5/6/25: Israel To 'Flatten' Gaza, Trump Movie Tariffs, Bill Maher Panics On AOC 2028 & MORE!

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
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Speaker 3 (00:25):
We need your help to build the future of independent
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Speaker 1 (00:33):
All right, good morning, and welcome to Breaking Points.

Speaker 4 (00:36):
That's right, that's Tuesday.

Speaker 5 (00:37):
I guess so we have to be breaking points hiding Ryan, I.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Wis should just all be breaking points? Right? Maybe just
wrap it all up?

Speaker 4 (00:44):
Yeah, I guess it's time.

Speaker 5 (00:46):
So we're just making major decisions with that, Saga and Crystal.

Speaker 6 (00:49):
So that's the time to make them exactly. So today
we're going to have my drop site colleague Jeremy Skahele
on the show to talk about the latest between and
Gaza and Yemen and Syria and Lemon and all of
which they are bombing. Jeremy just returned from a major
interview with Osama Hamdan, who's a senior political figure at Hamas,

(01:09):
as well as a bunch of other background interviews with
other Hamas.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Officials, that he can and he can and he can.

Speaker 6 (01:16):
Sketch out kind of where where they're feeling, what they're
you know, where they're at in the negotiations. As Israel's
threatening to literally quote flatten Gaza, uh, Donald Trump is
promising to bring make Hollywood great again. Hollywood's kind of
panicked tariff that he's gonna We're going to figure out
what it means to tear off a movie.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
Yes, we are going to figure it out.

Speaker 5 (01:39):
Actually, well, I mean we who knows whether we'll figure
it out, but the Trump administration is trying to figure
it out at this very moment, and maybe they'll learn
that there's really no good way to do it and
quietly drop this news. But Trump's made this announcement on Sunday.
Hollywood was in panic all day yesterday also trying to
figure out what it meant.

Speaker 4 (01:55):
So we will have updates on that.

Speaker 6 (01:57):
When you promise to help someone and they panic at
the thought, but that's got to be kind of a
nod feeling.

Speaker 4 (02:03):
Yeah, well on some one did.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
He did kind of step back a little. He's like,
I'm just trying to help.

Speaker 4 (02:08):
Well they yeah, I mean, we'll get into all of it.

Speaker 5 (02:11):
Then. We also have a former Greek finance minister, Janis
Farah Fucus, who's going to join us to go through
some of the latest on tariffs.

Speaker 6 (02:19):
If you don't you guys don't know Yannis. He's amazing.
It's going to be a fun one.

Speaker 5 (02:22):
Yeah, Oh my gosh, he's he's super interesting. So good
time to talk to him. We're going to be discussing
a little bit of from Bill Maher's panel last week,
there was Kevin McCarthy talking about how AOC and Bernie
are really the future of the party. So there's a
news about AOC in the Oversight Committee. There's all kinds
of fun stuff to get into.

Speaker 6 (02:42):
And Brian Kemp announced that he's not going to run
for Senate, which immediately has the asof for president crowd. Yes,
just wondering, you know, just basically measuring the drapes at
sixteen hundred Pennsylvania for president osof at they to go, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:56):
Osof Nation and Rise Up Gain a Function Research Executive
was signed yesterday so by Donald Trump. So we'll break
down all of that, and then Ryan, we have a guest,
a guest who's going to talk about some developments in
the case that we've covered before.

Speaker 6 (03:11):
Yes, So, Henry McKean Shapiro was one of the protesters
arrested by a G Dana Nessel in Michigan, spent four
days in jail yesterday with a handful of others, had
his charges dropped.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
We're going to talk about.

Speaker 6 (03:28):
What those charges were, where they stemmed from, why they
were dropped, and we're going to be joined by Henry
to talk about what, you know, what his experience was
like behind bars, and you know what he was told
he was arrested for, because it does appear that these
people were arrested for nothing other than protesting. Like no,
there are no no, no allegations of actual crimes.

Speaker 5 (03:51):
Yea. And just as a heads up, by the way,
we started a little bit late today. Ryan has kids
to take care of it. I assume they're the.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
Ones my wife's yes, exactly. You like that? Which handy
like better?

Speaker 4 (04:01):
I mean the colorful one obviously that your daughters of that.

Speaker 7 (04:05):
They did.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
They've started a nail salon in our.

Speaker 4 (04:07):
House whoa okay capitalism.

Speaker 6 (04:08):
Called Sleigh Nails. So I was one of their first customers.
But yes, my wife's still recovering from surgery. So I'm
just helping get the kids out to school. So when
i'm when I am co hosting this weekend next will
be a little bit later than normal. We're often a
little bit later than normal. This time we have an
actual excuse.

Speaker 5 (04:27):
Yes, well it's you know, whatever we can do to
get our fix of Ryan Grim.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
There you go, we will do it.

Speaker 6 (04:35):
Let's they started to chip, Yeah, I need to go
back to slate slay nails, and do.

Speaker 4 (04:39):
You get a discount?

Speaker 6 (04:40):
Well, and I didn't let them put the thing on
this it would help them stay longler.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
I was like, this is good.

Speaker 6 (04:45):
I didn't pay anything for it, so I don't know
if that's a discount or not.

Speaker 4 (04:48):
I guess you can go back.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
I don't think they've thought about their business model very deeply.

Speaker 4 (04:52):
Okay, well maybe it should become part of drops.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
The don't pay for the inputs.

Speaker 4 (04:55):
This could be a thing. So I don't know, we'll see.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
They don't really have to charge, Well.

Speaker 5 (05:00):
Let's bring Jeremy and speaking of drop sit, let's go
ahead and bring Jeremy in to hear from him about
his recent interview with Hamas.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
Joining us to discuss all.

Speaker 6 (05:08):
This is my drop site colleague, Jeremy scahe who just
returned from an interview with senior political Hamas figure Osama
Hamden and others.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Jeremy, thank you so much for being here today.

Speaker 7 (05:21):
Good to be with you guys.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
And so let's put a four up on the screen
to start.

Speaker 6 (05:27):
This is the first piece that you've rolled out from
this interview, this very wide ranging interview with Osama Hamden.
Tell us what your kind of main takeaway was from
this as it relates to Israel's most recent demand that
Hamas needs to disarm within greet to disarm within the

(05:47):
next week, return all of the hostages, or else it's
going to quote Flatten Gaza.

Speaker 8 (05:54):
I mean, Ryan.

Speaker 9 (05:54):
I think the first thing to be said is that
over the past eighteen months there has been almost no
obstintive interviewing of leaders of Hamas or other Palestinian resistance
factions by Western news organizations. It's not that they're not interviewed,
it happens CNN has had interviews, NBC has had interviews,
But often what happens is that you have one of

(06:15):
two things unfold. Either it's a very short interview responding
to something that the United States has said or something
that Israel has said, or it's an interview where it's
just entirely intended to be a reltigation of the events
of October seventh. And one of the things that we've
tried to do at drop site is to say, this
is journalistic malpractice not to understand the perspective of the

(06:40):
leadership of HAMAS or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or any Palestinian
leaders who are at the center of what is a
US fact Israeli war of annihilation. So that's the spirit
in which we've been conducting these interviews. Now, Osama Hamdan
is perhaps one of the most well known leaders within
HAMAS because he was based in Lebanon when the Israeli

(07:03):
war began in October of twenty twenty three. He was
one of the few officials that was actually in a
country where Hamas was allowed to publicly hold press conferences,
and so he became a very well known figure in
the Arabic language media. He's been a member of HAMAS
since nineteen ninety two, just a few years after the
organization was founded. He was the former head of its

(07:23):
operations in Iran, former head of its operations in Lebanon,
and was the former head of its international relations department.
He's actually a chemist by training, a very very well
educated guy who speaks excellent English, and so I sat
down with him for on the record about a ninety
minute interview, but I did spend several hours meeting with

(07:45):
osamaham Dan and other senior leaders within HAMAS. So part
of what we can talk about today is what was
said on the record, and then I can give you
some texture of the broader perspective of people. I haven't
spoken about this yet, so this will be the first
time I kind of go through some of what I've heard.
The main issue that you're raising, Ryan Hamas has now
staked out a very clear position that it hasn't in

(08:07):
such a clear way in the past eighteen months. And
what Osama Hamdan told me is that HAMAS is absolutely
not going to agree to any more short term truces
unless there is a clear path back to one of
two places, either back to the original framework of the
January ceasefire deal that was brokered by the United States,

(08:29):
Qatar and Egypt. That deal, which Israel blew up after
the first for forty two day phase, imposed this full
spectrum blockade on Gaza. No food, no medicine, no fuel.
Nothing has entered the Gaza strip in the past two months,
and then on March eighteenth, Israel starts scorched earth bombing
Gaza again, killing more than four hundred people in the

(08:49):
opening night. Since then, twenty four hundred Palestinians have been killed,
the majority of them women and children. Horrifying attacks too,
burning people alive, intents use so called suicide drones to
attack camps for displaced people. And what Hamas is saying
is we either are going to go back to that
framework and the second phase of that framework, which Israel

(09:11):
wanted to avoid getting into, said that there would be
a total withdrawal of all Israeli forces and that there
would be technical negotiations moving toward a permanent ceasefire followed
then by a full reconstruction of the Gaza strips. So
either we go back to that or we go to
an alternative arrangement which also has a very clear path

(09:31):
to the end of the war full Israeli withdrawal and reconstruction.
Hamas has said, we have a different proposal that we
want to put forward in response to Israel, and that
is what is called an Arabic ahudna, which means a
long term truce. And so Osamahamdan said they are offering
Israel a truce of five to seven years, the immediate
release of all Israeli captives living and dead, and an

(09:55):
internationally guaranteed agreement that Hamas and other Palastinian resistance factions
are not going to engage in any offensive operations against Israel,
and that they are interested in long term stability and
peace and an ability to rebuild Gaza. So they said
though that no matter what the deal is, they are

(10:16):
not going to lay down their weapons. They said, it's
not just a red line, it's a million red lines.
They said that laying down their weapons would be tantamount
to capitulating and surrendering, and once they surrender, then they're
at the will of the occupier. So this was what
I believe the clearest on the record statement that we've
gotten to date from Hamas that they will not accept

(10:39):
any of the proposals that have been put forward by
the United States or Israel that do not include a
clear path to full Israeli withdrawal, and they will absolutely
not agree to hand in their weapons under any circumstances.

Speaker 5 (10:54):
Jeremy, one of the interesting things that stood out to
me from your report is that they actually all of that,
and also they feel obligated not to put their weapons down, right,
could you tell us more about that part of the conversation.
I mean, as I understood it, it was they say
it as an obligation to continue going not just sort
of the practical thing that's best for them, but also

(11:16):
something that they must do to keep going forward.

Speaker 9 (11:19):
Yeah, it's an important question, Emily. You know, let's remember
that oftentimes when events in Gaza are discussed in the
broader Western media or the Israeli media, the story begins
on October seventh with Hamas's attacks and what Hamas calls
Operation al Axa flood. But this is actually a seventy
six year history. I mean, you could go all the

(11:40):
way back to the nineteen thirties and the Palestinians resisting
British occupation.

Speaker 8 (11:44):
But let's say that.

Speaker 9 (11:45):
The dominant narrative or the dominant historical arc here begins
in nineteen forty seven forty eight with the Knakba, which
is when the United States and European powers stole the
land from Palestinians and established a state primarily for Europeans
that were victims of the Holocaust or were at jeopardy

(12:06):
of being killed during the Holocaust. And so that state
was established. And the idea at the time that was
promoted by Zionists and also the West was that it
was a people without a land for a land without
a people. Well, there were a people there, and they
were called the Palestinian people, and in fact there were
Muslims and Jews living in relative peace on that land

(12:27):
until the establishment of the.

Speaker 8 (12:28):
State of Israel.

Speaker 9 (12:29):
So the perspective from the Palestinian side, and this is
not just Hamas. I spoke with Palestinian leaders who are
not even members of armed resistance factions, who will say
that every time the Palestinians have agreed to lay down
their weapons that they have then just been massacred and
wiped out. So it's not just about a strategic position

(12:49):
that Hamas is taking. They, for instance, with Samahamdan, said look,
we can look at the example of the North of
Ireland when the Provisional IRA decommissioned itself and handed in
its weapons. I was part of a many years long
process and it was agreed to by both sides. Hamden
said to me, Look this business about storing our weapons temporarily,
He said, first of all, that's just a media story.

(13:11):
No one has ever seriously raised that with us. But
are they going to tell the Israelis to store their weapons.
Who's going to monitor the Israelis? Because every time we
have a ceasefire, they continue to bomb us. So I
think it's very clear. And the issue of armed resistance
remains one of the most popular position points in all
of historic Palestine, not just in Gaza. The right of

(13:33):
Palestinians to use armed resistance against an occupation and apartheid
state that has been repeatedly condemned under international law, by
world courts and by every major human rights organization in
the world. They believe if they lay down their weapons,
the cause of Palestinian statehood and liberation is totally dead.

