. So US Intelligence has assessed that none of
the fentanyl that is trafficked to the United States is
being produced in Venezuela, despite recent claims from the Trump administration,
a senior US official directly tells me. The official noted
that many of the boats targeted for strikes by the

(02:04):
administration do not even have the requisite gasoline or motor
capacity to reach US waters, dramatically undercutting claims by Defense
Pete Hegseth quote. Despite the intelligence on Venezuela's lack of
association with fentanyl, the Trump administration has made Venezuela and
government drug trafficking the cassis belli in its drive to

(02:24):
overthrow the government of Nicholas Maduro. Toward that end, Secretary
of State Marco Rubio has redirected millions of dollars in
money previously allocated under USID towards pro democracy measures in
Venezuela and the surrounding countries, a thinly veiled effort to
prep the region for war. Two sources familiar with the
discussions tell me that a long proponent of regime change,

(02:46):
Marco Rubio is the driving force behind the aggressive military
posture towards the Maduro regime. Toward that end, Rubio, who
is in charge of the remnants of USAID, has redirected
some money previously allocated for pre pro democracy measures in
Venezuela in a fiendly veiled effort, as we said earlier.
And so I'm going to kick it now to Ryan
who actually did all of the reporting along with his

(03:09):
colleagues over at drop site, to actually expose what some
of those efforts actually look like at a contract level.

Speaker 6 (03:15):
Yeah, and so we tried to go around Congress seeing
what had been noticed when it comes to, you know,
money being moved from USAID over to inl or other
state department buckets. Jack Paulson, my colleague, dug through a
bunch of kind of federal records and found some interesting

(03:36):
buckets of money being moved around. Maybe the most interesting.
We've got a four point eight million dollar contract that
was moved for a quote Columbia virtual shooting range. It's
a contract with an Arizona based company called Virtue. This
so funding a shooting range in Colombia. Meanwhile, at one
point seventy three million dollar foreign military sale through the

(03:58):
US Coast Guard of of a bunch of twenty one
foot boats UH to a Colombian entity. And so we
got a tip that what we needed to do is
like look at the Colombia, look at Venezuela, and the
bordering countries, particularly Colombia and Guyana, where these kind of
anti Maduro Venezuelan factions set up shop. If you remember,

(04:21):
there was attempted twenty twenty coup that was funded largely
through USAID and other state Department money, which they comically
referred to as the Bay of Piglets because it was
such a it, it was such a catash for it
couldn't even rise to the Bay of pigs.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
It wasn't even a mature pig.

Speaker 6 (04:36):
It wasn't even a much wasn't even a mature pig.
And so, and you also have this conflict playing out
between Excellon Mobile and Guyana, which and these and these
like Gian entities that keep threatening to move on, uh,
move on Venezuela. And so what you've got is the

(04:57):
ground being prepped for all sorts of kind of mischief
and sabotage and troublemaking. While President Trump is now you know,
talking about bombing. All of this, we're told is being
really driven by you know, Marco Rubio, who throughout the
beginning of the Trump administration was trying to make the
case for regime change in Venezuela using kind of the

(05:20):
old school you know, South Florida arguments like human rights abuses.
We've got to get these communists out of our hemisphere.
We got this, the election was stolen. We can't we
can't allow uh, you know, we can't allow stolen election
here in our hemisphere. And Trump, i'd say, unsurprisingly, he
was not moved by any of those arguments. Trump in

(05:40):
the very beginning of his term was trying, and I
think it was a Washington Post report this to actually
make good in his promise to attack Mexican drug cartels.
But the lawyers and also the a lot of diplomats
are like, I'm sorry, Like this is geopolitically untenable at
this point. You cannot just start bombing inside Mexico. And
Rubio's like, aha, guess what. There's cartels in Venezuela and

(06:03):
the cartel leader is his name is Nicholas Maduro. And
here's this, here's this like indictment from twenty twenty where
he was involved in cocaine trafficking, and that scratched Trump's itch.
And so that's that's how he persuaded Trump to kind
of start backing regime change in Venezuela through this shoehorn
of the drug trafficking. Meanwhile, it's all become about fentanyl

(06:25):
because cocaine people. People don't think cocaine really causes hundreds
of thousands of deaths in the United States. You know,
it can destroy people's lives. It's not the thing that's
ripping apart entire generation of young people. That's fentanyl. And
so just out of nowhere, they started saying Venezuela is
producing fentanyl. And you know, as as we learned through
our reporting saga, you could talk about this, American intelligence

(06:49):
assesses that little to nona have you, as you mentioned to,
little to none of the ventanyl, if any, is coming
out of Venice.

Speaker 7 (06:56):
Is being mass produced in Venezuela.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
But did you, guys ask the important question of what
Israeli intelligence says, since we like to rely on that
instead of our own intelligence.

Speaker 7 (07:05):
I think is reminding me of.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
When you see I'm just reminded of when Tulsea Gabbard went,
you know, and testified to Congress and said, we see
no indications that iron is pursuing is pursuing a nuclear weapon,
and they decided to just pretend that didn't happen a
lot of the American people and be like but they
Israeli say something different.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
Anyway, I think even the Israelis are not dumb enough
to claim this one. And I think one of the
one of the key pieces that Ryan and I kind
of put together. First of all, the USAID money stuff
is very interesting in and of itself. Perhaps the most
interesting kind of tip that we got was about shaping
the area around and what Ryan and his colleagues were
able to hammer down was that the battle space, if

(07:45):
you will, of Guyana and of Colombia are the jump
off points where previous regime change efforts have sprung from
on Venezuela. And I think kind of secondary to what
Ryan is talking about is the internal logic of the
Trump administration. And one of the really interesting things that
has happened is that Trump has somehow been convinced, at
least as of this moment. Everybody remember he can change

(08:06):
his mind at any time, as he did. Remember the
six day timeline I laid out on Ukraine is that
we went from demanding a piece deal to sanctions and
long range missiles in the span of literally five to
six days. So, of course all of this is just
current to what Ryan and I understand as of right now.
But one of the key pieces is about the oil
and the minerals, the vast amount of resources that Venezuela has.

(08:29):
Keep in mind, Nicholas Maduro offered everything. This is according
to Donald Trump, and it's also according to the sources
that Ryan and I were able.

Speaker 7 (08:36):
To speak to.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
He was saying, I will give you oil. I will
happily to invite you know, US oil companies down here.
And in fact, you know, he currently is shipping a
significant amount of oil to China, some half a million
barrels per day actually just last month, and that is
just scratching the surface of the Venezuelan oil capacity. Now,
Trump is obviously salivating at that. He wants to get

(08:58):
oil prices down here in the US. He wants to
make sure the US oil industry is booming. Rubio has
very cleverly convinced the President that actually the best way
to get access to this oil resources is through regime
change itself. And so that is why this is now
kind of a central question inside the administration. And it's
one which obviously, I mean, just you know our own editorial,

(09:21):
Ryan and I are like, that doesn't make any sense
collapsing a regime to extract resources when the current regime
is like, take whatever you want. They're like, anything not
nailed down to the floor, take it, you can have it.
You're like, where to sell it to you? Yeah, well
we'll pry it up for you, you know, if you
want it. It's a tremendous risk. And there's a couple

(09:41):
of other areas that I think are really worth kind
of delving into how this happened. And I'm not taking
away Trump's agency, but just to just to explain some
of the internal dynamics. One of the most interesting things
that Ryan and I kind of delved into is the
Florida Cabal. And I think that's something that's really important
to this story. Is that you have the White House
Chief of Staff from Florida. You have the Secretary of

(10:03):
State from Florida. You have Senator Rick Scott, who's a
very high level person on the Senate Foreign relationsis Committee General,
the Attorney General is from Florida. One of the White
House senior communications aids is from Florida. The President himself
is now a Florida resident. So he is surrounded in
an ideological kind of cabal, which is genuinely unique to

(10:23):
the situation. At any time. And one of the things
that I think is hard to explain for anybody who's
not familiar with that South Florida dynamic is the ideological
fervor that they treat the overthrow of the Maduro regime.
You have a lot of rich Venezuelan expats. You also
have a lot of Cubans others ideologically motivated actors against socialism.

