1/2/24: FBI Fumbles New Orleans Attack, Cyber Truck Explodes, Trump Goes Full Globalist & MORE!

in the Republican Caucus. Mike Johnson faces a speaker vote tomorrow, and he can only because the House Republican Caucus has such a narrow majority he can only lose one vote.

understand this. Blake Lively justin Baldoni thing. He's firing back both at Blake Lively and at The New York Times, suing the New York Times claiming that they're reporting was false and that they were cherry picking and actually altering communications that they use for their blockbuster report alleging that he had harassed her and also that he had retaliated against her. So like all of that down for you. The parents of the open AI whistleblower who was found dead.

Authorities deem that as suicide. The parents don't buy it. They have hired a private investigator to look into exactly what happened there. So we'll bring you those details. And we also are going to have an American doctor from Texas join us who is just back from his second trip to Gaza. Obviously, we covered earlier this week the horrific latest raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last functioning

hospital in northern Gaza, has been destroyed. All the patients and medical staff forced to leave, some of them detained, etc. So he's going to tell us what he saw when he was in the Gaza strip before we jump into the latest that we know out of New Orleans and this horrific terror attack that occurred on New Year's Day. If you guys can help us out, help bring in the new year, help us be able to provide the best coverage we can by becoming premium describers. You can

go to Breakingpoints dot com. If you can't do that, that's fine. It also helps us out a lot to like and share our videos on YouTube. So with that, let's go ahead and jump into the news.

New Year's Eve. So it's clear that this attacker wanted to take out as many people as possible. Now, President Joe Biden late yesterday finally addressed the nation in some very crystal I was very strange. I mean, there's nothing strange really about the script, but certainly about the delivery. So let me go ahead right now and roll this video of Joe Biden addressing the nation from Camp David, which is where he was for the holiday. I'm going to get this on full screen so you can actually

see his face up close. Here's Joe Biden from Camp David last night.

in the weeks to come. I want to thank our very first responders and law enforcement personnel who stopped the attacker in his tracks before he could kill or injured even more people. And I want to thank you to everyone at the Department of the Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, including the FBI, for working non stop to investigate this heinous act. The FBI is an investigation to determine what happened, why it happened, whether there was any

continuing threat to public safety. Here's what we know so far. The FBI is reported to me. The killer was an American citizen born in Texas. He served in the United States Army in active duty for many years. He also served in the Army Reserve until a few years ago. The FBI also reported to me that mere hours before the attack, he posted videos on social media indicating that is inspired by ISIS, especially the desire to kill, the desire to kill. The ISIS flag was found in his vehicle,

which he rented to conduct this attack. Possible explosives are found in the vehicle as well, and more explosive were found nearby. The situation is very fluid, and the investigation as a preliminary stage. And the fact is that right right now, excuse me, there you go, the law enforcement intelligence community continue to look for any connections, associations, are co conspirators.

had posted some video sympathizing with ISIS. The more we learn about this dude, the more it looks less like an instance of some sort of like you know, Islamic radicalization and more like some a dude who went through a divorce and lost his mind because apparently he had first threatened his own family and was thinking of killing them, and then decided got this ISIS inspiration idea instead and goes and murders a bunch of you know, innocent partygoers

on celebrating the new year. So we can go ahead, Emily, I think you've got the TikTok video of this individual, born and raised in Texas, originally Christian, converted to Islam in the last number of years. According to his relatives and friends, had become sort of like increasingly devout and increasingly withdrawn. He'd gone through two divorces and had a very troubled relationship, in particular with I think the second wife it appears like, but this is a video of him.

He was a professionally worked at Deloitte actually, and this is a video of him when he was going through a phase where he was launching trying to launch a real estate business. This in any cases, how he presented himself in the context of that business.

Texas and now live in Houston. And I've been here all my life, with the exception of traveling for the military, where I spent ten years as a human resources specialist and IT specialist, where I learned the meaning of great service and what it means to be responsive and take everything seriously, guiding eyes and crossing t's to make sure that things go off without a hitch. So I've taken those skills and applied them to my career as a

real estate agent. Where I feel like it really sets me apart from other agents is my ability to be able to one.

I just have to say. I mean as the lawn enforcement response Crystal transpired yesterday and the public eye started with a news conference in which the FBI said that they were not investigating an act of terrorism. We're going to get into some of this in just one moment. And then obviously they had covered up the ISIS flag, which is going to lead to a lot of questions

for years to come, certainly. But then hours later, actually like moments later, pivoted to saying yes, they were investigating this as an act of terrorism, which all seemed to be adding up pretty quickly to the point where they

should be able to confirm that. They then held a disastrous, disastrous midday press conference yesterday, and it wasn't just law enforcement, it was also Jeff Landry, the governor of Louisiana, Senator John Kennedy, Republican from Louisiana, involved in this press conference.

so we're just going to end it. I mean, it was outrageous how that happened. So let's take a look at some of the questions they were answering. One of the biggest questions that they've failed going into all of this is how did this happen? Was there not adequate security? New Orleans obviously was hosting the Sugar Bowl. There were tens of thousands of people in town for the Sugar Bowl. Supposed to be yesterday night, on New Year's Eve, they postponed it a day. That was an announcement from the

press conference. We were just mentioning, but they're also hosting the Super Bowl and just plainly should be able to keep obviously people safe on Bourbon Street now on a New Year's celebration. Now, this is video, and it has some yellow boxes that you can follow of the car which was rented on the app turo. There's an electric vehicle. Let's go ahead and watch follow those yellow boxes if you're watching this.

fully barricaded the street. Crystal. Their answers to this have been utterly unsatisfying thus far.

it doesn't serve much of a purpose. Also, the fact that he's able to just skirt right around it and there's not any you know, immediate reaction. Now I have seen video of local law enforcement, you know, immediately running into danger when they realized what was happening, and obviously they were able to neutralize the threat before it would

caused even more loss of life. We should also mention in terms of the details here and part of what created this confusion around whether or not he was acting alone, confusion which I don't think has been completely resolved, although at this point it appears that the catch just showed up that he was acting completely alone. But there was uh an ied in addition to the firearms that he had in the truck, and then there was some indication that there might have been some other ied that was

found around the city. So you know, there are some questions that still remain, but that you know, that's part of what's been confusing is initially they came out and said, oh, we're investigating these other individuals that we saw planting these devices around the city, and then had to come out and walk that no, no, no, Actually it turns out they weren't involved. So there was a lot of you know, a lot of questions about the law enforcement response here.

And we actually have a video of someone who was there, an eyewitness, who said that he was concerned from the jump about the seeming lack of security of this area that is, you know, obviously famous in terms of America. It's this cultural historical destination known for its you know, revelry.

go around those barricades. Everything in New Orleans in the French Quarter has about all the balconies have poll several steels, and there's there's.