Speaker 6 (13:51):
So it's put up a two briefly because this references
this is an Axios News report about the flattening of
Gaza that they're threatening if there's no deal by the
time Trump makes his upcoming trip to the region. And
you can add a three as well. Here's a kind
of map that's been that's been circulating that is where

(14:13):
they're suggesting basically, they're going to take upwards of two
million Palestinians move them into a tiny quote unquote humanitarian zone.
And they don't really say what they're going to do
next beyond you know, invade, occupy, and hold the ground
rather than kind of move in and move back out,

(14:35):
which allowed then you know, Hamas to move back in
after the after the IDF would move out. And so
Hamas has this proposal, this counterproposal of a five to
seven year truce. Donald Trump likes to talk about cards.
You know, you don't have any cards. Who has the cards?
What are the cards that from your reporting that Hamas

(14:56):
has has left to play against against Israel? Like what
what what makes it so that this will this is
a serious counterbules that Israel needs to take seriously. And
from the Israeli side, you know, they're talking about calling
up tens of thousands of reservists.

Speaker 1 (15:12):
Do they have the cards?

Speaker 6 (15:13):
They do they have the ability to carry out this
invasion and long term occupation and complete ethnic cleansing that
they're suggesting they're going to carry out.

Speaker 9 (15:24):
I mean, there's a there's a technical answer to your question,
and then there's a much bigger answer to your question.
First the technical answer, anyone you speak to from a
Palestinian resistance faction that is holding captives Israeli captives inside
of Gaza will say, this is our only card right
now that we have. And so when the Israelis propose
short term truces with no clear path to an end

(15:47):
to the war or an Israeli withdrawal, and they try,
for instance, to get half of the living Israeli captives
out in one fell swoop hamas Palestinian Islamic jihad look
at that and they say, this is a death trap
for us. From their perspective, they believe that they have
kept as many Israeli captives alive as Israel has been
killing them with its own bombings. We don't know the fate,

(16:08):
for instance, of American citizen Aidan Alexander, who was in
the Israeli military when he was taken by Palestinian fighters
on October seventh, twenty twenty three, Hamas's arm duing Casambragades
lost touch with him some weeks ago after an Israeli airstrike,
and I was told by two senior Hamas officials that
they still do not know his fate. So from the

(16:28):
perspective of Palestinian resistance movements, their only card in these
negotiations right now is the fact that they are holding
Israeli captives. In the bigger picture, though, they feel that
they have a moral and a legal card, and also
a very strong card in the region, and that is
that international resolution after international resolution has declared Israel's occupation illegal.

(16:50):
You have a genocide proceeding that is going forward at
the International Court of Justice, and you have Arab regimes,
anti democratic Arab regimes that are watching their very nervously
the events on the ground unfold. As Netanyahu expands Israel's
attacks across the region. Public anger is growing inside the
capitals and borders of many Arab nation states, and we

(17:13):
could be at the beginning of a period where we
start to see potentially major revolts happening internally in Arab
countries against their rulers, against their governments, in part because
they have stood silently by as the Palestinians have been
subjected to genocide or because they've normalized relations with Israel

(17:34):
under the auspices of Donald Trump's Abraham Accords, so that
the Palestinians are great students of history. And one thing
I just want to say parenthetically, every time I speak
to an official from one of these Palestinian resistance.

Speaker 8 (17:46):
Movements, it's remarkable.

Speaker 9 (17:48):
They are doctors, their lawyers, their Islamic scholars, their veterinarians,
their engineers.

Speaker 8 (17:55):
Osama Hamdan himself is a chemist.

Speaker 9 (17:58):
Several of them have been educated in Western and countries,
including the United States. The portrayal of them, you can
think what you want about their positions, their policies, their actions,
but the portrayal of these individuals as cartoonish villains who
are interested in killing Jewish people because they're Jewish, is
so just clearly false and part of what I was told.

(18:20):
And we could talk about the details of this. Ryan
and Emily, you know, I met with both Hamas officials
that led the talks with Adam Bohler, who was Donald
Trump's special envoy on hostages. One thing I found interesting
is they didn't know that he had been at Jared
Kushner's roommate, or that he's a personal friend of the
Trump family. And when I shared that, they said, well,

(18:42):
that makes sense why he's still around, because Israel tried
to destroy Adam Bohler after he made the mistake of
just saying that he was surprised at the kind of
interactions that he had with Hamas. But they described to
me very cordial, friendly, at times diplomatic meeting with Adam Bohler.
They said that Bohler asked a lot of probing questions,

(19:04):
not just about the current political situation or the situation
from October seventh forward, but that he seemed truly interested
in understanding the historical perspective of the Palestinians. And they
said he just kept remarking on how they are so
different than they seem from the portrayal that he had read.
And what they told me is that you know, they
had these good meetings with Bohler. It wasn't just about

(19:26):
the American captives that are being held. It was about
a broader political solution. The Israelis go nuts where they
learn that these direct talks had happened and that Bohler
is out there in public saying on American television and
Israeli television that Hamas has proposed a multi year piece
deal with Israel. Ron Dermer was just like yanking his

(19:46):
hair out. Met Yahoo's political hit man who's in charge
of the negotiations now, and they said, so, you know,
the Americans are subjected to this thing where Adam Bohler
is now being smeared and targeted for having the audacity
to say some basic civil things orss about Hamas.

Speaker 8 (20:01):
But what happened, Ryan is.

Speaker 9 (20:03):
That there was supposed to be a subsequent meeting directly
with Steve Whitcoff, who is Donald Trump's the top envoy
negotiating all of these deals with not just with Gaza
but also Ukraine. They were going to have direct talks
with Steve Whitcoff, and Hamas was confident that the way
the dialogue was going that the Americans were actually understanding

(20:25):
the position and understanding that Hamas did in fact have
some flexibility in its position. And Hamden said he believes
that part of the reason why Israel assassinated Ismailhaniah, the
former political leader of Hamas, and has been assassinating others,
is because Israel doesn't want anyone capable of actually speaking
with the United States to be alive to do so.

Speaker 5 (20:50):
This gets to the question Ryan was asking about the
cards that Israel has a clip here of Donald Trump
yesterday being asked about some of this.

Speaker 4 (20:57):
We can go ahead and roll a one.

Speaker 10 (20:58):
Now, help the people of Gaza get some food. People
are starving, and we're going to help them get some food.
A lot of people are making it very very bad.

Speaker 8 (21:08):
What do you if you look.

Speaker 10 (21:09):
Hamas is making it impossible because they're taking everything this
brought in.

Speaker 8 (21:14):
But we're going to help the.

Speaker 10 (21:14):
People of Gaza because they're being treated very badly by Hamas.

Speaker 8 (21:20):
Thank you very much.

Speaker 5 (21:21):
Hostage families, we're protesting that Yahoo's decision yesterday as well.
So Jeremy, can you tell us what you make of
the last twenty four hours after conversations about all of
this with the other side.

Speaker 9 (21:34):
Yeah, I mean, first of all, you know, either Donald
Trump is lying or he's being intentionally fed bad information.
I mean, you can talk to anti Hamas people involved
with international aid on the ground and they'll tell you
that it is entirely false that there is any significant
amount of aid that is being stolen or commandeered by Hamas.

(21:55):
In fact, when private gangs that many Palestinians suspect are
in some way or another collaborating with Israel have been
trying to loot supplies of aid when the civil police force,
this is not casambragades, but when the civil police force
in Gaza tries to respond to this looting, Israel has
then attacked the police who are trying to prevent the

(22:16):
looting from happening. And of course, you know, there were
public there were executions recently of people that were involved
in looting, and people made a big deal about this
and it was portrayed as you know, Hamas is executing
Palestinians who are just trying to get food. The reality
on the ground is that some of the most powerful
and influential families in Gaza were demanding that somebody somewhere

(22:36):
take action to stop the looting of what little aid
is left inside of the Gaza strip.

Speaker 8 (22:41):
So, you know, we should be.

Speaker 9 (22:42):
Reporting accurately and factually on these matters and not, you know,
not falling into this trap of looking for every incendiary
story that we can hype and it turns out that
it's actually not even based on something that is fully true.
On this issue that Trump is raising them. I'll tell
you something that I learned in my reporting. A few
weeks ago, the Israelis approached My sources told me the

(23:04):
United Nations, and they tried to get the United Nations
to agree to take charge of distributing aid on that
Israel would send in. But Israel had a long list
of conditions about how many calories could be in each packet,
about how who could receive the aid, About the kind
of security checks that Palestinians would be subjected to if

(23:26):
they wanted to receive aid, about the kind of checkpoints
they would have to pass through and the distances they
would have to travel. And the United Nations told Israel,
We're not going to participate in that because it's weaponizing
the use of food for crimes of war. So then
the Israelis go to international aid organizations. Now, I'm told
that some aid organizations initially were considering going along with

(23:50):
Israel's plan, in part because they felt that the situation
was so dire that it was a compromise to make.
Other aid organizations then looked at what Israel's terms were
and said, absolutely not. These are de facto internment conditions.
Those that's a direct quote from a letter signed by
twenty aid organizations. So these international aid organizations said we
won't participate in weaponizing food for Israel's war aims. So

(24:13):
what Israel is now left with and Trump is referring to,
is that they've come up with a plan. They've already
divided Gaza into three sections. With these two massive corridors,
is they're essentially going to try to push as much
of the Palestinian population toward the south as possible into Rafa,
which basically doesn't exist as anything vaguely resembling a city anymore.
They're going to work with potentially an American security company

(24:36):
and others, and they're going to force Palestinians to go
through extensive security checks just to get some food to eat.
So it now is the case that Israel in the
United States seem to be trying to engage in a
propaganda campaign that also weaponizes food as a tool of
war in an effort to say, oh, look, we're helping
the starving Palestinians. This is a way to avoid having

(24:57):
to make an actual deal that would bring some peace
and stability and would halt this genocide.

Speaker 6 (25:02):
And in your interview, Hamdan responded to the Egyptian proposal,
which he rejected out of hand, which effectively, you know,
required you know, Hamas to to fully disarm. You're all
saying that there's they're willing to they're willing to move,
you know, and they're willing to make some concessions. So
what would be the concessions that Hamas is willing to

(25:22):
make in order to you know, get to this five
to seven? Your truth is not saying that there would
be no offensive operations. Obviously that's that's a concession as well,
because up to today there's state of positions. They will continue,
you know, carrying out offensive operations against Israel until they
say they won't. So that alone is one how would
they how would they allow that to be internationally guaranteed

(25:45):
while also maintaining you know, their weapons.

Speaker 9 (25:49):
So one thing on this issue of offensive you know,
Hamas would say all of their operations are defensive because
Israel is an illegitimate, illegal, uh you know, uh, occupying power.

Speaker 8 (26:00):
So you know, just to be clear, that's their position.

Speaker 6 (26:03):
Well, does that undercut their promise then if they're because
what Israel wants is them not to like do another
October seventh yeah.

Speaker 9 (26:10):
I mean, they're not playing like semantics here. I think
what they're saying is, we're not going to attack Israel
unless we are directly attacked militarily. Like they're not going
to launch an operation that in the existential sense of
it is defensive in nature from their perspective.

Speaker 8 (26:26):
But it's an interesting question.

