11/26/25: Job Loss Surge, Leaked Witkoff Putin Call, Epstein Dershowitz Conspired Against Mearsheimer, Tucker Flips On GOP, Venezuela War Push

Ryan and Emily discuss job losses surging in the US, leaked Witkoff Russia call, emails expose Epstein and Dershowitz conspiring to crush Mearsheimer, Tucker flips on GOP, Venezuela war push.

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Episode Transcript

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, and welcome to Breaking Points. Thanks so
much for joining us on this pre holiday episode. Ryan, actually,
you know it's the day before Thanksgiving. But what else
is Ryan Grimm doing other than breaking news? So he
has a news story getting into additional Epstein emails that
Dropsite has obtained where we learn about Epstein doing a

(00:52):
little behind the scenes work in the case of John Meersheimer.

Speaker 4 (00:55):
Ryan, you're going to break that story down for us, and.

Speaker 5 (00:57):
Of course I'm fan of the show.

Speaker 6 (01:00):
In front of the show, Alan Dershowitz is involved, who
if you haven't seen. Dropside also posted this clip of
Barry Wise saying that her method of kind of controlling
the media going forward is she wants to cancel everybody
outside of the center left and the center right. She said,

(01:21):
there will be no Hassan Pikers, no Tucker Carlson's And
as a model for how she would like to see
discourse go on between the forty yard lines, she said,
which I don't understand because like you can actually so
there's no red zone activity in.

Speaker 4 (01:36):
This Tucker scoring the touchdowns.

Speaker 6 (01:39):
That part, like I think the analogy kind of fell apart,
But this is what she said. Within the forty yard lines,
those are the only player. She wouldn't let the players
go beyond the forty yard lives. But the players she
cited were a debate between Dana Losche, former NRA spokesperson
or maybe still current and Alan Dershowitz and Glenn Greenwald
went and found that debate, which they act they did

(02:00):
host on CBS and it had like eight hundred and
fifty views over like twenty four or forty eight hours.
So yeah, Alan Dershowitz turns up in this story working directly.
In one week, he's working with Jeffrey Epstein to push
back against Stephen Walton Meerscheimer's paper called Israel Lobby, major

(02:21):
kind of watershed moment in two thousand and six, and
they're working to push back against allegations of sexual abuse
leveled by a fourteen year old at Epstein and they're
talking about how they've worked with a private investigator to
like uncover all sorts of they say, sort of details
about this girl to undermine her credibility.

Speaker 5 (02:40):
So it was a.

Speaker 4 (02:41):
Really busy day in Palm Beach in two.

Speaker 5 (02:43):
Thousand, Yes, busy day for that crew.

Speaker 6 (02:46):
So right, it's going to break that story down. To
break that down, it tuned. We're we're here at home
because you know, you know, it's the holidays. Let the
let the crew take it easy, start hitting the road.
You know, hope every everybody's traveling safely if they have
to travel. I'll be here in DC. We're hosting What
About You will be.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
In DC four Thanksgiving, then heading to Wisconsin the next day.
But you guys are hosting Wow, that'll be Yes, there'll
be quite a lot.

Speaker 6 (03:13):
Yes, we'll be like good Americans will be deep frying
a turkey in our in our Driveway, which which reminds
me like we and I think I speak for you
too here. We're so grateful for the audience here and
you know, for the people who continue to watch this
show and allow it. Without the audience, the crazy stuff

(03:35):
we said, we say would not have to be taken
seriously in our discourse, that the people we bring on
here and the news that we break could just be ignored.
That is the preference by power centers that they just
are able to ignore the stuff they don't want to hear.
But when there are millions of people listening to it,
they just have they just have no choice but to

(03:55):
grapple with it.

Speaker 5 (03:56):
And so that's a thank you.

Speaker 6 (03:58):
And if you're if you're not already a subscribe, like
doing that helps make this show possible. Like this is
not funded by corporate advertising, by philanthropy, anything else. This
is a viewer supported program, which is which is a
really beautiful thing.

Speaker 4 (04:16):
Yeah, that's so true.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
I saw somebody on my Twitter mentions the other day say,
Breaking Points is it's well known that it's funded by Cutter.
If you actually watched the show, that's obviously hilarious because
maybe we have some people who watch us in Cutter.
But the only way it would be funded by Cutter
is if a subscriber individually was was subscribe over at

(04:37):
breaking points.

Speaker 6 (04:38):
Or ninety nine dollars a year or what is what
is it now, eighty hundred dollars a year. You if
you're the Emir of Cutter, or if you're just a
very wealthy citizen of Cutter, the same price for you.

Speaker 4 (04:50):
There you go. But yes, I just want to underline
what Ryan said.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
We are so grateful, grateful, grateful, and especially because you
know we're going to be covering the jobs numbers in
just one moment. Tough times and could be tough times ahead,
so that makes us extra grateful. We do have new
ADP data, which is what we're relying on now on
jobs to get to and more and more updates on
the Ukraine peace Plan, a interesting rant from Tucker Carlson

(05:15):
on the Sean Ryan Show. So we're going to get
to all of that in just one moment. Let's start
with those ADP numbers. You just saw him up on
the screen and Ryan, this is looking bleak. So the
headline private payroll, well, payroll losses accelerated in the past
four weeks. According to ADP, and they're saying private companies

(05:37):
lost an average of thirteen five hundred jobs a week
according to ADP data over the past four weeks.

Speaker 4 (05:43):
What's your reaction.

Speaker 6 (05:45):
Yeah, and that's that's up from an average of twenty
five hundred job losses per week. So those are not
those are not the kinds of changes you like to
see with a quintupling of job losses. It's not our
it's not armageddon, you know, it's not what we saw
in you know, two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight,
where you're losing hundreds of thousands of jobs a month plus.

(06:08):
But it's not going in the right direction. And we
don't know more broadly what this what the circumstances are
in the economy. Because BLS was shut down, one one
employee at the BLS was deemed to be essential or
accepted from getting shut down. As you can imagine, one
person is not enough to collect data on the economy

(06:30):
from around the country. In fact, they probably need ten
times as many people as they have to collect genuinely
accurate or as accurate data as possible.

Speaker 5 (06:40):
So we're relying on ADP and.

Speaker 6 (06:42):
Other private private data collectors or you know, private companies
that work in employment and then you know, spit out
data as a result of it. But all of this
is indicating that at least we're going to get a
you know, we're likely to get in December, a rate
cut from the Federal Reserve, which is finally pushing down
somewhat on mortgage rates. I think they're down to roughly

(07:02):
six percent. You know, they haven't cracked underneath six percent,
but thing get under six percent, that's a little bit
more bearable for people.

Speaker 5 (07:09):
What was your reaction to.

Speaker 4 (07:11):
This, I mean, not the sound.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
I actually think I might be trusting ADP's numbers with
the governments. We're expecting more government numbers in December, but
ADP should have a pretty good pulse of what's happening
across the sector or across sectors, and so I think
this probably matches people's experience. We can put the next
element up on the screen. CNBC also reporting consumer confidence

(07:36):
is hitting its lowest points since April as job worries grow.

Speaker 4 (07:40):
April, of course, was a post liberation day, so they're.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
Reporting now consumer soured on the current economy and the
prospects for the future, with worries growing over the ability
to find a job, according to a Conference Board survey
released Tuesday. So if we combine that with the prior
to NBC report from yesterday about ADP these jobs numbers,
and you combine it with consumers saying they're increasingly worried

(08:05):
over the ability to find a job. Uh, it sounds
like that's a pretty decent picture, sadly, of what's happening
across the country right now.

Speaker 6 (08:14):
Ryan, Yeah, And what's so disturbing about this survey here
is that they are the people are saying that they
expect six months from now that we're really going to
be circling the drain. They have a higher impression of
the current situation than they do of the of the
future one.

Speaker 5 (08:30):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (08:31):
And you know that the reason that they you know,
they survey consumers on this is because that obviously then
has a self fulfilling effect where if you are thinking
about some type of significant purchase, you're going you're going
to then hold off on that, and then when you
are not making those significant purchases, then that has the

(08:51):
knock on effects throughout throughout the economy.

Speaker 5 (08:54):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (08:54):
The the prices of inflation, according to this survey, still
remain even though job loss and the difficulty of finding
a job is growing. In the kind of anxiety index,
Prices and inflation are still number one. Tariffs in trade
are mixed in there along with what they what they
describe as politics and the and the federal government shutdowns.

