8/18/25: Hillary Praises Trump On Ukraine, Top Israeli Official Arrested In Pedo Sting, Trump Tariff Loyalty Scores

Krystal and Saagar discuss Hillary praises Trump on Ukraine, top Israeli official arrested in pedo sting, Trump creates loyalty score for tariffs.

 

Fort Bragg Book: https://www.amazon.com/Fort-Bragg-Cartel-Trafficking-Special/dp/0593655087 

 

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Episode Transcript

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

Speaker 2 (00:01):
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Speaker 1 (00:25):
We need your help to build the future of independent
news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. Have an amazing
show for everybody today.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
What do we have Crystal, You have lots to get
into you today. So Zelenski is in town along with
a whole bunch of European leaders, so we will see.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
What will come out of that.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Also, Hillary Clinton agreeing with Trump on a number of
foreign policy issues.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
So I just sell time looking forward to who Sager is.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
The reactions to get the hell out of this timeline
is sooner in particular.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yes, actually that's what we're just discussing before we went live.
In addition, we have lots more to get to this.
I can't even believe this is reel. A top Israeli
aid to Night Yahoo was arrested in Las Vegas in
a pedophilia sting. Nevertheless, he was released a land fly
back to Israel. So what the hell is going on
with that? We've got some economic news, in particular, greenflation

(01:18):
is back with a vengeance, and we seem to be
shifting more and more towards the dreaded stagflation, so we'll
take a look at that. We also have the State Department,
now at the behest of Laura Lumer, deciding that they
are going to block all visas of kids coming from
Gaza to seek medical treatment in the US, disgusting move

(01:38):
in my opinion. We will break down how all of
this happened and what exactly it means. We've got Pete
Boodagiet cleaning up his Israel comments from Podsave America, which
is a pretty interesting sign of where things are within
the Democratic Party and how slow Democratic leaders have been
to adjust to the sentiment within the Democratic base. And
today we will be joined by Seth Harp, who just

(02:00):
wrote a book exposing the murders and drug trafficking coming
out of Fort Bragg. It is an extraordinary read and
I really think you guys are going to find.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
This very interesting.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
At its core, it's really a book about the blowback
from America's foreign endless wars and what it has done
to our own society.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yes, that's right, about the toll on the people who
fought it, about the toll on everybody else, And that's
why I think it's really worth talking. We always like Seth.
I'm happy to have him again on the show, hoping
that all works. Also we will have the AMA if
it works. We're trying again, all right, So if you
want to go ahead and sign up to become a
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It really helps other people find it. So let's go
ahead and start with Ukraine. We had Professor John Meerscheimer
break down the exact kind of the meaning of the summit.

(02:59):
We have some more details now that are coming out.
We know, of course, that President Zelenski is already here
in Washington. Almost every major leader of NATO from the
European Union will be here in Washington as well for
a grand meeting between Zelenski, Trump and all of them
to kind of set the terms. We did get some
interesting new revelations on what we could see in any

(03:22):
sort of peace agreement from Steve Wikoff, the chief negotiator
of the President, who was on television giving some of
that away. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 4 (03:30):
The thesis of a ceasefire is that you'd be discussing
all of these issues that we resolved in Alaska. You'd
be discussing security guarantees. There's not a person on the
European team who didn't knowledge that we made substantial progress
at this meeting. The fundamental issue, which is some sort
of land swap, which is obviously ultimately in the control

(03:53):
of the Ukrainians that could not have been discussed at
this meeting. We intend to discuss it on Hopefully we
have some clarity on it, and hopefully that ends up
in a peace deal.

Speaker 5 (04:05):
Very very soon.

Speaker 6 (04:06):
You mentioned the Article five guarantee of NATO.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
An attack on one and it's an attack on all.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
Russia would allow that to happen.

Speaker 4 (04:16):
No, Jake, that's not what I said. What I said
is that we got to an agreement that the United
States and other European nations could effectively offer Article five
like language to cover a security guarantee, which is the if,
which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants

(04:39):
to be in NATO. We sort of were able to
bypass that and get an agreement that the that the
United States could offer Article five protection, which was the
first time we had ever heard the Russians agreed to that.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
That is an absolutely extraordinary claim which we really all
need to sit with, because Steve Wikoff is claiming that
Russia has agreed to some sort of Article five lifestyle guarantee.
I find that very difficult to believe for a number
of reasons. Whether you have an Article five style guarantee
outside of NATO or in NATO. If you have all
the countries in NATO absent like Lithuania, actually no, they'll

(05:13):
probably give them once. What doesn't even matter. Slovakia I apologize,
and the United States give you snapback. We will if
one of us attacked. If not all you're in NATO. Okay,
I mean it's like, who cares whether you call it
NATO or not. Again, I find that very, very difficult
to believe. Considering Putin's rhetoric about why that started the war,

(05:33):
I guess it's theoretically possible that they would have agreed
to it if they could keep significant parts of Ukraine.
What's come out of the summit now so far is
that Putin is demanding not only the parts of Ukraine
approximately twenty two percent that he already already controls, but
actually significant parts of the Dunbass region. And that would
include Ukrainian withdrawal from areas of the front line, including

(05:56):
some cities that they already control. Everyone please keep in
mind Ukrainians or the Ukrainian government is like, oh well,
we can't give that up. These cities are rubble, no
matter whether they could control it or not, both for
Russia and for Ukraine. It's not like some thriving metropolis
that they're just handing over, right. These have been completely
emptied and destroyed, ravaged by the war. So that is
by far the single most significant thing that has come out.

(06:19):
But we should keep in mind, even if that is true,
you have to get Zelenski to agree. Zelenski, in the
last forty eight hours, I have tracked every single one
of his public statements. He is not even close to
coming towards a peace deal. In fact, his chief aim
from the Financial Times and others, which I will return to,
is not only a ceasefire, in immediate ceasefire. Why does

(06:41):
he want an immediate seaspire because they're losing the war
and they're expending and losing manpower. An immediate ceasefire, he
wants a security guarantee before on top of the ceasefire.
He's not ready to agree to a peace deal because
he keeps saying, I can't even agree to a peace deal.
I have to bring it to a national referendum, which,
of course he can control the process through which that

(07:01):
would happen. Part of the reason he is here in
Washington today with all the European leaders is actually to
convince Trump to go back to Putin and say you
need to agree to an immediate ceasefire or we're going
to put all of these secondary sanctions on you. I
believe this is echoing Meerscheimer, that Trump it all finally
clicked for him to say, no matter what sanctions I do,
no matter what's going on, putin what he's demanded. Has

(07:25):
really not changed all that much since Istanbul back in
twenty twenty two, and it's basically immovable from that point forward.
And so you basically have these two almost immovable objects
now considering the Ukrainian in the European Union position, the
United States has cut in between for some reason, we
have subjugated all of our policy to the EU and

(07:45):
to the Ukrainians. And then the Russians, of course, have
no compunction about killing thousands of men on the front
line every single day if they have to to continue
to grind forward inch by inch in Ukraine. So it's
bad all the way around. I see no possible way.
Echoing Actually the Secretary of State Mark Rubio on television,
He's like, we're not even close to a peace agreement

(08:07):
right now. So I believe him. I think he's right.
And you know, with the European Unions and the Ukrainians,
it's not good right now.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, And just to spell people for people, and you
guys did a great job with with Meerscheimer spelling this
out over the weekend, the difference between a seasfire and
a peace deal. The Ukrainians want a ceasefire because that
means you don't have to actually deal with the reality
of the territorial loss. You can just say, okay, we're
just taking a pause. Gives them a chance to sort
of regroup, reconstitute, reconsider, et cetera. Whereas the Russians, I mean,