This is in the middle of the day yesterday, there are three other suspects that are potentially being investigated as part of a terrorism cell and are loose ostensibly in the country, and the FBI then walks that back later in the day. So let's take a look at this report from CNN.

had nothing to do with this incident. At this point, it appears that those people seen on surveillance video did not have anything to do with replacing devices in the French Quarter, that this suspect was solely responsible, certainly for the attack, at least as we know it at this point. Now we should make clear that the FBI is still

looking at possible associates. They're trying to see whether there's anybody who may have been involved in helping to create the devices, the IDs, whether those people, anybody who might have been involved in helping to plan the attack. But at this point, at least for the on the part of the surveillance video, they now believe that those people had absolutely nothing to do with this. At this actual attack that happened this morning, Well, all right, we're an information indeed.

make remarks. And the reason I think that's important is I can imagine if you're in Louisiana and your constituents are still lying on the ground on Bourbon, you are probably enormously frustrated with the FBI. It came out right away for some reasons, so that we weren't investigating it as terrorism. Then flipped immediately on it later in the day would do the same thing, like there's a level

of incompetence that he may have been reacting there. Now that's we have no idea why he actually like boxed out the FBI director. But it was a horrible day for the FBI. Yes, there's absolutely no question about it. These things are incredibly difficult. Obviously, that's true. There's a few situation, thousands of people, there's lots of CCTV footage because it's Bourbon Street, there's lots of mobile phone video,

obviously because it was New Year's Eve. That said, how you get from alerting the country to three possible terrorists being on the loose because you're seeing them plant IEDs and CCTV footage that you're confirming that to the press, and then hours later saying, oh, no, we don't think that they were planning IDs. That was stunning reversal after the other, stunning reversal and the terrorism question.

So to be leaking to journalists like, oh, I think it's this larger like isis terror cyle based on you know, a video that then they immediately go out and find out, Oh, now they were just you know, partygoers, like doing whatever they were doing.

both vehicles were electric used in both attacks. Both attacks used vehicles, both rented from this same It's like a peer to peer rental car agency where it's like, you know, you can personally say, hey, my car is available for you to rent. That's what this That's what this app effectively was. And then the other thing is they both

are apparently former military. Now it doesn't appear thus far that there are actually any lengths these seem to be coincidences, but in any case, that's being investigated at this point. The fact that there were weirdly some surface level similarities between these two dispert attacks.

reaction happening around the country potentially. And to your point, Crystal, we're going to learn a lot more about what radicalized this suspect, and that'll, I mean, that's an interesting and unanswered question right now is basically what the hell happened.

This is somebody who was in the military, as you heard President Biden say just a few moments ago when we played the video from his Camp David press conference, somebody who was in the Army reserves until not that long ago, seemingly normal person who.

very confident and what the FBI says as things transpire. Now, some breaking news. The FBI is set to brief Congress on Thursday, so there should be Congresses back in town, the new Congress in session. We're actually going to talk about how difficult that will be for Republicans in just a bit, because as they seek to turn the screws on the FBI and to get a new FBI director confirmed in the Senate, at least over on the House side,

Mike Johnson has one vote margin. So a lot to come later this week, and a lot of questions that remain unanswered.

described as an intentional act. He's the only person who died in this attack. There were something like seven people who were standing nearby who were also injured, but thankfully again lower loss of life here. But in any case, let's take a look at this stunning video of what occurred here copy so you can actually see these like fireworks exploding. And sure enough, after the fact, when they got a look at the truck itself, you can see here them you know, carrying this tarp and revealing the

contents of this truck. You can see these firework canisters, gasoline canisters, camp fuel canisters, and they say large firework mortars in the back of this cyber truck that exploded.

So Elon Musk got involved immediately and helped out law enforcement trying to you know, first unlock the car which had automatically locked, and then investigating to see, you know, was this some weird like Tesla problem where the vehicle just exploded out of nowhere and no, he says, we have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented cyber truck and is unrelated to the

vehicle itself. All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion, and as I just mentioned, Emily, you also had a law enforcement confirming that this was being investigated as an intentional act. And you know, obviously you could see the symbolism here. You've got the cyber truck, which is Elon Musk, who's obviously closely affiliated with the Trump administration. You got the Trump hotel, et cetera. So let's take a listen to a little bit of the reporting here.

you the last couple pieces that we know here. As we mentioned before, you know, there are some surface level connections I don't want to say connections, but similarities is the better word, between this vehicle based attack and the other vehicle based attack in New Orleans. The most noteworthy of this was the fact that they both both vehicles were electric and both were rented through the rental car app Toro, where people can put up their own vehicles

to rent out to the public. I don't know, perhaps that's just like they thought, both thought that this would be a way for the vehicles not to be tracked, or the easiest way to get the particular type of vehicle that they were looking to get. I don't know how easy it is to rent a cyber truck from a traditional rental agency. But in addition to them both using vehicles, both using these this rental car app they

also both were former military. So this is who authority he said perpetrated this attack and ended up killing himself in this attack. Matthew Livelsberger, thirty seven, identified as the drive of the cyber truck that exploded in Vegas, listened on LinkedIn as an operations director and intelligence manager who apparently is former Green Beret. So at this point, that's about all we know about this particular attack in Las Vegas, which killed the driver and injured a number of passers by.

to Trump himself. But I mean, just we may learn that they have apps nothing to do with each other. But the questions I think on the minds of a lot of the American people who now see two different things happening on two different coasts almost at the same time, or within hours of each other. I mean the I shouldn't say almost at the same time, but really within the twenty four hour span, really was within I think

a twelve hour span roughly. That raises questions and the answer so far has been again entirely unsatisfying.

We have video of these other accomplices who were still at large. And then that's at the same time that you're just starting to get these details that oh, the cyber truck didn't just randomly blow up, this was another intentional act potentially being investigated as terrorism. It certainly raised, you know, as there are there going to be a series of more attacks in the country. So far, there's, as I said, there's no indication the two were linked.

It looks like two separate lone wolf psychos who decided, for whatever reason or whatever irrational reason their brain's concocted to try to hurt and kill innocent people who were just going about living their lives. But you know, that's still being still being investigated at this point to see

if there's any potential connection here. But as best we can tell, you know, I think we have we have certainly more details about the attacker in New Orleans, and you know, looks like someone who was going about his life do and okay, and then hit a rough patch.