(10:43):
So this Florida picture is really key to the entire story,
and it does show you how Rubio has a lot
of allies on his side. The tertiary to also that
gristle is something you mentioned about Steven Miller, is that
if the United States is in aged in a quote
war with trend de' arragua and with Venezuela and the

(11:05):
Venezuelan regime, it actually legally bolsters the argument, the legal
argument for the Alien Enemies Act and for some of
the other deportations of the Trump administration is currently doing.
So that's a small part of the story, but it
is important from a domestic point of view, because what
it belies is that there's not enough voices in the
White House saying, hey, if we're worried about illegal immigration,

(11:28):
the worst possible thing we could do is collapse a
regime which is shaky at best, which governs millions of people,
which could flood the region, flood the United States, flood
you know, based all of Central America and Cosmo mass
refugee crisis.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
Destabilize a bunch of countries, and then of course the
fall on from ours as well. And just a quick
note on the political dynamics as well, because I've been
making my head against the wall about why Democrats aren't
saying much of it. I mean, very few. Rocanna, Mark Pokan,
a couple love them, but by and large they're pretty quiet.
And I actually talked to Rocana about this yesterday, Kyle
and I did, And first of all, he revealed some

(12:08):
news that the Progressive Caucus has an official policy not
to take position, for their members to not talk about Palestine, Israel, Palestine,
that's inside. But he used that as a way of
exposing how on a lot of foreign policy issues, even
quote unquote Progressives have this very old school neocon cold

(12:30):
War formed ideology. And so now even though Florida is
long gone for Democrats like not competitive outside of you know,
some individual congressional districts, they still. The part of the
reason why you don't hear them loudly opposing this is
because many of them don't really oppose it. And we
saw that first, you know, certainly in the first Trump
administration with the whole one Guido, you know, coup attempt,

(12:54):
and many Democrats were fully supportive, many, if not most,
if not practically all.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yeah, and not to mentioned everybody remember who got the
Nobel Prize this year, right, it was a Venezuelan opposition
figure who you know, it doesn't take a genius to say,
is very supported, I'll say, at the least by the West.
And so the political dynamics of this are very dangerous.
We are moving, Griffin. Can you go ahead and queue
up Donald Trump the logic for land strikes in Venezuela.

(13:21):
This is the next part of the military campaign which
we may see, go ahead and play it.

Speaker 8 (13:27):
And briefed them on the operation.

Speaker 5 (13:29):
No, we will go, you will go, and we will go.

Speaker 9 (13:32):
We go for them to have judge, I don't see
any loss and go and no reason not to. You know,
they'll always complain, oh, we should have gone. So we're
gonna definitely, I'd like to just tell you, let's go
we'll go We're gonna tell them what we're gonna do,
and I think they're gonna probably like it, except for
the radical left lunatics.

Speaker 10 (13:47):
And mister President, if you are declaring war against these cartels,
and Congress is likely to approve of that process, why
not just ask for a declaration of war.

Speaker 9 (13:58):
Well, I don't think we're gonna necessarily asked for a
declaration of war. I think we're just going to kill
people that are bringing drugs into our country.

Speaker 7 (14:06):
Okay, We're going to kill them.

Speaker 5 (14:08):
You know, they're going to be like dead.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Okay, like that great question from a friend of the show,
Philip Wegman. What he underscored there was a couple of things.
Number one is about the military strikes that not asking Congress.
A second part, which was very important actually to the discussion,
is we really had two options. Trump was actually asked

(14:30):
live whether B one bombers were present off the coast
of Venezuela. He denied that, despite flight radar actually showing
these you know, very capable, highly sophisticated US aircraft that
were some fifty miles off the Venezuelan coastline. And actually
that was later confirmed via Pentagon sources that it was
a legitimate operation. This comes after we also had the

(14:53):
B fifty two bombers which very recently were off the
coast of Venezuela that took off from Barksale Air Force Base,
not to mention the large navel build up that we
have in the Caribbean. Third thing that we have to
remember is that the southcom Admiral, the admiral who was
in charge of these operations recently departed his post. Now

(15:15):
I've been trying to chase some of that down, and
I don't have it all fully nailed down, but it
does appear, at least from a little bit of what
we know, is that he was subjecting both to the
legality and the scope of some of the operations that
were happening. And I think everyone should be banging their
head against the wall because I don't. And I said
this yesterday. Where is MAGA on this? There's a New

(15:36):
York Times article I do want to give credit which
just came out yesterday. Some MAGA allies friends of mine,
people like Kurt Mills and apparently Laura Loomer as well.
I guess we're glad to have you, Laura, are speaking
out or at least a little bit, you know, behind
the scenes, but you know, there is no large scale
awareness in the way that there was on Iran, which

(15:59):
was legitimately did check some of the regime change efforts
that were happening originally by the Israelis and from the
Trump administration. They at least felt that they were politically
precarious this time. Much of MAGA is buying this fentanyl line,
hook Line and sinker, I think because they're desperate to
see some war against the drug cartels. But they're not

(16:20):
asking for basic evidence.

Speaker 7 (16:21):
Right now.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
It really is just Ran Paul who is standing up
and speaking out about this, and of course he's being
heavily penalized by the White House. Everybody, remember, if you're
Lindsay Graham and you agitate for regime change across the world,
Donald Trump will do his very first fundraiser of the
twenty twenty six campaign with you at a golf tournament.
That's not an exaggeration. He also only punished one senator

(16:45):
recently in an invitation to the White House. That was
Senator Ran Paul for speaking out against the Venezuela operation.
This is now central to how Trump views himself as
part of the Republican Party.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
And Lindsay Graham's floating making Venezuela fifty first date. So
I don't think is what MAGA thought they were voting for.
But now they're ready to go along with it, apparently.
Can we just go back to that Trump stop because
that was fucking insane. Like when I saw the quote
of what he said, I thought it was some like
sort of shit post summarizing speculatively what he really meant.

(17:20):
And then I listened to it and I was like, Oh,
he actually said, like we'll kill them, They'll be dead,
Like he actually said that. And when he's talking, I
really really really want people to take this in. Okay,
when he's talking about the ability to randomly murder people
that this administration claims our drug cartel members, we already

(17:42):
know they've lied about some of that. We already know,
as you guys reported that they know that none of
what they're doing has anything to do with fentanel. Okay,
so we know that they lie routinely about all of this.
They are claiming the ability to assassinate anyone that they
want to with no due process and not quote unquote
just in Venezuela or Colombia or some you know in

(18:03):
the Caribbean or in the Pacific we're talking about here.
And that's why the Stephen Miller connect is also very
important and why I'm sure he loves this right because
they are claiming extraordinary powers for themselves to do the
sort of things that previously in the War on terror,
you know, we're only done in foreign lands, to do

(18:25):
them here on our soil, and for us to have
no recourse, and for them to not have to provide
a shred of evidence that these people are who they
say they are. By the way, even if they are
drug traffickers, they shouldn't have We have a court system,
we have a judicial system, We have a justice system
in order to try them and evaluate the evidence and
for them to be held accountable. So this to me

(18:47):
is a red alert. It is red alert domestically. It
is a red alert in terms of regime change wars.
It is red alert in terms of authoritarianism, Like, we
are so far off the rails that I can scarcely
wrap my head roun it.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Griffin, if you don't mind, could you pull up Pete
hagg Seth talking about this, because this show I just
want to pick up on this, hagg Sath, I want
everybody to listen to the language that he uses very
carefully about ISIS and al Qaeda. That's the one that
you can look for, Griffin, because this kind of gets
to the extra judicial assassination previously that we saw the
legal justification under the Obama and the Bush administrations where

(19:25):
they're allowed to actually extra judicially execute and assassinate anybody
who was deemed a quote terrorist.

Speaker 7 (19:32):
Do you have it in front of you, Griffin, can.

Speaker 5 (19:33):
We play it? Yeah, coming up right now?

Speaker 7 (19:35):
Okay, cool?

Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, So again just setting it up and kind of
bolster that point around how this is now coming here
to the Western hemisphere.

Speaker 5 (19:44):
Let's take a listen.

Speaker 11 (19:45):
Tell as was mentioned, these are designated terrorist organizations, foreign
terrorist organizations. Our generation spent the better part of two
decades hunting al Qaeda, hunting ISIS well, as the President said,
this is the Ice, this is the al Qaeda of
the Western hemisphere. They intimidate, they terrorize, they extort, they

(20:07):
poison the American people. The President's right, every boat we
strike is twenty five thousand Americans whose lives are saved
because of the drugs that were headed in our direction.
So our message to these foreign terrorist organizations is we
will treat you like we have treated al Qaeda. We
will find you, we will map your networks, we will
hunt you down, and.

Speaker 7 (20:28):
We will kill you.

Speaker 11 (20:30):
And you've seen that evidence in the maritime domain, whether
it's in the Caribbean or in the Pacific. With the
last two strikes. We know exactly who these people are.
We know what networks they work with, what foreign terrorists
organizations they're a part of. We know where they're going,
where they originated from, what they're carrying.

