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Good morning, and welcome to Breaking Points. I was last week.
Last week.
It was so sad without your end, but we all managed to get through. I think more people are curious how you were last week.
Was good time, Good time was had.
Apparently some Epstein's news dropped while I was gone here.
Ryan was in Cancun at Fish shows as the Epstein files were being released.
I felt bad texting you, Oh, I.
Was loving it.
I was loving it. It added to it, it did, Yeah, I mean, because this is.
It's not a tropical vacation without learn for people who are genuinely curious about how the world works and who the people are who run this world.
This is like, this is the moment that the window is actually open.
It's so unbelievable.
And that's and Mac was just telling us that we've had hundreds of new premium subscribers over the last couple of days, and I think that's because we've been covering this honestly from the beginning, and it's such a disorienting mess of a story because there's so much active disinformation that gets pumped out into it. Yes, and you want to know what's true, what's not, what matters, what doesn't, and like we're trying to actually be honest about it not and we don't care who it offends.
Right, not trying to smooth the edges of the story out or anything like that. So you can get a pretty subscription at Breakingpoints dot Com.
Appreciate it. If you do, you can go sign up there.
Otherwise, just follow us, you know, subscribe on YouTube to get us in your feed and wherever you get your podcasts. It's very helpful. But this has been to your point of watershed. We yeah, I mean it's been like we've got the drip drip coming out for a couple of years now, but nothing like the geyser of the last several days.
And while we're on the subject of gratitude for viewers who are making this possible, I was thinking, you know, Mexico watching fish, it's a good time for contemplation, and I was thinking about how last year we didn't go to the show because my wife had just gotten out of the hospital with complications from chemo, which is damn
near killed her. And to think that now, like a year later, we're back on the beach and like celebrating it, and like throughout that whole thing, you guys were so cool about like missing shows, being late like that was that was really that was really moving. So I just really appreciate that and also my mother in law to like watch the kids the whole time.
Big thank you to Virginia.
That's so so And now I'm recharged ready to go get these Epstein goons.
So in a way, it was great timing perfect. You were recharging your battery just as the world needed our super soldier Ryan grim Most.
Yeah, well, we have said we have a lot to get through today. We're going to start actually with Epstein because the drip drip is continuing. But also what's important is putting the pieces of the puzzle together, and there are a few people.
Better Quip to do that than Ryan Grimm. So we're going to.
Start loving reporting on this.
I've been addicted, you've been You've been going through it like a pro.
It's addicting.
I mean, the Epstein library is addicting on the DOJ's website, which is a weird thing. You don't not many people get addicted to the DOJ's website.
But you can also now go through jmail.
We have all of the latest volume eleven up on Gmail dot world, which is project with drop side.
So I find that even more addicting because it's like being in the sims.
Right and you can and you can then like see the ones that came right before it, and you can put it in time and yes, the articles it links to links to the articles.
It's yeah, it's a technological feat. It's very very cool. Yeah, so folks should also go there.
If we put we put in for a pulletzer like they wanted to do it. I was like, you want to understand that the pulitzer is housed in Columbia, right, Like, we're.
Not getting a pullet. We deserve one. Yes, you like, if it was a fair fight, we would get one. Yeah.
It's the most innovative journalistic project I think ever on a massive data set. Uh, and it's the biggest story in the world, so it deserves it. I was like, I'm not sure if you followed the news around Columbia University lately.
It's not happening.
Don't think they're doing it in Epstein Pulleitzer.
No, not to drop side, definitely, not to drop side.
It's free to apply. I was like, look done hard to apply.
Yeah, no, that's true. A lot of new details to go through. So we'll start with We're then going to have Van Lathan join us once again because Renee Goods family testified in Curing yesterday.
We have clips from that.
We're going to talk about it with Van and just Democrats on the ending of the guard. So the government shutdown technically ended yesterday. The quote unquote partial government shutdown technically ended yesterday.
You probably didn't notice. Nobody noticed even in DC, nobody noticed.
Cruise right through customs yep.
Oh good point.
Yeah, So we will be talking to Van about DEM's decision when it came to reopening the government, having he joined with Republicans that sort of thing.
And the United States shot down in Iranian drone.
Yesterday, So we're going to bring the latest on that story as well. Elon Musk's X offices are being raided in Paris. Musk is now in a war of words with Spain and this is related to teen social media bans, but the raid is also related to some of those horrible images that were being created on X not You probably.
Remember when when Grock went completely Yeah, yep, groc did his thing.
We have a wild clip of Chuck Schumer about Israel, and Gaza will break down the latest new drop site reporting to talk about there, and then the Blowbok the blowback guys are here to talk about Cuba.
They were just in Cuba. Yeah.
Uh, Trump just put out an executive order declaring Cuba to be like the worst of the worst of the worst.
Did that happen while they were there?
They did?
And uh, he's pressuring Mexico not to sell oil to Cuba because somehow it is the business of the United States who Mexico sells oil to and who Cuba buys it from uh. They're trying to completely.
Send Cuba back to the seventeenth century.
So we're going to talk to Brendan and know about what conditions are.
Like there and what the what the politics are. Yeah, now and then and.
Negotiations between the US and Iran, which most people suspect the US is just buying so they can get all their assets in place and then launch an attack. But they have moved to Oman at the request of Iran. They moved from Turkey to Oman. We might even get Kushner involved in them. So we'll talk about them.
Yeah, lots to go through, all right, Let's start then with Jeffrey Epstein. Melinda Gates was on NPR and asked the most uncomfortable question anyone could ever ask an ex wife you.
Married one that an ex wife is probably not that unhappy to answer.