Speaker 9 (26:27):
First of all, let me say this, what I was
told by Hamas officials is don't we don't actually want
to be the government of Gaza. We won democratic elections
in two thousand and six, not just in Gaza, but
in all of the Palestinian territories. Ismail Jania was supposed
to be the prime minister of all Palestinian territories, not
just Gaza. A civil war then breaks out between Mahmuda
Bassa's FATA party and Hamas in Gaza in two thousand

(26:50):
and seven. That results in an effective split of the
Palestinian government where you have a BOSS and FATA controlling
the occupied West Bank, and then you had Gaza controlled Hamas.
The United States and other Western countries immediately impose sanctions
and Israel imposes a blockade on Gaza. So the place
has been being strangled ever since then. There hasn't been

(27:12):
a democratic election since, not because Palestinians don't want it,
but because it's been convenient for Mahmudabas not to have
such elections. So Hamas is essentially viewing it as we're
stuck being the government. You know, one of us officials
said to me, do you know what happens if we
don't pay people you know that are on our payroll,
or what happens if the garbage isn't picked up? People
protest against us like they would anywhere else. So it's,

(27:34):
you know, it's an interesting point. So they're saying, we
don't even want to be the government anymore. But if
we sign this kind of a deal, we will fully
relinquish all control of Gaza. We will submit to the
democratic will of the Palestinian people, will go one of
two ways. Egypt has made a proposal that there could
be a sort of technocratic committee of experts that would

(27:56):
govern Gaza until democratic elections could be organized and hell
or you could do something under the auspices of the
Palestinian authority. Even though Hamas is the extremely critical of Mahmudabas,
who they perceive as a collaborator with the Israeli regime.
They and other Palestinian factions have submitted forty to forty
five names as suggestions for people that they would accept

(28:18):
on a committee, and they're willing to submit to the
authority of the Palestinian authority their political rivals. That's a
massive political concession that Hamas is making. On the issue
of weapons, what Hamas has said is there will be
no need for resistance factions to have any weapons if
Palestine as a state is allowed to constitute its own

(28:40):
military and police forces capable of defending its territorial integrity.
The final thing I'll say about this is Osama Hamdan
said to me. I thought he was going to say
there's no you know, I asked him about two state solution.
What's called two state solution. I thought he was going
to say it's dead in the water. I've been told
that by other Palestinian resistance figures. He said, Israel is

(29:01):
the party destroying the two state solution, and Hamas would
welcome a two state solution if a majority of Palestinians
voted for it. We would never stand in the way
of it. If it was constituted along the pre nineteen
sixty seven war borders, if East Jerusalem was the capital,
and if Israel was forced through international oversight by the

(29:23):
United States and others to respect those boundaries, that Hamas
would not stand in the way of a two state solution.
So people can dismiss what Hamas is saying. But since
nineteen ninety two ninety three, the Hamas leadership has been
proposing these long term truce deals with Israel, which are
intended to create a multi year but defined period where

(29:44):
Hamas and other resistance groups will agree to engage in
no attacks unless they're militarily attacked, in the hopes that
there can be a longer term political solution. From Donald
Trump's perspective, that doesn't sound like a bad deal. And
I think that's why the Israelis didn't want someone like
Adam Boehler, who's a friend of the Trump family, or
Steve Whitkoff directly speaking to Hamas, because it might put

(30:06):
in their heads the idea Trump could actually preside over
a very long term deal.

Speaker 6 (30:12):
Yeah, I think if Trump just and Amir Tabone and
Haretz wrote a column saying this, if Trump just tweeted
the same way he tweeted at Putin Vladimir stop, if
he tweeted, this would Tabona written, Benjamin stop, get the
hostages out.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
Make a deal like that would actually work.

Speaker 6 (30:29):
Like tweeting at Putin not going to get you very far,
that tweet might actually work before you live. I wanted
to get your response to what Israel has been doing instead,
if we can put up a seven real quick from
the drop site Twitter feed, in the last twenty four hours,
Israel has bombed eastern and southern Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Gaza.

(30:49):
It's almost easier at this point to report you know
which neighboring countries Israel is not bombing. I'm curious, and
let's put up the one before that, which is a five.
I'm curious from your conversations with the Hamas officials.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
This is uh.

Speaker 6 (31:07):
This is a Hoothy spokesperson saying that he's that the
Hoothies are going to shut down air travel on an
ongoing basis into Israel in response to israel siege on Gaza.
They're saying that their strike on Ben Guria on airport
is going to be repeated, and he warns international airlines
not to fly into Ben Gurion Airport.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
Curious two things.

Speaker 6 (31:28):
One, how how does how did Hamas respond to this,
this kind of escalating war that's now involving almost every
country touching Israel, And how do they feel about the
Houthi response in solidarity?

Speaker 9 (31:42):
You know, I think not just Hamas, not just Palestinians.
I think that you know, really sharp observers in the
region of history understand that what has happened is that
Israel has run around throwing a lot of punches, and
they think that that they've knocked out all of their adversaries,
but no one can predict what the counter strike is

(32:03):
going to look like. You know, I had one very
senior Palestinian resistance figure tell me last week that Israel
is going to be wishing one day that Hamas was back,
because what's going to come next is going to be
a much more radical, much more ferocious enemy. Because a
whole generation of children, not just in Gaza, not just

(32:23):
in the West Bank, but now in Lebanon, the children
that were maimed by the Pager bomb plot, the Yemeni
Yemeni's who are being bombed on a regular basis by
the United States and Israel, increasingly Syrians. This generation that
rises up is going to be coming of age in
the shadow of one of the most brutal campaigns of

(32:45):
lethal arson waged by an Israeli leader in history. And
so while Netanyahu might feel that he's at the zenith
of his life's mission to you know, take it to
all of these resistance factions and try to redraw the
maps of the Middle least, history shows that this is
only the opening salvo, and what comes next is likely
to be much more ferocious than what Metan, Yahoo and

(33:08):
Israel have dealt with to date. So you know, Trump
should tread very very carefully in his embrace of this
arsonist agenda because history shows that what comes next, the
fire next time, is going to be much more ferocious.

Speaker 6 (33:24):
Yeah, I could imagine ten fifteen years from now, israel
officials looking back at the Hamas proposal of a five
to seven year truce handing over power to a civilian
authority as something that they would desperately like to go
back and be able to take.

Speaker 9 (33:42):
Rian, Can I tell you one bit of news that's
one bit of just bit of news that I haven't
reported anywhere, but I feel it's appropriate to share it
with you guys. You know, our colleague Hassam Shabbat was
assassinated in late March by Israeli forces, and Israel had
alleged that he was a Hamas sniper in the bait
Hanun battalion of the Casam Brigades. I've been asking Palestinian

(34:04):
officials about this from Hamas, and what I was told
is that they actually did an audit. They wanted to
get to the bottom of this, and they actually had
Casam Brigades search documents, interview people. What I was told
is that they are saying that not only was Hassam
Shabbat not a sniper and not in the Casam Brigades,

(34:26):
that he was not even a member of Hamas. And
they formally told me, and they are alleging this that
the documents that Israel released purporting to show that Hassam
Shabbat and other journalists are members of Hamas are fabricated documents.
That's what Hamas told me on the record.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (34:45):
And the document that they were circulating about Hasam, it
suggested he would have been I think, like sixteen years
old when he was in some training camp. And what
I can't understand about Israeli fabricated documents is why they
don't make them more credible. Remember the one where they
the guy would have been eleven when he was in it. Like,
if you're going to fabricate the document, like, at least

(35:08):
try to make it like you you have a blank
space in front of you, Like the page is blank,
you can write, put whatever numbers you want in there.
Why why make it so incredible that that's that's interesting though,
that they that they dived into those that they dived
into those accusations. Do they do they plan on putting

(35:28):
anything officially.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
Out about that? It's and it's hard to there's no
document that I guess that can I.

Speaker 9 (35:34):
Was raising it with them because he's our colleague and
and so you know, I had really been pushing them
and saying, like, you know, can can you is there
any legitimacy to this? Is there something maybe that they're
basing it on? You know that I think that's the
responsible thing to do as a as a journalist when
these kinds of allegations are levied against a colleague. And
it's been you know, weeks and weeks I've been pushing
them on that, and finally they said, okay, we've done

(35:56):
We've done that, and we've done this audit. Now people
can say, oh, well, Hamas is going to say that.
Not really, I mean Hamas and Kassam are you know
they they claim their martyrs publicly and and so you know,
their initial response was no, nobody's ever heard of it.
And I said, no, well that you know, yeah, you
can say that, but I mean, have you have you
actually checked? And so I was quite surprised when I

(36:16):
met personally with them that they said, we actually did that,
and here's our finding.

Speaker 1 (36:22):
No, you're right, that's that.

Speaker 6 (36:23):
People should understand that point that if somebody dies who's
in Kassam, they very publicly will we'll claim him, say
like that, you know he was a martyr in art
in this and will list all of the different affiliations.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
So that's that. That is the history that's accurate.

Speaker 5 (36:38):
Yeah, Jeremy, thank you so much. The story was fantastic.

Speaker 8 (36:42):
Thanks Emily, Thank you, Ryan.

Speaker 4 (36:46):
Will.

Speaker 5 (36:47):
President Trump sent Hollywood reeling on Sunday after making an
announcement that he would be implementing one hundred percent tariffs
on films. Just films, by the way, we can get
into what all of that means, but that are produced
outside of the United States. Now we don't even know
what that means, because there's some questions of co production.
There's production in one place and also another place. But
let's just take a listen to Donald Trump on Sunday

(37:09):
explaining what he's doing.

Speaker 11 (37:10):
What they've done is other nations have been stealing the
the movies, the movie making capabilities from the United States.
And I said to a couple of people, what do
you think. I've got some very strong research over the
last week, and we're making.

Speaker 12 (37:26):
Very few movies.

Speaker 11 (37:27):
Now Hollywood is being destroyed.

Speaker 5 (37:29):
Now you have an.

Speaker 11 (37:30):
Incompetent, grossly in competent governor.

Speaker 10 (37:32):
That allows that to happen.

Speaker 5 (37:34):
So I'm not just.

Speaker 11 (37:34):
Blaming other nations, but other nations, a lot of them
have stolen our movie industry.

Speaker 7 (37:40):
And I'm saying, if they're.

Speaker 11 (37:42):
Not willing to make a movie inside the United States,
and we should have a tariff when movies that come in.
And not only that, governments are actually giving big money,
I mean they're supporting them facial.

Speaker 4 (37:54):
So that's sort of a threat to.

Speaker 13 (37:56):
Our country in a sense.

Speaker 11 (37:57):
And it's been a very pot movie maker's.

Speaker 5 (38:03):
Love and so you can see the truth social post
this is b too that Donald Trump put out that
again this all sent Hollywood absolutely reeling. You can see
here he narrowly mentions movies and he says movies coming
into our country that are produced in foreign lands. He
invokes the question of national security, and we can control
them throt B three whenever we want.

Speaker 14 (38:22):
This is the.

Speaker 5 (38:23):
Hollywood Reporter, which has had pretty good coverage of this
over the last forty eight hours. The Hollywood Reporter basically
is I don't want to say they're forced to admit this,
but Hollywood in general is kind of forced to admit
that it is true. There have been incentives for some
productions to go to places like Canada and Hungary. There's
production that happens, post production that happens in places.

Speaker 4 (38:43):
Like the UK.

Speaker 5 (38:44):
But what's I think also very interesting is this sounds
like Donald Trump is thinking about China in particular. So
when he is invoking national security, it sounds like he's
making an argument people like me made five years ago
about China, and since then, since the pandemic, actually a
lot of that has changed. I'm going to skip ahead
here to be five and we can just roll through

(39:05):
A and B. But if we look at B five
A this is a chart from the New York Times
and You can see here the top ten movies each
year in China. In the twenty tens, a lot of
them were actually Hollywood movies. Now a lot of them
are not Hollywood movies. Twenty twenty three, not a single
Hollywood movie in the top ten. And so what happened
is that Hollywood reached out to China. We've had Chris

(39:28):
Benton on to talk about how he was a leader
in trying to broker that relationship between Hollywood and China,
and it was a massive source of growth for Hollywood
as they were being wrecked by streaming, as everything was
being thrown into chaos by streaming. And here's another great
chart from the New York Times. Revenue from top grossing
movies is shrinking in China. So again, twenty twenty three,

(39:49):
non Hollywood movies all the revenue in China. So all
this is to say this has changed significantly over the
last five years. These questions of Nash security concerns that
were raised during the filming of Top Gun two, for example,
where you had the Pentagon heavily collaborating on a movie
that's all Pentagon equipment that's very common in Hollywood, has

(40:09):
been for a couple of decades. They literally cooperate with
the Department of Defense and bring in training exercises, and
that's what you've seen a lot of like Jerry Bruckheimer
movies and things like Top Gun.

Speaker 4 (40:20):
Frankly, so that.

Speaker 5 (40:22):
Was considered national security concern because China had censorship power.

Speaker 4 (40:27):
Over the script.

Speaker 5 (40:27):
They took the Taiwanese flag off Tom Cruise's bomber jacket,
and what's very cpirt.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
Why did he have a Taiwanese flag on his bomber jacket.

Speaker 4 (40:35):
It was in the eighties too. It's sort of like
part of the whole thing.

Speaker 5 (40:40):
But anyway, this has already changed so much. Hollywood feels
like China has already learned everything that it can and
is already making some of these incredible movies by using
what Donald Trump says there about how they're taking American
film nohow.

Speaker 4 (40:57):
I mean that sort of has.

Speaker 5 (40:59):
Already that process is kind of already played out, and
China isn't even the concern anymore because Hollywood isn't cooperating
with China at the rate that it was just a
couple of years ago.

Speaker 4 (41:08):
So it's it's a really interesting move.

Speaker 5 (41:10):
I mean, you can I guess reshore some stuff that's
been pushed to Canada in the UK, but a lot
of this. First of all, movies do need to be
filmed on location in other parts of the world, and
some of it is just the For example, for atasit
to you Ryan the strikes in Hollywood a couple of
years ago, it costs more money to make movies in

(41:30):
the United States that does in other places. And so
if you're also not dealing with ensuring that Hollywood is
paying writers in this age of IP questions and technological upheaval, actors,
anybody in this space. I mean, it's just an enormous,
thorny challenge. One hundred percent tariff maybe can have some effect,

(41:51):
but it'll have to be like all the other tariffs,
augmented with other significant policies.

