7/21/25: Trump Admits He's In Epstein Files, Trump Sues WSJ, El Salvador Prison Swap, Israel Starves Gaza, Mehdi On Surrounded

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

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We need your help to build the future of independent
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Speaker 2 (00:33):
Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. Have a lot of things
to talk about in the show today, Emily.

Speaker 4 (00:38):
I mean the Jubilee segment. Stay tuned because Meddi he
had a ball.

Speaker 5 (00:44):
You're most excited for that one.

Speaker 6 (00:45):
Can't wait off grounded fan. It's amazing, Yeah, what they do.

Speaker 5 (00:50):
It's amazing how they find these people.

Speaker 4 (00:52):
Let's just say that, yes, and they just keep them coming.

Speaker 6 (00:55):
This seemingly an endless supply.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Indeed, So in addition to that, we have some of
a fa going on, a lot of new breaking news
with regard to Epstein, We've got Trump kind of sort
of admitting he's in the file, some details of a
disgusting party that he threw for himself, Jeffrey Epstein and
a bunch of young girls.

Speaker 5 (01:11):
Get into all of that.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Also some polling with regard to how the Mega bases
responding a new clip from Alex Jones. You know, I've
been tracking his arc in particular, which has been interesting
to me.

Speaker 4 (01:23):
He's well, I mean, he's a really important person of
watching this because he was one of I mean, he's
someone who spent some of the most time on Epstein.

Speaker 5 (01:29):
Yeah, he's the OG conspiracy guy.

Speaker 6 (01:31):
Yeah, so he's been very interesting in the last couple
of weeks.

Speaker 5 (01:33):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Pisco is going to join us to break down some
of the legal aspects of this. You've got the Trump
suit against the Wall Street Journal, so he'll tell us
about that. You also have I want him to take
a look at that original Sweetheart deal with alex Acosta
as well and help people understand just why that was
so absolutely outrageous and extraordinary. He's going to stick with
us to talk about some remarkable news coming out of

(01:55):
El Salvador. Those men who were kidnapped and shipped into Seacott.
They have been released into Venezuela. So there's a lot
to break down there from a legal and moral perspective
as well. We are hoping to have a guest join
us from Gaza. Obviously that is always a little tenuous
because of the interment and blackouts and internet issues there.
But Palestinians and Gaza are starving. There are accelerating starvation deaths,

(02:21):
especially among infants and children. At the same time they're
being massacred by the dozens when they seek aid. So
we have someone who's involved in the aid effort there
on the ground to hopefully be able to join and
talk to us about that. At the same time, huge
outrage from Catholics, Christians and just general people of decent
moral standing around the world after Israel attacked a Catholic

(02:44):
church and there's some real fallout within even conservative circles
here in the US Emily that I'm interested to get
your take on there too.

Speaker 4 (02:51):
Yeah, and three Gazen Catholics side, so we'll break that down.

Speaker 5 (02:54):
Including a priest, that's right.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Yeah, we have those aforementioned clips of Meddi Hassan on
round it, and we've got a report out of southern Lebanon.
This is courtesy of drop site News. Very difficult to
get on the ground there and see what is going on,
so it'd be really interesting to see that as well.
And for premium subscribers, we will have that AMA Live.
If you want access to the AMA Lives, the full
Friday show, this whole complete show with no ads in

(03:18):
your inbox every day, please subscribe at Breakingpoints dot Com.

Speaker 6 (03:22):
Sounds good, Crystal.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
All right, let's jump into the very latest with regard
to Epstein. So, as I said before, listen carefully to
this short clip because it's sure to sound like President
Trump kind of sort of admits that he is actually
in the Epstein files.

Speaker 7 (03:36):
Take a listen if they were run by Chris Ray
and they were run by Comy, and because it was
actually even before that administration, right, they've been running these
files and so much of the things that we found
were fake with me, but and so much of the
things that we found.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Were fake with me obviously, just you know, they loop
it at the end there so you can hear what
he's saying. There's so many things they found were fake
with me. And the tracks of course with his claim
that oh, Epstein is just a hoax. It's a Democrat
run hoax, crooked Hillary and Obama and Komy and Brennan, etc.
So it's increasingly seeming like and we have more evidence

(04:15):
to point in this direction that Number one, the reason
the files aren't being released is because Trump is in
them and he anticipated that something would come out. We
now have the Wall Street Journal infamous letter to Epstein
that has come out that he would need to be
able to explain away.

Speaker 5 (04:30):
And so his excuses, oh.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
Well, this was all fake and it's a hoax and
it's created by the Democrats.

Speaker 4 (04:36):
What's someone interesting Because if he's saying what we found
were fake, including me in the wake of the Wall
Street Journal story, one of the things getting overlooked in
the Wall Street Journal story is that they attribute the
sourcing to a file that the Department of Justice had
on Epstein.

Speaker 6 (04:52):
So that does again make me wonder.

Speaker 4 (04:55):
And we talked about this on Friday show Saga and
I did is this a Marine Comy leak? Marine Comy
was the prosecutor in the Epstein Glenn Maxwell case. Trump
starts talking about a week ago in terms of Comy
and Obama and Biden framing him started explicitly mentioning James

(05:15):
Comy and Marine Comy is fired on Tuesday. Wall Street
Journal piece finally comes out Thursday night. It does Actually
I don't know this for sure. I doubt we'll ever
be able to confirm if anything like this happened, but
it does make it sound like this was something that
Trump administration.

Speaker 8 (05:33):
Was aware of.

Speaker 4 (05:34):
Yes, yes, which is an interesting piece of the puzzle.
If it's true, it's an interesting piece of the puzzle.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
The other alternative theory that I know you and Zager
talked about is that this is coming directly from Gleaine
or Gallen's world. She would certainly be someone who she
was the person collected all of these birthday letters, including
one from Bill Clinton and other luminaries you know who
are noteworthy in the context of all of this, but
not as noteworthy as the current President of the United States.

Speaker 6 (05:57):
The vindicated Alan Dershowitz.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
Lest we forget, yeah, of course, always always, Who's certainly
cleared his name fully and completely, and we no longer have.

Speaker 5 (06:04):
Any doubts about his good character.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
But in any case, the other theory is that it
could have been Gleane herself, who is looking for a pardon.
I just saw, you know, a tabloid piece this morning.
I think it was New York Posts. So they're usually
like someone credible saying that she was telling everyone, Hey,
when Trump gets in there, it's going to be totally different.

Speaker 5 (06:22):
I'm going to get out of here. It's going to
be over.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
And we had her family submitted that letter, public posted
that letter that said, you know, Donald Trump, the federal
government made a deal saying no co conspirators with Epstein
would be charged.

Speaker 5 (06:35):
I know you want to honor that deal.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Then you have this drop and you know, the theory
there would the be that this is kind of like
a warning shot of you know, this is where we start,
but you know, there's obviously more damage I could do,
So let's go and put this next piece up on
the screen. There was a significant reporting book from The
Guardian Anthon New York Times about this party that was

(06:57):
thrown for Jeffrey Epstein specifically in the nineties, so effectively,
what happened here is Trump asked this guy whose name
is Horney.

Speaker 5 (07:08):
How could that be real?

Speaker 2 (07:09):
I don't know, but anyway, he ran this American Dream
Calendar girls beauty contest, and Trump asked him to fly
in a bunch of the girls at Trump's sixpence to
mar A Lago. They are ages sixteen to twenty two.
And the pretext here was, I'm going to gather all
of these VIPs and elites from the modeling world. This

(07:31):
will give these girls a chance to mingle if all
of these wealthy individuals who can help make their careers.
So this guy sets this up, flies these girls in
and lo and behold, the only guest at the party
is Jeffrey Epstein. He is the only one who is there.
So it's Trump, It's Epstein, and it's all of these

(07:53):
girls aged sixteen to twenty two. There were also allegations
that surface from that night that Trump had sexually assaulted
actually the guy who organized its girlfriend. And then there
was also an allegation that he just plopped into bed
next to a twenty two year old who was there
for this quote unquote party. So effectively trafficking young girls

(08:17):
directly to Jeffrey Epstein at Mara a Lago is what
is being alleged in this Guardian and a New York
Times story.

Speaker 4 (08:23):
Both Yeah and Crystal, I don't want to skip ahead
too much, but I know, we have an element from
Julie CA.

Speaker 6 (08:28):
Brown.

Speaker 4 (08:28):
This is a six something that's I think worth pausing
and thinking about.

Speaker 6 (08:33):
Julie K.

Speaker 4 (08:33):
Brown obviously is one of the reporters who's been foremost
outfront on this for years.

Speaker 6 (08:39):
So Brian Krassenstein.

Speaker 4 (08:41):
Said, I'm told that the Wall Street Journal article about
the Trump lettered Epstein is just the tip of the iceberg.

Speaker 6 (08:45):
Quote the dam is breaking.

Speaker 4 (08:48):
I would take that with the biggest grain of salt
that you could find on planet Earth.

Speaker 6 (08:51):
But Julie K.

Speaker 4 (08:52):
Brown says she quote tweets this and says I heard
this too, and so Crystal.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
It took it a lot more seriously when she said it.

Speaker 6 (09:01):
Oh, it's so much more seriously.

Speaker 4 (09:04):
Yes, And so that means this is kind of circulating
in the world of people who do these reports. And
so if the dam is breaking and the floodgates are
opening up, that would probably indicate I mean, I do
doubt there are a lot of I doubt with Trump. Again,

(09:26):
it's just hard for me to believe that there's some
type of smoking gun on Trump that's sitting around and
hasn't been reported out. Something in the Justice Department files
would be different, something that the FBI collected or something
like that. But I mean, every reporter in the country
has been working on Trump for ten years now. I
would expect a lot of them. This is why I
skipped ahead to be sort of similar to this Guardian piece,

(09:47):
where it's sort of like where there's a lot of smoke,
is they're going to be fire.

Speaker 6 (09:50):
So that's what the Guardian piece does.

Speaker 4 (09:52):
Seem to me to be a pattern of things we're
going to see in the next couple of weeks. It's
similar stories anecdotes from the eighties and the nineties.

Speaker 6 (09:59):
It's like, man, this is who Donald Trump is.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Yeah, I mean, we're gonna find out because I'm sure
MAGA is sort of helping that the worst of it
is passed or.

Speaker 4 (10:10):
That it's cad type behavior like this Guardian story is disgusting,
and it's the type of thing that conservatives were horrified by,
many of them horrified by in twenty fifteen when Donald
Trump started to run against all of the other Republican candidates,
and there were some stories like this that were published
around that time. And then obviously there was the Access
Hollywood tape, so that type of thing. I'm sure there

(10:34):
are more stories like this yeah, lying around that have
not broken through and probably will in the days and
weeks to come. They were discussing to most conservatives in
twenty fifteen. Most conservatives made their peace with Donald Trump
after twenty sixteen.

Speaker 6 (10:52):
And it's a reminder of the.

Speaker 4 (10:55):
Character traits that always sort of horrified people.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
You can just imagine in what would be said if
it was Bill Clinton who threw a party for sixteen
year old girls and invited.

Speaker 6 (11:05):
Only Jeffreys, only Jefferson.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
And the presumptions that would be made too. By the way,
let's go ahead this next piece A three. So you
have a Democratic Senator Dick Durbin saying that, according to
information my office received, used the Department of Justice pressure
the FBI to put approximately one thousand personnel personnel in
their Information Management Division, including the Information Dissemination Section which

(11:31):
handles all requests blah blah blah, on twenty four hour
shifts shifts to review approximately ten thousand Epstein related records
in order to produce more documents that could then be
released on arbitrarily short deadline. This effort, which reportedly took
place from March fourteenth through the end of March, was
haphazardly supplemented by hundreds of FBI New York Field Office personnel,

(11:52):
many of whom lacked the expertise necessary. My office was
told these personnel were instructed to flag any record in
which President Trump was mentioned. So two really significant disclosure share,
at least from Senator Jerbin. Number one that these people

(12:12):
personnel who were pulled specifically to go through Epstein related material,
were told, hey, you got a flag. If Trump comes up,
you got to flag it. So they were worried about
this and had at least the expectation that he would
be named in these files in various contexts, which again
we know they were close associates for years and years.
You know Epstein says the decade, Trump says fifteen years, etc.

(12:34):
So wouldn't be surprising. We know Trump flew on the plane,
we know their pictures of videos together. Apparently this party
all the rest and then the other piece. And Emily,
the administration themselves had indicated this back in the days
when they were pretending they were doing something, that they
had actually pulled all of these personnel to go through
the material. So what happened there, like, what is that material?

(12:56):
And why were all these people. If there's no there there,
why were all these people pulled off their duties to
go through a bunch of stuff? And you really are
going to tell me that in all of that there
were no significant revelations, nothing that can be disclosed to
the public, no conclusions that were found other than nothing
to see here. Case closes, everybody move on, or it's
a Democrat hoax.

Speaker 4 (13:16):
Well, if there were no significant revelations, then they should
have had no problem releasing more information. I mean, that's
actually even more argument, more evidence for the argument that
they would have been served much better by just disclosing things.
And from a again even cynical perspective, they could have
redacted the hell out of all of these documents, and
they already have a archive of documents that are redacted

(13:38):
to hell. They could have done so many different things
with this, but they chose basically a complete cover up
as of right now saying case close, no further disclosures warranted.
And that post that we just looked at, according to
Dick Durbin's office, actually it's a quote tweet of a
post from the Senate Judiciary. Democrats Pam Bondi, Cash Bital
and Dan Beagina. They say, have made a mess of

(14:00):
the Epstein files. It's time to clear it up once
and for all for the American people.

Speaker 6 (14:05):
Wow, amazing. I agree, let's do it.

Speaker 4 (14:09):
I mean the momentum that they have that has been
invited by Pam Bondy to keep the scrutiny on these files.

