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.
A toughs University PhD student was picked up off the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts. We have a harrowing video of what basically looks like a kidnapping. Three masked men are picking up this student and putting her in an unmarked vehicle.
The guy who's filming.
It seems disturbed by what he's seeing and keeps saying, can I see your faces?
How do I know that you are? How do I know that you are police officers?
Like?
What is am I witnessing a kidnapping?
Here?
Because it very much does appear that he is witnessing and kidnapping. Frankly, he is that is there, like there's there's I guess you could call it an arrest, but there have been no charges filed then, and that's what we typically understand to be to be an arrest.
UH.
Now apparently last night we can put let's put up D D three B. This is Meg not Bo's is a Columbia Journalism Review UH journalists who also writes for drop site News. This is a student in Alabama, Ali Reza de to Rudy, who is PhD student at the at Alabama, picked up off the street and as you can see there, if you try to figure out where he's being held now, it says under it's it is it is currently undisclosed. No word of any charges. We don't even know, like what he said, like what did
he use the word genocide in a tweet? Like we don't we don't know exactly what he said to get him thrown out. This is coming after you put up D three unse O Chum, who is a Korean American student at Columbia University in undergrad who has a permanent legal resident, who has been in the country since she was seven years old, was not a leader of the protests, was not arrested as I don't think, as far as I understand, during the during the protests, went to them
a couple of times, I guess, tweeted some things. And she has had her According to her attorneys, she has had her permanent legal residence status revoked and they have been hunting her. They have been using signifificant federal assets to try to find her. She suspected that this may be happening and apparently has been moving around and they have been unable to pick her up. At this point, none of these people have been charged with a crime
all of them. Their only quote unquote crime appears to be criticism of Israel's attack on Gaza and the US support for that assault, which, by the way, since March second, Israel has not allowed any food, water, medicine to get into Gaza and it is creating famine like conditions and has slaughtered more than three hundred children over the last several days protesting that is enough to get them thrown into the back of these cars or have to go on the land.
As you can see, you know, the first person, Miss Oz turk Is Apparently now she's a Turkish citizen, so apparently her crime is that she is quote one of several students who one of several author an opinion essay published last March in Tufts University student newspaper. The essay criticized university leaders for their response to demands and toughs quote acknowledged the Palestinian genocide and divest itself with companies to Israel. Mister Doroti who you mentioned, Ali Raza Dorati.
There's not even actually any record of anything that the guy has done, and like you said, the other one just attended a protest. This was again I need to talk philosophically here. Do you see the number of agents who are involved in teresting this lady? We don't have
better things to do here. I mean, look, I know, I know you disagree, Ryan, but I want to see those people applied to people who are in the country illegally, because that's what quote mass deportation was supposed to be about last time I checked, not you know, facilitating the arrests of some student PhD student late. Look fine, I mean this is where you and I have a disagreement, probably like I do think people who are here in the country on student visas and all that, you should be.
A little careful.
Okay, I'm not saying you don't have rights and all that, but you know, listen. But philosophically, when I go to authoritarian countries or other countries, like I don't mouth off about whatever. You know, whenever when I'm in China in Tianaman Square, you know what I don't talk about. I don't talk about the Tianaman Square mask here, but think about that.
But think about that. Are we in authoritarian country?
Well, I don't think that we're quote in authoritarian country, but I think common sense would dictate that whenever you're in another country or a guest in that person's country, you should generally try not to rock the boat.
I did.
I did a home exchange in France in twenty twenty three. We had a French family stay in our house and we stayed in their house for several weeks.
It was awesome.
If I France is an authoritarian country.
So at the time there was some I actually did several shows from there where I was critical of the French government for their handling of the situation and jer like, should they have come in and rounded me up.
Well, they could have No, that's a point.
But there we have a visa process that we have established for students and for tourists, and if you go through that process, we grant you a student visa. And as long as you follow the laws of our country and you're following the remit of the visa that we have given you, we have invited you into our country
and you are spending money in our country. And if you don't violate that, for us to arrest you because Israel or some pro Israel organization has put you on a list of people that they think are mean to Israel, it breaks the contract that.
We with them.
Totally agree with you.
There's no reason for us to be doing this stupid I'm more philosophically.
People are like, oh, they have a right to be here. I'm like, well, not.
Really, but we gave them the right to be there by creating a visa process that they that they went through.
And also people may not understand this.
