¶ Intro / Opening
Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of the show.
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
So if that is something that's important to you, please go to Breakingpoints dot com. Become a member today and you'll access to our full shows, unedited, ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
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 Tuesday. Have an amazing show for everybody today, Bro Show people Live for the Pound.
Good to see you, Ryan, It is great to see you.
We have a quadruple Bro show here. We've got Jeremy Scahill. He's going to join us in a little bit to break down the Israel Gaza ceasefire.
We've got David Dayan in the house.
He's going to break down vendor finance dot Com era vendors financing scheme that actually led to the crash and how it's all happening again, and he's actually legitimate expert on it. I'm excited to talk to him. We're going to break down some of the economy news. Very troubling APAC actually very interesting here Seth Moulton previously, how would you describe him, Ryan, He's like a national security He's like a normal debt.
Yeah, right now, he's to the right of a normal deme even Yeah, good point.
And he is declaring I will not take a single dollar from a pack, which just goes to show how much things have changed. The Epstein story, which we ran out of time yesterday because we were interviewing Shoycott Chakrabati.
Actually we will break down entirely. There's some new memoir come out from Virginia Gouffrey, as well as a ton of new stories which has not gotten nearly enough attention about Epstein, his connections with the financial billionaires, with some of the new files that were released in the cover of Darkness on a Friday.
They always released on Friday after how about that interesting right to do a colmic Politico called fishy Friday. Oh, I love that. I mean Friday newsum is a Washington tradition. Really, it really is, and sadly it does kind of work. It really does. Okay, Ukraine, important stuff going on with Ukraine.
President Trump now appearingly to reverse course now saying Ukraine
¶ Today's Show: Israel, Economy, Politics
does need to accept the piece deal. We're gonna break down everything that's going on there, some fast moving things and a potential summit between a new summit between Trump and Putin in Budapest sometime on the horizon. And then Ryan and I are going to weigh in on marijuana, all right, so when Crystal is away, the boys will play right. And this is actually it's a landmark case between the United States Supreme Court where they will rule on whether marijuana users should be allowed to own and
possess firearms. You should keep in mind that marijuana remains federally illegal and.
So technically it is a violation of the law. And so you will all get to.
See where I come down on that one, and we can discuss whether marijuana use is in fact addiction and does qualify.
So I'm excited to get into this. They're really jamming me up. Yeah, are they going to make me?
That's why I yes, you are, and I will I will be arguing for commons send s gun control. Right, Why would you want psychotic addicts to have guns? This is what the left has been begging for, right, Okay, so let's go ahead and get to Israel. Jeremy Scalehill standing by, Let's get him in here. I'm very excited now to be joined in studio by Jeremy Skalehill. Jeremy, we have a tradition here where we do a pound, so we have a triple pound.
Man, that's too much going on? Well, we call it the bro Show, that's what that's what we call. So that's where we're fired up and we are ready to go.
All right, So we wanted to go through all of the recent developments with Israel and the ceasefire, the breaking of the ceasefire, the unbreaking of the ceasefire by Donald Trump. Much of it comes down to, at the current moment, a hard position from the President and his team of no, we're going to try to do this. And so we had Steve wi Cooff and Jared Kushner give a joint interview to CBS sixty minutes.
Let's take a listen to what they said, and then we're going to get a reaction.
You decide to go to Gaza and what did you see?
It looked almost like a nuclear bomb had been set off in that area. And then you see these people moving back, and I asked the idea of where are they going, Like, I'm looking around, these are all ruins, and they said, well, they're going back to the areas where they're destroyed. Home was onto their plot and they're going to pitch a tent. And it's very sad because you think to yourself, they really have nowhere else to go.
Would you say, now having been there, that it was genocide?
No, no, absolutely not no, No, there was a war being foot.
But are you saying publicly right now that Hamas is acting in good faith seriously looking.
For the Bible?
As far as we've seen from what's being conveyed tests from the mediators, they are so far that could break down at any minute, But right now we have seen them looking to honor their agreement.
So he says that they're looking to honor the agreement.
Jeremy, what does that fit with some of your reporting
¶ Israel-Gaza Ceasefire Developments
and some of the other things that you know about behind the scenes.
Yeah, I mean, I think if you look at the actions of Israel versus the actions of Hamas since October tenth and the seasfire going into effect. Israel has continued its pattern of violating the ceasefire, not just by killing Palestinians and saying, oh, they cross this sort of fictitious line that the Israelis are now putting these huge yellow concrete blocks in continuing to kill as many as one hundred or more Palestinians. They're also not shipping in the
agreed upon amount of food and other life essentials. I don't like the term aid because what Israel is doing is not just blocking humanitarian aid. They're blocking life essentials because they're in total control of what goes in and out of Gaza. So the Israelis always do this. They violate the ceasefire, they claim that it was for security reasons.
On the other hand, Hamas's chief negotiator and its political leader, Khalil al Haya, gave a really interesting interview on Egyptian television yesterday in which he sounded like a season diplomat. When you compare the rhetoric of Hamas officials with that of Israelis Hamas is going out of its way to be very conciliatory about this. They're heaping praise on Donald Trump.
They're saying that they're committed to the ceasefire. When allegations of violations happen, they try to address it right away. It was extraordinary to have the Cassam Brigades, Hamas's armed wing put out a statement in real time, almost like they have their own kind of pr operation like a Western government, where they're responding tit for tat to what Israel is saying, but they're not using belligerent language. When
¶ Israel Violations, Hamas Diplomacy
they're asked about the issue of disarmament, they remain firm and they say that that's a Palestinian issue and that we're not going to disarm. But they also say these are issues to be discussed in a broader Palestinian context.
So what I would say is that when you hear Jared Kushner or Steve Whitkoff saying anything other than Hamas is the obstruction, even when Israel is accusing Hamasa being the obstruction, that's a market change from what we saw under Biden and also what we've seen at different points under the Trump administration.
Yeah, that makes sense, and we have a two on disarmament, let's play, let's roll through that.