Speaker 6 (14:19):
That was squarely because of the decisions that she made.

Speaker 4 (14:22):
And I think we should all be cheering it as
as cynical as it is.

Speaker 6 (14:26):
I'm all for it. Let's go, Yeah, let's see it.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
There was some report too, like, oh, Trump's getting frustrated
with Pam Bonnie.

Speaker 5 (14:31):
It's like, bro, this is your show.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Like, if she's handling it in a way that you
don't want, then you should say that. But we know
he went to the mat for her, He went to
bat for her, called Charlie Kirk said shut up about
Pam Bondy, like I'm sticking with her, etc. So you know,
obviously the buck ultimately stops with Trump. Let's put the
next piece up on the screens. With some additional reporting
from the New York Times, and the way they frame

(14:55):
this is an accuser story suggests how Trump may appear
in the Epstein files. This is with regard to Maria Farmer.
If if you've watched the Netflix documentary, Maria and her sister,
her younger sister, both feature quite prominently, and they've been
some of the more significant and earliest actually accusers of

(15:15):
Jeffrey Epstein. Maria as a an artist, a painter, and
Jeffrey Epstein sort of swept in and, oh, we're going
to make your career, we're going to support you, we're
going to help you. And next thing you know, they're
also sweeping into this network. Her younger sister, who was
a teenager at the time. Both of them beautiful girls,

(15:36):
and you know, they apparently, you know, Epstein and Maxwell
stole these pictures she had in a locked box that
had she paints, nude figures that had her sisters like
partially clothed or fully unclothed, and she, you know, and
Maxwell and Epstein, she accused them of sexually assaulting her.

(15:56):
Her sister made similar allegations again when she was a teenager,
and Maria Farmer went to the FBI. She did the
thing that she was supposed to do. She had faith
that this system would actually work to serve justice, and
she went to them in two separate occasions when there
was sort of a flare up in you know, an interest,
she was one of the first, like I said before,
to really go to the FBI. And by the way

(16:16):
that you know, the case notes all reflect this. I
think she went to the NYPD and then they sort
of said, okay, well we need to put this, take
this to the federal level. And she says that in
both instances, she said, hey, like I had direct personal
experience with Jeffrey Epstein, but you also need to look
into some of these powerful people that he associates with,
and she named Bill Clinton, and she named in both

(16:38):
instances in ninety six and two thousand and six.

Speaker 5 (16:40):
Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
Now, her interaction with Trump, which was weird but not criminal,
is she was called in to a meeting with Epstein,
you know, sort of spur of the moment. She shows
up in her jogging shorts and Trump is there oggling her,
and she says, specifically like looking up and down her
like bare legs as she's in these running shorts, and

(17:02):
Epstein said something to him to the effect of, no, no,
this one's not for you. And that was what really
raised significant questions in her mind about the nature of
their relationship and his involvement.

Speaker 5 (17:16):
So so in any.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
Case, that's you know, that is the revelation here from
the New York Times that hey, you know, was there
okay when she brought this to the FBI? Did they
look into Trump? Was there some sort of an investigation?
Is there any information there that might be important? Could
that be part of what is you know about Trump

(17:38):
in the Epstein files?

Speaker 4 (17:40):
And to be honest, I go ahead, But did they
look into Bill Clinton?

Speaker 8 (17:42):
Either?

Speaker 6 (17:43):
I mean, like, these are the questions.

Speaker 4 (17:45):
That that's this is the reason that the right wanted
information on it, whether it was Bill Clinton or anybody else.
And there are some perfectly good faith people on the
right who have been critical the Trump administration since, but
this is one of the reasons because there was so
it seems to be there. There's so many threads that
haven't been pulled on. So if you have a young
woman victimized and saying look into Donald Trump, looking to

(18:08):
Bill Clinton, the FBI the Department of Justice should have
records about whether they did that, what they found, and
if there was nothing to find, then they should be
able to show their work and explain that.

Speaker 6 (18:19):
Now I don't doubt that there are some false.

Speaker 4 (18:22):
Accusations of the many many women who have come forward
about Jeffrey Epstein over the years and Delayne Maxwell over
the years. I don't doubt that there are some cases
of accidental identification, and it would be terrible for somebody
who is accidentally identified to have their name out there.
But then we should know that the Department of Justice
looked into them, the FBI looked into them and cleared them,
and the FBI and the Department of Justice should be

(18:44):
able to show their work and say exactly how they
got to that conclusion or didn't get to that conclusion,
or they can release the files in a way that
doesn't implicate anybody who shouldn't be implicated, while not also
protecting people who should be implicated because their power and
their name is Bill Clinton or Donald Trump.

Speaker 6 (19:02):
And so there is a way to do this.

Speaker 4 (19:05):
Nobody is saying that even with Donald Trump, he's such
a high profile, polarizing person, it's not impossible that there
are some fake stories about Donald Trump in the mix
of these files. That's your job, if you're the Department
of Justice and the FBI, your job is to let
us as taxpayers know what you're doing what's happening. And
it doesn't mean that you have to tell us literally

(19:26):
everything at every given moment. But at this point, people
obviously have spoken want disclosure, so you your job is
to provide the disclosure, not to continue to hide it.
So they have to find out a way to do
it because people want answers.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
Maria Farmer has been speaking to some reporters as well
about you know, that Trump friendship and what she knows there.

Speaker 5 (19:48):
Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little
bit of that.

Speaker 9 (19:50):
Donna Trump was like her best friend. So at the
time Avanna had this, she was doing QVC selling jewelry,
and Donald Trump was always hanging out with Scene, and
Evanna was always hanging out with Land right and Evanna
would she would she would say, we're gonna go get
pick up Evanna or Evanna's gonna come and we'd ride
in uh in the car with her. And I remember

(20:14):
one occasion where Gland's like, I have to get out
right now, and she went and got a number from
a child. Everybody knew what they were doing. Everybody who
surrounded them knew exactly what they were doing.

Speaker 10 (20:25):
Did you go for rides often with her? And Evanna. Yes,
And would she would she pick up gils all the time?

Speaker 9 (20:34):
Yes, she didn't bring them in the car. She would
get their phone numbers right, but she would drive my
schools right so as they got out.

Speaker 10 (20:44):
So would she. And what Wasna doing at this point?
What you know.

Speaker 9 (20:49):
What are you living in the car? And I'll never
forget because they went one day, I was really weirded
out by what had happened. Land to shut me up,
gave me one of those cheap bracelets Evonna was selling
on QVC instead of Vanna wants.

Speaker 10 (21:03):
You to have this.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
So there are some of the details there. And Emily,
I was telling you, I've been digging into this world,
like the underbelly of these model management agencies, of which
Trump owned one Trump Model Management, And.

Speaker 5 (21:17):
It is I mean it.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
Is the It was a hotbed of exploitation of young,
vulnerable girls, especially after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Speaker 5 (21:28):
Was girls from you know, Eastern.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
Europe who would be effectively trafficked in And you know,
one of the most notorious pedophiles in that world was
this guy, John Casablancas, who ran Elite model management. John
lup Bernell, another close associate of Jeffrey Epstein, who also
killed himself in prison under Oh and the cameras weren't
working there either, in that weird who also allegedly trafficked

(21:52):
to twelve year old girls to Jeffrey Epstein. Of course,
Epstein would you know, insinuate himself in sort of inside
the Victoria secret modeling as well. But it was, I mean,
it was a disgusting world. And John Casablancas, I mean
he was openly living with Stephanie Seymour when she was
sixteen years old, and in the seventies, this was like

(22:15):
all you know, people just like like, oh, that's just
how it is, That's what he does. And he continued
those activities, and Trump knew him, admired him, you know,
after the sort of like you know, after his fall
from Grace and the you know, some of the other
sort of like stalwarts of that modeling world at their
their time had sort of passed. That's when Trump Model

(22:37):
Management and some of these other door modeling agencies come
into being. But yeah, it was a sick It probably
still is a sick world where young girls are routinely exploited.
People unearthed this footage from the nineties of Trump judging
what's called the Look of the Year contest, and this

(22:57):
was for explicitly for the new young models trying to
break into the industry, and so people were taking a
look at this footage of him as a judge in
this modeling contest in the early nineties.

Speaker 5 (23:10):
Let's go ahead and take a look at that.

Speaker 3 (23:12):
The fifty eight contestants participated in an exhaustive round of
personal interviewers designed to help our judges discover what may
call each one.

Speaker 11 (23:21):
Concentration was intense inside the judging room.

Speaker 5 (23:25):
They don't like you as you are, and out I'm
just so excited.

Speaker 8 (23:33):
Emotions ran high. Thomas is our opinion.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
One of honestly, the most disturbing things to me is
that he put his own daughter, Ivanka into this world,
signed her with Elite Model Management, that is John Casablanca's
outfit when she was fourteen fifteen years old. So in
any case, you know, all of these things are sort
of being resurfaced, his involvement with the pageants, his owning

(23:58):
of the model management company, you know, things like him
judging this competition, his having this party where the only
other for young girls were the only other guest is
Jeffrey Epstein, and you know, it's the sort of thing
where because Trump being just sort of like a lecherous
person is kind of baked in that.

Speaker 5 (24:18):
I think a lot of this, yeah, either didn't get
reported out.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
Or people just you know, sort of like shrug their
show as just Trump. But then when you really connected
in with Epstein and all that, that entails, well, then
people are seeing it through a different lens.

Speaker 4 (24:33):
Virginia Tiffrey worked at mar A Lago. Yeah, it literally
was an employee of mar A Laga's, right when Glenn
Maxwell essentially like plucked her from mar A Lago and
brought her into Epstein world. And so yeah, it's there.
There are many different ways this could go. I mean,
obviously one of the difficult things about the Epstein story

(24:55):
is that the lives of the rich and the famous
are off and like disgusting, I shouldn't even say often.

Speaker 6 (25:02):
They're like disgusting.

Speaker 4 (25:04):
And they are people who like transform into these what
like these Nietzschen. They see themselves this is like nietzsch
and superhumans who can do whatever they want, and they
kind of get off on that. And so some of
this it's it's hard to disentangle normal awfulness from what
goes to the next level with Jeffrey Epstein. But that's

(25:26):
what is being scrutinized right now with Donald Trump. Does
it go from just this disgusting billionaire cad behavior to
escalating in the criminality? And I remember a lot of
these videos actually from like the Republican primary early on,
and like after he comes down the escalator, there was
just people didn't take it seriously. And then when people

(25:48):
started taking the campaign seriously, some of this stuff started
really circulating from like Ted Cruz World's, Marco Rubio world
at the time, jeff Bush World. And it's interesting to
your point that when you connect it with the Epstein piece,
it takes on a totally different a little different It's
not surprising, of course, but it's it's back.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah, all right, Let's take a look at how the
mega base at this point is metabolizing all of this
information and where they are. I've been using Alex Jones
as my guidepost your shir of how where people are
in this process, and he seems to have completely, you know,
sort of come back into the fold. I love Trump,

(26:28):
It's a Democrat hoax, et cetera. Here he was on
with Steve Bannon talking about where he is and how
he's thinking about all this.

Speaker 12 (26:36):
The pr handling of this now twelve days ago when
they slip out this memo to Axios, the globalless mouthpiece,
none of this exists, just needs to go away. That's
what one eighty from everything that the record shows and
what Trump and his surrogates have been saying that they
were going to do. We know the Democrats have had

(26:59):
this file. They're not going to leave stuff in there
that incriminates them. And the whole history of it, it's
ninety plus percent democrats and globalists like Bill Gates, you
know that are heavily involved in the island and all
the you know, stuff that's going on. And so as
soon as the FBI rated back in March, the New
York FBI, when they wouldn't turn over the files, I
believe that was a setup, and they dropped a dimond

(27:21):
themselves and said, oh, there's fourteen terabytes of all these
kids being raped in Epstein raping him and all the
rest of it. And then Pambondi gets it, gives it
to the FBI, which I confirmed from sources. They sent
it out to all the offices around the country to
look at the file. They come back and say, oh,
there's a bunch of FBI reports and implicating you know,
people in the orbit of Trump with no real evidence.

(27:42):
And then Trump went, what the hell another Russia Gate,
And so he didn't clarify that the first few days.
He just said, you know, people need to basically shut
this down. It's bull And then he hasn't really clarified
when he says it's a hoax, it's a Democrat hoax.
He's not saying that the Epstein isn't a bad guy
and that he wasn't involved in all this evil stuff

(28:04):
with a deep state with no connections to Trump that
are based any reality.

Speaker 8 (28:08):
He just says it's a hoax.

Speaker 12 (28:10):
People go, await, Epstein's not a hoax because Lane was
convicted of this very stuff, and he'd been charged with
it and was convicted once fifteen sixteen years ago of
lesser charges in Florida. So Trump, I think needs to
be very clear that no, the Epstein case and the
evil he did is very real. But they've been in

(28:30):
control of this file, Brennan, Clapper and all the rest
of them, and it makes total sense that they falsified
all these other records, the Crossfire, Hurricane, the Steele dossier,
all run by Obama platform or do.

Speaker 13 (28:42):
You need a special process you get to the core
heart of it of the conspiracy removed Trump from office.

Speaker 5 (28:48):
So there you go. It was a PR screw up.
And here's what Trump's really trying to say.

Speaker 2 (28:53):
That's kind of my favorite part is like he's not
saying Epstein's not a bad guy, that there wasn't some
stuff there.

Speaker 5 (28:58):
That's not what he means when.

Speaker 2 (28:59):
He says it's all a hoax and tells us we're
stupid and he doesn't even want our support if we
keep talking about Its not what he means. But I
think the Democrats there, it's really it's the Democrats fault.

Speaker 11 (29:07):
Emily.

