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So let's stake to some of the details about what Elon is up to. And you know the disasters I think they are recording. So Trump has repeated, I mean, Trump really positioned himself as like a different kind of Republican who's not going to be like the.
Tea Party, austerity.
Obsessed, deficit hawk, and he separated himself from the Republican primary, you know, positioning himself as a populace who wouldn't touch Social Security or Medicare in particular. And now you've got Elon Musk, who is has been granted by Trump all of this power within the administration.
I mean, I would say that much more of the direction.
Of the administration has been Elon's ideology than Trump's ideology. And Elon went on Joe Rogan's podcast for a lengthy conversation and as part of that reiterated his attacks on Social Security.
Let's take a listen to that.
Well, I mean, the govern's one big permit scheme. If you ask me, yeah, well you can tell me social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.
Well, I explain that, oh.
So, well, people pay into social Security and the money goes out of Social Security immediately, but the obligation for social Security is your entire retirement career. So you're you're paying, uh with you you're paying like like, if you look at the future obligations of social Security, it far exceeds the tax revenue far. If you ever looked at the debt, the debt clock, Yes, okay, there's there's our present day debt,
but then there's a future obligations. So when you look at the future obligations of social Security, the actual national debt is like double what people think it is because of the future obligations. So basically, people are living way longer than expected, and there are fewer babies being born, so you have more people who are retired and get that live for a long time and get retirement payments,
so the future obligations. So how a bad the financial situation is right now for the federal government, it will be much worse in the future.
Simple fis you lift the cap so that rich people have to pay more into social Security and it doesn't just cut off at one five and then you would be good to go with regard to social Security. But you know, I mean, this is Elon's ideology. He I think it is accurate to say as an archo capitalist. That means that he actually thinks every function of government should be privatized. That's why he talks about things like I think every government employee should take what he describes
as a more productive job in the private sector. As Liz Franzac said on Twitter, though you have to love the ideology in which social security is a Ponzi scheme and meme coins our strategic asset.
I mean, that's what's insane about this is you have a multi multi billionaire. Obviously, I mean, arguably the most powerful person to walk the face of the earth right now. Sure in a teacher on a podcast laughing at social security as a Ponzi scheme, and it gets to what we were just talking about in the last block but reversed, which is social security does have problems like this is a quote from a Cato Institute analysis.
So obviously Cato Institute's.
Probably much more sympathetic with the anarcho capitalist than Milton Friedman famously is called had called social security a Ponzi scheme for decades, but in nineteen fifty there are about sixteen workers paying into social caurit for every retiree. Today that numbers dwindled to just two point seven workers per retireing and it's projected to fall further to two point
four workers per retiree by twenty thirty five. So this is a from a Cato Institute blog saying social security is a legal Ponzi scheme, which is where people like Elon Musk get really comfortable tossing that around because it's an ideological formulation of the right for.
Decades since the advent yes of social security.
And Milton Friedman again was like he's very much popularized thinking of Social Security in this way, and there are significant structural problems with social Security, But talking about it on a podcast so flippantly, a multi multi billionaire, extremely powerful person talking about it where he's almost giggling, is not it? Like that is not the politics that Donald Trump wants to advance for MAGA, Like that's like if Steve Bannon were here watching this with us.
What, Yeah, yes, I would think so.
I mean, especially they're going to pass a four trillion dollar tax cut for people like Elon Musko already. You know, TESLA had multiple years where they paid zero dollar.
It's their top priority right now, Yes, at tax it is their top priority.
As it was in the first administration.
Yes, yes, and I mean in that way there's an ideological carryover but from the first administration. But hey, if you just took that four trillion dollars and put it into the Social Security Trust Fund, I think would be
in good shape. But Bernie made, you know, a similar point to what I was making, and put this up on the screen just to lay on some of the numbers here he says, wrong, Elon social Security has paid every benefit ode to every eligible American for eighty six years, we can make it, solve it for the next seventy five years, and expand benefits by scrapping the cap that allows billionaires like you to pay the same amount into
Social Security as a truck driver. So yeah, I mean, the specter of having this man who aspires to be the first trillionaire, who, as you said, is probably the most powerful person who ever walked the face of the planet, steering at the most successful social safety net program and the most popular social safety net program in the history of America that has lifted literally millions and tens of millions of people out of poverty, is just I mean, it.
Is just disgusting.
It is just disgusting, And nobody needs me to tell them that.
Like, there is a visceral reaction.
To seeing this all gark plutocrat who is plundering the government saying we don't have money. We've got money for, you know, endless wars, We've got money for my four trillion dollar tax cut, but we don't have money for grammar social Security check.
Like, get out in here.
With that super bad I mean, just the super bad politics. And they're about to I think see that more and more show up and polling, and the more that Elon goes out and talks like this, it's going to be genuinely problematic for them because they've actually really tried. We were talking yesterday as were prepping for the show, like what did Project twenty twenty five have to say about
social security? And went back and looked because I remembered vaguely in my mind being like they had done something that was sort of new right e meaning like not old school con inc And I went back and looked in The reason I remembered that is because it basically
doesn't talk about social security. Talks about social security in a couple of different programs like in the through the lens of abortion, and that's sort of thing, but there's no like big plan for social security, which is fascinating because if this were still Paul Ryan's Republican Party, that would have been a focal point Project twenty twenty five.
But the reason that it wasn't is that people on the right have said, you're allowed to still believe this stuff, like that's just turn the volume down, like let's see, you know, like we're we may have to do all of these tweaks to social security at some point and I'm of the perspective that, like, they're desperately structural changes that have to happen in Social Security, but politically Trump world has said, like, you guys got to turn down the volume on that. We cannot be out here talking
about it. You can do that in ten or fifteen years, you can't do it right now. And then you have Elon Musk going out on Rogan and Big like it's a Ponzi scheme. And then you can't explain why it's a Ponzi scheme with any like persuasive answer that would resonate with average Americans, who, to your point, are going to see Grandma's Social Security cut or are going.
To worry about that.
I mean, that's good luck well and the worries are already here. I can put this up on the screens. Do is just making massive cuts to Social Security administration. They're saying they planned to cut some seven thousand jobs. The number I saw was that this was like roughly half the workforce that they're planning on cutting. Some of
those cuts have already come. Ryan actually tweeted on a list of some of the people who have already been fired, and they have names like Regional commissioner for New York, Deputy Regional commissioner for Kansas City, Assistant deputy commissioner for Ohio.
So and Ryan confirmed that they actually were fired because the administration was saying that we've mutually agreed to like sort of part ways. Yeah, but Ryan confirmed with his sources that this was like an actual purge.
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right.
And you know, I saw a bunch of local newspapers across the country that are covering the fact that their local Social Security offices are being shuttered. And you know, these are really important resources for if you have some sort of an issue with Social Security and you know you need to go to the office, then you know
that's your local resource that you go to. And to see those shuttered again to your point about how these cuts are not just being felt in Washington, d c. Among like some you know Ukraine flag.