(09:19):
So people are like nervous about the stability of the economy,
Like they're seeing the tariffs up down.

Speaker 5 (09:27):
Do we have a deal? We don't have a deal.

Speaker 6 (09:28):
The court strikes it down, Well, we're going to peel
it now.

Speaker 5 (09:32):
Supreme Court is going to hear it.

Speaker 6 (09:33):
Supreme Court didn't seem to like tariffs. What's going to
happen if they do that. Plus, I think by politics,
I think people mean like this is just a weird time,
like this, this is what is going on, Like Marjorie
Taylor Green is just resigning out of nowhere, Like it's
just kind of you know, this is a confident survey.

(09:55):
Our system is not inspiring confidence right now.

Speaker 4 (09:59):
Yes, that much is clear. And I wanted to go
back and look at this.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
I mean, Raincass was pointing out that consumer the CPI,
the Consumer Price Index increased one point five percent over
the past six months, which is since Liberation Day. That's
actually the same increase during the six months prior. Uh,
there's that evidence, of course that twenty percent of tariff
costs are what's being passed to consumers.

Speaker 4 (10:24):
Lower than some people expected.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
So at the same time, that's a little that's the
anti Dumer tariff pitch right now. At the same time,
this lingering uncertainty, it feels Ryan like that hasn't quite
what's the right word manifested, That hasn't quite the lingering
ANCERTAINTYA hasn't quite climax, I guess in the economy, and

(10:49):
that you know, we talked about the AI bubble, the uncertainty.
Maybe it wouldn't be such like a bubble pop, but
it could be something that's more more gradual because you're
going to see company's amidst all of this. To the point,
rhinters just making about things feeling unsettled, uh, betting either
fully in the United States, it's like Sharpie, which is
an incredible story the Wall Street Journal had about Sharpie

(11:11):
relocating to Tennessee and doing almost everything in Tennessee.

Speaker 4 (11:15):
Or you're just gonna say, screw it, we are We're
not even dealing with this at all.

Speaker 6 (11:24):
Yeah, And I feel like that that sense of paralysis
comes from comes primarily from people's assessment around the AI economy.
I think people people know that, like people know that
we're in a bubble, like we're gonna we're gonna pre
pop era uh. And the last the bubble was close

(11:45):
enough that enough people you remember having lived through it.
And then the tech you know, the tech bubble for
anybody you know Gen X or even millennial or up
has you know that we understand that this is a
bubble economy. We know, we know what this looks like.
We can see the signs. But then the fear comes
from this kind of you know, doomed if you do,

(12:08):
doomed if you don't, because if the bubble doesn't pop
and AI does keep going, they keep talking about how
that's going to take everybody's job. And people are seeing
it work like that when not necessarily that they're buying
a robot and firing a worker, but when people are leaving,
they're just not being replaced at the same pace. And people,

(12:30):
if you're watching this, like you tell us if that's
an accurate assessment from everybody I talk to, that's that's
the way they're seeing job losses going that somebody will
move on to another job, or they'll quit or retire
and they'll just figure out a way not to not
to hire for that position. And that's and some of
that is automation that things are becoming a little more efficient.

(12:52):
But what that means is that the efficiency gains are
going to the owners of the company, the shareholders of
the company, not It's not as if, oh, now my
life is just a little bit easier as a worker. No,
you're now you have to be more productive to make
up for the fact that these other folks are leaving.
So if the AI bubble pops, are screwed, because we're

(13:13):
going to you know, the economy is based on it
right now. If the AI bubble doesn't pop, you're still screwed,
because that means it's working. And this the data that
you're seeing there of how hard it is to get
a job is just going to you know, go through
the roof.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
Yeah, and a couple thoughts on that before we moved
to Ukraine is you know, we're looking already at catastrophic
numbers for college graduates, or catastrophic relative to the last decade,
really high levels of unemployment for college recent college graduates,
really high projections of what that unemployment is going to
look like for recent college graduates as the economy calibrates.

(13:53):
That's an optimistic way to put it to AI and Ryan,
I was reading this another long CNBC dive actually into
data centers, particularly in Wisconsin yesterday, because they're trying to
bring one into the empty Fox con facility, the Eighth Wonder.

Speaker 4 (14:09):
Of the World.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
Of course Fox don't trying to bring there data center,
and I think it's Microsoft.

Speaker 4 (14:14):
And it's being protested.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
I mean one of the there are a couple dueling
data centers in the area, but one of the local
meetings it was like a planning commission meeting. Forty of
the forty nine people who spoke were against the data center.
And it's this, so the AI boom is promising these massive,
sprawling data centers that will actually only in the long term,
supply a fairly small number of jobs compared to factory work.

(14:39):
It's not like that at all. It's not like they're
rebuilding Chrysler a Chrysler plant. That's not what's happening. And
so you're seeing AI shave off all of these jobs
and then comment to communities and build these massive factories
that'll use up or massive data centers will use up
all of this electricity, and at the end of the
day they're employing like a thousand people, still a lot

(15:03):
in some communities that can make a big difference, but
it's again not factory levels. So this is this adjustment period.
We're in the very early early early phases of it,
and it's a bit frightening, honestly.

Speaker 6 (15:16):
Yeah, yes, yeah, And I think we're seeing that reflected
some serious drama going on with the Ukraine Russian negotiations.

Speaker 5 (15:28):
That's right, so.

Speaker 6 (15:33):
Sort of have a deal, not exactly have a deal.
There's some some dispute over that, but it appears like
somebody's trying to sabotage it by leaking phone calls of
Russians Russians foreign minister. The implication from Russians, and I

(15:54):
think from anybody who's kind of following it objectively, is
that either the Ukrainians or you know, two groups here
would be tapping the Russian foreign minister's phone, the Ukraine
or be the United States or the Europeans. Actually, so
there's potentially three groups. Actually, the assumption is that Ukraine
is doing this and leaking it, but I think it's

(16:15):
just as possible that some European you know, Intel, Intel
agency is doing this.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
But if you worry or the US, I mean this
is Glenn already made the comparison. But it's not entirely
out of the realm of possibility, given what happened to
Michael Flynn during the Trump one point on transition with
Sergei Lavrov when that entire situation popped.

Speaker 4 (16:39):
So I don't think it's.

Speaker 6 (16:39):
Out of the question that there could be some element
within the US that that wants to undermine, would cough,
And yeah, I mean that's also possible. There a lot
of a lot of fingerprints could be on this knife.
That's yeah, that's that's for sure. Uh.

Speaker 5 (16:53):
And not to say that Russia doesn't do this as.

Speaker 6 (16:55):
Well, you know, they famously, I mean, we presume it
was them that that got this. Like incredible audio of
Victoria Newland during the twenty fourteen made on KUP where.

Speaker 5 (17:10):
She's basically says like, f the.

Speaker 6 (17:11):
EU, you know, we're putting our guy in Like it
was really kind of blunt talk where you're like, whoa,
this is live. This is the gloves off US approach
behind the scenes. This is this is what you hear about,
but you never actually hear directly. So everybody's tapping everybody here.

Speaker 5 (17:33):
So what.

Speaker 6 (17:35):
What the Russian foreign minister and Whitcoff were talking about.
It happens right before Zelenski's coming to the White House
and Wikoff is like, look, I really think it'd be
a good idea of your boss. Putin called Trump before
this meeting, and the guy's like, oh before really, It's like, yes,
you should do this before, And at that meeting, Trump

(17:56):
was prepared to green light a bunch of tomahawks because
Trump was getting increasingly frustrated with Putin, like, why won't
this guy just do a piece deal?

Speaker 5 (18:05):
You know what's screwed.

Speaker 6 (18:06):
I'm just gonna give Zelenski whatever he wants and see
how that goes. So Wickcoff seems to be trying to
stave that off and say no, no, no, have your guy
call and stop with the details. He's like, you and
I understand what the details are going to be. He says,
donettes you know some type of agreement around so you know,
some type of security agreement, but don't get into the details.

(18:28):
Just talk in hopeful terms and call Trump a man
of peace and say that we all want peace. And
the guy's like, okay, man a piece, we'll do, man apiece,
I'll have I'll have Putin call. So Putin calls and
they do a two and a half hour call before
this Zelenski meeting. And then Trump goes into the Zelenski meeting.