Speaker 6 (41:56):
Yeah, it's another example of us trying to you know,
compete with the rest of.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
The world while the rest of the world is.

Speaker 6 (42:05):
Able to do sophisticated strategic policy making and we just don't,
like we we have tariffs. In this case, Trump is
gonna I'm gonna put a tariff. Well, and then you're like, oh,
what does that mean is does it get tariff because
like one of your editors was in Paris or London
or and yes, like it's not just other countries like Atlanta.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
You know, it has been pulling a rug out from.

Speaker 6 (42:29):
Under Hollywood as well, by reaching out to these production
companies and telling them if you come here, we will
give you this tax break, this this expat so the
way to well, I mean, it's also just kind of
industrial policy in another way, like you're you're sub you're
subsidizing the thing that you want. And so the US

(42:50):
would then have to say, okay, Hungary just doing this.
You need to negotiate with hunger in Canada and say
stop doing this or else we're going to retally against
X and like that. That's how you do a kind
of trade war, because this is you know, this is
a service that is an export of ours, and we
import your maple syrup and we're gonna be mean to

(43:11):
it if you're if you don't stop subsidizing these Toronto
film shoots, or we equalize the subsidies and go to
the Hollywood and say, look, if you do it here,
it's worth it to us as a taxpayer to match
those subsidies.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
And that would require Congress. Good luck with that.

Speaker 5 (43:33):
So Yeah, let's roll, Howard letnink because actually filming it
Canda has been happening for a very long time. So
this is B six Howard Latink talking about the policy.

Speaker 14 (43:41):
So Mark Carney, whom I managed, Essential Banker, you're gonna
are you optimistic? Can we make a deal with Canada?

Speaker 15 (43:48):
I think it's really complex. I think this is really
complex because they have been basically feeding off of us
for decades upon decades upon decades, right, they have their
socialist regime and it's basically feeding off of America. I mean,
the President calls that out all the time. Why do
we make cars in Canada? Why do we do our
films in Canada? Come on? So, I think the President's

(44:11):
going to have I think it's going to be a
fascinating meeting. I'm glad I'm going to be there listening.
But it's going to be a fascinating meeting tomorrow.

Speaker 5 (44:17):
And of course that meeting is happening later today, Donald
Trump and Mark Carney. So it's possible Ryan that one
read on the situation is that Donald Trump was trying
to put more on the table ahead of his meeting
with Mark Carney. I mean, this is not an insignificant
part of.

Speaker 4 (44:30):
The Canadian economy.

Speaker 5 (44:31):
There have been productions in Canada for a long time,
and Hollywood has done movies and TV shows there for
a long time. Trump's true social posts again only mentioned movies.
This is another question that the Hollywood Reporter has raised
is first of all, how are you tariffing things that
are coming across borders when it's a lot of this
is just streaming. It's a significant like, I mean, some

(44:52):
of people are buying DVDs that are produced.

Speaker 4 (44:55):
It's a very the.

Speaker 5 (44:59):
Data that is encoded onto a DVD, I guess potentially
is produced in China if it's post production, or I
mean in Canada it's post production. But I guess it's
possible that Trump just wanted to throw some leverage out
there ahead of his conversation with Mark Karney.

Speaker 4 (45:13):
That might be one way to look it up.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
It's probably more animalistic Trump. Trump loves Hollywood like he
has a love hate relationship with Hollywood, and you know,
like an old man, he sees that it was better
when he was younger, and he's right about that. What
he doesn't want to think about is that.

Speaker 6 (45:31):
The biggest blow probably you know, to Hollywood is his
trade war with China. One of the first responses from
China was, we're going to significantly reduce the amount of
the movies that we're gonna, you know, allow from Hollywood
into China.

Speaker 4 (45:47):
Even it stopped significantly, Even though.

Speaker 6 (45:49):
It was down, it's still on an absolute basis, represents
enormous sums of money. And that's that's the thing about
the Chinese market. Now it can be maybe we're not
in the top ten, but it's still huge amounts of money.

Speaker 5 (46:04):
Right, Yeah, I mean it was a it was a
really big part of their growth plan going forward, and
then sort of the pandemic made them realize that probably
wouldn't be the case.

Speaker 4 (46:13):
But yes, there's still you know.

Speaker 5 (46:15):
I imagine a decent drink of money on the table,
but a ton of money on the table in Canada, UK,
Hungary where some of these productions have been moved.

Speaker 4 (46:23):
So we'll see.

Speaker 6 (46:24):
Well, looks like twenty twenty three, Hollywood firms earned eight
billion in.

Speaker 5 (46:27):
China and a lot of that is probably on older
stuff too, would be my guess.

Speaker 4 (46:33):
That's what will is that box office a lot.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
Of money revenue?

Speaker 4 (46:38):
I don't know, Okay, Yeah, So also it's.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Way down but it's a lot of money, and that's
my point.

Speaker 5 (46:44):
Yeah, yeah, of course, especially when they don't have a
lot of money to toss around like they're doing great
right now.

Speaker 4 (46:50):
Anyway, all that.

Speaker 5 (46:51):
Is to say, and we will see how Donald Trump's
meeting with Mark Carney goes today. We will see how
real this policy actually is going forward, you know, if
Donald Trump wants it to be real, even just the
process of implementing it. Given everything we just laid out,
does it apply to things that are co produced in
other countries, that are partially produced in one country? Does
it apply to TV shows? Does it apply just to

(47:12):
box offices, does it apply to streaming? There's really no
clear idea of what this would look like, so Hollywood
is left to scramble and lobby and I guess.

Speaker 4 (47:22):
Hope for the best.

Speaker 5 (47:23):
So we'll see what happens, and we should get to
Jannis Faa Fucus Now, Ryan, all.

Speaker 1 (47:28):
Right, stick around for that.

Speaker 6 (47:32):
We're moving now to Jannis Vera, Faucus writer and former
Greek finance minister Giannis thank you.

Speaker 1 (47:38):
So much for joining us.

Speaker 7 (47:40):
Peaks make great pleasure to thank you for having me.

Speaker 6 (47:43):
And so let's start with Howard Lutnik who's the kind
of man about cable lately? Commerce Secretary for President Donald
Trump speaking yesterday, I believe this on CNBC.

Speaker 14 (47:54):
So of course it's going to be a top ten
what's up a top ten economy from Asia?

Speaker 15 (48:00):
Listen, the Asian markets are very complex and there's a
lot of talking to do right. To get these things right,
you've got to do a lot of talking that We've
only got ninety days and we all got sixty left,
so these things are coming, but you gotta be patient. Now,
we're going to get some deals done pretty soon. The
President will decide when he announces it. Because remember I'm
as Commerce Secretary. I do the work, but the boss,

(48:23):
and you know the boss as well as anybody in
the world, and this is his deal to me, I'm told,
and his deal to do.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
No I appreciate that.

Speaker 6 (48:30):
Yes, that was on Fox Business, but I want to
play that clip because as we've been trying to report
on the Trump Administration's ongoing trade war, we've tried to
give kind of the best possible perspective, the best put
the Trump administration's argument in the best possible light so
that people can agree with or disagree with it, and
I've had a really hard time figuring out what it is.

(48:53):
I don't exactly know what they're trying to accomplish, and
some of your writing has been really helpful in laying
out what possibly could be driving some of what the
thinking is behind the Trump administration's kind of reorganizing of
the world economy at this point in time, What do

(49:14):
you think the Trump administration is trying to accomplish.

Speaker 7 (49:20):
Two basic things.

Speaker 16 (49:22):
The first thing they want to do is they want
to devalue, substantially devalue the dollar while simultaneously, and that
may sound like a part of expert I don't believe
it is maintaining the exobitant privilege, a so called exobitant
privilege of the dollar, maintaining its hegemonic presence in the weldicon.
That's one of the possibly the most significant goal. The

(49:46):
second thing they're trying to do is essentially tie together
the extent to which the Trump administration is going to
assault it's allies and foes with Trump with Trump's tariffs.
To tie this in to the extent to which tips

(50:10):
are going to be used. So use tartiffs in order
to enhance the penetration of the American military industrial complex
in other people's economies and to calibrate that.

Speaker 7 (50:23):
Penetration by the means of the tips.

Speaker 16 (50:25):
But the first task, which I mentioned, seems to be
judging by what Scott Pasient is saying, what seven miran
are saying, it seems to be the number one priority.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
It seems to be working right.

Speaker 6 (50:37):
And what would be the consequence if they do successfully
devalue the dollar but maintain the hegemonic presence?

Speaker 5 (50:44):
And can I also say Joannest, especially in the context
of Trump pulling back originally because of what he saw
on the bond market, I think he said people were
getting quote a little yippie. How does that all? How
does all of this fit together?

Speaker 16 (50:58):
Well, there's no doubt that he got the scare. He
felt that less trusts moment may be coming his way, undoubtedly,
so he stepped back. But he's going to step forward
again in his usual shuffle. But allow me to just

(51:18):
by the way less I am misunderstood. I'm not supporting
the Trumpian project, but I do believe that those of
us who are politically opposed to it, we have a
duty to understand it and not to dismiss them as
a bunch of Neanderthals, which is what the liberal establishment,
to the detriment, I have to add, are doing.

Speaker 7 (51:37):
So.

Speaker 16 (51:38):
Look, if you heard Scott Bessant at the IMF the
other day, he was really very clear. He talked about
the Breton Woods institutions, he talked about the Nixon shock
in nineteen seventy one, and essentially what he was telling
his audience was, and it's not any rational perspective to

(51:59):
present the world.

Speaker 7 (52:00):
What you were saying was, Look, folks.

Speaker 16 (52:03):
Ever since we became a deficit country at the end
of the nineteen sixties, by ninety seventy, America was a
deficit country. We achieved something quite spectacular. We managed to
grow our hegemonic power in proportion to our trade deficit
and our budget deficit. That has never happened before. No
empire has managed to grow its power while going into

(52:26):
the red. And the United States managed to do it
at the expense of the American working class, at the
expense of a very substantial portion of the American middle class.
But we did it, And then he adds, I don't
believe we can carry on doing it because there is
a limit beyond which trade deficits are not sustainable. Anymore,

(52:48):
and you see the success of the Nixon administration, the
Cardon administration, the Reagan administration, and so on and so forth,
was that they managed to make other people's capitalists pay
for the American deficits in a manner which enriched violently

(53:08):
reached the American renteer class.

Speaker 7 (53:10):
But that gave rise in the end to an incongruity.

Speaker 16 (53:16):
If you look at the dollar world, the world out there,
the economic sphere that is denominated in dollars, it is gigantic,
and it has been growing since the ninety seventies. But
the manufacturing capacity, the real material economy of the United States,
on which this dollar world is parasitic has been shrinking

(53:37):
and shrinking and shrinking. So you have a huge parasite
and a tiny little organism on which the big parasite
is being parasitic too. So their concern is that this
is becoming completely disproportional. They need to shrink the dollar
world and increase the extent to which the American economic
and manufacturer stuff.

Speaker 7 (53:56):
This is what they want.

Speaker 16 (53:58):
So from their perspective, at the valuation of the dollar
by around thirty percent, which is ballpark, what they want
will restore something like an equilibrium, not an equilibrium, but
it will take the whole gamut closer to an equilibrium.
But they're very, very worried that this devaluation should not

(54:21):
be allowed to diminish the exorbitant privilege of the dollar.
And this is why they're playing hardball with China. This
is why they're playing hardball with the Japanese. They're telling
the Japanese, sell a chunk of your one point two
trillion dollars of savings, but don't buy Japanese yen. Do
not buy the euro, do not buy the Chinese one.

(54:42):
We will tell you what to buy. So tariffs are
in that context, in the context of present.

Speaker 7 (54:48):
Their side show. They may be very high.

Speaker 16 (54:51):
Up the list of priorities of the Great Donald, but
not his economic team. His economic team is far more
interested in what they call the imbalancing of the dollar,
paper money trail and the actual productive capacities of the
United States.

Speaker 4 (55:09):
And let's put see one on the screen.

Speaker 5 (55:11):
So this is from Arnold Bertrand who points out that China, Japan,
South Korea, and the countries of Asen just issued a
joint statement in which they take a unified stance against
quote escalating trade protectionism, clear reference to Trump's tariffs.

Speaker 4 (55:24):
And I want to.

Speaker 5 (55:25):
Ask you, honest, now that we've sort of established, I
think very accurately what the administration's goal is, and that's
hazy and a lot of corners of the media where
they have this distorted idea of what the administration is
actually trying to doing, is actually trying to do? How
would you say that they're doing towards their own goal?
If that is their own goal, how is the progress

(55:47):
is it working, let's say, on their own terms.