(08:37):
he has been saying basically the same thing from the
beginning of the war about what the conditions are that
would need to be met, and you know, fundamentally they
are unacceptable to the Ukrainians, They're unacceptable to the Europeans.
I mean, they're unacceptable to a lot of the American
leadership as well. So the question is are you going

(08:58):
to end up with a Ukraine that is at all,
you know, sovereign. The faster this ends, the better it
is for Ukraine. And it's going to be incredibly ugly,
Like if it ends now, it's going to be incredibly
ugly the kind of deal that would have to be struck.
But if you continue, it is likely to only get
even uglier. Because of the logic of Russia just having

(09:18):
so much more manpower and Ukraine really spending so much
of their manpower already in this war and being in
such a precarious position. You know, things have been like
the Russians continue to make sort of minor advances. They
did have a significant breakthrough that we covered last week. However,
as time goes on, the Russians are betting that whatever

(09:39):
economic strife they're facing from the sanctions, whatever potential societal
societal instability they're facing, which you know from the surface level,
doesn't seem like a whole lot, that they can basically
outlast the Ukrainians. And I think that's a fairly safe
bet to make.

Speaker 1 (09:53):
Yeah, I mean again, it's not on a timeline. Everyone,
both the Russians and the Ukrainians are living in insane
like timeline where the Ukrainians are like, look at this
micro breakthrough that we made. It's like, look at the timescale.
In twenty twenty two, you launched your grand counter offensive,
and you made all of this talk about retaking this
is and this none of it happened. We gave you
probably one hundred billion dollars since that time period. The

(10:15):
frontline is relatively frozen and if there's been any movement,
it's been on the Russian side. Now, Zelenski himself again
reiterating those core demands where he wants a security guarantee
explicitly ahead of that, he only wants to cease fire
immediately before moving to peace. And then in terms of
any territorial concession, he's already ruling that out without a
national referendum. The territorial question is one that he's not

(10:38):
really willing to get to. Here's what he had to say.

Speaker 7 (10:41):
Constitution of Ukraine makes it impossible, impossible to give up
territory or trade land. Since the territorial issue is so important,
it should be discussed only by the least of Ukraine
and Russia at the trilateral Ukraine United States Russia. Russia
gives no sign that trilateral will happen, and if Russia refuses,

(11:06):
then you sanctions must follow.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
So you can see there about Ukraine does not even
have the ability without some sort of national referendum. By
the way, one thing that is interesting, compared to the
gallop polling that we've shown here, Ukrainian people are already
mostly broken. I mean, many of them want a negotiated
peace to this now maybe what Putin is demanding is
too much like yeah, quote, negotiated peace can mean a

(11:29):
whole lot of different things, but the point remains, Like
you can see that he's absolutely not willing to even
bring it up in this meeting right now with Trump.
I want everyone to understand all of this is in
the public, like what they've said they're going to do.
The European leaders there are there to hammer home only
a single point. We need to cease fire, and we
need it now. They want all They basically want to

(11:51):
box the United States into their own insane position, which
is all of these preconditions for peace as if they
are winning the war. The reason Putin is is resolute
is because he's winning the war. He has stood up
against the sanctions, he has stood up against obviously the
Ukrainian military. The Europeans have thrown everything that they possibly
could at him. It doesn't matter. If they had the

(12:11):
military might, they would do it. I mean I talked
to some military experts in terms of the cards. The
Russians have the cards because there's not a single thing
not strapped to the ground that we could send Ukraine
that was going to make a damn difference because of
their own manpower issues. So this is all very important
for everybody to understand. The problem is right now is

(12:33):
that Trump is you know, everyone talks about how Trump
is impressionable and that Putin is going to take advantage
of that. Well, Putin and the only person taking advantage
of that. You think all those Europeans flew over here
for no reason. Yeah, they know what they're doing too, okay,
and they've been wildly successful. Same with Zelensky over under
on whether he's going to wear a suit today because
apparently that was an annoyance of Donald Trump to try

(12:55):
not to repeat the February disaster of his meeting. The
question is all about how they are going to impress
upon Trump that it's really them who has the cards,
which again is fake because all the weapons are coming
from the United States, whether they're getting bought by the
Europeans or not. But stuck within that is now this
most recent Hillary Clinton thing, which I know this all

(13:18):
sounds crazy, but I didn't appreciate how important it was
until so I was watching all day the coverage of
the summer one of the Brett Bear has ten minutes
and the Air Force one to interview Trump. What do
you think. One of the questions was on Hillary Clinton.
And the reason why is if you watch all of
Fox coverage, Fox's coverage is the most hawkish I've ever seen.

(13:38):
I watched all three networks. Fox's coverage was just NonStop
pro Ukraine propaganda. And what I'm realizing is they're appealing
to Trump's ego by saying, see, Hillary says, you should
get the Nobel Peace Prize if you do it the
right way, aka the Ukrainian way, And so they're trying
to box them into this by creating public, elite public
opinion that says I agree with you. So here's Hillary

(14:01):
Clinton talking about the summit, lesticgalisten.

Speaker 8 (14:04):
I think all of that is a very good signal
that there is beginning to be a better understanding both
by the President and the people around him, as well
as by the leaders of our European allies that there
can be a common ground amongst us, and the kind
of dismissiveness that we saw in the first Trump administration

(14:28):
has been replaced by a much more obvious working relationship
to the good of European security, Transatlantic security, and hopefully
Ukrainian security.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
So I'm actually encouraged Nobel Peace Prize for Donald Trumps Locker. Yeah,
that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
This is not good.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
We need to get out of this timeline. All right,
let's go to the next part. Please, from the Financial Times,
Zelenski and allies will press Trump on security guarantees. This again,
is one of the most singular important things, because if
this war ends with the expansion of you call it
whatever you want, I don't care a bilateral treaty with

(15:09):
Ukraine that is signed on by more than half of
the NATO powers and or NATO, it's not going to
change the difference that all of us will be on
the hook for a nuclear war for the territorial integrity
of Ukraine. Even if whether Russia could live with that.
You should ask yourself, at a very basic level, do
you want that? As an American taxpayer? They never put

(15:31):
it to you in those terms. You know, and this
is part of the problem. We can see the history
and everyone says these are Putin talking points. It's ridiculous
because this argument's going long before Putin ever came to power.
You can go and read George Kennon's own theories on
NATO expansion, going back all the way to nineteen ninety
one Bill Burns. Very many serious foreign policy realists looked

(15:52):
at the situation said this is untenable and it's going
to create a crisis. John Meerscheimer, who we interviewed on Saturday,
said very similar things out of very basic level. The
border of NATO has been moving further and further towards
the Russian territory. The result of the Ukrainian War was
to bring Finland into NATO. Finland, a country which was

(16:13):
neutral for two hundred years, decided to join NATO and
we switched our fingers like this and immediately brought them in.
Now they're asking for eighty percent of Ukraine to be
brought into this as well. And when they say security
guarantees from the Europeans, that's fake because if europe could
guarantee their security, they would do it. They need America

(16:33):
to do it. That's another part which always gets left
on the table here. And so this is you know, look,
I think Trump is very open to falling for it,
and if that happens, you can't take that back. You
cannot take back you know, a full on Article five guarantee. Also,
because of the reality we live in, I would bet
you that that would pass the US Senate ninety nine

(16:55):
to one or so. There are may be two people
who would be willing to vote against it. I think
Hawley and by the way, Abstained actually on North Montenegro,
So I'm not so sure whether he would even do it.
So like this is a is a crisis in my opinion,
no one seriously even wants to talk about it. And
the real issue is if Trump goes on the record

(17:16):
to some sort of security guarantee. Putin has not said yes,
I will accept a security guarantee, at least publicly, We're
not taking that back. Then that is a statement of
US policy under the Trump administration. And what if the
Russians are like, Okay, well, that's evidence for why we
just need to keep rolling. That's the problem. What else
do we have. We're going to tear off China five
hundred percent? Does everybody want to shut down our economy

(17:39):
because of Ukraine? It's preposterous.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
Yeah, I mean, I just see the whole thing as
it honestly is sickening because it is a tragedy of
the failures of US foreign policy over decades. You know,
we use Ukraine as ponds and That's what has led
to this horrifying outcome where you know, what what the

(18:02):
Hawks are pushing for and is what is possibly going
to happen, and what the Europeans you know, would want
out of this meeting today, and what Zelenski would want
out of this meeting today is to use secondary sanctions,
like as if we haven't already sanctioned Russia is the
most sanctioned country on the.

