6/4/25: Elon Rages On Trump Budget, Piers Grills Israel Rep, Schumer Demands Iran War & MORE!

Episode Transcript
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it out. Ryan, We have a big show to start
with today. Elon Musk is now on a rampage against administration.
He just left. We have updates out of Gaza. We

(02:37):
have Truck Schumer with an incredible video.

Speaker 3 (02:42):
That looks like an attack on her on basically.

Speaker 5 (02:45):
About Taco Trump Taco Trump, so stick around for that.
We have a little exclusive from the State Department this
morning pertaining to a controversy over one of their employees.
So we're going to do that and talk about updates
from Ukraine. Joy Reid is way in more on why
she left MSNBC, so we have some video of her
and Wanda vid Rojas from Compact joins us to talk

(03:07):
about Trump's the conflicting what do we say, the conflicting tradiction, Yeah,
the factions in Trump world. That seems some people seem
to want a new policy in Latin America. Other people
seem to be clinging to the Cold War mentality. And
no surprise there, but Wandavida has been covering all of it,
and he's going to join us to talk about that.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
Yes, indeed, all.

Speaker 5 (03:30):
Right, let's dive in Ryan with Elon Musk. Playbook actually
counted that Elon Musk posted thirteen times over the course
of six hours yesterday, rampaging against Donald Trump's Big Beautiful Bill,
which we can announce we can now abbreviate helpfully as BBB,
which is by BBB. Is that the grade of your
watching this?

Speaker 4 (03:47):
So let's put are they mimicking build back Better?

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Is that what they were trying to do there?

Speaker 5 (03:53):
Or the Better Business Bureau? There's too many triple bes.
This is literally that's.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Where the bond rating is going. If you passed this,
if we're.

Speaker 5 (04:00):
Lucky, so we can put this up on the screen.
Elon's tweet here, I guess we have to call it
a post on X.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
We don't know what we don't, he goes.

Speaker 5 (04:09):
Tweet, he goes, I'm sorry, but I just can't stand
it anymore. This massive, outrageous pork Field Congressional spending bill
is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it.
You know you did wrong. You know it, He adds,
it will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to
two and a half trillion dollars and burden American citizens
with crushingly unsustainable debt. Right, there is a lot to

(04:33):
talk about here. I just want to start by saying
the central premise of Republicans pushing the big beautiful bill
is that that two and a half trillion number is wrong,
that the Congressional Budget Office is underestimating the growth that'll
come as part of this bill. So Elon Musk is

(04:54):
not just pushing back on the bill. He is now
adopting the counter Naar narrative. And he's not the only one.
You know, people like Ron Johnson and Rand Paul are
as well. But this is a man who is like
a week out of his special government employee status at
the White House, and he sounds a whole lot like

(05:15):
Rand Paul. And again, Elon Musk was not going anywhere
near significant criticisms just a week ago.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
I'm on the Musk side here because there's two, you know,
two types of quote unquote growth that people might be
referring to. One is asset inflation, which is basically the
stock market goes up and we get a housing bubble,
and certainly the more debt we circulate and you know,
the more like let's say you start having bitcoin backup treasuries, Like, yes,

(05:46):
you can get a run up then in asset prices.
That's not economic growth, though, because the way to get
economic growth either expand productivity or invest or. You invest
in things that you know yield back, you know, actual
returns for people in the real economy, and cutting taxes
for the rich doesn't do that because unlike, you know,

(06:07):
Elon Musk might be the exception among billionaires because apparently
he doesn't spend a whole lot of money.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
You know, he doesn't have like fifteen different.

Speaker 5 (06:13):
Houses, is fifteen different children probably, Well.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
That's true.

Speaker 4 (06:16):
He probably spends on all of his different children in
the amount that a normal billionaire spends on their houses.
He also flies everywhere. It's not like he's living a cheap.

Speaker 5 (06:26):
Life's a monk.

Speaker 4 (06:27):
The point is he's so rich, and these other rich
people are so rich that giving them more money doesn't
mean they spend more. If you give a normal person
a little extra money, if you give a mouse a cookie,
they're going to spend it. Yes, yeah, I mean actually
if you give him as a cookie is sort of
the explanation for how this works. But if you give

(06:48):
a regular person money, they're going to spend it because
there's things that they want that they can't have because
they don't have enough money. If you give a billionaire
another fifty thousand dollars, they don't even notice for the
most part, might see his uptick in this in the
stock market. So that that's why I think to the

(07:09):
higher estimate is probably more accurate. Now, if I want
to nitpick him, is there pork in this bill? Pork
is where you're like, hey, we're this community center or
this bridge in this district in Kentucky is going to
get seventy five million dollars.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
There is there some of that in there.

Speaker 5 (07:26):
So that is definitely a nitpick because no, I'm what.

Speaker 4 (07:30):
They're going to do is the Trump administration will then
do it for them rather than put it in the bill.

Speaker 5 (07:34):
Yeah, and that's sort of similar to the Biden Infrastructure Bill.
But that's actually part of the problem that some people
like Elon Musk and Ran Paul have with it is
that it hasn't fully dismantled. So Republicans are chalking this
up to Elon must be mad that it gets rid
of some of the EV like Biden's EV support package.

Speaker 4 (07:52):
It's crazy, like who spends one hundreds of millions of
dollars and gets well, I mean he got all his
investigations knocked away. But yeah, he's getting absolutely routed when
it comes to the government benefits that he was getting.

Speaker 5 (08:06):
I just don't know how important that is to him.
I mean, it's important to Tesla, But how important is Tesla?
How important is Tesla in his portfolio?

Speaker 4 (08:15):
Is leverage? He is highly leveraged. His collateral is Tesla's
st Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, that collapses. Then the bankers
start calling, and the bankers he does not have the
kind of bankers that you want calling.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
These are people who are like.

Speaker 4 (08:32):
Hey, why don't we meet in the consulate in Istanbul,
the Saudi consulate in Istanbill to talk about you're a
little bit overdue on your latest payment and then you
go and then you leave in a bucket.

Speaker 5 (08:43):
So he's actually by complaining about pork, asking for pork
for Elon. If that's his definition of pork, which is,
you know, something that's inserted into the bill to please
the very particular or niche interest of the donor class,
is not really the technical definition of pork, but there is.
Some people are upset that there haven't been This is

(09:05):
up out in the Wall Street drawer. There haven't been.
There There isn't enough dismantling of the Biden agenda in
this bill. But that's of course what's upsetting to Elon.
And this is where Trump right now is between a
rock and a hard place, because moderates say the bill
is already cutting too much, and then people like Rand
Paul and Ron Johnson say the bill is not cutting enough.

(09:26):
And that includes now, I suppose Elon Musk. So let's
go ahead and roll a three. This is Rand Paul
on Fox Yesterday, Fox Business Yesterday.

Speaker 6 (09:35):
In a separate post, Trump said there's a false narrative
about spending in this bill. He said it is quote
single biggest spending cut in history by far. Kentucky Centator round,
Paul joins me. Now, missus, Senator, I know you want
more spending cuts included in the bill. Can you tell
us what specifically you'd want to cut.

Speaker 7 (09:56):
Yeah, it's even more than that.

Speaker 8 (09:57):
The biggest objection I have to the bill is adding
five trillion dollars to the debt ceiling. I'm actually very
supportive of the tax cuts. I don't accept the CBO
notion that the tax cuts will lead to deficits. The
reason I believe there will be more deficits is they're
raising the debt ceiling five trillion.

Speaker 5 (10:14):
We know that this year.

Speaker 8 (10:15):
Most of the Republicans, not me, voted to continue the
Biden's spending levels in March, so we're going to go
through September of this year, and the deficit.

Speaker 7 (10:23):
For this year is going to be over two trillion.

Speaker 8 (10:25):
If you're borrowing five trillion, that makes me think you're
going to add over two trillion, maybe two point eight
trillion next year. So it doesn't show me that you've
turned around. If you look at the spending cuts, it's
complicated because it's at one point five trillion. It sounds
like it's enormous number, but it's over ten years. So
it's one hundred and fifty billion a year. They're also
increasing spending for the military and for the border three

(10:46):
hundred billion. That's actually more than all the Doze cuts
that we've found so far. So something doesn't really add
up here. And I can't be on record as being
one who supports increasing the debt by five trillion. I
think that's irresponsible. The bond markets are already starting to
show that their skittish over this. We got interest rates
of over five percent on the ten year bonds. There

(11:07):
are real problems we face as a country and we
can't just blithely go on the way we have in
the past.

Speaker 5 (11:13):
So Ron Johnson also specifically said that he's very concerned
about how the bill will affect the bond markets, which
is a completely reasonable concern. Interesting, yeah, right now he's no.
And they say they only need four of them. That's
the line that you keep hearing from Rand Paul and
others in the Senate. They only need to band together
four people, and that could mean an unusual marriage between

(11:34):
right Susan Collins.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
So is Utah liberals gonna We'll see.

Speaker 5 (11:39):
But there, I mean, you might not even need that
because if you combine the fiscal hawks with the moderates,
you're already easily at four.

Speaker 3 (11:48):
So well Collins, Collins get the four.

Speaker 5 (11:52):
Collins will be wobbly on because of Medicaid. That's she's
already indicated.

Speaker 4 (11:59):
Your asking Mains senator to cut energy assistance, oil assistance
for working people in winter in Main.

Speaker 5 (12:13):
Then also, this is where it gets even worse for Republicans.

Speaker 3 (12:17):
They have to gets called there. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (12:20):
Also last they then have to kick this back over
to the House to approve the changes. And everybody remembers
that this only went over to the Senate because Mike
Johnson cut a deal with some of the fiscal hawks
in the House to basically rubber stamp it and say,
we trust the President to work with the Senate to
get a better deal, but we don't like this bill.

(12:41):
We're not voting for this bill. We're voting basically to
send it over to the Senate and to get the
ball rolling. They want to have this bill done. Donald
Trump continues to push to have this bill done by
a month from today, July fourth. They want the bill
to be signed and enacted by the fourth.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
Of July, trying to get it done fast.

Speaker 5 (13:00):
Otherwise you start losing to the recess and you're into
the fall, and then you're into midterms. So it sounds
ridiculous because we're only a few months into the presidency,
but it comes up really. Midterms come up really fast,
especially because Congress gets so much time off.

Speaker 4 (13:14):
And so the House hawks they want the bill to
get to add spending cuts in the Senate, right Whereas
in order to get the senators that are wobbly, to
get Ran Paul, you'd have to do more cuts like
the hawks in the House want, But to get Murkowski
and Collins.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
You'd have to do fewer cuts, right yah.

Speaker 4 (13:36):
And the Pentagon just you can't like, we're doing a
trillion dollars for the Pentagon and that's all there is.
Like there's no nobody can come in and be like, hey, guys,
what if we didn't like massively increase the Pentagon budget.

Speaker 5 (13:48):
So this is where Elon Musk, while he's siding with
Rand Paul. Here you also heard Rand Paul throw a
little bit very subtle dig at Doge, saying that the
spending is higher than the Doge cuts and that's because
a lot of Republicans in order to get this bill passed,
which by The way is, as we've talked about, a

(14:10):
really critical element of the tariff agenda. So they believe
that the teriff Agenda, this is the sort of necessary
supplement to it that creates an industrial policy for onsuring.
We could debate whether or not that's the case, but
it has things like one ride offs retroactive to January
twentieth for factory building, manufacturing building, all that kind of stuff.
I think the corporate tax rate going from twenty one

(14:30):
to fifteen is industrial policy. So they feel like this
is an absolutely essential part of the tariff agenda. All
of that was predicated on the idea that Doge was
going to find so many cuts in the government that
they could basically do whatever they wanted to do with
this bill.

Speaker 4 (14:46):
This is where I start to worry about your people,
my pav pol. Yeah, that anybody took seriously the claim
for Elon Musk that he was going to cut a
trillion dollars and at one point he said it was
going to be two trillion dollars makes me worry about them,
makes me for viewers and for regular people whose media

(15:07):
diet has been telling them that there's waste, fraud and
abuse shot through the federal.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
Government, their entire lives.

Speaker 4 (15:12):
I don't blame those people who believed that this was
going to be possible.

Speaker 3 (15:18):
I don't even blame Elon Musk.