Speaker 4 (29:08):
I really felt that's where this was all going as
soon as the Wall Street Journal story came out, and
they didn't publish the picture, and so the Wall Street
Journal story can be true, and it can still be
a mistake for them to have not published a copy
of the image or it sounds like they don't actually
have one and they were racing to publish because they
kind of got scooped on their scooped But they're scooped

(29:29):
by Allah Darcy. It was like the journal's got something.

Speaker 5 (29:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
Well, clearly that was pressure from inside the journal to
make sure they actually published.

Speaker 4 (29:36):
It, right, because we know that there was pressure on
them not to publish it. Actually, Trump just came out
and said that normally that would be something.

Speaker 7 (29:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
It's like I told Rupert to get on this, and
Rupert was like, I'll take care of it.

Speaker 5 (29:47):
Yeah, and he didn't take care of it.

Speaker 4 (29:49):
So another thing to point out, it's true that what
Axten says, it's true that Democrats did have the file,
and it's not impossible that they would do whatever they
could to ensure some of the incriminating information about I
don't know Bill Clinton or any of their donors wasn't
easily accessed or found or maybe.

Speaker 6 (30:09):
Just totally disappeared. But you know who had the file first,
Bill Barr. Yeah, like Bill.

Speaker 4 (30:16):
Barr, CIA veteran Bill Barr when Jeffrey Epstein died in prison,
when Jeffrey Epstein was arrested. Interestingly enough, but when Jeffrey
Epstein died in prison, Bill Barr was overseeing the file,
and so there could have been all kinds of things.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Whose daddy gave Jeffrey Epstein his first first job at Dalton.

Speaker 6 (30:39):
I don't know. I mean, I don't know, Crystal.

Speaker 4 (30:41):
Lots of people in powerful positions have had access to
this information over the years, so who knows what's been
memory hold. Honestly, I mean, I don't think it's a
crazy point, but people Republicans and Democrats have had access
to it by now.

Speaker 6 (30:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (31:00):
True.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
Let's just take a look quickly here at the polling
from Harry Enton. So no surprise, the only six percent
of the public are like, yeah, there's probably no cover
up or no client list or nothing else.

Speaker 6 (31:11):
To see here.

Speaker 5 (31:12):
Trump's probably right about that.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
And the other part that's noteworthy about this is the magabase.
They're not moving off trouble whatsoever. This is, if anything,
their support for him has gone up while this whole
Epstein thing has been playing out.

Speaker 5 (31:25):
Let's go ahead and take a look at that.

Speaker 14 (31:27):
The American public does not trust what the government is
selling them. What are we talking about here is the
government hiding Epstein's alleged client.

Speaker 8 (31:33):
Let's get this.

Speaker 14 (31:35):
Sixty nine percent of Americans agree that the federal government
is in fact hiding Epstein's alleged client list versus just
six six percent who say that they are not. And
get this, a majority of Republicans and Democrats do in
fact agree on this issue. Out If we look at
Republicans and independents who lean Republicans, forty three percent are
dissatisfied with the amount of information released so far, compared

(31:56):
to get this, just four one two three four percent
of Republicans who are in fact satisfied with the amount
of information release so far by the federal government won
sixty percent of Democrats and independent leaning Democrats are in
fact dissatisfied with the amount of.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
Information release so far.

Speaker 14 (32:12):
And get this, just one two three percent of Democrats
are in fact satisfied so far with the amount of
information release. How is it impacting President Trump's overall approval
rating Republicans who approve of the job that Donald Trump
is doing. Get this and our CNN SSRs poll it
was eighty six percent prior to this whole Epstein saga.

Speaker 6 (32:31):
Now it's eighty eight percent.

Speaker 14 (32:33):
In fact, the percentage of Republicans who approve of the
job that Donald Trump is doing has actually, if anything,
climbed a little bit of cory to our CNN polling.
How about Quinnipiac eighty seven percent before this whole Epstein
saga started approved of the job that Donald Trump was doing.

Speaker 1 (32:46):
Among Republicans.

Speaker 6 (32:47):
Now it's ninety percent.

Speaker 14 (32:49):
So we see agreement between the CNN polling and the
Quinnipiac polling. Yes, Republicans are not thrilled with how the
government is responding to the Epstein case, but so far
they are in fact not taking it out donald Trump,
at least when it comes to its overall approval rating.

Speaker 5 (33:02):
So there you go.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
Apparently he could traffic a sixteen year old Jeffrey Epstein
on Fifth Avenue and not lose a supporter.

Speaker 6 (33:09):
You know, it's well said.

Speaker 4 (33:12):
It's an interesting thing to reconcile because on the one hand,
Republicans and conservatives care about the Epstein files. On the
other hand, they care and I think probably this is
true of most voters. They care more about other things.
And so what this will probably be in soccer and
I were talking about this on Friday too.

Speaker 6 (33:33):
This is a proxy issue. It's a ViBe's issue.

Speaker 4 (33:35):
It's an issue of great substances, and that's why we're
covering it extensively. For most voters, they can agree with
all of those points. And they're also like, my groceries
are so so expensive, and we've been talking about this
story for ten years now. And for Republicans, they're saying
one hundred thousand bureaucrats have been fired and we destroyed

(33:57):
the nuclear facility in Iran and blah blah blah.

Speaker 6 (34:00):
So I think both things can be true.

Speaker 4 (34:02):
They can care about Epstein and they can care about
other things more. And that's why I think the independence.
Sager was pointing this out. Those people in the kind
of middle who swung for Trump. Uh.

Speaker 6 (34:13):
Sager interviewed to Andrew Andrew.

Speaker 4 (34:14):
Schultz, yeah, example, and ask about the vibes like that's
an Those are the Those are the people who swung
in Trump's direction who are now looking around being like
what the hell, what the hell?

Speaker 6 (34:26):
Like this looks so shady.

Speaker 4 (34:29):
You said you were going to be super transparent and
now you're just saying.

Speaker 6 (34:32):
Nothing to see here. That's obviously a problem. Yes, yeah,
way more than Republicans.

Speaker 5 (34:37):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
And I recommend to people that interview that Sager did
with Schultz that's on our channel, because he asked them
some really interesting questions about like, hey, were you you know,
were you've used here, would you do anything differently? What
about the vibes? Were you voting on vibes whatever? So
really recommend that to people. All right, let's go ahead
and get peace got in here, and so we can
talk about some of the legal aspects of what was
unfolding here. So to talk about some of the legal

(35:02):
aspects of this developing story, we have peasco a host
of Pisco's Hour and also co host of the Great
Lib and Learn podcast, which I was honored to be
a guest on.

Speaker 8 (35:11):
Great to see you, sir, Thank you so much for
having me.

Speaker 5 (35:14):
Yeah, of course.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
So let's throw up the first element here, and I
got a few different aspects I want you to dig into.
But Trump, in trying to make the story go away,
is saying, now, okay, we're going to try to release
the grand jury testimony. Guys, put b one up on
the screen and we can take a look at this.
So this is Stormyashar Ali who says the US Department
of Justice has filed two motions in federal court to

(35:36):
unseal grand jury transcripts related to the prosecutions of Epstein
and Maxwell. The DOOJ says it will redact victim related
information and other personal identifying information. So peace, but what
type of information would be contained here? Is this likely
to actually happen? What could we actually learn from this?

Speaker 15 (35:56):
Yeah, So the grand jury materials that are likely to
contain there are like potentially interviews and testimony is given
from potential victims and materials basically given to an un
paneled grand jury for the purpose of you know, seeking
out an indictment or seeking out other materials relating to
their prosecution of Epstein in Maxwell. They're typically you know,

(36:16):
guarded under secrecy under the rules of criminal procedure. But
you know, the Trump administration is desperate now to get
to some kind of narrative to push off the pressure
from the recent releases, and so they're trying to go
with this narrative that you know, unsealing this testimony, which
you know, it's pretty high standard to release some of
its materials unless it's like necessary for another prosecution. Congress

(36:38):
has previously, in you know times past, tried to unseal
grandeurary materials for purposes of their congressional investigations. But it's
not going to help Trump at all with respect of
the story. They've already stated in the memorandum that you
just showed that they're sticking to their position. Their position
is that there's nothing to see here and that this
material is just to like assuage fears, I guess. But
the position of the administration has not fundamentally changed at all,

(37:00):
and they're even stating in this memo that basically everything
is as it was.

Speaker 4 (37:04):
Okay, So what can we expect to see happen in
the next couple of weeks, if anything, like, if any,
If people are following this closely, what would the next
steps look like?

Speaker 15 (37:15):
I think the next step would be arguing that there's
there's a sort of carve out of certain special exceptions
when grand jury's secrecy does not apply. And there are
kind of some disputes within the court systems about when
those exceptions are some relate to of course, like let's say,
if you had a perjury charge, obviously you could unseal
certain material for purposes of prosecuting that. But you know,
it will be up to the courts that determine whether

(37:36):
these special and exceptional circumstances that some courts have recognized
apply for just like the public interests in this case.
And remember the position of the administration is that there's
nothing to see here, and so this would just be
assuaging the public. I guess who doesn't believe them on
their memorandum, which again the administration is explicitly sticking by
in this submission to the court.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
Yeah, so it feels like a way to sort of
pretend like they want disclosure, kick the ball over the
court system, and you know, expect either the courts are
going to be like, no, we're not releasing that, and
then oh, that's the courts that are doing the cover
up now, or if something does come out, it's certainly
not the totality of what people mean when they say
Epstein files.

Speaker 15 (38:13):
Absolutely correct, Crystal, and like they already know this material
and they came to the conclusion that they did, which
is that there was no conspiracy that Epstein killed themselves.

Speaker 8 (38:21):
Like even though.

Speaker 15 (38:22):
They obviously know what's in this material, and you're what
you said is absolutely correct, that this isn't even one
percent of the material that they have, like the FBI
will have and like their you know, their evidence containers
and in their databases. This is just the matuire that
they presented to a grand jury. And so everyone who's
calling the administration on their bs here is correct, Like,
this is not the smoking gun proof that people are

(38:42):
waiting for. A lot of these allegations are probably uncorroborated
or you know, it doesn't pertain to third parties in
the way that they want them to. So so, yeah,
this is not going to assuage the people. And frankly,
I think it's just there for red meat to give
a desperate media class something to cling to and to
pretend bas the administration is listening to their concerns.

Speaker 4 (39:02):
Are there any moves that say victims or potentially like
Galen Maxwell could take, or Democrats even congressional democrats.

Speaker 6 (39:12):
Could take that would force disclosure at all?

Speaker 4 (39:16):
I mean, there's so many different avenues legally here, But
are there moves that could be taken legally to force
any new information out into the public.

Speaker 15 (39:24):
Sure, I think a lot of this is up in
the air, given the Supreme Court's recent rulings with respect
to like the unitary executive theory and what like the
whether or not the Congress can intrude on the core
prerogatives of the presidency and so you know, your mileage
may vary. But if Congress passed a law that mandated disclosure.
I don't see why that wouldn't be binding on the
executive branch under normal circumstances, you know, assuming that the

(39:45):
trimp administration would like follow the law.

Speaker 8 (39:47):
But of course not to change the topic.

Speaker 15 (39:49):
But if you guys know about the TikTok law right now,
which was enacted by bipartisan Congress and you know, approved
by the Supreme Court, there's just no basis right now
for them to prevent the execution of the TikTok band
whether you agree with it or not. And the Trump
administration notwithsaying that is not listening to it. And Pamboni
released like a letter saying anything that relates to national
security like that is completely.

Speaker 8 (40:09):
Within the president's control.

Speaker 15 (40:10):
And so yeah, I think that legally, Congress could pass
a law mandating disclosure, but you know, it's up in
the air where the courts would force the president to
execute it.

Speaker 5 (40:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:18):
I mean, we had a law passed in the nineties
mandating disclosure of JFK related information that multiple administrations were
just like, yeah, we're just not really going to totally
do that. So but the Trump administration has been particularly
aggressive about just doing whatever the hell they want to
do at the same time, the Trump administration has now
and can put the second element up on the screen.
Officially filed suit against the Wall Street Journal, This is

(40:41):
a libel lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and reporters
who wrote the story about a collection of letters gifted
to Jeffrey Epstein for his fiftieth birthday, including a note
bearing Trump's name and an outline of a naked woman.
The lawsuit seeks at least twenty million dollars, and CNN
describes it as an extraordinary escalation of Trump's ongoing legal

(41:03):
campaign against media companies he views as opponents.

Speaker 5 (41:07):
Just talk to us.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
About the significance of this and also a little bit
of how this process will unfold, because I think it
is highly unlikely the Wall Street Journal would publish this
information without because they would know that this would be
a real issue for them if they didn't have it
all completely locked in and complete and total confidence that

(41:28):
this was legitimate material. So at some point there's going
to be discovering this. I mean, how does this all unfold?
What do you think Trump's gambit is here?

Speaker 15 (41:37):
Yeah, so I think that this is in line with
what Trump has been doing with other media organizations even
when he has like a kind of crappy case. So
if you remember, he sued like CBS for how they
edited the Kamala Harris interview and they settled. They sued
CNN and other organizations for other statements they made where
people were questioning the case there and actually criticizing the
news organizations for settling. But there were kind of different

(41:58):
practicalities that issue there. So we can talk of like
the legal case and then why Trump is doing this.
The reason why I think Trump is doing this is
because this is his reflex whenever he's attacked publicly. You know,
his reflex is to go to court and to sue
people into push push push, an attack, attack, attack, like
Roy Cone told him to. So it's not surprising to
me at all that the president is assuming. I think

(42:18):
that's very much in his in keeping with his general strategy,
regardless of the legal merits here here. Though you know,
this seems like preposterous at the Wall Street Journal, which
is owned I want to add, by Rupert Murdoch, like
an ally of the President in many other respects, and
owned by corpor News Corp. That they would not adhere
to pretty much a pretty wonderful track record in terms

(42:41):
of the substance of of their reporting. And also when
the standard is so high for defamation cases involving public figures,
you need to show what's known as actual malice. And
that requires not just that you issued like a false
statement that is defamatory in its nature, but that you
did it knowingly or with reckless disregard. So you have
to show that like the process of the Wall Street Journal,

(43:02):
which again, as you mentioned, probably has like lawyers and
tons of people like looking at these documents over and
over and over, and who was careful. If you read
the actual article, they state plainly that we don't know
how this, you know, what led to the creation of
this document, So they disclaimed specific knowledge about how the
document was created. I had a hard time identifying a

(43:24):
single statement in the lawsuit that the Trump team was
arguing was false.