(18:48):
He's like, I talked to Putin. He said it, you know,
said him a man of piece, he said he, I
think he really wants a piece. And so we're gonna
hold off on these long range missiles and and you
know in yeah, and this here's the transcript. Should we
do the Russian accent and do a do a dramatic
reading of it?

Speaker 4 (19:05):
I think you should definitely do that.

Speaker 5 (19:07):
How's your how's your? How's your? Lavrov? No, No, it's
not Lavrov. What's his name? Lavrov is the other guy?

Speaker 4 (19:15):
There's so many of.

Speaker 5 (19:16):
Them, Yuri or Euovov. What's it meant? Yeah, the whole,
the whole, the whole thing.

Speaker 6 (19:26):
Is worth reading. I would I would go and I
would go and check it out. And then out of that,
Wikoff gets a lot more room to negotiate, right, and
he says, basically he's having Putin kind of do with
his own work for him. He's like, tell, you know,
tell tell, tell Putin to tell Trump that you want

(19:48):
Steve to be able to cook.

Speaker 5 (19:49):
Let Steve cook. It's like, let's do it.

Speaker 4 (19:52):
It's kind of a do you say that in Russian?

Speaker 6 (19:54):
He says the thing about how Steve cooked in Goza
with that eighteen point plan or the twenty one point plan.
It's like, let's do it. Similar thing between you guys.
Don't He's like, but don't talk about the points, what
the points are, just just that it's a pointed thing.
And you know, Steve, Steve Wikoff knows his men.

Speaker 5 (20:12):
M like he he knows.

Speaker 6 (20:14):
Everybody thinks they know Trump because Trump is just he
is who he is. But whick coof really knows Trump.

Speaker 4 (20:21):
Yep, yeah, I think that's right.

Speaker 6 (20:23):
And what it did, it does seem to have worked.
So then what so we got a twenty four point
plan that included that was very friendly to run. So
it's funny how this goes. So they're like, the Russians
are skeptical. They're like, well, wait a minute, if we
propose doing a point plan and then if we put
the plan together, they're going to say they're going to

(20:44):
then just kind of change it and then accept it
and say we have a deal. Like That's what the
Russians are worried about because they were watching h the
extremely bad faith negotiations go on in Gaza, where Yohamas
like get a eighteen point plan. They'd accept it all
except for like one tweak and then then they would say, oh,

(21:08):
now this is a Hamas plan and yeah, and Hamas.

Speaker 5 (21:12):
Won't even accept it. Like the whole thing.

Speaker 6 (21:14):
It was just completely incoherent start to finish, like right,
Witkoff would present a plan and then Witkoff himself would
reject it after Hamas would accept it, or they would
or they would claim that somebody accepts it. Was it
was just bad faith all around. And so I think
Russians were nervous about getting caught in that. So they say, well,
let's do this informally this is not our plan, but

(21:36):
clearly what like, So they put together the points US
tweaked them and it was very friendly to Russia. Included
giving up territory in the East that they don't even
occupy yet, and included you know, not not allowing you know,
not allowing you know, European forces in Ukraine, not allowing NATO,

(21:57):
et cetera. And then sounds like from the reporting the
Rubio and others got involved and took out a lot
of those provisions and now it's down.

Speaker 5 (22:05):
To like an eighteen point plan. Ye now, but now
looks like they might reject it.

Speaker 3 (22:10):
Well said, you're actually the perfect person given drop sites
very detailed reporting on the TikTok back and forth with
the gazap piece plan, which was also heavily being negotiated
by Steve Whitcoff, of course, and then Rubio was sort
of dip in Trumpets sort of dip in, and I
think we're seeing a European struggle over that process, to

(22:32):
be honest, because of course if you're I mean, this
is the thing with the neo cons absolutely losing their
mind over the transcript of the call, especially some of them,
like I'm thinking Republican congressmen who are losing their minds
or the transcript of the call.

Speaker 4 (22:47):
It's like you are licking Trump's boots and Steve.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
Witcoff does exactly what Trump does, and you lose your
minds because it's coming from.

Speaker 4 (22:57):
Steve Wikoff and not Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 (22:59):
Ms when Donald Trump does it, you'll say, oh, he's
a great leader.

Speaker 4 (23:03):
But with Steve.

Speaker 3 (23:04):
Wykoff does it he is, you know, verging on traitorous
and as a you know, a Kremlin.

Speaker 4 (23:11):
Stooge.

Speaker 3 (23:11):
But I actually think if you don't include, for example,
as you mentioned Rian, that plan that looked very friendly
to Russia because it had territory that hasn't yet actually been.

Speaker 4 (23:21):
Occupied by Russia, this is I'm curious if they're parallels
in the gossip Lin, because that's how a negotiation goes.

Speaker 3 (23:31):
You put forward a proposal where there are things that
you know you're going to take out as the negotiation
is going back and forth. And so to me, it's
not necessarily surprising or reflective of anyone trying to do
Putin's bidding so much as it is there are leaks
of a peace process that is absolutely messy, and people

(23:54):
are either taking this private information that's becoming public and
treating it like the final word when it's just a
little snippet from this broader process, or they have bad
intentions anywhere and trying to sabotage anything that Donald Trump
might do for peace because it would end up giving
up parts of the Dombas which they want Ukraine to

(24:15):
fight for.

Speaker 4 (24:16):
Every last Ukrainian men man, you can keep.

Speaker 6 (24:19):
And I understand why people are upset at Witkov because
if you think that giving Ukraine tomahawks and permission to
fire much deeper into Russia was going to give them
leverage that was going to then lead to a better
deal for Ukraine, then from that perspective, Wikkof has undermined
Ukraine in the negotiations and deprived them of that leverage.

(24:41):
But if you're somebody like Wikoff who doesn't, who thinks
that it's feudile, that no matter how many tomahawks you
give to Ukraine, no matter how many they strike in Russia,
the math is just not going to work out in
Ukraine's favor, right, then you're actually you're actually helping Ukraine

(25:02):
get out of this faster than they would otherwise. So
I so I get why people are like this is
this is Wikkough undermining Ukraine and helping Putin. But I
think from Witcoss perspective, he thinks Ukraine is diluted right now,
and they they may they might think that this is
better for them, but but in fact, you know they're

(25:24):
you know, they're they're now up to recruiting what fifty
well over fifty years old, like they're they're running out
of bodies to throw into the meat grinder. And so
all the missiles in the world, uh, are you know,
aren't going to give you the kind of leverage you're
going to need to get to get what you say
you want out of this.

Speaker 5 (25:45):
So let's let's move this. Let's move this forward.

Speaker 6 (25:48):
And I think if you're going to defend Wikoff, you'd say,
you know, he would do this kind of thing, you know,
with when it came to you know, Israel and Hamas
as well, you know, he would he would give advice
to the mediators. He never ended up meeting directly with
the mass and they were they were about to and
it blew up for various reasons. But his his deputy

(26:12):
did and they would say like here's how here's if
you want this, like, here is the way to frame
this right to get it there. And so Trump was
asked about this on Air Force One and he he said,
I haven't listened to the recording or I haven't seen
the transcript, but it sounds to me like normal diplomacy,
like this is this is what a mediator does. Negotiator

(26:32):
does you tell someone this is the thing you want.
Here's how you frame it to this party. It's a
little awkward for Trump that like somebody's you know, telling
somebody else how to talk to him, right, Like it's
a little weird and awkward to have that out in public.

Speaker 5 (26:51):
But it's not It's not terribly unusual, I think.

Speaker 4 (26:55):
No. I don't think so either.

Speaker 3 (26:56):
I mean it's unusual if you can remember when Mage
and Obama had that moment where Obama said he'll have
more flexibility after the election. So this would have been
like twenty eleven or twenty twelve, people lost their mindsup
on the right lost their minds.

Speaker 4 (27:12):
I was too young to really lose my mind.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
I was still in college, so you can't go back
and find clips. But you know, to some extent, maybe
that's different because he was promising. I don't know, But
to some extent when these conversations, I mean, they have
to have personal relationships, and Trump is more I don't
mean this in a little sense like he's more of
a realist personally when it comes to those relationships as
opposed to and I actually find my kind of refreshing.