Speaker 4 (15:19):
He's just drug addled like tech guy who just like
most tech people, like, doesn't know anything outside of like
this very narrow area, but thinks they're experts everywhere.

Speaker 3 (15:30):
That's just his personality types. So I don't even blame him.

Speaker 4 (15:33):
But the people who've spent ten decades in Washington thinking
that Elon Musk was going to come in and identify
trillions of dollars in like painless waste fraud abuse, that
makes me worry about them if they were not just
cynically using him. Steve Bannon, friend of the show, you know,
was saying from the very beginning, this is a fraud.

(15:54):
And now they wouldn't go to the Pentagon, right, And
now he's been saying, look all of these people in Washington,
these Republicans in Washington, didn't want to make the painful cuts,
and so they just put their faith in Elon Musk
that he was going to find this this trillion dollars.
He didn't find it, he was never going to find it,
and so he marched them into this place where now

(16:16):
they've got all the tax cuts ready to go and
the Pentagon spending, but they don't have the cuts. The
cuts were never there because they weren't willing to go
after power centers like Medicaid and Medicare. Fraud is on
the provider side. It's the it's the private equity owned doctors.
It's the straight up fraudulent just you know, just put

(16:38):
bars around Miami. Don't let anybody leave until you find
every Medicare fraudster. Yes, I mean, ask Rick Scott medicare fraudster.
Who's the senator from my from Florida, Like ask him, like, hey,
how'd you do that? And he could tell you in
like two minutes. Oh, it's really easy. You just claim
that you did services that you didn't do, and you

(16:59):
send that to the federal government. The federal government, with
no questions asked, sends you money and we're like, oh, well,
we have AI now that could maybe detect that stuff.
Like maybe you have to send an actual photo of
Oh you say you sell wheelchairs, you say you sell scooters,
Send us a picture of the scooter and we're going
to reverse Google search image of that thing. Make sure

(17:21):
you didn't just pull it off the web. You can
stop this stuff.

Speaker 7 (17:24):
It is.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
It's not that difficult.

Speaker 4 (17:26):
But what's difficult is doing it politically, because these are
white collar criminals who have bought off the system and
have gotten themselves elected into the system. Well, so that's
why you weren't going to find the trillion dollars.

Speaker 5 (17:41):
It's partially a matter of semantics too, because when they
say things like widespread fraud and abuse, I actually agree
with that, But so what are they looking at right now?
Like one hundred and sixty What is one hundred and
sixty billion in cuts from dose?

Speaker 3 (17:54):
That's the top line nonsense.

Speaker 4 (17:56):
The way to actually calculate what they really saved would
be how much is Congress quote unquote rescinding.

Speaker 3 (18:05):
That's money that was spent.

Speaker 4 (18:06):
But then because you found the fraud abuse, Congress can
just take it back, and that's nine billion.

Speaker 5 (18:12):
That's insane.

Speaker 4 (18:13):
Two of that is NPR and PBS, which you don't
need Doge to like defund NPR and PBS. That's an
ideological thing that they can just do. So that's seven
and a bunch of that is like leases and lit's
just stuff that and God help us if any of
that actually saves us money, Like this is probably stuff
that you cut that seven billion dollars, it's going to

(18:34):
end up costing the federal government more money down the road.
But okay, fine, seven billion, he found seven billion. How
do we know that none of it was fraud? Because
have you seen a single headline about DOGE referring a
frauds Department of Justice? It's a lot of would that
not be just leading everywhere? Well, there we got them,

(18:58):
ladies and gentlemen, you.

Speaker 5 (19:00):
Got them definitely. Okay, So this is what I mean
semantics the waste question. Yeah, I mean, but if you're
saying widespread to the tune of two trillion dollars, which
is what he projected, what you end up finding and
let me say, plenty of waste at the Pentagon that
they could have gone after. So no, I do think there's.

Speaker 3 (19:19):
Like why are we doing?

Speaker 4 (19:21):
He could have been like, hey, guys, why are we
building another nuclear triad?

Speaker 3 (19:24):
Like we don't need it?

Speaker 4 (19:25):
Like they're talking about spending a trillion dollars yep on
a new batch of nuclear weapons yep. You could you
could be like, hey, number one on the agenda, what
let's just not do this, yeah, and make people argue
why you should do it, Like, actually, all right, we
heard the arguments we have enough nuclear weapons that we
can kill everyone on the planet one hundred and seventy
five times over.

Speaker 3 (19:46):
We're good trillion dollars.

Speaker 4 (19:48):
Saved that you would that would actually but guess what
that would mean special interests who are involved in that
nuclear program would it would have to take a haircut,
and they don't want to do that.

Speaker 5 (20:00):
So that is to say, the question of how widespread
it is versus the just amount of money that we
spend on medicaid for example, Medicare, Medicaid, social Security, it
just pales. And the Pentagon budget too, although you could
actually just delete the Pentagon, you could go to the
entire defense budget and it would not make a dent

(20:21):
in the deficit, which sounds crazy, or in the debt,
i should say, which sounds crazy, but's true. At the manhattan'stude,
they've run the numbers on that. So it's just like
the fiscal hawks there have run the numbers on that.
It's it's really really good.

Speaker 4 (20:34):
It would get your it would get your lines closer,
which is what the market really cares about.

Speaker 5 (20:39):
Yeah, yeah, it would be helpful for that type of.

Speaker 4 (20:42):
Thing doesn't close everything because you've got thirty trillion dollar
debt right now roughly.

Speaker 5 (20:46):
It's I mean, it's still pale. Like Actually, defense spending
pales in comparison to how much money the expenditures, annual
expenditures on Medicaid, Medicare and those things.

Speaker 4 (20:57):
I mean, if if you took a trillion out, then
that thirty trillion dollar dead starts to shrink. However, actually
it doesn't.

Speaker 3 (21:05):
It does.

Speaker 4 (21:06):
It does then it is the American military that makes
the dollar the reserve currency. Right, so the whole thing
collapses without the military.

Speaker 5 (21:16):
It's so much fun.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
But maybe you don't need a trillion dollar one.

Speaker 5 (21:19):
But that's what gives people like Ron Johnson pause. And
this Ron Johnson from the Tea Party Wave by the way,
who is talking about how now is not the time
to be cutting taxes and he specifically has looked at
the same said to look at the bond markets. He
was just on Tucker Carlson Show actually making this case,
making basically an extended case against the BBB. So the

(21:42):
Trump administration has a month to somehow get these dug
in factions to the same place and I mean Rand
Paul has said that he is ready to compromise, that
he is he understands he's going to have to compromise.
If you are Mike Johnson and you have been giving
Elon mus cover for months, you are just beside yourself

(22:04):
and furious about this right now because he didn't find
the cuts that he was supposed to find, and now
he has the audacity to criticize your bill because after
it is it is. At the same time, you also
look at someone like Mike Johnson, you say you have
the audacity to talk about government spending and then put

(22:27):
a bill like this on the table. So just I
don't honestly, I don't know where they go. I mean,
they're desperate, which means that they'll be willing to make
significant compromises. I don't know that they even have a
good idea of what some of those compromises might look
like going forward. And that's pretty important for the way
that they see the entire economy. The American economy is

(22:48):
sort of hanging on whether or not they're able to
get some version of this past. We will see Ryan
how that ends up. We will continue to follow the story.

Speaker 3 (22:59):
Ryan, Let's move what's the next thing to watch on that,
and then we'll go to So.

Speaker 5 (23:03):
John Thune is meeting with Donald Trump at the White
House today and they're hitdling on policy in the particularly
tax policy. So we'll see what comes out of that.
It's going to be daily negotiations. I mean, I actually
think Trump has had sort of a lighter schedule the
last couple of days because he's working the phones and
taking meetings try to get people into the same pay

(23:26):
or onto the same page on this which it's just
sort of at this point unfathomable what you can do
to build up bridge, but they have a month to try.

Speaker 4 (23:36):
Pierce Morgan has gotten increasingly fed up with the arguments
that he's been hearing from defenders of Israel on his
program in a way that I think is symbolic of
the broader shift in Western media and politics going on
at the moment that there have been a couple of
viral moments just from the last twenty four hours. One

(23:57):
of those we wanted to play here this is Natasha Hasdorff,
who is a UK lawyer who represents Israel and went
on with both comic Dave Smith and Pierce Morgan. Though
you'll see that Dave Smith plays the same role that
you're going to play in this which is just watching.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
So let's do that.

Speaker 9 (24:14):
I was told by the investor to the UK it
was a blood libel for me to suggest that Israeli
killed children.

Speaker 10 (24:19):
No, I don't believe that was the case. I want
to do with targeting children. There is a difference because
we are hearing that Israel's targeting children and that couldn't
be further from Well.

Speaker 9 (24:28):
Last week, nine out of ten children in one home
where two doctors reside were killed in an air strike.
What was that?

Speaker 11 (24:35):
Remarkable?

Speaker 9 (24:36):
What was that?

Speaker 11 (24:36):
That has been based only on the basis of hearsay.

Speaker 9 (24:39):
You don't believe that story?

Speaker 11 (24:40):
Nation, I want these stories.

Speaker 9 (24:41):
Wait, wait, wait a minute, you don't believe those children
kill I have.

Speaker 10 (24:46):
Seen conflicting accounts, and I want that story to be
properly investigated before the international media runs with it.

Speaker 9 (24:51):
Do you think those two parents, one of whom I think,
operated on.

Speaker 11 (24:55):
One of the children.

Speaker 5 (24:56):
I have a question.

Speaker 9 (24:57):
Do you think that those two doctors, the parents they
just made it up? Why the nine of their ten
children had been blown to pieces by and Israeli is right?

Speaker 11 (25:06):
If this is true, you don't believe it, well, why.

Speaker 10 (25:09):
On earth was artificially generated imagery used to promote this
story when it first I've got to say, what.

Speaker 9 (25:16):
You've just said about that family is despicable.

Speaker 11 (25:19):
We've seen time. Sorry, it's despicable.

Speaker 9 (25:22):
Somebody you talk about blood libel, like David said, you
talk about blood libel, you talk about lies. You're talking
about promoting propaganda. And who you sit here as a
lawyer and you say that you do not believe those
nine children were.

Speaker 11 (25:36):
I didn't say that. You're putting it in my mouth.

Speaker 9 (25:38):
Do you believe it or not?

Speaker 11 (25:39):
Said that they were conflicted?

Speaker 7 (25:40):
Do you believe it?

Speaker 11 (25:41):
And it needs to be invested?

Speaker 9 (25:42):
Do you believe it?

Speaker 11 (25:43):
I thought you would be.

Speaker 9 (25:44):
The parents said nine of their ten children were killed.
Do you believe them or that there's two doctors make
it up?

Speaker 10 (25:50):
They haven't said that directly as far as I have seen,
I have seen secondhand accounts and hearsay.

Speaker 11 (25:55):
But it's important to ask why are these civilians still there?
Why is it that you know?

Speaker 9 (26:00):
It's important to usk whether you believe that family have
lost nine of their ten children.

Speaker 11 (26:04):
I want to know why the international don't do you don't?

Speaker 9 (26:07):
And this goes to the point that I would say
about Israel generally now in this wall, Israel says they
don't believe anything everything. Every story that comes out about
the deaths of civilians in Gaza, someone will pop up
representing the Israeli governments saying it's propaganda, it's not true.
I've heard it's.

Speaker 4 (26:27):
Not right Emily the most revealing comment from her. I
thought maybe it was accidental, but she said why are
those civilians still there? Which I think what she's referring
to is that, like six months before these nine children
were killed, there was an evacuation order given for that
area where they live. The problem with these evacuation orders

(26:49):
is that they Israel does not they don't expire. They'll say, okay,
we're going to be the IDEF is going to be
operating in this area. Everyone from this neighborhood leave, people leave,
IDF comes in, and then the IDF leaves, and then
everyone from the neighborhood comes back, and then six months
later they bombit and say, well, we told you to leave.

(27:14):
But the underlying quote there, what are these civilians still
doing there? I think represents this like deep, something deeper,
like they are very frustrated that there are still civilians
in Gaza twenty months later, I thought, why have we
not fully expelled everybody yet, Like, what is going on here?

Speaker 3 (27:34):
Why are you even still there?