Speaker 1 (18:17):
Planet, already in the world.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
But we're going to, you know, Levy now secondary sanctions
to try to put more Prussia on Russia to try
to secure some sort of you know, immediate ceasefire without
a larger piece deal.

Speaker 3 (18:27):
Russia is not going to go for that.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
But what that means for you is that once again
the US tearff policy and trade policy is being used
to efectuate these foreign policy goals, and that does have
real impact on you and what prices you're paying and
what you know, cost of living here is in the US,
and it's very unlikely to work. I mean, this is
the insanity frequently of our foreign policy. I always think

(18:50):
about Joe Biden when he was like, you know, we're
talking about the Hoofy strikes and He's like, we're going
to continue the hoofy strikes.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
Are they going to work?

Speaker 1 (18:57):
No?

Speaker 3 (18:57):
Are they going to continue?

Speaker 5 (18:59):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (18:59):
So much of our foreign policy is driven that way.
Do you think there's any reasonable expectation here in DC
that if we levy some war sanctions or you know,
secondary sanctions against Russia, that that's going to somehow magically,
you know.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
To be honest, I used to think the way you did.
I think they are as dumb as they seem and
as crazy. I mean, Okay, this is gonna be this
is going to be a head cut for everybody, but
stick with me. But Michael McFall I know, you know,
the former US ambassador of Russia under Obama. I saw
him tweet the other day. At least this was not
Yalta two point zero. Now, this is going to sound crazy.

(19:33):
That was the arch like anti communist talking point of
the Republicans in the nineteen forties, because they criticized Roosevelt
for dealing with Stalin and the you know, the theory
behind is that Roosevelt should have basically gone to war
with the Soviet Union to protect against the expansion of
the USSR right. So once I saw that, I was
like Holy shit, We're living in a timeline where the

(19:56):
neoliberal left talking point on Ukraine is that actually, the
United States should have pursued the tertillian policy of declaring
war on the Soviet Union after we won World War
Two to make sure that we didn't expand in a goal.
That's why I was like, oh, we are living in
a psychology of people who are still litigating the Cold
War at its very foundation of Yalta, and so seeing that,

(20:18):
that's why I'm like, oh, no, the sanction policy and
all of that makes sense, because it's not that they
think it's going to work. It's that they want a
forever war with the Russian State until it is dissolved,
yes and destroyed. No, that is what they want.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
No, that's right, and it has to And part of
it too, also does come back to money, because after
the after the Soviet Union collapses, after we had all
of this gigantic expansion of the military industrial complex and
the Pentagon spending, the logical thing would be, Okay, this
superpower rival of.

Speaker 3 (20:50):
Ours has now collapsed.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
We don't have to spend all of these mass amounts
of money and fund all of these contractors in the
Beltway area. To the extent that we have been. We
could be spending that money. Oh maybe people should have
health care, maybe people should have decent wages. Maybe we
should invest in some infrastructure for once, and you know,
really rebuild the country. No, instead, those people have every

(21:14):
interest in saying no, no, no, you have to continue there.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
You know, they're always a threat. They'll always be a threat.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
They'll never not be an adversary, they'll never be an ally.
You have to always be in this you know, aggressive
offensive posture towards them, and so the money fuels it too.
So that's why I see the whole thing as just
such a tragedy and cautionary tale about the US foreign
policy that has been pursued for decades across multiple administrations.
And you know, now you end up in this situation,

(21:40):
which is truly horrible. There is no good outcome here,
There's zero There are zero good outcomes in sight. There's
not going to be any sort of end that is
all in any way, just for anyone, right, it is
not rageous that Ukraine was invaded by Russia. It's really
not their fault, you know, it was more US using
them as pawns in our imperial games. And now that

(22:01):
we get here, I see why Ukrainians would feel like, well,
you're the ones who dragged us into this position, so
you should be fully backing us up right. You should
be doing what it takes to make sure that our sovereignty,
in our territorial integrity is preserved. You should be guaranteeing
our security because you're the reason, a big part of
the reason that we're in this situation to begin with.
So I have endless sympathy for the place that the

(22:24):
Ukrainians have been dragged to in this situation. And it's
not to say to take away agents see from Zelenski
to say that there's nothing that's gone on there as well.
But we're the big players in this game, and we
have created this endlessly disastrous situation.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
And here's again where I need to stick with this.
Zelenski today repeated the lie that the United States made
a security guarantee to Ukraine in nineteen ninety four. That
is complete bullshit. He's referring to the Budapest Memorandum of
ninety four where the Ukraine went Now again, I'm gonna
choose my language carefully gave up control of the Soviet
Union's nuclear weapons because they say it gave up control

(22:58):
of our nuclear right. No, no, no, no, no, no, gave
up control of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons. Well, here's
news for you, Ukraine. That was a non binding agreement
made by the Clinton administration. Now, when Putin gives one
of his long lectures about NATO expansion, what does he cite.
He cites how George Schultz and other secretaries of State

(23:20):
told him we will never expand NATO beyond the borders
of Germany. That, by the way, is the exact same
logic of Putin, who said, the Secretary of State told
me that you wouldn't expand, and you expanded. Well, as
the Russians well know, in this country, nothing is legally
binding unless it passes the United States Senate. It's the
same thing with the Budapest memorandum. So you know what

(23:42):
you should do. You should treat them the Clinton administration
making a promise that they could never fulfill for the
same timeline, with the same weight of the United States
telling Putin we would not expand NATO. Neither are legally binding.
We have a treaty system ascribed by the Constitution in
this country. But yeah, at both sides take the word

(24:02):
of some previous administration as law that we're supposed to follow.
And yet if I told the Ukrainians, it's like, well,
by your own logic, then we never should expand NATO.
What would they say, That's a Putin talking point that's
completely non binding. And then Zelenski, with a straight face,
says the same thing. I get it, Okay, It's unseemly
the fact that we signed a memorandum and then didn't
end up backing it up later on. It's also unseemly

(24:23):
to me that we expanded NATO later on even though
we didn't say it. But that's our system. We live
in an elected government where different democratic leaders get to
make different changes to foreign policy. You have to view
it in that context and have to do so fairly,
and if you want it changed, then pass it through
the Senate. But that's the unfortunate part of all of this.
And this is the structure, the superstructure on top of

(24:44):
today's talks. It is the biggest NATO propaganda effort in
modern times since basically since the expansion and the initial
start of the war back in twenty twenty two. The
goal is to set completely ridiculous and out of step
param for the Trump administration and for the Europeans and
the Ukrainians such that Putin will not agree. They do

(25:05):
not want this war to come to a close period.
They are not ready to stomach it. And the net
result is probably going to be the Europeans continuing to
buy our scarce weapons from US, which again are coming
from US. Who pays for it? Almost doesn't matter if
the stocks are you know, is what matters the most.