One of the main things that keeps our trade deficit lower than it would be otherwise is that millions of people come from overseas to the United States to study here and to do tourism here. If you look at the trade deficit that we have with Canada, it's cut like in half by Canadian tourists and students who come
here and spend. And also many of them pay like full freight to go to our state and private universities, and so they're subsidizing the American students like American University, Like it's like eighty five thousand dollars a year or something for the full freight. Americans don't pay that. You know who pays is like the rich Egyptians emiratis.
I don't disagree with the word you're saying, but that also raises a lot of questions.
Then why is the student debt crisis so high?
And why exactly expensive?
Right exactly now? You know, we can debate this foreign student thing all day long. I think what we can both agree on is the appropriation of immense federal resources to hunting some South Korean lady who uh so South Korea was seven years old and attended the Columbia University protests. It's just like not very high on I think most people's list of what they thought of for mass deportation.
And then when you go when you look at mass deportation figures of the actual criminal or legal aliens who are being deported. The numbers are exactly the same as they were under the Biden administration, and or roughly the same now, you know, but.
I also don't think I don't think she should have to watch her mouth. She's a legal permanent resident. And the difference between US and China and US in Russia is that you don't have to watch your mouth here. You say whatever you want as a citizen.
Yes, that's where I that's where I just disagree. Now I'm not saying that again. We're talking about should and can.
Okay, but what if you're a citizen?
Yeah, but you previously were, you were your naturalized citizen, so now you're a citizen. You've had a lot of Republicans or Trump administration officials say, well, okay, yes, they're resident. But if we would have known that once they became a permanent resident that they would go and protest Israel,
we would not have given them their permanent residency. Therefore, we're taking their green card, and then we're taking the visa they had before that, and we're going to jail them and we're going to send them to El Salvador. We're going to send them back to wherever they're wherever they're from. Why would that not also apply to citizens? So we gave you your citizenship, but if we wouldn't have given it to you, if we would have known that you were going to be critical of Israel.
CAZA is very different on citizenship, Stripping United A citizen and citizenship, as I understand, this is.
A little harder.
No, not little harder, it's like they're definitely harder. I don't actually think you can strip United Sate citizens.
No, you can if if they if they, if you know, it's like in your passport, if you open it, if it's serve in a foreign military except for the IDEF.
If you you know, they.
Say, if you lied to get your citizenship, that's right, if you would. What they would say is you told us you support and defend the United States, and here you are criticizing Israel.
So how dare you you lied?
I think the difference, the difference in particular on these student visas and these permanent residents is for me, the appropriation, like I said, of federal resources purely based on speech grounds with no criminal behavior, is one that I think most people will say, yeah, that's pretty messed up, right, And because if you look in the past, for any of these, like deporting based on support for foreign it was like pretty extreme stuff.
You know, if we're going to the World War two era.
You literally had to be a actual like pro Nazi, like on the radio giving a speech like we need to support Hitler. For you, the Roosevelt administration or others to prosecute you for treason actually even on speech grounds. I was looking back, was recently reading a book about this. Even then, a lot of those cases had immense difficulty
getting on a first minut back. That's with the citizens that we're talking about here, and that was even at a time of Kramatsu when you had Japanese Americans literally slaved in a camp, you know, illegally by their government. But in this particular case, the point is is that they are using extraordinary measures of the United States. You
know what treaty exactly what is the State Department? The Secretary of State can designate any individual here and pulling their visa and then using ice and like, I mean, do you know how much money it costs to like arrest someone and fly them to Louisiana. I don't know what tens of thousands of dollars just to support these type of operations. I think that's the big problem that we see right here, and most people can agree that it's obviously a stunt. And the worst is that it's
on behalf of a foreign government. And these lists of all of these people, as you and I know, are coming from these like pro Israel groups who have sat there and scrubbed social media. It's sickening for me, you know, to even watch because I have there's like these accounts on Twitter stop anti Semitism or whatever, and I'll watch them just like blow up some girl who like wrote on Strava that she was like really upset about side and she no word, she was like saw some annoying zie.
It's like, okay, whatever, all right.
People can post whatever they want on their social media and they're like blowing up this lady's life. Or you know, a flight attendant who has like a Palestine flag on their lapal.
You know, by the way, I've been on flights four where I've seen the Israeli flag there. Whatever, maybe she's Israeli.
Okay, yeah, I don't care what flags give me a drink.
You know, it's like, what are we doing here?
Let me get the whole can.
Yeah, that's right, give.