Liberals or whatever.
These are really across the country in critical ways that are going to show up in every community in some way across the country. And you know, people like to be able to go to their Social Security office. They like that they have a regional commissioner so that things can be taken care of, and I also think you are courting disaster to think. Listen, we know when Elon came in and slashed and burn Twitter, things broke, things
still bring. I can't my dms aren't working on my fricking phone right now, right now, And when it's Twitter, it's like, oh well, whatever, I'll just get them later, I'll do it on my laptop, et cetera. When it's your Social Security check, it's a little bit more important, or when it's airplanes falling out of the sky, it's a little more important.
When it's food.
Safety and we don't have the regulators to be able to make sure that the standards are being upheld, or baby formula where we've already had issue in the past, these things are more consequential and there is not the same margin for error of like, oh oops, are Ron de Santis spaces was a total and complete disaster, but no one's going to die from that.
To be fair, your Twitter dms they're probably hacked by Masade, is probably not El's.
Fault, although they are.
Also I read that some doge Shaffer is like figuring out ways to download everybody's dms as well, and I probably run some AI program through it, et cetera.
So it could be that too.
Who it seems perfectly legal. What is the very legal? Very cool? That's how Trump described something once.
That's right, Yeah, very cool, That's exactly right.
I was mentioning the FA some of the you know, air safety pieces. Let's just put this X piece up on the screen. To the point of the self dealing that has been going on. So last week I talked about how Elon's SpaceX people had gone in and were like, you know, this two point one billion dollar contract that was going to Horizon, it's going to go to Starlink. Now, well they apparently that hasn't been made official yet, but they are already ordering staff to root around to find
millions of dollars in funding for Elon's Starlink. So, you know, tens of millions of dollars they say, for a Starlink deal according to sources here with the with Rolling Stone, and you know again, I think people have two ways they can look at billionaires, and I wish people just had an auto like negative on billionaires, but they don't.
They have two ways they can look at it.
One is like, oh, he's so brilliant and he's such so successful and he's such a genius. We're so lucky to have him, and you know, rooting around in the government. The other is that you know, this is an arrogant prick who is just self interested and is a robber barren. And the reason he's so rich is because he steals
things for himself. And when you have situations like this unfolding, it is clear the way that people are going to if they don't already view Elon Musk in the context of all the power he has in our government.
Well, I mean, you described him earlier in the show as an anarcho capitalist, and I think that's how he sees himself. But the better way to describe it that as a crony capitalist, because he doesn't believe in the anarcho part of that. He still believes that there should be a government to give him contracts.
That's the coerce.
That is a really important priority.
Yeah, yeah, I mean the thing with it's I think two things to be true. He can be brilliant on the one hand and also be a robber baron. And that's the interesting thing about Ela Musk is that Republicans for a long time had I mean, he had a decent bit of pop cultural credibility, like bakedin before he started like going full Doge, and we're starting to see
that sort of crumble to an extent. Republicans were not used to having someone from Silicon Valley, where they'd been really cozy with Democrats since the Obama administration.
They were not used to.
Having somebody that had pop cultural cachet and from Silicon Valley and lots of lots of money be so nice to them. Yeah, and that was very exciting, and he could go in Joe Rogan and talk about all these things of the government that are broken. But that has a flip side, and that is increasingly becoming very fair, very clear that there's another side of this coin politically at least. So I mean, it's similar to what we
were saying with Democrats and Doge. And one of the things I feel with Democrats and Doge is that they need to have a better answer, because if the public is asked to say the government is inefficient?
Is the government inefficient? And like are you going to vote based on this?
You may have some people genuinely continuing to vote Republican even if they're upset with those and feel like some of this stuff isn't going well because Democrats answer is USA idea is wonderful and there's never been any problems with it, and just shut up if you're talking about this like you're wrong. They need to have a better answer. On the other hand, Republicans need to have a better answer. You keetch just an Elon Musk out to talk about
how special Security is a Ponzi scheme. You have to It's like repeal and replace. The politics of repeal and replace fell apart when they didn't have a good replacement.
Yeah, that's true.
I mean one of the things Democrats could do is just insist on the return of Inspectors General, who job it is to look into waste rodden abuse and to not cut the GAO, which is the you know, government office,
and to beef those things up. But you know, you're absolutely like and going beyond like the plan for Government Efficiency or whatever, which I do think the conception of trying to run government like a business is just it doesn't make ideological sense because the goal of government isn't to turn a profit.
The goal of government is to.
You know, do things like protect our food and protect our children, and you know, make sure that the airplanes aren't crashing out of the sky, and make sure that Grandma's able to eat and not be you know, eating cat food or whatever. But I think more broadly, they need to have an explanation of.
The world of what went wrong, of what.
Led people to feel so stressed and be truly so stressed, and you know how prices have gotten so out of control. Like they need to be able to point their finger at villains, the oligarchs and billionaires of the world who even before Doze were sort of robbing us all blind
but and perhaps more subtle ways. And they can't really do that until they write, until they clean up their own house in that regard, and that we'll talk more about that once we get into the block about what the Democrats are up to and what they are thinking and complaining about, et cetera. Just a real quickly through the last two updates with regard to Doze before we get to this crypto mess.
So put the next piece up on the screen.
We have a new iteration of the what did you do last week TPS report email? This time hag Seth is saying, Okay, no, actually, I do want everybody to respond to this thing with I guess looming potential firing.
If you don't.
You know, this has been obviously huge back and forth. Elon put this thing out. A bunch of agency heads including hag Seth resisted, and Rubio and RFK sort of said yes, respond and then said don't respond. Now this email is supposed to be going out today and DoD civilians, of which there are millions. That's the largest employer in the workforce.
You said, like thirty.
Percent of the federal government civilian workforce are under Department of Defense, So this is extremely consequential in terms of that workforce. And then the last piece is a legal update here we have I mentioned the Inspectors General that had been fired, puts the six up on the screen.
We had a judge rule that it is constitutional for the Office of Special Counsel to assert independence from the president, is legitimate authority to act free of removal by the president without causue rules next upscotis So this is one of the court battles that's playing out over who can be fired under what circumstances because there are laws that govern you know, with some of these individuals, there has to be you know, a time period. Congress has to
be alerted. It has to be for cause. It can't just be capricious because we feel like it. And so this one is likely headed up to the Supreme Court for a consequential ruling about whether the executive has total and complete control over hirings and firings, or whether Congress can say no for things like inspectors general. You have to give us a reason why you're getting rid of them, because you can see, you know, you could see how
this could be used in a bad woe. This person was investigating me in a way to like now they're gone, et cetera. So they try to insulate them from those sorts of political pressures.
Yeah, just one of those decisions where the Trump administration would say, maybe facially it's against the statute, but the statute is unconstitutional.