Speaker 3 (25:22):
Money is not really the issue.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
And the war will continue day after day after day.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, and the Ukrainian position will further erode day after
day after day. I mean, this has really been one
of the lessons again of this war is we've set
all of the conditions for nations to take the lesson
of like keep your nukes or get nukes. Yeah, number
one and number two. The earlier this conflict was resolved,

(25:48):
the better position that Ukraine would have been in. I mean,
it still continues to be such a tragedy that we
blew up those peace talks that were ongoing in Istanbul,
because that would have been the moment when you had
the best potential possible outcome from Ukraine. And every day
that they want to continue this war. The likely position
of Ukraine and the likelihood that it's even able to
persist truly as a sovereign, independent nation continue to diminish.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
Yeah, absolutely right, all right, So that's the context. We'll
see how it goes for today. It's going to be
a truly extraordinary day here in Washington. The schedule is
an initial meeting first with President Zelenski, then a lunch
to follow with the head of NATO all of the
major NATO powers in their heads of state as well
as the European Union, and then some sort of press

(26:34):
conference release memorandum or whatever that will be released afterwards.
That will be the set terms. Then we'll see what
the Russians have to say.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
So we expect them, Zaga to like take questions at
any point.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
So let me take a look at the schedule just
very quickly.

Speaker 3 (26:50):
Of course, we'll cover whatever.

Speaker 1 (26:51):
Yeah, We're going to everything that comes up. Knowing Trump,
there's going to be something, so yeah, on his public schedule.
There is not currently any public press conference, but there
is a press spray. What that means is when Trump
is like in the Oval office and the cameras all
come in, yeah, to ask questions. So we have two
of those scheduled, one with Zelenski and one actually with

(27:12):
the European leaders. So most likely that three pm press
pool in the East room where they're going to have
some sort of big meeting. That is where we will
probably see the most significant tape out of today. But
we'll see. And as we saw with the Putin Summit,
things move around, get canceled and stuff all the time.
It moves at a very rapid pace, so who knows

(27:33):
what's actually going to happen, But that's the context.

Speaker 2 (27:39):
Let's go ahead and get to this situation that unfolded
in Las Vegas.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
I can scarcely.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
Believe that the details of this are correct, but we
have double and triple checked and yes, in fact, this
all really did unfold. Let's put this up on the
screen and shout out to I'm actually not sure her
full name, mel. Her handle on Twitter is Village Crazy Lady.
She's done some really important reporting, not just here, so
shout out to her for really breaking this down and

(28:04):
highlighting this, bringing it to the forefront.

Speaker 3 (28:08):
So she tweets.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
The executive director of Israel's National Cyber Directorate was arrested
this week in Las Vegas in a child predator ring sting.
There were a number of other people who were arrested
as well, I think seven different individuals. So he gets
arrested in this sting of trying to lure a child

(28:29):
on a computer for sex acts, and then he's released
and allowed to go back to Israel. Keep this up
on the screen for just one moment so you can
see she has screenshots here. One from why not News,
which is an Israeli publication, says US detains worker from
Israel's top cyber defense agency for questioning the Prime Minister's office,

(28:52):
as the incident resolved quickly, ending with brief questioning of
National Cyber Director at Stafford before his release. So that's
the way they're spinning It is like, oh, he was
just a question that I was all fine. You've got
the local news saying that all of these individuals. By
the way, one of the other dudes in here was
a pastor a minister, so that's cool too. But he
actually was arrested, apparently facing charges. They all face felony

(29:15):
charges of luring a child with a computer for a
sex act and were booked into the Henderson Detention Center
with the exception of one of the individuals who's booked
into a different detention center center. So again all of
them arrested and booked. You can see she also has
this guy Tom Alexandrovich, who was the executive director of

(29:37):
Israel's still is an Israel's national cyber Director, which a
very important position, by the way. There you can see
his Twitter profile, so you can see sort of you know,
what his whole deal is. Let's put the next piece
up on the screen with some more details reported out
here by Mel. She says, just to clarify, she's got
the arrest record here on the right. Okay, so again

(29:58):
rebutting the line of the Israeli Prime Minister's office, saying, oh,
he's just questioning his release. No, no, no, Here he
is the arrest record right there on the right of
your screen.

Speaker 3 (30:08):
She says.

Speaker 2 (30:09):
Number one, Tom Alexandrovitch, was one hundred percent charge. It's
on the county website. His next hearing is supposed to
be eight twenty seven, twenty twenty five. I'm sure that's
not happening. Number two Tom was charged with luring a
child with a computer to engage in sexual conduct. Number
three in order to be charged with this specific offense.
Tom had to seek out a child under the age
of sixteen with the explicit purpose of luring them from

(30:32):
their parents to engage in sexual conduct, who, she says
in the Trump admin intervened on behalf of him? Was
it cash? Wouldn't surprise me since the FBI was part
of the sting. We want answers now, Sean King does
have some reporting. Now his reports should be taken with
a Graham salt. He claims to have sources within the
police department who said, yes, this was, you know, our sting,

(30:55):
and the Trump administration intervened and pushed forced him to
be released so that he could fly back to Israel
in order to escape any sort of charges or.

Speaker 3 (31:07):
Accountability for this. I don't even know what to say.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
I mean, like, again, the details of this you could
not even make up. But it appears that he was
caught dead to rights as part of this broader child
pedophilia sting in Las Vegas, and then the federal government,
the Trump administration.

Speaker 3 (31:28):
Very likely.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
We don't have that totally locked down, but very likely,
because how else would this happen. Intervene said now you
got to let this guy go, and he's.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
Allowed to fly back to Israel.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
Unbelievable soccer Very interesting, isn't it. I think a lot
of it speaks for itself. So I'll just leave someone.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
Not much commentaries really need to here, is it just
you know, I mean we could yeah, we could talk
about you know, also what's going on with Epstein kind
of connects into this that you can make that connection
if you'd like to. But you could talk about these
six interests are being protected here. Yeah, just so you
note that this isn't the first time.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
Our Jewish American pedophiles hide from justice in Israel. In
a tense stakeout, they talk about having to look at quote,
the widespread problem of many accused American pedophiles flee to Israel.
Bringing them to justice can be very difficult. In fact,
an entire watchdog organization has to track pedophiles inside of
Israel because they flee there and they seek use their

(32:29):
dual citizenship basically to seek legal escape the legal system
here of the United States. I'll recall everyone will call
that Epstein at one point fled to Israel. It was
open talk in US society. Returned from Israel to the
United States for a Sweetheart plea agreement in April of
two thousand and eight.

Speaker 3 (32:46):
He was negotiating that deal from Israel.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
Product that's right, And what they say actually inside is
at least more than sixty have fled the US to Israel.
Given its limited resources to identify these individuals, they say
the actual number is probably much higher. Again, basically a
weaponization of dual citizenship. But and here, you know, it
could actually be a weaponization of diplomatic immunity. Now you
and I have lived here in Washington and or you

(33:08):
lived in New York too, So the diplomatic community thing
is always, you know, a source of tension. We have
a ton of diplomats here in DC. They have diplomatic plates.
They often ignore traffic signs or whatever. But that doesn't
absolve you, as it says very specifically of felony charges.
It's limited. But in many cases, like if you commit
like murder or something, it's like you just get diplomatic community.