Speaker 10 (43:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (43:30):
I read through the lawsuit this weekend, and it was
it was bluster. It was funny.

Speaker 4 (43:35):
Yeah, because to the point to the point that you're
making about having to prove actual malice, that was that's
the most amusing part of the lawsuit. I can't believe
them trying to say they know that there was a malicious,
malicious intent on behalf of the Wall Street Journal, basically
because Trump said that this was fake and told them
that this was fake, and they went with it anyway.

Speaker 6 (43:54):
Which is not nearly enough.

Speaker 4 (43:56):
Of course, Let's put this next element up on the screen, Crystal,
I know we wanted to talk about. This is a
CNN article actually from twenty twenty. B three DOJ review
finds alex Acosta us quote unquote poor.

Speaker 6 (44:06):
Judgment in Jeffrey Epstein deal.

Speaker 4 (44:10):
This is going back to the sweetheart plea deal that
was given to Jeffrey Epstein years and years ago. This
was two thousand and seven. Many people are familiar with this,
CNN wrote at the time twenty twenty quote. Epstein avoided
federal charges and served only thirteen months in state prison
for state prostitution charges concerning his sexual involvement with underage girls.

(44:30):
The arrangement also protected ute unquote any potential co conspirators
of Epstein and specifically named for women whom victims alleged
were involved in the sex trafficking scheme.

Speaker 6 (44:40):
And you can.

Speaker 4 (44:42):
Help us understand basically in what ways this might be
affecting our conversation or our ability to get more details
now because of the magnitude of the deal or of
the secrecy that was part of this deal, I think
that would be helpful.

Speaker 8 (45:01):
Yeah, one hundred percent.

Speaker 15 (45:02):
So the deal was substantively, in my opinion and a
lot of commentator's opinion, a great deal for Epstein. So
he was potentially going to be on the hook for
a bunch of really serious violations under the Man Act
and other statutes which have like twenty thirty year maximums
in terms of their penalty, and that's all listed out
in the non prosecution agreement. So substantively to have to

(45:23):
only plead to those charges in Florida the state charges
there and basically only have like a twelve month sentence
or something approaching that, where a lot of it was
under better conditions than other defendants would have and with
like sort of nicer amenities.

Speaker 8 (45:37):
It's a really good deal for Epstein.

Speaker 15 (45:40):
The problem, I think from the perspective of people who
want like truth or whatever, is that it did kind
of halt the investigation or aspects of the investigation at
that time when it was made, like in two thousand
and seven, two thousand and eight, and so from a
substantive investigatory perspective, people were upset that it kind of
halted any further investigation that was going on at the time.
And then it included this like co conspirator clause in

(46:02):
part of it, which, by its terms, right, the non
prosecution agreement literally only refers for Jeffrey Epstein's portion to
potentially being charged again in the district, But the co
conspirator clause says that, like the government, the United States
promises not to prosecute not just the four named co conspirators,
but potentially other non named co conspirators. Now, the government

(46:25):
now has a kind of different position on what the
non prosecution agreement means. They're like, oh, no, no, you know,
that is meant to apply only as well right to
the Southern District of Florida. And also, we only included
that portion there to protect like victims that could have
been considered co conspirators without naming them. So you can
buy the government on that front. But it was like
deemed even by this government, even by Trump right now

(46:47):
currently in litigation over the Maxwell case to the Supreme Court,
as a quote highly unusual provision of the deal.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
Yeah, And I think the reason this is important is
because the nature of this deal was so extraordinary that
it raised questions about what really the hell was going
on here? You know, does his wealth, I guess, really
explain the nature of how cushy of a deal he
was able to secure here? Does the fact that he
was able to get these high powered lawyers, people like

(47:15):
Alan Dershowitz on his side, is that sufficient to explain
how good this deal was? The I mean, ultimately they
were you know, the deal was deemed to have violated victims' rights.
Having this clause in here that you know, I don't
know if it's unprecedent, but it's certainly highly unusual to say, Okay,
not only are you done and we're not going to
investigate any but anyone who was involved in this, they're

(47:38):
off the hook as well. Do you think just like
his wealth is enough to explain that? Because I do
think this is the locus of where people start to go, okay, well, then.

Speaker 5 (47:45):
Who else was involved? Who had something to lose here?

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Alex Acosta reportedly also said this was a book. I
was told this was above my pay grade and that
he was intel and I needed to leave it alone.
So what do you sort of make of how of
the ordinary is this given that, of course we all
acknowledge that as much as we would like the justice
system to be completely even and fair for everyone, there

(48:09):
is a two tier system of justice where if you
can pay for better lawyers and if you can pay
to harass victims and do these sorts of things, yeah,
oftentimes you are not treated the same as your average
running the male criminal.

Speaker 15 (48:21):
First of all, I watched with great interest the argument
that Michael Tracy had with with Sager with you, and
I thought it was a great debate, and so I
agree with aspects of what both of you guys said.
So on the one hand, I do think that it
is highly unusual and it feels weird the nature of
the deal. It doesn't seem weird to me at all
that a rich guy had powerful lawyers that were able

(48:42):
to get him a good deal. I mean, that just
seems like the status quo in terms of the double
standard that exists in the justice system in the United
States today.

Speaker 8 (48:50):
But it does raise eyebrows.

Speaker 15 (48:51):
The comment attributed to a member of the administration will
attribute it to a costa about being intelligence relations to
intelligence services that also his eyebrows, And it feels weird
and substantively here, like he was given a slap on
the wrist for what could have been substantive charges ranging
again for like life in prison ten twenty thirty years
under the Man Act and other statutes where he almost

(49:13):
certainly would have been convicted for that stuff. So I
totally buy and agree with the misgivings of individuals generally
who are like, wait a second, something smells wrong about this.
And then he was appointed to be like, you know,
Secretary of Labor. So I get everyone who's like, this
seal seems weird. We want more transparency. I want to do, Like,
I want to say that there is no smoking gun
proof for the other theories, and so even though you

(49:35):
know it's possible, right that the only incentive here was
that the nature of the fact that they had high
profile lawyers, and maybe they were convinced by Dershowitz's arguments
that the federal statutes didn't apply because of like territoriality
or something like that. But I just want to say that, like,
I understand people and their misgivings, given how much smoke

(49:55):
there is, I just caution them not to, you know,
jump to conclusions right away.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
All right, let's go ahead and move on to the
other story I wanted you to break down for us
here at Pisco, which is you can put this next
see one element up on the screen here. This was
a huge development. I'm honestly surprised it hasn't gotten more attention.
But a prisoner swap has freed Americans in Venezuela for
migrants in El Salvador. So the TLDR here is that

(50:25):
all of these Venezuelan migrants in the US who were
shifted down using the Alien Enemies Act no due process
to Seacott in El Salvador, where basically the expectation was
they would never be released. Seacott, of course, notorious for
human rights abuses, slave labor.

Speaker 5 (50:42):
And all the rest.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
They have most, if not all, have now been freed
to Venezuela as part of this deal. So talk to
us a little bit about just the details of what
happened here. And I also think that it's important to
get into this really exposes a lie of what the
Trump administration has been saying in court all along, which
is that, oh, that's just in control, you know, El
Salvador's control. Now, we have nothing to do with these prisoners.

(51:07):
We can't possibly get them released even if we wanted to.

Speaker 8 (51:10):
Yeah, that's the key component here.

Speaker 15 (51:11):
The Trump of administration was engaged in like one of
the most horrific abuses of due process in our country's history,
really just picking people up and putting them on a
plane without any notice or opportunity to be heard, and
chipping them off to a torture dungeon, a gulag foreign
gulag in Seacott, where now we're getting information from kil
Marberger Garcia about like him being beaten, him being forced

(51:34):
to you know, defecate because he was like kneeling for
so long, and other outrageous accusations about the treatment there,
you know, mass people in a cell without any opportunity
you know, really to contact lawyers or your family.

Speaker 8 (51:48):
So the conditions here are absolutely deplorable.

Speaker 15 (51:50):
And as a matter of policy, this administration sent these
people to those camps without any due process whatsoever.

Speaker 8 (51:56):
And all the while.

Speaker 15 (51:57):
They were disclaiming that they had any power to bring them,
they were doing this song and dance before Judge Boseburg,
before the Supreme Court, even that potentially these people were
outside of their command and control, outside of their ability
that really, you know, in front of the Oval office
in that like horrific meeting with Bukel pretending like it
was under the sovereign power of the El Salvador that

(52:18):
these people were being held. And we knew all along
this was a crooked deal that was sort of cooked
up by the administration to pay the government of El
Salvador to house these individuals, and so they were there
at the discretion and urging of the United States government.
And now this proves right what you're pointing to, this
deal between the government of Venezuela, who had you know,

(52:39):
kidnapped or held Americans or American legal permanent residence under
their control, and to have that deal in exchange for
some of these people who were sent to s Cott
and L. Salvador shows that who's running the show here,
the American government. They're the ones in control of these prisoners.
And also we knew this because L. Salvador had specifically
stated so in front of the UN and in the
weeks before. This is like something that is not even

(53:01):
like seriously contested, but we had to deal with really
the fraudsters and the hacks from the magoing of the
of the party and from the influencer class who are
pretending that somehow Trump couldn't if you wanted to bring
these people back, either to this country or to some
other country.

Speaker 4 (53:15):
Yeah, And if we take a look at the next
couple of elements, there's some familiar names to people who
followed this closely. So the next one, this is Harse Rays.
He's this is the case of the goalie that some
people may remember. He is part of the deal here.
And then if we go to the next element, Andre
or Nandaz Romero, he was the makeup artist who was
in prison because of his tattoos, also part of the deal.

(53:39):
So one of the things, and this is the final element,
the Mother Jones story c.

Speaker 6 (53:44):
Three. One of the things that's important legally here is.

Speaker 4 (53:48):
That there are protections from leaving being sent from America
to a prison where conditions here Mother Jones reports that
people were say there they were beaten every day, where
the conditions are known to the United.

Speaker 6 (54:03):
States government to be like this.

Speaker 4 (54:06):
So could you explain a little bit of what the
basically that this is part of our legal system is.
You're not allowed to send people to foreign prisons where
you know the conditions are going to be. And you
can tell us particularly what it is but like less
than the standard of the United States is that the
legal provision.

Speaker 15 (54:23):
So I think the three main things to look at
here are asylum withholding a removal, and the Convention against Torture,
and some of these are pursuing international agreements. To Convention against
Torture is US law like incorporated by Congress, and it
basically prevents deportations to locations where someone is likely to
be tortured. And that applies whether you were here illegally.
That applies whether or not you know you entered without
inspection and admission at the border. The United States is

(54:45):
an active obligation not to send people to places where
they're likely to receive torture. With respect to asylum and
withholding different standards in those cases the legal alluances like
I beyond the scope of this, you know, this interview,
but basically where you're going to be subject to persecution
limitations on the government's ability. That's basically what keil Marberger
Versire was granted with holding of removal because of the
likelihood of persecution at the hands of the El Salvadoran

(55:08):
government or at the hands of someone with which the
Salvadoran government doesn't have the authority or power or willingness
to stop in the case of the gangs. So yeah,
these are protections in our laws. And that's one of
the reasons why now that there's all this fur about
the administration sending people to like South Sudan and places
on the on the brink of civil war where they're
also likely to be, you know, subject to inhumane treatment.

(55:30):
So yeah, they're actual active obligations on America, like American
law that we passed that we should follow that prevent
us from doing this kind of these kinds of deportations
to places where it's fundamentally unsafe or where people are
fundamentally going to be subject to like deprivations of rights
and persecution and torture.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
And I think it's worth noting obviously it's better that
these men are not in Seacott, given the record of
abuses and what they themselves are saying now when when
journals are able to speak with them about what their
treatment entailed. But in many instances, I mean, their rights
were still violated. Here in that Mother Jones article they
write for some relatives, the news of the men's return

(56:06):
to Venezuela evoked mixed feelings. Maria Cuavedo, the mother of
Eddie Adolfo Hertado Cuevedo, told Mother Jones she was feeling
relieved but still scared. I'm happy because God gave me
the gift of seeing my son free on my birthday.
I'm scared because my son is going to Venezuela where
he was threatened by a paramilitary group called collect Evos.
Many of these individuals actually had ongoing asylum claims that

(56:28):
they were you know, some of them would have been rejected,
and some of them potentially had you know, a legitimate
standing and.

Speaker 5 (56:33):
May have succeeded here.

Speaker 2 (56:35):
So just speak a little bit about that aspect of
at Pisco.

Speaker 15 (56:39):
Yeah, something like thirty percent of asylum claims that are
petitioned are meritorious, and so you know, it's not this
like five percent, six percent. It's a significant percentage of
these claims with at least with respect the asylum are
granted meritorious asylum claims.

Speaker 8 (56:53):
You know, even under the Tump administration, which.

Speaker 15 (56:55):
Oftentimes like rolls back protections and rolls back different coverage
of asylum provisions and change the rules under the Department
of Justice. So it absolutely is a concern and think
about what the implications would be if the Trump administration
were successful and being able to make this kind of
laundering scheme where you just send someone to like an
intermediary and then do some kind of crooked deal to
send them back to the country where they were trying

(57:17):
to flee for persecution, and that way like get rid
of their legal obligations under the Asylum statutes and at
the Convention against Torture and under the clolding statutes. It
would be it would be like a massive hole in
our law and obviously against the due process clause of
the United States Constitution, where unanimously even this Supreme Court,
the Supreme Court, which is basically walking over nails to

(57:39):
give Trump the benefit of the doubt in every single case,
unanimously said even illegally, you know, President, aliens in this
country have procedural due process rights before their deportations and renditions.