Speaker 4 (27:36):
And that brings us to this absolute calamity of an
effort at AID distribution. Over this week, it's been a
wild week because over the weekend, you remember, there's this
massacre at about a kilometer from an AID distribution center.
The IDF initially claimed that it had not fired any

(27:56):
shots whatsoever. They sent an email out to some reporters
that said, off the record, we did fire shots at
the direction of suspects because we told them to stop
coming at us and they kept coming. So we did shoot,
but we don't believe that we shot any right, They.

Speaker 5 (28:16):
Said that off the record, and an email that also
include the denial.

Speaker 3 (28:19):
Right that also include the denial.

Speaker 4 (28:21):
And so a reporter sent me this and like, Hey,
I can't use this because I've agreed to receive these
emails that are off the record. You haven't agreed to this,
So I published that. So they're like, Okay, yes we
did shoot, but we don't know who was hit, and
like maybe there was Hamas And then they released this
video that they said was hamas gunman doing the shooting.

(28:43):
Turned out that was at a different day, at a
different location and where it was in Communis and it
was gangs that were backed by Israel who had stolen
aid and we're selling it and people who wouldn't pay
them for it, they were shooting them. So that fell
apart the watching post yesterday, should this like incredible like
correction that said, while three eye witnesses talking about the

(29:06):
weekend massacre, while three eyewitnesses told the Washington Post that
the gunfire came from the Israelis, Israel denied it, and
we did not give proper weight to the Israeli denial
in our original article. I can't imagine any other shooter
who would get that kind of grace. Even though three

(29:27):
people said they saw you do it, you said you didn't,
and we should have put it that you said you
didn't right in the headline while this debate over the
level of Israel's culpability of the weekend massacre was ongoing, I.

Speaker 5 (29:41):
Say, by the way, I don't even object to that,
because people can make up their own decisions about people
are supposed to give weight on their own without necessarily
being handheld to the journal, sayway, and.

Speaker 4 (29:51):
So while this debate has been going on about what
was Israel's responsibility for the massacre on over the weekend,
there has been a masker every single day at a
Gaza Humanitarian Foundation a distribution site, including just recently, including
and again last night.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
We can roll b one.

Speaker 4 (30:12):
This is This is imagery from yesterday evening Gaza time
where the Gods of Humanitarian Foundation announced that it was
going to be pausing distribution because the Boston Consulting Group,
which was the consulting for American consulting firm that basically
did all the work to set up GHF, announced that

(30:34):
it was leaving. They said, this was pro bono work
and we're putting on leave the partner who brought us
into this debacle and we're not helping them anymore. Conflicting
reports came out that they were they were sending million
dollar invoices for the work that they've done here. I'm
sure we'll see that sorted out in court.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
Either way. The word goes out, Okay, we lost our consultant.

Speaker 4 (30:57):
We're not We're not gonna We're not gonna do dis
Truck drivers leak to their friends and family and Gaza. Hey,
there's going to be a convoy going through that. That
was Western Gaza City that you see. So a massive
crowd convenes in Western Gaza City of starving people who
are there hoping that they're going to be able to
like a truck will stop. And then what happens is

(31:19):
when the truck stops, they just unload everything right there,
and whoever is close enough to the truck and strong
enough to like hold on to the bag of flower
gets to like leave with the bag of flower in
this hunger game style situation. And so while this chaos
is unfolding, and what you see in the video there
is people running from gunfire, different reports of where it

(31:42):
was coming from, helicopters, quad copters. Again, you know, you
get you get denials. We can put up this next element,
which I think is B six. So as we're going
back and forth over you know what happened? Who did
the shooting? Most of Babutoha, who you guys may remember.

(32:02):
He's the Gaza poet who won a Pulitzer prize this year.
He got this video where he says, I've just found
this video posted by a mean's friend. The man's name.
The man's named Amin Samir Khalifa. He documented the moment
when Israeli soldiers opened fire at them yesterday morning. Amen
was killed along with over thirty people. The Israeli forces
denied their responsibility for the killing, and the media changed

(32:25):
their headlines. Can you tell us who killed Amen and
the other star of people? And if you go find
this on his feed, it's just an absolutely horrifying scene
of explosions in gunfire. And then tell yourself this is
billed as an aid distribution site. This is why you
don't militarize aid distribution sites like they turn an AID

(32:48):
site into a war zone. For the first sixteen seventeen
months of the war, the UN World Food Program, World
Central Kitchen and others, you didn't see images like this.
Occasionally you would see the flower Masacre, which involved the IDF.
You saw World Central Kitchen trucks getting hit by the IDF.
But you never saw the World of Food Program shooting

(33:10):
at hungry people. And you never saw scenes of warehouses
getting mobbed or trucks getting mobbed. It's only when this
program has taken over that that you start to see this.
And I think because Pierce Morgan is covering this stuff
every day that that's what accounts for his turn.

Speaker 3 (33:31):
What do you think.

Speaker 5 (33:33):
It's I think Piers Morgan as such a you just
said turn, as such a staunch defender of the Israeli
government and the Israeli side of the conflict, is representative
of something that we've covered in general, which is the
public sentiment in places like the UK and the US

(33:53):
just shifting over the course of the post October seventh
War in ways that I just people like the barrister
he was interviewing are not at all prepared for. I
think it's catching them off guard to some extent. It
was a really dark exchange, a really dark exchange in
that video, and just watching the last video we watched
and hearing thinking back to her point about why artificially

(34:17):
intelligent videos a I generated videos had initially come out.
That is so so dark when you think about it.

Speaker 3 (34:28):
We're going to see that now exactly.

Speaker 4 (34:30):
Anytime there'll be a masker going forward, there will also
be some AI related content that comes out as well,
and the people who carried out the masker will say, well, look,
this part's fake, so maybe all of it's fake, and.

Speaker 5 (34:45):
They may generate it.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
They might generate, right, and that's.

Speaker 5 (34:48):
Really really you may generate it as a shield. So
it's just quite frightening to hear that line. It does
I think grind smack of desperation. And the only other
point I wanted to make is I think Piers Morgan
is wrong. I think she actually does believe that the
family was killed. I think that's probably why she didn't

(35:10):
want to really answer the question. And that's to your
point about the more interesting or the most interesting line
being that why were they still there? Why were they
still in Gaza? I think she probably does believe that
they were killed, and just doesn't feel the need to
or doesn't feel like it would be advantageous for her

(35:31):
to defend it. And so it's easier to say, from
the sort of public relations cynical perspective, well, we don't
really know what happened. The answer is that they believe
the government believes that's the collateral damage.

Speaker 4 (35:47):
Yeah, here's the exact line from the Washington Post. The
Post didn't give proper weight to Israel's denial and gave
improper certitude about what was known about any Israeli role
in the shootings. The early versions fell short of Post
standards of fairness and should not have been published in
that form. This is after Bill Ackmen, like snitch tagged

(36:09):
Jeff Bezos on Twitter.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
I was like.

Speaker 4 (36:13):
And saying that, like, this is the kind of thing
that is producing anti semitism around the country.

Speaker 3 (36:19):
It's like, No, the Washington Post reporting.

Speaker 4 (36:23):
On these massacres is not what is driving anti semitism.
And to me, none of it should be driving anti
semitism either way, because Israel is a state and I
refuse to allow Israel to claim that it represents an
entire religion of thousands that is thousands of years old

(36:46):
like that, that, to me is what everyone should be
drawing a line at this that these actions do not
represent Judaism.

Speaker 3 (36:57):
Like how anti semitic would it be to say that
they do.

Speaker 5 (37:01):
The Bill Ackman niche tweet is it's a way to
use that expand the definition of anti semitism to use
as a shield that protects a political actor, a state
actor from scrutiny, do scrutiny that would apply to any

(37:23):
political or state actor in a conflict.

Speaker 4 (37:25):
So their new version written to satisfy Bill Ackman says,
while three witnesses said the gunfire came from Israeli military positions.
The Israel Defense Forces denied the allegations, saying in a
statement that an initial inquiry indicated that its soldiers did
not fire at civilians while they were near or within

(37:46):
the distribution site.

Speaker 3 (37:48):
Then they add An.

Speaker 4 (37:50):
Israeli military official later said that troops had quote acted
to prevent several suspects from approaching unquote them overnight and
fired warning shots at the group.

Speaker 3 (38:00):
Well wait a minute, which is.

Speaker 4 (38:00):
It, but that there was quote no connection between this
incident and the false claims made against the IDF.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
Okay, yes, so we.

Speaker 4 (38:08):
Did shoot at those people at the time that this
is said to have happened, but there's no connection between that.
I have never seen a line that is closer to
These are not the droids you're looking for.

Speaker 3 (38:22):
Than that one.

Speaker 4 (38:24):
Okay, yes we did it, but there's no connection between
this incident and the false claims made against the IDF. Oh,
these are not the droids we're looking for.

Speaker 5 (38:33):
It's dark, really really dark stuff.

Speaker 4 (38:35):
Meanwhile, the Gaza flotilla I believe it's called the Maldine
is getting closer. We can put up this next element
getting closer to Gaza. This borderline suicidal mission, which includes
Greta Thurnberg and roughly what a dozen or so international activists.

(38:56):
I'm trying to think if I see any Americans on here.
I do not see any Americans on board this ship.
We can put up before they posted this image or
this this audio of a drone flying over top of
them rolled before.

Speaker 12 (39:14):
Hey everyone, this is Diaguablon here on board and Madeline.
We are on our mission to break the stage of Gaza.
Is that they're nine and there's a drone on.

Speaker 7 (39:22):
Top of our ship.

Speaker 12 (39:23):
We need your support right now, right now. Please tell
everyone demand a safe passage. If this is an attack,
we need your support right now.

Speaker 4 (39:31):
This, of course, is after Lindsey Graham effectively called for
Israeli sink the ship.

Speaker 3 (39:37):
What do you say?

Speaker 4 (39:38):
I hope that Greta can swim, And a bunch of
other kind of pro Israel influencers we're making the same
remarks that wouldn't it be great if Israel would just
solve our Greta problem here and just, you know, sink
this ship. After the twenty eleventh flotilla was rated by

(40:02):
Israeli troops and I think eleven were killed.

Speaker 5 (40:04):
So they're trying to distribute eight as my understanding, So
how what do you think practically happens when they get
so they I think set shell sail from Italy. So
when they get can't I mean it can't be at
this point too far away. What happens when they get there?
Practically it would be your prediction.

Speaker 4 (40:21):
I mean, they could just let them, Like it'd be
wild if they just got out of their way and
just let them land and let them distribute everything on
the ship. There's no there's there's no way there's weapons
on that ship. Just there's just no way, Like how
suicidal would that be to have weapons on the ship,
And so just let them give them meta food and

(40:43):
medicines on the ship and let them just unload it
and then go.

Speaker 3 (40:45):
Back, go away Like that is a that is an
option that is available to the Israelis at this moment.

Speaker 4 (40:53):
That that that is not even being discussed in meetings
about how to handle this is indicative of the tenor
of the approach towards humanitarian aid. The best case scenario
is that there's some Israeli naval ships that kind of
stop the ship and turn it around within what Israel

(41:13):
is considering the worst case scenari would be what happen
in twenty eleven where they attacked the ship and board
it and killed a bunch of people. And let's pray
that that doesn't happen. Yeah, what are we on next, Oh,
Chuck Schumer.

Speaker 5 (41:28):
We're going to talk about it ran, which is actually
sadly a decent segue from this block to the next block,
because we've seen the connection many times, so of course
the last couple of weeks, but we do have a
really incredible clip of Chuck Schumer, the most talented politician
of his general.

Speaker 4 (41:47):
That's right, and so let's set up to context here.
So Steve Wikoff, who is managing both the Ukraine file,
the Iran file, and the Gaza file for Trump.

Speaker 3 (41:58):
The same day he's.

Speaker 4 (41:59):
Dealing with a negotiations between Hamas and Israel over US ceasefire,
he sent a proposal to Iran around they're re entering.

Speaker 3 (42:08):
The nuclear deal, in which Barack revealed it.

Speaker 4 (42:11):
Axios reported the US conceded that Iran would be able
to enrich at a civilian level, so there'd be Titans
in spections. They'd have to blow up a bunch of
their kind of weaponized program. No new centrifuges, but they
would be able to pursue a civilian program.