(33:29):
It's not how it works, right, And so one of
the things there are a lot of questions here is
how exactly did you escape, you know, from a questioning standpoint,
especially because all of the other people from what we
can see have been arrested right in this sting. And
by the way, you know, there were some initial questions
around this, but other organization news organizations, including The Guardian,

(33:50):
have confirmed his identity, so we're going off of their reporting.
But it is still, you know, extraordinary because the very
fact that he was released, whether it was state, local,
or federal, is outrageous, right because you have somebody came
to our soil. I mean, he did the worst thing
he can do. In my opinion, the absolute worst crime
of all is trying to exploit a small child, right,

(34:12):
I mean, as far as I'm concerned, Like that's where
we get the death penalty and then you get not
you get to flee the country and go back. There's
just so much about you know, the actual crime itself,
the way that our government is willing to look the
other way. Again, we don't know if the FEDS were
totally involved. I don't really see how they couldn't be.
How could they not, because how do you just get

(34:33):
let somebody go right like that? Or you know, maybe
they got scared because he was a diplomat. He flashed
the diplomatic passport. I don't that's possible.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
I mean, does he even qualify for diplomatic immunity, because
I mean, he's not like an ambassador, you know.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
I mean, he's an.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
Israeli official, but not every is every government official isn'tentiled
to diplomatic immunity. It's supposed to be ambassadors, high commissioners,
other senior diplomatic officials.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
So no, I mean, I think.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
It almost has to be be that. You know, probably
the Israelis.

Speaker 1 (35:04):
Look, somebody somewhere did something that's always.

Speaker 3 (35:07):
Really caught wind.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
They called up, you know, who would that fact. Maybe
it's cash, maybe who knows. Someone in the Trump administration
was like, this can't happen, and you know, and I'm
sure there were this will be a scandal, and this
will be a big deal, and you don't want to
have to deal with this and hope that it would.

Speaker 3 (35:25):
Just fly under the radar.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
And it may well have if you didn't have you know,
a few people, a few like Twitter, flus and journalists
who looked into this and were like, hey, guys, this
is kind of a big deal. But yeah, we need
answers to who intervened, at what point and at what
level because this is absolutely insane. To go back to
the piece that Soccer was citing before. Was that CBS

(35:47):
News that does did the reporting there. This is a
few years back, what like twenty eighteen or so that
that report came out. But in any case, you know,
they talk about it and compare it to the scandal
and the Catholic Church where you had you know, you
had a.

Speaker 3 (36:02):
Mass cover up.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
And within the Jewish community oftentimes it's in these you
know more you know Orthodox, that acidic where they don't
want you know, shame on the community, and so it's
just okay, well, you can flee to Israel and you
know there'll be people there, but it will pick you
in and protect you.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
The Hissidic stuff is even crazier. I've read number there's
a New Yorker story from back in the day about
inside the Hissidic community how they protect you. Yeah, remember
you know, and he was like, they're like, oh, you
just pay them off, like you pay them twenty thousand
dollars or whatever, and everybody makes it go away and
nobody goes to NYPD. I was like, this is disgusting
because it was just a serial predator protected over and

(36:42):
over and over again. Yeah, they don't want scrutiny of
their community, which is crazy. I mean, sorry, you live
in this country. You know. By the way, if you
want to live under religious law, there's a place called Israel.
You can go and live there. Apparently you can live
with impunity here, Apparently to these Jewish American pedophiles. In
the story, they talk about how some of the people
who prey on children here go there, flee and actually

(37:05):
continue to you know, dope while they're course. Yeah, so
they're going after Israeli children too.

Speaker 3 (37:10):
Sick, absolutely sick.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
Speaking of sick, you guys will recall there was a
right to rape protest in Israel, of course, because there
were Idea soldiers who were caught on camera raping and
abusing Palestinian detainee. And you know, for once, there was
an attempt to intervene and arrest these guys, and there
was a mass protest against just the most basic level

(37:34):
of accountability for these actions, which were again caught on camera.
And apparently, this, this debate over whether or not Israeli
soldiers should be you know, raping prisoners continues to this day.
Let's go and put this up on the screens of
vo this Channel twelve news, This person says, you know,
it's one of the most popular news channels in Israel,

(37:55):
and they host a debate for and against institutional rape
of m US detainees as a policy. And remember also,
I mean not that it would be okay even if
they actually were quote unquote Hamas detainees, but they also arrest,
they arrest children, they arrest any man who is quote
unquote a military age. The level of abuse that has
been documented by multiple human rights organizations is just absolutely sickening.

(38:20):
So they're having, you know, a little pro and con,
you know, a little crossfire style debate there on Israeli
channel twelve news. Let's go and put this next one
up on the screensider because I know you're going to
enjoy this one. The ADL has updated updated their glossary
of extremism and hate because they're really a credible, a
really credible source now of extremism, and they say that

(38:44):
America First is now considered to be an extremist term
used by extremists in anti Semitic, racist, and xenophobic ways. Now,
let me be honest, there is a certain way in
which you could define this that maybe you could get
me to go along and agree, but we all know
what's going on here. We all know what's going on here.
It's that there are any Republicans who use the America

(39:05):
First label to say, hey, maybe we shouldn't be supporting
this genocide in Gaza. Maybe we should be focused on
what is actually in the interest of our country and
not participate in this barbarism that is going on with
our tax dollars in our name.

Speaker 3 (39:20):
That's the part that they truly object.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
Of course, and they did this before. I mean, remember
the interracial marriage, intermarriage thing that we talked about that recently.
And the reason why all of this is important is
that it's about defining the terms and making sure that
all discussion, sane discussion, is pushed to the realm of
being branded anti Semitism. Now, I again think that it's

(39:44):
backfiring spectacularly, and that's part of the reason why I
don't quite get it. Popular culture has long move now
against Israel. Mainstream media is the last bastion of any
pro Israeli supporting and most people who are like us,
who don't have any ties funding ties right to the establishment,
can say what they want when they're confronted with this
level of smearing they just say, screw you. I'm not

(40:05):
going to deal with it anymore. Miss Rachel is actually
the perfect example. She just shared this, I'll go ahead
and read it. She says, the group the Stop Anti
Semitism is calling me evil for wanting starving children to
have food. They called for me to be investigated by
the DOJ because I care about Palestinian children along with
all children. It's led to me getting threats, needing security,
and they have tried to ruin my career. It has
been incredibly painful, but the pain does not compare in

(40:28):
the slightest to what the children of Gaza experience. My
dedication to children and their human rights is stronger than
any of it. So that's what you've done. You actually
turned the most popular children's influencer in the world with
what the most streamed show on all of Netflix ever? Yeah,
children on top of YouTube. I mean I was recently
looking at you. I didn't even know views like that

(40:48):
were possible, like one point one billion outside of Gangnam
Style or whatever. I was like, I did not know
this existed. And so, and she's only been doing this
for five six years. She's got the multi millillion dollar Honestly,
maybe a billion dollar brand. You know here in the
US they sell stuff of hers it like Target. So
you have turned that person into one of the most prominent,

(41:10):
you know, spokespeople for the children of Gaza by branding
them anti Semitic. We are just you know, news commentators
and others. But the more that this comes for other
people inside of the system, you just make it so
that you look at the ADL thing and you just laugh,
and then next time they're going to come and talk
to me about anti semitism, even if it's genuinely anti Semitic,
I'm like, I need six other sources I need, I

(41:32):
need to or let me check it out for myself.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
Any credibility, That's what I do, any credibility.