Speaker 3 (20:46):
He knows who they are except for I think there
were people that had to release recently.

Speaker 1 (20:50):
Right well, so that's of you know, that is an
important part of the story, and it kind of undercuts
the same logic. If you struck a boat of terrorists
and two of them survived, why would you return them
to their home country free of any charge. Wouldn't you
bring them here to the United States to face trial

(21:10):
or it?

Speaker 5 (21:11):
Right?

Speaker 1 (21:11):
So this is part of the thing, which you know,
and this is where my media kind of critique comes in.
Like that story about the release and about those captured prisons,
it was nowhere. I mean, it was I was like,
you know, bottom of the fold A four or whatever.
New York Times, like, barely anybody was really talking about
this because I don't think that they're putting the pieces together.

(21:34):
And look, Ryan and I are not the first people
to hear this about what's happening in town, and I
do want to give credit. There are other kind of
national security reporters who have reported much of the same
types of dynamic, but it is not being taken seriously
to the level that I think it should be. During Iran,
as I said, there was a full on there was

(21:55):
a genuine discourse in the country around this. This is
just happening, and they're saying it out loud, but nobody
seems to like want to believe that this is actually
going to happen. I'm at a point where unless we
get some sort of Zelenski style reverse, which again very possible,
this this is gonna happen as of right now.

Speaker 8 (22:15):
So, Sager, I'm curious, how much of this do you
think if internally they know that fentanyl isn't coming from Venezuela.
So that's sort of a BS pretext for all of this,
if you know, behind the scenes, Maduro is basically offering
them minerals oil offering to cut relations with US adversaries,
whatever else the case may be. If that can't really

(22:37):
be the logic in terms of going after the resources,
Like what is the split on this being about the
resources and regime change versus just being sort of like
a pure ideological project that guys like Marco Rubio have
wanted to do for years and years and years, and
so they're just hell bent on doing it regardless of
what else is on the table.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah, great question, Stephen Miller is definitely or sorry, Marco
Rubio is in that ladder camp, right, He is the
ideological He's been trying to do this since the day
he came in. Now, the rest of them are kind of,
you know, a little bit all over the place. And
I will say, you know Pambondi, Susie Wiles, all these
other Floridians, they're more ideologically, more aligned with Marco Rubio.
Trump was formally firmly in the resource camp. That's all

(23:18):
he particularly cared about. He's also he's the person he
hates drugs, Like any mention of drugs. Rubio can hang
his hat on the twenty twenty indictment around Maduro.

Speaker 8 (23:29):
Well, you would think though, with somebody like Trump, like,
you know, I'm the I'm the deal maker. You know,
I can make deals with anybody. You would think he
would lean in that direction, right of Maduro's making me
a great offer whatever, and we like, that's what we
were hoping. So just Mark or Rubio, just that influential or.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Yeah, well, I mean this is part of the Ryan
you can talk to this. People are not like he's
the most powerful man in national security since Henry Kissinger,
Like it is almost no American parallel in modern history.

Speaker 7 (23:57):
It's it's really interesting.

Speaker 6 (23:58):
We thought when u Bo was put in that job
that he would be a marginal figure and boxed out
and that Trump would get rid of him by the
time his daughter was ready to run for Florida Senate.
In instead, he has you know, played the palace intrigue
game quite effectively. We report in this story that there's

(24:19):
effectively what what people internally call a gang of five
uh that run foreign policy, which is entirely unusual because
you know, there's there's an entire national security and foreign
policy apparatus that has been set up over decades and
Trump is basically you know, reorganized it. And so this
this gang of five is Susie Wiles, the chief of staff,
and these are the people. These are basically five people

(24:40):
that run foreign policy. Susie Wiles the chief of Staff,
Stephen Miller the deputy chief of Staff, then Witt Witkoff,
uh Marco, Marco Rubio, and who is the Who's who's
even the fifth person?

Speaker 7 (24:53):
Those are the.

Speaker 5 (24:53):
Vans with Jade vans.

Speaker 6 (24:55):
Yeah, which is also like unusual but not necessarily surprising.
But that's not certainly Kamala Harris wasn't in any you know,
if there would have been a gang of five advided
and she wouldn't have been in it. So those five
on the outs are basically everybody else kind of fighting
fighting their way in. And so then it just becomes
this real game of intrigue inside the administration for who

(25:18):
can talk to Trump last and what arguments they can make.
And also the Florida Hawks believe that if they can
topple Venezuela, that Cuba follows, Yeah, like the verse domino
theory that they've been working on since the seventies.

Speaker 1 (25:32):
Yeah, And just to explain a little bit more in
the National Security Council thing, one of the reasons why
you really want an independent national security advisor is their
job is to kind of be an advocate for the
president to get as many different viewpoints as possible. Now,
it's been corrupted obviously many times in the past, but
theoretically the job of the National Security advisor is to
convene something called the Principal's Committee, where you take options

(25:56):
from the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, Secretary
of Homeland Secure and then you say, okay, we need
a hawkish option, we need a medium option, we need
a ladder option. The thing is is that Rubio as
an ideological actor and the Secretary of State kind of
had two different prongs at his disposal. He can control
the information that's even getting to the President's desk, and
he gets to put the information in there, right, And

(26:18):
so there's been a bit of a breakdown in how
the normal process is supposed to work, which explains so
much of Trump's movement in this direction. And there's just
a variety of like political convenience inside the ADMIN at
the same time. And so that's why I genuinely think
this is much closer to happening than Iran.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
And we got very close well, because who's on the
other side.

Speaker 7 (26:42):
Right, That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
I mean, Bran, you had warring factions and here you've
got a like alliance. I mean, the innovation of making
it about you know, some supposed war on drugs, like
literal war on drugs, not the other type that we've
been having for decades. That seems to have brought all
of the factions together, and also so by the way,
seems to have sold by and large to the grossroots
MAGA base, especially in the opposite in the in the

(27:05):
absence of an opposition party to make the case and
you know, press the case in the media that this
is absolute insanity on every level. I mean, I find
the connect between the domestic crackdown and the powers there,
and the you know, continued like war on terror style
expansion of the military industrial complex, and the regime change wars,

(27:28):
like all of those pieces together I find to be
absolutely terrifying. And you're right, I'm pulling my hair out
that we you know that that isn't the national conversation.
It's not coming from Democrats. You know, there is an
allowed MAGA faction that's opposing any of this. The decision
to make this like somehow about drugs, even though it's preposterous,

(27:48):
seems to have really worked. It worked to get everybody
on board.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
It's very it's very important to just you know, last
thing before I have to jump as mister dad daycare
is that that is the central part and kind of
the political genius is it's just drugs. And I don't
know why people don't question this stuff because even aside
from Ryan and I's report, which is current, but before that, guys,

(28:14):
I mean from the day one, Crystalill you remember this,
I was like, hey, look at DEA statistics. It took
me five minutes, right, It's not hard like you can
do a chat hept or a Google search to go
look at DEA analysis. I mean, by the way, you know,
one of the sources I spoke to, it's it doesn't
take a genius to say the absolute vast majority and

(28:35):
I'm saying ninety nine percent it's from Mexico with precursors
from China. You don't even need to believe me. Go
look at previous statements from these administration and previous administrations
about fentanyl. Like fentanyl is a very specific substance which
has been obviously poisoning Americans. We have a long standing
understanding of the supply chain and where it comes from.

(28:56):
Venezuela was not even tertiary to the comver station until
these recent strikes.

Speaker 6 (29:02):
I really tried this earlier with Canada. Trump, Yes, Canada,
because fentanyl was coming through. Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
One last one, last side note on all of this.
I was reading yesterday. You know, one of the people
that was randomly murdered in the Caribbean was a Trinidadian fisherman.
And there's a big, very disturbing article in the New
York Times about how in these areas of Trinidad, like
random charred dead bodies are now washing up on the

(29:35):
coast and the locals are like, what the fuck is happening.
And yet even though every other Caribbean nation has said
we oppose these, you know, random assassination assassinations in the Caribbean,
the Prime Minister of Trinidad has not and appears to
be supportive. And it could be a very important military

(29:56):
staging ground for you know, the future operation in Venezuela.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
I'm glad you said that Trinidad Tobago is actually one
of the destinations for some of these boats who look
some of these boats actually may be carrying drugs. But
one of the things that Ryan and I and by
the way, this actually backs up what Ran Paul and
others have said about this, who will presumably are read
in like at least to a limited extent as well,
is that many of the drugs, if they're aboard the boats,

(30:22):
there's not a lot of evidence they were coming here.
They're more likely heading to Trinidad and Tobago, which could
be a way station to Europe because remember, cocaine is
much more expensive in Europe, and in particular the Holy
Grail is Australia.