Speaker 8 (57:51):
And so this should concern everyone.

Speaker 15 (57:52):
It's not just a matter of like, yeah, some of
these people probably did some crimes, some of these people
probably don't have meritorious claims, But it's the principle about
letting the government make it a road through due process
and make an end run around US statutory law that
protects these people from these kinds of substandity provisions.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
Last question I have for you, Pisco, is you know
what do you make of the fact. First of all,
the administration has not gone forward with using Alien Enemies
Act as far as I know, for further deportations. They
did ultimately have to bearing kil Mar Roo Garcia back,
even though they said explicitly he will never, under no
circumstances will he ever come back to the US.

Speaker 5 (58:26):
Now you have this as well.

Speaker 2 (58:27):
I mean, Christinoum had also represented that the expectation was
that these men would be in Seacot for the rest
of their lives, and now they're not. Now you know
they're not back here, but they're in Venezuela. What do
you sort of politically make of those developments?

Speaker 15 (58:42):
Yeah, I think politically right now it's having an effect,
like some of these oversteps Alligator Alcatraz, some of what
you saw with Kilmar, some of these stories are having
an effect on his polling with respect immigration, you're seeing
that consistently that it's going down.

Speaker 8 (58:56):
This is the strongest issue.

Speaker 15 (58:57):
But taking the strategic position from moment of getting to
the head of the administration. I would caution people to like,
look at why the administration is taking these kind of
crazy roads in the first place from a good faith perspective,
and compare it similar to this defamation lawsuit against Epstein.
Is the defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal? Is
that about defamation law per se? Or is it about

(59:20):
sending a signal? Is it about sending a signal to
other media organizations, other news organizations that if if you
like publish damaging soars against the administration, we're going to
make you hurt and we're definitely going to bring you
to court. And so if you take a look at
the longer term picture, what are these renditions using the
Alien Enemies Act trying to do. They're trying to make
people scared, make people scared to come to this country,

(59:41):
and make people scared to apply for asylum. Some of
the stuff they know it's illegal, they know it's against
the law. But you should see it in the context
of a signaling sort of debate and about showing people
that the American government is not going to accept kind
of like any immigration or they're going to be mean
no matter what. And so viewed in that context, I

(01:00:01):
can understand if you're a super anti immigration person, why
you'd be like, okay, all right, so a couple of
people were illegally deported, but the broader messages the deportation
or sorry, the border crossing numbers are down and that's
a result of this harsh policy. But I think that
there's a danger of overstepping and I think the administration
will start to see that again with the polling numbers
and with the midterms on the horizon.

Speaker 4 (01:00:22):
Yeah, I think they already have, and that's you know,
they were really excited to use Guantanamo and that became
relatively limited and probably still on their radar to some extent.
But I think we've seen that in the strategy. They
ended up sending a few hundred people to Seacott, which like,
as a fairly conservative someone with the fairly conservative perspective
and immigration, the Bukeli larp was just insufferable. So I

(01:00:46):
think they realized most people saw it that way too.

Speaker 15 (01:00:49):
What do you think, em a lady support the administration's
position of immigration.

Speaker 4 (01:00:52):
On immigration, not what they're doing, I mean the way
that they've handled it now, I think they have to
do significant numbers.

Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
Of deport Pisco loves to turn the tables. We're supposed
to be asking you the question.

Speaker 6 (01:01:04):
I could do an hour on everything I think they've
gotten wrong.

Speaker 4 (01:01:08):
When we're talking about Seacott and the Bouchelia larp, you're
going to get me to say no because that was
just embarrassing.

Speaker 8 (01:01:14):
What about Alligator Alcatraz.

Speaker 4 (01:01:16):
I don't have a hard position an Alligator Alcatra.

Speaker 6 (01:01:18):
It feels weird.

Speaker 4 (01:01:18):
It also feels like another LARP, but I haven't thought
too much about it. Also, there shouldn't be American citizens orminers,
and they're like, that's obvious.

Speaker 6 (01:01:27):
It seems obviously weird.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
So Pisco will have to have you back so you
and I can fight about Superman since he knowsingly wrong
in his analysis here, so we can he doesn't. You
don't you don't think it's actually Israel Palestine being reflected
in this.

Speaker 15 (01:01:45):
I think that it's possibly like a combination of Israel, Palestine, Ukraine, Russia.
What I don't think is I don't think that it's
I don't think that it's this anti Semitic movie Likemitic.

Speaker 5 (01:01:58):
Obviously it's not that.

Speaker 15 (01:02:00):
No, but there was this person I was talking to.
I don't know for people who are like very online.
His name was Drew Pavla, and he took the position
that this was a groper movie that was basically literally
picking Benjamin Yahoo and that it was meant to like
get everyone to cheer about a Zionis occupied government and
how you know when Benjamin and Yahoo was killed that
people were supposed to cheer and this was supposed to

(01:02:21):
basically turn everyone anti Semitic.

Speaker 8 (01:02:23):
And I don't go that far.

Speaker 15 (01:02:24):
I do think that there are obviously like historical illusions,
but I think that people it's a bit of a
self report when a bunch of Israel supporters are like, hey,
this like very corrupt country that's working with Lex Luthor
to destroy the world. When when they say that must
be Israel, I think that that's a little bit of
a self report. And I think there are many different
historical illusions you can make.

Speaker 4 (01:02:42):
Yes, indeed, we just opened three cans of worms here.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
God, I kind of get a Agatraz Superman anti Semitism.

Speaker 5 (01:02:50):
Yeah, well, it's not an anti.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
Semitic movie, but I do think it is an anti
Israel movie, and I celebrate it for that.

Speaker 8 (01:02:56):
We'll have to talk about it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:57):
Yes, everybody got subscribed to piece Goo's Hour and Live
and learn and check out what he's doing over there.

Speaker 5 (01:03:02):
Great to see you, my friend.

Speaker 8 (01:03:03):
Thank you guys so much.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
So, guys, the number of deaths from starvation at the
hands of the Israeli government inside of Gaza are truly accelerating.
The situation, judging by what people on the ground, doctors,
relief organizations are saying, is truly truly dire and urgent.
We have trouble connecting with AAA Maui. He's a representative

(01:03:27):
of the Gaza Relief Committee. He is inside of Gaza
for a live interview, but he was able to record
this video about what he is seeing on the ground.

Speaker 5 (01:03:34):
Let's take a listen to that, my friends.

Speaker 16 (01:03:36):
I can't imagine the tragedy that our children is still facing.
Their bodies is imacinated and they still suffering from the
from no foods, no flowers, no works. Really, the situation
here is more than we can describe multiple times to
the media.

Speaker 17 (01:03:56):
But in my notes, I expected that.

Speaker 16 (01:04:03):
Our children will die good by good because they will
not have any resilience in the air bodies with the
lows of the nutrition and the water. Also, so the
international community must do urgent intervention and open the humanitarian
coldor that can let our shouldn't stay alive by some

(01:04:29):
food supplement or any amount of foods. We cannot imagine
until this moment. We send thousands and thousands of humanitarian
appeals to the world, No when do any tangible actions
that can save our life. So I hope something will

(01:04:49):
change soon after our speech, and after all of the
humanitarian appeals, especially with those children's, our babies will lose
they have lives gently after the femine is completely destroy
every resilience here.

Speaker 17 (01:05:08):
We can't just stand.

Speaker 16 (01:05:09):
And complete our life with the circumintances here.

Speaker 2 (01:05:12):
So as I was saying and as Ad was saying,
the reports on the ground are truly truly dire. We
can put this up on the screen. This is just
a prepare yourself guys trigger warning. This is a three
month old baby who is now dead from starvation. They
have blocked any aid from entering the Gaza strip but
including formula. The mothers are to malnourish themselves to be

(01:05:37):
able to breastfeed, so for babies to be able to live,
they require formula.

Speaker 5 (01:05:43):
They require milk.

Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
And this is far from the only dire case, far
from the only death that has been experienced. I think
the number that I saw was you know, you're up now.
In the dozens of starvation deaths, it's mostly young children, infants.
I've also seen horrifying videos of some elderly individuals who
are just collapsing. We could put D two up on

(01:06:05):
the screen. Haretz has a report about Gaza medical officials
saying that people are arriving with severe hunger symptoms, including
children and infants.

Speaker 5 (01:06:15):
Director of the Field Hospital.

Speaker 2 (01:06:17):
And Al Maasse warned of an impending wave of deaths
due to organ failure among displaced individuals. They say the
cases reaching us are of people who collapsed in the
streets from lack of nutrition. All of them need food
even before medicine. According to the health ministry in Gaza,
about seventeen thousand children in the Strip are suffering from

(01:06:39):
severe malnutrition. The death toll from starvation overall has risen
to six hundred and twenty, including at least sixty nine children.
I've seen warnings Emily that the level of famine they've
reached already is you know, there will be even if
the floodgates opened and the Gaza shrip was you know,

(01:07:00):
the thousands of trucks of aid that are lined up
outside were allowed in. At this point, for some people,
it has gone too far and too long, and there
will be continued death and you know, lasting developmental issues,
lasting health issues, and consequences even if the siege ended today,

(01:07:21):
and there is no indication that the siege will end today.

Speaker 4 (01:07:23):
So the question for Lecoud, and that's Nahoo and the
Israeli government right now is whether that is constructive for
the case of peace?

Speaker 6 (01:07:33):
Right?

Speaker 4 (01:07:34):
Are they creating conditions that will make their own people
just by their let's take their argument at face value.
Are they creating conditions right now that will in the
long run make their own people safer and more prosperous
with the situation that they have created in Gaza? And
the answer is obviously absolutely not. These people have watched
this happen for years, they're watching it happen right now.

Speaker 6 (01:07:58):
And if this doesn't radical you.

Speaker 4 (01:08:02):
In that position, yeah, I mean, of course it's going
to radicalize many many people who are watching this happen
to them.

Speaker 2 (01:08:09):
It's I mean, I just I did not know that
we lived in a world where we could watch two
million people be starved to death and that would just happen,
like I didn't know we.

Speaker 5 (01:08:20):
Lived in that world. We apparently live in that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
World, because I mean, the media is covering it the
tiniest bit.

Speaker 5 (01:08:28):
There was an analysis.

Speaker 2 (01:08:29):
They covered Zoron's reaction to the comment globalized them to
FADA in the New York Times like thirty seven times,
and it barely covered this whatsoever. I mean, these ill
images of these skeletal three year olds, two year olds, infants.
They're out there for It's not a secret like they
announced they're you know, blocking the aid trucks from coming in.

Speaker 5 (01:08:51):
We all know. We could put D three up on
the screen.

Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
This quote unquote Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is nothing but a
cruel joke. The latest indicate you had at least seventy
three people who were murdered by Israel while they were
seeking aid.

Speaker 5 (01:09:07):
So it's this absolute.

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
Dystopian horror where you're starving everybody. The only access to
food is through GHF. If you can, you know, brave
the sniper fire and the you know, at one point
they have like the Navy firing on starving people who
are seeking aid. It just could not be more grave

(01:09:31):
and more dire. We're kind of you know, joking around
with Pisco about the Superman movie and whatever, and I
said this when we covered it, to be honest with you,
like what Israel is doing is even more cartoonishly villain
villainous than the cartoon version of Israel as an evil
country that is portrayed in Superman. Is just I don't know,

(01:09:53):
I don't know how, I don't know how humanity comes
back from such a thing of just knowing this is
happening and announce government policy. The world's superpower is involved,
its apparently supportive, and it's all unfolding before our eyes
and like no power in the world with the power
to stop it is doing anything.

Speaker 4 (01:10:11):
Let's look at let's look at D four here, because
this is the choice. To the point Crystal is just
making that people are facing, which is whether to go
seek aid. So this has reported the US mercenaries who
are as Suliman Achmed puts it here. He says, quote
US mercenaries assault starving civilians and pepper spray them as

(01:10:32):
they wait for aid at the JHF center in Gaza.
So Crystal, that sets up the reality is the decision
go seek this aid, go try to get food, or
continue trying to.

Speaker 6 (01:10:46):
Survive on what you don't have.

Speaker 2 (01:10:50):
Yeah, and it's cruelty and horror with a specific end
goal in mind. And we could put this up on
the screen because our country is being enlisted to help
to create this end goal is real seeking the US
help on deals to move Palestinians out of Gaza, i e.
Ethnic cleansing to third countries. And the idea here is
that you make conditions so unlivable inside of Gaza that

(01:11:14):
people are desperate to go anywhere just to have a
chance to live. And at the same time, you know,
they've increased the evacuation zones so that they are literally
concentrating the population of Gaza into small camps and concentrating
the population so that they can ultimately continue applying this

(01:11:35):
pressure of wanton massacres plus starvation, plus you know, complete
intentional destruction of all civilian life, including by the way,
I mean, we've talked a lot about the infrastructure, the buildings.
I mean, they've intentionally destroyed farmland, destroyed you know, aquifers,
they've greenhouses, anything that would allow Palestinians to be able

(01:11:59):
to care for themselves and grow their own food. They
have systematically destroyed that as well, and so I mean,
that's the ultimate plan. It's not hidden, it's announced. Our
government is being asked to cooperate. Our government is already
cooperating it. And you know that is the That's where
we are. The world is standing by as a genocide,

(01:12:21):
ethnic cleansing, and mass starvation campaign unfolds before our eyes,
and I just don't even know what to say about
it anymore.