Speaker 7 (55:51):
Allow me to be frank, it is far too early
to know.

Speaker 16 (55:56):
Imagine we had the time machine and we went back
to let's say October ninety seventy one, a couple of
months after the Nixon Shock, it would have been impossible
to predict whether the Nixon shock could have worked, because
it took it a decade for the Nixon Shock to
be implemented fully. Which means that the Trump administration, this

(56:16):
Trump administration, can all explaining it, to.

Speaker 1 (56:18):
Explain to us what the Nixon shock is.

Speaker 16 (56:21):
In nineteen seventy one, fifteenth of August, those old enough
can remember that because it was a shocking day. It
was the day when effectively Nixon blew up the international
monetary system that the United States had painstakingly put together
at the Breton Moods Conference in ninety forty four. The
golden age of American capitals with global capitalism, which was

(56:43):
the nineteen fifties and sixties as well. We all know
and remember it was predicated. It was built on that
monetary system. It was a remarkable system, come to think
of it. It had the anchor was the dollar. People
say that it was the gold, because indeed the United
States guaranteed anyone with thirty five dollars an ounce of

(57:03):
gold from Fort Knox, But.

Speaker 7 (57:05):
That was a side show. It was more for show.

Speaker 16 (57:08):
The reality was that it was a monetary system predicated
on the United States dollar, which was in fixed exchange rates,
completely pegged to every other currency in Europe and in
Japan and the Japanese yen. For years, for decades, there
were no fluctuations in exchange rates. Interstates were stuck at

(57:30):
around four and a half percent plus on minus zero
point one zero point two percent.

Speaker 7 (57:35):
It was wonderfully boring.

Speaker 16 (57:38):
You know, the whole financial establisher imagine, you know, you
never had to check the exchange rates or interstates because
we're for decades they were the same, and it was
a golden era because what was the essence of the
Breton Wood system. It was that the United States exited
the Second World War as the only creditor nation, as

(57:59):
the only plus nation, the only country with a large,
gigantic trade surplus. It was the only country that was
not in ashes after the Second World War, and the
idea was to maintain those surpluses. The American administration would
do whatever it took in order to dollarize Europe and Japan,
essentially essentially taking part of its surpluses, sending it to

(58:22):
Europe into Japan, either in the form of aid or loans,
private loans, public loans, so that the Europeans that the
Japanese could afford would have enough dollars to purchase the
American experts. And this worked brilliantly until the United States
no longer had the surplus.

Speaker 7 (58:38):
And with typical.

Speaker 16 (58:39):
Bravado brigard Nixon, there wasn't Nixon himself, there were some
very interesting people around him. The Nixon team comprised Henry Kissinger,
who was the National Security Advisor at the time before
he became the Secretary of State. It was John Connolly,
the former Texas governor Democrat who abscondent joined the Nixon

(59:02):
administration became the Treasury secretary. Yes, indeed he was in
the car when JFK was shot and primarily a young
man called Paul Volke that no one knew at the
time who was the real brains of the Nixon shock.
But there is one mentioning that, and thank you for
giving the opportunity to say that the Nition Shock took

(59:23):
place on the fifteenth of August ninety seventy one.

Speaker 7 (59:25):
It was major.

Speaker 16 (59:26):
You know, Nixon sent Connelly, his Treasury secretary, to the
Europeans who were pulling their hair out because the dollar
divided so fast and essentially inflation and unemployment was coming
the way of the Europeans as a result of that
move by Nixon, and Connelly very arrogantly and aggressively looked

(59:50):
at them with cynicism, I would say, and said to them, guys,
the dollar is our currency, but from today it is
your problem. So when people say that, you know, what
Trump did is unprecedented, and never before has America treated this.

Speaker 7 (01:00:06):
Allies so badly, that's rubbish.

Speaker 16 (01:00:09):
They did it in ninety seventy one and they kept
doing it for years and years. And indeed, Paul Volker,
before he was appointed by Carter chairman of the FED,
a couple of months before that in nineteen eighty seventy five,
in actually in ninety seventy eight, if I remember correctly,
he gave a speech that the University of Warwick in England,
which was remarkable because there he outlined the plan and

(01:00:32):
the plan was and I am quoting here the button
because I've it's etched in my mind this speech of his.

Speaker 7 (01:00:39):
He said, the.

Speaker 16 (01:00:40):
United States has opted, for reasons of its own national interest,
for the control disintegration of the world economy.

Speaker 7 (01:00:49):
Does this remind you of anything?

Speaker 16 (01:00:50):
This is sevity had the control disintegration, and the Japanese
and the Europeans were pulling their hair out. So but
you see, it took ten years because it wasn't just
an some shog ninety seventy one. It was a content
administration that continued that by appointing that's the same man,
you know, Paul Volga to be the head of the FED.
And then Reagan continued it, and then Bush continued it,

(01:01:11):
and Clinton continued it.

Speaker 7 (01:01:13):
So whether you know.

Speaker 16 (01:01:14):
This, this is my excuse for saying it's too early
to judge whether the truck shock is going to work,
because the question is is there going to be this
continuity in implementing the basic idea which people like Scott
Peasant are outlining.

Speaker 6 (01:01:31):
And so I often also fall into the trap of
thinking that these are Neanderthals that are organizing this policy,
but I agree and follow along with their analysis all
the way up until basically implementation. When it comes to
the implementation, it feels like there's no and therefore this

(01:01:54):
is how it's going to work out. And maybe I'm
missing this as well, but they are you know, effectively
you know, devaluing the dollar, creating conditions that could you know,
create some manufacturing turnaround without having done the work of
giving us the foundation on which we could build a
manufacturing capacity, like you still need things and people in

(01:02:17):
order to feed that. You know, economics by itself is
just just magic. Like it can't you know, by magic,
It can't just create things out of nothing. And if
China tells us, well, we're not sending you any semiconductors,
We're not sending you any any of the magnets, You're
not going to get any of the fund refined rare
earths that you're manufacturing capacity needs. We're going to have
a collapse in our manufacturing base relative to last year,

(01:02:39):
and then the politics are going to reverse and end
this entire experiment before it even you know, gets out,
gets out of the lab And that would answer, then
answer your question of whether it's working, because in order
for it to work, you need political continuity, and you
can't have political continuity. I wouldn't think if you get
a significant recession and you don't see any green shoots

(01:02:59):
of Manu factoring out of it. So what am I
missing there?

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
Like?

Speaker 6 (01:03:03):
What is best and see as the as the potential
for us to revitalize our manufacturing capacity while simultaneously cutting
ourselves off from trade.

Speaker 5 (01:03:13):
And you honest, I'll just add there now saying the
tax cut bill that Trump hopes to pass over the
summer will include like one hundred percent right offs on.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Building expenses something of an answer.

Speaker 5 (01:03:24):
Retroactive to January twenty. So I don't know how you
would react to all of that.

Speaker 16 (01:03:28):
Yeah, well, I'll sell the last point you made about
the tax scats. We keep forgetting that Trump's shotgun has
two battles, one of them contained the tariffs. The second
one the tax scats. The second has not been fired yet.
And I think this is a very important part of
their plan for attracting foreign capital, particularly particularly German capital,

(01:03:54):
or Japanese capital, or Taiwanese capital in the United States.

Speaker 7 (01:03:58):
But yes, look, you have every reason.

Speaker 16 (01:04:01):
To be despondent about the lack of preparation, the the
chaotic nature of all these announcements, the very sloppy language
that Donald Trump in particular uses reciprocal tariffs.

Speaker 7 (01:04:19):
There's no reciproces in what he's doing.

Speaker 16 (01:04:21):
He's just going all out with Jake and the tariffs
in proportion to the trade deficit that.

Speaker 7 (01:04:26):
The United States has vis a very particular countries.

Speaker 16 (01:04:29):
So yes, I mean it is a bit you will
excuse my unscientific term, it's a bit of a shit show.
But then again, then again, I have to take you
back to nineteen seventy one.

Speaker 7 (01:04:39):
It was exactly that.

Speaker 16 (01:04:40):
In ninety seventy You know, Richard Dix was not the
most coherent for reasonable people in the world, right, he
was probably one of the worst ones. He also on
the fifteen of August. What we tend to forget is
that not only did he uncoupled the United States dollar
from gold and had the massive.

Speaker 7 (01:05:00):
Evaluation of the dollar. But he also did something else.
He introduced tariffs ten percent tariffs.

Speaker 16 (01:05:06):
Immediately the same day, and then he took those back
three months later. So that's why I keep insisting that
we've seen this play before, and we have seen the chaos,
and we have seen how remarkably it worked. Not on
behalf of the working class of the United States, of
the middle class of the United States, they were destroyed.

(01:05:28):
I mean, as you know, in your country, hourly real
wages are still below the level that they used to
be at in nineteen seventy three. When Trump talks about
the carnage in the heartlands of the United States, he's
completely right. Of course, he uses this to exploit the
people who vote for him and trust him, and I

(01:05:51):
think they trust him in a manner which they will
live to regret one at some point. But we've seen
all this before. Now let's get to the point. Is
this going to work or not? Well, I don't think
it's going to work. I think that it's not going
to work from the perspective of the mega base who

(01:06:13):
put their trust in Trump to bring back a sufficient
number of jobs and equality of jobs that would somehow
restore their capacity to dream, the American dream. And the
reason is not that capital is not going to rush
to the United States. I have no doubt that it

(01:06:34):
is already rushing into the United States. I've spoken to
people in Germany, I've spoken to people in France, I've
spoken to people in Japan, and they are increasing very
substantially the amount of investment they are going to be
putting into the United States. That is not a problem.
Capital is flowing already in the United States. But I

(01:06:55):
don't think the number of jobs is going to be
proportional to the amount of capital. Because if you think
about take Apple for instance, when Apple introduced manufacturing again
in the United States some years ago, they built that
factory that makes their laptops MacBook pros in somewhere near Austin, Texas. Well,

(01:07:17):
the number of jobs was miniskilled because of automation. So
a lot of the new manufacturing capacity is going to
create a jobless search.

Speaker 7 (01:07:26):
So this is problem number one.

Speaker 16 (01:07:27):
But allow me to tell you what I think is
the real the real danger that Trump should be thinking about,
you know, especially during.

Speaker 7 (01:07:37):
The night keeping him awake.

Speaker 16 (01:07:40):
If I were him, I would worry about success because
if he is success in bringing back manufacturing to the
United States to the extent that he says that he will,
which I don't think he will. But let's say that
he does. Then what happens Then the trade DEFs of
the United States shrinks. But the great deficit of the

(01:08:00):
United States is the flip side of the massive rents
extracted from the global economy by American redeers. Because, come
to think of it, it is the American trade deficit
which keeps German factories churning, Japanese factories and Chinese factories.
And it is the dollars that these capitalists in Germany,

(01:08:24):
Japan and in China collect, which they accumulate and then
they bring it back to or send it to New
York to Wall State to be recycled in the form
of US government debt, treasuries, some equities, and a lot
of real estate. So the reason why financial markets have

(01:08:44):
been doing so well over the last forty years or so,
the reason why realtors like Trump have been amassing these
gigantic rents for the last forty years is.

Speaker 7 (01:08:57):
The American trade deficity. So what happens when eliminated.

Speaker 16 (01:09:00):
If he succeeds in eliminating, he's going to have some
really very cross re reenteers, financiers, and realtors. His tribe
are going to be living with him. Can he sustain
that or would he choose to betray the working class
that voted for him?

Speaker 7 (01:09:18):
I suspect it will be the letter.

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
And so yeah, so what would that look like?

Speaker 6 (01:09:22):
So let's say the rentier class is now getting pinched,
and it's incredible irony that it is a kingpin of
the rentier class that you know, he's literally a real
estate developer that is, that is leading this operation that
that then pinches people like him?

Speaker 1 (01:09:41):
What what? What?

Speaker 12 (01:09:41):
Then?

Speaker 6 (01:09:42):
What then happens if you no longer have these dollars
you know, flowing out to German factories, Chinese factories, Japanese
factories and then recycled back into into Wall Street and
then circulated throughout the US rentier class?

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
Like what?

Speaker 12 (01:09:57):
So?

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
What what does happen?

Speaker 5 (01:09:59):
Like?

Speaker 6 (01:09:59):
How do the how do the what are the factories do?
What are the and what are the rentiers do?

Speaker 7 (01:10:04):
Well?

Speaker 16 (01:10:04):
You see, I don't think we will reach the point
where they're in tears.

Speaker 7 (01:10:08):
Interests will be so seriously jeopardized.

Speaker 16 (01:10:12):
That is, even if the trumpion playbook is implemented and
starts working and the trade deficits starts shrinking, at some
point the administration itself will stop it from shrinking. They
will say, okay, well, we have reduced it by I
don't know what percentage. We have recalibrated, rebalanced the dollar

(01:10:36):
world and the manufacturing world, the US manufacturing world to
some extent, and that's enough.