Speaker 5 (30:36):
So for a lot of these drug traffickers.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
The second part is, don't forget there are a lot
of American tourists who go to the Bahamas and you
go all over the Caribbean who like to buy cocaine,
and so in a lot of ways, actually that's where
probably some of these drugs actually are headed, if they
are drugs. But the one thing we can also say
is that there is no current evidence that there's some
mass fentanyl operation you know, industrial breaking bad style vats

(31:03):
of chemical, you know, engineers and others cooking this stuff up.
That does exist, but it's in a country called Mexico,
and that is not what we are being told about, right,
there's no regime change that's being mounted on that ground.

Speaker 6 (31:15):
Yeah, I can, I can reach into my first book
on this. Like the trafficking from South America into the
United States used to go through the Caribbean in like
the nineteen seventies. Yeah, yeah, seventies, and as in George
hw Bush, you really cracked down on that and he
brought the hammer down on the Caribbean. Didn't have to
you know, launch air strikes from the air. But what

(31:37):
it did is that that that's that's when trafficking moved
up through Mexico. So drugs that are coming from South
America into the into the United States are are coming
through the Mexican US border.

Speaker 7 (31:48):
Like that that ninety nine percent.

Speaker 6 (31:50):
Like the idea that you would put them in a boat,
take them to the Caribbean, put them in another boat,
and then take them to Florida, Like that's why would
you do that when you can just run it?

Speaker 1 (32:00):
Know you have this, we have NAFTA, We have millions
of trucks a month. Yeah, and now we have a
government shutdown. Like you think that, Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 6 (32:10):
On a human level when you just when when people
keep saying, you know, on Twitter, you'll say, look look
at this boat that probably did have drugs on it, Like,
who do you think is piloting these ship? Let's say
it is a drunk. Let's say there is cocaine on
this thing and it's taking it somewhere. Who who do
you think the cartels are putting on that they're seeing

(32:32):
random desperate people, desperate people that they are many people
who they're forcing to do it. This is not a
put it put something out on Facebook, marketplace or correct.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
But it's not the Kingpin. It's not El Trapo on there,
little dinghy.

Speaker 6 (32:46):
Yeah, it's like you're doing this either we have some
leverage over you or we're going to commit violence against
you or your family if you don't do this. And
if you do it, you get a hundred bucks or whatever.
But these are just these are highly disposed of people.
Like can you imagine if we just had people at
the border and you could scan the drug mules the

(33:07):
women who like have to you know, swallow you know,
the the drugs, and then and we just like if
if if they happen to have drugs, you just snipered
them right there, and then you'd have people on Twitter.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
But well, don't look at them any ideas, Ryan, Please
don't get them an it.

Speaker 2 (33:23):
Does look like, well, they're announced. I mean, that's what
Trump is announcing, that they have that they want to do,
and that they have the power to do. Ryan scenario
like literally, I mean, you almost can't come up with
a scenario that's too preposterous for these people to, you know,
to contemplate and put into action. So I know Ryan
and Sager, I know both of you guys got a jump. Ryan,

(33:43):
do you have time just really quick to break down
this government shut down news that you were taking a
look at.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
It's your show, It's all of ours, it's all of ours.
All right, I'll send pictures of Pe all right, Yes, gone, all.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
Right, please do by Zager? Go ahead, Ryan, all right?

Speaker 6 (34:07):
Yes, So yesterday Jason Smith, the chairman of the Ways House,
Ways and Means Committee, was on Bloomberg TV. And I
don't know if if we have that mirror article that
we can put up with which we can get his
exact quote, but basically what he said was that there's
a lot of talk in Republican circles now of the
way he described it extending the CR through December of

(34:28):
twenty twenty six, and what if you extend the CR,
that's that's the continuing resolution, that's the budget as it was,
that means you keep the ACA subsidies in place through
the midterms of twenty twenty six, to have the ways
and means Chairman saying this on Bloomberg TV is a
is a real signal that Republicans are thinking to themselves,

(34:52):
maybe we just maybe we just like extend these subsidies
because it's a political albatrusts around our next to have
this subsidies go away anyway going into the midterms, Like,
it's not to me. It's always been strange that they've
been stopping Democrats from letting them save themselves. And so
I talked to a source in Democratic Senate leadership and

(35:15):
he said that, yes, that he's. Their sense is that
Republicans believed that Democrats would cave quickly, that this would
be an they've done, and they had reason to believe that.
That's that's been the pattern in the past. You've shut
it down for a couple of days, people get fired,
it's it's chaos. You realize you're not going to win this,

(35:38):
you bring everybody back. Republicans are realizing that Democrats are
much more solidified in their in their position at this point,
and so all all the different calculations that they've made
have turned out to be wrong. And so the sense
that the sense among Democratic leaders is that they actually
that Republicans might actually cave. And so even if Democrats

(36:02):
are wrong about that, the fact that they think that
matters because that will then strengthen their resolve to continue
it with the shutdown, thinking that if we just hold
on a little bit longer, Republicans are going to give
us what we want and if they and so that's
so it is.

Speaker 5 (36:20):
It is tilting.

Speaker 6 (36:21):
I feel like in the direction of Republicans saying, you
know what, why are we why are we dying on
this hill anyway? Like do we want people's health insurance
prices to double on our watch?

Speaker 5 (36:33):
Like what?

Speaker 1 (36:33):
Like what?

Speaker 4 (36:34):
Who do?

Speaker 6 (36:35):
What do we cares thirty two trillion versus you know,
thirty two point three trillion debt? Like what's the difference
to us? When you know the midterms are coming up?

Speaker 11 (36:44):
Right?

Speaker 2 (36:44):
Midterms are coming up? And also, by the way, with
the government shutdown, you know, the holiday season is coming
up people who rely on, you know, on snap benefits
not getting them starting in November. You know, the longer
that this thing drives on, the more real world impacts
that you feel. Well, they're also one thing I wanted
to mention that. So you know, I live in this
town that has a naval base, Dagger Naval Base, and

(37:06):
a lot of the workers there are not actually furloughed
because it's a quote working capital organization, So they sort
of sell their services almost like an internal military industrial complex,
like they compete and they sell services to other branches
of the government, and there's other entities like that within
the federal government. A lot of them actually people don't realize,
and they will be funded basically through the end of October.

(37:28):
So then in the beginning of November, there's a whole
nother wave of federal government workers and services that will
stop because a lot of that working capital funded those
projects will run out of funding at that point and
they will be out of work as well. So, you know,
I think they're looking at the polls realizing voters are
blaming Republicans buy and large for the shutdown. Watching Trump's

(37:49):
approval rating is now like the lowest it's been democrats
approval rating actually is ticked up a bit because people
see them fighting. They've managed to put healthcare at the
center of the agenda, which is obviously much better issue
for Democrats than it is for Republicans. And so yeah,
increasingly the logic looks like, all right, well, I guess
you know, maybe the least bad political option for Republicans

(38:10):
is to extend these subsidies and also save themselves a heartache.
Of the vast majority of the subsidies go seventy seven
percent I think go to red states, go to like
you know, it's a disproportionate number of Republican voters too.
So why why don't we just rip off this band aid?
I mean, it doesn't make sense to me.

Speaker 3 (38:28):
And we've got Marjorie Taylor Green to think for all
this don't we need from leading breaking cracks in the
walls here for Republicans on all this healthcare stuff?

Speaker 5 (38:36):
Do you think that created any pressure for Republicans?

Speaker 6 (38:41):
I think it was more the the miscalculation about these
Democrats rank the Democrats and their willingness to take this
to the so did they leave the Democrats would just
fold under the oh they're giving you know, healthcare to
illegal immigrants or whatever, and Democrats would feel the pressure
right immigration line, or.

Speaker 5 (39:01):
I think they would.

Speaker 6 (39:02):
I think they thought they would fold over the pain
to federal workers and the and the threats to like
fire and riff a bunch of you know, which.

Speaker 8 (39:10):
Is as you guys have pointed out before, it's like
they were already doing that.

Speaker 5 (39:14):
Like they were doing that.

Speaker 8 (39:15):
They're going to continue to try to rip apart the
federal government to fire as many federal employees as it is.