And yet as soon as you left, Hamas executed seven people and then they went on to execute thirty more. Do you believe they really will disarm.
Well, they promised they would, They said they it's down that they would. Now they said they were gang members, et cetera, et cetera.
You know, but.
These are very violent people. This is a very violent part of the world. Nobody's seen violence like this. If we have to, will disarm the US, well, whether it's me or the US, or it's you know, a proxy could be Israel. With our back end, we won't have boots something around. There's no reason to.
And you gotta love when Trump this says the quiet part out loud, that Israel is a proxy.
But yeah, yeah, one of our proxies.
Now, when Kushner was asked about that by Leslie Stahl, he gave a much more nuanced answer. He said, well, you have to wait until this International Stabilization Force is up and operative because it's a population of a couple of million people and you need some sort of police force. It's like it's unusually kind of level headed and clear eyed from him, and so he was saying, effectively, we can ask Hamas to disarm until there's until We've gotten all the rest of our ducks in a row.
So you are what are you.
Reading from all of the different signals that are being sent about this.
I mean, first of all, let's fly up to thirty thousand feet. When when Israeli officials talk about disarmament, they're actually not talking about arms. They're using that as a
¶ Disarmament, Israel as Proxy
proxy for we want a full surrender of the Palestinian people. Right in a way, if you look at this just on a factual level, this is a total humiliation for Israel. If you actually look at facts, they're demanding that Hamas give up its arms.
What arms?
Most of it is either repurposed Israeli ordinance, homemade by the Engineering Corps of Hamas Battalion's sniper rifles. They have rocket propelled grenade launchers that either were bought on the black market from Israelis or that they've manufactured within Gaza. A massive modern military that is a is a killing machine in the region, has been unable to militarily defeat
guys wearing flip flops and track suits. So on one level, this issue of disarmament, the world should sort of be saying, wait a minute, Israel's goal from the beginning has been the obliteration of Hamas and the disarmament of a Hamas. They've utterly failed to do it, even though they've killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in the process. Trump himself said that upwards of twenty thousand Cassam Brigade soldiers have
been killed. The pre war estimates were between twenty and twenty five thousand of the Casam Brigades now US officials. I think it's really interesting that when you have Kushner and witcoffin Trump talking about this issue of the weapons, they seem to understand that there is a game that Israel is playing here and that the issue isn't actually the weapons themselves.
It's a political question.
And that's why I'll go back to Hamas's position. When
¶ Disarmament Equals Palestinian Surrender
they first responded to Trump, they broke his twenty point plan into two basic parts. The first part was, we the resistance holding the Israeli captives. We have the mandate to negotiate an end of the war, the resumption of delivery of life essentials, and the issue of Israeli troop withdrawals. But these other issues are political questions. Now Trump's people could have taken a hard line and said no, it's
all or nothing, but they have it. Trump continues to misrepresent, according to Hamas's officials, what they actually said about disarmament. I suspect based on what sources within the Palestinian resistance have told me that when these discussions took place with Witkoff and Kushner, and I did speak to a source recently with direct knowledge of that conversation, what Khalil al Haya I'm told said to Witkoff and Kushner was we are open to disarmament in the context of the constitution
of a Palestinian state and a Palestinian armed force. That is not a new position, but in the same way that Hamas was asking that Trump publicly announced an end to the war without any way of validating that or keeping it accountable. I think that there were those kinds of discussions at play, and so what Trump is representing is a dramatic oversimplification of the position Hamas has taken.
But all Palestinian factions have said this clearly, armed ones, we will disarm in the context of merging our forces into a professional standing army, as has happened through history in these anti colonialist struggles.
What's fascinating to me, Jeremy, is the White House is singularly representing Hamas as the problem, but also all of their indications are that Israel is a problem.
So we have a New York Times article.
I asked if we can put it up there on the screen or edit it in post production there it
¶ Hamas's Disarmament Conditions
is the White House works to preserve Gaza deal amid concerns with Netanyahu. So not only did Steve Wikoff and Jared Kushner dispatched to Israel, but Vice President Vance is now wheels down in Tel Aviv. And apparently it's because of this. There are multiple White House officials going on background to the New York Times who say they are quote increasingly worried Netsan Yahu would dismantle the US broker disagreement.
Vice President Vance, they're now actually trying to back up the two of them to deliver a message from the White House like, hey, we need this to stay together. But what they see behind the scenes was the immediate jump, let's say, with that unexploded ordinance, where Israel immediately lied about what happened. The only reason it got ranged is because the White House said, oh, we know that is
that this wasn't a Hamas attack. We know this was unexploded ordinance, but that was a signal that this is all. This is what every single day of this is going to look like. And so with the White House trying to demand this of Netanyahu, how precarious do you see the current framework in the context of everything you just said.
I think that we should understand Israel's position in this as netnya Who and others in the government trying to figure out how to exploit this and do a strategic repositioning in the short term. I think what we're seeing is the White House saying to netnya Who, we are
¶ White House Preserves Gaza Deal
not going to allow you to blow up this deal right now, and they're essentially I mean, I think Trump was right when he said that effectively he was saving Israel from itself. They were not succeeding militarily at anything except killing enormous numbers of children, intents, and starving people. I mean, they were unable to stop the insurgency. So what I think Trump and Vance are saying to Israel right now is your agenda is still there, let us go down this path.
There's also the wild card we've discussed on this program.
Before Trump, Kushner, Witcoff's son, all of these people in the inner circle have huge business entanglements with these Gulf states. And I think that the Article five like agreement that Trump made with Katar, this mutual defense back. Now, the Saudis, you know, are are saying, wait a minute, We've spent so many years kissing the boot, and where's our agreement.
But what Trump is doing is quite interesting because I think that on one level, the greed, the business, the family connections, the security for his family businesses going forward, his legacy are causing problems for Netanyahu in the short term.