Speaker 7 (01:10:42):
And now we are going to do.

Speaker 16 (01:10:43):
Other things like, for instance, we are going to give
even more tax cuts. We are going to allow Elmask
to go crazy with his uh you know, tesla autonomously
driven vehicles, deregulate completely, put all our eggs in the
big tech basket, which is where the United States still

(01:11:05):
has a significant advantage visa vidas of the world and
to some extent China, and accumulate trends in that regard.
But that will create political cares because the megabase will
have been betrayed firstly by Obama in two thousand and eight,
then by Biden, and now by Trump two point zero.

(01:11:28):
And therefore nothing good is going to transpire when it
comes to the quality of what we call our democratic
process here in the West, be.

Speaker 4 (01:11:41):
Honest, very focus. Thank you so much for joining us
as was fascinating and very helpful. We appreciate it.

Speaker 7 (01:11:46):
Thank you. I enjoyed it.

Speaker 6 (01:11:50):
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was on Bill Maher talking
about AOC and Bernie.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
Let's roll over this. They gained the system, they.

Speaker 17 (01:11:58):
Changed the horizon for twenty twenty eight in the Democratic
primary right now.

Speaker 7 (01:12:03):
Yeah, Bernie and AOC.

Speaker 17 (01:12:05):
No, they got the biggest crowds.

Speaker 7 (01:12:07):
That doesn't matter.

Speaker 8 (01:12:08):
It wants sustain itself.

Speaker 17 (01:12:10):
But right now they have no leader, you know. But
this is the thing the Republican Party has to understand too.
Both parties lost in the last election. Trump won, okay,
and I don't know if that's going to transfer. We
should have won four more seats in the Senate if
you look at the last seventy races for the Senate,
sixty nine and folly.

Speaker 8 (01:12:28):
But exactly that.

Speaker 4 (01:12:29):
I think it's more versus Younkin.

Speaker 17 (01:12:30):
That's where I see it, Youngkin would be. I think
it's going to go back, get adjacent, and then Vansen
Junior will fight it out for that crowd. You're the
AOC and Bernie and who's at the top of taking
a lead right now?

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
Who's at the.

Speaker 17 (01:12:43):
Top of that ticket, Kevin, Because if it's if it's
not Bernie, what he's going to be vice president?

Speaker 15 (01:12:48):
And wait his turn, it would be Vernie's been running
each time.

Speaker 8 (01:12:51):
I'm just saying who's in the.

Speaker 14 (01:12:52):
Lead right now.

Speaker 17 (01:12:53):
I don't think that nobody ends up.

Speaker 12 (01:12:54):
But big crowds don't necessarily mean who's the right candidate?

Speaker 7 (01:12:57):
You know when I started.

Speaker 17 (01:12:58):
But it drives, It drives where the ideas are going
to go. Is going to drive them money for a while.

Speaker 12 (01:13:03):
It doesn't make them the winner.

Speaker 8 (01:13:05):
It doesn't make it a winner.

Speaker 17 (01:13:06):
You'll have to wait till you'll get two years out
and then you'll start seeing these governors they start showing solutions.
You also have to know what is the issue going
to be. Are we going to have a foreign policy issue?
We're going to have an economic issue? And who's been
the best and leading in that? But right now, for
the Democrats, who's going to lead for the next two years?
The money is going to AOC outraised everybody in the House,

(01:13:26):
and it's all small doughters. This is exactly where Trump
was when no one gave him a chance. Is empty.
He outraised everybody else. So that's where the base is at,
right and so what will happen. It'll move after the
next midterm elections.

Speaker 6 (01:13:40):
We do know what AOC will not be doing, and
that's running for the top spot on the Oversight Committit.

Speaker 1 (01:13:46):
If you can put a zero zero here, she.

Speaker 6 (01:13:50):
Says, Jerry Connolly stepped aside, who had beat her in
the race for ranking them on oversight, and she says
she's not running this time. She says, quote is actually
clear to me that the underlying dynamics in the caucus
have not shifted with respect to seniority as much as
I think would be necessary. And so I believe I'll
be staying put at Energy and Commerce unquote, because if

(01:14:11):
she would be ranking member, then she couldn't serve on
Energy and Commerce Committee, which is an a committee.

Speaker 1 (01:14:16):
It's very they used.

Speaker 6 (01:14:18):
To be a powerful committee back when committees mattered. Meeties
don't really matter anymore. But it's not there's not zero.

Speaker 5 (01:14:25):
It sounds like what she's saying that, if you read
between the lines, is that leadership is still trying to
wield significant power over oversight.

Speaker 6 (01:14:31):
She feels like, if I don't think it's leadership, I
think what she's saying is what she means, which is
that the caucus itself is so filled with people who
believe in the dogma of seniority and that you rise
up through the ranks based on how many terms you've served,

(01:14:54):
and that they're not willing to upend that even at
this moment, that seniority trumps everything else. And so if
because you know there's a there's there's a very uh.
The incentive for each member of Congress is to support
the seniority system because it's not a merit system.

Speaker 1 (01:15:11):
It just means if you stick.

Speaker 6 (01:15:13):
Around long enough, you will matter. If you suck, it
doesn't matter, nothing matters. You will eventually get your turn.
As Connley called, he said, I've never gotten to be.

Speaker 1 (01:15:20):
A ranking member.

Speaker 4 (01:15:21):
Don't ask Tony Hoyer about that, though.

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
Well, yeah, the very top thing. You got to compete.

Speaker 18 (01:15:28):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:15:29):
And yes, because he was he had.

Speaker 6 (01:15:30):
Six years of seniority on on Pelosi, who he allegedly
allegedly went on a date when their interns back in
the fifties, which is hilarious. It was the fifties interning
from a Maryland senator.

Speaker 4 (01:15:44):
Genuinely hilarious. Before the Civil Rights Act is.

Speaker 1 (01:15:46):
When they well won a date.

Speaker 6 (01:15:48):
Yeah, even before the fifty seven Civil Rights Act, many events.
So she's saying that she wouldn't have a chance. And
I think losing once is hey, you take your shot,
you show your play on the inside, to play the
inside game. You maybe even have a shot at winning.
You lose, you know, then you go out and go
back to what you were doing. Lose twice, you start
to get the stench of loser on you. So's so

(01:16:13):
she's just not going.

Speaker 1 (01:16:13):
To go for it this time.

Speaker 5 (01:16:14):
And this is becoming something of a panic because we
have this other clip.

Speaker 4 (01:16:18):
This is D two.

Speaker 5 (01:16:20):
So not only was Bill Maher pushing back vociferously in
that clip to Kevin McCarthy's point in a way that
you know, I think maybe did reek of a little
bit of I shouldn't say little, but significant concern.

Speaker 6 (01:16:32):
Yeah, wishful thinking in his party. Right, Please tell me
this can't be true.

Speaker 5 (01:16:36):
Well, and this is an interesting divide on the right
is that you have people like Kevin McCarthy, who I
think are accurately pointing out that this is where the
energy is on the left, and then you have people
who say AOC's political career on.

Speaker 4 (01:16:48):
A national level is done on the water, done in
the water.

Speaker 5 (01:16:50):
She is a joke, she's way too radical, but she's
both of those things can't be.

Speaker 4 (01:16:56):
True at the same time.

Speaker 5 (01:16:58):
And so there's some people on the right like, it's it,
it's AOC, and then oh, but also AOC is a
disaster for Democrats, so let's go ahead and enroll D two.
This is part of an MSNBC panel where they started
to talk about this.

Speaker 19 (01:17:11):
They've got to get out of the policy discussion and
the policy fight and focus on a purpose. They've got
to broaden the party, and they've got to go with
a forty year old because they do well with Obama,
Jack Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and they've got to They've got
to well they they've got to get So to me,
I would get in a room and call a summit,

(01:17:32):
and I would say just.

Speaker 4 (01:17:35):
To not go off his hides behind a clipboard. That's
the Democrat Party.

Speaker 19 (01:17:41):
The Democratic Party will never listen to Aaron, but they
should hear erin and say the following.

Speaker 8 (01:17:46):
You guys are in disarray. You're having a civil war.

Speaker 19 (01:17:49):
You're going hard left with AOC and Bernie very bad mistake.

Speaker 7 (01:17:53):
Country doesn't want that.

Speaker 8 (01:17:54):
I can't tell.

Speaker 13 (01:18:03):
I know, but point look California we got twenty six
thousand people, twenty thousand in Salt Lake City thirty six
thousand California, twelve thousand, in Idaho, Denver, Colorado thirty four thousand,
and on Arizona twenty three thousand.

Speaker 18 (01:18:18):
I mean what Kirts need to do is in power
of the Alyssa Slockins, the tim Ryans, the seth Multons,
the moderate young Democrats that they've been head padding for
the last ten years and saying just wait, you're child.

Speaker 4 (01:18:29):
Yeah, but when is till their turn?

Speaker 13 (01:18:31):
But let me ask, I mean the all of those people.
Do you think any of those people have to take
to run for president and win?

Speaker 5 (01:18:38):
No?

Speaker 18 (01:18:39):
Because the Democratic Party has not conditioned them.

Speaker 4 (01:18:41):
No.

Speaker 13 (01:18:41):
I mean in the in a perfect world, do they
really have what it takes to run for president of
these United States?

Speaker 12 (01:18:48):
And when.

Speaker 4 (01:18:50):
Senate candidates they're.

Speaker 18 (01:18:51):
Greed, Well, I think they have a better chance than
the progressive people that alien.

Speaker 5 (01:18:56):
I feel like Stefan watching that clip, like this MSN
or the CNN pannel that's what it was, has everything.
It has Anthony Scamucci, a man in a cowboy hat
and sc cup in a demon gumpsuit screaming about Alyssa's luck.

Speaker 1 (01:19:09):
Well, it's such a funny network for it.

Speaker 6 (01:19:11):
It's such a funny network because the MSABC is almost
the same that it's a center left network and they've
been covering the Democratic Party sympathetically for you know, for
ten years, ten plus years, and Bernie Sanders rose in
twenty fifteen, and they still don't have as far as
I can tell. So definitely not in that panel. I

(01:19:33):
don't think anywhere on the network somebody who aligns with
that major faction of the party. Yeah, not just people
like looking at them like zoo creatures.

Speaker 5 (01:19:43):
They have like Bernie curious people like a like maybe
like a Van Jones, I.

Speaker 1 (01:19:47):
Van Jones, I know, I know. He just took a wall.
You take a hundred million dollars from Jeff Bezos a
couple of years ago.

Speaker 5 (01:19:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so this isn't it.

Speaker 6 (01:19:56):
Was a mauist in like the nineties. It was literally
like uh now as the activists in San Francisco.

Speaker 4 (01:20:02):
Yeah, it was why he was.

Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
That would be they don't have they didn't have him
on that.

Speaker 5 (01:20:08):
Yeah, No, it's amazing there are like this is again,
it's something that a lot of people in the right
don't understandbout these networks.

Speaker 4 (01:20:12):
They are center left. They just actually hate the left left.

Speaker 5 (01:20:16):
It's almost more than they hate the center right. Given
that Anthony Scaramucci was on that panel. Let's take a
look at AOC being disrupted by protests. I think this
was at a town hall. This is D three.

Speaker 6 (01:20:48):
Question, So sorry, that was pretty hard to hear, but
you probably saw clips of it going around. Basically, it's
somebody protesting her out a town hall, saying you're a
war criminal. What are you going to do about the
genocide in Palestine, the genocide in Gaza?

Speaker 1 (01:21:11):
And I do think for.

Speaker 6 (01:21:13):
Maybe ever, but for a very long time, she's going
to have to answer for her convention speech where she
said that Kamala Harris is working tirelessly for a ceasefire,
because at the time, nobody really believed that she was
working tirelessly for a ceasefire, Nora that Biden was working
tirelessly for a ceasefire. We've since had Israeli officials come

(01:21:36):
out and say, yeah, the Biden administration never actually.

Speaker 1 (01:21:39):
Pressured us to reach a ceasefire. So it raises the
question of was the Biden administration lying to AOC or
was she lying to the DNC.

Speaker 6 (01:21:50):
And if they were lying to her, why couldn't she
see that it was a lie that day, I believe
it was, or maybe it was the next it was
the next day at a protest or at a public
event in where was it, Chicago? Ilhan Omar held a
spoke at a rally where she said, you know they're
not they're not working tirelessly. She quoted AOC or a

(01:22:12):
fellow squad memerics quoter saying they're not working tires and
Omar brought that up again in the last couple of weeks, saying,
you know, they lied to us when they said they
were working tiresly. And she's so kind of direct shots
at AOC, and she's never, as far as I've seen,
kind of you know, confronted that directly. So if she wants,
if she does end up running for president, that's going

(01:22:35):
to be something that she's going to have to address.