So they're trying to we's talked about this.
They're trying to push it into the Supreme Court to get decisions that would centralize power essentially with the executive because they don't want bureaucrats to be able to subvert the executive. It's an interesting ideological conversation, but this is a.
Part of that.
Yeah, So we'll see that one's headed up to the Supreme Court, so we'll see what direction they go into with that.
All right, let's get to the show.
Part of the show that I'm most interested in talking about, which is this frikin crypto reserve. What's put the Trump truth up here on the screen. He announces a US crypto reserve that will elevate this critical industry after years of corrupt attax by the Biden administration, which is why my Executive Order on Digital Assets directed the Presidential Working Group to move forward on a crypto Strategic Reserve that includes XRP, SOOL, and eightya. I will make sure the
US is the crypto capital of the world. We are making America great again. He followed that up emily with another one, saying, oh, obviously bitcoin and ethereum, other valuable
cryptocurrencies will be the heart of the reserve. I also love bitcoin and ethereum, So we've got five different crypto assets here that so he's this has been floated for a while by Trump, and now he's actualizing it and announcing which particular coins are going to be are going to benefit from US taxpayer dollars or funding being used to pump up the prices of these things to be
held in a crypto asset reserve. Basically the problem for a bunch of crypto billionaires is that they're holding these quote assets and there isn't enough liquidity for them to cash out their bag.
And now the US tax payer will.
Backstop those assets so that these crypto billionaires can cash in. And the guy who is you know, has been in charge of putting this together is a guy named David Sachs who's a billionaire. He's one of the billionaires who you know was involved in Silicon Valley Bank and cried to the federal government that they needed bail out. Well, that was on the verge of collapse, and has you know, definite conflict of interest here in terms of which coins
are being selected. So first let's put C eight up on the screen and you can see the way that these crypto coins have. You know, of course they went through the roof. They soared after Trump revealed which coins were going to be part of this. And then with regard to David Sachs and the reported conflicts of interest here, which is a really fancy way for just saying that he's you know, completely enriching himself.
Put this up on the screen.
This individual, Derek Martin, I checked all of this, by the way, and accurate, has a massive conflict of interest with this announcement. Folks, should you where of a new level of corruption. Put the next piece up on the screen. His company Craft Ventures has invested in a startup called Bitwise invest since at least twenty seventeen. He's listed as the primary investor, and just so happens that the main crypto coins going into the Crypto Strategic Reserve Fund just
so happened to match Bitwise's top five crypto holdings. So incredible self dealing here, I mean, corruption really doesn't begin to describe this digital asset reserve of even putting David zax aside.
I mean, this is just a heist. It's just theft.
It's just robbing the treasury to elevate the price of these completely bullshit meaningless like I mean, talk about a Ponzi scheme, like crypto is the ultimate Ponzi scheme. There's not even a pretense of these things have value in and of themselves, and yet we're using federal government resources to backstop the price.
Of these tokens.
So that you know, insiders can cash in, which that already appears like that is happening, and so that a bunch of billionaires can cash on their holdings. I mean, it is a classic pump and dump, but using you know, federal garment resources in order to do that, and coming at the same time is they're like, we got to cut Social Security. Like it's just it's totally insane. I almost don't have words for it.
This is a genuine problem for Sacks, and one that he anticipated because he says he divested all of his crypto holdings before taking government office. But what's interesting about that?
And Ryan pointed this out and asked him about it on X and I'm curious what you make of this, because I mean, it seems like if you were someone who's been into crypto for years and you're a major stakeholder in the crypto world, you would probably have the investments that you just outlined, Like it's not it's not surprising that that's where Trump went with the Reserve, and that's somebody who isn't like, you know what I mean, it seems to me like that genuinely coincidence wouldn't be
the right word. Just sort of it's a logical place where your money would be parked. And I think that speaks to the bigger problem with having a cryptos are is that his companies, right and correct me, like this is I know you're more into this than im, but he's companies where the companies are invested obviously in crypto doesn't matter if you divest, but if your companies are invested in crypto, and we don't know that he's divested from those companies, I sort of.
Doubt he's divested from this company. Correct. Yeah, it seems like a huge, huge problem.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And then I mean, also the other problem is that who knew in advance which coins were going to be pumped up by this thing? And you know, someone noted there was a position that was taken fifty times leverage the tune of two hundred million dollar long, and I think it was a Theoreum and bitcoin.
Well, to me, it seems fairly obvious that the reserves would be ethereum bitcoin like some of the ones that are in there, which sort of but it's like.
The timing exactly, so this position was taken a day before the announcement and fifty times leverage means that if there was a two percent drop, all of those millions gone wiped down, two hundred million dollar loss. Yeah, and you're telling me that person didn't know, Like, come on, and it's not just this like this is unbelievably naked.
Just theft of the public resources.
In my opinion, there's zero strategic reason why we need to hold these important, meaningless Ponzi scheme quote unquote assets, right, zero justification for that whatsoever, Nothing that makes sense at all. But you also have a situation where you know, one individual who was being investigated by the SEC bought a bunch of Trump shit coin posted publicly about it too. I think it was the largest you know, purchase of these tokens and investment in this in his like crypto scam.
And then oh lo and behold that scene, seed drop their investigation the vehicle to just outright bribe Trump through his crypto coin. I mean, this is listen, a politicis has been corrupt since the beginning of time, nothing new
about that. But this is a world historic level of theft and graft and just brazen pay to play corruption that has been enabled by crypto And this is just like the latest iteration of that who puts C ten up on the screen that has the details about this Chinese crypto entrepreneur guy named Justin Sun. So they halted the fraud prosecution of this Chinese national who sent Trump millions and bragged about it, so that to make sure he knew that he had invested thirty million dollars in
these crypto tokens, so I was.
Paying off for him.
CEO of Coinbase also benefited the SECS, dismissing their lawsuit. That move came after Coinbase boosted Trump's crypto meme coin, donated seventy five million to a pro Trump superpack, and chipped in a million dollars to Trump's inauguration celebration. So presidency just completely for sale by these Robert barons.
Well, and I think in the corruption front, I was going to say this earlier about Elon Muskin Starlink. Part of the problem with all of this right now is that there's this They do have a sincere ideological not always sincere like Trump's.
I don't think it is sincere.
I don't think he sincerely gives a damn about crypto because he said it was a scam and then it could undermine the US dollar and you have to is the same thing with him in TikTok, right, Like it was pretty nakedly transactional. Now his opinion on it flipped.
Elon Musk has a sincere ideological belief. We were talking about his sort of like anarcho capitalism flirtation before in crypto, like he really does believe in it, and so then and David Sack certainly does legitimately believe in crypto, and so then you have this You're just sort of being asked to trust that this is all for the good of this like ideological argument and not self dealing. And with starlink gets interesting because starlink is a very cool technology.