But I would say we're in a perilous situation. Israel is still in pole position with their war of annihilation Netanyah who I think they just want to kind of discipline him a little bit, get the dog to come next to you and stand at your leg, and then when you tell him he can go back and attack whatever you order him to attack. That's essentially what I see happening right now. It's very dangerous for the future of the Palestinians right.
Now, that makes sense. Yeah, so how how does this unfold from here?
Yeah?
You know, I was talking recently with some Palestinians who are very close to the negotiations, and I think from the Palestinian perspective, they want to widen the team that's negotiating this. There's some advantage to Netnya who having Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad be the negotiators at the other
end of the table. I've heard people mention, for instance, that Mustafa Bargutti, who is well known to Western audiences, a physician who speaks bluent English, goes on CNN, does not control an armed force, but has widespread recognition in Palestine and increasing popularity. He's never kicked the armed resistance under the bus from the moment October seventh started. But
¶ Trump's Transactional Approach to Middle East
he also is someone that can deal with the European Union and other Western diplomats that I think what the Palestinians want now is to widen the circle of who's negotiating. They also have to navigate the fact that Mahmudabas, the extremely elderly, decrepit and corrupt head of the Palestinian authority, is not represented of the Palestinian people. While he was blocked from coming into the US to go to the
United Nations, General Assembly. He was allowed to be on the sidelines of the Charmel Shaiks scam summit, but he wasn't a full participant. And I think that there's a way in which Israel, even though they say, oh, we don't want the Palestinian authority, they would prefer it because they've always gotten what they wanted there. So from the Palestinian perspective, I think they want as many different interests represented at the table because they feel like it is
an existential question now for the future of Palestine. From the Yahoo's perspective, he wants to have Hamas and Islamic Jihad be the representatives of Palestine. And yes, Hamas is a very popular political entity within the fabric of Palestinian society,
¶ Widening Palestinian Negotiations
but they're not the only one. It's a pluralistic society with a diversity of views. So who's going to be on this technocratic committee is a big question. Is it going to just be a kind of discussion group that's overseen by, you know, the United States for all practical purposes, the Tony Blair thing. I don't know that that's actually going to happen, but it does seem Trump's intent on this questions about who's going to constitute this so called international security force.
There was a piece in the New York Times this morning.
I think a lot of nations are really concerned about that, especially Arab nations. The populations of all of these Arab golf nations in the broader Islamic world, they're furious that their governments did.
Nothing about this. So then they're going to go and deploy, And I think that the concern.
Yeah, I agree with your skepticists, and we've talked about this before, but like they're going to deploy and then either they're going to get killed and so called friendly fire incidents by Israel, raising questions about how their nations respond, or they essentially get co opted into becoming agents of Israeli repression.
So the question of whether this is tenable is not just one.
For like, the one of the Palestinians going to agree to Trump is in bed with all of these Arab golf countries on multiple levels, personal and business of the government. And you have a very vicious, insidious net Yahoo and his team on the sidelines trying to poke at whatever Trump is doing. And then you have the Palestinians who should be the most central voice, and yet they don't allow any Palestinians to participate in a so called peace summit about Palistinites.
Crazy.
I can't move away from everything you're talking about, which is and I brought this up every day civilian administration. So, Hamas, you know the war temporarily pauses. Yes, you know they're imposing some law and order. We may not like how it looks, but that's you know, that's what how they want to do it. Yeah, they brought it in and they shot people who they accused of being collaborators. I was like, yeah, that's what happens when you have a
security vacuum. You literally blew this place and made it look like, in the words, a nuclear bomb went off. I didn't say that, Jared Kushner said that. And so what do you think is going to happen? And so the supposed civil administration, I believe all three of us are in this business literally because of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What did we all witness?
We collapsed the government, the centralized authority, they broke into warlord faction, civil wars happened. We bore the responsibility. We're asking Hamas disarmament. How is that possible? Who is going to civil administer? You guys had a story recently just highlighting the issue. You guys estimate that nearly one million of Gaza's one point one million olive trees have been destroyed, a long time sector of their economy, not to mention
just their tradition. So what is You know, the Arab nations are going to come in and do some coin counterinsurgency. It's not going to happen like so they're going to get blown up in crossfire. Not to mention unexploded ordinance. This is a war zone. How is anybody able to govern this if it is not the Palestinian Gazans themselves, which, of course the Israelis don't want to see.
And remember, even up right up until the closing hours prior to the ceasefire, Israeli forces were going on a systematic arsen campaign and attacking basic infrastructure, water treatment facilities, as well as a further flattening of residential buildings, saying that they're terrorist infrastructure. We're talking about apartment buildings that they're not. Nown So Israel still has its eye on
the goal of annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza. But the law and order, so to speak, that you're raising is a really vital question. Remember what happened when Bush and Cheney decided to overthrow Saddam Hussein's government. The most disastrous decision they made on a counter insurgency level was debathifications. They fired, you know, two hundred and fifty thousand Iraqi soldiers.
And I remember so clearly.
The late great journalist Anthony Shadid quoted an Iraqi official who had been in the Bath Party as saying, it was the day that a quarter of a million Iraqis joined the insurgency against the Americans, and you saw a massive uptick in the number of American bodies coming back.
I predict that if they try.
To de hamosify Gaza's institutions, which are largely civil institutions, including the police, including domestic intelligence, including the governance of courts and jails, et cetera, They're going to be begging for those people to come back to the work.
They will.
And so it was interesting to.
Hear Trump, although he contradicts himself the next day, but he does seem to get it. And that's why he said at the beginning. Oh, we told them that they could do this for a period. I think that they're going to realize that there are multiple faces to Hamas, and one of them is governance. They were the only governing authority that any Palestinians in Gaza knew for two decades, and under incredibly different, difficult circumstances, they managed to keep basic civilian infrastructure going.
Hamas officials have told me it.
Was it became an albatross around our neck. We're under siege, the whole place is locked down. Our popularity was dropping because of governance issues. It's not because of the armed resistance that remains the number one most popular issue along with statehood for Palestinians, but on a governance level. So if they think they're just going to blow it all up, impose some foreign force, say oh, here's a new committee, but it's not really in charge.