She was also under financial distress, had this difficult divorce and appears to have just completely lost his mind and was thinking about killing his own family and then decides instead to kill a bunch of innocent, random civilians on you know, New Year's Day, early in the early mornings of New Year's Day. So welcome to twenty twenty five. Not going so well, so so far?

way or another by what happened in New Orleans. There's enough time that whatever the motivation was, maybe it's like something is a reaction in one way or another to what had happened in New Orleans. In the Las Vegas case as well. So a lot more to be, a lot more questions to be asked, and hopefully we'll get those answers sooner rather than later.

But in any case, seems very much like he was siding with Elon. However, I did see some of his supporters who are on the more like mega like anti immigrant right, who were kind of coping over this, saying until I hear from his mouth, I'm not going to believe anything, blah blah blah.

going to bring in the best and the brightest. But that's not the position that Donald Trump has taken in the past, and it's not the position of people like Stephen Miller and people who are so hawkish on immigration that they believe in this is typically for cultural reasons and alongside labor reasons that they believe basically the country

is full, is the way that they'll say it. We have to integrate people who are already here culturally and assimilar people who are already here culturally, and we cannot continue to import workers that are undermining American workers. So no immigration, full moratorium. Legal immigration has to be reduced dramatically, if not entirely curbed. You have to get rid of all of these visa programs. That is not something that can exist alongside H one B visa is without significant reform.

Elon Musk you've probably seen this. Crystal has come out and said you, basically, we all believe that there should be reforms to H one BES, which is I think

an easy thing to say. It's another question of what happens when people actually try to make those reforms and what they end up looking like, and who weighs in to potentially stop them if they are a threat to the way Silicon Valley does business, which this is important to their bottom line because they you can see just the reaction from people over the last both weeks how important it is to their bottom line.

twenty twenty and twenty sixteen. You know, just to clarify again my position, I support more legal immigration, more pathways to citizenship high skilled and low skilled. But the problem with this program, and effectively with all guessworker programs, is it does create it that create this indentured servant class that is completely beholden to, you know, whatever, whether their corporate boss once in there, their immigration status depends on

pleasing their corporate boss. They frequently are under paid. You know, they're also used as a tool to like, you know, bust unions, because if you've got this workforce there that is, you know, can only stay in the country so long as they keep the boss pleased, then they may not want to do something as adversarial as start a union, et cetera, join a union, et cetera. And so, you know,

those programs are fundamentally exploited. It both for the workers themselves and also have a deliterious effect on the existing workforce. It's also worth really noting something that people been you know,

pulling up and noting on Twitter. Tesla among other tech companies laid off thousands of American workers at the same time that they're claiming because you have to in order to you know, get one of these H one B visas that you can use for your company, you have to claim there's no American worker who can fill this role. And so at the same time they're claiming, oh, we can't get anyone to fill these positions, you're laying off

thousands of American workers. So for Elon Musk, it's very clear what's going on here, you know, And for the rest of the tech oligarchs, it's very clear what's going on. They like having an exploitable, easily manipulated, lower paid workforce, and they consider that to be really important to them, and they're you know, capitalist bottom line. Just to show you, so to give you a little visual representation of Elon's influence, here can see him here, you know, vibing with little

X on his shoulders, who is absolutely adorable. Starting with Trump at mar a Lago. There's a New York Times report that he just he's just staying at the cottage at mar Alago. I saw someone on Twitter. It was like, you know, he's smart enough to realize Trump is very influenced by the last person he talked to, So he's just kind of post up and mar Alago and always be the last person who talks to Donald Trump. But even beyond that, I think this deal was already made

back when Elon basically like rescued his campaign. And who knows if he would have want or not if Elon wasn't involved in his money, et cetera, et cetera. But certainly possible that that quarter of a billion dollars plus organizing efforts on the ground was determinative given how close a margin the race ends up ultimately being.

the headlines, as you can imagine. But what's important about that, in combination with something you just said, is that you have to say you can't hire Americans xy, like this is the most qualified person blah blah to get your h one B. That's already a protective measure intended to be in the law, and so when you come in and say I'm making reforms, this is going to be even more stringent. Value. If they stop protesting usually means

they found a way around whatever the reform is. Usually means they feel comfortable that they can still continue to hire people with these ways that are like beneficial to their bottom lines and undercutting American workers. Because if you look at what happened with Disney, for example, it just raises this obvious point, which is if they can do it, why wouldn't they If they are about maximizing shareholder value, why would they not do that If they can do it,

if they can get away with it. Obviously they don't want the negative media attention that was fairly disastrous for Disney, but now nobody even knows it really happened. So if they can do it, why wouldn't they, And that means they're always.

used at his properties many h to be visas. And so it's important for people to remember, in spite of the way Trump has brandoned himself, he ultimately you know, his class interest and ideological positioning are very much aligned

with Elon Musk. So you know, for him to come out totally change his position and don't let him fool you like this is a change in position, no one should be surprised because he avails himself and benefits from this very same very exploitative system of visas which are tied to your employment, so if you piss off your employer, you get deported.

are trying to use the same practices. And that's why there's no like, yes, h one bv's is if you put Steven Miller in charge of them, that's a threat to Silicon Valley. But there's always a confidence in the industry that they're able to write these laws in a way that's still worse for them, even if there are restrictions or reforms or whatever. So that's why, you know, I take seriously the idea that the program should be reformed if it's espoused by or endorsed by people like

Elon Musk. I think that's great, but incredibly incredibly suspicious that it would really happen in a way, a meaningful way.

tune with regards to this very specific topic. So Vivek Ramaswami, who on Monday, you probably recall, we covered he put out that tweet like attacking American culture as being mediocre and pushing great mediocrity because of our sitcoms that we watched in the nineties and hanging out at them all or whatever, all in order to back up Elon's position and now Trump's position on H one B visas back

in October, not like years ago. I'm talking about literally this October twenty twenty four, he sounded.

So there's a lot that's broken about the administrative state, the bureaucracy.

of it all together. And so you know, he really is kind of caught here also, I guess, deciding to kowtow to his fellow billionaire. He is also a billionaire, although I guess a lesser billionaire than Elon musk Ski's mill near single or double billionaire as opposed to whatever Elon musk has, but you know, ultimately allowing aligning here with his own class interests.

And it just it's so to your point about Silicon Valley, it's so valuable to them that we've seen those arguments just sort of melt away, and this idea that it could be reformed without as vivaid I actually basically agreed with what he said in the conversation that we just played, because when you start quote unquote reforming things, you end up with those holes like Swiss cheese being poked in by lobbyists and industry, which is a system that we

have now, it's a system likely we would have under a seriously reformed version of H one B visus. So to see the change in rhetoric is just a it's a small sample of what America workers have been dealing with for decades from the political class.