Speaker 3 (42:27):
That gets leaked to Revede.

Speaker 4 (42:29):
Donald Trump then about five hours later, goes on truth
Social and says absolutely no enrichment happening. Forget it Mullis,
which then led head to Chuck Schumer injecting himself into
the negotiations.

Speaker 13 (42:46):
This way, when it comes to negotiating with the terrorist
government of Iran, Trump's all over the lot. One day,
sounds tough, the next day he's backing off, and now
all of a sudden we find out that Witkoff and
Rubio are negotiation eating a secret side deal with Iran.
What kind of bull is this? They're going to sound
tough in public and then have a side deal. It

(43:07):
lets Iran get away with everything. That's outrageous. We need
to make that side deal public. Any side deal should
be before Congress and most importantly, the American people. If
Taco Trump is already folding, the American public should know
about it.

Speaker 4 (43:21):
No side deals, So Tago Trump, that's Trump always chickens
out as the Wall Street phrase for it's okay to
you go along on Because Trump is going to back
off of his tariffs and now there's Schumer trying to
use it to egg on a war with Iran.

Speaker 3 (43:38):
So it leads to this open question of what's actually
in the proposal?

Speaker 4 (43:42):
It is there Richmond or is there not in Richmond?
And we'll roll Samuel Aarry in just one second, who's
a Palacinian who is very.

Speaker 3 (43:52):
Well connected in.

Speaker 4 (43:55):
And has connections to people who are familiar with the negotiations.
We interviewed him yesterday at drop site. We can roll
what he says about the enrichment, what's in? What's in
it regarding enrichment? But think about this, what are the
chances zero percent to one hundred percent that Donald Trump
has read Wittkoff's proposal that he delivered to Iran? Because

(44:18):
we're making news based off of what Trump says about
the proposal, h so we should know.

Speaker 3 (44:26):
Do you think he read it?

Speaker 5 (44:28):
Did you see the report last week that Telsea Gabbard
had been preparing to shift the daily intelligence briefing to
look like a cable news segment. So it's not in
you didn't see this, it's not You don't.

Speaker 3 (44:40):
Have to read.

Speaker 5 (44:41):
It, right, you don't have to read it, but that.

Speaker 3 (44:44):
Do the like do it as a stand up from
a couch.

Speaker 5 (44:47):
Trump is famously not super interested in written text, and
so that's it seems to me that through word of
mouth he could be getting different versions of what's in
the wit CO, what different spin in frame.

Speaker 4 (45:01):
Exactly what Trump knows about that proposal is what he
was told about it.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
No way he read it. Now about my life that
he did not read this proposal.

Speaker 4 (45:10):
Samuel Arion, We asked him if he had any sense
of what was in it?

Speaker 3 (45:14):
And this is C five, let's jump to that one.

Speaker 4 (45:18):
What can we understand about what the actual offer is
from the US to the Iranians?

Speaker 14 (45:25):
Right?

Speaker 15 (45:27):
Yeah, I mean it's incredible that you have one person
who's acting like the effective Secretary state. That's Steve Wickoff,
someone has never been confirmed by anybody, has never been
accountable to anybody except the Trump That's I think that's
the first, probably in America's history, when it comes to
one person, one void having all these very crucial files.

(45:48):
You have the Gaza fhile, the Iran file and the
Ukraine file. Leaven that aside. My information, which is confirmed
through what has been reported by in Iran, is that
indeed the the the letter that was sent by the
Americans does concede and this is this is very much confirmed,

(46:11):
concedes the right of Iran to enritually. So that's that
spoint's already been conceded by the United States, which opened
the possibility of reaching an agreement. The second point, they
wanted to freeze the enrichment. The Americans wanted to freeze
their enrichment and offered that they could be a regional

(46:35):
hub by which they could be enrichment activities in which
Iran can participate. Now the details are not very clear,
but the Iranians are very much encouraged by the fact
that the Americans have already conceded the point that Iran
was not willing to walk away if it was willing
to walk away if that was never conceded. So the

(46:56):
fact that the Americans have really considered this point that
opens the passibility of an agreement. The Americans offered a
three point sixty seven percent I think, whether it's three
point sixty seven percent or more or less, obviously it's
going to be less than twenty percent depending on the application,
is something probably that is subject to negotiations. But the
Americans never talked about the ballistic program, the rocket program

(47:21):
or the support of other non state actors, particularly when
it comes to Israel Palestine. So having the fact that
the Americans are not tying or linking these objects, and
that the Americans conceded the point, the possibility of reaching
an agreement now is much much higher than it was
a week or ten days ago, or even months ago.

(47:45):
Will the Israelis accept this, Will they sabotage They will
definitely do everything in their power to sabotage this. But again,
because this is a state actor and the implications of
any military strike on Iran is going to be catastrophe
not only against US interest but globally it will be filled,
I think the Americans will be very very careful not

(48:08):
to allow the isoelists to subletype.

Speaker 4 (48:11):
So you can imagine why the Israelies are upset about this,
not only as far as our you know, our sources
and Ravined understand it. It does allow some low level
of enrichment and does not stop them from supporting amas
nce A law, Iraqi militious. You know, the whole set
of proxies as Bela and the ballistic missile program is

(48:35):
something that is dear to the hearts of the israel government.

Speaker 3 (48:38):
As well, because that is the delivery mechanism for the
most part.

Speaker 4 (48:41):
This is so you can imagine why they're upset, and
humor is channeling that right.

Speaker 5 (48:47):
New York Times this morning, the Trump administration is proposing
an arrangement that would allow Iran to continue enriching uranium
at low levels while the US and other countries work
out a more detailed plan intended to block Iran's path
to a nuclear weapon. The propose will announce to a
diplomatic bridge intended to maneuver beyond the current situation, but
the details remain big, and the two sides remain far
apart on some elements. So potentially what's emerging here is

(49:10):
a pitch from whitch cough for a bridge, like to say,
will allow low levels. But that's not the final deal.
That's our bridge deal, and who knows if the other
deal actually ever comes, But that seems to be potentially
what the administration is landing on as an effort to
sell this to the Lindsay Grahams of the world.

Speaker 4 (49:30):
Yeah, which they don't seem interested because also they don't
want No, they don't they don't want it to work
because they don't want sanctions lifted.

Speaker 3 (49:39):
Like that, and that's the key.

Speaker 4 (49:41):
That's another thing that Samuel Arien talked about is that
the key thing that isn't getting a lot of focus
here in the US is that Iran's major interest here
is not just the economic sanctions, which are increasing less
important than the various terror designations they want because if you,
as Cuba has found out, like the the fact that
Cuba is listed as this like state sponsor of terror

(50:03):
makes it so that they can't bank with anybody anywhere,
and they're like, what terrorism like, we're not doing any
terrorism like that, setting Cuba side.

Speaker 5 (50:12):
So we'll talk to talk about that with one roal US.

Speaker 3 (50:15):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (50:15):
But Iran, you can make a stronger case if you
believe that all of these organizations are terror groups which
the US designates them. They know Ron does support them,
so Ron wants, you know, those things lifted. And if
they don't get that lift, what's the point We're not
going to give up our turn to turn.

Speaker 3 (50:31):
It if we don't get economic advantage out of it.

Speaker 5 (50:35):
I mean, Chuck Schumer, actually I'm curious how you make
it the way that Chuck Schumer is framing this, because
there's the it's oppositional Trump framing. But we can put
C two on the screen. This is polling from the
Brookings Institution. Most respondents prefer a deal limiting Iran to
a peaceful nuclear program. Only fourteen percent of Americans back

(50:58):
military action to Roy Aron's nuclear program. So, thinking back
and how the Republican Party framed the Obama nuclear the
Obama around nuclear deal, the politics of this for Chuck
Schumer going after Taco Trump are also kind of interesting,
don't I don't know what they're quite what they're thinking

(51:19):
with this.

Speaker 4 (51:20):
Ryan Well, either the utility or the futility of Taco
Trump is demonstrated in this moment because I actually used
the exact same phrase on TikTok.

Speaker 3 (51:30):
I just Chuck Schumer and I are both you know, TikTok.

Speaker 5 (51:32):
Natives, right, digital natives, and we both.

Speaker 3 (51:36):
Went after Trump over this.

Speaker 4 (51:38):
I went after him from the opposite side for undermining
Witcoff's offer and called him Taco Trump for his truth
social where he said there can be no in Richmond. Yeah,
because he's chickening out against Schumer and then Yahoo and
the rest are pushing on him. Schumer's calling him Taco
Trump for the original witcough proposal, right right, So Taco Trump,

(52:03):
it might not it might fall apart because it might
just be too useful. It's just you can just use
it constantly, and anything that like is that vague that
ends ends up getting drained a meaning and it loses
its pop.

Speaker 5 (52:16):
Well, it also sounds just kind of whimsical. It makes
everyone think of tacos, which they love.

Speaker 4 (52:20):
So putting something you love keeps being bothered by it,
then it will it will maintain its resonance.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
Well, he seems to not like it.

Speaker 5 (52:28):
I was gonna say, so C three we can put
on the screen. This is Access reporting that the DNC
rented at Taco Trump to mock to mock Trump on
the costumes.

Speaker 3 (52:36):
He's not going to like that.

Speaker 5 (52:37):
He's really not gonna like that. But at a certain
point if it gets if it becomes like dem leadership cringe,
then it probably does lose its power with Trump. It
probably becomes a meme of how pathetic it is to
see Chuck Schumer looking like he's literally in a nursing home,
which I suppose literally is because he's in the Senate
in that video that we played, like saying Taco Trump

(52:59):
to what egg Trump into a nuclear.

Speaker 4 (53:01):
Conflict and also putting tariffs on the entire world, Like
this is what democrats are daring him to start a
war with Iran and put tariffs, high tariffs on everybody
everywhere around the world.

Speaker 5 (53:13):
Right, right, things are going great, could not possibly be
going better. So all is all is well. But Chuck
Schumer is a star.

Speaker 3 (53:25):
He is a star. You scroll back and see, like
just the star power just pops off the screen, It
jumps right out. How many takes that was? What do
you think?

Speaker 5 (53:34):
That's a good question because is he reading off a prompter?
Did he have to memorize lines? Do they have Q
cards where she gets the bottom un?

Speaker 4 (53:41):
I think that I think he didn't. I think it
was off the cuff.

Speaker 5 (53:45):
You should be able to do that.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
But it was third or fourth take.

Speaker 5 (53:48):
Yeah, let's move on to Ukraine. Ryan.

Speaker 4 (53:53):
Yes, so we're on the brink of nuclear annihilation in
right here in Washington everywhere around the world. As the
escalatory ladder continues to be climbed by by Ukraine.

Speaker 3 (54:09):
We put this vo up here.

Speaker 4 (54:12):
This is footage of the crimea bridge boom going boom.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
This this was many months of planning. According to.

Speaker 4 (54:23):
Ukraine, they strapped enormous amounts of explosives as you can
see there to to the the base of the bridge.
Apparently it's back up and running. So maybe we can
take a step down.

Speaker 5 (54:37):
One of the more important bridges.

Speaker 3 (54:40):
Yes, the Crimea Bridge.

Speaker 4 (54:41):
It's a it's not just a prize infrastructure project of Putin,
but you know, economically and culturally, it's extremely important for
connecting you know, Crimea with.

Speaker 3 (54:51):
The say, the rest of Russia.

Speaker 4 (54:53):
At this point, this comes after this you know wild
drone attack that went deep into Syria. Going after the
the Russian bombers that are used. You know that the
Ukrainians will say we hit them because they're used for
you know, bombing targets deep inside Ukraine. UH critics of

(55:16):
the operations say they're a central part of Russia's nuclear arsenal,
and you are playing with nuclear fire by going there.
One of those is UH retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who
was asked about how, you know what what he sees
as the risks of this Ukrainian attack, and he had

(55:39):
a rather chilling response.