Speaker 1 (41:38):
It's like when someone calls something racist, I'm like, all right,
show it to me, let me see, you know, let
me scrutinize it for myself. I don't believe you. That's
my number. If the media is saying it, I'm like,
let me check it out. Hate crime attack, I got
to see all the details. If it didn't happen on camera,
don't believe it. Same thing here, you know, it's one
of those where they have turned it into a social
weapon against everybody. And we are now, I think collectively,

(42:01):
at a point where like, if you are not outwardly
you know, denying the Holocaust or whatever. Yeah, and if
it's about Israel, I'm not going well.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
And guess what genuine anti Semitism is on the rise.
And it's precisely because of the actions of Israel and
insistence that every Jew must be associated with it, which
is preposterous and in and of itself anti Semitic. We
just think about the discourse around Zoron winning in New
York and which continues to this day, about oh, he

(42:29):
needs to do more to appeal to the Jewish community,
blah blah blah. Then you actually look at the numbers,
You're like, wait a second, he has, overwhelming some way,
is more support than any of the rest of these
people with the Jewish community in New York. So maybe
stop being so one dimensional and characters Jewish and stereotyping
people and what they care about and their position on
this issue, because no, turns out, not every Jewish American

(42:51):
wants to be associated with the genocide being perpetrated in
their names in Gaza. It is utterly and completely disgusting.
And so then when you have this intense censorship, and
when it's so clearly weaponized to just completely crush any
sort of legitimate descent on our nation's policy by the way,
visa VI a foreign visa v. The country of Israel,

(43:14):
and opposition horror at what was being done there. When
you have that, then yeah, I mean this is part
of why people like Nick Fuentes, who are genuine white
nationalists and genuinely anti Semitic. Guess what, you have a
lot of people who are, oh, well, what he's saying
is making sense. No, he has a disgusting ideology. What
is he's saying does not make sense? But should you

(43:36):
be surprised? Are you remotely surprised that those are the
types of people who will gain traction in this moment?
You certainly shouldn't be surprised by that is and you know,
the ADL is probably you know, part and parcel of
sparking more anti Semitism than any other group in America
outside of the US federal government.

Speaker 3 (43:54):
Let's go and play this next part.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
So obviously there's this disgusting alliance between you know, the
absolute psychos in Israel, the psychos in our national government
and the evangelical Christian base, some of whom you believe
in certainly some of the leaders of whom believe that
it is their God, you know, that it is their
duty to God to support Israel, no matter how many

(44:18):
babies they massacre. So as emblematic of that, here is
Mark Levin talking about how this is God's war that
we're fighting.

Speaker 3 (44:26):
Take a lesson.

Speaker 9 (44:26):
This is good versus evil. This is civilizations, the ambassador said,
versus the barbarians. We're fighting the seventh century and we
just beat the crap out of it. On. This is

(44:48):
a righteous war we're fighting. And let me say this,
this is God's war that we're fighting right now. And
if you are it's too stupid to understand that's their problem.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
I will remind you.

Speaker 9 (45:06):
That's where Hitler was born.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
Kufi Conference.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
There, Christians united for Israel, and he's saying, oh, this
is good versus evil. Really, the good side is the
one that's massacring and starving the babies, starving the entire population.
The good side is the one that just announced complete
and you know, authorized, complete ethnic cleansing displacement plan into
concentration camps, which is currently in talks with different nations
to permanently displace Palestinians from Gaza strip. That's what your

(45:32):
religion is telling you. That is utterly absurd and discussion,
but it's also still counter to any basic sense of morality.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
It's also so inarguable because if they're fighting, I mean,
people have always made this term. But it's like, if
you fight God's war, then nothing is out of the court.
Of course.

Speaker 3 (45:46):
Yeah, that's why they That's what makes it so.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
Too God's war that we're fighting. If Europe is too
stupid to understand, that's their problem. I will remind you
that's where Hitler was born. It's like these where does
this shit come? You know? And uh, look, that is
the perfect view into a Republican support for Israel. You know,
a quasi you know, either pre diabetic or diabetic man
who could barely breathe whenever he's giving his speech in

(46:09):
front of a bunch of evangelical boomers, you know, who
have been, like I guess, brainwashed into the specific type
of Christian dispensationalism for support of the political state of Israel. Look,
I'm not Christian. It's not my job to sit here
and to you know, to litigate these the intra Christians debates.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
It's a human with a view.

Speaker 1 (46:31):
Yeah, that's what I'm just like. I mean, it seems
pretty crazy to me, but you know, it's not my
not my beef, but it's just one of those where
I just feel that you can't help but look at
that and see the psychopathy of what it takes at
this point to be so rapidly pro Israel. That's who
they are. They look down on you, by the way, completely,
you know, and they have nothing but contempt. Unfortunately. Yeah,

(46:54):
you know, for all of us.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
It used to be the right that was more aggressive
in the like you know, you should be actually judgmental
of extremist religious views, and the left that was more
like morally relativist.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
I mean, I still think that's true on Islam, but anyway, yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:09):
Yeah, no you should.

Speaker 2 (47:10):
I think if you your religious belief is leading you
to support horrors that are morally atrocious, yes, I think
that should be subject to judgment. I think if for society,
I think that should be absolutely subject to.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
You're talking to an og Richard Knawkins.

Speaker 7 (47:24):
Guy.

Speaker 1 (47:24):
All right, I've been up from day one, but I
did come to find that it does turn you into
a little bit of a debate, bro and a little
bit you know, it doesn't accomplish necessarily the goal.

Speaker 3 (47:36):
I don't know that we may need.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
To bring it, but yeah, may we need to let
me just one more piece here. We'll not have an
element for it, but it fits in with the Mark
Levin piece, and it's very important. I don't know if
you guys remember there was a judge at the International
Court of justin Of course, they're the ones hearing South
Africa's claim along with others who have not joined the case,
that Israel is committing genocide. And there was one judge there,
the Ugandan Vice President of the ICJ, who would put

(47:58):
out a dissenting opinion that was just pure Israeli hasbara
and it was I mean, it sounded like it was
literally written and it may have been by the Israeli
simce like, what is going on with this lady. Well,
now she has come out sager and said that quote,
God is counting on me to stand on the side
of Israel, that the signs of the end times are

(48:18):
being shown in the Middle East right now. So now
we understand why she was so out of step with
all of the rest of the including the American one.

Speaker 3 (48:28):
By the way, all of.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
The rest of the judges at the ICJ, in this
dissenting opinion, she is not evaluating facts. She is, you know,
coming from this place of religious extremism, and you know
her view that the end times are nigh, and so
she has to do whatever she can.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
To back up Israel no matter what.

Speaker 2 (48:45):
So you know, not only are the consequences here domestically
in the US, but the consequences of these viewpoints are
global as well.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
Yep, absolutely, very well said. All right, let's get to
the economy. We've talked a lot here on the show
show about inflation, about tariffs and what the overall effect
will be, but one of the things that we may
have discounted is gre inflation. You will remember there was
a huge debate about the sources of inflation back in
the day, from twenty twenty one onwards, as to whether

(49:15):
it was corporations raising prices, inputs prices going up. It
turned out to be a part of both. But part
of the reason why the stock market actually did quite
well during the Biden years despite horrible inflation was that
corporate profits were be able to be maintained. How do
you do that exactly, Well, you eat some of the costs,
but you pass some of it all and also to
the consumer, and so we are seeing some of that

(49:35):
with tariffs as well. Let's take a listen to this
report from CNBC.