So if you're someone who wants to have more immigration, whether it's high skilled, low skilled, whatever, I really don't think doing it through these guest worker programs, which is something that you know, the left has long critiqued the guessworker approach to immigration because of these labor dynamics that it ultimately sets up. So, you know, the the last thing that I'll say here is even though Trump has

weighed in question, is not necessarily completely closed. Steve Bannon has been very much on the warpath, specifically against Elon. I mean, that's the thing is like Laura Lumer all these people like they never really go directly at Trump. It's always like whatever proxy on the issue, and Trump's just being misled. And of course we love Trump and he would never do anything wrong, but like let me sort of like do a round about critique of him.

But in anyway, in any case, Steve Bannon going very aggressively still on this issue, really declaring war on it. Let's go ahead and listen to some of his latest comments here.

much anymore. We can't keep what we got. But in the old days, you know, half the Saints are missionaries. We loving converts. But the converts sit in the back and study for years and years and years and make sure you understand the faith, and you understand the nuances of the faith, and understand how you can internalize the faith. Don't come up and go to the pulpit in your first week here and start lecturing people about the way things are going to be.

That's part of MAGA. That everyone will have healthcare part of MAGA, which means different things obviously depending on where you catch Trump and the Republican Party in any given day.

Donald Trump tried to come to the table with Nancy Pelosi on DACA in his first term, which is easily forgotten what MAGA means to Donald Trump and what MAGA means to Steve Bannon and Steve Bannon's many many followers and listeners and the grass roots of the Republican Party tea Party activists who have been around the county Republican Party headquarters across the country for years. It means something very different to Elon Musk and to Steve Bannon and

to Donald Trump than it does to those people. Steve Bannon is more sort of has his finger more firmly on the pulse of what that looks like to the actual party faithful and grassroots. So the question, I think crystal is where the stacks on priorities. So if Donald Trump and Elon Musk continue to say we're plowing ahead with H one b's, maybe they do lift the cap. Which is what this all off was the AI Appointment putting out a tweet that said we should lift the cap,

we should have unlimited. Basically, if they did something like that, It's one thing to just go along with the existing system. It's another thing entirely to say we're blowing up the system. There's no caps anymore. We're bringing over all of these people to compete with the American workforce. If they did that, Bannon's going to continue to absolutely raise Hell, and Bannon's followers will continue to absolutely raise Hell. And I don't think it goes away if they just sort of keep

the system as it is. I mean, then I think everyone just kind of goes along for the ride. But the question is what level of priority it stacks up as and that'll depend on I think what we see right away.

immigration hawkish restrictionists, who is the immigration czar. So you still have some very hardline people who are going to put together a series of very hardline policies with regard to deportations. So yeah, I think that'll you know, satisfy the Steve Bannons of the world. And frankly, I think most Trump supporters have proven themselves to not be particularly ideological.

It is more of a cult of personality than it is a consistent ideological movement, because if it wasn't, like, he's already betrayed the supposed tenants of trump Ism many times, like you said, trying to make a deal with Nancy Pelosi on Dhaka in the first administration, making his primary achievement in the first administration a giant Paul Ryan tax

cut for the rich. And there was never any revolt among the magabase over any of these things outside of like some minor complaints, minor bickering, And I don't see that as being any different this time around. The last thing, and I'll say on this with regard to the billionaires, is there's the reason why these billionaires flit back and forth between the parties. It's not because they're having some

like based awakening. It's because they're going wherever they think they can get the best deal for themselves, Where they think that they're very consistent ideology of like enriching themselves and being able to, you know, have the type of captive, exploitable workforce that they want to have. They're going to go to whichever party they think is most primed to

deliver those results for them. Or wherever they think is most likely to win, whoever they think they can have the most influence with, etc. And so you know, that's that's what's going on here with Elon and David Zax and all these people who have you know, made some sort of a lot of the tech right that used to be in the Democratic Party, Mark Andresen being another

example of that. It's not that they've had some sort of you know, ideological conversion, although they may talk about being anti woke or whatever, but mostly they just use that as a cloak, like Mark Andresen does for pushing through whatever their sort of bottom line capital interests are.

And I'm referring specifically to you know, when he goes on with Joe Rogan attacks the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has been decidedly a positive thing for American consumers and has delivered money back to them when they've been defrauded by companies. And he's had some portfolio companies that

have come into their crosshairs before having scammy practices. He doesn't like the CFPB, but rather than directly talking about what it is he doesn't like about it, which is that it, you know, this regulatory body was negative for him and his portfolio companies and his self interests, and steady cloaks it in this like, oh it's it's woke, and they're canceling conservatives and their debanking conservatives, which is total and complete nonsense. So you know, these guys are

wolves in sheep's clothing. They don't align with by and large. There may be some areas where they have overlap with your interests, but they're looking out for themselves, whether they're glomming onto the Democratic Party or the glombing onto the Republican Party. The bottom line for them will always be the bottom line.

is becoming the useful idiot of the money class. And that's that is a serious threat to Trump's second term. If you're a Steep Bannon type of populist, or if you're just an average American who saw in Donald Trump's somebody that would be extend to helping hand to you know, your interests. So yeah, if you're bringing these people into your movement and you think they're your useful idiots, you can very easily become their useful idiots. Oh yeah at a moment on a whim. Yeah, yeah.

level of power. And I think to not see that from the jump is and was foolish, which is why when Elon was and Vivigue, we're given their like doage Commissioner and was like, oh, they just gave them this make work project and it's like pathetic and good job for just kind of like pushing them to the side. I was always very skeptical of that because no, you

are giving them this whole government mandate. The Trump administration has thought through specific legal mechanisms that they can use to try to effectuate some of the desires of Elon Musk. This person has the ear of the President and is in a very powerful position.

mean that his power is ultimately diminished. And that's what really like outside the specific of H one bs and H two b's and all of the like, you know, the policy wonkery here, that's the meat of why this story is so important is because you have your first very clear ideological difference between the Steve Bann and Stephen Miller, you know, Laura Lumer and culture that wing of the party and the Elon Musk billionaire capitalist wing in the party.

And Elon won and it wasn't close. Trump sided with him unequivocally. So if there was any question about how this was going to go, I think we got a pretty clear answer this time around, and there's no sign of you know, they're all this like, oh, maybe Elon's gonna overstep and Trump's not gonna like it, and blah blah blah. There's no sign of that. They seem to be getting along famously, fabulously. I'm not sure Trump really cares that much about what happens in this administration. He's

staying out of jail. He doesn't have to run for reelection again. He can do what he wants to do. He doesn't have to care what Maga thinks of him or Steve Bannon thinks of him, ultimately, because he doesn't have to get re elected, and he rightly calculates that at the end of the day, they're all just gonna probably go along with what he does anyway. So I think that's, you know, it's a preview very much of things to come.