Who's in charge?
Is this peace board that Trump said it's going to be a disaster, And they're going to come begging those technical experts that ran the government in Gaza and also won the last democratic election and say come back in. So I think we're going to see that if they try to impose it one thing is clear of Palestine's history, they are not going to accept foreign occupation. It's just not going to happen. The question is how does it get resisted. Do we have actual recognition of Palestinian rights
or not. The world has never been more clear on what the Israeli project represents than now, and I think that was a key factor in why the Palestinian negotiators took this deal, even though it's a bad deal, because they recognize that the world is on their side. And that's why, in a way, it's more important for journalists and others to pay much more attention.
Now than at any point.
I totally agree with you.
The future is up for grads.
I completely agree because this is the post project of you know, immediate term was hostages, negotiation, ceasefire. Now it's the hard part. Yeah, did we win the war in Iraq? After mission accomplished that'? Actually when we lost the war in Iraq. That's what so many people failed to grasp. It's going to be a decade long problem.
What can I make one one last point, just something that you said there on this issue of the exchange of captives. You look at the Israelis that have been released from Hamas's captivity, and they were held during scorched earth bombing, during a starvation campaign, and I think many of them, their physical appearance did not look like what people thought it was going to look like when they came out.
You look then at the images.
Of Palestinians, you know, where medical officials are saying that organs were surgically removed, where their bodies are charred, where
¶ Post-War Gaza Governance Challenges
there's ropes around their necks, where some of them have their hands tied behind their backs.
You know, blindfolded, blindfolded.
You see in the photos the bodies are like decayed, but you can see the blind hills and round the eyes.
As we sit here in this studio in Washington, d C.
Palestinians are gathered intents in Gaza watching monitors where medical examiners are putting pictures of the bodies of Palestinians that have been returned, and they're doing close ups of the teeth or of the hands, or of the clothing that was on these people. And they're gathering intents to try to say, see is that my son whose body part I'm looking at?
You know, the sadistic nature sure of this.
Israel is holding at least seven hundred and twenty Palestinian bodies that we know of one Palestinian political prisoner.
Who died on hunger strike. His body's been held for forty five years.
They still haven't released it, but there are current indications that there are as many as one thousand, five hundred bodies in addition to that that are being held. In the context of October seventh and the aftermath Palestinian bodies, Trump talks about the sickness of what kind of sick people hold dead bodies. It's a matter of state doctrine in Israel since nineteen sixty seven to hold Palestinian bodies.
So the whole narrative.
Whether you are a maga person in this country, or you're a Democrat, or you're a leftist or you're a rightist, all of us should recognize there are two standards that are being broadcast here right now, and it's a question of like, what are our values we're denouncing the I mean, the Palestinians are desperate to get the bodies of these Israeli captives back.
This is a total liability for them. The Israelis are holding them in coolers and freezers in some cases for forty five years. Why don't we talk about that.
And real quick paceince we have here on the I want to ask you about the West Bank because actually there was a video just this week of a man was killed in the West Bank and it was his wife or some family member kind of battled the IDF soldiers there to like grab his body, and Palestinians successfully prevented the Israelis from taking the body out of ambulance and back into Israel forty eight. But on Monday we also saw this viral video filmed by Jasper Nathaniel Graydon.
We had him on our show yesterday, reporter who captured an image that is becoming kind of the masked face of Israel, which is this like thug settler with his with a giant stick over his head beating an elderly woman.
And today Hen Mazig, I.
Don't know if I'm pronouncing his name right, one of the Israeli propagandists out there, he reports Israeli Deputy Commissioner
¶ Hamas's Role, World's View
Moshe Pinche sent a message to other commanders ordering them to find and stop an Israeli man who had attacked and seriously injured an elderly Palstadian woman in the West Bank who had been out harvesting olives. He added, quote an image that kept me from sleeping. We will not be like our cruel enemies, unquote, and then he adds, this is the kind of moral clarity we need to
maintain even through the darkest times. This is accountability. So is actually responding to the images of this violence, which is highly unusual. But what do you make of them getting off there, took us here and saying they're going to actually do something about this. What would you say about the moral clarity that's alleged here.
The last two years of Israeli conduct has dramatically given lie to this mantra repeated by Democrats and Republicans that it's the only democracy in the Middle East. There's actually nothing democratic at all about Israeli society when you have, on the one hand, the stealing of people's land, the brutal beating and killing of Palestinians as you try to steal their land, the denial of full rights to people even that you say are your citizens who happened to
¶ Captive Exchange Double Standards
be Palestinian. So you know, the the the entire project has been exposed as a lie. But what I would say is even when Israel gets caught on camera and caught on film, the actual accountability when it happens is minimal. You know, you had people who were filmed raping Palestinian prisoners and their defense in court that their lawyer offered was that it was they needed to rape him because it was self defense. You know, and and and you know,
the Biden administration repeatedly got played on this. They would stand there at the State Department of Oh, well, Israel is doing an investigation. It never goes anywhere. There's never any actual consequences. What I would say about this beating video though, the Palestinian woman who was getting you know, beaten with a club for committing the crime of farming while Palestinian, is that what happens when we don't have
video there. Yeah, that that's actually what matters, because when you hear, if you listen to Palestinians and what happens to them at the hands of the government in forest and backed settlers, it's it's an astonishing crime that has
played out for decades. And you know, this is why so many Arab and Islamic states wanted this term in the Trump Plan, saying that there won't be any annexation of the West Bank, and then it was taken out the night before by you, Durmer and others meeting with Whitcoff because I think that is the agenda moving forward.
You know that that speech in the kanesset of Trump was like watching a reverse Nuremberg trial where instead of facing justice, the criminals gather together and they congratulate each other.
Uh.
The the the guest of honor who should have been there was Joe Biden, who you know, the difference between Biden and Trump is Biden was a committed Zionist ideologue.