Me the can. I need to die coke can, all right, and pour it properly over. I'm joking again. I don't ever say any of this stuff.
But my point is, just like who cares what the lapel and they blow these people up, they like ruin their lives and inviting this like witch hunt. And those are the people who the government is taking these lists of people from who didn't commit any crime.
All they did was to speak out against a foreign government.
So I don't know.
I just think it's crazy.
And I would say to the people who are like, well, they should be good guests and screw them.
No, not to be clear, I'm not saying screw them. I'm actually on their side. I don't think they should.
I mean there's they're going to be.
What I get annoyed by is like this transnational American identity, as if citizenship itself doesn't mean anything. Just simply being present in the country does not mean you are a citizen who's entitled to all of the protections that we have and that the government cannot deport you. For a reason,
and that it is just empirically true. If you want to argue America the exceptional country and all that, I think that's fine, But it is empirically true that in almost every country in the world that going there and in participating in a protest, specifically like in a foreign policy against the city government, they're not going to let you stay. Even in Europe and many of these other places, they're not also you know, kind and fuzzy, you know, to to.
Foreign studies, particularly if it's an anti Israel protest.
Yeah, try going to Germany. Okay, liberal democracy Germany or god. I can name any of the country. Uh, Like I said, even non authoritarian ones, ostensible democracies where if you do this type of stuff like you are going to get deported, you can argue.
That you shouldn't. And you know, I would say, you certainly can.
That's what just shut and shutting off, like you're gonna hurt tourism, and you're going to hurt You're going to hurt the number of foreign students who come to the United States, and I think people are gonna be like, well, screw it, who's there.
I think we should have much less foreign Sto.
I think it's completely perverted our financial system in these universities because what happens is is they increase the costs for everybody. Now they subsidize marginally the American students who are still loaded up with tens of thousands of dollars in student debt, but you also make it basically a visa farm for the richest people all over the world to be able to come here.
Would they fake they're reducing course, No, but they're not. They This is the thing.
If that were true, Ryan, then you would not see the inflation and overall educational costs. I mean, the more foreign students, the higher that the price actually goes.
And then worse is the government.
Comes in and backstops these student loans for you know, fake lower you know, oh we gave you ten thousand dollars in student aid. It's like okay, but the thing is still sixty thousand dollars. So they're going they're getting some fast alone. The government's doing that basically comes a foreign visa farm. The PhD programs and all that. There's no particular evidence that it's all that like great for the United States or that all of this money is
flowing into the hands of the average American citizen. Like, I don't see any evidence that, you know, all of this educational spending has done any or increase in education costs, and subsequent dollars come in has been distributed at all to.
The overall population.
It's mostly just a money laundering organization for the University of Michigan or the university whatever, you know, all these other places which use these dollars to just continue to prop up and justify even more overall expenses.
I'm totally against the current way that it's funded.
The explosion of the cost of university is I think a separate issue from foreign students coming and spending money in universities. Like there's a correlation there, but I don't think.
I don't think foreign students.
No, I'm not blaming them per se.
I'm saying it's all part of the incentives, as in the incentive for a university when they charge sixty thousand dollars or seventy thousand dollars.
What is it now, Harvard, I don't even know.
In eighty thousand something eighty five thousand, let's say, Sarah Lawrence is always famous because they have been like in.
The middle of Rhode Island.
They charge in like ninety grand a year. It's like, okay, well, who's paying that well, foreign students. But also even though for the student who's let's say, paying forty five thousand dollars per year, which is instill an insane amount of money, that person is taking on a government back loan, right that literally can't be discharged.
And you watch as those.
Two things have basically made it so that these universities can offload all the risk of participating in their financial product if you just look at like a balance sheet, they offload the risk of the government and to the individual and they take those profits home. Again, we don't see much evidence that they're distributing that funding. If it were true that all this increased tuition was so great
for workers, then professors would be getting paid more. Actually, their salaries going down for the phderies right for the adjuncts, and the way that they run it's actually more restrictive than ever. Really, what they're doing is they're enriching themselves and a bunch of fund managers on Wall Street by you know, these endowments.
So anyway, that's that's I.
Agree with that point I think that cutting off the foreign students, well, I guess we'll get to find out what it does.
Well. So yeah, I mean that is the question. I guess in.
Terms of if you're a foreign student now, like for the student willingness, I would assume that you're looking around at other countries. Do you think so, I would be maybe or maybe maybe you just don't criticize Israel, which is also like that, like America has become less America.