Now this is a quote from Ralph Norman to Axios. He says, a quote growing number of members want at minimum assurances from Johnson on meaningful cuts to spending before they vote to re elect him. Now I'm going to share a second story. This is Donald Trump backing Mike Johnson for House Speaker endorsement. As speaker. He said that on Monday on Truth socially referred to Mike Johnson enthusiastically

actually as a quote good hard working religious man. He will do the right thing and we will continue to win, so said Donald Trump. Now this is interesting because there is, as Access reported, a movement among Freedom Caucus types or Freedom Caucus adjacent people like Thomas Massey also Chip Roy

to block Mike Johnson from becoming speaker again. They're absolutely infuriated by how the omnibus negotiations transpired in late December, disgusted by it, said, we actually have the House of Representatives. You are the speaker. You are a Republican. Donald Trump just won what they believe was a mandate, and you are still governing like the political class has like you, Mike Johnson stood up against before you were speaker, and

we're basically heading into crystal. What I think is another Kevin McCarthy's cycle here, where Mike Johnson is basically the only option that they have, so they're pushing right now. They were sort of testing the waters that looked like, for example, chip Roy was testing the water to see if Jim Jordan was a plausible candidate that they could quickly see if Jim Jordan had enough momentum to just

be voted as speaker. But what I think we're heading towards more likely is another series of concessions from Mike Johnson to people like Chip Roy. They got some significant concessions, significant enough that McCarthy was ousted last time around by

his own concessions to Matt Gates. One of the things was something called the very art like parliamentary arcane thing called the motion to vacate, which was always around until Nancy Pelosi hilariously got rid of this, or she added a threshold and they got rid of that, which is how Matt Gates ultimately was able to oust Kevin McCarthy by bringing a vote on the speaker to the floor. So, you know, Mike Johnson might be in a position where he has to make some concessions that could ultimately be

his undoing. But Republicans right now know in their conference that they don't really have anyone to rally around. That is a consensus point between the Centrists and the Freedom Caucus people when you have such a thin, thin, razor thin majority. As they head back to Washington, DC, so Mike Johnson has already technically lost the votes. Thomas Massey says, no, that's all he can afford to lose. It looks like Chip Roy is a no as of right now, but

we'll see what happens. There's a lot going on behind the scenes with this.

Mike Johnson is not going to be the speaker? No, Mike Johnson is ultimately, unless something crazy happens, which you never know, Mike Johnson is ultimately going to be the Speaker of the House, but not before going through what I'm sure will be a very painful and public exercise of like you know, having to go back and forth and figure out what sort of concessions he's willing to give and what Thomas Massey at EL are willing to accept.

And they have some bargaining chips to work with here. So, first of all, Trump has to be certified as president. We all became intimately familiar with this electoral certification process January sixth, four years ago, and so it's got to be proved by the House. And if you don't have

a speaker, you can't do anything. So they need to get a speaker in place in order to certify the election results and make Donald Trump President of the United States, which I'm sure as part of what motivated Trump to weigh in on this fight and to try to close the door to any potential challengers, et cetera, et cetera. So there's that. The other thing is, you do have a debt ceiling constraint here. You're about to reach here in early January. So Janet Yellen came out and Emily's

got this up on the screen here. As soon as January fourteenth, the country could hit the debt ceiling limit. So in a previous deal, the debt ceiling had just been like suspended. By the way, debt ceiling is a stupid archaic thing. No other country has it, but we have it. It's like ridiculous. But anyway, so like Donald Trump, Crystal, it's true. I agree with Donald Trump when he says things like that. Anyway, it was extend, it was suspended.

So they just like got rid of it temporarily until January first, because they're getting some refunds back and whatever. They're going to have enough money to not hit the debt ceiling until roughly January fourteenth. Even that is not a hard limit, because then they can do what's called extraordinary measures, which means they move around the order of the payments, et cetera, et cetera, to extend what period

of time they have. However, it's kind of like once you hit January fourteenth through the twenty third, somewhere in that range, then the top clock is really ticking and you really actually have to deal with this. People like Thomas Massey, they'll go out and chip Roy they'll say, like oftentimes they're just like, I'm not voting for a debt ceiling increased period, end of story. We need to cut spending. That's their ideology, that's what they believe. They're

pretty consistent about it. So that's part of why they were so upset about the omnibus. Trump was upset about the omnibus because it didn't extend the debt ceiling, which creates immediate problems for him as his administration is coming in that he has to deal with. But in any case, that's one of the sort of like chips that they can play in terms of trying to extract whatever concessions

they want ultimately out of Mike Johnson. Then you have to remember, like it's not just the House that we're talking about here.

tell them. You need to give me reason to make this okay. And so that's the leverage they have behind closed doors, and actually, you know, out in the open right now, you're seeing some of this this happen. What they can get from it is going to be fascinating because Mike Johnson is almost the only option. But you know, obviously, if you're you're shopping around Jim Jordan, you can say I'm voting for Jim Jordan. There's nothing you can do about it. Democrats are definitely not going to help Mike

Johnson this summer. I THINKI Kim Jeffries has already said something to that extent, So good luck, Mike. I'm probably gonna have to give up a whole lot.

side willing to employ those tactics either. And I think that you know, the like it's become very clear that the tactical posture of the squad and a Bernie to let me, you know, play nice with the Democrats and let me see if that's the way that I can effectuate the most political change like that really defanged them and made them just another sort of rank and file Democratic estyle member. I'm still glad that they're there versus

you know, another more corporate Democrat. You know, they're more likely to vote well on the issues that I care about, but it has completely defaning them and completely undermined there the places where they could have wielded power, and there are a lot of places, because you know in the Senate, but in particular in the House, when the Democrats have the majority is also a very slim majority, and so they could have employed some of these tactics to further

left populist ideological interest and every opportunity effectively. I don't want to say it every that they never used any leverage whatsoever.

They still behind the scenes, Nancy Pelosi pushes for her chosen candidate, Jerry Connelly, and blocks AOC from that position. So it was a failed tactical decision. And I am envious of the Republicans' willingness to play hardball in these negotiations.

much came out of the Tea Party. The post Tea Party attitude of people like chip Roy was bolstered by certain populist Republicans who came from the Tea Party wave themselves saying, oh, I know my constituents are behind me. And not only are they behind me, they don't want me to go in here and make bad deals with you. They want me to make either no deals or good deals. And that's why we may see people like chip Roy like it's actually possible that they don't go along to

get along with Donald Trump. We saw Donald Trump actually attacking chip Roy a couple of weeks ago when the Omnibus was on the table and chip Row was threatening that they know fundamentally that their constituents are behind them when they block deals with the political establishment, so it gives them confidence and the squad should operate like that as well as sort of the post populist iteration of left populism in Congress. I shouldn't say post populist, but

the populist wave iteration. And they should know that that's where their constituents are too. And just finally, that means that you know, if your constituents are fully behind Donald Trump, they're going to want to see you go along with Trump. And that's the question that the Chipwroys of the world have to ask themselves in the next couple of weeks.