Speaker 6 (39:20):
So Yes, when you operate in a completely lawless, reckless fashion,
you take away the card of you better hold you back.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
It's like crazy, Yeah, where are we with mass layoffs?
Like the mass layoffs were the threat? Like how how
deep into that are we? How many people have been
getting laid off?

Speaker 6 (39:41):
I don't have the data on that. Uh, you know,
they're they're doing what they can. Yeah, but I think
that they cut so deep into the bone.

Speaker 7 (39:51):
Previously that.

Speaker 5 (39:54):
Those stuff seemed more brutal.

Speaker 9 (39:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:57):
Interesting, All right, Ryan, Well, I know you've got to
jump to so we'll let you go and Mac and
Griffin and I can. I have a few more things
I want to say on the shot down you guys
probably do as well. Ryan, thank you have a good one.

Speaker 5 (40:09):
Have a great weeknd Ryan, Right, But.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yeah, I actually, I mean I was going to say,
I think I also thought the Democrats would cave quickly,
because that is my experience with Democrats, and I think
they remember there was that reporting at the beginning that
Schumer was trying to look for some sort of an
off ramp. You know, hey, can we pass like a
short term cr or you know. The other thing that

(40:34):
I think Ryan and Sager had floated on the show
they did together was like, let's just get to November first,
and then we can say like, oh, it's too late
for these Obamacare subsidies. So we tried, and the Republicans
did in our way. I guess there's nothing we can
do about it. May as well open up the government.
I think that the leadership was very interested in pursuing
some week need direction. In fact, I think leadership didn't

(40:55):
want to do this shutdown at all, and they felt
they have felt the pressure from the Democratic base that's like,
these are fascists, you cannot fund them, you cannot bend
the knee. You will shut down the government. You will
not capitulate and there would be this again, is something
I talked to Rocan about yesterday, like there would be
a mass Democratic base revolt if these people caved to

(41:18):
the Trump administration. So I don't think so. I mean,
it's a it's a rare instance where actually there was
some like grassroots democratic, like small d democratic input here
that I think has completely shaped this entire trajectory from
the Democratic Party perspective.

Speaker 8 (41:35):
Yeah, I totally agree that does it feels like they
got backed into a corner into doing this.

Speaker 5 (41:40):
Yeah, and especially because pushing yeah, go ahead, go for back.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
I was just gonna say, Zra Kliin's been pushing the
shutdown for a while, right, and he was kind of
right in saying, like, if you do it, you got
to have one really clear demand.

Speaker 5 (41:58):
It can't be a kaleidoscope of issues.

Speaker 3 (42:01):
And seems like with the help of Burning and a
few other people, they zeroed it on healthcare.

Speaker 5 (42:05):
The Republicans just don't have a good answer for that.

Speaker 8 (42:09):
Yeah, I mean, it's such a direct material thing to
be like everybody's you know, premiums are gonna double, or
everybody's you know, health insurance is going to skyrocket in
the next couple of months if we don't prevent these
these subsidies from going away. So I mean, it's it's
a pretty cut and dry issue. Although like I think
Crystal you or maybe Ryan has made this point before
where I wonder if there is any sort of broader

(42:32):
reckoning within the Democratic Party in terms of Obamacare being
a failure in general, the fact that it needs to
rely on these kinds of subsidies in order to function
at sort of like a bare minimum level. Like, do
you think there's any sort of lane there with the
base or with you know, some faction in the Democratic
Party to like open the door to a conversation about

(42:53):
broader structural change to healthcare in this kind of a moment,
or is it just we're going to save the subsidies
and then you know, move on with that.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
I think with the base absolutely, I mean I think
the base is there. Like that Grand Platiner poll that
we saw yesterday, I was like, oh man, you know
everything that we've been because this is what we've been
saying from the beginning of Trump two point zero is
that the like normy liberal Democratic base has been kind
of radicalized. You know, they're they're much more now where
we have been. You know, they see the failures of

(43:23):
the establishment. They're disgusted with leadership and the end, you know,
they're disgusted with people who can't call a genocide a genocide.

Speaker 5 (43:31):
And part of that.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
Package is, you know, more radical reform to healthcare, which
by the way, has been the policy preference of the
Democratic base for years at this point. But they are
always persuaded by like, oh, Bernie's not electable. We just
can't do it. We have to be pragmatic, we have
to stop Trump. That all of that calculation appears to
be out of the window. I mean, you see it
with Zorn's election. You see it with the way Grand

(43:51):
Platner is just wiping the floor with a sitting governor
comes out of nowhere. And you know, Abdul said strength
in Michigan and again against another establishment approved candidate. I
think these are all signs that and this shut down,
the fact that the base forced the hand of Democratic leadership,
It's all very encouraging to me about the way that

(44:14):
the base wants the Democratic Party to be and that
they're not going to be manipulated like sheep the way
that they were frankly in the past. So now my
big question is, you know, are there going to be
like free and fair elections that allow for that transformation
to happen and create a possibility of, you know, taking
the country in a different direction. And maybe now's the
time to place Debanon talking about Trump twenty twenty eight.

(44:36):
But you know, you have a lot of very troubling
things that are happening on the election front. They are
openly floating using militarized forces in all fifty states that
would be there in time for the mid term elections.
You have an executive order that forces all states, mandates
all states to send their voter rolls into the DOJ.

(44:57):
You have people in key positions in the t administration
overseeing this, like you know, elections who are twenty twenty
stop the steal, complete nut jobs. You have the refusal
to seat at Alita Grijalva by the Speaker of the House.
And now you have Steve Bannon saying, by the way,
in twenty twenty eight, Trump's not going anywhere. I think

(45:19):
we should believe them like I don't think. And that's
not without even talking about all the redistricting stuff and
the Supreme Court. She's probably got to hand the Republicans
another maybe as many as twelve seats in the House.
We're gonna have a guest on from Virginia who can
talk about some of the redistricting, like the counter redistricting
efforts in Virginia. But they they are really they're really

(45:39):
going for it, like they are really going for it.
If it's with the Venezuela conversation too, you know, cleaning
the power just randomly murdered people. Oh, they were terrorists,
they were in Tiva terrors, they were drug terrorists. Do
we have any evidence? No, But they're gone now, so
you should be happy.

Speaker 5 (45:54):
So we can imagine what you.

Speaker 3 (45:57):
Yes exactly, and we can imagine like what that looks
like in a presidential election.

Speaker 5 (46:01):
What does that look like for a midterm though I.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
Don't know exactly. I mean, I think part of it could.
So I think the one scenario that Ryan floated is
that now they allow them to go forward more or less,
but then they just don't actually like if there are
subpoenas in the House, they just don't listen to them.
So they effectively just bypass commerce like it doesn't exist,

(46:24):
which is not hard to imagine because they basically already
do that. Right now at the current moment. It's because
Republicans have just completely capitulated to them. But you could
see them continuing to just do whatever they want and
not actually paying attention to any of the legitimate subpoenas
or investigations that are launched by the House. That's one possibility.
Another possibility is that they know they're obviously doing all

(46:46):
the redistricting efforts to try to tilt the playing field,
which would make it so that Democrats have to win
by something like five points plus in the popular vote,
so it would have to climb a big hill just
to be able to win. Another possibility is that they
use some of the tactics they used in the have
been using for years, but ramped up in the last election,
where they kick legitimate people off the voter rules and

(47:09):
you know, target especially minority groups that vote disproportionately for Democrats,
usually black voters, kick them off the voting roles and
so skew the results that way. Another possibility is that they,
you know, the elections go for where Democrats win the
House and Trump just insists it was all rigged and
that the mail in voting was fraudulent and refuses to

(47:31):
seat them, and then we're in a standoff. Who's going
to force them to seat these new members of Congress.
That's why the thing that's happening with Adelita Grijalva I
think is important because you know, Mike Johnson is just
refusing this woman won her congressionals and he's just refusing
to seat her. So where's the forcing mechanism for that?
Are the courts going to intervene?

Speaker 11 (47:50):
Like?

Speaker 2 (47:51):
How is that all going to go? And then you
also have this little detail of dominion voting, which is
you know, they're the makers of voting machines and any
number of states that were the center of all sorts
of wacko conspiracy theories in twenty twenty, dominion voting is
now owned by a Trump twenty twenty stop to steal Psycho.
So there is a lot here, nice, There is a

(48:13):
lot here to be extremely extremely concerned about. Shall we play?
Shall we play bann In talking about Trump twenty twenty eight.

Speaker 5 (48:20):
Yeah, let's get if we're not concerned enough, folks.

Speaker 7 (48:24):
Yeah, Well he's going to get a third term.

Speaker 5 (48:25):
So Trump twenty eight.