It's an awesome product, and it may be the best for the FAA. We don't know though, that it's because it has the best It has the best argument to the FAA forgetting this contract. In the same way that like, well, how is anyone supposed to believe that this is genuinely the right move for the strategic reserve and not self dealing? You then just have to put your trust in Trump Elon in this case, David Sacks and David Sachs will will have this ideological reasoning give all these explanations, but
it's really hard. You're just asking the public to say, yes, I trust that this was not about your portfolio, even though the public has seen that happen for decades. And that's what Trump is a response to, Yeah, seeing that happen for he said, I alone know the system.
I think the system, and Ilon contix it. Yeah.
So Trump and Elon have a lot of like theoretical ideological divergences. The way that Trump positioned himself certainly in twenty sixteen but somewhat at this time as well, and the way Elon, you know.
Portrays his ideology.
But in just their commitment to theft of the public verse, they are completely united. And I do think that that is one of the most important like operating ideological commitments that you can see throughout this administration. Elon's primary goal, I think he wants to be the world's for australionaire, and he wants to use government money, our public taxpayer dollars to fund SpaceX so he can.
Get to Mars.
Like he wants to go to Mars.
He wants to plunder the government so he can go to Mars. That's that's his primary operative goal. And if that means Grandma's going to starve, and that means kids in Africa and doesn't matter, that's his goal. Okay, just braisen theft of the public government, public purse so that he can go to Mars. Trump wants to be wealthy on the tune of like an Elon Musk. I mean, Trump is obviously incredibly rich guy, but he's not like Elon Musk to Peter Teel right, well.
And that was debated too. I mean, what Trump's actual network was before these these coins, as you did a great tik talk on how there's a few whales who are at least as the time you did that TikTok, we're holding the Trump coin. That's another example of like we legitimately do not know if he knows who they are, Like, we don't know who they are. We know the like one or two of them are, but we don't know who they are. We don't know anything about that, and
we don't know if he knows who they are. Yeah, so then you're just being asked to trust that Trump's net worth was jacked up as he was entering office anonymously by people who were just trying to make money, and it was like a baseball card deal.
It was just really good. Yeah.
Well, and by having this shitcoin, anyone, whether it's the you know, Chinese crypto dude or anyone else, can just funnel millions of dollars into it, some portion of which go directly into Trump's pocket to get their way with
the government, right, so you know, he's robbing us. And then you know, the whole foreign policy direction of we're going to take Greenland, We're going to take Gaza, We're going to do you know, we're going to take half of Ukraine or whatever, like that's all about his you know, benefit for his family and Elon Musk as well, but a whole cadre of all dark billionaires who can you know,
also rob those countries and benefit themselves as well. So it's a pretty consistent commitment across the government and certainly helps helps us to understand you know, all this wired Trump and Elon able to get along.
So well, and why hasn't there.
Been a falling out, like because they both have a commitment to you know, stripping the government for parts and exploiting whatever they can in order to enrich themselves and pursue their own goals.
But I think their common commitment.
To theft of the public purse is a bond that they share and part of what is keeping that relationship together.
Oh, I think Trump's primary concern right now is his like historical legacy, and where those two things depart will be interesting.
So do you think he cares?
I think he.
Cares that he will be looked at as like a great walking around having his people call himself, to call him the peacemaker in chief.
Like I think he.
Does at this point care about how history sees him, and that's dangerous because it gets to, you know, just posturing, and every president does that. But like to what extent is this going to just be a public real campaign? Like is the presidency going to be a public relations campaign. I think what he cared about first was leaving office with money so that he has that covered. You know, he doesn't want to go to prison, So there's that too.
That could factor into the conversation about potential third term. As Bannon I think sadly is pushing, but I think he wants to be perceived as someone who healed the country. I think he desperately wants to be perceived that way, and I think where that departs with Elon Musk is going to be a problem for Trump.
And but what we've.
Seen so far is that it hasn't been to your point about the money, Yeah, So, I mean it's a he really cares about the optics. That's why he's obsessed with polling and obsessed with how he wont to mandate in the popular vote and all of that. So Elon could could potentially be a problem to that down the road. But you know, even even when we've seen breaks so far in public perception of Elon Musk, Trump is not this gets your theory right, Trump has not departed from him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Former Biden House Press Secretary Korean Jean Pierre, out of that job for only about what a month now, was at the Harvard Institute of Politics last week and made some comments about the Democratic Party's push to oust Joe Biden from the ticket that have gone viral and are well worth getting Crystal's reaction too, and diving into some of the problems or how they speak to some of the broader problems that a Democratic Party is facing right now.
So let's take a listen to Korean Jean Pierre again, this is from last Wednesday at the Harvard Institute of Politics.
Was a firing squad and I had never seen anything like it before. I'd never seen a party do that in the way that they did, and it was hurtful and sad to see that happening, A firing squad around a person who I believe was a true patriot, a person who I believe did everything that he can for this country, a person who I believe, as I mentioned before, has done more in his in one turn than most president had done in two term, historical things, and I was shocked.
But what I was.
Seeing, and Korean, you're just to clarify other Democrats coming out against Biden, yep, I.
Had never seen anything like that.
That was if you're asking me the thing that I saw in those three weeks, that was shocking, shocking, and instead of coming together to really be unified and trying to figure out how do we save our democracy, how do we fight back?
That's what I was seeing, Chris.
So I know you have a lot to say about that. I'm going to toss it to you. With just the response to Kurdin, Jean Pirez, that man. Do you know what I've never seen is a president who is basically dead continuing to try and run for president again. So to her saying, I've never seen anything like the firing squad.
It was like he fell asleep during a debate. Practically he beat me Mediga Medica, I'm sorry, but nobody has ever seen what precipitated what you say you've never seen, so maybe it's not so crazy that we.
Had never seen that level of firing squad before.
I mean, I just I don't even know what to say, Like, I don't know you were part of a historic scandal and cover up of this man's decline if you care so much, and I don't think that she really does. I mean, and that's part of it, Like if you actually cared about defeating Donald Trump and riding the ship, you should have been blowing the whistle and letting us in on the fact that this man could not function,
that he was unable to put sentences together. That I mean, the things that are starting that have been coming out after the fact about how oblivious he was to the political reality as well, about how many donors who would just see him at one event and you were with him, you know, day in and day out, donors would see him at one event and be like, holy hell, this
is worse than I thought. And so for you to sit here and play the victim and act like the people who were in the wrong were the ones that finally, at long last acknowledged reality and were like, Jesus Christ, this cannot go on is just insane to me. It's also insane to me, like I'm sorry to treat her with such kid gloves, like to host her and let her Oh my god, my feelings and it was so
shocking and it was so terrible. Blah blah blah, Like she needs to be treated as someone who was part of a conspiracy against the American people.
She's been touted out at Harvard.