Speaker 4 (01:12:28):
Well, Crystal, again, the Israeli military may have done something
from the pure perspective of public relations, as they incorporate
into we know their strategy, as they see it as
a very important part of their strategy, they may have
done something that was counterproductive. When a Catholic church in
Gaza was hit and it drew the attention of many

(01:12:51):
conservatives to what was happening. This was a raging debate
on x over the weekend among different conservatives.

Speaker 6 (01:12:58):
So we can put on the screen.

Speaker 4 (01:13:01):
This is a tweet from Joel Berry of the Babylon
b who says, quote this won't be easy for people
to hear, but there are only about two hundred professed
Catholics still living in Gaza and they all support Hamas.

Speaker 6 (01:13:12):
I just want to read.

Speaker 2 (01:13:14):
Managing editor of the Babylon B so not some low
level rando.

Speaker 4 (01:13:18):
Yeah, and some of my friends on the right right
came out and staid, we're never dealing with Babylon B again.
Like it's this is the final straw after that happened,
and we're going to get into more of this.

Speaker 6 (01:13:33):
But I want to read just on that point.

Speaker 4 (01:13:35):
As a response, this post from former Congressman Justin Amash,
former Republican Congressman Justin Mosh the Libertarian.

Speaker 6 (01:13:41):
He's Palestinian.

Speaker 4 (01:13:42):
He says, quote the claim that Orthodox and Catholic Christians
in Palestinian communities aren't quote unquote true Christians is reprehensible,
an attempt to erase the identity of a people living
in the Levant since ancient times and alienate Christianity from
its ancestral home, the place of Jesus Christ.

Speaker 6 (01:13:58):
Amen.

Speaker 4 (01:13:59):
Justin Amash, I think he absolutely nailed that response to Joel,
but Crystal, this debate is now not going anywhere for
the people who are the most supportive defensive of the
Israeli government at every step.

Speaker 6 (01:14:15):
Of the way.

Speaker 4 (01:14:15):
Here is Michael Knowles, who is a Catholic, reacting on
his daily wire show to news of the Church that
was hitting Goza, we can roll d seven.

Speaker 18 (01:14:26):
As I've mentioned before, everyone seems to hate the State
of Israel these days, mostly coming from the left, but some.

Speaker 8 (01:14:31):
People on the right have joined.

Speaker 18 (01:14:32):
And I've been broadly supportive of the State of Israel,
not really as an ideological matter, but as a matter
of prudence. And you're losing me. You're losing me when
you strike churches, the only church in Gaza, even if accidentally,
but especially if not accidentally, you lose in me. If

(01:14:55):
you're losing Mike Huckabee, the Israeli government is really screwing up,
is really not playing its cards right. I agree with
the Holy Father, I agree with the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem,
and I agree especially with the Holy Father on most matters.
The war needs to come to an end. There need
to be political consequences for this action, and the war

(01:15:17):
needs to come to an end. How long is the
war going to go on? I know what the answer is.
The answer is, well, until the hostages are come home. Okay, Well,
how about we redouble our efforts to get the hostages
home if that's the impediment to peace, Because it seems
like there have been a lot of side quests and
side missions. The war has been going on for almost
two years. When's it going to end? Just what's the

(01:15:41):
end of it? Can anyone tell me that when the
hostagees are released, well, then focus on getting the hostages released. Well, no,
when Hamas is totally destroyed? Okay, Well when's that going
to be? When Iran is no longer funding terrorism? When's
that going to be? When Sirius made safe for democracy?
When give me an answer? Because the war or cannot

(01:16:01):
just go on indefinitely, it just work, can not just
go on indefinitely?

Speaker 4 (01:16:05):
Okay, crystal reaction to Michael Knowles's reaction, And let's just
also now, since the church was hit, the only Catholic
church in Gaza, as he mentioned, Pope Leo has come
out and condemned what happened, obviously, and even Mike Huckabee

(01:16:25):
to what Michael Knowles just mentioned, has been up in arms.
We covered this a little bit last week. He visited
the Christian town in the West Bank over the weekend,
so on Saturday, and also condemned that called for quote
harsh consequences.

Speaker 6 (01:16:41):
So this is a real break.

Speaker 4 (01:16:42):
The question is there are plenty of real breaks on
the left during the Biden administration. The question is whether
that actually trickles into the policy level, and that's much
less clear. But as we have covered for a long time,
the sort of mainstream average right has a very different
position same thing on the left as the policymakers on

(01:17:05):
this issue.

Speaker 5 (01:17:05):
Yeah, well not the boomers, but right right, the young right.

Speaker 2 (01:17:10):
Yeah, And I think that's I don't expect there to
be a policy consequence. You know, my Kuckabee is expressed
as upset. They'll work out whatever their visa issue is
and he'll move on with his lockstep support as well
Donald Trump.

Speaker 5 (01:17:23):
But I guess what.

Speaker 2 (01:17:25):
Bothers me is it just it seems like it took
a fellow Catholic getting killed before they saw he saw
anybody as like human beings who were there. And I
think it really reveals how much Islamophobic, Islamophobia and anti
Arab bigotry allows this situation to persist. They've just been

(01:17:46):
so thoroughly dehumanized that I mean, think of how much
death and destruction and intensional starvation, all of the mosques
that have been destroyed, in the schools and the refugee camps,
and the doctors and the huh hospitals, and the ground
plowed up so they can't grow food and they're barred
from even fishing off their own coast. I mean, just

(01:18:07):
the utter horror, death, disease, starvation, destruction that has been
going on now to his point, for almost two years.
And so I mean, I'm glad that finally you have
a recognition of like, oh, holy shit, these are actually
human beings.

Speaker 5 (01:18:19):
Maybe this is wrong, but it does bother me that.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
You didn't see any of the rest of the people
who were being murdered as human beings. So that's, you know,
one of the things that jump down at me is
I do think it really underscores how much this whole
project is dependent on a thorough dehumanization of the Palestinian people.
And the moment you have some Palestinians who Michael Knowles

(01:18:46):
and my Couckabee can recognize as actual human beings, then
it becomes pretty clear how horrifying and outrageous the entire
project is.

Speaker 4 (01:18:56):
Well, here's what I think is interesting and maybe it's
worth even talking to Michael about. He is a very
staunch defender of like the West, the broader West, and
that's what I think is particularly compelling about his argument
is we hear constantly, and he says he's supported Israel
generally as a matter of prudence, because for many people

(01:19:18):
on the right, they see Israel as a bastion of
Western values versus anti Western values, people who actually do
not believe in liberal democracy as the West sees it.
And that juxtaposition has always been really powerful on the right,
That purported juxtaposition has always been really powerful.

Speaker 8 (01:19:38):
On the right.

Speaker 4 (01:19:39):
And what I hear from Michael is when you look
at conduct like this, that's a cracking facade. The idea
that Israel is upholding the values of the West in such.

Speaker 5 (01:19:52):
I mean, it's frankly an insane idea.

Speaker 4 (01:19:54):
At this point, it's definitely like to see that reaction.
I find that really really interesting because that's the foundational
piece of support that keeps even good faith conservatives sort
of intellectually behind Israel. And that is what falls apart

(01:20:15):
fairly easily since, especially since October seventh. I think that's
why this post October seventh period has been really important.
Let's put up a lot of Catholics were sharing these
images of Cardinal Pizza Bala, so this is D eight.
We can start rolling this. He actually went and visited Goss.
He went off and visited the church on Saturday, So

(01:20:37):
clearly putting his self himself on the line here and
going into a war zone and touring the destruction.

Speaker 2 (01:20:47):
And this was guy and only in my correct that
the right really was hoping.

Speaker 5 (01:20:50):
To see as pope.

Speaker 2 (01:20:52):
Yes, and so the fact he's the one that goes,
I think gives it added significance.

Speaker 4 (01:20:57):
Yeah, the best way to explain it would be if
you were watching Enclave, he would be sort of one
of the conservatives right in the in the conservative faction.
That's a very rough approximation. And I'm not Catholic, but
that that's the best way that you can kind of
I can kind of explain it. He was on the
list of people the right wanted to see potentially step

(01:21:20):
into Francis's shoes because of his reputation as one of
the more conservatives. So this is I think this was
a really powerful moment. And this is D nine. You
can see him posing with kids.

Speaker 6 (01:21:34):
Look at that. This is so such a beautiful sign
of resilience.

Speaker 5 (01:21:38):
Just to go back to this Joel Berry.

Speaker 2 (01:21:40):
Yeah, this is this is who he's saying is Amas.

Speaker 5 (01:21:44):
This is who right here?

Speaker 2 (01:21:45):
Look at this little girl taking communion with this little
boy looking over her.

Speaker 5 (01:21:51):
That's who he is justifying their murder. Let's be really clear.

Speaker 2 (01:21:55):
By saying these they all, let's be honest, they all
support Amas.

Speaker 5 (01:21:59):
That's what he's doing.

Speaker 2 (01:22:00):
And the number of you know, the number of tweets
and commentators and arguments that I've seen made exactly like this,
by the way, applied to the entire population, I can't
possibly keep track at this point. But for him to
put it out there so clearly about Christians in particular,
you know, this is the first you know, I saw

(01:22:21):
a significant backlash from the right of like, wait, these
little kids, You're saying, these little kids who are here
with you know, with this cardinal taking care, you think
they are Hamas and deserve to be murdered.

Speaker 5 (01:22:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:22:33):
Well, there's a there's a Catholic Protestant third rail, particularly
on the right, because the right is still more I
think that the sort of professional right, the conservative movement
is knitted together by religious fabric in a way that
the left really isn't anymore, and so the Catholic Protestant
third rail, when that gets touched, it can flare up.

(01:22:53):
But one of the interesting things I saw is a
lot of my like fellow evangelicals were like wildly offended
by what Joel said, and we're saying so like this
was completely wrong, and that is something that you don't
often see, to be honest, a bunch of evangelicals rallying

(01:23:15):
behind Arab Catholics in Gaza because someone dared to, you know,
affiliate them with Hamas. These are children children, Three people died,
nine were injured, that a priest was injured. The church
was damaged. Many churches have been damaged over the course
of this. And we mentioned earlier how could he was

(01:23:37):
in the West Bank and like the remaining Christian village,
mostly Christian village in the West Bank. And you know, Chris,
I totally understand your point about people waking up to
this because Christians are under attack sort of human nature
to you know, it's hits home for you when it's

(01:24:02):
people with him you identify. And so yeah, I absolutely
hear what you're saying. This though, the amount of piling
on Joel that happened over the weekend, this that really
feels like the chapter being turned like something happened over Was.

Speaker 2 (01:24:22):
There some other just real quick, was there some other
precipitating because I saw people like pablan bees, anti cavioc vibes,
there were other things that happened.

Speaker 4 (01:24:30):
So Joel has been out at the forefront with James
Lindsay and some others condemning Tucker Carlson and Darryl Cooper
and the quote unquote woke right, which I think there's
something to the quote unquote woke woke right construction. If
you're talking about like Nick Flenta's, if you're talking about
Tucker Carlson, No, if you're talking about this narrow slice

(01:24:52):
of people who are very identitarian like Nick Flents, who
are open racists as he identified himself on Canon's own show,
then yeah, you could call him like neo woke, like
identitarian white nationalist.

Speaker 2 (01:25:05):
Yes, but they think that woke is a worse pejorative
than like nazi.

Speaker 4 (01:25:10):
So Joel and others have been lumping I would say
people were not at all like Dave Smith.

Speaker 2 (01:25:17):
Let's say that, yeah, like we could safely.

Speaker 4 (01:25:20):
Say right, and particularly because of their positions on Israel.

Speaker 6 (01:25:24):
And so that's where this has gotten.

Speaker 4 (01:25:28):
That's the precipitating factor here, that people were already primed
to be like, dude, you are being. If anything, you
are the one being woke. You're the one sort of
engaging in this cancel culture of anyone who dares to
question the Israeli government, not even Israel, but like the
Israeli government.

Speaker 6 (01:25:46):
So that was already that had sort of.

Speaker 5 (01:25:48):
Been percolt, that was bubbling, okay.

Speaker 6 (01:25:50):
Yeah, And a lot of.

Speaker 4 (01:25:51):
People do perceive that as Catholic, as a lot of
anti Catholic, because a lot of Catholics tend to be
more in that camp than Prosta evangelicals, because Prostan evangelicals.

Speaker 6 (01:26:03):
Have this very.

Speaker 4 (01:26:05):
You know, many people are dispensationalists. Evangelicals are dispensationalists, and
they have this idea of the nation of Israel and
the state of Israel being involved in prophecy and all
of that.

Speaker 6 (01:26:18):
So it does touch on that third rail.

Speaker 4 (01:26:22):
So it was the Joel really stepped into ah, you say,
stepped on into the minefield.

Speaker 10 (01:26:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:26:28):
I could tell when I was reading the replies that
I was like coming in halfway through the conversation, like
I missed some things. I can tell people are mad,
but I definitely miss some things that happened before this. Yeah,
for explaining that.

Speaker 6 (01:26:39):
There's a lot going on there's a lot going on.

Speaker 2 (01:26:41):
Yes, speaking of a lot going on, let's go ahead
and get to medi on Surrounded. All right, guys, so
some pretty interesting moments as Mehdi Hassan went on jubilee
their show called Surrounded. The title here on YouTube is
one progressive versus twenty far right conservatives featuring Meddie Hassen

(01:27:03):
and far right. Certainly, I don't even think that does
justice to the ideology that some of these people espoused.
Case in point, this dude right here, Let's take a listen.

Speaker 17 (01:27:13):
How would Conna's America look What would it look like?

Speaker 13 (01:27:15):
Well, quite frankly, I think we would deport people who
shouldn't be voting. What does the government look like?

Speaker 1 (01:27:19):
Would the government look like? I would say, quite frankly,
it's under a sort of benevolent leader such as why
does it could be a kind of aristocratic class, could
be someone.