Speaker 14 (55:40):
We can roll that sort of set up an analogy
Mexico or Canada or any third party, particularly one that
was approximate to our borders, launching missiles that hit Whiteman
Air Force Base and destroyed B two bombers, or hit
Barstow in Louisiana, or mine and destroy'd be fifty two bombers,

(56:02):
or came in on Growton, Connecticut where a ballistic missile
submarine was being serviced and hit it. These are things
that during the Cold War we swore to each other
Moscow and Washington that we would never do. These are
things that are so destabilizing that Putin would be in

(56:23):
his every right with regard to all the lessons we
have learned and their many to attack and to attack
with nuclear weapons and to say to the rest of
the world they provoked me.

Speaker 3 (56:36):
They surely did.

Speaker 14 (56:37):
And I'm not losing my devices for responding should I
be really provoked by a first strike. And that's what
you're talking about. Never never hit the assets that your
nuclear armed enemy needs to assess whether or not you're
attacking them. That's a no no, Always been a no no.

Speaker 16 (57:00):
No.

Speaker 14 (57:00):
One disputed that in Moscow or Washing, earn it, for
that matter, in the other capitals in.

Speaker 3 (57:05):
The world, see only.

Speaker 4 (57:07):
I don't think that this justifies a nuclear response from Boutin.
But I don't like the idea that we're even in
the area. Yeah, of course where it's an open questions,
like we should try to avoid being in the area
the gray zone of nuclear response.

Speaker 5 (57:23):
It's completely insane. Just slept walk directly into it. And
right now on the hill today Richard Blumenthal, Lindsey Graham,
our meeting.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
They're back in the US.

Speaker 5 (57:32):
They're back here and meeting with a top advisor to
Zelenski actually today and pushing the sanctions past package and
who knows what else.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
The other thing they were just in Ukraine, they were
just and cheering them on.

Speaker 5 (57:45):
Yeah, and you're demanding more support from Trump, who's obviously
frustrated with Putin and not without reason in the peace process,
of course, but right the ease with which I mean
Ukraine said that operation took several months according to CNN.
It's crazy to me that when you watch the video

(58:07):
you realize, I mean it just it seems like that
should be a much harder target to hit him, and
it's important.

Speaker 4 (58:14):
Not underwater, and you know they also hit it, you know,
several months ago. If you remember, there was a footage
of the car like you're just driving along and boom
all of.

Speaker 5 (58:27):
A sudden, which is why it's kind of wild that
they're able to pull it off after several months. I mean,
that's one of the most obvious targets. But I think
part of what's it's so obviously provocative to do that
to the bridge, To do that to that bridge, so
obviously provocative.

Speaker 4 (58:45):
So yes, it's wild, it really well, these talks are
going on, Tar talks are going on.

Speaker 5 (58:52):
Ye. Well, and you can't that operation that we covered
a Monday that went you know, more than three thousand
miles from Kievan, Russia. That was, of course, literally the
day before peace talks and assemble. So it's a message obviously,
and they'd been getting hit really hard in the days
leading up to it. But Ryan, we were hearing from

(59:14):
Donald Trump for however long, that he would broke her
a peace deal within twenty four hours. We are now
pushing into the six month of his presidency and it's
getting worse. Yeah, it's not getting closer at all.

Speaker 3 (59:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (59:26):
And meanwhile, there seems to be some operation happening against
Darren Beattie, who was a top State Department official and
one of the one of the key guys in pushing
back against one of the key guys in what you
call like the peace camp and.

Speaker 5 (59:46):
The non interventionist Yeah. Yeah, he'd be sort of decried
as an isolationist from the Lindsay Graham faction.

Speaker 4 (59:53):
Yes, And so he's getting hit in the Telegraph with
this With this article, the headline is Trump official who
shut down Counter Russia agency has links to Kremlin.

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
Darren Beattie, who.

Speaker 4 (01:00:06):
Alarmed the State Department with his pro Moscow views, is
married to a woman whose uncle has ties to Vladimir Putin.
By the way, as a former tabloid reporter at the
when I was at Tough Post, the word tie anytime
you see the word ties.

Speaker 3 (01:00:25):
Or links, that is what's called a.

Speaker 4 (01:00:29):
Kind of get out of defamation jail free guard because
think about the word link.

Speaker 3 (01:00:34):
Yep, you're linked to everything.

Speaker 5 (01:00:37):
We are linked to Putin by doing this segment.

Speaker 4 (01:00:40):
We're linked, yes, breaking Points, linked to Putin, yes, or untied.

Speaker 5 (01:00:43):
To Putin, LinkedIn tie, LinkedIn tid Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:00:46):
So we have a statement from the State Department here.

Speaker 5 (01:00:51):
Yeah, this is an exclusive statement to Breaking Points from
the State Department that says it isn't a coincidence that
these attacks on Durn Batty are servicing as the administration
is working to fight censorship domestically and champion free speech
around the world. We will get back to that in
just a moment. These fake news outlets are so desperate
to keep these censorship tactics alive and discredit the transparency initiative,

(01:01:12):
they are publishing falsemeres on respective respected and effective employee
at the State Department. Now. Der Baty is an enormously
controversial person who was working in the sort of media
punditry space before being plucked into the State Department. In
this administration, he had worked in the White House.

Speaker 3 (01:01:30):
I fired for speaking at like a white nationalist conference.

Speaker 5 (01:01:33):
Right from the first Trump White House, right, yeah, exactly,
and then it is brought in the second administration. Ruffles
feathers for sure in the but especially among the interventionist
crowd because they are probably more offended by his questioning
of interventionism.

Speaker 3 (01:01:50):
The white nationalism whatever.

Speaker 5 (01:01:54):
It's coalition, Yeah, it's coalition. So anyway, we confirmed the
State Department says passed all of his background checks. So
this innu window about his wife and her uncle. It's interesting, Ryan,
because to work in a key position in the State
Department actually the Biden State Department went through this with

(01:02:18):
what's his name, Rob and Iran stuff. No, that was Trump,
but Rob Valley on Iran stuff. And it did eventually
come out that he had some interesting links and ties.
But he was obviously, oh interesting, you'd obviously be be vetted.

(01:02:39):
So his dinner and baby's wife gave a statement to
The Times, the UK Times quote, far from being Kremlin aligned,
Putin publicly denounced my uncle and his ownership stake in
bosh Kirsta, where upon the Putin government stole his company
from him. He has lived in exile for Russia for
five years. I'm deeply disappointed that the Telegraph would omit
these material and publicly discoverable facts that completely undermine the

(01:02:59):
suggestion that my uncle or I am Kremlin linked, which
is the narrative backbone of the entire piece.

Speaker 3 (01:03:05):
Links linked to the Kremlin by being adversaries.

Speaker 5 (01:03:08):
It is.

Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
So we'll find out.

Speaker 4 (01:03:10):
If this is a get out of defamation jail or not.
Because I met you know, this is the UK. It's
much easier to get sued, it's much easier to win
acclaim than it is here in the US. So yeah,
like so right, the point is yeah, there is a
connection between her uncle, which is like, come on, uncle, yeah, now,

(01:03:32):
now you're responsible not just for what you do, not
just for your for what your wife does, but for
what no wife's uncle does.

Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
And it turns out the wife's uncle.

Speaker 4 (01:03:41):
Was actually beefing with Putin over some oligarch stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:03:44):
Mm hmmmm hmm. And that's not really in the article,
is yeah, so Ran it is amusing to see the
State Department and being himself in his post on X said,
for anyone who passionately supports President Trump and fights to
advances of Jennifer the American people, media hit pieces come
with the territory. Interestingly, that echoes the exclusive statement that

(01:04:04):
we got from the State Department, which is suggesting that
this is a hit piece timed specifically because of what's
happening in Ukraine right now. And you read the piece
and can even take issue with Darren Beattie working in
the State Department, can take issue with his views. I
actually think that it is laden with innuendo and probably

(01:04:26):
timed exactly as they're implying it.

Speaker 4 (01:04:29):
Yeah, it probably is, but we shouldn't move on without
just taking a moment to dwell on the ability of
the State Department and Marco Rubio's people to apparently hold
two completely contradictory things in their head at the exact
same time. One is that their administration, quote is working

(01:04:51):
to fight censorship domestically and champion free speech around the world.
You're like, I'm sorry, you're doing what You're fighting censorship
domestically by going through the social media of every college
student and then trying to find anybody who's here on

(01:05:15):
a visa.

Speaker 5 (01:05:16):
If every non citizen college student apparently, and.

Speaker 4 (01:05:18):
Yeah, so you've got a permanent resident who protested Israel's
actions at Columbia, Mood Khalil, a Green card holder married
to an American citizen who has an American citizen daughter
who he has never seen because he is behind bars

(01:05:40):
for his speech.

Speaker 3 (01:05:41):
And you every day are.

Speaker 4 (01:05:44):
Fighting censorship, Like okay, anyway, just that they could say,
like the fact that they could type that up and
nobody's like, this kind of come off weird to like
the whole world who sees what we're doing every day.

Speaker 5 (01:06:02):
Well, it's important from their perspective messaging wise that they
actually do lean into that, because their contention, it's not
from their perspective morally inconsistent because their contention is that
it's speech for US citizens, And so they've done things
like get rid of State Department contracts with the Global
Engagement Center and groups that have designed these censorship apparatus,
and they what was it just last week, said that

(01:06:24):
they were no longer giving visas to people who had
sought to interfere with the free speech rights of Americans.
So again, I disagree obviously with the os Turk and
Khalil cases and the way the State Department has handled those.
We've said that, We've covered that many times. But I
think from their perspective, you have to lean all the

(01:06:44):
way into saying that we just totally brazenly are champions
of free speech, because otherwise it would imply that they
think they actually are curtailing free speech.

Speaker 4 (01:06:56):
And what's amazing, though, is if you think about that,
let's take let's take their explanation at face value and
pretend it is on the up and up. They're saying, yeah, Okay,
what we are concerned about is the speech of American citizens.
If you're a foreigner here in our country, that is
a privilege.

Speaker 3 (01:07:15):
Just and shut up. We don't want to hear any
criticism from you.

Speaker 4 (01:07:19):
At the same time, they're telling other countries, if an
American citizen is in your country, the First Amendment applies
to them in your country, and they are not subject
to your censorship laws.

Speaker 3 (01:07:37):
Your people, if.

Speaker 4 (01:07:38):
They come to our country, cannot criticize Israel and they
are subject to our censorship rules. But when our people
come to your country, they cannot be censored. Not that
they would try to make anything consistent, but like, what's
the principle there under which their citizens are not entitled

(01:07:59):
to beach rights in our country, but we, who are
the free speech champions of the world, insist that ours
are entitled to it in your country.

Speaker 5 (01:08:08):
I was gonna say, the really important point is about
that principle period. Because the argument that Mahmu Khalil or
Mesa Ostrik are undermining the US foreign policy goals, which
is the provision that Mark Rubio has used to justify
revoking the visas the principle of their speech, which in

(01:08:29):
Ostrich's case was a pro bds op ed about the
college student government and the administration at toughts that that
is somehow undermining the foreign policy of the United States,
interfering with the foreign policy of the United States. Now
the powers of that law are broad and actually probably

(01:08:49):
should be reconsidered periods. Judge Trump said, yeah, let alone
used but all those to say, the principle is that
it is beyond the pale to be critical of Israel
because it's hurting the foreign policy goals of the United States.
And I think what you're getting into there is criticism

(01:09:10):
of Israel being anti Semitic, which is something of course
that has been passed in bills in Congress before that
Anti Zionism is anti Semitism and is a common refrain.
And that's not free speech for Americans either, even though
it's being applied in this case to people who aren't
American citizens. The implications down the line are setting the

(01:09:31):
stage for more censorship of American citizens.

Speaker 4 (01:09:34):
And if we can tell other countries know what their
speech codes and laws need to be with regard to
American citizens, can we tell other countries that they must
ban criticism of Israel within their countries too. Not to
give ideas to anybody, but like just I mean, most

(01:09:55):
of them don't need that idea. That's already they've already
gone down that road.

Speaker 5 (01:09:59):
If they end up up getting rid of Darren Beatty.
They can bring you in. There'll be a job open,
you can come in.

Speaker 4 (01:10:05):
Well, Beattie and I have both interviewed in ron Khan.
Oh really, he did the last interview with him, Ron
Khan before he was jailed. BET's very good on Pakistan.

Speaker 5 (01:10:15):
Oh, that's that's quite interesting. He's an eccentric thinker.

Speaker 3 (01:10:20):
This is undoubtedly true statement I say.