That's right, Yeah, she was part of a conspiracy against the American people. They helped to, you know, block any sort of a democratic primary process from playing out. They hid, They went to great lengths that we are only beginning to scratch the surface of to hide the nature of his true condition. And that you feel no remorse or regret about that, your old concern, your only criticism is for again the people who very belatedly were like Jesus Christ,
we cannot hide from this reality anymore. Like that is so insane to me, And I do think it speaks to just like a deep lack of seriousness and a deep narcissism within some of these people, where it was more important about how her boss felt and the way he was treated and you know, his own ambitions than addressing what you know, you she probably would describe and what I certainly describe as a fascist.
Threat to the country.
So I just it's incredible to me that this is still the way that she's sort of like positioning herself. Oh, it was so heartful, hurtful, it was so shocking. Also, the whitewashing of Biden's record is should should not be unnoted as well. She says he accomplished historical things. Yeah, like you know, facilitating a genocide and Gaza as one example of those historical things that he was up to. And and I supported very much parts of that domestic agenda,
especially in the early days of the Biden administration. But you also have to grapple with the reality that, you know, the economy took a turn, people were not happy, people were not satisfied with what you were able to accomplish even on the domestic front, putting aside foreign affairs and Biden's core promise that he ran on in twenty and twenty and was planning on running again in twenty twenty four, was defeating Donald Trump.
And on that measure, you failed.
You handed the White House back to him on a silver platter. So you should be hanging your head in shame. And I know it's cliche to say, but with her, I really do feel like what happened to you? Because I knew her back at MSMB. She came out of the like move on activist, anti war world, and every day when I would see her up there justifying these atrocities.
In Goz, it was just like, how does this occur?
Like what is the path that you walked that led you to feel that this was not only just she thinks she has the moral high ground.
She still thinks that she is.
Like the more virtuous, morally correct one, and I just I just can't run my head around it, honestly.
And it's first and foremost a rebuke of the crowd that she came out of. And that's a really interesting point.
Actually, Yeah, that's exactly right.
Yeah, because she she came out of like the activist community, right, And I think, I think once you start to justify, well, this is just what I have to do for my career, and if it wasn't me, it'd be somewhere one else, blah blah blah, then you end up at the podium, you know, justifying war crimes and atrocities, and you end up here after the fact being upset that people pointed out the reality that the president was, you know, too old to be functional at this point, right.
So it's this, It's it's how the It's very common. It's not just on the left. But you see the ends justify the means, meaning to a certain extent, you start believing in the means, like it's right. So it's one thing to be like, you know X. But there was never any cracks in the foundation when it came to her, apparently, like when we didn't see anything leaked, she didn't indicate there was any daylight between herself and
the present. She was a real loyal foot soldier to the point where it seems like she was in the camp of like now, agreeing with the means, not just that the means justify the end. But we have to talk about this sort of glimmer of hope. I think for Democrats. Governor of Minnesota, Governor Tim Waltz, who is a slightly more compelling politician than he was allowed to be on the campaign trail, significantly more so.
He goes on Malli Jong Fast podcast.
It starts to talk about Man, I'm really eager to talk about this because it reminds me a lot of what Republicans have dealt with over the last ten years. Crystal about single payer healthcare. Yeah, let's roll this clip of Tim Waalts on Mallijrong Fast podcast. It's a full recollection of sort of went wrong or reconsideration of what went wrong in twenty twenty four. But here's what he had to say, particularly about healthcare.
I hear the thing out there is is that when we get back, which we will fight, I'll tell you what people are going to expect is they're not going to expect us to tinkle around the edge with the ACA. They're going to expect universal health care. And if there's a lesson here, I always said this, we had a one vote majority in Minnesota. When we move clean energy, we move reproductive rights, we moved. We moved a whole slew of progressive, very popular including things around guns and
gun safety, very popular things. We moved it with a one vote majority, and people ask, well, what do you call a one vote majority? A majority?
Exactly what happened with the Tea Party, Crystal, except in reverse. They did not expect Republicans to just tinker around the edges of the ACA. They wanted a full repeal, but when Republicans had nothing to replace it with, they lost the permission structure. From as you know, people have pointed out a lot of like populist conservatives who rely on the government for some of their health insurance, veterans, et cetera.
And so when you.
Have these populist movements spring up for good reason, your response can't the crony capitalism and corporate bullshit. Yeah, And I think that's the point that Walts is making here.
I think he has better instincts political instincts than the vast majority of democratic politicians. And you're absolutely right that he was really sort of stifled on the campaign. I think there was a fear maybe of him overshadowing Kamala. He did very poorly. Also in the JD vance debate, like we have to say he you know, this was way too accommodating. I mean, it just was not the not the way to go. In fairness, he did say going in like debating is not my things though that's
apparently a weakness for him. But you know, he auditioned for the campaign on cable dues, where he was fantastic.
He had a real instinct of how to characterize the Trump administration as like abnormal versus reaching for the high moralistic language of their fascists, et cetera, which obviously I agree that they are, but I do think that politically his way of just saying, like, these people are strange, they're outside of the mainstream, like this is not the direction we should be going in, I think was probably
the better direction. And he just was a very effective and relatable messenger when he was allowed to do so. And I think his instinct here is precisely correct and speaks to what you were saying, Emily, which is, like, you know, Democrats have always supported if you ask Democrats, overwhelming majority supports single pairer like this has always been what Democratic base voters have wanted. In that twenty twenty primary,
when in whether it was Mississippi or Nevada. When you ask Democratic primary voters do you prefer to, you know, a public option or some other variation of healthcare reform versus single pairer, they backed Bernie Sanders Medicare for all.
And at this point it's like, Okay, well, we tried it your way.
We did the Joe Biden thing, we did the Kamala Harris thing, and you were wrong that this was the way to defeat Donald Trump. You were wrong that this was the way to stop the country from sliding into you know, oligarchy and authoritarianism. So we're not going to listen to you anymore. Like this time, we have our
own ideas about how we want to approach things. And I think his instinct that a more sort of passionate and someone who is more of a fighter and who is more willing to embrace those kind of universalist programs that are really popular, things that are popular among the Democratic base are going to be in a much better position next time around.
Now this is where it gets even more interesting, because I think's Third Way selectively leaked to this document to Politico. But Politico got its hands on a document from a third Way retreat that happened out in Louding County. Obviously, if you're not familiar with Third Way, they're openly center left. They're not trying to be the activist the representation of
like the Democratic activist grassroots. In fact, they're openly sort of rejecting the direction of the party of the activist grassroots. But we can put the next element up on the screen. This is a document that was leaked to Politico from that retreat about how Democrats can regain working class trust quote and reconnect with voters culturally. They laid out twenty
solutions and crystal. It's so fascinating because some of this is right on the mark, it was right on the target, like the quote faculty lounge program, but some of it is so incoherent, like their prescriptions on the faculty lounge problem are incoherent with their point about economic concerns, because you'll have much better thoughts on this than I do.