It's a little bit better than being Bill Gates's current wife, as she basically says in the clip. She's asked about the detailed Crystal and saga covered where in the files. This was in an Epstein draft to himself. Those drafts are a very bizarre hot to send. Yeah, hot, too hot for send, But it was the drafts are a
very strange window into Jeffrey Epstein's mind. And in a draft you may remember, he mentioned Bill Gates, a Russian prostitute, and procuring four Bill Gates the type of medication he would need to slip into Melinda's diet somewhere or another to prevent her from getting an STD. Yeah, so Melinda Gates was asked about this, let's roll the club.
I think we're having a reckoning as a society, right, No girl, no girl should ever be put in the situation that they were put in by Epstein and whatever was going on with all of the various people around him. No girl, I mean, it's just it's beyond heartbreaking, right. I remember being those ages those girls were. I remember
my daughter's being those ages. Right. So for me, it's personally hard whenever those details come up, right because brings back memories of some very very painful times in my marriage. But I have moved on from that. I purposely pushed it away and I moved on. I'm in a really unexpected, beautiful place in my life. So whatever questions remain there of what I don't can't even begin to know all of it. Those questions are for those people and form
even my ex husband. They need to answer to those things, not me well, and I am so happy to be away from all the muck.
The emails in the files suggest that Bill Gates had additional affairs, and that he tried to get medication to treat a sexually transmitted infection, and that he was going to give you the medicine without you knowing. His representative has said all of this is false. It is not on you to have to respond to the details of that alleged behavior. But I wonder what your dominant emotion is when you read these news articles with these details.
Sad just unbelievable sadness. Unbelievable sadness. Right, and again I'm able to take my own sadness and look at those young girls and say, my god, how did they have How did that happen to those girls?
Right?
And so for me, it's just sadness, sadness. For you know, I've left, I had, I left my marriage, I had to leave my marriage. I wanted to leave my marriage.
I had to leave the.
Fact I felt I needed to eventually leave the foundation.
So it's just sad and ren that's pretty close. To confirmation from me Linda Gates. The divorce itself was related to the Epstein allegations with Bill Gates.
And they're not allegations.
I mean, it's the confirmed relationship between Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein. Obviously there are all kinds of different allegations that circulate around that, but it's not an allegation that they that they had a significant relationship. I'm not insignificant relationship. And in that clip, the way, the question was asked by NPR, what is your dominant emotion when you hear that? As opposed to did your ex husband secretly drug you too?
Out of love?
Of course she wouldn't know.
I guess she wouldn't. But what is your dominant emotion when you hear that clip?
Maybe sad too? I'm in anger? Like what what is comebag?
I know?
Yeah, and you know she has said that she told him this. By the way, this guy is a creep, so like she didn't see him, you know, doing whatever the satanic stuff they're doing, but being around him, she was like, he's a creep. You should not be around him. And if you're keeping around him, like this is not going to work. And it's indicative of your character as well.
She was dead on. From other people who have met him, I've gotten people have said the same thing that like your creep dar like just went up in immediately, and that goes sadly to the next guy we got to talk about. We can put up c three here, one of the for a certain subset of like gen X, particular left wing people. This one has been just a body blow.
The Woodstock ninety nine crowd.
Yeah, put up if you put up a three, and before that, you know everybody everybody older than that too, Yeah, put up a three. So this is an email and people have tried to do some some cope around it, saying, well, it's not from Noam Chomsky's email, so it's maybe it's not him, and basically what he what?
What?
The one, the one that's circulating comes from one that Nome did send directly to Jeffrey Epstein, and Epstein took out some personal stuff in it and then sent it to another friend saying this is this is the advice that I got from Nome.
Now the personal.
Stuff I think actually plays into this, and maybe we can have glenn On and we can talk about this.
But let's we can move on from that for now.
But basically what he tells Epstein says, I'm getting all of his terrible press for all of these women accusing me of abusing them.
What should you know? What should I do? And this is this is twenty nineteen.
This is deep into me too, and it's I believe this is long after the Miami Herald has done the investigation into the.
Way that.
What he did in Florida was way worse than he ended up getting charged with, because what he did was extremely clever for his own rehabilitation. There were dozens of, as we've reported, dozens of victims that they could have chosen to charge him with. Yes, some as low as like fourteen. He got them to make the one charge somebody who was seventeen, which was very smart on his part because what did he immediately start doing. It was
a prostitution situation. She told me she was eighteen. Turns out she was seventeen and a half, and so many people in the elite world were willing to be like, you know what, hey, an age of consents at sixteen in some states and so and also he hangs out with the Secretary of State and former presidents and he's on the board of this and that, and he's a billionaire.
Sure it's fine. But by twenty nineteen, so even if you like allow for that that cleverness that he was able to pull off with the cost in and the Bush administration, by twenty nineteen people knew the contours of that deal and the context of it. And so what Noam Chelnsey basically tells him is do not respond it all. Like, if you respond at all, it's just going to give
the vultures. He says, you know what the vultures dearly want is a public response, which then provides a public opening for an onslaught of venomous attacks, many from just publicity seekers and cranks of all sort. And he goes on and on and so to see, because you know, some of us had our cope was Chompsky responds to everybody he has, He emails Everybody'll like, he'll speak wherever, He'll take any interview request. He has this voracious curiosity
about humanity. Epstein was funding MIT. Obviously, Chompsky wants to do what he can to like get funding from my t so you could like you can get there and be like, look, but to see the level of emotion that he had in his relationship with Epstein, knowing that so many other people who met him or like, this
guy's creep. It's uh sitting. It doesn't mean that he participated in any of the any of the sordid stuff, which and I've been consistent on that, Like people want to cancel every single person who's on an email with Epstein, but I don't think that's fair.