Speaker 5 (01:10:22):
I was surprised when they brought even I was surprised
when they brought him, all right, as the kids say, based.

Speaker 3 (01:10:31):
Yeah, and it's not.

Speaker 4 (01:10:32):
I don't think that Rubio was involved in bringing him in,
to put it gently right, likely.

Speaker 5 (01:10:38):
Not, Maybe Michael Anton and those guys. I don't know.
That's a good question. We'll see. All right. Let's move
on to Joy Reid. Ryan House did MSNBC anchor. Joy
Reid is sharing more of her thoughts about why she
ended up getting the act just a couple of months ago.

(01:10:59):
Let's roll this first clip of Joy read in conversation
with Katie Kirk.

Speaker 16 (01:11:03):
I got to you know, NBC and I Twitter back
in two thousand. I think I joined an eight or
nine and the bosses were horrified, and anytime I would
tweet anything, I would get calls I would get.

Speaker 5 (01:11:15):
Please get off Twitter. We hate it.

Speaker 16 (01:11:17):
They just they don't like that it pulls their talent
and their reporters out of their control because now you're
not running what you're tweeting through standards and practices. It's
giving your personality directly to the audience, which they don't
like because it's no longer managed and curated by them,
and they don't want people breaking news.

Speaker 5 (01:11:39):
I'm just not realizing that Katie Kirk has that famous
picture of Joan Didion framed behind her on her podcast set,
which is just to be fair, I have a Joan
Diddion book on our set back here, but that's just
Katie Kirk with the Joan Didion portrait. Is something just
really getting under my skin this morning, Ryan, But that's
neither here nor there, Joy.

Speaker 3 (01:12:00):
Read guest hosts right while Sager's.

Speaker 5 (01:12:02):
Out Katie Kirk, Kirk or Joy Read right, Hey, hey,
you bring your men, see what happens. It's a it's
a fine line between I've always said this, between Katie
Kirk and Sager and Jetty they share many similarities. Yeah,
so it's something I think about now be fun together, Yes, yes,
something to somebody to think about producers. I know you're listening,

(01:12:23):
but joy Read makes a fairly interesting case in this clip,
by the way, and I will not be rescinding any
of my criticisms of joy Read whatsoever. But she makes
an interesting case about MSNBC in this clip, which is
that she didn't have the worst ratings at MSNBC, which
is a low bar. By the way, she says to
Katie Kirk, I wasn't told the ratings were terrible. It's

(01:12:45):
something you did. You tweeted a terrible thing. She said.
She had been being quote extra careful on social media
at the time because there was a real anxiety, she
said about it, and that's kind of interesting. She says,
it wasn't the ratings because we had just a ratings
meeting a couple of weeks before that, talking about the
fact that our show, other than Rachel Mattow, we were
down the least after Tramp's the election win. So being

(01:13:07):
down the least, but it's actually an interesting point because
it's not as though, now that we have a few
months in hindsight, it is not as though MSNBC is
actually trying to change its brand. It's not as though
so when I saw the firing of Joy Reid, and
I was like, this is this is interesting because Joy
Reid was I think symbolically a very powerful representation of

(01:13:30):
and maybe we disagree on this, but where MSNBC went
wrong during the Trump years, which was this kind of
sanctimonious doubling down on being the voice of truth and
facts and nobody else could possibly or nobody who disagrees
with me is on the side of truth or facts.
I'm on the side of truth or facts, and I
will tell you what's right and what's wrong. And I

(01:13:53):
thought maybe that they were getting rid of Joy Reid
because they were trying, you know, however ham fistedly to
go in a different direction. But they're definitely not really
doing that. They haven't really made any significant changes.

Speaker 3 (01:14:05):
Yeah, I don't Joy as being.

Speaker 4 (01:14:10):
Differentiating herself in that crowd of people during the first
Trump You think she had the same kind of approach
as almost all of them did. The thing that did
differentiate her from the pack was that she was consistently
critical of.

Speaker 3 (01:14:31):
Israel's assault on Gaza.

Speaker 4 (01:14:33):
Like that was If you try to think about the
things that make her different than other hosts, either on
CNN or MSNBC, that's the only one that I can
think of.

Speaker 5 (01:14:44):
So she doesn't cite that. She says, quote, I'm a
black woman doing the thing, you know what I mean,
And so I'm not different from Mattow or Nicole Wallace.
But quote, I think that there's a difference for Trump
and hearing the kinds of criticism, specifically out of a
black woman.

Speaker 3 (01:14:58):
That is true, it.

Speaker 5 (01:14:59):
Bothers them in a way, doesn't bother him like anything else.
She says there's a fear of him, implying at MSNBC,
we're seeing it everywhere. Uh now, I'll have.

Speaker 3 (01:15:10):
To think she's right about that. Like, sorry, Trump people,
I think she.

Speaker 5 (01:15:13):
Is really that Trump has some issue.

Speaker 4 (01:15:16):
Black women being critical of him hits harder for him
than like a Rachel Maddow or certainly hits harder than
like a white guy, especially good looking white.

Speaker 5 (01:15:32):
Well, I guess this is a little bit different. But
the man he hates more than anyone else is Chuck Todd.
Chuck Todd seems to be just about anyone he likes.

Speaker 4 (01:15:42):
Some of the other guys like who wrote the Enemy
of the People book, people book, the CNN guy Jim Acosta.

Speaker 3 (01:15:51):
Yeah, yeah, like he loves you can tell he loves.

Speaker 5 (01:15:54):
He loves going back and forth with Jim Acosta.

Speaker 4 (01:15:56):
Yeah, because he's that's a handsome newsman right there, you're
fake news.

Speaker 5 (01:16:00):
To isn't exactly out of central casting.

Speaker 4 (01:16:01):
True, he wants them out of central casting. He wants
his enemies to be good looking white eyes.

Speaker 5 (01:16:08):
Now remind me. So I'm looking at this right now
because MSNBC was spun off of so Comcast spun off
its portfolio of cable news networks and that includes MSNBC.
This was announced back in November. Reid was let go.
That was what earlier the spring, roughly around March ish.

(01:16:30):
So that's why at the time I thought maybe MSNBC
was just going in a different direction, which by the way,
would mean it actually would mean getting rid of Nicole
Wallace or at least like turning down the volume on
the entire the Scarborough, the Scarborough Brazizinski disaster, which is I.

Speaker 3 (01:16:50):
Know, like they all have to go, right, Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 5 (01:16:52):
If they're trying to brand differently, at least you would.
But but so she's saying she's basically lumping in the
CBS settlement and other settlements, what ABC's Stephanopolis settlement and
implying that MSNBC might have a similar fear.

Speaker 3 (01:17:11):
Now, which I think is also true.

Speaker 5 (01:17:13):
It's interesting because it's it's a question of whether Comcast
still has so where they are in the process of
actually spinning MSNBC off, is Comcast is there is there
implication that Comcast is afraid or is it the MSNBC.
Because MSNBC is a left of center network, I don't
think would be particularly afraid unless they're trying to get sold.
Because that was another thing. Elon Musk was flirting with

(01:17:34):
the possibility that maybe he would buy MSNBC. But you
could easily see another like right wing billionaire doesn't have
to be Elon Musk swooping in and buying MSNBC. And
then at the time if they were trying to like
ready it as a property for an acquisition, maybe that's
what's going on, or maybe it's just hard to work with.

Speaker 3 (01:17:52):
Yeah, I think it was the Comcast stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:17:53):
Like Comcast is a terrible business whose the entire existence
depends on large s for from the government regulatory for
the most part, and so that is like the most
vulnerable kind of company. So you don't want to anger
the king, you know, if you depend on the king.

Speaker 5 (01:18:13):
I don't know. I just Joey read. Yeah, I guess
we'd probably disagree on this, but I've found her to
be one of the more difficult, one of the representations
of a lot of the stuff that went wrong during
Trump era journalism, and to her credit, one of the
more interesting things she did. She would have conservatives, right wingers,

(01:18:34):
mega people on and she made compelling television because she fought,
and that's something that I think people like Rachel Mattow
and Chris Hayes and Nicole Wallace I suppose should do
more of. So I definitely give her credit for I agree.

Speaker 4 (01:18:50):
Actually, I think the blue Maga stuff is totally fine
to do as as content if you're going to have
people arguing with you on there.

Speaker 3 (01:18:58):
Right now, it's not my kind of thing.

Speaker 4 (01:19:00):
It's not what I would want to watch, but like,
if you're going to debate it out with people and
then the fine, it's it's the it's the blue Maga
echo chamber stuff that becomes really corrosive.

Speaker 5 (01:19:11):
Yeah, I agree with that. Rachel Mattow I think has
sadly fallen prey to though. I just think Rachel Matto
is really smart and talented journalist and has.

Speaker 4 (01:19:20):
Her monologues are always the long, like ten minute long
thing she does the top.

Speaker 3 (01:19:24):
Yeah, it was fun.

Speaker 5 (01:19:25):
Well, they were also like masterfully crafted and the writing
was like extremely compelling if you were watching some of those.

Speaker 3 (01:19:31):
Where is this going? Where's this going?

Speaker 2 (01:19:33):
Right?

Speaker 5 (01:19:33):
The Trump one monologue that Rachel Mattow would do, which
became kind of famous or infamous, but probably infamous after
she claimed to have Trump's tax returns and all of
Washington was watching. I even watched that, Yeah, I mean
that night and it was like Heraldo at the vault
by the end of it, like she had her scoop
was like way over hyped what she actually had. But

(01:19:53):
the writing was just masterful. So it's sad when people
get kind of sucked into the universe where they just
have purged anyone who might disagree. I think the best
segment on the debate between porn, the debate over whether
there's porn in schools and the library controversies is between

(01:20:13):
Joy Read and Tiffany Justice on Joy Reads on the
NBC Show, And I recommend everybody watch that.

Speaker 4 (01:20:19):
It's good because like it forces them both to learn
what the other side knows and understands and thinks and.

Speaker 3 (01:20:26):
That before you can rebut it.

Speaker 5 (01:20:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:20:29):
So up next, we've got Wanda vid Rojas, who's that conservative,
like kind of a heterodox conservative.

Speaker 5 (01:20:35):
I don't even know.

Speaker 4 (01:20:36):
If writer when it comes to Latin American politics roughly.

Speaker 5 (01:20:42):
I mean he's conservative on immigration policies. I wonder we
maybe we should ask him how he sees himself. But
he does fantastically interesting and heterodox coverage of Latin American
politics from Ecuador to Venezuela, to Cuba and to Mexico
as well, and has been on a tear recently with
some interesting coverage of Claudia Schinbaum front of the show

(01:21:03):
and also the world friend of the World Venezuela. We
particularly want to dive into a story he's written on
Venezuela because happening under the surface Parklading, under the surface
of this administration is a divide over how to approach
Venezuela between like the Rick Gurnell, Laura Lumer camp and

(01:21:24):
the old school cold Warriors. So we're going to dive
into all that with Wanda vid Ross right after this.
As promised, we're joined now by Wanda vid Rojas, who
writes at Compact one. Thank you for joining us.

Speaker 7 (01:21:38):
Thanks for having me guys.

Speaker 5 (01:21:39):
Well, let's start with F two, which is a recent
piece that you wrote for Compact that both Ryan and
I found really interesting. The headline is Laura Lumer is
right about Venezuela. But the story behind that and what
exactly Laura Lumer is right about is really important because
just last week there was significant controversy over whether Chevron
should get a real authorization to continue doing drilling in

(01:22:05):
Venezuela basically, and that pitted Rick Grenell against the Marca
Rubio kind of cold warrior camp, and in a really
interesting way because we hear from Rubio. Actually I literally
just heard from Rubio last night at the American Compass
Gallus saying that people are still clinging to the Cold War,

(01:22:26):
that we had these Cold War policies meant to prevent uprisings,
and then we kept those Cold War policies going forward,
and you can you started assume in that context he
was speaking generally, but that he was thinking about Ukraine
in particular. But Venezuela and Cuba, which we're going to
talk about as well, are good examples of this too.
So one, can you tell us a bit about what's

(01:22:48):
percolating under the surface of the Trump administration as it
relates to Venezuela and maybe more broadly Latin America, because
this is I think a really really important and underappreciated
part of what's happening over at state.