(27:36):
Like he does it with Shi Jinping, he does it
with Kim Jong un like he does it with everyone,
where he just lavishes them and prays and does it
in order to butter people up to make deals that
they might not otherwise make. Now whether that's that works
or successful, different question. But Donald Trump is the president
right now, so there's no nothing surprising whatsoever about Steve

(27:57):
Whitkough handling Hiss this way when he's on the phone.

Speaker 4 (28:01):
With the Russians.

Speaker 5 (28:02):
Yeah, no, I think that's right.

Speaker 6 (28:05):
So there had been a Thanksgiving deadline that Trump gave
to Zelenski that appears to have been lifted, like giving
them a little more time. As Zelenski has said, we
have to choose between losing our dignity or losing our ally.

Speaker 5 (28:20):
But so that's kind of where we stand.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
That's a maybe not the right bar for the dignity
of Ukraine, which has been proven by the way in
spades over the last couple of years, as ordinary Ukrainians
have sacrificed so much to keep their country.

Speaker 4 (28:36):
So I don't think it's appropriate.

Speaker 3 (28:38):
I would be insulted if I were a Ukrainian and
Zelensky was tracking up their dignity to keeping all of
the Dawn Boss or some significant portion of it. So anyway, well,
speaking of foreign policy, Bryan big new drop site report
based on a tranche of emails that you all have obtained,
and you have some insight into a week in the

(28:58):
life of Jeffrey Epstein and now Dershwitz circle two thousand
and six.

Speaker 6 (29:02):
That's right, and maybe we should finish this block playing
the Barry Wise Alan Derschwitz clip because it's so they've
got the clip. Excellent, thank you Griffin. So in two
thousand and six there was a watershed moment in kind
of US Israel relations when Stephen Walt, who was at

(29:22):
the time the dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, and
John Mehersheimer, who was a one of the top international
relations professors at the University of Chicago, published a paper
called the Israel Lobby. It also ran in the London
Review of Books. And you would think, Okay, that's the
most boring thing I can think of, Like two academics

(29:44):
published a paper that also ran in the London Review
of Books. Okay, that's interesting, But why is the entire
world supposed to care about that?

Speaker 5 (29:54):
The world lit up on fire?

Speaker 6 (29:57):
It is shot through with all of these caveats and
apologetics that they're even you know, broaching this subject. But
they make a basic argument that a loose coalition of
supporters of Israel in the United States have built a
network and a lobbying infrastructure that has given Israel outsized

(30:18):
influence on American foreign policy and at times has driven
American foreign policy away from its own national interests and
towards the interests of Israel. That was viewed as an
absolutely shocking thing to say in polite society. And what
genuinely concerned the lobby was particularly that Walt was saying it,

(30:43):
because Walt, as Merersheimer's you know, you know, was at
the time very highly respected. He is today a highly
respected academic among people like us, but he took a
huge hit in his reputation inside academia over as a
result of the pushback against this. Walt was as the

(31:05):
dean of the academic school of Harvard Kennedy's Harvard's Kennedy School.
That's like the plumb position in that field, Like that's
that's the dean of all of it, not just Harvard,
but basically all of it. So to have somebody like
him saying this, the fear was that this was going

(31:25):
to open up, that this was going to create a
permission structure for people just to debate and talk openly
about the influence of the pro Israel lobby in the
United States, and so that had to be shut down,
and the pushback against it was like nothing anything academia
had really ever seen. Talks were canceled, you know, it's

(31:49):
like some pre cancel culture type of stuff going on.

Speaker 5 (31:54):
What we're reporting over at drop side.

Speaker 6 (31:56):
Oh one. So two other details. One who was president
of Harvard at the time, Epstein, Buddy Larry Summers, you
guessed it. Who was either the main funder or one
of the top funders of the Kennedy School, Les Wexner,
the Wexner Foundation, and who controlled the Wexner Foundation's money,

(32:17):
Jeffrey Epstein. So all those facts are known.

Speaker 5 (32:20):
Now. What we know from Epstein.

Speaker 3 (32:21):
Himself was was donating heavily to Harvard at the time
as well.

Speaker 6 (32:24):
And Epstein himself was too, but he was more influential
for his control of Wexner's fortune. But yes, he but
he himself was giving millions. But now what we can
report from his inbox, which as I mentioned last week,
we have we have currently have explosive access to thanks
to distributed denial of secrets, which is making the you know,

(32:46):
they're making it available to other journalists as well. Is
that Epstein himself was involved with Dershowitz in kind of
circulating Dershowitz, you know, giving feedback to Dershowitz's counter argue
meant which the school public the school published, and helping
to circulate it. And so he was involved, He was

(33:07):
directly involved in the coordinated campaign, uh, to undermine this
this paper, which means that a paper making a claim
that a loose kind of collection of pro Israel supporters
are leveraging their money and their resources and their connections
was undermined by a loose coalition coalection of Israel supporters

(33:31):
operating behind the scenes using their connections, UH, and their
and their financial resources. And yeah, as you said, so
it's disconnected from this pushback. But that same week in
the in the Inbox, we found UH, Dershowitz and Epstein

(33:51):
going back and forth over Epstein's latest sex abuse allegation.
And this one was from somebody who said she was
fourteen when she was abused. And you have Epstein with
this kind of list of reasons why this girl's credibility
should be called into question things that she had said

(34:14):
on the internet.

Speaker 3 (34:15):
Because he had hired a private detective, you're reporting, right,
to follow this girl around, or to at least to researcher.

Speaker 6 (34:22):
Yeah, I don't know if they were, if he was
following her, if it was just like online research.

Speaker 5 (34:26):
This was like one week of research, Okay, right, it
may have gone beyond that. We don't know.

Speaker 6 (34:33):
But what we know is that on earth the bunch
of dirt on this girl. And he's saying and so
they're going back and forth. Dortswood's telling Dershwooz, who was
his lawyer in this case, you know, to give this
to the state attorney, to tell him that he should
not be going forward with these charges because this girl
is not to be believed. So that was the twin

(34:55):
campaigns that they were running at the time.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
What a I mean, just these these inboxes because there
are multiple are such wild glimpses into what was happening
behind the scenes and how elites are operating, not just
stepscene and Dershwitz in summers, but more broadly.

Speaker 4 (35:13):
And that last bit Ryan.

Speaker 3 (35:16):
Is particularly irritating because you remember when it was rising,
there was any sort of rising where Alan Dershowitz was booked,
and it was you, Robbie and me, And at one
point Dershwoitz flew off the handle and said that we
wouldn't have wanted John Adams to defend the Boston massacre

(35:40):
the British in the Boston massacre case, which is I
think when you're looking at these emails that you have
about a private investigator being hired by Jeffrey Epstein to
dig up dirt on a fourteen year old girl, the
obvious difference you don't even know need to know that
that was happening behind the scenes to make the case
that the obvious difference is John Adams believed with every

(36:01):
fiber of his being that he was doing the right thing.
That he was defending. He wasn't just a defense attorney.
He was defending the right cause that his side was
correct in this case. Did Dershowitz think that Jeffrey Epstein
was just clean as a whistle, had never done anything wrong?

Speaker 4 (36:23):
Morally pure? Of course? Not? Of course, not right. I mean,
that's laughable.

Speaker 6 (36:28):
And their relationship over working together on the Israel lobby
actually is directly relevant to this claim because let's say, okay,
use the John Adams argument where you say, you know,
even even our worst enemies in our in our fair system,
deserve deserve representation. So that's the argument. But what if

(36:49):
you also found out that John Adams was secretly working
behind the scenes with the British on other unrelated matters
in order to un mine other people, showing that they
actually are a team that they are not that it
is not that Adams is just defending the principle that

(37:10):
everybody deserves a good lawyer. It's not that Dershwitz is
representing Epstein, even though he understands he's an awful person,
but he thinks that everybody deserves an attorney. Like, that's
clearly not what That's clearly not what is happening with
Dershowitz because he doesn't he's working with him secretly to
undermine Meerscheimer and Walt's book that has nothing to do.

(37:34):
You're not you're not You're not required to do that,
Like you clearly believe that he's your ally in this,
in this effort, in this ideological effort. So I think
we can dispense with this idea that Dershowitz was a
reluctant defender of of Epstein, and he did it on

(37:54):
the principle that everybody deserves an attorney. You know.