He emailed thousands of people.
The people that need to be face accountability and shame are the ones that participated, knew about and didn't say anything or knew about and participated in what he was doing.
We know, at least Chomsky had a.
Very close relationship with him, and we know that he was a creep and that it was easy to tell that, and we know that he's telling him, he's guiding him how to overcome this.
Like wall of allegations.
It's rather odd to see deference given to a billionaire supporter of the global intelligence state as well. Right, So, like it's one thing if Epstein had been a sort of left aligned billionaire and I mean and I don't mean Democrat, like obviously he was a dem donor and he was close.
With the labor wing of Israel.
Yeah, we can put a two up on the screen. Yeah, labor wave of Israel.
But a two is the news yesterday from the House side, the Clintons have broken an agreement to be questioned on camera to avoid those contempt of Congress charges that it looked like they were barreling head on into.
Just a couple of weeks ago, and they sent.
That letter and said, no, this is all We're not doing it. They're not going to pull Steve Bannon and go to prison for defying the subpoena. They're not going to be on camera. But that's a reminder that again it's why of all of all the billionaires who have gnom Chomsky's deference and trust and support.
Epstein's a non choice, but the worst one. It's a non choice, like who else you got?
It's going to be worse than that.
It's a weird one.
Yeah, and it gives throwing it to rail the entire show.
Chomsky was a an anarchist, and in the time that I was coming up, actual socialism had been somewhat significantly discredited on the left because of the collapse of the Soviet Union and a lot of like American The American idea in the late eighties nineties about communism was not that it was this bulwark against American imperialism and like an and a like vehicle for the rise of the
working class. It was like this was a sclerotic, authoritarian thing, and that gave purchase to anarchism to really take hold in like the nineties and early two thousands as an alternative that radicals could glom onto. And you always had the socialists and communists saying that's fake, that's just that's just gloss over liberalism. And it allows them to say I told you so, because the answer to how could
he align himself with somebody like this would be so interesting? Well, it's actually it really was just glossed over liberalism.
That's so interesting. A four. Let's put a four up on the screen.
This is an Epstein email to Peter Teal where Ryan This gets into a lot of the drop site reporting here. Epstein, February twenty eight, twenty sixteen. As you probably know, this is to Peter Teal, I represent the Ross Childs. I was hoping to figure out a way for the bank that has one hundred and sixty b and management can do something in tech best client lists in the world, prehistoric products.
It can wait. Good luck in China.
This is like a poem, like a sick pome. I'll be in Europe again twenty twenty eight, then island. So if you want to come around the world going west dot, come to the island dot. Or if you would like to meet in Saudi at the end of the month question mark and then Teal says, certainly, not in Saudi.
I think I will would the Middle East for the next decade or so.
Should be back on East Coast in late April May sometime in NYC or on island.
Then dot dot dot.
Lovely they have us hanging here in suspense. But Ryan Dropsite has done a deep investigation into the Epstein Rothschild's connection.
Right yeah, so people can go read that.
That's Arianda Rothschild, who herself is a fascinating character because she's not a Rothschild, just from Central America, married into the family and then became the first kind of married in person to run the bank. And she developed a very close relationship with Epstein, which she denied, but which our original.
Emails showed not true at all.
This further tightens it and shows that he was using his linkage with her and the bank to try to appeal to Teal.
Here that's twenty fifteen.
One thing I was proud of from this weekend that I had a nice scoop before we hit the tarmac, which was we found this three and a half hour conversation between sin Ahood Barack and Laurence Summers that was huge and pulled a piece out of it where he is telling ad Barack, who's still Minister of Defense. So this was February of twenty thirteen. He didn't leave the
ministry until March of twenty thirteen. But so he's plotting, like what his next move is going to be, and Epstein is like, you should be on the board of this company called Palanteer.
He spells it for him, incorrectly, spells it incorrectly.
It's like traitors where they write the names. And then that's all I could think of it.
And then Barack spells it back to make sure he's got it.
Right, and gets it right no and yes, yes, even though it's been way off when Epstein spelled it and then they asked him to spell Teal. He gets that wrong. At one point Andres and Horowitz he gets that wrong. Meanwhile, but he's Meanwhile, Sommers is there and he tells that He's like, who's Andres and Horowitz. He's like, oh, Larry's an advised with him. He gets a million dollars a year from them just to give them advice. Larry can't even be like, I'll be spelled it wrong. So after
that Teal Epstein invests heavily in Peter Teal's companies. Twenty twenty four, Palenteer and Israel strike up strategic agreement. Trump basically has a strategic agreement with Palenteer. Now, so this is interesting to see the kernels of this, this relationship starting to bloom.
And from all of the reporting you've done on Ahood Barack, what then, big picture geopolitical significance would you or how would you describe the relationship in that context? What does it mean that they were forming that bond at that time?
Ahu Barack played a well he goes back to Iran contract. Yeah, as you're learning in this book that and when are both reading now on Profits of War by Ari Ben Minsh. Barack comes up there in a bunch, but so he goes back to early which Epstein was also involved in, but after he leaves office and twenty thirteen he tries to come back. In twenty eighteen nineteen Epstein dying, I think the rails helped to derail has come back into politics.
He played a central role in the creation or the advent and the expansion of Israel's cyber weapons in cybersecurity industry. Barack is on all of these keyboards. It became his thing, and it was Epstein who guided him toward this thing and telling him like, these people like Teal and these other these are the this is the future, and you need to be a major part of it, and you
can open the doors. You can then be the one that can sell you know, you can build relationships with African countries, with Asian countries around the world to help these Israeli companies get in. And because Barack had been at the center of Israeli intelligence for so long, he had those relationships. So Epstein played a central role in the expansion of the surveillance state, global surveillance state that we have today and that continues to expand.