That's fair. I think that's probably the best point.
I mean, I don't think that we're going to really see if anything, I'm not sure if you saw this. Law school applications went double this year, which is usually a bad sign. That means that there's a recession coming, right because people dook at a job, so that means
that they're going to law school. Usually a bad financial decision, especially with that take advice to me, but you know, just saying loading yourself up with two undergrand in debt and the hopes that it might pay off in the future usually a bad idea.
But you know, a lot of.
People seem to think that it's good.
We saw the same thing in O nine for law school applications, but The problem, I think is what you just said is that the government is enforcing policy to chill speech on an issue of a foreign government.
You know, that is genuinely crazy.
It's crazy.
It's crazy.
I mean every other time in the past we talked to Jefferson Morley, at least our government should be siopping our population to support a war that we are. You know, it's like, is that too much to ask Intel pro for you know, for Vietnam. Don't support it, but I get it right, I'm an Nixon administration.
This is too much repress us to own your own process for your.
For your own benefit, not for the benefit of some people in Tel Aviv, you know, who aren't even although I guess some of them are US citizens.
But we forget though, like yes, they're very is powerful, et cetera. They are a client and they benefit us. They're like, there was a reason that we're not just doing it for them, like we're doing it for us. It is like they are a fundamental part of our foreign policy in the Mid East. So in that sense, we are suppressing criticism of ourselves. Several days of protests have broken out in Gaza. Israel is already working to
exploit them can roll. This statement put out by Defense Minister Israel Katz is speaking to hebrewly, but he says the IDF will soon operate with full force and additional areas of Gaza, and you will be asked to evacuate from combat zones for your own safety.
The plans are already prepared and approved.
Hamas is putting your lives at risk, causing you to lose your homes and more and more territory that will be integrated into Israel's defense formation.
The first Sinowar destroyed.
Gaza, and the second Sinowar is ready to burn half of Gaza with his own hands, just to try and maintain his corrupt rule. Alongside his fellow Hamas murders and rapists. They sit safely with their families in tunnels and luxury hotels with billions in foreign bank accounts, while using you as hostages. Learn from the residents of bate Lahia, just as they did, demand the removal of Hamas from Gaza and the immediate release of all Israeli hostages.
This is the only way to stop the war.
This came several days after israel Cats had put out a separate statement residence of Gaza. This is your final warning. Evacuation of the population from combat zones will soon resume. If all Israeli hostages are not released and Hamas is not kicked out of Gaza, Israel will act with force you have not known before. Take the advice of the US President, return the hostages and kick out Hamas, and new options will open up for you, including relocation to
other parts of the world. For those who choose the alternative is destruction and devastation. After these remarks, starting this week, you started to see organic protests not or in other words, in other words, not organized by Fatah or the Palestinian authority, which are rivals of Hamas. After the into the second day, the size and the kind of the ferocity of the protests expanded significantly.
We'll see.
We'll see how that develops on said Ay, which would be the third day. What has been remarkable about these protests is that they have included significant anti Hamas sentiment being expressed.
And so let's talk about the.
Politics here and the material conditions in which these are in which these are unfolding. So to be clear, you know, Hamas took power in two thousand and five, and in this election, and then afterwards there was you.
Know, Fatsa tried to take power and there was.
Amas pulled a kind of counter coup and there haven't been elections since. They have been in power now for almost twenty years. And for obviously among Palestinians and Gaza, there is a rain of opinions. They're by no means monolithic, but there are many, many people in Gaza who have serious objections to Hamas as a governing authority. Right they they have largely kind of primarily been an armed resistance organization and a national liberation move That is is their identity,
that's what they see themselves. As governing has never been the thing that kind of animated them. And at the same time they've been operating under a twenty year siege. They've been a repressive government as well, and so it you know, from talking to people in Gaza yesterday, they were they were adding like, yes, people are people are frustrated with Hamas. People are people are people, and people want an end to this war. They want a lifting
of the siege. People are are literally starving, and they think that if they go out and express opposition to to Hamas that that can lead to an end to this war.