Speaker 7 (01:23:00):
Yeah, that's a great point.

Speaker 17 (01:23:01):
I mean, now that I think about, I saw that
common elsewhere from Rubio as well. But yeah, that definitely
doesn't apply to Latin America for him. You know, he's
an old school Miami Hawk and his former constituents here
in the state of Florida. I live in Fort Lauderdale.
A lot of the only thing they care about is

(01:23:22):
regime change in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. And so you
have this tug of war within the administration that's really
interesting between you know, hawks like him, and then like
in Congress there's the three Republican representatives for South Florida,
madri Madea, Elvida Sare and Carlos Emenes and yeah, all,

(01:23:47):
like I said, all they care about is regime change,
and so any like new sanctions, any like you know,
sort of favors or benefits that Venezuela, Cuba could.

Speaker 7 (01:23:58):
Get in this case, since twenty twenty two.

Speaker 17 (01:24:01):
Biden has allowed Chevron to pump oil in Venezuela. They
have a license which allows them, you know, to explore
in Venezuelan waters, and both administrations to get around the
same time for a long time, right, And when Trump
got in, I just assumed that he, you know, they

(01:24:24):
would just you know, go maximum pressure again on Venezuela.
But what we saw is that the immigration hawks actually
were open to dialogue because they wanted to be able
to de poor people direct directly to Venezuela, which you know,
they they weren't authorizing.

Speaker 5 (01:24:41):
They're voting back and forth.

Speaker 7 (01:24:44):
Thies I was.

Speaker 5 (01:24:47):
Going to say one just quickly, the TPS revocation of
that status temporary. Yeah, of course, three hundred and fifty
thousand Venezuelans, so the number of deportations that they require
cooperation with Venezuela otherwise they need to find other countries
to send literally tens of thousands of people to. That's
how high stakes it is for them, exactly.

Speaker 7 (01:25:07):
Yeah, it's super urgent.

Speaker 17 (01:25:09):
And so you've had this tug of war between the
because there's these slim margins in the House of Representatives,
they just have a two seed majority, so those three
congressmen can sink basically anything that they want. So in February,
they threatened to not vote for what was the continuing resolution,

(01:25:31):
the like February.

Speaker 3 (01:25:32):
Budget when there's gonna be a shutdown.

Speaker 17 (01:25:33):
So the administration said, oh, okay, we're not gonna or
renew Chevron's license. Then they backpedaled and actually did, and
then so the Hawks got upset, and uh, you.

Speaker 7 (01:25:46):
Know, we could talk about that more in depth.

Speaker 4 (01:25:48):
Well, the key moment comes when Venice, when they when
they do pull the license, I guess you know. However, briefly,
Venezuela then pauses taking deportation flights and then the Trump
administration sends them to Al Salvador instead.

Speaker 3 (01:26:09):
So yeah, yeah, to walk through how.

Speaker 4 (01:26:11):
This like pivotal moment in the Trump administration's immigration and
foreign policy ends up getting decided by these kind of
three counter revolutionary like South Florida Republicans who could not
be more the kind of counter to America. First, if
you try to design it in a lab like that

(01:26:33):
they are, they are very explicit that their most important
priority is Cuba, and then Venezuela, yeah, and then and
then Nicarwaga and then eventually at some point you get
down to the North American country of the United States
of America.

Speaker 17 (01:26:48):
Yeah, it's horrible because it was definitely a contributing factor.
I mean, you know, Steven Miller doesn't need all that
much help to do his own psycho stuff. But you know,
they they were for like a brief period, a few
weeks because in days after Trump assumed office, they cut

(01:27:09):
this deal with Maduro. Okay, you know, we'll renew of
the license if you agree to take deportees. And they
did for a time. Then they renagged and so, okay,
we can't send people to Venezuela. All right, well let's
send them, send them to El Salvador. And was really
horrible is that? At least, according to multiple investigations, one
from The New York Times another from ABC, at least

(01:27:31):
two hundred of the two hundred and thirty eight Venezuelans
that they sent to a maximum security gang prison in
El Salvador had no criminal records in the US and Columbia, Chile, Peru,
a ton of different countries.

Speaker 7 (01:27:44):
They were really thorough.

Speaker 17 (01:27:46):
The administration denies this, but they also have refused to
release the names or the you know, supposedly Hanu's crimes
that these people committed. To be fair, around like two
dozen actually had credible, you know, associations as being a
gang numbers and committed crimes. Yeah, but the I mean,

(01:28:08):
this is just completely incompetent, and it's like, why would
they do this? If you know, I would dispute the
use of the Alien Enemies Act because you know, they
said that that you know, they were terrorists and that
Venezuela's conducting this invasion of the US through what uh
So I think that you know, using Alien Enemies Act
is wrong. But at least if they sent actual criminals,

(01:28:29):
you could say, okay, all right, well why are we
going to cry over criminals? And it just completely undermines
their case. And it's also been a huge boon to Maduro,
like you know, he just goes out on TV. It's like,
look at this, these forced disappearances to El Salvador. Look
at how complicit the Venezuelan opposition is. And he's right
because the Venezuelan opposition can't criticize Trump because he's their

(01:28:53):
chief political and financial backers. So it's been a colossal
debacle where lumor comes in, that's really funny is that
her and this Florida businessman wanted to renew the Chevron's
license because they're saying, hey, you know, Trump has this

(01:29:13):
agenda of energy abundance, we should be exploiting Venezuela's oil,
not in not China because most of Venezuela's oil exports
go to China. Obviously, she doesn't really care about, you know,
the deportations at El Salvado or anything like that. But
you know, in a very narrow sense, she's you know,
completely right. I mean, on its own term, sanctions have

(01:29:37):
not achieved their intended goal of regime change, and it's
just not going to happen, So why are we doing this?
It just makes Venezuela more miserable. And yet, if anything,
improving conditions.

Speaker 7 (01:29:48):
There by allowing more economic activity, would deter migration.

Speaker 3 (01:29:54):
And you know, there's something similar going on in Cuba.

Speaker 4 (01:29:58):
We can put up f F one here, which is
this political article about how you know where they say
it's Cuba. Cuba tried to improve its relations with the
US by cooperating with Trump's deportation flights.

Speaker 3 (01:30:09):
It didn't work.

Speaker 4 (01:30:10):
Cuba is facing sanctions and terror designations that make what
the US is doing to Venezuela seem almost almost friendly.
You've had an unspeakably large exodus of people from Cuba
to the United States and to other countries or you know,

(01:30:30):
in the in the hemisphere. People are reporting losing like
enormous amounts of weight, like just there isn't enough food
to go around. Healthcare and healthcare is just is completely
collapsing because the sanctions and the and the terror designation
means you can't get spare parts even like from Europe
or or anywhere else. Nobody wants to bank or do
business with Cuba. So they thought, okay, let's let's cooperate

(01:30:52):
on these deportation flights, and and that will that will
end up benefiting us it had it has not. The
same hardline approach is still being taken to Cuba. I
actually think, and you know, it's become a kind of
a mantra that you know, it's been sixty years almost
and we've been doing the same policy and we haven't
gotten regime change. I think it's actually possible, given the

(01:31:15):
absolute dire state of the situation in Cuba, that they
may actually accomplish their goal in the near term, Like
there could be complete collapse of the Cuban regime.

Speaker 3 (01:31:27):
I don't know, but it like there isn't much left
holding it up.

Speaker 4 (01:31:32):
That being a long term goal of the United States,
and now maybe even being in sight, what on earth
would happen.

Speaker 3 (01:31:40):
Let's say they get their wish.

Speaker 4 (01:31:42):
I would imagine that creating another Haiti, creating a failed
state on that island does not have the kind of
immigration consequences that the United States immigration.

Speaker 3 (01:31:56):
Hawks would want.

Speaker 4 (01:31:57):
So let's talk a little bit about this weird country
action at the heart of the rights approach to immigration.
We're on the one hand, they want no migration or
very little legal migration. On the other hand, they want
these hard line policies toward Latin America that that cut
off development and create failed states and plumbing economies that

(01:32:18):
then produce mass exoduses of migrants towards the United States.

Speaker 7 (01:32:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 17 (01:32:26):
And you know, historically, and when we're talking about like
what I call Miami neocons, they actually supported an open
door policy with regards to Cubans, and you know, they
had to backpedal more so with Venezuelans.

Speaker 7 (01:32:39):
But you know, this makes perfect sense.

Speaker 17 (01:32:41):
I mean, most people of Cuban descent Venezuela and the
dead the Broguan descent are extremely hard line with regards
to foreign policy towards their home countries, are extremely conservative.
And you know, you have what's called the Cuban Adjustment Act,
which is basically any Cuban who manages to stay here
for more than a year and a day is automatically

(01:33:03):
granted residency. And this is you know, just electorally. It's
great for Florida Republicans, and it's something that you know,
exactly exactly I've argued against it.

Speaker 7 (01:33:17):
It's it is a magnet.

Speaker 17 (01:33:19):
For a ton of people on the island, and conditions
are very dire. As you've said, it's something like two
million at least have left since twenty twenty one. And
you know, in the case of Venezuela, this is something
I push back on some of my anti imperialist friends
who say that, you know, the country's collapse, so it's
just due to sanctions. Well, that's not entirely true, because

(01:33:42):
Venezuela is an oil estate, and their economy collapse before
we impose sanctions on the royal sector in twenty seventeen.
You know, twenty fourteen, the price of oil dropped massively,
and you know, millions of people had already left before
we impose sanctions. That said, imposing sanctions obviously will make
things worse. Worse against sanctions whole scale. The case of

(01:34:03):
Cuba is another story. The current crisis has definitely been
caused by sanctions, specifically putting them on the State Sponsors
of Terrorism list, which is something that went back and forth.
Trump put them on the list, and the last days
of his presidency, like January twenty twenty one, Biden took
them off days before leaving office, and then Trump put

(01:34:26):
them back on the first day. Their economy is completely
dependent on tourism and putting them on that list means
that basically no one can do business with them, cruise
ships and all the like. And actually Biden imposed further
rules like that European tourists would have to report that
they've been to Cuba. This is something that drops I

(01:34:46):
reported on, Yeah, that they've traveled to a Cuban Obviously
that's going to be a deterrent to tourism.

Speaker 5 (01:34:53):
Well. And one, this is so interesting because the Trump
administration and kind of seems like a two thousand and
nine era Obama is on this reset tour of the
Cold War. At least some people in the Trump administration
would love to reset American foreign policy from the pattern

(01:35:16):
that we were stuck in for decades during the Cold War.
And that applies to Ukraine policy, it applies to NATO policy,
it applies to certainly Eastern Europe. But when it comes
to Cuba, very very close around the backyard, Cuba does
have is some measure of cooperation with China. Venezuela has

(01:35:37):
some measure of cooperation with Iran in China as well,
So it's not all on the US side, although we
could go back into the tit for tat who pushed
them into the arms of Iran and all of that.
But all I'm saying is it does seem like the
time is ripe for the Grenelles and Laura Loomers to
make an argument that a Cuba reset or a Venezuela

(01:35:59):
reset would be in the American interest. I think about
like Mara Gaza, Like what about Mara Havana, Like it
just seems like there's an argument sitting there to be
made to Trump about what can happen going forward. But
I guess as long as you have Mariel virus Salazar
and others. It seems like maybe there's just no path

(01:36:19):
to that.

Speaker 7 (01:36:20):
Yeah, funny story.

Speaker 17 (01:36:22):
I actually found an article that quoted Trump in like
the nineteen eighties and he said, yeah, something along the lines, Oh,
I'd love to build a hotel in Havana.

Speaker 5 (01:36:30):
Huh.

Speaker 7 (01:36:31):
So, yeah, there's an opening there.

Speaker 17 (01:36:33):
But unfortunately, Yeah, the Miami lobby is extremely powerful. I'm
all for pragmatism.

Speaker 5 (01:36:40):
I think that what are the politics of that in
South Florida? By the way, so just since you're there
to talk a little bit about that too as well.

Speaker 17 (01:36:48):
Yeah, it's uh, you know, these people are my neighbors,
and I understand where they're coming from.

Speaker 7 (01:36:54):
Actually, some of them, you know, actually lived.