Trump is transactional. You know.
Trump will pay lip service to Marriam Adelson and the agenda of Zionism.
It's you know, it's it's funny to him.
Yeah, It's almost like he's saying, like, can you believe these fools? Believe me?
It's sort of like the famous quote about Carl Rove talking about the Evangelicism night, you know, where it's basically they reckoned that they could get them as a as a voting block, you know, with the radical rise of the radical religious right. In a way, I think that's kind of how Trump is toward Israel. I don't think he cares one way or the other. I don't think he's actually like a committed Zionist in.
A political sense.
Committed Biden's entire career was that. So Trump's like, Okay, well, we'll let them burn the place down after they blow up the ceasefire. But it had to do with his own uh, you know, transactional political real estate, all.
Of these other things. Oh well, yeah, Mary Madelson is telling me I need to do this. Oh yeah, well she's got sixty billion in the bank. I okay, if I will that, yeah do.
Biden, though committed Zionist his whole career, defending Israel at its worst constantly.
Yeah.
He said that a Jew in the world would not be safe if Israel didn't exist, which is a slap in the face to our country that still enrages me. So you're the preest day, Yeah, I know, I mean what, that's such an insane thing to say.
Eight million people in the country not say.
Literally, yeah, we're not saving exactly.
¶ West Bank Violence, Israeli Accountability
And now we have Anthony blink In. I'm not sure. I'm sure he saw this.
John Kirby is now at David Axel Rods Institute for politics. Jake Sherman's at Harvard. These people had no consequence. It's icky. Yes, I abologized, Jake Sullivan is over at Harvard. I mean, these people paid no price. And I think that's what so personally black pilling is. I saw that happen with Iraq, and I said, Okay, it won't happen again, right like in my own lifetime.
But it did happen again, and yeah and again.
You know, I think that on these questions, we cannot let the Biden people off the hook.
There's a huge yes.
Trump allowed the Israelis to put forward a narrative of lies to blow up that January ceasefire deal. March second, they reimposed the Speege siege, and then March eighteenth they begin the terror bombings again. Now they've brought it back
to the to the so called ceasefire. But Biden's people, including Matt Miller, the former State Department spokesperson, have acknowledged that they allowed Israel to blow up ceasefire deals because they were afraid if they were too hard on them that it would ruin their chances to get a ceasefire deal.
I mean, if you think about the logic there but I would again, I would draw a difference between the Kushners and the wit Coughs of the world, who I think, in their own way are sort of cold, callous, vicious characters when it comes to how they're approaching Palestine and the Biden people. There was ideology at the center of
the Biden people regarding Israel. With Trump's people, it's it's it's kind of like a Walmart, you know, like they're they're they're really this is just about like how much crap can we, you know, sell to get what we want to get those profits. And I think again, we should never forget that it was the Biden people that let this go on, that facilitated the entire thing. There never would have been that January deal had it not
been for Trump's intervention. No matter how much the matt Iglesiuses or others of the world want to try to pretend Biden's people sealed that deal, they didn't what Biden brought.
He should be remembered as the butcher of Gaza.
But Biden's legacy should be he was the butcher of Gaza.
And it was as simple the whole time. Jeremy, how did the ceasefire happen this final one. They met with Hamas in a room. It's not difficult meet with them. Kushner that I brought it up in the first Trump term exactly. It's one thing that I do give the temp administration credit for. Although they kind of they screwed the Palestinians on the eedon Alexander, you know, exchange the American Israeli soldier who was released, and they were supposed to be Trump calling for an end of the war
and resumption of aid. But I give them credit for sitting down and talking with Hamas. And this is the dangerous thing, and it's the broader lesson we can end on, I guess anytime. And it's why at Dropsite we believe in speaking to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic jihad. It's because anytime you speak with people that you're told or the enemy, you're going to learn something about what motivates them, what
drives them. And if we really want to resolve conflict or we want to end these wars, you it is imperative that you be willing to hear the perspective of the other side. Otherwise you have what Israel is, which is just an annihilationist agenda, a serial killer masquerading as a nation state.
But if we want to hold ourselves to a higher standard, it means you talk to everybody. So I'm that strand of Trump, of Trump's policy, I think it's something that should become part.
Of the US perspective on resolving conflict. Or you have to.
Speak to people that you that you claim to be fighting against or that are being characterized as terrorists, particularly when it's in the service of another country.
Yeah, especially, absolutely right. Don't let anybody shame you. You talk to whoever you want to, even if they're literally terrorist.
I've got to talk to you.
Yeah, yeah, that's right, You're.
Right, you know.
I'll end on this note.
Similarly, I remember I ate all the propaganda about North Korea. Then I met some of the people who were analysts who had met with the North Koreans and they explained their perspective.
I go, yeah, I'm not giving my nukes up either.
Obviously, I'm like, what of course I'm I was like, I'm not trusting these people for one second. I heard what they said at the negotiation table about Goddafi to Mike Pompeo's face, and I was like, yeah, I'm on Piong Yang side here man, Like you know, I'm never given these up. So that's a perfect example of what you're talking about. Jeremy, thank you so much for dropping by. I always love talking to you man. Thank you very much to be with you guys.
Thank you.
Turning down to the economy, we've been trying to stick to this as much as we can, the two tiered
¶ Biden vs. Trump Israel Stance
economy where people, Yes, the S and P five hundred record high just yesterday, gold record high. So if you have some of those assets, you're doing well. But beneath the surface and behind the scenes, a lot of stuff happening for people who are making less than one hundred thousand dollars.
Just go and put this up here on the screen.
Lower income Americans are missing car payments, so more Americans are struggling to make monthly car loan payments. Assigned that the lower income consumers are undergrowing financial pressure. The share of subprime auto loans that are sixty days or more pass has narrowly a high of six point five percent and has lingered near that level.
Repos have swelled.
More drivers are trading in vehicles that are worth less than they owe, meaning that they're upside down, and lenders such as CarMax and Ally Financial have warned investors about auto loan.