So of the course of the last several months since the movie came out, and they famously did not promote the movie together, but it has since just in the last even forty eight hours, become a sposed me to story about how the media is handling allegations of sexual misconduct. Essentially, it's becoming a fascinating story. But I think a really important one. One of the reasons that I love following celebrity gossips so closely, Crystal, is because it's a low

stakes public relations game. And you see how journalists, and in this case, we were talking about the New York Times, We're not talking about TMZ, We're not talking about Pop Sugar or whatever else. We're talking about the New York Times, how easily they can be manipulated by powerful people in the public relations game. So right now, it's sort of a question of who's a jerk, Justin Baldoni or Blake Lively, And maybe the answer to that question is both of them.

But just yesterday, Variety published a story that I'm going to share on the screen right now because this is a hugely significant story in that it is a quite a rebuttal to a New York Times story that really really took Blake Lively's side. So this is the headline for a Variety. Justin Baldoni files two hundred and fifty million dollar lawsuit against New York Times over break Blake Lively story, saying it relied on her quote self serving narrative.

Now again, Crystal, I don't think we needed Justin Baldoni to file this suit to realize that it was relying on Blake Lively's narrative. Let me share the New York Times story right now. You can see we can bury Anyone inside a Hollywood smear machine that had the byline. You may recognize that byline. Viewers, listeners may recognize this byline. Megan Touhi, who was one of the famous New York Times Me Too reporters, very celebrated for me too reporting

in the initial wave of the me too movement. And I don't know about you, Crystal, but as I was reading through the original New York Times story, it seemed to me, just as a casual reader who hadn't looked at any of these documents, that there was a huge context gap that a lot of the producer's texts that were being published. So the one that's in the headline it says, quote we can bury anyone, we were missing

a lot of other parts of those conversations. So the New York Times is making it look as though Justin Baldoni had realized that Blake Lively was not happy with him and was going to run her own kind of campaign against him. Obviously, Millions and millions of dollars are on the line anytime you're promoting this. It's like a big product essentially, and so it means a lot to bottom lines for these big companies, and they treated really seriously.

And that's where celebrity gossip becomes a product in and of itself as well. So yeah, and you know, these allegations are that Baldoni was walking in on Blake Lively while she was breastfeeding, allegations that he bit her lip during a kissing scene, basically that he acted like a jerk. Nothing here I think constitutes like assault obviously, But he was also sort of walking around clothing himself as in

the sort of like moral garb of male feminism. So then it's like he seems to be orchestrating or his people seem to be orchestrating a social media campaign to take clips of Blake Lively and disseminate them and make it look like an organic uprising of people realizing that

Blake Lively has always been sort of a jerk. And then he comes in with this lawsuit against the New York Times and gives evidence to variety suggesting the New York Times, believe it or not, Crystal was overly gullible, And a lot of people will look at that more cynically and say, was you know, taking is like some type of orders from Blake Lively or something in return?

But I think what it looks like is they got drip drip drip bits from Blake Lively's team and did not confirm the context or were ideologically sort of wedded to the Lively narrative and to her side of the story that they weren't interested in the other context. Because what Baldoni is doing, I don't think he may get

a settlement. You're not gonna win. I think the suit against the New York Times, And as a journalist, you know, I don't think he should win the suit against the New York Times, because they're free to publish whatever nonsense they want to, and we're free to say that it's nonsense. But it looks like some of these things, at least from a journalistic standpoint, were would have been served by context, better context. And so the question now becomes whin the

New York Times had that context? So Crystal, what do you make of what we learned yesterday.

et cetera. So he adopts this whole mantle, and during the promotion for this film, neither one of them. They won't appear together. And also the entertainment media picks up on the fact that a bunch of cast members have unfollowed him, so there seems to be some rift between him and everyone else. So then according to you know, some of the texts that have been released. He starts to panic of like, obviously she's not happy, they're not happy with us, Like they could really smears in the press.

What can we do to get ahead of that? And I think even without you know, some of the ways that the Times characterized it, obviously like they screwed up right, Like for example, that quote you know about we could bury anyone, et cetera, et cetera, left out the emoji that would have indicated to readers that they were being sarcastic. And they also left out a text that indicated directly that this PR team was actually not responsible for this

specific article that appeared. But nevertheless, even put in that aside, he enlisted PR professionals to basically try to get out of the story and flip the narrative. So at some point there seems to be this online organic like we don't like Blake Lively and she's kind of a bitch and she was a bit in this interview, and why she's just out there promoting her like alcohol company when you know alcohol can be linked in domestic violence and

she doesn't talk about domestic violence at all. There seemed to be this organic anti Blake Lively narrative that took hold in the public. And so when she gets her side of the story out in this New York Times piece, she alleges, with the aid of New York Times that effectively, like number one, you were inappropriate on this side in

any number of ways. You mentioned a few of them coming into my trailer when you know, at different times when I was naked, there were some allegations of like body shaming, she just had a baby, there were allegations that there were different boundary violations, and they both they had sex scenes in this movie. So you know, it's very fraught, and she's married and her husband apparently berated

Baldoni at one point. So any in case she llegis that that happened, then that there's this orchestrated campaign of retaliation against her.

You can see from Variety as an example, one of the juiciest tidbits from the New York Times story was this allegation that Baldoni had basically stormed in on Blake Lively while she was breastfeeding on the side of the movie and versus the Variety story that I know you were just about to get to, which says, well, the context there they have text messages of Blake Lively saying I'm just pumping in my trailer if you want to work out our lines, and Baldoni saying copy eating with

crew and we'll have that way.

Then she fires back with this New York Times story that The New York Times was far too credulous about at best, at worst, like actively hid and manipulated some of the things that would be more favorable towards him. And now he's firing back with this lawsuit, which also you have to assume, right it's his lawsuit. This article is based on his side of the story. Is also likely cherry picking and leaving out some of the less

flattering details for him as well. So some of the core themes here are number one, like, you know, he went out and draped himself in very intentionally, Like that was part of the PR campaign. Drapes himself very intentionally in this. I'm an ally of women. I'm like, you know, I'm against toxic masculinity. I'm going to speak out against it. You should never harm women. Blah blah blah. He's doing this as part of a PR campaign to undermine this very specific woman.