But just as I'm thinking about some of these prescriptions, it's very heavily about the problems with identity politics, which is again funny from the center left, which completely encouraged, I mean, all of the corporate sponsorships of identity politics and you go back over the last ten years.
So it's amusing right now. Now.
On the other hand, though, they are talking about how democracy again like re emphasize the economy, like tone down the volume on the cultural issues, turn up the volume on the economy. But they're also talking about isolating the far left. And this is the problem, as I see, if your Democrats, the far left economics are more appealing than the center left's economics. So if you alienate the quote unquote far left, which actually does represent where the public is and a lot of economic.
Issues social security is one really good examples.
We were talking about earlier, healthcare another good example.
If you alienate the quote.
Far left because of the cultural messaging, you are left with what like Obamanomics, which is also not popular. So like what do you in this documents has reduce far left influence and infrastructure.
That's one of the bullet points.
Yeah, so you're going to be screwed on your economics if you do that because you were center quote center left economics are not popular.
Yeah, well, I think that's those are those are good points. I mean, they really give away the game here when they say that the goal should be to move away from the dominance of small dollar donors whose preferences may not align with the broader electorate.
You think the big.
Donors preferences are aligned with the broader electorate, Like tax cuts for the rich and you know, cutting Social Security A and union busting, those are the priorities of the big dollar donors, or you know, backing Israel's war crimes from here until eternity. You think that's what's aligned with the broader electorate. I mean, that's what really gives up the game here. Because it's all well and good, all
week should focus on economic solutions. What economic solutions like you know, salt tax type of bulshit exactly because I promise you they don't mean expanding social security and single payer healthcare and you know, union jobs and living wages.
They don't mean that.
So the other piece of this that is just maddening to me is again it pretends like the Bernie Sanders left has been in control of this party.
They're not.
They have very limited power, very limited power in this party. And that is precisely the problem. Like there was a populist left answer to trump Ism that made sense to people that appealed to the very bros who have now drifted to the right that appealed even to Joe Rogan, that appealed massively. I mean, Bernie Sanders was king among
working class Latinos. Again, the same groups that have drifted to the right that had a narrative that the Sanders left populist movement had a narrative and a class focus that made sense to people because it was true and it was real, and it offered actual solutions. And your efforts over these years, this group, in particular, efforts over the years to crush and sideline that movement is one of the key reasons why Democrats find themselves in the
place that they are now. So to act like you haven't been in control of this party while you're running, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris is to me so utterly insane and dishonest that it's crazy. But like I said, even if you you know, might agree with their sort of vague generalities about like oh, they need to get out into real communities, which is funny to me that those real communities include gunshops.
Like hell yeah, also good luck, I mean seriously good.
Luck, right, Like yeah, I don't think you're going to be winning a lot of voters of the gun show. But whatever, go to the gun show. That's fine if you want to. But even if you agree with these sort of like vague generalities, when they're talking about getting in touch with economic issues, they are not talking about the actual economics that would deliver for people that the quote unquote far left has been offering for years and years.
They're talking about an elite agenda backed by big money politics, which is precisely why Democrats had no trust with the voters when they claim to be the party of the working class.
It's really disgusting to see how elite Dems and massive corporations that were funding elite Dems got behind the identity politics agenda when it was convenient for them, and are now taking these issues and just completely discarding them. It's a great example of how people are like toys.
Right.
It's like we're on the Truman Show and they're running everything. It's a big experiment on us, and they're just like pulling the puppet strings. Like from my perspective as a conservative, and I'm like, okay, so you guys did all of this bullshit to girls' sports, and now you're taking a step back and being like, hey, no, no, no, we gotta we got to get our power back. And it's like, give me a break. You were just your It's just
we're all players in your fun little game. Yeah, and you'll you'll give all this money.
And you'll call people bigots, and you will.
It's like when there's that famous moment at a Bernie Sanders rally in twenty sixteen where a BLM group overtook the stage and started protesting him. And what we saw after that was the Hillary Clinton campaign start weaponizing this as a wedge issue and going after the Bernie bros And saying people were bigoted form backing Bernie, they were just sexists and just completely weaponizing it, and it became the dominant ideology of the Democratic Party and now they just want to get rid of it.
Yeah, thanks for growing us all.
You were not the ones who originated this as a way to pretend like Bernie Sanders was a racist and a sexist and pop like you were the real.
Programs and his supporters were racists and sex That's right, And the same thing with Trump supporters were necessarily all racists and sexists. They played this game with the country where they poured gasoline on the fire of the culture war, and now they're acting like as it burns, they're like, oh man, wa, you guys are really bad. Can you guys deal with putting those flames out?
It's such bullshit.
Yeah, And I mean you can also see the nakedness of it with the way that all these corporations, whether's Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg, like, you know, they adopted the the like liberal identity framing when that was the power that they thought was ascendant, and now that they feel like the right wing is ascendant, well they'll just ditch that and they'll adopt the right wing cultural totems to also cover for what is fundamentally a pro oligarchic agenda.
I mean that's Mark Andresen going on with Joe Rogan being like the CFPB is canceling, you know, conservatives blah blah blah and just making stuff up to try to use a trojan horse of these cultural issues to usher in a pro oligarch agenda. And it was groups like Third Way and the you know, Hillary Clinton neo liberals who originated that in the Democratic Party. So yeah, it's but the just coming out and saying like we got to get rid of these small dollar donors is so insane.
I mean, when Bernie ran and he is the most successful, and this is the other thing that gives away the game. He is the most successful small dollar donor candidate probably in history.
And Trump is really successful too, but not.
As successful as Bernie.
And this time around, actually Trump didn't do all that well with grassroots jonors. But you're right, but with Bernie, you know, you would go and look at the top professions and it was like Walmart workers and Amazon workers and Starbucks workers, and I think, though, you think those are the people that are out of touch with the priorities of the broader electorate. But you're like, you know, la Silicon Valley Wall Street donors, those are the ones that are going to get us back in touch with
the working class of America. Like they can't believe that, they can't actually believe that. It's so dishonest and so insane.
Hmm, yeah, I don't know if they believe it.
I mean some of them probably doing some of them are probably like, we know this is insane and stupid.
But that's their Yeah, you're right, they're in such a bubble that perhaps they do actually think because that's all viewpoint that surrounds the Bill, right, they're like, oh, these rich donors in Silicon Valley, or they're the ones that really get the pulse of the country.
M hmm.
Let's move on to the brewing feud between Bill Burr and Ben Shapiro.
This is a fun one, all right.
So Ben Shapiro has said that we can put element one up on the screen. This is the quote he said recently that Bill Burr quote has become woke over time. I think he became embarrassed that many people in the right thought he was very funny, so he decided he was going to go woke. Bur openly cheered the murder of the United Healthcare executive because he says ceo should live in fear if they don't act in the way that he would have them act in a system that he has no fixes for. By the way, now let's
go to the second one. He called Burr's comments about the killing of the United Healthcare CEO quote truly evil and said he's saying you should live in fear if you're the CEO of a company that does things that Burr deems to be bad or wrong.