Speaker 4 (37:57):
It's also amazing because he was.

Speaker 5 (37:58):
Secretly working with him on this Israel lobby book.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
It is amazing to go back and think of the
early days of Joshuwitz's self defense of his relationship with Epstein,
and then compare what he said then to what we're
seeing behind the scenes in these emails that I'm sure
he never thought would see the light of day, which is,
you know, whatever they're talking about, Meersheimer or the case.
They were not just business colleagues, and they were not

(38:22):
just casual business acquaintances. They had a close relationship. Obviously,
they had a close relationship. Close conspirators they were, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (38:31):
They were allies.

Speaker 3 (38:32):
They were you know, I don't mean conspirators in the
legal sense, it just being that they were behind the
scenes operating closely together. Yeah. I mean, obviously in this
case there's a little conspiring that's that's taking place. But
it's just I think worth thinking back to how he said, yeah, well,
you know, I defended him as his lawyer met with

(38:53):
him a couple of times.

Speaker 4 (38:55):
I'm paraphrasing. Obviously, what the defense was back then, but
laughable at this point.

Speaker 6 (38:59):
Yeah, and Dershowitz is the man that Barry Weiss wants
to hold up as a paragon of of serious center
left a charisma, the kind of person that's gonna, you know,
bring young people, you know back. So Griffin, if you
have this, let's play it and play the whole thing, because.

Speaker 4 (39:20):
You got you got some do you have some guff?

Speaker 5 (39:24):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (39:24):
People tried to community note this and say that she
didn't actually talk about an a Loch and Dershwitz, but
it's like, no, you have to watch for like threes
whole minutes and then and then she gets into that, folks.

Speaker 5 (39:36):
Yeah, so keep your attenent span. You can roll it
two x.

Speaker 6 (39:40):
But here is an impersonation of an old person's version
of a young person.

Speaker 5 (39:44):
Let's all this, all of us.

Speaker 7 (39:47):
See the moment that we're in, and all of us
see that the choices that it feels like we have sometimes,
which is Hassan Piker and Tucker Carlson or Nick Flentes
and you know Andrew Tate, the kind of people.

Speaker 6 (40:00):
By the way, the CBS is trying to get him
to do a debatekrect go ahead.

Speaker 7 (40:05):
Those don't actually represent our values, and I don't think
that they represent the values and the worldview of the vast.

Speaker 4 (40:11):
Majority of Americans.

Speaker 7 (40:13):
And so this is an opportunity to speak for the
seventy five percent, for the people that are on the
center left and the center right, that still believe in
equality of opportunity, that still believe passionately in the American project,
that still believe in all of the things that everyone
in this room believes in, which is liberty and freedom

(40:34):
and individual responsibility, and in the most basic level, the
right to know what is actually going on in the world,
not the world as propagandists and ideologues imagine it to be,
but what's actually going on in the world and in
your community, so you can make decisions about where to
send your kids to school, about where to live, and
about how to vote. That used to just be normal,

(40:58):
and the goal of what we're trying to do at
CBS is to get back to that normalcy. And I
feel incredibly energized and enthusiastic because I think that is
where the vast majority of Americans actually are.

Speaker 4 (41:10):
Both and Ryan. This is recent right. So that articulation
of that set of goals to speak into the lives
of the seventy five percent. How are you going to
do that? What's your strategy for success?

Speaker 7 (41:26):
So I think one of the problems is a lot
of people have tried to do centrist news. I know
this because I am like the target audience for those things,
and the reason that they have all failed is it's
like trying to force feed spinach down someone's throat. Right.

Speaker 4 (41:40):
It's felt very like tofu oatmeal.

Speaker 7 (41:43):
It's like centrist news is choosing the midpoint between every
single topic. It's felt like an absence of charisma and identity.

Speaker 4 (41:51):
And I, you.

Speaker 7 (41:52):
Know, as nostalgic as people might be for an era
in which thirty million Americans every night watched Walter Cronkite
and saw them as the voice of truth.

Speaker 4 (42:00):
And I understand why they're nostalgic for that. We're never
We're not going back to that.

Speaker 7 (42:04):
So how do you build trust in a moment of
unbelievably low trust in all of our public institutions, especially
the mainstream press. I don't think it's by pretending like
we can go back to having a view from nowhere.

Speaker 4 (42:18):
I think it's about who's in the room, right.

Speaker 7 (42:21):
I think it's about redrawing the lines of what falls
in the forty yard lines of acceptable debate and acceptable
American politics and culture. I don't mean that in like
a censorious gatekeeping way. I mean having people that are
that are clearly identifiably on the center left and on
the center right in conversation with each other. And we've

(42:41):
been doing so much of this at the Free Press.
I was in Where was I Chicago last week? I
think I've lost all track of time Where Dana Lash,
former spokeswoman from the NRA, was debating Alan Jerschwitz on guns. Now,
these are people that have wildly different opinions on the
Second Amendment and yet showing that they can have good face,
very passionate, very charismatic disagreement and still like each other

(43:06):
at the end of the day. We think it's important,
and so it's for me, it's always about the curation,
Like who's in the room. How are you showing centrist
news not as the absence of disagreement and the absence
of charisma, but explicitly charismatic and disagreeable, and yet doing
it in good faith And the other the other way

(43:27):
you do it you do it is you know, by
by being really honest with your audience.

Speaker 6 (43:31):
I think we get it. Yeah, incredible. Also so Glenn,
I said, Glenn went and found it. When he found
it had eight hundred and fifty views. Let's this is here,
it is ago, twenty four hours ago. Let's see how
it's doing. Four point three So we so I think
various various video has been viewed like eight or ten

(43:54):
million times at this point talking about Dershowitz as a
charismatic dropsite clip. Yeah, we put uh and we put
this link here underneath, and it still was only able
to drive four point three thousand views to this Free
Press and Fire present Alan Dershowitz.

Speaker 3 (44:13):
First, Dana Losh, I will defend these conversations that Fire
is doing with the free press because they've been not
just with those quote unquote centrists. And I don't think,
by the way, Dana Lash is a centrist at all.
I think it's crazy.

Speaker 5 (44:26):
To center right right.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
I like Dana Lash, But what's the commonality I saw
people reacting this. Dershowitz and Lash are both ardent defenders
of American support for Israel and of Israel itself, And
so I think that's genuinely quite interesting. Yeah, right, I
actually think that's interesting. So like Dana again, like I
actually do like Dana. She's not I would not describe

(44:50):
her center right. She's like a rock ribbed conservative, whereas
Dershowitz you can definitely describe as center and I don't know,
you can definitely trim as charismatic.

Speaker 6 (45:02):
And he's a Trump supporter and when he when he
talks about Gaza, he talks in the most extremist, genocidal terms.

Speaker 5 (45:10):
Yes, yes, like yet.

Speaker 6 (45:12):
Yet somehow that it's allowed to count as center center.
But that's left even because clearly she didn't mean that
Dana is the center left one, so he must be
saying that Alan Dershwitz, it's Trump supporting, genocidal maniac is
actually on the center left.

Speaker 3 (45:27):
Which is like because he was arguing for for gun
control and he has social left, social liberal perspectives. And
that's where this discussion about what constitute center left versus
center right, it's really about temperament. And I feel like
that's what's actually being described as.

Speaker 6 (45:45):
Like want people guns, he's like center left on guns.

Speaker 3 (45:50):
Barry doesn't want people who are I would say temperamentally
anti establishments, probably pro choice too well, people who are
impugning the mode of the political establishment or who started
using the phrase of the Epstein class.

Speaker 4 (46:05):
I like that people who are, yeah, ro impugning the
motives of the Epstein class.

Speaker 5 (46:10):
He's got people.

Speaker 3 (46:12):
You can think whatever you want about guns, but if
you're impuning the motives of the Epstein class, that's what
gets you sort of look in the red zone. To
continue those mixed metaphor for a lesbian, she should have
better sports metaphors right at.

Speaker 5 (46:28):
The ready inside the forty yard line anyway.

Speaker 6 (46:31):
But yeah, so, as as I mentioned while she was talking,
Hassan Piker said that CBS News has been reaching out
to him to try to set up a debate, which
is comical since like she's explicitly saying that he's the
kind of person that should not be allowed in conversation.

Speaker 4 (46:50):
He was, he was fun on triggeronometry. I watched the
whole thing last night.