And also like you know, to go and even layer deeper, and we're about to talk about OpenAI and some of these AI stuff, Like one of the possibilities here is even that chatbots were potentially wielded in this war between Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively, and it it does just make you like, this is kind of you know, it's not that consequential of a story ultimately what happened on the set between these two individuals, but it does also make you question, like how much of what we're being

fed by the media, fed on social media like these you know, interactions that appear to be real and a peer to be organic. How much of this is already just fake, already just you know, astroturfed, already just completely concocted by somebody for some reason to manipulate you and

your perception of reality. And to me, that's like the most kind of like dystopian angle of this, is that we really don't know how much of what we're already consuming on the web in media is real and how much is just literally generated, like falsely out of whole cloth.

But this is a celebrated me two reporter of the New York Times who seems to have been at the very least taken for a ride by the extremely powerful public relations team of Blake Lively that I guarantee you weaponized the reporters me too connections and feminist bona fides against them and for the benefit of the Blake Lively smear campaign. And we started this just by talking about how entertainment media is often just like a lower stakes

example of what happens in political media. So if you imagine, remember a lot of people probably do like you were talking about your daughter. These clips of Blake Lively going viral around the premiere of It ends with us. Their allegation is that Baldoni sort of his team Whether or not he knew about it is a different question, but his team astro turfed this viral momentum against Blake Lively by sort of creating accounts or feeding accounts these old videos.

And we actually have one right here that will go ahead and roll for everyone just for a taste, because you probably a lot of people probably remember seeing this stuff go viral at the time. But here we go. This is an interaction that Blake Lively had.

did this organically blah blah blah. But you know, there's a question there too of whether or not she had some incentives. And maybe those incentives were just like, oh, I've built this particular audience, and here's a way that I can you know, like get in on a similar storyline that may have a similar hook, etc. But this is also a potentially motivated actor in this whole thing as well. So, yeah, these things that can seem like they just sort of like organically popped out of the

ether and there's some public reaction against it. It's like, well, did that really happen or did you really have like an army of boths and some highly motivated influencers and Credul's journalists to push a particular view of the world that may or may not be accurate.

any of that. What it means is that you could see in the sort of anatomy of the New York Times piece that it was coordinated by a public relations team on behalf of Blake Lively because it was so conspicuously missing context. And again, that's fine if you are a feminist metio reporter who wants to stand with Blake Lively, and that's just your opinion, You've reviewed the text messages

the team sent, you've asked the questions you feel irrelevant. Whatever, Fine, go ahead and do it, but don't do it and act like this is the objective or the most neutral version of the story. If you're leaving out context or not asking questions that would help you ascertain that context, that is being conspicuously hidden from you by Lively's team. And again, yeah, to Crystal's point, these are multi billion

dollar businesses. These are important, like the celebrity stuff. It's lower stakes obviously than politics, but it's important to their bottom lines, the health of their companies, to their shareholders, and so they treat this stuff like it's widgets. They treat these human interactions like these like their widgets. And the actors all know that the actors are investors. They're part of that producers, executive producers. So they play the game.

They understand what they are in all of this. They're making a lot of money off of it. But now put this to politics, and it's maddening to watch to see stories like this about any given topic. A Crystal from your perspective the New York Times coverage of Gaza, or from my perspective New York Times coverage of any immigration story or you know something dumb that Trump said, Like you can just see you can see the fingerprints.

The cheap fake stories were a great example ahead of the debate about how the Republican Party was circulating these cheap fake videos. You could see in the New York Times coverage at the time the fingerprints of the Biden White House and the DNC on those stories. And you have that perspective when your media and you do this

for your job. But this is the best example if you're a member of the public and you want to like see how the media came into feel like truth and information, read both of these stories and it'll be really eye opening. Yeah.

good for him. It's still a story. Yeah, he still very much paints a picture of he was worried that she was going to say some bad things about him, So he cloaks himself in this hole. I'm the women's ally and I'm against toxic. He cloaks himself in all of this, runs around talking about, you know, pretending like he really cares about domestic violence, and meanwhile, I was launching this pr campaign of retaliation against her. Like even if you add the context, that is all very clear.

It's just they wanted it to be a less nuanced and more clear cut in of him. They wanted the quote about we can bury anyone to stand on its own without having the you know, the supporting context, et cetera,

et cetera. And by doing that, by reaching further than what was you know, organically, they're and honest, as best we can tell at this point in this story, they really you know, they really end up undercutting her because now people just say, well, look, you did include that, so obviously this is just a hatchet job, like it's just bullshit, where I don't think it is all just bullshit, Like I think the general the basic contours of she was unhappy with him. He wanted to get ahead of it.

He launched this pr campaign of retaliation to get Like, I think that is all true.

But now we have the parents of that whistleblower, whose name is Sucier Bology, raising questions and saying that they are going to hire a private investigator in order to try to get to the bottom of what really happened here. Let's take a listen to a part of their press conference.

number of stealth companies. You've got DARPA, which is a secretive agency within the US government that is funding research and development Israel, China, like, the list goes on of actors and interested participants here. So the amount of money at stake here is truly truly mind blowing. I mean probably somes that we've never seen in history. Is not

an eager exaggeration. Just to give you a sense of some of what he was sounding the alarm over, and in particular we were talking about The New York Times. In particular, was featured in a New York Times story raising concerns about what he had seen when he was at OpenAI. He elaborated on that interview in this post. He said, I recently participated in New York Times story about fair use and generative AI and why I'm skeptical that fair use would be a plausible defense for a

lot of generative AI products. I also wrote a blog post about the nitty gritty details of fair use and why I believe this. To give some context, I was at open Ai for nearly four years, worked on chat GPT for the last one and a half of them. I initially didn't know much about copyright, fair use, etc. But became curious after seeing all the lawsuits filed against

gen ai companies. When I tried to understand the issue better, I eventually came to the conclusion that fair use seems like a pretty implausible defense of a lot of generative AI products for the basic reason that they can create substitutes that compete with the data they're trained on. I've written up the more detailed reasons for why I believe

this in my post. Obvious say, I'm not a lawyer, but I still feel like it's important for even non lawyers to understand the law, both the letter of it and also why it's actually there in the first place. That being said, I don't want this to read as a critique of chat, GPT or open ai per se, because fair use and generative AI is a much broader issue than anyone product or company. I highly encourage mL

researchers to learn more about copyright. It is a really important topic and precedent that's off it cited like Google Books isn't actually as supportive as it might seem.

other products that we're all now able to use. And so we're talking books, we're talking transcripts of YouTube videos, we're talking literally anything they can get their hands on. And without that data, they're unable to train these lms and push them out into the world. So this is not a side issue. This is, you know, alongside like having sufficient you know, electricity and having the computational power. These are the key ingredients for the development of AI.