One of the dumbest arguments I always hear is they voted for Hamas, so they support it. Okay, Well, the median age in Gaza is eighteen years old, right, so that means that the median of Gazen was not alive whenever there was an election. And by the way, even if there was an election like let's say ten years ago or whatever. As you know, I know this is
trite almost at this point, but that's the logic. O'samom bin laden use right to attack the United States on nine to eleven is they support their Zionist government under George W. Bush, So they deserve it, right, That's why we should attack and kill the average American because they are complicit in the crimes of their own government. It's like, okay, well that by that standard, you know, then there is no such thing as a civilian. Now, that's basically the
argument that that has been put in place. What's also ironic about those elections is that they were pushed by us. Yes, we're the people who basically forced the is Really he didn't even want to have an election because they knew what was going to happen. The reason that we pushed
it was because of Bush's brain dead freedom agenda. And it's so funny even in retrospect, they have the election, the election doesn't go the way they want, They're like, okay, now we got a sanction in blockade this entire thing because they elected the wrong people.
So what happened to the whole freedom agenda thing?
Right? Freedom as long as you pick our guys.
Freedom as long as you pick our guys, kind of like Iraq Afghanistan?
Remember Hillary?
Thing is you remember Hillary Clinton's famous quote after that election she said's so good you guys can google up and find it the exact quote. But she was like, how on earth did the Bush administration hold an election where they couldn't determine the outcome of It's like, she's like, what kind of incompetence it is?
That?
Which just says absolutely everything about everything.
That's one of my favorite things in reading history is at the Potsdam conference when Churchill lost the election, Stalin was like, I don't understand what is going on here. He's like, why didn't you just rig it? And he's like he was mystified, you didn't rig it. You're just gonna keep it that you're just leaving. He's like, you can't leave where?
And he was so annoyed. He's like, now I have to.
He's like, who's this new guy at Lee? He's like, who the fuck are you?
You know, I don't want to deal with you.
And so if we put up D eight on the screen, Israel's dropping flyers over Gaza urging Palestinians to go out and protest against Tamas. This has kicked off, obviously what you would expect, which is then a rallying around of Hamas, like because on the one hand, people are deeply frustrated with the situation, and they're deeply frustrated with you know, a lot of elements of the way Hamas is like
operationally handling this situation people are suffering. On the other hand, they don't want to be seen as aligning themselves with Israel. So what as a result of this, as the rules of Israel trying to exploit the protests, You've had a lot of clans and kind of senior elder officials like up and down guys that put out statements saying that
the people have a right to protest. People have a right to protest Tomas but we stand steadfast and firm with with the national liberation and with the resistance against Israel. Trying to trying to make make that, make that clear. At the same time, you're going to have political jockeying for what may be a post Hamas environment after Gods.
Israel tried, you know.
Very hard and was and you know, they put their plans publicly out there that they wanted to empower clans against against Tamas two.
To distribute aid.
They armed some of these clans, they would bomb Hamas, they would bomb secure police that were connected with Hamas to try to empower these basically gangs because then they it's the classic divide and rule situation, and so some of those gangs have obvious political motivations to try to fuel these and so what is what is relying on genuine organic sentiment of you know, very quickly is getting pulled in many different directions.
That's what I really wanted to get at it.
I was like, what do we really make at these protests because everyone's like, oh, it's I was like, maybe it seems a little convenient.
But it's like there is and it should definitely be acknowledged that there is significant anti Hamas sentiment being expressed at these at these protests.
What are your dropside colleagues say about the participants and others.
That yeah, that that this is that these are that there are significant you know, anti Hamas elements to these.
Protests, of course, but it's.
There's also anti siege, anti occupation, like anti like end this war, like we want to live is one of the one of the main lines, main battle cries of these protests is we want to live. And then there is some frustration that the ceasefire didn't last, and it's frustration that everybody involved like they just want the but they also know who is blockading Gaza right now and they know they can in many cases you can see
the trucks on the other side. Abu Baker ab Had, one of our correspondents there, is to put on Twitter the other day that or yesterday that children that he's seen are drawing food in the sand, that the depth
of the hunger is at just intolerable levels. And so part of this, I think is just say flipping the table like something's got to give here, and it's it's it's being received in a very complicated way in Israel because on the one hand, the Israeli public likes to say that, look, even the Palestinians are protesting against some we told you Hamas is terrible, but that also then undercuts their argument that everybody is Hamas, and why are you killing them all? Like they're begging you to not
kill them. They're saying they want to live, and there is a very clear path that Hamas has outlined that they will leave the government, make a deal. Let let let let a new government come in with some amount of sovereignty and open and open up the passes so that the trucks can get back in and they'll disarm and move on like and so. For a lot of the Israeli right, one of their biggest fears has always been being told, yes, peace and co existence is possible. We want,
we want peace because Israel does not want. The Israeli right does not want, which ends the Israeli right is now almost all of Israel. They don't want peace and coexistence with Palestinians and Gaza. They want the Palestinians and Gaza to no longer be there. Right, they're setting up an entire ministry to move them to Egypt and Jordan. They want to ethnically cleanse the entire area. So peace
and coexistence is a threat to that vision. So that's why it's being received in this kind of complicated fashion. And you're and you're seeing a lot of Israeli commentators say, we don't care if they're protesting.