Speaker 6 (46:54):
Really, Oh yeah, excellent, Well, looking looking forward to that one.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
Speaking of people outside the forty yard lines, let's go
ahead and take a look at this clip of Tucker
Carlson on the Sean Ryan Show that just.

Speaker 6 (47:10):
I don't know if you saw this right, No, And
what I hadn't what and what what. One of the
things I love about this show is getting educated about this,
the insanity that's going on and just the wild circus
that's going on on the right now, because I need
somebody to.

Speaker 5 (47:27):
Safari me through this jungle.

Speaker 4 (47:29):
Gladly, I'll be the sharpa here.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
This is Tucker Carlson making a comment that you might
not think would be controversial, but the Libertarians were quite
upset with it.

Speaker 4 (47:40):
We can roll and in.

Speaker 8 (47:42):
The Republican Party, which is almost to the point where
it's's useless, and I'm gonna have to oppose it because
they're just I hate them too much, but because they're
such betrayers anyway.

Speaker 5 (47:52):
They're in the Republican Party.

Speaker 9 (47:53):
It's like, you're a socialist, are you from Momdani? No,
not really a socialist, just I don't want anyone to
I don't want high density housing in my neighborhood. I
don't want any more fucking strip malls, nobody goes to.
No more karate studios and vape shops. Like how about now, ooh, socialists,
you don't believe in the free market because you bribed

(48:14):
county commission to buildboard garbage. You don't even live here
and then almost sudden, we'd like burn your strip mall down.
You can't do that here. You can't turn my women
into prostitutes sorry, only fans. And you can't destroy the
landscape that I live in. No, how about No, that's
not crazy, is it.

Speaker 4 (48:35):
We could probably stop it there. No, and you can't take.

Speaker 9 (48:38):
All my tax dollars and then stop refuse to do
anything about.

Speaker 5 (48:41):
Child moll station.

Speaker 4 (48:42):
Yeah. The only reason you exist.

Speaker 9 (48:45):
County commissioners, is to protect my daughters from getting molested.

Speaker 4 (48:49):
That fair point.

Speaker 3 (48:51):
But people lost their minds, particularly over the dollar store comment.
Ryan and the Old Riot was out in Spade saying,
rich guy hates dollar stores. And it's amazing because there's
a wide variety of research that's been done over time
showing dollar stores increase the likelihood of the small local

(49:14):
grocery store, the small local guy being run out of
business as soon as that dollar store.

Speaker 4 (49:20):
Comes into town.

Speaker 3 (49:21):
And so it's not as though dollar stores are uncontroversial
in We're all places, or actually in inner city places
at all.

Speaker 4 (49:29):
But of course, god forbid you say something like that.

Speaker 3 (49:33):
I mean, also, the sentiment about the Republican Party is
just like typical Tea Party era stuff. But the dollar
stores don't attack the dollar stores because God forbid we
go after the dollar stores.

Speaker 6 (49:46):
Yeah, and this is an interesting one to try to
parse because the people who shop at dollar stores do
not like dollar stores like they work at them or
work at them. They hate them most. They shopped there
because it's the only choice, and the system that we've
built has has left them with nothing but this dollar store.

(50:09):
If they had any other options, that's certainly any other
option to work, but any other option to shop, they
would they would take that option. It reminds me of
did you see this campbell soup executive?

Speaker 4 (50:21):
I saw you tweeting about it. I was like, why
the hell is Ryan tweeting about Campbell's.

Speaker 6 (50:25):
This Campbell's soup e zec is getting dragged for saying that,
like they're like they're raviol They're like beefravioli is disgusting
or whatever, and nobody knows what's editors, you know, whatever
the whatever she said or he said, and it's like, yeah,
like everybody who's eating it is saying the same thing,

(50:48):
Like there's there's nobody that thinks this is anything other
than like mystery made and or they're making fun of
themselves while they're eating it. Now, they don't want you
making fun of them. They would prefer to be eating
it and eating something out in general. Some you know,
some of the some of their stuff is great.

Speaker 4 (51:06):
I agree. We have the video from Healthy Now that
I don't even so I look at it bio engineered me.
I don't know a piece of chicken that came from
a three D printer. You the recording.

Speaker 6 (51:26):
Yeah, I mean that's how anybody's going to feel about
those products that those super processed, Like where, what what
even is this kind of product?

Speaker 4 (51:38):
Now you were mistaken.

Speaker 6 (51:40):
People are mistaking what people do out of necessity, for
for like their culture and how they want to defend
their culture, Like there's nobody who's like, my culture is
the dollar store and and how dare you say something
about it?

Speaker 5 (51:54):
Now?

Speaker 6 (51:54):
It's about how dare a rich person? Like it's it's
one of those things like you like, it's like talking.
It's like your family, Like you can criticize them, but
you don't really want somebody else to say that's exactly right.

Speaker 3 (52:07):
Yeah, And you know, I mean, first of all, I
think Tucker was speaking pretty casually there, but also just
this idea that you have a massive global chain that
sells all kinds of junk. And to Ryan's point, what
they'll do is run the local guide of business. And
then do you think maybe when it's safe, they raise
prices again? Do you think maybe that's what happens. Of course,

(52:28):
that's what happens.

Speaker 4 (52:28):
Do you think maybe they get.

Speaker 3 (52:30):
Do you think maybe they get really shitty about working conditions?

Speaker 4 (52:33):
Yeah, of course. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (52:34):
Once they've driven the other stores out, then they close
some of their own stores and make your drive further.

Speaker 4 (52:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:39):
And this is why your odds of having a better
customer experience and worker experience with a local chain where
the person has a stake in the community because they're
you go to the PTA meetings, you're going to church,
they're playing baseball.

Speaker 4 (52:55):
Whatever with you. Well, it's not always perfect.

Speaker 6 (52:58):
Go ahead, right, I'll add something unpopular. A lot of
these small business owners in these small towns where you've
known them your entire life scrooge total total jerks.

Speaker 4 (53:10):
Yeah. I mean, of course, so their human beings.

Speaker 5 (53:15):
Yeah, a lot of them are terrible basses and terrible jerks.

Speaker 3 (53:18):
Yeah, but you're going to have a terrible boss no
matter what. I guess I'd just rather be somewhat the devil,
you know, versus the devil who's somewhere in midtown Manhattan
and you have to get through five layers of calls
just to talk to somebody with the damn stuff.

Speaker 5 (53:33):
He's our sob at least.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
Yeah, yeah, and uh, Anyway, it does increase the likelihood
that you'll have I mean, I think it genuinely does
increase the likelihood that you'll have somebody who has an
incentive to have a good reputation in the community. Therefore,
their incentive is not necessarily the GDP.

Speaker 4 (53:49):
Their incentive is to.

Speaker 3 (53:51):
Do a good job in the community because they have
social ties that go along with more social ties that
go along with their economic ties to the community.

Speaker 4 (53:59):
So anyway, he's saying Mom.

Speaker 5 (54:01):
And popp are off pretty cranky. That's all. I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (54:04):
They've been Ebenezer Scrooge a mom and pop shop. That's true, right,
But yeah, this this clip just the defenders of the
Dollar Store. It was remarkable to see all these like
conservative writers come out of the woodwork, being like, rich
guy hates the Dollar Store, and we're supposed to believe
he's a class warrior.

Speaker 4 (54:24):
Ha, got it?

Speaker 5 (54:26):
I thought so. I watched this and like, all right,
let's see what's the controversy here.

Speaker 6 (54:29):
I thought it was going to be that the Republican
Party is awful and I need to oppose it. Like
I thought that was going to be the thing that
people were animated about.

Speaker 4 (54:38):
But no, that's what they're mad about that too.

Speaker 5 (54:40):
They're mad about that as well.

Speaker 4 (54:42):
But again, like I don't know, I mean, I think
it depends on what.

Speaker 3 (54:46):
Like, Republican voters have a pretty high level of support
right now for the Republican Party, though it waxes and wanes,
and like Dems have a very low favorability the Democratic
Party right now, historically low favorability the Democratic Party right now.
But if you talk like that at most like county
party headquarters, people are gonna be like yep, because they
assume you're talking about the elite, the Republican elite. They

(55:11):
assume you're talking about like Lindsay Graham or something. So
also didn't strike me is that crazy either?