Speaker 17 (01:27:29):
Who mixed the autocrat, not frankly the people.

Speaker 13 (01:27:32):
I mean, we could hold a vote on it kings democracy, Well,
sure you can have a vote to get to that
and normal votes off towards absolutely, and if.

Speaker 17 (01:27:42):
That ultocrat kills you in your family, you'll find with that.

Speaker 1 (01:27:45):
Well I'm not I'm not going to be a part
of the group that he kills, because that's the whole thing.

Speaker 8 (01:27:51):
Tend to kill.

Speaker 13 (01:27:51):
Everyone makes this point very well in his work. It's
the friend enemy distinction, right. The Nazi theoretician, absolutely, I
don't care.

Speaker 17 (01:28:00):
Are you found of the Nazis?

Speaker 1 (01:28:02):
I don't. I frankly don't care being called the Nazis.

Speaker 17 (01:28:04):
I didn't say that. I didn't actually say that. I said,
are you a fan of the Nazis?

Speaker 1 (01:28:07):
Well, they persecuted the church a little bit. I'm not
a fan of that.

Speaker 17 (01:28:10):
But what about the persecution of the Jews?

Speaker 13 (01:28:13):
Well, I mean, I certainly don't support anyone's human dignity
being assaulted.

Speaker 19 (01:28:16):
I'm a Catholic, But you don't condemn Nazi persecution of
the Jews.

Speaker 1 (01:28:20):
I think that there was a little bit of persecution
this show because you.

Speaker 17 (01:28:25):
Were a little bit more than a far right Republican.

Speaker 1 (01:28:28):
Hey, what can I say?

Speaker 17 (01:28:30):
I think you say I'm a fascist?

Speaker 1 (01:28:32):
Yeah, I am, absolutely.

Speaker 19 (01:28:37):
I'm just checking who's clapping, just to get my set
where everyone comes.

Speaker 5 (01:28:41):
Yeah, so where do I find these people? I don't know?

Speaker 2 (01:28:47):
I mean, and some of them you'll recognize from other
episodes like this Blonde check. I've definitely seen before in
other episodes as well, But I mean I watched, I
watched the whole thing.

Speaker 6 (01:28:58):
That's crazy.

Speaker 5 (01:28:59):
You really got enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 (01:29:01):
Many did, I mean many did a great job, and
there were some weird moments too, where like some of
these people would come up, especially on Gaza actually, and
they would be like, I don't even disagree with you,
It's like.

Speaker 5 (01:29:12):
What are we doing here?

Speaker 2 (01:29:13):
And then other ones would just be like, yeah, I'm
a fascist and I think he should die, and it's
like what are we doing here? You know, it's just
like yeah, So my question for you, Yeah, this guy,
I mean this guy people online or apparently as an
online persona, they're saying like he's a groper, meaning he's
like a fan or follower of Nick Fuentez obviously, you know,
happy to be called a Nazi or fascist or whatever,

(01:29:35):
doesn't care and follows like Nazi thinkers and whatever. Like right,
how significant is this strain with young Republicans in particular.

Speaker 4 (01:29:45):
It's a good question. I mean, I think this is
it's not representative of like an average kid by any means,
or an average like twenty something by any means. It
is something that if for people who spend a lot
of time in like the online fever swamps. The way
that I think about it is there's now this almost

(01:30:07):
like architecture, Like there's this mental architecture, like him invoking
Karl Schmidt out of basically nowhere in that conversation with Mehdi.

Speaker 6 (01:30:18):
It's such a tell that he's part of.

Speaker 2 (01:30:21):
The Like he wants to say that he was dying
from Mehdi to be like you're a Nazi, yeah, because he's.

Speaker 5 (01:30:27):
Like, I don't care if you call me Nazi. He's like,
I didn't even say that, right, said are you a
fan of the Nazis?

Speaker 8 (01:30:32):
Right?

Speaker 5 (01:30:33):
He was dying.

Speaker 2 (01:30:33):
He was so happy to have his little moment where like, yeah,
you can call me a fascist and things. It's like
hilarious and everyone in the room is laughing and applauding
that yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:30:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:30:41):
And so it's there's always going to be a component
that of like of the right that's like fascy, There's
always going to be a component of it. There's always
going to be like mouth breathing, fringe conspiracy theory, adult
weirdos like that's always going to be a part of
basically any political movement. And on the right it tends

(01:31:02):
in the direction of like ultra reactionary fascism. So the
question that I have, and I don't have a perfect
answer to it, but the question I have is is
it growing or is it just that they now have
this kind of mental architecture where they can they have
like Carl Schmidt and they're ready to say for an
enemy distinction because they've read all of the viral threads.

(01:31:23):
And there are people who are sort of thought leaders.
Because the Internet, you don't have to like gather in
some type of like weird bar after closing and have
these like meetings of like fringe weirdos.

Speaker 6 (01:31:38):
You can do it on the Internet now.

Speaker 4 (01:31:40):
And there are people who are like national like Nick
Funt does, yeah, somebody who talks about this type of stuff,
And so there's just a more is more obvious and
more visible. I definitely worry that our elites are leading
us into position where more and more people are tempted
by fascism or anarchism or any fringe like frankly communism,

(01:32:07):
because people are so desperate and upset.

Speaker 6 (01:32:09):
This kid, though he looks like a normal middle class
dude who just is.

Speaker 5 (01:32:14):
Like, yeah, like what's your excuse, buddy.

Speaker 4 (01:32:16):
Yeah, but it's you know, as much as I want
to trash Jubilee or whatever the hell it's called, Surrounded,
whatever it is.

Speaker 2 (01:32:23):
Yeah, so it's the channenge you believe that this show
is surrounded.

Speaker 4 (01:32:26):
Something interesting about it is that it does force them
to play out this experiment in the real world instead
of on the Internet. And like, yes, I get that
it's being broadcast on the internet in its kind of
meta sense, but to have the conversation in person with
somebody who disagrees with you, your thoughts are tested in real time.
And you just saw that he obviously hasn't considered whether

(01:32:49):
he will be put into it one of his little camps, right,
and he thinks, no, I'll be okay.

Speaker 5 (01:32:53):
I'll be okay, little thought experiment.

Speaker 4 (01:32:55):
Many people have thought that they would not end up
in the camp, sir. That's the story of the last century.

Speaker 5 (01:33:01):
I've got more for you.

Speaker 2 (01:33:02):
So this is in the immigration portion, and just you know,
background knowledge here. Mehdi is an American citizen. He is
a naturalized American citizen. And one of the Jubilee guys
is like, you need to get the hell out.

Speaker 5 (01:33:14):
Let's take a.

Speaker 17 (01:33:14):
Listen to understanding economics because you can't explain I'm wrong.

Speaker 19 (01:33:18):
I'm telling you how you're wrong, because you're ignoring the
fact that when immigrants come into an area, they spend money,
they create jobs, they spend.

Speaker 17 (01:33:27):
That's a good thing.

Speaker 19 (01:33:28):
Also, because you don't like us a foreign aid, so
this is the point they create job.

Speaker 17 (01:33:32):
Into this country. So far, everyone of my assumptions about
you as being correct, listen to me. I am an immigrant.
I'm speaking for us experience. I don't even like I
should get the hell out. Yes, why I don't want
you're here?

Speaker 13 (01:33:42):
Why because you come here and say all this bullshit
about how Americans are lazy, you push your left Americans.

Speaker 19 (01:33:48):
Americans come into this country so they can do jobs
that we don't want to do.

Speaker 20 (01:33:52):
That.

Speaker 17 (01:33:54):
Why do you guys watching.

Speaker 19 (01:33:56):
On YouTube rewind to the time where I said immigrants
are doing jobs we don't want to do.

Speaker 17 (01:34:00):
When do I say those words out of my mouth?

Speaker 1 (01:34:03):
Why do we have to bring in immurt suit country
if we have people who are.

Speaker 17 (01:34:06):
Going to do the jobs.

Speaker 7 (01:34:07):
Pause, you've been voted out.

Speaker 19 (01:34:10):
Nice to you, You're going to have to go.

Speaker 17 (01:34:14):
Bro, is what he said as I left to an
American citizen. Good good to know.

Speaker 2 (01:34:18):
And yet to your point, Emily, you know these this
sort of validates like the worst caricature of what democrats
or liberals or leftist or whoever would say about the
right of Like oh, you're pretending you just want secure borders.
Really you just want in white death, no state, and
you hate brown people, and you think even a naturalized
citizen like Medi Hassan.

Speaker 5 (01:34:39):
Should be should go bro, And this guy's like yes.

Speaker 2 (01:34:42):
And I think that's what's very different about today is
that like you can go on Twitter and see this
sentiment expressed like routinely out in the open, with support
with you know, prominent online media figures who will bolster
the case with these like pseudo intellectual arguments that are
being made, whether it's the Curtis Yarvins of the world

(01:35:03):
or whoever. And I think Richard Hanania himself a he
claims former Eugenesis, I would say there's questions there.

Speaker 8 (01:35:12):
Awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:35:12):
In any case, I think he actually explained it well
as he called it, like the based loop or something
like that, where it's like you just keep going further
and further and the test is saying the most outrageous
things and not getting offended by it, and you know,
whoever can sort of like survive that test gets the
most cloud credence, like countercultural vibes on the Internet.

Speaker 4 (01:35:36):
Well, there's a very obvious, I think, in sad reality
to that, which is social media has completely gamified our
politics and our culture and literally these Twitter was designed
like a casino, and so when we are communicating, whether
as journalists or as politicians or as members of the

(01:35:59):
public sort of gauging in civic debate quote unquote, it's
all like gamified in a way that is playing on
our neurological structures. It's not it's actually incredibly messed up.
How little we think about what this has done to us,
because posting is you're posting about your personal life, you're

(01:36:21):
posting about politics, you're posting about another human being. This
we could have an entire conversation about the Coldplay concert
when it comes to all of this, but you're.

Speaker 6 (01:36:30):
Maximizing retweets and likes.

Speaker 4 (01:36:33):
That's literally like casino behavior for politics and culture.

Speaker 6 (01:36:37):
And of course it was.

Speaker 4 (01:36:38):
Inevitably going to change the way that we talk to
each other in real life.

Speaker 6 (01:36:43):
It doesn't just stay on the Internet.

Speaker 4 (01:36:44):
And so I actually think this is answering the question
that we were just talking about a little bits, whether
this is getting better or worse, or whether it's staying
the same, you know, whether we have the same number
of fringe people, or whether it's getting worse. I think
probably it is getting worse to some extent. And what
I saw in that conversation was a little bit different
than like white ethnopolitics. To me, that was this new

(01:37:06):
argument that you hear from Trump world when.

Speaker 6 (01:37:09):
You bring in a bunch of.

Speaker 4 (01:37:11):
People from different countries like Europe, places where hatred of
America or mockery of America.

Speaker 5 (01:37:19):
Is common medic in the UK.

Speaker 4 (01:37:21):
Right, right, But that's the new Like, that's JD. Vance
going to Europe and saying like this is the way
that you guys have your free speech. And obviously it's
hypocritical coming from JD. Vance, But that's what I saw
in that argument was this idea that like, it doesn't
behoove America to bring people in who hate America. But

(01:37:43):
it's just like he didn't have Medi saying that he
hated America. He was just assuming Meddi thought Americans were
lazy because he had different positions on immigration.

Speaker 2 (01:37:52):
Yeah, well right, And that's where the fundamental hipocracy of
the Jdvans thing like connecting it to this is like,
you know, I'm sure this guy may also be like, oh,
I believe in free speech. It's like, yeah, but you
have decided that Mehdi should be denaturalized and deported because
he has differing political views.

Speaker 5 (01:38:08):
Then you like literally.

Speaker 2 (01:38:10):
Just on the basis of this, he's like you come
in and spout this garbage, is like he and then
make and then he makes up things that Mehti didn't
even say in the context of this debate.

Speaker 4 (01:38:19):
Because it's a strong It's the internet, straw man, and
this is what it does to our brains. And this
is why it's really frustrating sometimes the feedback that we
get on this show, especially and I'm sure you get
from the left, I get it from the right, but
like the feedback we get sometimes, to me, it's frustrated
because people who don't do what we do all the time,
where we're talking to each other literally every day on
things that we disagree with on have these I think

(01:38:40):
straw man ideas that social media encourages us to construct
of people who disagree with us, and unless you are
putting in a lot of time, which is hard to do.
But like, unless you are putting a lot of time,
we're lucky. Like that's why I consider myself lucky to
be able to do this. Yeah, it's those start to
crumble when you have actual conversations and so I guess.

Speaker 2 (01:39:02):
Good on, you believe this worthy exactly, caricature is completely
validated and they're like, yes, I am that internet nazi fascist,
but I am.

Speaker 4 (01:39:11):
His caricature of Mehti was incorrect, right, And that's like, yeah,
I mean, Mehdi is somebody who if we didn't do
this show, I would probably have a caricature of but
we had many on a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 6 (01:39:24):
And it's it's hard to maintain.

Speaker 4 (01:39:26):
Those charricatures when you're doing it every single day and
you're actually talking to people and having reasonable conversations. And
so I think that's one of the problems with the
online discourse is that the algorithms force us into caricaturing
and straw manning because that's.

Speaker 6 (01:39:42):
Validates our priors.

Speaker 4 (01:39:43):
It's the confirmation bias that makes virality possible, and when
you have to actually have these conversations in real life,
it's a lot harder even for him, uh, the first
Nazi boy talking about Carl Schmidt, it was a lot
harder for him to even maintain his own argument, the
caricature of himself, because he would.

Speaker 2 (01:40:02):
End up in a damn camp, right, someone's going.

Speaker 6 (01:40:05):
To the camps. Doesn't matter how much Carl Schmidt they've read.