Speaker 1 (01:22:37):
What was her because she has been you know, she
took a.

Speaker 6 (01:22:42):
Week or two longer than some others to use the
word genocide, but she said it very early. She was
one of the first sponsors of a ceasefire resolution, but
then she takes some other votes that gets that get
people frustrated. So you know, from her perspective, she's basically
done everything she can. From the perspective of her critics,

(01:23:03):
she's lying about the Biden administration working to quote unquote
working tirelessly towards ceasefire and undermining pressure on the Biden
administration to actually do that.

Speaker 4 (01:23:12):
Yeah. Yeah, And when we were on the ground at
the DNC.

Speaker 5 (01:23:15):
It was easy to sense a lot of cynicism aboutes
among the people that we were talking to. Let's put
D four up on the screen, because this is another
sort of shot in the arm, perhaps for the ascendant left.
Ryan Brian kem announced Kempt announced yesterday Georgia governor that
he will not be running for Senate, and the New
York Times headline actually adds Osoff's team must have been

(01:23:36):
stoked about this headline quote giving asoff a lift. Osoff
nation is rising up. We'll put D five here on
the screen, Ryan, and maybe you can explain it for
the offline left.

Speaker 6 (01:23:47):
Old Germantum So what among his many posts about this yesterday,
basically he's saying, asof vance race in twenty twenty eight,
would be similar to JFK.

Speaker 1 (01:24:00):
Nixon.

Speaker 6 (01:24:01):
So comparing as off to JFK advance to Nixon Nixon
in sixty not that I don't think it's that off
in an interesting way.

Speaker 4 (01:24:12):
Yeah, I don't know. Is this not crazy?

Speaker 6 (01:24:14):
You know, there's a lot of cynicism about ostof But
like I've said on this show, before you look into
his actual record, you know, investigative journalist, and his run
is run as a pretty strong kind of populist progressive
in Georgia. He didn't use the terms like Green New

(01:24:37):
Deal and Medicare for all, but when you look at
what he was saying, he was supportive of those basic
ideas but talking about them in a way that he
thought would resonate with you know, majority of Georgians.

Speaker 1 (01:24:52):
And so if he is able to win.

Speaker 6 (01:24:54):
Reelection in twenty twenty six, then yeah, he's a top
tier front runner for twenty twenty eight.

Speaker 4 (01:25:02):
It's super interesting.

Speaker 5 (01:25:04):
Right, let's move on to the gain of function news
that broke yesterday. We can go ahead and roll this
clip of Robert F. Kennedy Junior, now obviously Secretary of
Health and Human Services talking as Donald Trump signs as
one of those classics, Donald Trump second administration EO signings
in the Oval Office where he's flanked by Marty McCay, J.

Speaker 4 (01:25:24):
Baticharia, and Robert F. Kennedy Junior.

Speaker 5 (01:25:26):
He is signing an executive order that against gain of
function research.

Speaker 4 (01:25:32):
So let's just take a listen to this.

Speaker 20 (01:25:33):
As a E one, GAANA function is and it's worked
at the end of GAINA function research funding by the
federal government, DNA halls of controls, by project corporations on
GATA function studies. This was a kind of study that
was engaged in by the United States military and intelligence agencies,

(01:25:54):
begetting in nineteen forty seven. By nineteen sixty nine, CIA
that they had reached nuclear equivalents that they could kill
the entire US population for twenty nine cents person.

Speaker 5 (01:26:08):
So Robert Kenny Junior went on for a couple of
minutes there, going back into the history of gain and
function research. But what the EO did was restrict federal
funding for research known as quote gain of function. And
what's interesting about that, Ryan, is that Facci likes to stretch.
You know, he used to say he was enhancing pathogens.
You may remember that infamous exchange she had with Senator

(01:26:29):
Rand Paul, but it wasn't quite quote unquote gain of function.
So maybe there are still ways for the medical establishment
that wants to continue desperately many people want to continue
doing gain and function research. Wiggling around the boundaries of this.
But I think you actually checked in with eat write
on this.

Speaker 1 (01:26:45):
Yeah, And I read the EO and it's it's pretty tight.

Speaker 6 (01:26:47):
I mean, the the language is pretty tight, so I
think it'll be difficult for them to them to get
around it. But it really focuses in an annoying way
on it says quote unquote countries of concern e g.

Speaker 1 (01:27:03):
China.

Speaker 6 (01:27:04):
It's like, okay, fine, whatever, but like it doesn't matter
where the research is done. Like you you get a
pathogen out in the air, like it can be in Toledo,
it can be in China, it can be in Sierre Leone.
Like people travel, there's airports everywhere.

Speaker 17 (01:27:22):
Hm.

Speaker 6 (01:27:22):
So like just focusing on countries of concern, it's it's
Trump's kind of obnoxious xenophobia manifesting in a place to
where it's like completely unnecessary.

Speaker 5 (01:27:34):
Well, I don't know if it makes anybody feel better
if we're even doing it here, right, I mean.

Speaker 1 (01:27:37):
Maybe feel like why would that be better? Like, it's cool.

Speaker 6 (01:27:41):
We're gonna do all of our gain of function research
on viruses in your backyard, not.

Speaker 1 (01:27:47):
In China, North Carolina.

Speaker 6 (01:27:48):
It's gonna be it's gonna be downtown watching DC. You're
gonna be fine. You gotta, you know, make America great
again for gain function research.

Speaker 1 (01:27:57):
But yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:27:57):
So I asked Richard Ebright about RFK Junior's claim there, which,
if you could hear him, what he was saying was
gain of function research has basically produced nothing of value
for the scientific community. And so Ebright, he's a molector
or biologist at Rutgers. He's an outspoken critic of a

(01:28:21):
lot of the scientists involved with his research and also
the research.

Speaker 1 (01:28:23):
So I asked him for his take.

Speaker 6 (01:28:26):
I was like, really, like, blanket zero nothing, And he
says it has added nothing of substantive value. It has
had zero civilian applications, It has not contributed to the
development of any vaccine or therapeutic agent, and it is
not contributed to preventing or responding to pandemics. I mean,
its origin and it's financing is mostly around bioweapons, like

(01:28:53):
in the military capacity, both whether it's the US investing
in a Pentagon or or the Chinese military. That's you know,
that's what really gave it its boosts, and particularly after
the anthrax attacks back back in two thousand and one,
two thousand and two, that's when all of this money
started flowing into it. So and they've kind of then

(01:29:14):
retconned some rationale for some civilian applications. But according to EBRAI,
so far like zero, like nothing has come of it.
And it's it's interesting to think about the Wuhan Institute
of Virology, so like the goal of that institute was
to identify pandemics early pathoges that could be of concern

(01:29:38):
to become become a pandemic before they spread too far.
I think the evidence is clear that they produced the pandemic.

Speaker 1 (01:29:48):
Setting that aside, let's say that.

Speaker 6 (01:29:49):
They didn't, but it started in Wuhan, like it, So
it started like next door to them. Their whole job
is to around the entire world identify potential pandemic viruses
and then control them before they become a virus. It
happened right there, and you still didn't stop it. So

(01:30:11):
at very best, you didn't start the pandemic, but it
was next door to you, and you didn't stop it.
How are you going to stop one that happens, you know,
thousands of miles away from you anyway, So it's not
a not a great not a great track record.

Speaker 1 (01:30:26):
That brings us to.

Speaker 6 (01:30:29):
Our our friend of the show, Jeffy Sacks, who chaired
UH the pant who chaired the commission that looked into
the origin of COVID. And so speaking of Wuhan, there's
there's another you know, UH locale that also gets brought
up here. Let's roll Jeffrey Sachs here.

Speaker 21 (01:30:51):
I'll tell you a sad truth, also a little surprising,
and I have to admit what I'm about to tell
you is only ninety nine percent sure. But my view,
based on very extensive work over the last four and

(01:31:13):
a half years, is that COVID came from the University
of North Carolina, which is the leading researcher on beta coronaviruses,
working with the US government on a set of grant
proposals that identified putting in the viral change that created

(01:31:37):
Sar's cove two. It's a grim truth, it's ugly, it's
been hidden from view. The reason I mentioned in this
context is we don't have any global governance that is
effective right now to control the manipulation of dangerous pathogens

(01:31:58):
like the manipulation that created the pandemic and when it happened,
and officially it took seven million deaths, but probably if
you count all of the deaths associated with COVID, it
was probably closer to twenty million deaths. Even when that happens,

(01:32:21):
it's never properly investigated, it's covered up, it's hidden from view.

Speaker 1 (01:32:27):
And so that's actually quite a plausible claim.

Speaker 6 (01:32:30):
Like you, if you want to look into it, just
google kind of Ralph Barrack, who's the head of the
program there, who was working directly with people in the
Wuhan lab. He was he was you know, he led
the project that came up with basically the recipe that
appears to be the thing that led to the creation
of COVID later. And I think when you understand the

(01:32:52):
role of UNC in the origin of COVID, it helps
to explain why there wasn't an investment gation because.

Speaker 4 (01:33:01):
Well, I mean even our own funding of Luhan either way.

Speaker 6 (01:33:04):
Right, and so yeah, from so from early on, you're like,
wait a minute, if this was the Chinese and it
happened in Wuhan. Will where's where's the US propaganda apparatus
to start? You know, staber rattling and you know, you know,
banging the drum about how awful China is.

Speaker 5 (01:33:20):
If anything, it was if you were blaming China, the
Nancy Pelosi was calling you racist.

Speaker 6 (01:33:25):
Right right, So and so it's like, oh, oh, I
see why because the US was intimately involved in this
as well, and so both China and the US then
have motivation to be like what you say, it was,
there's rednecks in Wuhan, you know, buying pangolins.

Speaker 1 (01:33:45):
Yeah, let's let's go with that.

Speaker 4 (01:33:47):
Sounds right. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:33:48):
So finally we back at the Hill hosted a lot
you set this up. It was a fascinating debate between
JOHNS Hopkins professor named Gigi gromfol and an MIT professor
named Kevin as well. And this was like, I think
we went for an hour having a pro gain of
function person and an anti gain of function person talk
about whether it's ultimately valuable and whether the costs are

(01:34:11):
worth the benefits of doing the research. So, if you're
curious in hearing out both sides, I would recommend taking
a look back at that because it was very very
helpful for me to hear both of them.

Speaker 6 (01:34:20):
And we kept trying to pin her down on what
have been the what has it produced?

Speaker 4 (01:34:25):
Right?

Speaker 20 (01:34:26):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:34:26):
Not that science, It's.

Speaker 6 (01:34:29):
Okay, Like science doesn't always produce results, Like that's what
science is. You have a hypothesis, you explore it, and
sometimes it goes down a rabbit hole and you get
and your hypothesis was wrong. So that alone is not
a reason not to do it. If it's extremely dangerous
and you're putting a whole world at risk, that's kind
of can be a reason not to do it. But
she never You guys can go back and watch it

(01:34:51):
if you want. But like, to my mind, she never
effectively presented to us anything that made us feel like, oh, okay,
that is that is a benefit that we have derived
from this research, which can be weighed against the risk of.

Speaker 1 (01:35:07):
A global pandemic and millions of people dying. Yeah, I mean,
so then we can balance that out.

Speaker 6 (01:35:14):
I was left with, well, we know the risks even
if you don't think this happened in the lab, which
I think it did.

Speaker 1 (01:35:22):
But even if you'd think it didn't, it could. Their
leaks all.

Speaker 6 (01:35:25):
The time, So we know the risk, but we don't
know the benefits. We haven't seen anything yet.

Speaker 5 (01:35:30):
I remember wrapping that segment and being like, yeah, thanks
so much to both of you, hearing both of it out,
and Ryan, you just jumped in and you're like, think
it's pretty clear who won.

Speaker 1 (01:35:40):
Was like, oh my god, she didn't like that.

Speaker 5 (01:35:44):
I don't think so, but I was really to shoot
the messenger. So yeah, go ahead and take a look
at that if you're curious. And on that note, let's
go ahead and get to our second guest of today's show.

Speaker 6 (01:35:56):
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has dropped charges against people
that she rounded up recently for protesting against Israel's war
in gazif rolled F two here. This is vo You
guys might remember this kind of viral footage that went
around of the Michigan police backed up by the FBI,
literally smashing their way into into people's homes, dragging people

(01:36:20):
off and then and then charge and then charging them
with you know, serious felonies and keeping them behind bars
for quite some time they have. Now she has now
dropped those charges. And so we are joined by Henry
McKean Shapiro, who was one of the protesters who was

(01:36:41):
who was rounded up by Nessel and her federal accomplices
ended up spending Henry Wood.

Speaker 1 (01:36:46):
Four days and behind bars before you were released. Is
that right?

Speaker 12 (01:36:50):
Yeah? Actually, just a bit of the correction is that
are the charges.