So this is one of the things that I've been going through the last like forty eight hours is mentioned in the files of the NSSA. And this is really interesting actually in the bigger contexts that you just mentioned. Epstein was obsessed with the idea that you can use NSA style decryption on human cells, and so he was engaged in this project. And maybe we can talk about this next week or something. But where he's trying, he's
asking people to hook him up with Israeli hackers. I'm looking at one email right now to this guy who's at the Gates Foundation at the time, Boris Nikolic, who says, Jeffrey Epstein says, let's think up NSSA types for Washington meeting. All these mentions, where do you have contacts at NSA? Can you find me the best codebreaker NSSAY type. I mean,
it's just like over and over again. And that's really interesting that he was helping a Hubarak build the Israeli surveillance state and then looking to mine codebreakers at the American surveillance state for his science.
Like he had these what's the right We're like these almost like millenarian ideas about technology, like he can bring about.
Right, and unusually he brought it about. I've seen a lot of people who've watched his interview with either listen to that conversation or they watch his interview with Bannon and they're like, Oh, this guy is just this owner who's just like high flutint and ideas, but he's actually a dummy. And I would just strongly encourage people to give that analysis a second thought. This guy, this is not a dummy. This is a guy who can explain
and understand extraordinarily. He can take extraordinary complex systems, whether it's global finance, global politics, science and medicine, surveillance, global surveillance, he can he can understand them intuitively and then he can explain them in a way that allows you to understand them. That is an extremely rare quality in somebody that is not a dummy, that is that is not somebody just sitting around pontificating. And man's plaining like, don't under don't underestimate this guy.
That's what I would say.
Well, one person who was not charmed by Jeffrey Epstein is Norman Finkelstein.
Let's put this one up a five. Oh my gosh, Ryan, this is a great email.
This is fun. So yeah, what's so the context here?
You've got some reporters who are kind of reaching out for comment right about Dershowitz and and Epstein. Norman Norman Finkelstein twenty fifteen responds, My guess is, if Epstein put your daughter at age fifteen in such a position, you wouldn't publicly describe him as a quote friend and person of quote integrity. In fact, I would hope that you'd promptly throttle both Epstein and Dershowitz.
Epstein is c seed on this email, by the way, Yes, and probably I was just going to say, yeah, I bet Dershwitz is one of the redacted names.
We had Dershwitz on the program a couple of years ago, before Rising Rising, and I remember before Finkelstein was so the celebrity he rightfully is today. I asked him about his The context for this is Dershwitz basically destroyed Finkelstein's academic career because he didn't like a review that Finkelstein wrote of dershwitz book.
This is another piece of drop site.
Reporting well that that was actually that was about the Israel lobby merchant, that Epstein and Dershwitz both collaborated to try to undermine that the book the Israel lobby with Meerscheimer and Walt.
They probably did the same thing with Singlestein.
Too well, absolutely, I.
Am collaborating behind the scenes.
Was Epstein like involved with going after Finglestein like they could like probably yes, Oh the other fun thing, we don't have him here. Epstein and Woody Allen hated Alan Dershowitz so much that, which is the funniest.
The girls were gossiping behind his back.
It's the funniest ending to this that Alan Dershwitz has dragged his.
Own meager reputation through the mud.
Do defend Woody Allen and Jeffrey Epstein to the bitter end? And now to find out they despised the guy. They thought he was full of himself the worst. They call him a completely shameless name dropper.
Yea, Like they just go in on him.
Especially Woody Allen, I mean, and just.
His wife, because sometimes his wife is writing from what he writing for him either one.
And sometimes she's just emailing as well. It's just a lot of sunny and woody in these emails.
But the and Epstein says to whatdy Allan, No, no, he's even worse than you think, and Alan's like, that's not possible.
Like, I'm woody Alan, There is no there.
Is no bottom to what I think of Alan Derschwitz. Yeah, those are his best friends.
What a team, What a team just going around the world.
All right.
There's also an email we should talk about here where Jeffrey Epstein March of twenty eighteen, subject line writes to a redacted recipient, quote he was passed away.
That's the subject line, and it's.
A Actually, it's the quote of an article that I think was published in The Mirror in two thousand and two. And Epstein put in Robert Maxwell and then went to the quote, which is quote threatened Masade. He told him that unless they gave him four hundred million pounds to save his crumbling empire, he would have expose all he
had done for them. And that time he had free access to Margaret Thatcher's Downing Street, Ronald Reagan's White House, to the Kremlin, and to the corridors of power throughout Europe. Maxwell passed away, passed on all the secrets he learned to Mosad in Tel Aviv. In turn, they tolerated his excesses, vanities, and insatiable appetite for luxurious lifestyle and women. He told his controllers who they should target and how they should
do it. Henointed, he appointed himself as Israel's unofficial ambassador to the Soviet Bloc.
And then Ryan this is it's a quote.
H It's quite interesting that Epstein yes, and then he says he was passed away his passive voice as.
BFF is Maxwell's daughter.
Before Jeffrey Epstein, there was Robert Maxwell, Like the biggest, the most similar scandal to Epstein today is actually Maxwell when he was killed, as this is as this is the allegation from Epstein Maxwell. And it was similar also in the sense that there were so many obvious clues that he was in his rarely intelligence asset.
Including his like.
His burial, like in Israel at the most prestigious place, including Ari Benmnash saying out loud he was an asset and I worked directly with him, including all of this evidence, and you'd have the press calling it a giant conspiracy theory. So it was similar in that sense where and the public eventually I think that fought It was like, no, yeah, I don't believe the press on this one.