Speaker 2 (01:40:08):
So one of the assertions that Mehdi, you have to
come in with, like these are my claims, you know.
One of the claims Medi made in the context of
this debate was that Trump's plan for Gaza is ethnic cleansing.
And this was one of the ones where actually a
number of the people who came up and wanted to
debate with him did not actually disagree with him, which

(01:40:29):
was also kind of interesting. And you're like, okay, why, like,
well Trump used the word clean. I mean, it's just
like it's sort of impossible to argue number one. But
number two is also indicative perhaps of some of the
ways that the Young Right is different on this issue
of us it different than others. But they did have
one guy who came in and was, you know, making

(01:40:51):
some not great points about how basically everyone in Gaza
is Hamas and they all deserve to die.

Speaker 5 (01:40:56):
Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.

Speaker 21 (01:40:58):
You gotta let me finish.

Speaker 19 (01:40:59):
No, you get on the question fourth time when he's ready,
snipers get Palestinian children in the head running aut of time.
I need to know what you think about innocent children.
What you said was pretty outrageous. You said innocent Palestinians
for the fifth time. When Palestinian children are shot in
the head by Israeli snipers, that's not the.

Speaker 17 (01:41:14):
Fault of Israeli snipers. What did why did they tell me?
Did the children do have to be shot in there?

Speaker 21 (01:41:20):
Because the problem is, you know, millions of people are watching.
You say they just watching children. They start brainwashing children
at a very long gay young.

Speaker 19 (01:41:28):
So you support exact sping children in Gaza. Look to
other people here support sniping children in Gaza? Is that
a conservative position?

Speaker 22 (01:41:34):
Now?

Speaker 1 (01:41:35):
What if they're varying good suicide burst?

Speaker 17 (01:41:37):
They weren't, But what if they are they're not?

Speaker 12 (01:41:39):
Though?

Speaker 19 (01:41:40):
What if children I have friends who doctors, went to
American doctors, they came back as multiple children.

Speaker 21 (01:41:46):
What if they're helping killing you and your family?

Speaker 17 (01:41:50):
A ten year old chid, ain't year old chid? A
six year old child?

Speaker 21 (01:41:53):
Because because you're sitting on their brainwash television.

Speaker 19 (01:41:57):
There are millions of people are going to see your
neighbors and friends kill.

Speaker 21 (01:42:01):
Millions of people don't know what's going on.

Speaker 19 (01:42:03):
Even your fellow right wingers are saying, don't go this
far genocide.

Speaker 17 (01:42:07):
Sure, but don't.

Speaker 21 (01:42:08):
People don't understand the brainwashing that is going on in
his Islamic Republic and in Palestine to create there with.

Speaker 19 (01:42:15):
It ran so much that you're supporting the killing of
Palestine children who never harmed you or any other Israeli
that's insane.

Speaker 2 (01:42:22):
And that guy himself is Iranian and so which you know,
I guess helps inform where what he's thinking about in
this debate.

Speaker 6 (01:42:30):
But you said he was Zoro.

Speaker 5 (01:42:33):
That's that personally confirmed. I don't want to tell you, but.

Speaker 2 (01:42:38):
I think to your point about you know, if you
have to exist in any sort of reality and you're
still trying to toe the line for everything Israel does
is totally and completely justified, you're gonna end up looking
like a genocidal maniac, as this fool ultimately ends up
looking at the hands of Benny.

Speaker 4 (01:42:54):
You know, one of the things I think bothers me
about the format here is that they do kind of
mimic social media in the sense with the red flags like.

Speaker 6 (01:43:02):
You've been voted out.

Speaker 4 (01:43:03):
Whatever it's it's gamified in and of itself, because I
was thinking during that conversation how much more interesting it
would have been without the chaos of like the flags.

Speaker 6 (01:43:11):
Waving and people cheering, because.

Speaker 4 (01:43:14):
You could really see how Medie was working through uh
the debate. I mean, he literally wrote a book about
how to win arguments, right, Meddi wrote a book about
how to win arguments.

Speaker 6 (01:43:23):
I mean few years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:43:24):
I don't care how you feel about many Meddi is
a very smart and very skilled presenter, debater, interviewer. I
think he is truly one of the most talented like
people in that genre out there.

Speaker 4 (01:43:36):
He's good what he does, and so going on an
episode of Surrounded with Mehdi is going to be a mistake.

Speaker 6 (01:43:42):
If you aren't just like an Internet.

Speaker 4 (01:43:44):
Strollin you might think you're.

Speaker 6 (01:43:47):
Gonna win hip.

Speaker 4 (01:43:48):
You're not going It's not gonna go well for you.

Speaker 2 (01:43:52):
I believe, I believe twenty what do they call him?
Far right conservatives found that out in real time, and.

Speaker 4 (01:43:57):
Meddi said, because someone Quoteta and said, Jubilee invited by
Nazis and Meddi Hasse went, yeah, sure, I'm going to
go debate them, and Mehdi said, to be fair to me,
that's not how the debate was sold to me. You
can see my shock when they expressed they start expressing
their views openly, and it's something similar happened. I'm trying
to remember who was Oh it was Jordan Peterson. Remember
they sold the debaters as a Christian versus atheist and

(01:44:20):
Jordan Peterson's not a Christian.

Speaker 6 (01:44:21):
This happened like a month ago.

Speaker 2 (01:44:22):
Right, they had to change the YouTube title, yes, because
it was supposed to be one Christian versus twenty atheists.

Speaker 6 (01:44:28):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:44:28):
And then he's immediately like, they're like, wait, he wouldn't
say he's a Christian? No, I mean, and ever something
he does, he like won't actually say what he believes
and be direct about it, right because he doesn't know it.

Speaker 5 (01:44:41):
Was a mess.

Speaker 6 (01:44:41):
Yeah, because he doesn't know.

Speaker 4 (01:44:43):
So anyway, what a what an experience those those young
kids had with Many and Zorro.

Speaker 5 (01:44:55):
Friends were made, enemies were made.

Speaker 6 (01:44:57):
And the friend enemy distinction was Yeah, it happens.

Speaker 7 (01:45:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:45:03):
So I think, answering the question we started with, I
do think some of the French stuff is getting worse.
I think there are probably more people that are interested
in a version of like, for example, there are probably
people who are attracted to Zoramumdani's ideas in ways that
I think would probably go in a frightening direction where

(01:45:23):
they tested out. I don't think that's representative of the
Zoramumdani movement in any way whatsoever. I think that's representative
people being desperate and our elites being terrible.

Speaker 6 (01:45:33):
Now on the right, I.

Speaker 2 (01:45:35):
Just, I just I'm not saying you're necessarily but I
just made the distinction. I don't think there is anything.

Speaker 6 (01:45:40):
There's no equivalent, equivalent like.

Speaker 2 (01:45:43):
Let's have free buses and being like I'm a.

Speaker 6 (01:45:45):
Nazi, of course not.

Speaker 4 (01:45:47):
No, I'm just trying to say I think there are
people being people are being pulled in like populist directions,
and sometimes when people are pulled in a populist direction,
it goes really really wrong, and people get Because people
are being pulled in populist directions in good ways, like
the media is awful, you're being lied to. That opens
up space for people who say, correctly, everyone is lying

(01:46:10):
to you, listen to me, and those people will often
lie to you, and so I think that it actually
is really dangerous, and I think it's one of the
most frustrating things about the obsession with just recycling, like
Andrew Puomo or Republicans, like having no answer to Donald
Trump other than we're all maga Republicans now, as they say,

(01:46:32):
like that is really dangerous because you're not actually answering
anybody's problems, you're not actually solving anybody's problems. You're just
putting a sort of charismatic person in front of them.
And again, I'm not drawing an equivalence between Zoran and
Donald Trump. I'm just saying that's what happens when you
don't answer populism.

Speaker 6 (01:46:51):
It ends up like making people more and more desperate.

Speaker 4 (01:46:54):
And as people get more and more desperate, they say
insane things like this. But one of the weird things,
not weird things. These people all seem perfectly like they
should be well adjusted, right, And that's like, that's we're
being poisoned by social media and these algorithms.

Speaker 6 (01:47:09):
And true, it's really what a time to be alive?

Speaker 2 (01:47:13):
Indeed, all right, speaking of what a time to be alive,
Israel routinely violating seasfire and southern Lebanon barely makes news
because of so many other things that are going on
with even Israel specifically, the drop site has a great
report for us.

Speaker 5 (01:47:25):
Let's go ahead and get to that.

Speaker 2 (01:47:27):
We have an important report courtesy of our friends over
at drop Site. So despite agreeing to a ceasefire with
Hesbela in November twenty twenty four, Israel has repeatedly violated
the terms of that agreement. News coverage has focused a
lot on israel strikes on Syria and Iron and starvation
of Gaza, understandably, but the conflict in Lebanon is also
still ongoing. In the seasfire agreement, Hasbela agreed to withdraw

(01:47:50):
north of the Latani River in southern Lebanon and Israel
agreed to withdraw their forces. Now, Israel has not actually
withdrawn all their forces and they have continued bomm Lebanon
on a semi regular basis. Last month, Drop Site sent
journalists Jeremy Lefredo to southern Lebanon to report on the
status of the ceasefire there.

Speaker 5 (01:48:09):
Now you might remember Jeremy.

Speaker 2 (01:48:10):
He's the American freelance journalist who was arrested and jailed
by Israel for reporting on iron strikes there on the ground,
he continues to face charges inside of Israel. It is
exceedingly difficult for journalists to be able to reach southern
Lebanon at this point, but Jeremy was actually able to
get access and he filed this report from Iida al Shab,

(01:48:31):
a southern Lebanese town reduced to rubble and forcibly emptied
by Israeli strikes and systemic demolitions, not during the conflict,
but following the supposed ceasefire. As Jeremy demonstrates with this report,
less than one thousand yards away from Aida al Shab,
Israeli forces still occupied mountaintop positions inside of Lebanon, surveilling

(01:48:53):
that town and firing on anything that resembles reconstruction. Here
is Jeremy's report from Ida, where he is in converse
station with a Lebanese journalist named Mohammed Klight who helped
him to be able to get there.

Speaker 22 (01:49:25):
So this is Aita Shah. It's a bordering town between
northern occupied Palisa and Lebanon. It's like one kilometer away
from the nearest Israeli outposts. Israel insisted on totally destroying

(01:49:45):
this town and making it unhabitable. In two thousand and six,
this town and the people who were fighting in it,
they stood steady to resist the Israeli occupation and it
is really advancement towards the town took the spotlight during

(01:50:06):
the two thousand and six war, and as you can see,
there's nothing left. The houses are either totally destroyed or
partially destroyed lower lower the camera as a military checkpoint.

(01:50:33):
They entered it, they occupied it, they were targeting, targeting
it with bombardment, with with earth strikes, with shelling like
tank shells, and when they occupied the land on foot,
they made sure like during the ceasefire, to destroy everything.

(01:50:54):
They planted the bombs inside the houses, like those houses
as you see on the hilltop. They also appear in
the videos off the Israeli military when they are like
drone footage when they are blowing up the entire neighborhood.
As I remember, this excavator was targeted on the first

(01:51:18):
few days when people returned. They were trying to remove
the rubble, but then.

Speaker 7 (01:51:25):
It was targeted.

Speaker 22 (01:51:26):
It's part of the Israeli policy not to allow any
type of construction or reconstruction in the town, so you
could find like excavators.

Speaker 8 (01:51:40):
And trucks just.

Speaker 22 (01:51:43):
Parked on the side of the road, left alone. Even
like the houses, like small houses that are portable houses,
they were also targeted by Israel. No one is allowed
to come back. When people came back here, they found

(01:52:10):
a lot of uh that husband love fighters under the rubble.

Speaker 18 (01:52:15):
They kept on digging.

Speaker 22 (01:52:16):
Every time like they reached a house, they started digging,
they would find one or two hysb loave fighters like
that sign says the right that we're present in every
area and we won't leave our weapon.

Speaker 4 (01:53:05):
That sounds really all close.

Speaker 10 (01:53:08):
Up up there on the two.

Speaker 23 (01:53:12):
I think that's the new one. I think that's another one.

Speaker 8 (01:53:22):
Fun you see it, m.

Speaker 23 (01:53:30):
It's uh, it's very close.

Speaker 11 (01:53:36):
Sh oh nice, let's street forces jackets.

Speaker 8 (01:54:29):
Excuse yes, good.

Speaker 24 (01:54:34):
Jacot name her mother will have masser ballad Shobabiah. This

(01:54:54):
b what that in my ashes solid there was that
in my isshoe all that saw the blacks Lola.

Speaker 17 (01:54:59):
Hagen when I show.

Speaker 24 (01:55:02):
Number what my yeah, and I'm da Rohane Rohaney know
this start pub sadid Israelia and the s also this did.

(01:55:28):
But a lot of the sub and.

Speaker 6 (01:55:32):
On hand.

Speaker 24 (01:55:34):
With them. Sure, oh not in Alfhan city a wordy
Ma rof j naser al. We had to tell about them.

Speaker 20 (01:55:59):
This man, the Brahma and the writer Shavison over the year.
Uh when Mala Bimana co famo come, I had came
Libau hid the Australian and yam alone alumla Oh, I'm

(01:56:23):
mister timber hal alumla, but al would die am with
alum had had a phone alum They are a rock
folk rock footlock. And then the more they started clana

(01:56:46):
line of the Australia.

Speaker 8 (01:56:51):
Who who to say.

Speaker 20 (01:56:55):
Or killed hen and d hotterwom this man did?

Speaker 2 (01:57:01):
Ship All right, guys, thank you so much for watching today.

(01:57:29):
Ryan will actually be in tomorrow and hopefully Sager will
be back. He's uh, his family is sick, baby everybody.

Speaker 5 (01:57:35):
They're going through it, baby bug.

Speaker 2 (01:57:37):
That's right, no fun, no fun in any case, Thank
you so much for watching and we will see you soon.

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