Speaker 5 (49:38):
I don't quite understand why the government is saying that
profit margins increased when we're not seeing the essentially a
lot of inflation in the consumer prices, but we're seeing
prices higher on the wholesale prices that should compress margins.
And we've had a whole bunch of companies come on
and say we're taking big hits because of these tariffs,

(50:00):
so this number should be going the other way. I'm
not sure what's happening here.

Speaker 10 (50:04):
I'm actually not surprised that we didn't see compression of
corporate profits. That's something that's characterized the inflationary period since
the beginning of the pandemic, that corporations are actually able
to protect their profit margins and actually even increase their
profit margins at times using inflation and uncertainty as cover

(50:24):
for price hikes even if their costs aren't going up.
And so one of the things we're going to be
looking for in the CPI, as consumer prices are starting
to rise, is our corporations actually taking hits or are
they able to use this moment of supply constraint created
by tariffs and uncertainty created by the Trump administration to

(50:47):
pass on higher prices even above their increased costs.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
All right, So there it is straight from CNBC. You know,
they were killing themselves for that one because they hated
gre inflation narratives back in twenty twenty one, in twenty
twenty two. But what it does generally fit with the
pattern of is that the companies are broadly okay right now.
And you know that's one of the things I've emphasized
about this tariff policy. If the tariffs were working, then
the S and P should be down by twenty percent
because if a company had to actually increase its costs

(51:15):
capex costs here in the US, why would their stock
go up? You know, it'd be like, Okay, well, we
have to massively eat all of this new policy. The
only way to offset that would be a shit ton
of federal dollars or a tax break. Not happening because
I can read what the tax code is, and that's
why the S and p. Five hundred is doing pretty
well now. One of the ways that they're doing well

(51:35):
is basically this like weird pay for play system inside
of the White House. Let's go and put this up
there on the screen. The West Wing has now apparently
created a loyalty scorecard for five hundred and fifty three
companies in trade associations on how hard they work to
support and promote President Trump. So Trump currently the unusual

(51:55):
spreadsheet fits the administration's proclivity for micromanaging and mini string
loyalty tests. Factors in the rating include social media posts,
press releases, video testimonials, adds tendance, adds, attendance to the
White House, and other engagement related to OB three, the
One Big Beautiful Bill. The organization's support is then ranked

(52:15):
as strong, moderate, or low. Examples of good partners include Uber,
door Dash, United, Delta, AT and T, Cisco Airlines for America,
and the Steel Manufacturers Association. Apparently other companies you know
have not you know, been able to rate on the list.
One of the ways that you do is to cheer

(52:36):
on things like no tax on tips if you're Uber
or being a door Dash person who is promoting some
of the policy but this gets to the heart of
that Nvidia deal. I'm not. I think I covered it
with Emily, which is still so crazy. It's like, yeah,
you can do business in China, but you have to
literally pay us a cut of the profit. Nothing to

(52:59):
do with strategy, nothing to do with anything. And again,
there are plenty of good arguments for letting Nvidia send
the H twenty. I went through all of them during
the segment. US getting a quote cut of it is
not on the list you know of what that is.
Now apparently we're doing the same thing with Intel, which
by the way, is a US company, which is even
crazier because it's not even about that about the C

(53:19):
three please from Intel considering quote buying a steak in Intel.
I am not even fundamentally opposed to sovereign well funds.
I don't think they're always a bad idea as long
as they're actually, you know, done properly or any of that.
That's not what's happening here, that's right, And that's the
opposition that I have to so much of this. If

(53:39):
we want to have a full on strategy the way
that China does it, where they have stakes and they
control things for the overall national interest which is actually
benefiting the people as a track record, I'm all in, okay,
but this is not what we're seeing right now, which
is basically like some loyalty fealty thing to Donald Trump,
you know, so we can get a solid bar of gold,

(54:00):
which I'm still not over that.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
We should never be over that.

Speaker 1 (54:03):
Pretty wild here's your literally, Yeah, it's like you know
when Amazon, when Amazon explorers would go into the jungle,
they would come with beads and other things to exchange
for goods. It's like, that's a primitive that is to
present the leader with the bar of gold to the chieftain.

Speaker 2 (54:24):
That's why the loyalty score story and the intel stake
story tied together so importantly, because it would be one
thing if yeah, if you were pursuing something like, you know,
a China policy which is very long term driven and
very much in the interests of, hey, what do we
want life to be like in China for Chinese?

Speaker 3 (54:43):
What do we want to invest in?

Speaker 2 (54:45):
What are the industries of the future, like this very
intentional strategy that instead what we have here is just
did you tweet.

Speaker 3 (54:54):
About the one big beautiful bill?

Speaker 2 (54:56):
You know, did you show up with your bar of
goal at the White House, Like how slavish and devoted
have you been to the person of Donald Trump. Oh okay,
then we're going to look upon you favorably. And if not,
then not. So all of these, like all of this
involvement in the economy, which yes, if done a.

Speaker 3 (55:15):
Different way, I would support too.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
And in fact, I'm hoping that some you know candidate
on the left picks up this road that has been
mapped up by Trump and does it in an actually
intelligent way to actually, you know, benefit the manufacturing economy
here and benefit you know, jobs and wages and all
those sorts of things, and invest in critical industries and
industries of the future. But no, this is not that.
This is about just you know, what's going to be

(55:39):
good for Trump. Who paid the best tribute, who had
the best gold bars in the Oval office? You know
the door Dash example they had. They had a delivery
driver who wore a red door Dash Mom T shirt
as she stood behind Trump at a White House event
promoting no tax on tips, also in a Fox News
digital interview. And that's what earned them their great loyalty score.

(56:01):
Now they'll be able to reap the benefits of that.
It's also why Wall Street hasn't been not upset about
the teriffs, because they know that they have the money
to be able to get in those rooms, and they
know how to you know, work is go Massage's ego
and be able to get whatever they want.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
I actually read a fascinating analysis which is that economists
have undercounted the actual tear. Part of the reason why
you know, people are shocked right now but the S
and P and everything, yeah, is because the official tariff
rate is like fifteen percent or whatever on average. But
what the peace dug into is that economists took the
government to literally, as in, they took it for what

(56:35):
it is and thought it was being applied across the board.
That's not what actually they're paying. If you look at
the corporate profit and the reported costs of tariffs, it
doesn't line up with the government figures, and the actual
tariff rate is much lower, indicating a ton of exclusions
which are not public which it turns out that the
Fortune five hundred is probably paying about half of what

(56:56):
the government actually says they are paying. And that is
the only only thing that you can possibly reconcile the
profit numbers and where things are today, the lack of effect,
and then the government published number. There's no other way
to do it, and it was a long like more
economic analysis, but translating it to others is basically saying like, yeah,
you know, what they say they're charging is not what

(57:18):
they actually are because there's all these corporate exclusions that
are being cut at the fortune five hundred level that
you and I know nothing about. But this is all
deeply legalistic. You know, it's all with the Commerce Department,
et cetera. But it results in the fact that the
tariff being paid are actually much lower than they say,
so it makes you know, that's.

Speaker 3 (57:35):
Again using this loyalty.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
That's what I'm saying, right, and that's why I think
it's very important, you know, for for actually understanding some
of this, and that actually gets to the Scott beston
point with a very extraordinary comment about Sovereign Wealth Fund.

Speaker 6 (57:49):
Let's say, go listen, we have these agreements in place
where the Japanese, the Koreans, and to some extent the
Europeans will invest in companies and industries that we direct them,
largely at the president's discretion.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
And how does that work?