Speaker 22 (01:36:55):
The felony charges that were just dropped against me and
six others yesterday are unrelated to the FBI raids.

Speaker 12 (01:37:02):
So it's the same prosecutor for them.

Speaker 22 (01:37:05):
But our charges come from back in September related to
the U of M encampment.

Speaker 6 (01:37:10):
Yeah, so actually walk us, walk us through why we
ended up seeing these raids recently.

Speaker 1 (01:37:14):
So what what what charges resulted from the original encampment
and what was.

Speaker 4 (01:37:20):
The what's the relationship between both?

Speaker 12 (01:37:23):
Yeah, that's a great question.

Speaker 22 (01:37:25):
So in September of twenty twenty four, Dana Nessel dropped
eleven charges against people for their involvement in the U
of M encampment, seven of which were felony charges, and
all of us, including myself, had felony resisting and obstructing
arrest in misdemeanor trespassing, and four others got various different

(01:37:47):
kinds of misdemeanors, ranging from stepping on a two dollars
small Israel flag to other other just ridiculous ones like
trespassing and data nestil Is also will continue to do
charges against people for their involvement in Propolsetyne activism at
U of m SO in January, she dropped charges against
people who participated in a die in demonstration on the

(01:38:11):
Yumish Diag at the at the beginning of the school year,
and then on just on April twenty third, she requested
a judicial warrant which authorized the FBI and a bunch
of different police precincts from across the Strait, across the
state to raid the homes of several prominent pro Palestine activists.

Speaker 1 (01:38:33):
And so what are the what are the actual charges?

Speaker 6 (01:38:38):
Like how is she trying to take political activism on
a college campus and transform it into felonies?

Speaker 1 (01:38:46):
Like what does the paperwork look like there?

Speaker 22 (01:38:50):
Yeah, I mean, it's a good question because it's really
quite ridiculous the way she's trying to do it is
so for these these raids that happened on April twenty third,
it's only it's so she can actually has a bit
of a loophole when it offers warrants to people who
are being searched, which is that they don't have to
list the probable cause for why they obtained the search warrants,

(01:39:11):
so it's actually extremely unclear to even the people who
were searched what purpose or what they're even going perhaps
going to be charged with. They in the press releases
have mentioned multi jurisdictional vandalism, which is not an actual
legal term, but it's clear that they're trying to quickly
manufacture consent for the Attorney General's office handling these cases

(01:39:35):
and to bring in the FBI, which is usually not
brought in to handle small protests related issues within the state.

Speaker 12 (01:39:44):
So it's it's.

Speaker 22 (01:39:46):
So far she's mentioned this multi jurisdictional vandalism thing, which
we know is really just a kind of a ridiculous
way of trying to justify her presence across the state
and her cooperation with the Trumpet.

Speaker 6 (01:40:01):
And to set the context right, there was some frustration
among a lot of people that local police they were
not sufficiently aggressive enough against protesters like they wanted. They
wanted they wanted more protesters blood.

Speaker 1 (01:40:15):
The Guardian had a good piece.

Speaker 6 (01:40:18):
On this recently where they say are the Guardian's investigation
revealed concrete evidence of conflicts that defense attorneys argued factored
into the prosecutions. Among the findings, the story revealed a
g Nessl's office charged propile stating protesters at a higher
rate than other state prosecutors. Nessel was recruited by university
regents who were frustrated by local prosecutors unwillingness to crack

(01:40:41):
down when most of the students arrested, to take over
the case and file charges, three people with direct knowledge
of the decision told The Guardian at the time. The
investigation also found that six of eight regents contributed more
than thirty three thousand dollars combined to Nessl's campaigns. Additionally,
her office hired a regent's law firm to handle major
state cases, and the same regent co chaired her twenty

(01:41:03):
eighteen campaign. And so if people remember, there was a
multi day controversy when Rashida Talib said that she felt
like Dana Nessl's office was biased against Michigan protesters, and
she said it was because, in her understanding, Nessl was
getting pressure from the regent's office. She was then accused

(01:41:27):
of anti semitism, saying.

Speaker 1 (01:41:29):
That by Dana Nessel, right, by Dana Nessel.

Speaker 6 (01:41:32):
And then by CNN, who repeated for many days that
charge and then wrote stories about how she wasn't apologizing
for anti Semitism. Their argument was, well, Dana Nessel is Jewish,
and so that so Rashida Talib is saying that Nessl
is biased because Dana Nessel is Jewish. When Talib gave
the reason that she said why Nessl was biased, and

(01:41:54):
that was because she was being pressured by the regents.
So now we have this investigation the shows, in fact,
the regents of the university were indeed upset that local
police and local prosecutors weren't, you know, bringing the hammer
down hard enough on you and fellow protesters, and so
they roped Dana Nessel into this. So can you you

(01:42:16):
talk about what your interactions were like, you know, with
local police and prosecutors versus now with the state and
the FBI.

Speaker 12 (01:42:26):
Yeah, I mean, it's this whole thing has been. It's
just a total, total circus.

Speaker 22 (01:42:30):
In fact, a huge factor of why Nessel likely dropped
the charges is the fact that it's so unclear why
she had why she was taking up this case to
begin with. In fact, even came out that seems like
our local prosecutor, Elie Sabatt had never even received the
charges from the encampment. And something that had become really

(01:42:53):
clear to the to the Attorney General's office in this
ongoing our lawyers had filed emotion to recuse Dana Nessel
for you know, impropriety in taking these cases and.

Speaker 12 (01:43:06):
Strong both real and appearance of.

Speaker 22 (01:43:10):
Anti aram and anti Muslim bias is the fact that
if she was to continue with this case, it would
have opened up her office into evidentiary hearing and opened
them up to discovery to figure out exactly why they
picked up these charges, because it doesn't make any sense.
You know, this was not even remotely a multi jurisdictional case.

Speaker 12 (01:43:30):
It all happened within.

Speaker 22 (01:43:32):
The Image diag, which is about you know, like two
hundred square feet.

Speaker 12 (01:43:36):
So it doesn't make any sense that.

Speaker 6 (01:43:38):
Yeah, that's what I was wondering, like this multi jurisdictional vandalisman.
You guys were literally camped in one place.

Speaker 12 (01:43:43):
Weird.

Speaker 1 (01:43:44):
That's the whole thing was. It was an encampment, right.

Speaker 22 (01:43:48):
I mean, it's totally ridiculous, and you know, like you
mentioned before, it's just clearly a result of the regents
not getting the response that they wanted from Elie savat
the sufficient response that they had wanted to a previous
protest that happened in November twenty twenty three. And I mean,
the link is just going to be clear. Even on

(01:44:09):
the eve of Dana Nessel dropping the decision to charge
those of us from the encampment, just the day before,
a regent Jordan Aker had posted a selfie on Instagram
with himself, Data Nessel, and Jeremy Moss, who are like
a kind of like zionist three stooges in Michigan politics.

Speaker 12 (01:44:28):
So it's just very clear.

Speaker 22 (01:44:29):
And Mark Bernstein, who you mentioned he's was a co
chair of Dana Nessel's campaign, has given you tens of
thousands of dollars in financial contributions to a campaign. And
it's clear that Dana Nessil has basically just been recruited
by them due to their dissatisfaction with Ellie Sabbott's like

(01:44:51):
insufficient zeal for prosecuting pro Palestine protesters at.

Speaker 7 (01:44:55):
You of them.

Speaker 5 (01:44:56):
Last question for me is just basically what this has
been like for you, this crazy experience, you know, any
any major takeaways or any reflections on it.

Speaker 22 (01:45:07):
I think, I mean, I think right now, those those
of us who just had our our charges just dropped,
or obviously very personally relieved, but I think we're also
very like invigorated with I think what we see as
like a massive victory for pro Palestine activism, not just
in Michigan but nationwide, which is to show that you can't,
you know, build up these ridiculous charges against pro Palestine

(01:45:28):
protesters and expect to get away with it, that you know,
unlike what might have been the case three years ago,
that taking such a vigorous stance against anti genocide protesters
is not acceptable, uh with with the public and showing that,
you know, you can't get away with just you know,

(01:45:51):
concocting some ridiculous narrative about you know, anti Semitic protesters
is just not gonna not gonna work. So, uh, the
fact that we were able to hold on long enough
for her office to to drop the charges under under
the massive amount of popular pressure, we see as a

(01:46:11):
huge victory.

Speaker 1 (01:46:12):
And we're very proud of that.

Speaker 6 (01:46:13):
And I'm curious when you were when you were in jail,
what did the other folks who were in there with
you say when they're like, yo, know, what are you
here for? And you're like protesting the war genocide.

Speaker 12 (01:46:27):
No, I mean obviously all of them.

Speaker 22 (01:46:30):
I didn't meet a single person there that wasn't supportive
of of, you know, of our cause. I mean all
of you know, a lot of them not a not
a fan of the local prosecutors as well a lot
of people there who had been you know, screwed over
by them for just simple things such as you know,
unpaid parking tickets or just being unable to meet bail.

(01:46:51):
And in general, they were super you know, a lot
of them even had actually been towards the encampment and
mentioned that to me. And I also been targeted by
the University of Michigan police before for and we're very
sympathetic to our cause, which was very comforting for those
four days I was there.

Speaker 1 (01:47:08):
All right, well glad you're out.

Speaker 6 (01:47:09):
Yeah, it must be a relief, you know, were you like,
were you getting threats from the prosecutors like this is
the amount of like you're going to spend years if
you don't know, plead down or something.

Speaker 12 (01:47:20):
No.

Speaker 22 (01:47:21):
Actually, it's interesting is that wasn't the kind of thing
that they were even looking for. And most of all,
they wanted us to accept a plead that would have
required giving them some kind of political victory, like saying,
we admit that we did not participate in peaceful protest,
and we didn't want to do that because first of all,
it could be like legally problematic for us down the line,

(01:47:41):
but also we didn't want to. I mean, you know,
she's clearly fishing for that for a reason, and probably
as an excuse to continue pushing charges against people who
have been speaking out against you of M's complicity and genocide.

Speaker 6 (01:47:56):
Oh so they were offering if you would admit that
you were violent, that then they would give you no
time basically, but you would get a charge on.

Speaker 22 (01:48:03):
Your record, or that it would be like the charge
would be there would be a diversion of the charge
with time. But like it was very clear that the
admission of you know, her political agenda was like the
most important demand for coming from her office.

Speaker 1 (01:48:20):
Right.

Speaker 6 (01:48:21):
Well, glad you guys you know, stood up for yourself
and didn't didn't capitulate to that.

Speaker 12 (01:48:27):
Thanks Henry, Thanks for your time, Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1 (01:48:31):
Take it easy. Well, Emily, I think the kids are
all right.

Speaker 5 (01:48:34):
What do you think if everyone decides to include that,
if the people who edit the show have decided to
include us both counting in one or the other, then
that is what happened.

Speaker 4 (01:48:45):
For the audience's sake.

Speaker 6 (01:48:46):
We can start that over all, right, do you want
to start it two?

Speaker 1 (01:48:52):
Well, Emily, I think the kids are all right. What
do you say?

Speaker 4 (01:48:55):
Super interesting? What a wild year he has had, I.

Speaker 5 (01:48:59):
Mean, truly the roller coaster of Michigan politics, throwing students
through the ringer.

Speaker 1 (01:49:03):
Not fun to have felony strown at you.

Speaker 5 (01:49:05):
No, and then being forced to admit. I mean, their
attorneys obviously helped them. Do you make a good decision there?

Speaker 12 (01:49:13):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (01:49:13):
Good, Good for him for standing up, because if he
would have admitted and he and his you know, colleagues,
comrades would have admitted confessed to some violence that didn't happen,
then yeah, then they would use c told you, this
is a legitimate thing that we're doing. Now we're going
to go round up other people. Yeah, So good for
him for standing firm. Yeah, I'm sure that the apologies

(01:49:36):
are coming for Rashida to leave any time now.

Speaker 5 (01:49:39):
Yeah, I'm sure that'll take just another couple of days
packed show today. Thank you everyone for tuning in, for
sticking with us for these slightly later starts, But we've
all got so much going on.

Speaker 4 (01:49:51):
Crystal will be in tomorrow, right Ryan.

Speaker 5 (01:49:53):
Christmas Crystals and tomorrow, and then you and Crystal are
on Thursday.

Speaker 1 (01:49:58):
I think it's you and Crystal. According to this guy Joel.

Speaker 4 (01:50:00):
No right here, we could.

Speaker 5 (01:50:04):
Yeah, we should just start doing this stuff actually on
camera though everyway it's more like reality TV.

Speaker 6 (01:50:10):
And then we have an A M A up next
that's right for the premium subscribers, So breakingpoints dot com
make sure you're throwing away your last hundred bucks on that.

Speaker 4 (01:50:19):
See you there,

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