Now, Bill Burr.
Did an interview where he was asked by The New York Times because he's doing it, actually, this is actually kind of cool. He's doing a Glengarry Glenn Ross adaptation, which is interesting because David mammott is has long been sort of affiliated with the right though Glengarry Glenn Ross is a critique of capitalism. So let's put E three on the screen. Bill Burr responds and says, all Shapiro knew is if he put quote woke on what I said, he would make more money. I don't know who he is,
but that guy is jerk off. Now let's go back to how Bill Burr has been talking about Brian Johnson and Luigi So this is a clip from Bill Burr on December ninth of last year.
We can go ahead and roll this element.
You know what's annoying me about this, this kid who killed this CEO is none of these news programs are talking about the incredible lack of empathy from the general public about this because of how these insurance companies treat people when they are at their most vulnerable, after we've all given them our money every fucking month, and now we finally need you, and all you do is deny us. And then these pussies and all of these things are
taking the pictures of their CEOs off their websites. You know, I gotta be honest with you, Okay, I love that the fucking CEOs are fucking afraid right now. You should be, by and large, You're all a bunch of selfish, greedy, fucking pieces of shit, and a lot of you are mass murderers. You just don't pull the trigger. That's why it looks clean. That's why these people look, oh my god, Oh he was just you know, walking into a hotel. It's like, okay, but what was his job?
What did he do?
What was the results of it?
All?
Right?
So there's a lot to say about this, Crystal, because Bill Burr has been on a tear about Brian Johnson and Luigimianngioni essentially since this happened, so for several months, and I think, you know, Shapiro wouldn't claim to be a sort of avatar of trump Ism. He has a lot of his own complaints with populism. He's a fairly anti populist pundit. That's kind of what got him in
trouble originally with with Trump world. He's always sort of been honest about his opposition to like anti corporate populism as it's risen on the right. But Bill Burr, I guess I don't understand why Bill Burr is supposed to have a fix to the healthcare problem if he's going to spout off about Brian Johnson.
He's a comedian, really, but the one that's actually funny and actually stands up to power, you know, and if Democrats want to win again, take notes from Bill Burr like this is actually the type of energy that you need to buy. I when he says a lot of these CEOs or mass murders, they just don't pull the trigger like you want to talk about the kind of populist left energy that could win.
This is how people feel.
I mean, that's why there was such an outpouring of enter of emotion around Luigi Mangioni. And so for Bill Burr to say, like, hey, aren't we going to talk about where that comes from? And then Shapiro is like, oh, you can you know this is truly evil blah blah blah. I also, I think what was the smartest thing that Bill Bert said in all of this would speak to what we were just talking about about using cultural issues
to usher in an oligarch agenda. He said, all Shapiro knows is if he put woke on what I said, he'd make more money. And that is I mean, again, a lot of oligarchs on the right are using an anti woke, you know.
A woke backlash.
You know, the energy around anti woke is use whatever DEI, whatever cultural totems exist that are important to conservatives and putting that across whatever their agenda is, and you know, trying to usher in Trojan Horse in this pro oligarch movement, and it's being very successful. And so I think the way Bilberr like immediately picks up on that, I think is honestly very impressive. It's also hilarious that he's like, I don't know he is, but he's a jerk, right Yeah.
And this is probably not popular with a lot of our viewers, but I personally really like Ben. But what I would say if he was sitting here is that wokeness is not anti corporatism.
That's there's nothing woke about Bill Burr.
I mean, it might it might be coded as left, but it's the opposite of woke to that's right, anti corporate and I mean, obviously corporations were pushing wocism for a really long time. It did become the language of corporate America. But wocism and like being mad at CEO shouldn't be flated. That's a really dangerous I think conflation on the right because it pegs and bend to his credit, would be against both of these. He would be against
populism and wokeism. But most of the right is not against populism, like most Republican voters are not against what Bilburgh is saying here.
Well, and Ben isn't against wokeism when it comes to like.
Well, that's very different. Yeah, that's that's.
He's very in favor of affirmative action when it comes to his pet issue.
Totally different like that.
He would he would obviously argue if you were here that it's all I think he would conflate anti Israel sentiments with anti of course.
Yeah, and that's yeah, So that's.
A the whole I mean, but the whole thing of like wokeism was I mean, it's not that I agree, it's that anti black racism doesn't exist.
Yep, it's over it's over stretching the.
Terms, yes, exactly.
And so you know, when it comes to anti Semitism, suddenly he's the snowflake who's like, you know, these college kids said experienced micro Russian. You know, so he has his own flavor of wocism. But I think your point is a really important one, Emily, which is that, like the way that Bill Burr does left populism is actually the opposite of the woke liberal virtue signaling that people were justifiably upset about. So yeah, I think this, this energy,
the Bill Burr energy, is the real winning. A third way should take some notes from this. Well, he care about winning, but they don't. They care about their agenda.
He talks like a real person, Like he talks like a real guy. It talks a real it's it's it's actually sort of Trumpian, a rogan and Roganian in a way, because he just talks like this is why he's popular. He talks like a guy that you'd be talking to in real life at a like at a bar, at a barbecue or whatever.
He's just a normal person.
He's not trying to He wasn't endorsing people killing CEOs. He was saying, like he's been really deeply upset with the media coverage and his big thing about the killing of Brian Johnson is that the media has has martyrized Brian Johnson and and not talked about the broader problems of the industry. And we can have a debate about that or whatever, but it's driving Bill Burr crazy.
I think he has a point.
It's it's only he's only this like pure innocent victim, and you know, he just doesn't mean that he deserves to be killed. Yeah again, like it's it's sort of precious to conflate those two things true and to ignore I mean, all of these people and this isn't actually really Ben because he would say, you know, he actually does have like principled positions on what the healthcare system could be, even if we disagree with them.
There's all of.
These people that are in love with Luigi Mangioni. It's because they hate the healthcare system. It's not just because he's a funny meme. They're viscerally furious and we've talked about this, like many many times. They're viscerally angry at the healthcare system because it is screwing them over and people getting are getting.
Rich off of it.
Yeah, And so you cannot just wave that away as wokeness.
Yeah, it isn't.
He represents a very significant chunk of the public that will that is an intense It's an intense sentiment. It's not just people disagreeing with the healthcare system. They're bitscerally angry about it.
Yeah.
And I don't even think it's just the healthcare system. It's like the sense that this whole corporate America structure is growing and robbing us.
Totally true.
And so it's it's energy.
I mean it is very like Occupy Wall Street kind of an energy I think, more potent.
Yeah.
And the last thing I'll say about Bill Burr's like, I think comedy at its best is like cultural critique and punching up at the powerful. Yeah, and I think Bill Burr does that very well. And I mean he's the polar opposite of being like a woke snow of Oh my god, you can't say that.