The conspiracy theory is true.
And now it's a pretty I don't now it's barely even a controversial thing to say that Maxwell wasn't at an Israeli asset like he just he just was, and he was. He also was, like Epstein, a bit of a con artist and a flim flam and and frittered away,
you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. According to Ben Minash, the thing that actually broke his empire was there was this intramural dispute with the Israeli weapons traffickers involved in Iran Contra, and so they moved their money from banks that were guaranteeing Maxwell with the Iran Contra money to the East Block so the money would be safe from the CIA, which they were now starting to fight with. And so once that money got pulled, now Maxwell all
of a sudden couldn't meet his monthly obligations. Maxwell then threatened that he would you blow the whistle on all the things that he was doing for them, And just a pro tip for assets out there, don't do that.
Don't You're not going to win that one. Don't do that, like, don't don't warn that. If you do it, just do it.
Don't tell them do x or I'm going to expose all of your secrets.
Don't do that.
You're not going to make it to that point. If you're going to leak stuff, leak it you might while.
You might end up falling off the back of your gut.
Don't walk into the room with the whists and be like, I'm going to blow this. If you don't give me, yeah exactly, you might wind up falling on of a window or off the back of your yacht or uh. One guy they said he got he'd played tennis, and like two days later they said he died of an aggressive form of cancer m.
That he picked up like the day before.
Like, oh, that's interesting, how that happens.
One of those things, those crazy things in life.
So yeah, pro tip, don't do it like this.
And this is i mean the gist of what it's like going through these emails, and it's probably everyone's having this experience on social media right now. You're seeing little like tidbits in these single emails that like this seemed to confirm Epstein buys the conspiracy story. It's not really conspiracy anymore, but what has been treated as a conspiracy in the past about Robert Maxwell being quote passed away and it's just in.
The subject line of an email.
So there are it's wrong to call them gems, but like gems in the context of a getting to the bottom of what's actually going on, they're everywhere. And that's what makes it so addicting to be buried in the Epstein Library is you never know which silly email riddled with typos is going to be so significant and one, you know, throwaway email he sent what twenty eighteen?
It has huge.
Consequences and it's I love it in the sense that its teaching people history and very recent history that is still quite relevant to us.
We're going way long. We should probably move on.
Yeah, let's do it.
Yeah. So Van laith is joining us next to talk about.
Oh no, we have a part two.
Ice hearings. Congress probed the behavior of ice and hearings yesterday. Me or mar Martinez was there, who was shot five times by ICE agents in Chicago but survived, one of the more high profile survivors of ice violence.
We're going to be joining in a moment by a friend of the show. Van lath And discussed the hearings. Let's start first with Martinez up on Capitol Hill.
This is b one.
As my attorneys showed the court, the disgusting text messages Exem sent to his fellow Border Patrol buddies, literally bragging about how many times he shot me. I got stick to my stomach. Seeing how a federal law enforcement officer will talk this way about shooting me, a woman who he swore into was both eye opening and heartbreaking.
The true that in the body cam footage the CBP officer told you too, and I'm so sorry for saying this. The author told you to quote do something bitch before he fired. Yes, the disgusting, shameful, and it gets worse.
Ms Martinez.
These are images of texts sent by the agent who shot you, and they're actually were They're actually disturbing.
To read, but I think it's important for the public to see this.
The agent LinkedIn article about your shooting and texted, read it five shots, seven holes. I fired five rounds and she had seven holes.
Put that in your book.
Boys, Oh well, it is what it is. Shit happens. This is someone that works for the United States government. I fired five rounds and she had seven holes. Now, he was talking about you, and it's our understanding that he was actually bragging about his aim shooting an unarmed American citizen?
Is that right?
Correct?
And so we're hearing from mir Mar Martinez because she survives that attack. We didn't hear from Renana Cole Good, though we heard from some family members. Didn't hear obviously from Alex Pretty who's no longer here to testify. But Van, I'm curious when it comes to your when it comes to your audience, is this level of brutality kind of breaking through? And how have you how have you seen the conversation around immigration enforcement change?
And also welcome to the program.
Oh, thank you very much, glad to have you back. I hope you had a good time down there. I see no tank. There was work to be done.
I can tell.
I'm feeling good.
And now what I'm seeing from my audience is rage.
I'm seeing rage, and I'm seeing a sort of wake up call. Now, Ms Martinez, you guys just featured her. That was a story that I saw you guys cover that I saw majority report cover. I saw a lot of play in independent news media cover, but I did not see too much coverage of what happened to her anywhere else. I say that to say that I think that there were overreaches, brutality and violations of the Constitution by ICE prior to Renee Good that the general public wasn't aware of.
I don't think they understood.
I think they people got the sense in cities, particularly with large ICE deployments, of how you know, ICE was you know, roaming their communities and papers please sort of culture, scaring people that they share their communities with, and there were headlines being made.
Don't don't don't get me wrong, but.
As far as ICE agents taking out their guns, shooting people and putting their lives in danger, American citizens and undocumented people, I think that Renee Good and alex Pretty was a wake up call to those people, and I do not think they're as a way to put the genie back in the bottom.
Let's roll this clip of renee Good's family testifying at the same hearing yesterday.
B two, my name is Luke Ganger, and I'm here with my brother Brent. Renee Good is our sister. We're here on behalf of Nay's big family and those who loved her. We're here to ask for your help. I was talking to my four year old last week when she noticed I was not doing well. I had to come here today and talk to some important people. She knows that her aunt died and that somebody caused it
to happen. The deep distress our family feels because of Nay's loss is in such a violent and unnecessary way, is complicated by feelings of disbelief, distress, and desperation for change. In the last few weeks, our family took some consolation thinking that perhaps Nay's death would bring about change in our country, and it is not. The completely surreal scenes taking place on the streets of Minneapolis are beyond explanation. This is not just a bad day or a rough
week or isolated incidents. These encounters with federal agents are changing the community and changing many lives, including ours, forever.