And performance quote.
Despite stubborn inflation and punishing tariffs, the US economy, on its surface appeared to hold up relatively well. The stock market has climbed, companies executives for the most part, remain upbeat, and consumers overall are still spending, but it's largely those top ten percent consumers which are The weakness is that the auto market is one of the clearest indications that lower and middle class income families could be starting to buckle,
because many Americans need cars to get around. Auto loan delinquency is a tel engage of financial.
Hardship, essentially a good proxy, right.
It's like one of the last things that you're going to go bust on is repossessions. I'm not sure I'm not the only one, but videos of repo men literally go viral all the time, and it does feel maybe it's algorithmic. I'm not sure my own personal bias, but I do certainly see them go everywhere, and I think it combined that with some of the other sides, particularly with the Stegram we're going to do later on with
David Day. And the real risk to our economy right now, Ryan is that you know, if you're already making less than a hundred thousand, like you're basically not bust, but you're really struggling. And if fifty percent of all consumer spending and just from the top ten percent, a slight pullback in that is just enough to send us into a recession.
Yeah, and what you said is exactly right.
If you lose your car, and yeah, you can't do anything, like you know, there's a small percentage of people live walkable enough that they can get to work et cech A. That's not that's not the situation, right, like a massive portion of Americans.
And so.
If so when you start struggling, yeah, you your rent is the thing you stop paying first, maybe because it's much harder to get evicted. And then then your credit card, your student loans, definitely you're not paying those. What are they going to do take your take your degree back? Eventually? You but you keep paying the things that you need, and you need your car when you and then when you stop paying that and then now you're dodging the
repo man. And if you lose your car, then you're you know, bumming rides to work, you might lose your job. You're So that's why the being counter is look at this number because through all of that pain and suffering is an economic indicator, which is that if people are falling behind on their car payments, that means everything else is going really badly.
That's well, that's exactly right.
There's another metric I track very closely. Let's go and put here up on the screen. When I saw this, I said, sell everything, because this is this is the biggest indicator of impending economic disaster. The number of people who registered to take the l SAT in September twenty twenty four was eighteen thousand, eight hundred and eleven. The number of people who registered to take it in September twenty twenty five is thirty two thousand, one hundred and seventy.
So let's explain, shall we.
What it is is that in anybody who is my age is just old enough to remember this is back in the Great Reception, you lived through this ryne. You were aftering the job market at that time. If you entered the job market between nine and twenty twelve, you were dead right you're basically entering one of the worst wage job markets of all time. So what a lot of people did, especially those who graduated let's say in nine, is they said, Okay, screw it, I'm just gonna have to.
Go to law school. I'm gonna have to business school.
Yes, I'm gonna have to leverage myself with some debt, but hopeful things will have cleaned up. I'll have gained a credential in the meantime. It's kind of a stopgap measure for a lot of people. It's nice if you can afford it, but it's definitely bad if you're taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans.
Just to add to that.
In and you go on, let's say you graduated in five, You've been working for two three years, right, you just got laid off, and you're staring at now years of unemployment. Like there was this whole thing back then what they call the ninety nine ers, people who would exhaust ninety nine weeks of unemployment.
Uh.
And so you're like, well, I could sit around and just suffer because like there's not you know, it's an extraordinary amount of suffering.
It has to be looking for work.
It's it's an assault on your dignity as well as your finances. And so you're like, well, if I'm going to be sitting around for three years anyway, might as well at least try to come out with a credential that can make me more employable down the line.
Yeah.
And actually, what we saw is that the number of people who took the alsat actually dropped after the economy started to get better. So it is one of those like very good indications about how people are doing. And eventually as the economy got better, so let's say to twenty.
Twelve, it fell even more precipitously.
But the fact that it has such a large spike is genuinely one of those like two thousand and nine to two, it's the exact same thing. I'm looking right here at the statistics substantial jump of some twenty to forty percent in law school applications just in the two thousand and nine to twenty ten school year. So this is the same number if you look at what that is almost double actually, so very similar metric.
It just goes to show you at the lower.
Level of the job market, there is a crushing feeling of this isn't going to get better, and so I might as well just take out some debt and deal with it.
I will also add, though, this.
May be one of the worst times to do it, because not only do we have AI which is on the horizon, but also, you know, for people who are out there, please pay very attention to the law.
So there's something called a grad plus loan. Are you where what that is? Yeah?
Right?
So previously cap no exactly. So previously this grad plus loan was one of the most used student loan federal programs for medical students and for law students. Now, the United States Congress in the recent legislation has capped that at fifty thousand, and so there are some schools I recently saw statistics that for the very first year ever.
I think it's Santa Clair. I need to check which law school.
They had their tuition at seventy thousand, but then the law change and they changed to fifty.
I was like, oh, interesting, interesting, the seventy was kind of fixed.
Say, all right, so there are two options that are right now. Is that one is that, yes, maybe law school prices will drop.
I am deeply hopeful for that.
Personally, I think we should make the grad plus own zero and then we'll really see what the market rate for law school is. My guess is a couple thousand dollars. But the real like change here.
Could be the Yales, the Harvard's.
Let's say, any in a T T fifteen top twenty five law school, any of those, they're not going to change. People are going to get leverage no matter what, whether it's grad plus or not. That's where I get scared, you know, for people is that they'll not only even have access to grad plus on I have to get a private loan.
Private loan is.
Going to have a user's interest rate right now, and you could really get stuck in a deep pull and you're basically banking on an entire career that works out when you have a technology environment right now where you just don't know. I mean, again, I'm not a lawyer. I know a lot from what I know. AI has not come yet. There's still a lot of guild checks
in the system. But I can't be the only person who says, hey, you know, especially the lawyers who I grew up with their first two three years in the industry, it was bullshit. It was like, you know, document review, it was doc review, it was working. They would when the partners went to bed, that's when you started to work and you have to do your research and make sure that the footnotes are I mean, it's like investment banking.