Kill them anyway.
All right, let's get over to NPR and to PBS. Last piece here. But Ryan and I we were like, we need to debate something more. And foreign students is too much, that's that's not spicy enough.
So what about NPR and PBS.
So there have been these congressional hearings for purposes we still have yet to be explained. But anyway, they are there, and Republicans and Democrats sparring over whether the hearings are a joke, for defunding NPR, NPR not doing itself any favors. Their CEO hasn't particularly come across well with some of our own past tweets. So we compiled some We compiled some clips from what went down yesterday to give you the best and the brightest.
Let's take a listen.
The former senior Business editor friend PR.
How long you work at MPR?
I believe he was there just over twenty five years.
Twenty five years award winning journalists?
Do you win any awards?
Are time to anybody? Award that's pretty important in it? That is a pretty distinguished journalists, right certainly? And I wrote he wrote a long story about what you do at MPR is MPR.
Biased, Congressman.
I have never seen any instance of never of pro political bias determining editorial decisions.
Now, wells mister Berliner in his story.
A couple last year wrote, I've in the DC area editorial positions at MPR. He said he found eighty seven registered Democrats, zero Republicans.
Is that accurate?
We do not track the numbers or the voter registration, but I find that.
Award winning journalists who worked twenty five years at NPR, mister Berlin or was he lying when he wrote that.
I am not presuming such. I just don't have We don't track that information about our journalist eighty.
Seven to zero, and you're not biased?
Do you believe that America believes in black plunder and white democracy?
I don't believe that, sir.
You tweeted that it is reference to a book you were reading at the time. Apparently the case for reparations.
I don't think I've ever read that book, sir.
You tweeted about it.
You said you took a day off to fully read the case for reparations. You put that on Twitter in January twenty twenty.
Chirst of all, I do want to say that NPR acknowledges that we were mistaken and failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner our current editorial leadership. Woohan, We recognize that we were reporting at the time, but we acknowledged that the new CIA evidence is worthy of coverage and have covered it.
So Yeah, didn't go so well for Catherine there. I mean, she's been a real target for quite some time now. I don't know in terms of in terms of whether this is a good idea or not. Before we get to the debate, though, let's also take a listen to the Democrats eat three.
Please, let's take a listen.
Free speech is not about whatever it is that y'all want somebody to say, and the idea that you want to shut down everybody that is not Fox News is bullshit. We need to stop playing because that's what y'all are doing in here. You don't want to hear the opinions of anybody else. And the Constitution says Congress shall make no law respecting or establishing of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging.
The General Woman's time has expired.
The General Woman's time has expired.
Here's what I think we should be having a hearing about. After Trump and Musk took over the government, reporters noticed the State Department was trying to funnel four hundred million taxpayer dollars to Tesla. The State Department said, it's an old contract, no news here, But because of a brave whistleblower and an NPR reporter, they exposed the corruption and
the lies. Madam Chairwoman, if we want to look into waste for aden abuse, why not look into that Elon Musk, who's running cabinet meetings, who's running the White House, was trying to funnel money to himself. So let's stop investigating cookie monster and start investigating how the Trump administration lied about this and was trying to funnel money to their biggest political supporter.
Entry.
Now, I will admit that the extreme liberal agenda that you're all pushing, I think doesn't stop there. This, of course is Burton Ernie. Now, these two guys actually live together, they're friends, they're supportive of each other. Now that might be triggering to our chairwoman and someone this committee, and perhaps that's also why we're here today, Ms Kerger, an important question. Are Burton Ernie part of an extreme homosexual agenda?
No, thank you, miss Kroger, and.
Thank you for being a good sport. Now I'm obviously using some humor here, but the fact that we're sitting here today talking about defunding public television is actually not funny. At a time where we can't agree on basic facts and well, the free press is under attack, we need public media like PBS and NPR more than ever.
So I had no idea Burton Ernie were possibly gay.
Well that's the whole thing that there was. There was a panic on the right for a while.
It was.
Is this a long standing thing? Is this more recent development? What's up with that?