So Van, I kind of disagree, respectfully with Renee Good's brother there on the point he's making about feeling as though her death has not brought about change. Public opinion has put a lot of pressure on the Trump administration, and that really, I mean, the Renee Good death was the moment that changed from my vantage point at least, I'm curious what you make of that. And one thing I wanted to ask too is people talk and we've talked here about the kind of dem Tea Party moment.
It feels to me like the abolish Ice movement has become a really critical part of like Obamacare for the Tea Party movement was that rallying policy question. It feels to me like abolish Ice has kind of emerged as that for the Tea Party moment.
Yeah, so I'll take your first question first.
I tend to agree with you, I think from his vantage point, and I hate to speak for him, but when you are the victim of an injustice that's as profound as the loss of a family member, then the only elixir is for the source of that injustice to
be held accountable and then for that to stop. It will probably be difficult for somebody that's dealing with that type of tragedy to see what we're seeing, which is that event being a flash point for really a political and cultural awakening for a lot of people in terms of how far ice has gone, what Ice really represents
right now. You're seeing it in all the podcast spaces with a lot of the guys who are part of laundering Trump's reputation prior to the election, and just how they're being held accountable by their audiences for what they told people they should do, which is go out and
support this regime. All of that's political. I think what would be cathartic to that, gentlemen, probably is to see one there be accountability in the death of his loved one, and on top of that, to see ice abuses stop or for there to be some plan for them to stop.
And we, frankly haven't seen that quite yet.
We've seen a lot of political tug of war happening, but nothing that seems like an answer to the problem of how they're being deployed in certain cities. To your second question, which I have totally forgotten in that little articulate and eloquent rant, what was.
It again about?
How so you have some Democrats voting with Republicans on the shutdown yesterday and basically the demp tea party moment seems to me like it's coalescing around abolish ice and the way the Republican tea Party was coalescing around Obamacare.
And I just wanted to get your thoughts on that.
Yeah, that's funny. How can I be that's funny? The Democrats don't.
Get it, and it's I feel like you're about to uncork something.
Then no, no, it's you know.
I had a homeboy back in the day, and he used to like to, you know, have an occasional drink on Sunday night, you know, you come and he he polished off three or four twelve packs and he'd be like, he's a light he's a light drinker. I remember his girl telling him, hey, enough, like enough enough of it, like everybody had had enough. And I remember talking to him, talking to him. We go out one time and he goes, hey, man,
I'm just gonna stay around here. I was gonna have a couple of I'm like, nah, man, you have an issue. You have a problem. We're dealing with you in love. But I'm telling you, this is a serious thing. You're gonna lose your family. I'm telling you. I'm telling you, I'm telling you. And it wasn't until he was seeing his kids at Barnes and Noble that he really got the the idea that she wanted something different and he had a serious problem. The problem was a part of
his makeup and it was time to address it. I wonder when the Democrats are going to see themselves in the mirror, like when they're going to what Barnes and Noble visitation or we're going to have to arrange for them for them to see that they are orphaning their base. As you see me search for words. I really don't know how to articulate it. They do not get it. We're not going for it. That's it. We're not going for it. We're not going for it. It can't be negotiated.
There's so many things that we're not going for, Like, it can't be negotiated. You can't talk nice about it. I'm wear that up on the hill everybody. There's all these histrionics and then they all go out and have a stake together and go to Epstein's house and all of that stuff like that. I get that that's how it goes. But like at this point, right now, that's over. We want this to stop. And how much ever pain has to happen to the general American public and project for this to be headed off.
For this, for this part of.
It, Ice Ice overreaches for us to say, hey, abolish this. This can't be reformed. The guts of it have to be torn up, torn up. Immigration enforcement is a part of having a country you have. You're gonna have borders, You're gonna have integration, immigration reform, and reform and enforcement excuse me, enforcement, should I say?
You?
Guys pissed me off with the question.
I'm so mad at the at the Democrats, and I'm not coming across as articulate as I would want to. But I have conversations with politicians. I talked to them a lot. They called me, and they honestly don't get it. They are still in the phase of this where they are attempting to launder the reputation of ice to convince me and other people like me the usefulness of ice, where they're attempting to soft pedal it, and it really
is I'm not even baffled. I'm fascinated, right. I think that a lot of people, if they had the conversations that I had, they would be gobsmacked by some of the political weakness. And I get it. It's complicated. I understand that it's complicated. But I was on the phone with somebody a couple of days ago. I said, man, figure out what the figure out what desperate looks like, figure out what truly obstructionists looks like. Figure out what ten is and go there, figure out what ten is.
If there are all kinds of things, ICE is funded for a long time, I get it, all that stuff, figure out what ten is and go there. Because the disconnect between what I feel like the political intelligency of the left in Washington. That disconnect as it relates to the people that I'm having conversations with that listen to my show that.
Taught to me, it's vast.
They're talking about this issue as if it's regular, where there are people who are seeing Americans killed on the street, and they're like, what are you guys gonna do?
And it feels like for a while, and tell me if this connects with what your conversation had been like feeling for a while, Democrats thought their answer needed to be to grow a beard and start using profanity.
Yes, and like that.