Speaker 12 (48:26):
Trump is going to be president in twenty eight, and
people just sort to get accommodated with that.

Speaker 7 (48:31):
So what about the twenty second Amendment.

Speaker 12 (48:33):
There's many different alternatives. At the appropriate time, we'll lay
out what the plan is. But there's a plan. And
President Trump will be the president in twenty eight. We
had longer odds in sixteen and longer odds in twenty
four than we got in twenty eight. And President Trump
will be the president United States, and the country needs
him to be president United States. We have to finish
what we started and the way we finish it to Trump,

(48:56):
Trump is a vehicle. I know this will drive you
guys crazy, but he's a vehicle of divine prophetence. He's
an instrument. He's very imperfect. He's not churchy, not particularly religious,
but he's an instrument.

Speaker 5 (49:08):
But he's divine will how he's pulled this off. All right.
That's that's the gist of it right there, Crystal. What
do we make of that?

Speaker 2 (49:16):
I mean, implement divine providence and they and they get
mad when we call it a cult, you know, I
mean the audacity of these people. And here's the thing
I saw. I saw someone on Twitter. I think it
was Wegel, though I don't want to like blame him
if it wasn't Wegel, But I think it was Wegel
who was like, well, listen, if democrats can't beat an
eighty some year old Trump in twenty twenty eight, like,

(49:38):
just wrap it up, call it quits, you don't deserve
to exist anyway. But that assumes that elections again are
like a thing and not just. And when I say that,
I don't mean that there won't be the trappings of
divid There's the trappings of democracy in Russia, there's the
trappings of democracy, and Hungary there's the trappings of democracy
in Turkey. But I'm talking about a more or less

(49:59):
even playing field where voters actually get to express their
preferences and may the greater man or you know, the
better man or woman win. I think we're very unlikely
to have that in twenty twenty eight, and certainly not
when they're talking like this is God's, you know, divine
will to have this man occupied the White House until
he strokes out My question.

Speaker 5 (50:21):
From Mac, then, Mac, what do you think?

Speaker 3 (50:23):
Like you think you think that even like one percent
of the people that support Trump now would not support
him running again in twenty twenty eight, will he have
the same exact coalition?

Speaker 8 (50:33):
Well, I mean, like Crystal said at that point, if
they're actually making a play for twenty twenty eight, it
almost doesn't really matter. Like if he has a lock
on thirty percent of his base or whatever, then that
might be enough to pull it off. I guess another
thought that I had watching that banning clip is, I'm
you know, we've we've covered on the show a few times,
like some of Trump's health related stuff, his hands bruising up,

(50:54):
his ankles are extremely swollen, he has this this reported
heart thing or whatever. And so I'm like, as a
broader fascist project that they're trying to build here and
dismantling the you know, sort of facade of democracy that
we have in this country, Like, is this so in
a cultish way centered on Trump that they don't even

(51:16):
have a backup plan to carry on this project in
twenty twenty eight, Like it's gonna be like a borderline, hey,
borderline like on death's door Donald Trump in twenty thirty.
Who's running this project still? I mean, is that the plan?
Like if Trump were to die, does this all this
fall apart? Or like it doesn't seem like they really
have a plan outside of Trump.

Speaker 5 (51:38):
What do you think one hundred percent.

Speaker 3 (51:40):
I mean we I mean the JD Vance vibe check
he's been not passing. People have been saying that on
both sides of the spectrum. No, yeah, I mean all
this does kind of go with him, which means that
you just keep putting out fake videos of him.

Speaker 5 (51:55):
This administration's already shown that they're willing to post.

Speaker 3 (51:58):
Any fake bullshit like and lies, memes, just completely fabricated
video evidence. So like what's to stop Trump from like
being half dead in a bed and then just posting
videos of him like walking around doing the dance. Like
I think there's one hundred percent of chance that we
would see something like that in twenty twenty eight, you know,
a Biden basement strategy combined with AI.

Speaker 8 (52:21):
Yeah, imagine if Biden had had the AI that we
have today, he could have he could have like barnstormed
the country Ville virtual tours.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
I don't think it's quite there yet, Like it's still
in a little bit of the Uncanny Valley yeah zone,
But very likely by the time you get to twenty
twenty eight, they will have figured it out enough that
we could legitimately be fooled by it. And certainly there's
Trump is so distinctive, and there's enough of his comments
on record that it wouldn't be hard to like come
up with things that he's allegedly said. I mean, this

(52:49):
stuff sounds so fucking insane, but every day I read
some other news article that is equally, if not more
insane than the crazy things I could come up with
my head. So it's your question of whether or not
this whole thing falls apart without Trump. I am of
two minds about it. Okay, Number one, I think Trump
is the kind of singular figure I used to kind

(53:10):
of reject that. I used to kind of reject that,
but now I do think the combination of his celebrity,
his comedic stylings, his charisma, his unique pull on the culture,
like this you know, almost reptilian instinct that he has
for pushing society's buttons and keeping his you know name

(53:32):
in the news constantly and like keeping us all just
agitated about him all the time. Like I do think
he is a sort of singular figure. However, we have
to look around the world, like We're not the only
country that's backsliding in democracy. We're not the only country
that is seeing the rise of far right fascist movements
and there's a reason for that. It's because, you know,

(53:54):
you've had a failure of the you know, the ancien regime,
the neoliberal order which fits has failed to deliver for
people materially, which has turned on a wealth pump that
has you know, miserated the working class and continues to
pump more and more wealth into the hands of a few.
And you know, State Rep. Sam Marusol has joined us. Now,

(54:15):
just finish my rant here about the wealth pump and inequality,
and then we'll we'll chat with you about what's going
on Virginia.

Speaker 7 (54:22):
But welcome, great to have you, Thank you so much
for having me.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
Yeah, of course. So we're just talking about whether, if
you know, when Trump is no longer with us, whether
the Maga cult coalition is able to survive. And I
was saying, on the one hand, I think singular. On
the other hand, we have to recognize the underlying dynamics
that brought us to the place where a large swath
of the American public is open to effectively a fascist movement.

(54:47):
And you know, I think wealth inequality is at the
center of that. And mac and Griffin, you guys are
mentioning AI like AI is only going to consolidate even
more extraordinary powers and in the hands of a few,
and money and wealth in the hands of the few,
and to absolutely a misery. I mean, their goal is

(55:07):
to put to make human labor irrelevant. So so you know,
I don't think we like there's even with Trump gone.
If we don't respond in a way that's necessary and
offer an alternative vision and allow people to share and
you know, broadly in prosperity, then we are definitely not
going to be out of the woods. So with that

(55:29):
being said, rustle guys, just so you you know a
little bit of the background, allow you to introduce yourself
as well. He is a long time a state representative
in Virginia and the Virginia House of Delegates. Also happens
to be Palsadeni American has been attacked by prominent Virginia
Democratic candidates and elected officials for his views and his

(55:50):
opposition to genocide. He is one of two Muscle members
of the Virginia Legislature. And you know, it's just a
really interesting, I think, thoughtful person and so Sam, great
to see you.

Speaker 7 (56:01):
Yeah, great to be with you. Thanks so much for
having me. Crystal.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
Yeah, of course I don't know if you remember, but
I'm pretty sure we talked back in twenty ten when
I was running for Congress and you had just run
in two thousand and eight. Yeah, and probably I'm sure
I asked you for advice. I probably also asked you
for money. But in any case, it's nice to be
nice to be reconnected with you. And there's a lot
I want to ask you about. But the first thing is,
I just saw this news that the Virginia Democrats, Okay,

(56:26):
I think of jumping into the you know, the redistricting
wars and you know, trying to redraw the Virginia state
map to add a couple more likely Democratic seats. One
of them would actually be in the area where I
live here in King George County. But in any case, Sam,
can you break down for us is what is going

(56:47):
on here in your.

Speaker 9 (56:48):
View on it?

Speaker 10 (56:49):
Yeah, I was one of the few who actually voted
for redistricting reform because I believe that there needs to
be a fair process. I believe that we should try
to remove as much as possible the artisanship.

Speaker 5 (57:00):
Out of it.

Speaker 10 (57:01):
The reality, though, is that Trump has ordered these especially
Republicans state legislators to redraw the maps.

Speaker 7 (57:07):
So this is this is cheating, and it's being done
mid cycle.