It's just pure scut work.
And that's one of those where that I'm fairly certain chat GPT could do or at the very least you could use it to check your work and then come but the workload is going to be much much less. So that's where I really start to worry, you know, first, especially with the doctor view. Oh yeah, I mean that's the definition of automated right right, yeah.
The hopefully I mean, don't put a value judgment on it. There are so many like fake cases that seem to have been seeded into the world. I don't know if like Thompson Reuters or like some other of these companies that you have to pay to get access to their cases, are like genuinely like seeding the world with like fake cases the way that like hippies would put like a
spike in a tree. Something's going on that is putting in all of these made up, completely hallucinated cases that then ais are then writing into their memos that they're writing, and judges are coming down hard on them.
Say oh this is this is clearly AI. You're sanctioned, you're fined.
So at least you will need humans to like read the AI briefs and then actually go and check the cases to see if it's not illusive.
Well you should be checking it anyways.
I can't tell you the number of times I'll use
¶ Lower-Income Financial Strain
check GPT for research and I'm like, wait, that's wrong.
I mean, like I know that that's wrong, right, It's one of those wheys.
And then I'll say hey, that's wrong, and they're like, oh, you're right, it is wrong.
If you work it like Thomson Reuters or one of these other places, reach out to me because oh yeah, actually that would be a great story. And if I were them, I would do it. Oh absolutely, yeah, absolutely, you know why not.
Be like business And Jenni versus Groom is powerful Supreme Court case and you can put it somewhere where the AIS will crawl it, but nobody else can find it.
Yeah.
My dream is to get my name attached to a landmark case on marijuand and Jedti versus the United States and Jenny versus the state of Colorado.
So my name can live forever.
All right, let's go and put this one up here on jed Ji Yeah, the Miranda rights and Jenni right in Jeddi Wright too. There was actually a huge case here in Washington, d C. Where a woman sued her neighbor for smoking weed and one actually and one she is my personal hero right now. So the home sellers now outnumber buyers by more than five hundred thousand.
That is the largest gap ever recorded. So yeah, you know, things are scary.
And the reason why this scares me is the price still has not adjusted. Ryan, So even though the sellers are out numbering the buyers, the law of elasticity would tell you that the price should come down. Price is not going down, right, it's actually staying flat. In some cases in the big metro areas, they're going up, which I just don't understand. I don't know how it's possible. But there's something where I have said now this entire time, it feels like it has to crack, but it doesn't.
And I think that's what scares me the most is we've lived through these crazy times now since June of twenty twenty it's been five years. More than five years of an insane housing market doesn't sound that long. Let's say if you're sixty, if you're my age and you're thirty three, that's.
A long time.
I wasn't even married with a child five years ago. Right, Your life can change rapidly in five years. Let's say you're twenty eight years old, You're right around that time where you're like, yeah, you know, I'm thinking about it. Oh, seven percent interest rate, terrible housing market.
I can't afford it. I don't have the savings.
Let's say I'm either getting laid off or I'm not getting the raise that I thought I was going to get. Inflation is eating away at my bottom line. Those are the people I think about the most right now.
And I think what you're looking at there is a standoff. And I think, and this is the reason that you're not seeing the prices crash. Yet you have most of those sellers there have some type of three percent interest rate that they're sitting on, and so their monthly payment very low is something that they can afford as long as they're staying employed, and so.
They can wade out the buyers.
Buyers are looking at a seven eight percent interest rate, which sends your monthly mortgage costs, you know, absolutely through the roof, which changes the amount of house that you can then buy. So if you're a seller and you're selling on your three percent mortgage, now when you go to buy a new home, you're going to.
Have to take out this eight percent level.
So there's that huge gap, and so people are staring at that and saying, you know what, I need a
¶ Law School Surge & AI Impact
lot more money to be able to get an equal house. And the person's like, well, why would I give you that much money? When no, I mean it makes it's perfect. It's two people just staring at each other. And I think the only way this breaks I guess eventually the force of like economic decline could do it because enough people just can't make their payments anymore. But really, interest rates have to move, yes, that's right, Like you can't.
They're just crazy world of where you have three and eight, Like the buyers at eight and then the sellers at three, Like trying to find a place where they can meet in the middle is proving to be impossible.
Like that's why you're seeing this record. That's such a good point.
Yeah, and a lot of people are stuck in houses that they don't even want to be in. I know a lot of them. They have like three children, and they're like, I'm not moving. I can't afford it. I literally cannot afford to move. Let's go and put the next one up on the screen. This is we wanted to bring it back to the shutdown. There is in fact a shutdown happening, by the way, if anybody's forgotten, it's.
Actually fourth week if the shutdown.
Not that anybody cares, apparently, And so these Obamacare prices were the things that the Democrats really were zeroing in on. And there's spend new public reporting now of these higher prices that are now actually revealed in over a dozen states. It says consumers are now facing greater costs for their twenty twenty six ACA health coverage as Congress continues to debate whether to extend subsidies that help people afford their premium.
So health insurance prices for next year under the Affordable Care Act now available. The annual enrollment period for Obamacare starts on November first. The costs are becoming publicly available piecemeal through state marketplaces. People shopping for coverage can now preview the costs they face from potentially expiring subsidies sharply rising premiums in many markets, including California, New York, Nevada, Maryland, and Idaho. Man California, New York. What that's a huge
portion of the entire US population. Based on newly published information, a family of four making one hundred and thirty thousand dollars in Maine would face an increase of sixteen thousand dollars in annual premiums just next year because they would no longer qualify for generous subsidies. And that is from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. That's devastating. Sixteen thousand dollars. That's after tax income.
First, that's that's one of those where you read and you're like, that can't be right, right, that has to be wrong.
It's huge, an increase of sixteen thousand dollars. And like you said, after tax income.
So the family for making one hundred and thirty one hundred and thirty, I guess.
Technically tax it up whatever. I'm not on accountant, but still, yeah, yeah, yes, you can write that off. That's true, but your income is not.