That was gonna show like how serious they were about changing, you know, their approach to Trump and to and to politics. I see, I can't tell if I see a little bit less of that. Like they started realizing, okay, it actually it's not authentic, and like if it's not coupled with something meaningful, it doesn't doesn't really land. And so maybe this is like an answer to what they could do, Like the Maga movement. They they were serious about changing
the country. They like they told you, if we get into power, we're doing We're doing We're gonna build the wall, We're gonna do mass deportation, we're gonna do tariffs. Like they had these big ideas that stood in for the expression of the anger that people had, Like you've got this anger, and we're gonna do these big fundamental things. Democrats don't seem to have that, Like they've got profanity
some of them. Some of them have grown beards, but they're not really there's nothing that you can grab onto that you can say, Oh, if they get into power, this is how the anger that I have a what's going on is going to be expressed abolished. Ice would be one of those things to say, like ice is irredeemable, We're getting rid of it.
We're still doing immigration enforcement.
But this rogue agency that's killing people in the streets like CBPS actually like killing more people in the streets.
Deal with that separately.
Uh, they gotta go like something like that, like does that does that track that? Like they feel like they feel like all they have to do is channel the anger by sounding angry themselves, but without any kind of meaning or substance behind it.
Uh.
I think you're you're you're dead on and I think that comes or that exists because they have for so.
Long been a harm reduction party mm hm.
And that robs you a vision, right, the Republican Maga, Trump is and wing they provided a vision to America. Now, in my opinion and opinion of a lot of people, that vision was grotesque, but it was a vision, nonetheless, and behind that vision, in order for them to be taken seriously, there had to be action. Now that action is disorganized, it violates the constant, it's inhumane, it's the entire list of things. But it had to exist, it
had to be there. Abolished, ice is vision, defund the police. I know you guys don't like it. That's a vision statement, that's a statement idea. It's a big idea, right, It's it's something that says, hey, let's reimagine that and this and whatever.
Is it the most popular thing?
No?
Is it something that should have been discussed for the merits of what it actually was. Yes, are some of these things jarring and shaking to the milk toast Boulet bourgeoise person who doesn't want to see society set on flames and reimagine cool, get all of that.
The question is what's your version of that? Like, what is your vision?
Okay, we know that this needs to stop. How do you imagine it stopping? How do you imagine immigration enforcement? How do you imagine a path to citizenship? How do you imagine humanity for people that we share borders with? What is your version of this? And it's very difficult. They are so concerned with not being rude that it seems like they care more about that than actual victory and the protection of the people who put them in power.
And in the politics of it, the political value of being able to milk the energy to have the hearing like they put together yesterday without putting their policy, like you said, whatever they're reimagining, putting it on the table, you can talk and end up never actually Republicans of this with Obamaca, it's a perfect parallel. They never put anything right now, they don't have anything. It's been fifteen years right.
Because their resistance to Obamacare has nothing to do with what we're trying to talk about, which is how are people going to get to the doctor. Yeah, okay, Like how are people going to get care? And I think that really on both sides of this, there.
Is something happening.
And I really desperately hope that we can take advantage of the moment people that want to live in a society of freedom, that people are really getting to a point where they're starting to ask a question. And it's a question that all Americans should always have asked themselves, but it's a hard question to ask, like what's in this for me? I think the biggest thing about the what ICE is doing in the overreaches is people are seeing in their communities, in their societies dysfunction and chaos,
and they're going, is this changing my life? And are things cheaper? Are societies better? Or are you injecting a whole bunch of chaos into my world for political reasons? For your power? We voted for a long time to uh, I guess we know what's in it for Trump, we know what's in it for Chuck Schumer, we know what's in it for all of these people. They get power, they get to continue to pull the strings of society.
We'll just ask yourself, like, what's in it for you? What have you.
Gotten for this? Have you gotten better medical care? Do you get lower grocery prices? What's the is any of this working for you? And I think on both sides of the aisle people are going it doesn't seem like anyone's really thinking about me.
Yep, Ben, Always a pleasure to have you on. Look forward to your next to Parents Higher Learning podcast.
Everybody check it out. Thanks so much for joining us.
No problem.
I would have hack because next time I want to come, I want to fish. I want to fish and go to fish fishing today and then we go to fish in the evening.
Ryan, don't leave me out, brother.
You're in, You're in the crow, all right, say all right up. Next, Iran talks are moving to Oman. Is it just a they just like faking this so they can get their assets in place to bomb Tehran again?
Probably we'll talk about it next.
Details out of the Arabian Sea. Let's put this first element up on the screen. As Fox News says, here, the US military shot down and unmanned Iranian drone after quote, it aggressively approached a US Navy aircraft carrier with unclear intent. A US Central Command spokesperson told Fox News. The USS Abraham Lincoln was transiting the Arabian Sea, approximately five hundred miles from iran southern coast, when in Iranian had one
thirty nine drone unnecessarily maneuvered toward the ship. According to that spokesperson for Centcom Ryan, this is a reminder of how fragile the conditions in the Middle East star right now. And I know a lot of people on the right who are disappointed that Trump has not made good on his promises in Iran. But reminders they got a drone,
Reminders of plenty, yes, they got a drone. Of how quickly, quickly, quickly this can escalate the second an American is hurt, you have a different, completely different war.
The the like asymmetry here as wild. Like if you try, if we try to add up the amount of money the US spent to shoot down this was it twenty thousand dollars drone, It would reach into well into the probably hundreds of millions. I mean if you count the
billion dollar aircraft. Although we can keep aircraft carry we can keep using that the missiles, the like, the equipment this is this is a fundamental material problem for the US going forward, that it's up against it's up against this new cheap drone warfare with and it is using it's older like multi billion dollar assets. We're in a war of attrition with somebody who can actually produce them
like consistently, like China. Like we've run out of like ten million dollars missiles pretty quickly, and they can just keep slapping together these drones.