Speaker 11 (58:09):
I mean, it's almost like an offshore appropriation. I'm not
sure we've ever had anything like that in the States before.
Have you consulted with I don't know, the Santa Finance Committee,
or the House Ways and Needs Committee or what.

Speaker 6 (58:24):
Well, Larry, I think a good framing of that is
other countries, in essence, are providing us with a sovereign
wealth fund.

Speaker 11 (58:32):
They're going to build our factories. They're going to help
us to build new factories, which mister Trump loves exactly.

Speaker 6 (58:39):
So the way to think about it is these huge
surpluses accumulated offshore, let's sake, Japan, We're going to have
five hundred and fifty billion, and they will be reinvesting
that back into the US economy, and we will be
able to direct them as we reshore these critical industries.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
Okay, So translating that a little bit and our friend
are no, you know, put it this way. Quote, This is,
without exaggerating, one of the most extraordinary things the Treasury
sector has said. He says. What he is saying is
that the US will now treat US allies wealth as
an American sovereign wealth fund and direct them, at the
President's discretion, how to use their money in order to
build American factories and reshore American industries, as even Larry

(59:22):
Kudlow says, he's like what he's like, have you run
by this by the Senate? Yeah, or any of that.
I mean, are no, and I probably have more of
a difference, But because I think, you know, in terms
of our trading relationship or other I don't really see
the point of being an empire if you're not going to,
you know, tell your imperial outposts how exactly to pay
their tribute. I would say that's part of the problem
with the global American empire right now in terms of

(59:44):
who's benefiting from it or not. But the overall problem
I really have with the way that this is all
being done is that it's stupid and it's not really
to the benefit of anyone. Because if you take like
the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund, or frankly even the Saudi one,
or are many of these others, they have been to
the tremendous benefit of their actual countries and of the

(01:00:04):
people who participate. There's a lot of democratic input. I'm
not sure if you saw it. They just divested from
Israel as well more recently, which is a huge deal
just because one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in
the world. But the point is is that it's being
actually used and has a lot of democratic input by
the people because they see it as a way not
only to ensure their own security, their financial status, etc.

(01:00:24):
But part of the problem for the country we have
not had any of that get put on the table.
It's being used entirely by the administration and setting a
precedent where, you know, if you think about it in
the future, if you can just have this discretionary funding
completely available, then President Biden or President Newsome or whoever
is going to come next can also use it to
their end, which of course people would freak out about,

(01:00:46):
you know, by saying that these are the public dollars
within the government treasury. That's what I would say is
you're setting it up in such a capricious and a
stupid way, not only setting a bad standard going forward,
but you're not even accomplishing what you allegedly set out
to do.

Speaker 3 (01:00:59):
Yeah, no scrutiny, accountability.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
And we know the way that Donald Trump operates, it's
all about, you know, what's going to be good for
him and his bottom line, So you know, don't be
surprised if that wealth that's supposed to build American factories
is going to his shit coin or whatever Trump hotels
or some sort of deal that you know benefits him,
or just the you know, to whatever CEO happens to
be the most like embarrassing and willing to humiliate themselves
and grovel at his feet. So that will be the

(01:01:22):
criteria by which those investments are judged. At the same time,
you know, we've got a few different indicators of you know,
economic turmoil.

Speaker 3 (01:01:31):
You can put this up on the screen.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
They say the jaws of stagflation are wide open. This
is from Bloomberg. You've got employment shrinking, you've got prices
paid rising. So you know what stagflation is when you
have low growth or no growth or negative growth and
you have inflation. And the reason why this is such
a terrible thing to happen, I mean, first of all,
it just causes a lot of pain. Second of all,

(01:01:54):
it's very difficult to deal with because if you are
trying to control the economy using the FED, and you
hike interst rates to get the inflation under control, well
then you're going to further crush growth. If you lower
interest rates to help to trigger growth and deal with unemployment.

Speaker 3 (01:02:12):
Well, then you're going to get inflation.

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
So that's why stagflation is such an incredible concern. And
we can put the next piece up on the screen
as well, from Joe Wisenthal. We just got new consumer
sentiment numbers. Overall sentiment down, inflation expectations much higher. This
comes from University of Michigan. I think this is kind
of the pre eminent consumer sentiment index. And it's fallen
to fifty eight point six when it was estimated at

(01:02:36):
sixty two and long term inflation expectations rising to three
point nine percent when they had been estimated at three
point four percent. So and it turns out, Sogera, the
public is paying attention to how they're feeling economically and
to some of the legislation that has been passed by
this administration.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
This is extraordinary. Put this next chart up on the screen.
C seven.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
Trump's sup with people who are on Medicaid, and of
course medicaid, you know, significantly cut by the quote unquote
one big beautiful bill has gone from being quite positive
to quite negative. So you can see if you track
this at the beginning of Trump's term fifty two percent

(01:03:21):
of those on Medicaid approved of Trump, so he was
above water fifty two percent and only thirty four percent disapproved.
Now it's completely reversed. Now you have fifty five percent
of those on Medicaid who disapprove and thirty six percent
who approve. This person tweets their his support is down
thirty seven points among those who are on Medicaid since

(01:03:44):
his first week in office. So, as Steve Bannon famously said,
a lot of mag on medicaids, however.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
That's exactly I mean, you know, look, we're going to
find out some of this stuff. There were a lot
of contraindications going into twenty twenty two and more. I'm
really just desperate for the twenty twenty six term data
to see who overperforms and who doesn't, who doesn't come
out to vote overall Republican support, and if there are
any hidden surprises, because Medicaid right now is the number

(01:04:10):
one thing that you would put your money on a
for The backlash is similar to twenty eighteen. There was
a lot of crediting of the resistance and stuff in
twenty eighteen for the midterms. I guess I wouldn't downplay that,
but it really wasn't the driving force. If you talked
to many of the Republican candidates, they all said, my
vote to repeal Obamacare is what nuked me. Right. That
was like the story of the twenty eighteen midterms for

(01:04:33):
a lot of the anti Trump backlash, it kind of
came together and a lot of the Republican senators what
was her name, McSally, I think that's what it's down
in Arizona. She was like me voting on Obamacare, She's like,
that's it killed me. She was lost by thirteen points,
it was as So my point is just that broadly
this could be the sleeper issue. I think it's I
think so too. I'd be willing to bet, just given

(01:04:54):
some of the previous just the way that things went
with twenty eighteen and with more. I'm still not quite sure.
I guess I could. You know, how, what would it
take for Trump and the Republicans to declare victory probably
be keeping the House, which you know, the gerrymandering and
all that doesn't help. But the actual like demographic data
on this and the extent to which people are either

(01:05:14):
demoralized or not enthusiastic to come out to vote is
going to be a very important story. The Medicaid thing
is number one thing to want.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
The fact they're doing this whole thing with the maps
and the census and whatever tells you they think they're No,
they're worried. Yeah, they're trying to rig it as best
they can to try to, you know, prevent massive losses.
Because listen, I mean, if Democrats have the House, Senate
is a longer shot. But if they have the House,
there are things they can do, right, they will have
subpoena power. It will be the end of you know,
of a lot of what's going on in the Trump presidency.

(01:05:42):
Although you know, Trump has done a lot with just
executive power without even using convers sasman most of what
he's done. But you know, I think they're worried about
scrutiny over things like the Epstein files. They're worried about
scrutiny over all these massed ice agents and other federal
agents that you know, who have their identities completely shield.
I think there are a lot of questions to you
would be revealed about what exactly is going on there

(01:06:02):
and who is doing what within some of these various agencies.
So I think they are concerned about that, and that's
why they're pulling the fire alarm.