You know, you're actually income is going to be more like one hundred, even though you can write a.
Lot of that off.
But that's brutal, and so what people, so's what's interesting here. Let me read something from a related report which says, so the expiration of enhanced tax credits will lead to out of pocket premiums for ACA marketplaces. Role is increasing by an average of more than seventy five percent. This is the doubling that you keep hearing about. So they're guessing that won't be a complete and total doubling, which ensures with insurers expecting healthier enrollees to drop coverage, that
in turn increases underlying premiums. So, just to make sure everyone's clear on what's going on here, we're going to double the price almost of these exchanges. A lot of people are going to look at that sixteen thousand dollars price tag that they're facing for next year, and they're going to say, I can't afford that. It's not even a choice of whether or not I want to buy this. I don't have the money for it, so I'm just dropping.
Health insurance insurers have already gained that out. They know that they're estimating two million for next year and then increasing as it goes on. Okay, so it's the healthiest people who are the most likely to say, you know what, I just I'm not family is going to have to go no insurance this year. And so if you lose the healthy people from the pool, you then have to
charge everybody else more. So, not only are you losing the subsidy which is driving the price up to seventy five percent they're estimating then they're already forecasting two regulators that they're going to raise the underlying price by twenty percent. Yeah, that is a year over year increase that is utterly unsustainable and insane.
Right, twenty percent in one year. It's horrible.
But you know, I keep coming back to what Crystal said with Corbin Trent.
Which is a devastating point. This is the devastating point.
The whole fight is we can't afford to go back to normal Obamacare. Well, if this is normal Obamacare, this sucks. It's like I said, ay time, Yeah, it's like this is horrible.
This is horrible.
The only reason people signed up were because of pandemic era subsidies for health insurance, and now that it's reverting back from people.
Were like woah, woah.
I'm like, I didn't know that this is what the normal program was. And that's actually kind of a Republican talking point, which is not incorrect. It's like, if this was the normal marketplace, then what the hell are we doing here?
One hundred. I mean I got some of these older figures.
I got a in Kentucky, a sixty year old couple make eighty five thousand will face an increase of twenty three thousand and seven.
They make you will make eighty seven thousand, and there increases a quarter of the twenty three seven hundred.
I'm rolling the dice.
Don't get medicare, I mean personally right, if you're health healthy, I'm like, let's let's roll the dice. Don't take any buses, don't don't go on across.
And that's what they that's what they expect people will do. So and so costs are going to go through the roof. The best thing that people said about the ACA at the time was well, this is the first step, and they'll fill it in with subsidies. And then they did, and now they let them go. Now you have to fight to get them back. Yes, it's it's utterly absurd.
It's outrageous, and it shows why you need universal coverage because without universal coverage, the healthiest people aren't in it, and then everybody else, everybody else pays more.
So Yeah, the politics play an interesting role here.
Yeah, this is really what I want your opinion on because it does look like the Senate Democrats are going to cave.
Right, because so think so if you're just listening to this, This is Andrew Destorio, steal reporter saying, are Senate Dems eyeing November first as a shutdown off ramped m think they can argue it's no longer feasible to address the expiring ACA subsidies legislatively and make GP own the resulting premium mics.
No decision yet this idea is picking up steam.
So in other words, saying, okay, well, the exchanges open up for business on November first, and this is what we're fighting for. So if we get past November first, we can then save face and say, okay, look we tried. We tried to save Republicans from themselves. We tried to stop Republicans from doubling your health insurance costs. They refused, Now they're doubled. It's done, let's open the government up. Like so that's and then.
You've had.
Was it Thoon yesterday saying I will negotiate, you know, And what Republicans have been saying is we will negotiate around these subsidies, but we won't do it with a
¶ Housing Market Standoff
gun to our head, which is hilarious because it's like the exact reverse of what the parties said during the last shutdown. There is no principle in process ever, like don't don't If anybody claim that they believe in a process, they're lying.
They don't. They just believe in the outcomes.
So in the previous case, it was Democrats who said, why can't you negotiate with the government open?
Because Biden was president?
Yes, now it's Republicans saying why can't you negotiate with the government because Trumps Trump is pressed and that's all that matters. So Democrats can say, all right, look we tried. And also from a cynical perspective, Schumer Schumer's personally, but Democrats in general, they are personally. You know what, if Trump wants to hurt twenty million people and let the whole country know that he's doing it to them, then let him do it, then let him do it and we'll reap the political.
Yeah, but then why did you shut the government down for a month two?
Because nobody would have known otherwise, like they would have gotten their increase and been like, oh this is terrible, but like life sucks. Now they can say, look, we told you Trump was doing this, We fought for you.
Trump fights against you.
That check your writing, remember Donald Trump's name while you're writing it.
I mean, that's their theory.
I could see it. It's just a little week for me. It's like, if that's the political calculus, then keep the government shut down. Okay, I mean because again you know, and Crystal's made this point, I'm sure you agree with it if you ask those No Kings people. Yeah, there's going to be some signs about Obamacare. That's not what they're mad about, right, They're mad about Ice. They're mad about all this other stuff going on. Right, So for them,
they're like, screw you, why should I fund you? You think these ICE agents aren't getting paid fine by me?
Right?
You know, for a lot of them, they're saying, there's no reason to fund this government. It make their life a little bit more difficult. Force them to do stupid shit, like I don't know, firing an artillery shell, if that explodes over the city of Los Angeles, I mean, if I'm a damn I'm gonna take that all day long.
Right.
Yes, it's very painful for a lot of the for the federal workers, et cetera. But you know, it's ponds have to be played in the field of battle.
Romer Democrats is that Republicans only have to peel off a few and they're good.
Okay, So yeah, Democrats as.
A leader ship can want whatever they want. But if Republicans can get a couple, I don't know.
We'll see. Like, but November first is you know, it's still a ways away. Yeah, all right, well we'll see. We'll see. Ryan, I'm very curious.