I only remember from the kind of gay panic two thousands ere.
Oh really, but I wasn't These are like the people wouldn't let their kids like read Harry Potters.
Yeah, okay, yeah, but maybe back in the sixties seventies there was some.
Okay, So Ryan, let's uh, let's talk about it.
What is your case for NPR and for PBS, and why don't we split them apart? Because NPR is news organization, not so NPR News specifically, but also NPR.
Has a lot of different programming, public interest programming. I've listened.
I listened to tons of NPR when I was growing up. They have great book shows, et cetera. But I don't think you can deny that it's effectively taken, you know, pretty liberal in the last decade or so.
So why shouldn't public dollars be funding something like that?
So I would preface this by saying that my concern for this country is like rapidly evaporating, well as we become more like China and Russia. But you like, we're giving up right exactly, So then you like it. So let's just be China. Then at China you're going to get publicly funded media, yeah, and you're going to get you know, much better public benefits.
You also have then no freedom of.
Like thought, association or whatever. I mean, that's an exaggeration. Sure shouldn't say that about my good chairman, she but you don't have the same level of freedom that you have here. As we're eroding our freedom here, then it's like, well then what are we what do we even have to offer?
But it's kind of like the food stamp thing that we had talked about yesterday, Like why so if it's tax payer dollar, don't you have a taxpayer interest in this? And the and the democratically elected government should have some say over the way that it's.
Going to ae.
I agree, and and I'm and I'm and I'm fine with that. I think that I think there should be a correction in the kind.
Of political bias of NPR.
And I think they're doing it like I think, I think they've been chastened by the election.
And how did it get so.
Out of control?
Right?
You know, because even I think I think the way it got that was I think the way it got out of control is the realignment of our of our politics.
In throughout the twentieth century, you had, you know, the kind of suburban class that is going to dominate well A, newsrooms were more working classes throughout the twentieth In the early twentieth century, yeah, as as they became more professional class in the eighties and nineties, the professional class had a lot of Reagan supporters in it, and a lot of Republicans and suburbs were Republican and so and you also had this more of an American identity where journalism
was less not seen as partisan.
It was seen as it was like because.
You had NPR, NBC, you know, you know, PBS, CBS, ABC, like that was basically it. And they saw themselves as kind of above politics. As you move into the realignment period of the twenty and twenty tens, everybody with a college education becomes kind of a liberal, whether and whether they're Regin.
Specific type liberal or not.
Right, yes, and they're you know, they're pro choice and their secular there and there are a lot of our kind of pro free trade like that kind of kind of a liberal. And everybody in journalism starts to have a college degree. So the combination of those two things just meant that everybody just worked at NPR even though they still had and I know these people like they still have they still can to themselves journalism journalists first,
but they they were just kind of personally liberals. Then Trump gets elected and they see him as this this kind of assault on their on their on their sensibilities and on the American Constitution.
Glenn Greenwall and I have talked about this.
We from the two thousands up through twenty sixteen, we had always been saying journalists need to, you know, stop pretending that they're objective and allow the public to know what their opinion.
I totally agree.
And then after twenty sixteen we're like, oh, maybe not like that, Like that, wow, okay, maybe maybe we were.
A little off on that, Like, well, no, a little you want a little.
Like they went so anti Trump. Yeah, it's like no, but that was good. That was revealing, that actually made it. It's like, no, your impartiality is actually bullshit. I'll tell you where my jump point came for NPR News in particular, put this one up there on the screen.
I'll never forget this.
From the day that the hundred came out, Why haven't you seen any stories from NPR about a New York Post Hunter Biden quote. We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories. We don't want to waste the listeners and readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions. Now listen, am I telling you that NPR or that Hunter Biden's story was the biggest story in the world. No, do I think it should have merited coverage in the same way that any
story should have merited coverage in that twenty twenty election. Yes, And in particular, they didn't just not cover the Hunter Biden story.
They also didn't even cover the censorship of.
That story by Twitter and others that were involved at the time. So to me, that was when it became an overtly political, taxpayer funded organization, and I said, I just don't think that can stand you.
You shouldn't be doing that.