Speaker 10 (57:12):
S breaking all the rules as usual, and what we
need to be able to do is to keep our
options open. The way it works technically in Virginia is
Virginia needs to make a decision or pass a resolution
before an election. We have an election in about ten
days and it's a long process, but the end of
that process has a referendum going to Virginia voters. So

(57:36):
all we're doing is a procedural motion that allows us
to maybe if things continue to get out of hand,
allow for Virginia voters to decide what we should do.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
How how amenable are your Democratic colleagues to this move?
Is anyone squeamish about it? Or is everyone like, listen,
we got to fight fight fire with fire.

Speaker 10 (57:59):
Look, the reality is when Trump ordered Texas and now
other legislatures we saw in North Carolina, I just completed
theirs to break the rules and cheat and say we're
going to redraw the maps ahead of the twenty twenty
six mid term elections. What unfortunately, that's just thrown all
the rules out the window. And so in Virginia, what
we have said is we're not drawing maps next week.

(58:21):
We're not doing that in the short term because we
can't constitutionally. But what we can do is procedurally keep
our options open. And so what we have to have
is a vote before the election, a vote after the
election with the new legislature, and then that sends a
referendum in Virginia.

Speaker 7 (58:38):
Voters decide what should we do about this moving forward? Gotcha?

Speaker 2 (58:42):
So it has to go to the voters before any
maps can really be redrawn. I'd love for you to
talk a little bit about you know, you represent Roanoke,
which for people who don't know, is like in the
southwestern part of the state, and you know, part of Appalachia,
so you're not, you know, up in northern Virginia. I
think it gives you a bit of a union perspective.
What are you seeing in terms of how voters are

(59:04):
feeling about this administration, how they're feeling out of su Virginia.
You have an election everybody in Virginia, you know, the
governor's races this year as well. How are people feeling
about the state of the country right now?

Speaker 10 (59:15):
Look, being the only Democratic legislator in the western half
of the state, this little blue dot and the sea
have read.

Speaker 7 (59:22):
The reality is I think that there are a lot
of folks who don't know the.

Speaker 10 (59:25):
Difference between when President Obama was in office, then President Trump,
the President Biden.

Speaker 7 (59:32):
Now back to Trump.

Speaker 10 (59:33):
We have been in a place to what you were
saying just before I came on about the socioeconomic disconnect.
We left so many people behind. Really, about forty years
ago began the trend in earnest in this area with NAFTA,
where we said, hey, we're going to outsource all these jobs,
but with no plan to make sure that people have

(59:55):
an economic future. And so that's what, in my opinion,
that what is given birth to Trump in twenty fifteen,
when this guy came down an escalator and says, you
know why your life stinks, it's because of those Mexicans,
the rapists, the Muslims, the blacks, he said, all these
terrible things. He used identity politics because people were economically

(01:00:16):
frustrated and needed to place it somewhere and democracy to
take that narrative back.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
How much have you seen, you know, when you you
ran for Congress in two thousand and eight, you know,
in an Appalachian district, performed very well, but at that point,
the partisan slide in Appalachia had really sat in and
it was just too big of a hill to climb.
And so I'm curious you've had a front row seat
to watching the partisan hardening of rural Appalachian voters into

(01:00:48):
the Republican Party, and you know, like, are they just
gone for good? What would be some of the direction
you would take the Democratic Party in that would make
it so that, hey, in the future, maybe you could
run for that Appalachian congressional district and have a shot
at it and not be just, you know, totally destroy
down to the gates because you happen to have the

(01:01:09):
D by your name.

Speaker 10 (01:01:10):
Look, you know, if a Palestinian Muslim can get elected
in Appalachia, I think that there's a place for all
of us at the table.

Speaker 7 (01:01:16):
But we have to think generationally here.

Speaker 10 (01:01:19):
There's got to be a long term conversation and the
reality is is it begins with building relationships. We've got
to go back and do deep canvassing, get back into
these neighborhoods, and people need to believe that the Democratic
brand is for them. And what I like to describe
to folks is it's not a Democratic party. We are
a coalition of many factions, and our faction that believes

(01:01:41):
that sales to economics has a place prominent place in
this conversation. People deserve to be inspired by a vision
for their future and the future of their children, and
we just haven't given them that. We've been playing into
their Republican narrative for too long. There's absolutely a play
here in Appalachia, in these rural parts, but we've got

(01:02:03):
to put the elbow grease into it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
So, Sam, you had the audacity to oppose genocide. I
wouldn't think that that would be a controversial position, but
apparently among some it is.

Speaker 5 (01:02:14):
How has that?

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
What is the response to your position there been?

Speaker 7 (01:02:19):
Well, we've been through the gamut.

Speaker 10 (01:02:20):
Right from two years ago when we were saying, well,
I mean, how could they be attacking these hospitals, People
would say, oh, Israel would never attack hospitals, and now
almost every hospital has been attacked, every university has been obliterated.
There's a genocide that we are funding with our own
tax dollars. And I think people are frustrated, and there's

(01:02:42):
a thread and you're seeing it. I'm sure on the
right and the left of people saying why are our
tax dollars going there. I think if you take a
Republican and you ask them, you know, America first or
Israel first, I think their heads will explode because they
don't know exactly how to answer that many times. But
if we we can, you know, reclaim the narrative and say, look,

(01:03:02):
this is one of the darkest moments in human history,
to watch a genocide play out piece by piece. When
is never again really mean never again? And I will
tell you that in my lifetime, nothing has brought the
Jewish community closer together to the pro Palestinian community than

(01:03:23):
this genocide. It has been a silver line because on
the front line of every single one of these protests
have been one of my Jewish brothers and sisters saying
this does not define me, This does not make up
who I am.

Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
What have you made of the you know, the failures
on the democratic side. You know, Democrats are supposed to
be these humanitarians, supposed to believe in international law, supposed
to believe in human rights. And I feel like, belatedly
now you start to see a little bit of a shift.
But you know, we've watched these you know, under the
Biden administration, we were funding these horrors. You've had very

(01:04:00):
very few members of Congress who are willing to call
it a genocide. And Abigail Spanberger, who's the Democratic nominee
for governor in Virginia, was critical of some of the
comments that you made.

Speaker 10 (01:04:10):
Well, look, I have tried to clarify with folks that
it's not Judaism, it's not our Jewish brother and sisters.
This is a political supremacist ideology called Zionism, and Zionism
wants to destroy everything in its way to get what
it wants. And we know that the APAC network as

(01:04:30):
well as a variety of other funders are coming in
and pushing this on us. And so when we can
kind of number one, even like in defense of Judaism,
that this is a political supremacist ideology that's been around
over the past hundred years, that has kind of taken
over saying this is really the enemy, it's not just
net and Yahoo's war that we've got to push back

(01:04:52):
against it. It begins to crystallize things for folks because
they framed it as though it's Jews versus Muslims, or
and forget getting that most of the Arabs in America
are Christian, but it's not a religious war. It is
wanting to steal land and eradicated people as they try
to have this conquest. Right now, we are seeing that

(01:05:13):
Gaza is the litmus test if you're running for higher office,
for US Senate, for US president, where were you during
the darkest moment in modern history? Where are you on
this Zionist propaganda and ideology that is wanting to control
our politics.

Speaker 7 (01:05:30):
I'm glad we're having that conversation Griffin and Mack.

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
You guys got anything?

Speaker 8 (01:05:35):
Yeah, I mean to your point earlier, it seems like
it's a unique opportunity here where you know, you can
make a right wing case against continued support funding Arming,
giving diplomatic cover to Israel to the right, and you
can also make it to the left, whether it's from
the America First angle or it's from a more humanitarian
centered angle. And also in terms of the foreign influence

(01:05:56):
pedaling and organizations like APAK, it does seem like it's
a unique opportunity to have a broad coalition on what
I think many people used to think of as a
super divisive issue amongst the voting base. So where do
you think that this could go in a state like Virginia.
Do you think there's an opportunity there across the state

(01:06:17):
to build some sort of a cross coalition there at
the upper levels or is it mostly just consolidated amongst
the establishments of both parties right now?

Speaker 10 (01:06:26):
Well, there's clearly a thread, and we have seen a
variety of folks on the right who have taken advantage
of the opportunity to kind of break the chains themselves.
I wish that they would talk kindly about a variety
of other issues that we care about.

Speaker 7 (01:06:40):
But more importantly for us is to not just stand.

Speaker 10 (01:06:45):
In solidarity with Palestinians, you know, as a Palestinian American.
What we want to show is that this is all interconnected.
And if you are against the military industrial complex, if
you are against war, if you are an environmental list,
if you believe that we shouldn't have paid for American
bombs to drop over six times the number the amount

(01:07:08):
of bombs that we dropped on Nagasaki, in Hiroshima, on
this little guys the strip, then you can see that
there's a thread here that's interconnected in the progressive movement,
where you have you know, the Israeli military training American
police officers, where You've got so much of this that's

(01:07:30):
got to be broken if we're going to have a
true progressive movement, if we're going to talk about lives mattering,
and then we've got to make sure that we're coming
together as not just a in solidarity with all these movements,
but to realize it's all one movement as we move forward.