Speaker 6 (55:18):
So we need Actually, we have a main reporter who's
been covering the Grand Platinum race for Nathan Bernard. Maybe
I'm gonna have to ask him to go find out
what Strip Mall was built on a road that's between
Tucker's cabin and the river where he goes fishing every day. Well, clearly,
clearly some county commissioner got bribed by some developer to

(55:41):
build a vape shop. We know, we know everything that's
in the Strip Mall. There's a vape shop, there's a
dollar store. What was the third thing he was complaining about,
a karate studio.

Speaker 4 (55:50):
That one's funny.

Speaker 5 (55:51):
There's a karate studio.

Speaker 6 (55:53):
So okay, Nathan, if you're watching this, because you know,
I'm trying not to work as much on the holidays.
So this is how a son's story. See if you
can find the Strip mall with the karate studio, the
vape shop, and the dollar store that has any soccer
Carlson ready to declare war on the Republican Party because.

Speaker 4 (56:12):
Because we want to know what happened with the county
commissions and.

Speaker 5 (56:14):
The owner does not live there. We know that, so
you know things we know.

Speaker 3 (56:18):
Yeah, I think your experience of Vermont, I mean I've
always thought it was sort of like Vermont's billboard, you know,
when you're coming up in the conservative movement that sort
of looked at like as as hippie nonsense. But I
feel like the difference between the old right and the
new Right is looking at Vermont protecting the esthetics of
the like highway and saying, actually, I don't think that's

(56:40):
an infringement on the rights of the of the free market,
the free marketeers who want to sell their vapes or
whatever on the highway.

Speaker 4 (56:49):
This is one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Speaker 6 (56:51):
And it's it's really fun that Vermont and New Hampshire
share a share this massive border because you just go
from Vermon into New Hampshire and like the hippie uh
you know, communal focused approach gives way immediately to the
libertarian approach.

Speaker 4 (57:09):
Like balls as far as I can see.

Speaker 6 (57:12):
Yet where we lived, like you had to go over
there if you wanted to go to the Walmart or
any of the big box stores just right across the border.
You know, liquor liquor laws different. But yes, the it
just looks wildly different, the billboards and the strip malls,
and and the character as a result is different.

Speaker 4 (57:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:34):
Well, uh, that I guess is a good place to
leave it for the pre Thanksgiving show, Ryan, because on a.

Speaker 6 (57:42):
One let's give one update on our well Afton Bane. Well, yeah,
o again, we could, we could, we can.

Speaker 4 (57:49):
Roll, we could get rock in here, will we? This
is premature, that's right.

Speaker 5 (57:54):
I have a nine to thirty podcast. I have a
couple more minutes. So aft in Bane.

Speaker 6 (57:58):
There's a new poll out that has her down by
two points. Oh, this is the special election for what's
his name, Mark Green Mark Green seat in Nashville stretches
from Nashville and a bunch of royal areas outside of it.
Latest poll has her down. As her down I think down?
Was it down to her up to I'm pretty sure

(58:19):
it was down to But this is a plus twenty
two district, and she has been getting just blasted with
her podcast.

Speaker 3 (58:31):
And sometimes rightfully so, because wow.

Speaker 6 (58:35):
Well it's it's it's a it's an inverse or it's
a parallel, even not even inverse to Platner in some ways.
Platner inadvisably spent fifteen years vomiting all of his darkest
thoughts onto Reddit. Afton Bain spent has spent years vomiting
all of her thoughts, dark and otherwise into a podcast.

Speaker 9 (58:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (58:58):
Not anonymous, not.

Speaker 5 (59:00):
Anonymous at all. Not PA Hustle, not p Hustle.

Speaker 6 (59:05):
So then there was the one, and I think though
that they're over emphasizing the I hate Nashville one because
that's almost too absurd, and I think people will quickly
understand that the parallel would be like if a New
Yorker said I hate Times Square exactly.

Speaker 4 (59:22):
Yeah, I think that's right.

Speaker 6 (59:22):
So, yeah, of course everybody hates Time Square except the tourists.
So she's talking about the tourist area, whereas some of
the other ones are almost worse. They're talking about, you know,
people who don't have kids, and like, yeah, you know,
she can have more power with that. Like it's like
like whoao.

Speaker 3 (59:39):
But and it was twenty twenty, so it was like
as this this wave of elephant in the zoom politics,
as Ryan once wrote, was cresting, and everyone, I mean
nobody really thought it was going to go away. Everyone
kind of thought it was going to be there for
a while, and you had to be on the right
side of it.

Speaker 4 (59:55):
You had to talk the right way about it.

Speaker 5 (59:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (59:58):
Yeah, so we'll say that's that the like she is
coming up. I think that today may be the last
day of early voting or something, and then we'll see,
you think she has any shot at all, you.

Speaker 4 (01:00:11):
Know, I think she's a shot of making.

Speaker 3 (01:00:14):
But it's it's certainly in a what did you say
plus twenty something district, it's certainly a statement if you
get close, and that can energize the local grassroots folks.
So after being breaking points of viewer, that is a
race that we are watching closely. We had a few
minutes with her last Friday that ended up, of course,
on Fox News why Else or where Else? Producer Griffin

(01:00:37):
asking Afterbaane about her her podcast has gone very very
asking her about her podcast remarks on Nashville that Ryan
just referenced has gone very very viral.

Speaker 4 (01:00:45):
Agree, they're probably over.

Speaker 5 (01:00:46):
Apparently Fox is playing our Friday show interview.

Speaker 3 (01:00:50):
Yeah, the one from last week? Yep, you grays at
Hi mom?

Speaker 5 (01:00:56):
What what? Which one did they play?

Speaker 4 (01:00:59):
They played?

Speaker 3 (01:01:03):
So they played the one Griffin keeps popping into or
I thought you guys could hear him, but you can't.

Speaker 4 (01:01:07):
He's offering very helpful tidbits throughout the show.

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
But they played the moment where Griffin asked Afton Vane
about her Nashville comments on the podcast and she said
that she was conceived George George Strait's song honestly, to
Ryan's point, maybe not as much of a disasters as
people might think.

Speaker 5 (01:01:25):
And what's wrong with that?

Speaker 4 (01:01:26):
Yeah, there you go. She said, I don't hate country music.
I was conceived to a George Straight song.

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
But if you're a real if you're a real country
fan like me, you don't love George Straight.

Speaker 4 (01:01:35):
So that's that's a little.

Speaker 5 (01:01:36):
Bou So maybe that's the problem with that.

Speaker 4 (01:01:38):
That's the problem. George Straight is too.

Speaker 6 (01:01:40):
Soft, but it's also stolen country valor, like your parents
liked George Straight. Sure, I'll give And people are looking
it up. It sounds like they played in February of
eighty nine in Florida.

Speaker 4 (01:01:54):
People here looking this up.

Speaker 6 (01:01:55):
Yes, you got a fact check claim like this. So
so her parents. If they were in Florida in February,
then that might be where they saw George Straight play.

Speaker 4 (01:02:09):
Or they were just listening to George Straight on the
radio and.

Speaker 6 (01:02:13):
They just either they had a false memory or they
lied to her. Do you also, why are you telling
your daughter.

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
Tell your kids that, Oh my gosh, all right, should
we take.

Speaker 4 (01:02:26):
A trip down to Honduras? Ryan?

Speaker 6 (01:02:29):
Oh yeah, and yeah, Griffin win, I guess we could
play some of this clip later or you can added
a post if you want. But so this Sunday, Honduras
will have an election and Jays Jose Luis Granados Seha,
who was on the dropsite livestream yesterday. It's a reporter
in Mexico City. We had him on to talk about

(01:02:51):
the Mexico protests, which is actually really helpful. He's going
to Honduras to cover that election. They'll be doing a
dispatch for us. You're seeing two things. One is that
the current president, Shia Morra Castro, is almost as popular
there as Shinbaum is in Mexico's left wing sixty five

(01:03:11):
ish percent approval rating. But in their constitution you can't
serve a second term. So her husband was ousted in
a coup in two thousand and nine, supported by Hillar,
Clinton and the US at the time. So she comes back,
she wins, and so now it's one of her cabinet
members basically is running instead, and the US is very

(01:03:34):
heavily getting behind her main opponent and is sowing all
sorts of doubt about the elections, saying like can't trust
these numbers, which is always a signal that you're planning something.
So that when because this is supposed to be a
very close election. So if the numbers come in and
the left has won slightly, you can probably look for

(01:03:58):
US proxies to call for people to go out in
the streets and demand, uh, you know, and and cry
foul stop the steal. So there's just there's a US
back to stop the steal thing going on.