And you know, he was outspoken on it. And now his parents who listen. You know, these are grieving parents who I'm sure nobody wants to think that their son or daughter was so unhappy as to commit suicide and to end their own life. So you know, we always

always have to keep that in mind. But it's worth taking seriously this investigation simply because this is one of a you know, relatively small number of whistleblowers who we've seen said, you know what, what is being done here is wrong and I'm not going to be associated with it.

sign of struggle. So the police obviously ruled this, as you mentioned, crystal suicide. But if the parents are saying the police ruled it a suicide despite there being signs of struggle, that's I think something just in the investigation stage people will be looking at very closely, and we will be looking at very close if there are serious signs of struggle that still resulted in the investigation being concluded as a suicide. That's a hugely significant piece of information from the parents.

The resources that are being thrown into this truly arms race, both between nation states and between corporations to be you know, the furthest to head an AI to achieve was called a GI artificial general intelligence, to be the first to

develop that. This is all going on. Some of it is, you know, you can you can read about in the press, but there is not nearly enough media coverage, democratic debate transparent about what the plans are for this technology, how it will be deployed in our lives, what that will look like, how will upend the labor force We're talking about, you know, potentially greater than Industrial revolution level change over

a much shorter period of time. That's the real like undercurrent of the political games that are being played right now and the political moves that are being made obviously Elon Musk is a big player in that. Sam Altman of Open AI a big player in that. Noteworthy to me that after Trump wins, Sam comes in, It's like, let me give a.

that AI researchers take very seriously as a possibility. This is all happening effectively behind closed doors, with a few comparatively small number of scientists and technologists who are making these decisions that could completely upend all of our lives. And so you know, this incident with this whistleblower is just a tiny window in to the stakes of this game and how much is happening and how consequential.

This time, I went up north in November to the Ali Hospital, which, if you remember, was the first hospital that was attacked, and there was a lot of questions as to whether a hospital would be attacked by the Israeli military and uh, this this experience was completely different,

just a lot of death and destruction. We did, you know, quite a bit of operating ortheedic surgery, surgery just you know, there's a lot of uh stabilizing fractures and unfortunately, you know, in this setting, there were a lot of amputations, just a ton of blast injuries.

and get shot. I think there's a lot of a sense that this is, you know, very much kind of utter destruction. What I would say is in April we saw a genocide. In November it just seemed like a full on holocaust. Everything is destroyed up North. There's really barely any buildings left that are standing, and the ones that are are partially destroyed, and people are trying to live in those in a makeshift environment.

they're completely non functional. Now, there was a discussion of having our group go up to Kamaladwan because one of the purposes that we serve as European and American teams is sometimes we can be protective for the people that are at the hospital. I think there's the you know, when we left European Hospital and in Gaza in April, I was one of the part of the discussion is once the team stopped showing up. Then we know we're about to be attacked, and so going up to kamadwe

was not not an option. And we knew that hospital was under sage the whole time we were there. And there were a bunch of messages because everyone knows doctor Hasama Viasafia up in the in the area, and you know, we're what's that messaging him and stuff and kind of getting an update. But it was it was not very functional even back in November. Now it's completely non functional after having been invaded and destroyed.

horribly underwhelming. You know, every night that you're at the hospital, you see them bring the dead bodies to the area where they will wash them and then bury them, and it's it's I mean, on average you're probably seeing twenty to thirty at night, and the death toll has kind of been stalled for for many months now. The use of human shields, I think is a is a very

tenuous argument. A number of the nurses and doctors that we talked to were there actually at the Ul Shifa invasion and during that siege they were actually drinking ringers, lactate and normal sailing to you know, get hydration. And there were a number of the providers that they recounted stories of being being told to undress and then they would have to go room to room and basically search the hospital for the Israeli military with a drone and a dog following them.

right now? I think there is no real evidence that that is being done because at least in the hospital setting, because for pretty much, you know, since a month or two into this war, there have been medical teams in a number of these hospitals, and I don't think there's been one story from any of the American, European or foreign medical providers of the Hamas coming in and using human shields in the hospital.

it's just very limited from a medical supply standpoint. Food is also incredibly limited. Like I actually turned I had my birthday there when I when I was there in November, and they they they kind of made the joke that, uh, you know, we would get you a cake, but there's no there's no sugar and no eggs in Gaza every every and there.

lot of malnourishment and food shortages. So what was what was it like sort of watching people try to get medical aid, even just yourself and food into gaza.

feminine supplies. All those things were able to get in because when you go through the rougher border, there was a year there was an Egyptian entry in an Israeli entry, and the doctor the medical teams could go through the Egyptian entry, so we were able to bring in a bunch of stuff. This time you're going through Crem Shalom and you're not really able to bring in anything other than personal.

population has thinned. The aid that does get in. There's you know, if you talk to the people on the ground, there's this suspicion that the aid is that is being brought in is being given to businessmen and not necessarily people on the up and up, so that they can take the aid, mark it up and try to sell it to people. And they feel that that's being conducted

through contacts in the Israeli military. If you ask the individual people on the ground, the supply is act better in the north because the demand has gone down and south prices have skyrocketed. So it was a very interesting

thing when we went into the south. You know, we prayed behind one of the guys that runs the morgue was leading prayer, and so after his prayer, like he put up his hands and specifically made a prayer for the people in the north because there's there's you know, it's known that there's so much death and destruction there.

But then when we went north and then we're coming back down south, they actually a lot of people in the North wanted to give things to us to take to their family in the South because they're going to die here and this this stuff needs to get to our family, and things are so expensive down south that they can't they can't get anything. So the supply is actually lower in the South and demand is higher, so the prices are just skyrocketed.

obviously didn't move the needle. Now you have an incoming administration that you know, is has long been very hostile basically long done what you know, the Israelis have wanted them to do. So what if people want us to know and what hope are they hanging on to at this point?

going to beat Trump. He's like, if you tell, if you see Trump tell him, guys, is not just gonna free Palistine, It's going to free the whole world. I think there's this sense that even though Trump, you know, one of the doctors is like Trump has a son in law that's Lebanese, maybe he's going to be a

little more more uh favorable. I think that the general sense is that even though you know, Trump has been pretty derogatory in the way that he's talked about Palestinians, I think the thought is that you can't really appeal to his humanitarian side, but you might be at least appealed to his ego to not look subservient to nen

Yahoo and Israeli leadership in perpetuity. I mean, I think on the Kama Harris and Biden's side, there just seemed to be no light at the end of the tunnel in terms of them ever standing up to know what was being done in Israel, even if it violates our own laws.

there actually are. Like I mean, it's they literally tell you they won't even tell you the number of family members that they've lost unless you ask them, and then they just they they take it so well and then continue to work to help people even without pay, like in the hospital.