Speaker 2 (01:07:49):
And representatives, Well, another thing that we hear a lot
is like, well, you should just you know, Americans don't
really care about foreign policy. We should just focus on
bread and butter economic issues. What is your response to that,
Because my experience has been that people actually connect these
things quite a lot. First of all, they're just horrified
morally to be involved in all at all in the

(01:08:11):
slaughter that they see on their their timelines and their
news feeds every single day. And second of all, they're like,
wait a second, we have a lot of problems here
at home. You know, we're about to see these subsidies
expire for the ACA. People's premiums are going to skyrocket.
Rural hospitals probably in areas like yours, are going to
be closing, and we're shipping all of this money routinely

(01:08:32):
to the people who are bombing babies like what is
happening here? So you described as a litmus test issue.
I've also seen it be much more important to the
election of Donald Trump, to the successives or on Mom Donnie,
to a lot of these Democratic primaries that are playing out.
I've seen it be much more central to voters' calculations
than perhaps the polls would really suggest. And certainly that

(01:08:52):
the establishment thinks.

Speaker 10 (01:08:54):
Thirty billion dollars plus we have sent during this genocide
that really opens eye right away. People are saying, man,
what would that pay for? You pay for a whole
variety of things, not only completely ending homelessness in America,
but doing things like being able to make sure we've
got all of our kids. As I'm the chair of
education here in Virginia, and we've got a bill that

(01:09:16):
comes through every year that I hate not being able
to fund, which is free meals for all kids right
in school. So we've got so many priorities, and here
we are feeding into the military industrial complex. And when
you tie it back in, look, it's I think it's
very fair for people to ask the question, like, what's
in it for me?

Speaker 7 (01:09:34):
Why does this matter to me?

Speaker 10 (01:09:36):
There's so many problems in this world, and in this case,
when you've got our free speech being squashed by thesignist movement,
when you've got thirty billion dollars plus that has gone
to this genocide, when you have this authoritarian regime it's
working hand in hand with war criminals like Nanyahu and

(01:09:56):
some others. It clearly has an impact on us, and
we can't divorce it. And so we've got to say, look,
this is part of a broader movement. Whether we're sending
twenty billion dollars to Argentina to a right wing authoritarian down.

Speaker 2 (01:10:14):
There, it's forty now.

Speaker 7 (01:10:17):
Even worse, forty billion dollars.

Speaker 10 (01:10:20):
The reality is is we've got our priorities that we've
got to figure out here in Virginia, but certainly in
the United States, and that resonates, that resonates with folks.

Speaker 7 (01:10:30):
So we need to make that connection and we're happy
to do it.

Speaker 10 (01:10:33):
And as look and as the only Democrat in the
west half of the state and being a kind of
super minority out here, I have to do that all
day and talking with folks, and I think that that's
our challenge and our charge as Democrats moving forward.

Speaker 5 (01:10:47):
I got a behind the scenes question for you to
state wrap.

Speaker 3 (01:10:50):
So you know, we are technically in a tenuous cease
fire right now, very tenuous. You know, Israel still struck
Gaza recently, and we're not sure every day if this
is gonna hold.

Speaker 5 (01:11:03):
Has that given some of the I would say more
Zionist or.

Speaker 3 (01:11:08):
People who don't want to talk about Palestine and the
Democratic Party?

Speaker 5 (01:11:11):
Are they relieved?

Speaker 3 (01:11:12):
Are they like, finally we can move on to other subjects,
because you know, we've done a lot of reporting on
groups like the dem dark funded money group Chorus, and
a lot of the instructions within that were like, you know,
just don't talk about Palestine.

Speaker 5 (01:11:24):
You know, it's just too divisive.

Speaker 3 (01:11:26):
It's not something that brings people together and unites people,
So let's just kind of avoid the subject. Are you
hearing behind the scenes any sort of liberal relief that
they can start to pretend like the issue doesn't exist anymore,
that they can like move on and talk about other stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:11:41):
What are you hearing behind the scenes?

Speaker 10 (01:11:44):
Yeah, I mean what we see on the ground is
I think people wanting to release the issue. But it
was very very clear right away.

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):
I was in a.

Speaker 10 (01:11:58):
Hair salon the other day and just talking with folks
and and people were just talking with Like I told
you all that Trump was trying to make that into
some kind of real estate development for Jared Kushner. You know, people,
I think saw right past this farce of a piece deal.
And that's why you didn't see me and other Palestinians

(01:12:18):
celebrating this at all, because we know the reality that
the West Bank is guys are.

Speaker 7 (01:12:22):
Two point zero.

Speaker 10 (01:12:23):
They've already tons of thousands of Palestinians in the West
Bank have already been pushed out of their homes. We
see that Americans are being locked up in Israel, even kids,
American children are locked up in Israel right now. You know,
what are we doing allowing this craziness to continue? So

(01:12:44):
people would like, I think, to move on in some respect.

Speaker 5 (01:12:48):
And I know it's tough.

Speaker 10 (01:12:49):
I mean, watching genocide, watching the mass starvation, the intentional
force starvation from Israel. But if we allowed for this
neo liberal movement over the past several decades to create space,
to justify a genocide, to create space to give us

(01:13:10):
Donald Trump, then anything can happen. None of us are safe,
and we've got to make sure we keep bringing all
of this to the forefront.

Speaker 2 (01:13:19):
That is such a great point. I do have one
last question, which is about healthcare in your area. I mean,
you have the quote unquote big beautiful bill you and
the massive cuts to you know, to Medicaid. You've got
the rural hospitals that are under threat. You have the
ACA subsidies, which are you know not at this point extended.
You know, how how does this mess impact the constituents

(01:13:44):
of your district? And you know what, what are you
hearing from people about the impact of our broken and
wildly expensive and inefficient healthcare system?

Speaker 10 (01:13:54):
Well, having the fourth highest Medicaid utilization rate of all
of the legislative districts, I have a district that is
very much in need, and we have about three hundred
and fifty thousand Virginians who are about to be kicked
off of Medicaid because of this terrible bill. So it's
going to have and is already having profound impact because
people are in anticipation, just frantic about what's happening right now.

(01:14:19):
And so bread and butter coming back to how can
we be defending democracy? This is what happens when we
lose touch. And this is and I see the establishment
folks wanting to keep pointing at Trump. Yeah, look I
tell him, Look, the fight is on two fronts. Always
number one, pushing back against the hateful policies from Trump

(01:14:41):
and his cronies.

Speaker 7 (01:14:43):
But number two, we have.

Speaker 10 (01:14:44):
To have a vibrant debate about how we got here
in the first place, and not only how we got here,
but like Groundhog's Day, we elected Trump, we had this
what we so called reprieve, and now we're back with Trump.

Speaker 7 (01:14:58):
The reality is is we just lost touch with way
too many folks.

Speaker 10 (01:15:03):
And while the wind is at our backs right now
with the terrible things that Trump is doing, we need
to fix the kind of broken establishment as we move forward.

Speaker 2 (01:15:12):
All right, Well, Representative Versoul, thank you so much for
your time this morning. We're extremely grateful. People want to
check out your campaign or support you. I know you're
up for reelection here in just a couple of weeks time.
Voters are actually already going to the polls. So where
can people find more from you?

Speaker 10 (01:15:27):
Yeah, they can check us out on samfordvia dot com
for sure, and hopefully we'll continue the conversation and think
through how we can approach all these issues in an
intersectional way.

Speaker 2 (01:15:39):
Yes, agreed, Great, to see you.

Speaker 3 (01:15:41):
We'll include your links in our description of our video.
Thank you State Rep folks. That's going to do it
for the first half of the show. In the second half,
we have a lot of fun stuff. I have an
insane artificial intelligence ad from Andrew Cuomo, we have an
Eric Adams endorsement.

Speaker 5 (01:15:58):
We've got more courtisly.

Speaker 3 (01:16:00):
I'm also gonna ask these cringe lefties Crystal and Mack
about the Bernie Borders clip on Tim Dillon. We've got
a lot of spicy stuff in the second half. If
you want to see that, go to breakingpoints dot com.
Sign up for a membership. We've got yearly and monthly,
and we'll see you all in the second half. See
you then, Bye bye,

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