Speaker 5 (01:04:11):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:04:11):
And this is obviously driven by the fact that we
have a South Florida you know leader Marco Rubio as
our as our secretary of State, and he's got a
bone to pick with the left all over you know,
Central and South America and the Caribbean. But also that
Castro they probably don't like. Their name is Castro. Uh Castro.

(01:04:31):
When she first came into office, not helpful, not helpful,
she immediately went after all the crypto bros who had
used the previous government, which was this run by this
right wing narco terrorist. And when I say narco terrorist,
he's literally in federal prison now after being the US's
you know guy.

Speaker 5 (01:04:51):
And we knew he was a narco terrorist when.

Speaker 4 (01:04:53):
We were fighting the narco terrorist.

Speaker 5 (01:04:55):
Trian we were well.

Speaker 6 (01:04:59):
Another remind that of Kissinger's quote that it's like it's
dangerous to be a US adversary, but it's fatal to
be a friend. As soon as he was no longer useful,
we literally have thrown him in federal prison. And so
while he was in power, which came through after this
consolidation of the US backed coup, he created all these

(01:05:19):
carve outs for crypto bros. To build these basically law
free zones where they would have their own sovereignty. Castro
came in and said, no, we're done with these, we're
revoking those. There's a big fight going on over that.
Plus she immediately or very quickly recognized China and broke
relations with Taiwan, which really pissed off the United States.

(01:05:43):
And then so China offered, you know some Belton Road
style you know, investments in Honduras.

Speaker 4 (01:05:48):
Well, so that I think that's a that's really important, Griffin.

Speaker 3 (01:05:54):
You can see this clip up of South Florida Congresswoman
Marie al Vira Salazar, who's former Helemund knows.

Speaker 5 (01:06:02):
This one's really good and end it's amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:06:06):
She's a same like mold of a Cold warrior keevan
Republican congresswoman. Lots of fun, for sure, but here's what
she said about Venezuela.

Speaker 10 (01:06:19):
So we know we have information that maybe the top
echelon of the military forces in Venezuela maybe with MAJORA,
and they're going to flee with him, but the middle
and lower ranks are with the opposition. We're talking about
that this is going to be very similar to Panama
that I was there. I was a news reporter and
I remember when the Marines were walking in the Panamanian's

(01:06:39):
girls were asking them to marry them. Yeah, yeah, I
think it's very similar.

Speaker 5 (01:06:43):
Yeah, no, I remember, well I was.

Speaker 11 (01:06:45):
I was there and just after it it kind of
bled into nineteen ninety. It started in late December of
nineteen eighty nine, bled into nineteen ninety and that's I
went in in January and it was it was remarkable,
how receptive the Panama word of the change, and it's
been a relatively peaceful country since. But I'm just the transition.

(01:07:06):
I mean, Maria is a wonderful woman, the opposition leader,
She's fantastic. But how will that transition take place? Will
will there be a snap election after he flees or what?

Speaker 4 (01:07:19):
Well?

Speaker 10 (01:07:19):
She has a and I've spoken to health to her extensively.
They have a one hundred day plan. They have shared
with a White House. They are prepared. She knows what
she's doing. I mean, they have been at this for
twenty five years. Like I said, eighty ninety percent of
the Venezuelan people, plus the eight million Venezuelans who have fled,
they want to come back. This is going to be

(01:07:40):
a very major success and a suc sex story, not
only for them but for US. And I salute President
Trump for having the fortitude, the courage, the political vision
to be doing this because Maduro is the head of
a transnational criminal organization. Maduro is not the legitimate president

(01:08:00):
of the country. So we're not invading a sovereign country
that has a free and fair, elected democratic president. No,
this guy is a thug and he's good friends with Zbolan.
They are giving uranium to Hamas and to Iran, and
to North Korea, and to Cuba and to Nicaragua. Come on,
it's time for the United States to do what we
need to do. And thank God that Trump is doing it.

(01:08:22):
And I'm telling you that these people, the Venezuelans, have
the largest reserves of oil in the we're talking about.
This is going to be a windfall for US. When
it comes to fossil fuels.

Speaker 11 (01:08:34):
Well, and again it's the actual transition that a lot
of Americans are a little wary about because of the
fact that regime change always has unintended consequences.

Speaker 3 (01:08:45):
Yes, so the reason this is connected with Honduran politics
as well is that what you're seeing emerge more overtly
right now is the reality that this is a new
Cold war dynamic, not just that we're using soft power,
but that we are planning to use is hard power
in this new Cold war dynamic.

Speaker 4 (01:09:02):
To take for.

Speaker 3 (01:09:03):
Example, oil, really really good example to prevent, and this
is a parallel, of course with the Soviet Union, to
prevent an alliance between places like Venezuela and Iran with
Hesbelah with Hamas, which, like, listen, you and I would
probably debate the uranium. You and I would probably debate

(01:09:24):
the substance of those claims. I think none of us
would debate that there have been overtures.

Speaker 4 (01:09:28):
Of course, that's.

Speaker 6 (01:09:30):
A debate I think I could win if if you
were required to argue that Venezuela is shipping uranium.

Speaker 4 (01:09:37):
No, I'm not.

Speaker 5 (01:09:38):
Arguing that North Korea.

Speaker 4 (01:09:40):
Absolutely, Iran does have a foothold.

Speaker 6 (01:09:43):
In and I can take the other side of that one.
I am confident in my debating abilities that I could
walk away with a wa I think.

Speaker 4 (01:09:49):
You'd have that one.

Speaker 3 (01:09:50):
I don't think any of us would debate that Iran
has and Moduro have had a little bit.

Speaker 5 (01:09:54):
Of a like Venezuela sending uranium to North Korean hamas.

Speaker 6 (01:09:58):
It's just the this is the parallel between are they
getting them into Gaza.

Speaker 3 (01:10:03):
If you if you were a in the nineteen seventies,
if you were a populist lefty or even not even
a lefty, and you talked a little bit about nationalizing this,
or you talked a little bit about an alliance with
the Soviets, be careful, Be careful, because or they'll make
the economy scream and then do a little CIA covert action.

Speaker 4 (01:10:27):
So that's that's what's emerging in the region.

Speaker 3 (01:10:30):
It's been happening with like a lot of soft power
USAID stuff, but Trump is militarizing with Venezuela obviously, and
so different countries are going to have that possibility injected
back into their politics.

Speaker 5 (01:10:41):
Yeah. Yeah, So we'll be watching that on Sunday.

Speaker 3 (01:10:46):
Happy regime Change. Thanksgiving Another good one where David Asmond
is like they were greeted as liberators after backing Noriegover Overlog.

Speaker 6 (01:10:57):
Who was also a narco trafficker and was our man
in Panama.

Speaker 5 (01:11:01):
He was working with the CIA.

Speaker 4 (01:11:03):
Hot CIA director George H. W. Bush met with him.

Speaker 6 (01:11:07):
Anyway, we don't get anyone and then and then he's
removed for being an narco trafficker and not being useful anymore.
So be careful if you're a narco trafficker, don't trust
the United States for your retirement plan.

Speaker 4 (01:11:19):
Don't do it.

Speaker 5 (01:11:19):
Pro tip.

Speaker 3 (01:11:20):
Ye all right, Ryan, I know you're hosted Thanksgiving, so you,
in addition to having a podcast coming up, have a
lot of responsibilities in the next couple of days.

Speaker 5 (01:11:29):
So this was important stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:11:31):
This was fun. You're doing the Journalist football game again
this year?

Speaker 6 (01:11:35):
Yes, well, every every Sunday after Thanksgiving a journal football game,
so I think they'll it's gonna be a heavy times
contingent this weekend, so that'll be fun.

Speaker 4 (01:11:49):
All right.

Speaker 3 (01:11:49):
Well, Happy Thanksgiving to all of you out there. Thank
you again. We're super grateful for your support. Even if
you're not a premium sub, we totally understand. We appreciate
you watching the videos, sending them around means a lot
to us, so I have a great one.

Speaker 4 (01:12:04):
Everyone