I will stand for And this is where I disagree with the libertarians and others. Actually, public programming, which is educational is great. I cannot tell you how much MPR I listened to when I was growing up. Bookstore, you know, book they had all these books shows, you know, the money one. I'm forgetting exactly what the name is. I mean, in the mid two thousands and all that, a lot
of people you know, turned NPR on. It maybe have been whatever was even available, and it had just general public interest programming of like highlighting stories and you know, just thinking back to kind of the explosion the pre podcast era, that was very very useful for a lot of people, and I wouldn't even really call it political,
especially in its you know, non news programming. But that's where you said the educational problem starts to come in, because now even that cultural programming around books where like reviewing Ibrahim x Kendy right as part of our show thing. They're like, okay, well, you know it doesn't take a genius to see which way all this is start trending?
Now?
Am I saying you can't review that?
No?
But are you also going to have a critical author on I don't think so. That becomes the issue and you start to really see the organization from twenty fourteen onwards become just like overtly liberal. I think PBS is the same story where it's sad because it's not just about Sesame and others. I mean PBS helped a lot of kids to learn about science and how to read. If you think about you know you're in my childhood, probably in our public.
Schools, what did we watch?
We watched a lot of PBS programming about how to read and cartoons. I genuinely think that stuff is really very impactful, especially in a country where you can't leave it to these privatized education companies, they certainly don't have our damn interests at heart. So I guess it's more about coming back to principles. But a lot of the libertarians and the conservatives, they don't even believe it's possible, and so they just want to blow the entire thing up.
So that's really where I differ with them.
Right, So it sounds like we agree on the sense that in principle, public media is a good thing, and then the public coming together and deciding that they're going to use public resources to fund media and education is a good thing because the market doesn't do everything. And when it comes to NPR, for instance, apparently about three percent of their funding is tax dollars.
That's the National MPR.
That's the one they hate, the one that all these liberals on.
North Capitol Street.
When it comes to NPR stations around the country, it's at least ten percent of the funding as tax dollars. And without that funding, the NPR station that exists wherever you live, if you're outside of DC or New York and Los Angeles would.
Probably go under.
And those NPR stations, they're important to National MPR because it's cool how NPR.
When there's a story in Alaska, they've got something in Alaska.
Story in Montana they've got and not didn't fly somebody to Montana. They've got somebody that lives right there, knows the local scene reports every day for the local NPR, but then when there's a national story, they report for national MPR. And I think that these rural areas in particular are significantly worse off without those publicly funded NPR stations, and they just just from a commercial capitalist perspective, there's not going to be the audience there for them to survive.
So the public should step in and provide a thing that the market can't that we consider to be valuable. And if we feel like it's going off the rails politically ideologically, I think it's fine for the public to step in and be like, look, come on, get it together.
Good, that's what we're doing here.
Then we totally agree, all right.
Guys, But except the Republicans don't agree. They're try to cut off. Yeah, we'll see I doubt.
I mean, like you said, though, what is it three percent of the funding and it's not like they also solicit to it. That's so if the only thing that's annoying meou for prs, how much they shake you down for money.
But every time you listen, if Republicans do cut the funding, it will not be national NPR that will go under.
It would be the local mprs.
That's true, that's fair. PBS.
The only reason the real thing for PBS is I love their historical programming for anybody out there.
I mean, I think it's on Amazon.
It's only like three ninety nine a month, and you can get access to the whole PBS category. I love those American Experience ones about the American presidents. Obviously, the ken Burns documentaries are just incredible.
But that's a.
Genuine, genuine public service in my opinion, because that stuff is used in schools to like, I mean, it's definitely gonna better than any history teacher that you're ever to see to. Actually, this like highly produced, all these interviews. That's Civil War documentary. Actually it's funny. Shane Gillis was joking about it, but I feel like he's speaking directly to someone like me. But Shelby Foot, have you ever
read his books? After I watched that, I actually tried to read Shelby Foot's books they are impossible to.
Read for me.
They are written in that the way he talks is the way that he writes. It's lyrical, so.
He'll be like mister Lincoln, you know, coming up on a broad hill. Jefferson Davis, known for the scar on his face. I'm like, dude, I can't read this like you know.
He didn't write with troops such as these, did he Stonewall Jackson biography?
No, I don't think he did.
He wrote he wrote a trilogy which was I forget exactly what they were called. Uh yeah, the Civil War narrative. And to be fair, he even would tell you that he was not trying to write. He was writing it in like a historical uh and like a he was writing it specifically in the way that I found annoying.
I just personally cannot stomach that whenever I'm reading. So there you go.
Book discussion from Soger and Ryan. Ryan, it's been fun, man. Thank you for stepping in this week. We appreciate you. Back to regular programming
Next week and we will see you all later.