And I will see in this case, like there's a you and I made disagree on this, but there's I think an interesting test case happening right now for the
piece through strength doctrine at its best. So if Trump de escalates by having aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea and threatening her on but not actually going much further, like doing what they want him to do, and they being the neo conservative bulwark that remains in power through Lindsay Graham and many many others here in Washington, though not many others around the country, average voters, not a huge constituency, of course, but by not giving into their
demands for like full scale war and using the big stick, it's possible that fewer people die and you spare your spared a broader conflict.
But uh, just yeah, at this point, I would take that because my expectations of Trump are so low. But I'm really tired of him taking credit, uh for not doing bigger wars.
That he didn't have to do at all.
He's like, look at Venezuela, like we went in and we went out and could have done a long term occupation and invasion. Well you could have also just left them alone.
Nobody will like.
We still don't know that it's not going to It's the same thing with Iran.
I mean there's so many people who were taking victory laps after June, like, oh, you guys were wrong.
Yeah, we only did twelve days.
I'm happy to take an L, happy to take an L.
But it's February and here we are back again. Yes, why like again? Why like? What like?
And here we.
Are with Delsi Rodriguez and Judge of Venezuela like what was your what were you actually doing?
Yeah? Good question.
So, uh, nuclear talks are kicking up, so we can put up C three. So talks are scheduled now in Oman. They will not be their call news meetings calling them between the US and Iran, but Iran Iranian officials are saying, uh, they're there are indirect talks in a sense that the US is still refusing to kind of be in the same room. Cutters going to be there and they're going back and forth. There's some reporting out of Iran that they've gotten hints that that Kushner might end up becoming
involved because we can put up C two. This is from on Launch Media, which is very well sourced among Iranian insiders. They were saying that one of the problems with the last round of negotiations, besides the fact that Trump killed all the negotiators, is that wit Cough consistently had to fly back to the United States to get answers, which you can imagine how frustrating that is. You're you're in the you're in an office, you're trying to buy
a used car. Salesman like, I got to go talk to my manager, see if I can give you, you know, a discount on this true cote and he comes back ten minutes later, he's like, great news.
You know, as long as you do the ten.
Year warranty, we can do this true code at this at a discount. Imagine he had to fly back halfway around the world every time, and then the Iranians are sitting there twitting their thumbs and then they get bombed.
So you can imagine that those are not ideal negotiating circumstances. So they're trying.
They're saying, like, can you get some more people who are empowered to actually make deals? To me, the whole thing is absurd, Like, it seems pretty clear Trump is not serious about negotiations and it's just stalling because they launched most of their anti missile defenses during the Twelve Day War, and so they need to restock so that
they can defend Israel from whatever counter attack comes. They can defend their other assets around the region, and they need to get all of their naval and air assets close enough to Iron so they can launch an attack.
That seems to be what they're doing.
In the past every time that they have invited the Iranians to negotiate, including Solomony, who I'll keep reminding people COSTM. Solomoney was in Bagdad when he was assassinated because he was lord there for negotiations towards peace, Like like, it's what it's Trump's move. He thinks it's clever, he thinks nobody sees it coming, and he's correct at first because
that's like a maniacal thing to do. Yeah, because for thousands of years, like the one thing that even like Eengis Khan or whatever would like recognize and be like people go out and talk like it's just not pragmatic to kill that person. We'll talk to them and then you can go back and kill each other.
Later.
Trump was like, oh, but what if we killed them at the negotiating table when they're not looking?
Have you thought of that?
So you know, there's only so many red weddings until people show up at the wedding and like, so that's why I suspect that the Iranians are assuming that an attack is coming.
You got you still got to take the invitation.
You can imagine being tapped for these negotiations if you're an Iranian diplomat. I like, uh, really, this weekend helping my friend move.
Like this is a chance of a lifetime. Would really love to do this.
But if they can move it to am On, Oh they moved it to them on, God, then can't do them on.
Actually turns out, yeah, I'm gonna worn out and am On.
Things got a little out of control a couple of years ago when I was there I would really love
to can't go to Aman. So yeah, and there's there's also reporting in that article that you can go go read that which backs up reporting that Jeremy Scalho had done earlier drop Site, which is that Iran had felt that the best way to de escalate these Trump attacks was to forecast exactly what they were going to do, tell Trump ahead of time so that there's minimal amount of damage and no actual damage to people, to American troops, and to announce ahead of time. We consider after we respond,
we consider this finished. And so that's what they did multiple times, and there were people arguing at the time inside Iran, this is only going to convey weakness and invite more attacks.
That you have to hit Trump harder.
And the people who advocated for the restrained response, a lot of them were killed, and now they're being replaced by the people who had said, you're going to get yourself killed with this restraint. What Trump doesn't want is a forever war that he can't control. He's been very clear he hates those. So what we need to do is show him that we can pull one of those off.
So we need to hit American assets in Iraq American assets in Syria, American assets in Doha, and you need to hit Israel as much as we can.
And they've even talked about killing.
As many as five hundred American troops to send a signal that they're going to be consequences to you continuing to attack us every six months. They feel like that's this faction feels like that's the only way to get this to stop, that that's the only language Trump understands. And the people in the room to argue against it were killed by Trump. So maybe they're all bluffing and or maybe the US can just annihilate their response capacity.
Who knows, and hopefully we won't find out. But that's the current state of play.
Well that's I mean, just the drone strike yesterday is again a reminder of how quickly this can completely change completely. You can wake up one day and an American could have been killed on an aircraft carrier, and we could be sending more and more troops, We could be sending boots on the damn ground in a heartbeat.
Because of how fragile this is.