Speaker 17 (01:36:57):
Through really horrible things that were persecuted by these guys
of governments. Some of them were tortured all these regimes.
One thing that they'll do is that they'll withhold food
to families in order to coerce them, you know, to
vote for them or you know, attend rallies and stuff
like that. So I genuinely get where they're coming from
in the same way that I completely understand where a

(01:37:20):
lot of the anti imperialists, both internationally and like in
you know, in the governments of these countries, like you know,
Cuba for a long time was basically a vassal of
the US mob and interests were huge. They had didn't
have control of their own trading policy until trade policy
until like nineteen thirty four. But through the plat Amendment,

(01:37:41):
I mean, really horrible stuff. It's it's kind of obvious
that the revolution in fifty nine happened, but you know,
and through a lot of it also there was just
like dictators that were just kind of stooges of the US.
So I get it. But because like the each side
is so like maximal. On the one hand, you know,
like the Cuban or Venezuelan regime is like, oh, because

(01:38:03):
there's sanctions that gives us free rein to just you know,
kill people on the streets and prisoner torture them. Uh,
And then the neocons just say, oh, well, look they're
killing and torturing people, so we need to impose sanctions.

Speaker 7 (01:38:15):
This is just the circular loop that's pointless.

Speaker 4 (01:38:18):
And I wanted to pick up on something you said
earlier about the way that this has really been a
drag on the Venezuelan opposition because it it feels like
systematically across the globe, Trump is hurting his allies and
boot and boosting his adversaries. We just saw in South Korea,
you know, the left center, yeah, winning the presidential election there,

(01:38:42):
which you know, the Bannons of the world are calling,
you know, Korea having fallen.

Speaker 3 (01:38:47):
To the CCP.

Speaker 4 (01:38:49):
But certainly the tariff, the you know, Trump's tariff threats
to that region dragged down the Trump the Trump aligned
conservative candidate.

Speaker 3 (01:39:00):
Australia saw you know, lefties win there.

Speaker 4 (01:39:03):
Canada saw its conservative movement just completely collapse. And now, yeah,
in Venezuela, you've got Machado, who is being pushed on
this question of what do you know, are you with
venezuel As sovereignty or or are you actually an agent
of a foreign government? And you know what had what

(01:39:24):
has been her response and what's been the kind of
the response of the public to that.

Speaker 17 (01:39:31):
So the day, i think the day after days after
they those Sea Caught deportations, she issued a statement on
x saying that something along the lines of the Venezuelan
should not be treated all as criminals. But she didn't
actually you know, verbalize any sort of opposition, you know,

(01:39:54):
put into words that like okay, you know, like the
Sea Caught episode was not a good thing. So it
just kind of up in the air. And she has
since still just told the line of the administration that
oh Maduro is the head of danda Agua and is
directing an invasion, which.

Speaker 7 (01:40:09):
Is just completely insane.

Speaker 17 (01:40:11):
There's been protests in Venezuela, rightfully so from the family
members of people that are you know, like now contempted
to life in prison inside the secote against Bouchele and
against Trump. You actually had this Bouquele said that he'd
be willing to do a prisoner swap of the Sea

(01:40:31):
Cottu prisoners for if Maduro released a bunch of an
equivalent number of political prisoners. And so that was just
kind of a spectacle for the two leaders. Uh Maduro
actually a few weeks ago uh paraded this like little kid,

(01:40:52):
the child of one of the Scott deportees, who they
didn't send to Venezuela because they were worried for her safety.
But then they send the mom and then they sent
the kid, and so Adera was saying, thank you, Donald Trump,
You're in a beauty of this. But we brought back
so and so and it's just it's something else.

Speaker 3 (01:41:14):
Yeah so she so.

Speaker 4 (01:41:15):
Uh, while we while we have you, I did want
to ask you about another really good piece you had.

Speaker 3 (01:41:21):
This was for the Liberal Patriot.

Speaker 4 (01:41:22):
If we can put up just the final element here,
what the what democrats can learn from Arena which is
the party of Amlo and Claudia Shinbaum and you had ah,
you had a Let me see if I can find
the deck to this article too. That the subtitle was,
it sounded like it's written for Breaking Points. The Mexican

(01:41:44):
left combined ideological diversity on cultural issues with a shared
populist division on material concerns, which it's sort of like
what Breaking Points has been screaming for years would be
an effective policy from either party. Uh, you know, ideological
diversity on cultural issues a big tent there, and populous

(01:42:06):
vision on material concerns. So what can you tell us
beyond the headline that you know, for people who were
just like hey, hey go Cloudia, but like what what
what beyond that did Amloan Cloudia do effectively that Democrats
could learn from and also frankly, that Trump could learn from,
because he seems to have his own odd set of

(01:42:29):
admiration for both of those figures.

Speaker 7 (01:42:33):
Yeah, funny story.

Speaker 17 (01:42:34):
Last night I got a notification from a pro Morena
outlet saying that Caroline Lovitt defended shame Bomb that the
Washington Post ran some sort of I meant to send
you this. Actually, the Washington Post ran some sort of
article that uh vuntional seizures at the border had mysteriously declined,

(01:42:55):
and so Caroline Levitt was asked about that, and she said,
it's not mysteriou is, it's because of our tough stance
on the border and our strong relationship with President Claudia Shamebaum.

Speaker 7 (01:43:06):
So that was kind of funny, that is and.

Speaker 3 (01:43:10):
Probably like but let's be real, like that's probably true.
Like ye, absolutely, state does have more control.

Speaker 4 (01:43:17):
Both states have more control over fentanyl flows. Then I
think that they let on.

Speaker 17 (01:43:23):
Yeah yeah, well, and this is actually a really good
uh yeah segue into that article. Shane Baum has done
something really interesting. It's not entirely a U turn, but
it's been framed that way.

Speaker 7 (01:43:35):
Well, it is. It is kind of a turn.

Speaker 17 (01:43:38):
She has taken away tougher stance on security than omlo
ever did, and I think this is a lesson for
progressive I'm a big critic of a progressive crime policy.

Speaker 7 (01:43:50):
Uh, and I love what he did.

Speaker 17 (01:43:51):
He actually, it's it's not quite entirely correct to say
that it was like soft on crime. It was kind
of soft on the cartel's. But in public security, for instance,
if you go to Mexico's security is very militarized, and
you see like a lot of troops, you'll see like
these trucks with like soldiers standing on the back with
these machine guns. But with regards to the cartels, he

(01:44:15):
took a more hands off policy. His view was that
the previous governments had, you know, they declared a war
on the narcos, and this just exploded violence. Before two
thousand and seven, when Felipe Don't, a former president, came in,
Mexico actually had a pretty low homicide rate equivalent to
the US of like seven per one. And he came

(01:44:36):
in and within months sused, we're gonna bring out the military,
We're gonna go after the cartels, and this just exploded
violence and it hasn't really improved much since. When came in,
he said, Okay, we're gonna shift the strategy. We're going
to deprioritize seizing drugs, and going after Kingkins.

Speaker 7 (01:44:56):
We're kind of gonna do damage control.

Speaker 17 (01:44:58):
So when there's an outbreak of violence with the cartels,
we're just going to send these huge deployments of soldiers
to try to quell the violence. According to official figures,
homicides went down like ten percent during his government, but
disappearances were still huge, and this was a huge criticism
against his government. Also, the critique was that it allowed

(01:45:19):
cartels to, you expand their control over parts of the country.

Speaker 7 (01:45:22):
What Shane Baum has done is that.

Speaker 17 (01:45:27):
She's taken a more She's taken a tougher approach, but
also a more strategic one.

Speaker 7 (01:45:32):
So she's prioritizing going after like the mid level guys
in charge of logistics within cartels, and it really prioritized
drug seizures because one of the problems was that AMLO
got rid of the fay and Alis, which a lot
of people might be familiar with from the movies, replaced
it with the National Guard. The National Guard was a

(01:45:52):
military not a police entity, and so they didn't really
have the training to do like investigative work and like
seizing drugs was a problem. So she's looked to professionalize
the National Guard and is also looking to create an
investigative police. In Mexico, things are a bit different.

Speaker 10 (01:46:10):
You have.

Speaker 17 (01:46:12):
The police don't investigate crimes, it's the prosecutors to do.

Speaker 7 (01:46:17):
So she's created this.

Speaker 17 (01:46:19):
Her security minister announced a few weeks ago the creation
of an investigative.

Speaker 7 (01:46:23):
Police, and so far the results have been pretty good.
Drug seizures on.

Speaker 17 (01:46:28):
The Mexican side have really gone up and homicides have
gone down around twenty percent.

Speaker 7 (01:46:34):
So that's extremely promising.

Speaker 4 (01:46:36):
What's all happening pretty out in the open, So i'd imagine,
if you know, there be a lot of gains to
make out of the gate.

Speaker 7 (01:46:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 17 (01:46:43):
Yeah, And to be fair, yeah, a lot of this
is due to pressure from the Trump administration through tariffs
and the like whatnot. But going back to the point
of the piece as to like what democrats can learn
from what Ana, Yeah, that article is kind of a
ten year history of the party. Was founded in twenty
fourteen and in ten years, Wow, they managed to basically

(01:47:06):
take over the whole country. And he, you know, some
people like would dispute this. I like to say that
he was a traditionalist and he didn't really care a
lot about social issues. I think that personally he was
kind of conservative on some of the leg LGBT issues
and stuff, but it wasn't really the focus of his politics.

(01:47:31):
And the focus of his politics was all material raising
the minimum wage, backing unions, securing Mexico's energy sovereignty. And
that's a good lesson that I like to critique progressives on.
I think the climate change is very important, but working
class people have a very different view of the energy transition.

(01:47:53):
They think that, yeah, we should invest in renewables, and
that's great. Below prices are really the priority you want
to have in all of the above approach. And that's
something that the liberal patriot really hammers home all the time.
It's better in the long run if we just invest
in renewables, don't you know, generate a backlash among workers

(01:48:16):
and bring down energy prices instead of trying to go
full speed ahead and you know, go in on renewables
which are unreliable. You know, the sun isn't always shining,
the wind isn't always blowing. Uh and in South Florida
exactly exactly, So what Morena has. The policy of Morena was,

(01:48:39):
you know, we need to secure the needs of workers Omlow.
He prioritized refining after previous administrations had decided, you know,
they were just going to import oil from the US
and this brought down prices. He you know, he built
this huge oil refinery in his home state of Talasco.
And Shane Baum, well, she's a climate scientist. She cares

(01:49:00):
about renewables. But so far she's been very practical, and
especially because of the terriffs, that's forced her to prioritize
energy sovereignty. So her government is promoting partnerships and renewables
and public private partnerships and renewables and in fossil fuels.
Carlos Slim is actually a significant backer of a BANDMICS,

(01:49:23):
the state oil company, which has had huge problems.

Speaker 4 (01:49:26):
Want to beat Rojas, writer for Compact and other outlets.

Speaker 3 (01:49:31):
Thank you so much for joining us. Welcome back any time.

Speaker 5 (01:49:34):
Thankes, says n That was great, super interesting.

Speaker 4 (01:49:37):
Yeah, big, big, want to beat Rojas fan. Even though
you know we don't agree on everything, He's always got
something interesting to say, right yeh.

Speaker 5 (01:49:44):
So interesting, something different. It's interesting and different. Things parcolating
under the surface of the Trump administration and we'll see
where they go. It sounds like none of us are
particularly optimistic that they'll be a true reset.

Speaker 4 (01:49:57):
Yeah, there's a lot of entrenched, a lot of incumbent
interest groups to deal with.

Speaker 5 (01:50:03):
Yeah. Well, as a reminder, the monthly subscriptions are back,
so BP free is the code if you want to
try it out for a month breakingpoints dot com. The
promo code is just BP free. You can get a
free monthly trial. We will be back here on Friday
with the Friday Show. Are you here tomorrow as well? Ryan?
I am okay, so Ryan's in tomorrow. Then the three
of us will be in on Friday, and the second

(01:50:24):
half of that show is for the premium subs. So
if you want to see you just want to try out,
I want to be like, are they saying things that
are that interesting? Is it worth my money? You could
do that over at breakingpoints dot com. And Ryan will
be back tomorrow and we'll otherwise. I'll see you guys Friday,
see you then see you

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