Like he says it. He goes there.
And it's funny to see someone who claims to stand in opposition of that sort of like snowflake cancel culture thing, having a little bit of his own meltdown about all of this.
Yeah, I mean, if comedians have to have policy prescriptions for every political thing they joke about, we are in trouble.
All right, let's go ahead and get you.
There's a bunch of developments with regard to Israel where they're completely out of the ceasefire deal, they are planning to completely block humanitarian aid. They're even threatening to cut off the water to Gaza. Trump administration playing into this as well. Jeremy Skahill is going to join us to talk about all of that. Very fortunate to be joined this morning by Jeremy Skatehill, who is co founder of drop site News, alongside our very own Ryan Graham.
Great to see Jeremy.
Thank you, Crystal Emily.
Yeah, of course. So a lot of developments here.
Let's go ahead and put the tweet up on the screen, so you talk about here how Natanyahu is announcing he's blocking once again all humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza strip after Hamas refused to alter the previous deal and
release Israeli hostages. Bb is saying his decision was made in coordination with the Trump administration, and in addition, you know, the Israeli have just completely backed away from even a pretense of continuing into Phase two of the ceasefire deal, to the extent that the even ever had such a pretense since Netna who was always promising some of his coalition partners that it would never go beyond Phase one. So if you could, Jeremy, just bring us up to speed here a bit.
Yeah, just to rewind a little bit. First of all, on February third, there was supposed to be the start of negotiations over the implementation of Phase two, who refused to ever send any negotiators. Instead, he goes to Washington, d C. And becomes the first foreign leader to meet with President Donald Trump and sits that meeting where Trump floated the Trump Gaza Riviera idea NETNYA who has just been systematically violating the ceasefire. They've killed upwards of one
hundred and twenty Palestinians inside of Gaza. They've refused to allow almost any of the mobile homes. There were supposed to be sixty thousand mobile homes sent into Gaza. Almost none of them have entered two hundred thousand tents. While there has been food aid and other forms of humanitarian aid going in, it's been far less than was stipulated under the agreement. And so you know, when we look at what happened over the weekend, basically this is how
it went down. Netan Yahoo and Israel took what was sort of a proposal paper from the American side, And everything I'm telling you is based on talking to sources involved with the negotiations. This happens where Egypt, or Kuta or the United States, they kind of float proposals as a starting point for discussions, and as the Israelis did repeatedly throughout the Biden Harris administration, they don't even give Hamas a chance to review the proposal or give a
formal answer. Israel then announces Hamas has rejected an American proposal for extending Phase one of the ceasefire deal. What's interesting too, I spoke to a senior Hamas official who said, we hadn't even been given a chance to review the whole thing before we even read in the papers basically that Israel said that we had rejected the deal. What's interesting though, is Brian Hughes, Trump's National Security Council spokesperson. He was asked directly whether or not the Israeli version
of events was true. Is this actually an American proposal? He ignored that question and then just kind of paid lip service to the idea. Israel has been negotiating in good faith for fifteen months. So what we're seeing here is Israel has violated the ceasefire agreement repeatedly. Israel refused
to send negotiators as stipulated under the contract. Israel is continuing to kill Palestinians inside of Gaza, and then Israel is continuing its multi decade arc of front running ceasefire negotiations with the Palestinians and then making announcements that make it appear that it is, in fact the other side that's hindering the deal, when in fact, anyone that's read the agreement that Trump promoted as kind of the beginning of the end of this war and peace in the
Middle East, the Israelis are the ones violating it. What's going to be interesting is to see how Steve Whitcloth, Trump's Special envoy, response to this. He's an interesting guy. He's very different from Anthony Blinken, the way that Blinken handled these situations where the Israelis just blatantly lied about something that happened in the negotiation, was to openly co sign Israel's lie. I'm not sure wik Coof's going to
go that path he could. My guess would be that he's going to sort of thread the needle, issue some kind of vague statement that defends Israel and calls on Hamas to come to the negotiating table. But everyone involved with this knows that Israel has been violating the ceasefire and now is blaming Hamas for something that actually Israel has done quite.
Openly, Jamie, I was going to ask if you could talk to us a little bit more about that. Actually, such an interesting dynamic you mentioned Brian Hughes. But how has the Trump administration navigated this over the last several days. I mean, we were talking about obviously Ukraine earlier in the show, and Zelensky has tried to sort of invoke Hamas interestingly enough, But so much attention has been on Ukraine in the last few days despite all of this
unraveling in the Middle East. So what is the Trump administration how have they been responding to the developments.
Well, you know, a week ago, Steve Whitcoff made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows, and at the time he was doing those interviews from Miami Beach in Florida, and he also for part of that visit was with Jared Kushner, who, even though he's not in an official position right now in the Trump administration, holds tremendous way over the events that are going to play out in
the Middle East. Witkoff said that he was optimistic that we're going to make it into a formal phase two of the agreement, but he did say that there's going to have to be an extension of Phase one. There's another significant event happening this week, which is that the Arab Summit is convening and they're going to be discussing an Egyptian proposal that is seen as a counter proposal
to Trump's Gaza riviera. And what's interesting about that, I've been talking to Palestinian analysts and they didn't have a kind of apocalyptic response to Trump's announcement when he was alongside BB about you taking over Gaza as a US property and building hotels. Some Palestinians I've talked to sort of saw it also as a jab toward Netan Yahoo. Trump didn't say We're going to turn it into the
Israeli riviera. Trump said the American riviera. That was, you know, for people that are following this closely felt a bit like maybe a pushback on net Yahoo and something he wasn't entirely excited about. But the benefit for net Yahoo. And this happens with Trump all the time. He wants to talk about the border wall, he wants to talk about you know, Hillary Clinton, Hunter Biden's laptop, that sets
the agenda. What was the agenda that was set there that NETNYAHUO liked the idea that Palestinians should be removed from Gaza. So it was a mixed sort of message that is certainly genocidal in its kind of overarching intent. But we're in the middle of negotiations here. You know, wik Koff himself has shown that he's willing to poke Net Yahoo. He certainly is a militant supporter of Israel.
He certainly is a Zionist, He certainly is very anti Hamas, but he also has spoken with a diplomatic language that you didn't often hear from Antony Blincoln. And you know, Wikkoff also visited Gaza and saw the devastation that was there. That narrative was not actually all that great for NETANYAHUO. Maybe some of the really rabid, you know, kind of bloodthirsty people within Israeli societies were happy about it, but Wikoff also managed to give a fairly accurate assessment of
just how horrifying the destruction was in Gaza. So while I'm not, like, you know, beaming with hope that Wickkoff is going to save the day and that the Palestinians are going to get liberation, I do think that we're in a strange situation where potentially Trump could accidentally do something that would have been better than if things were left to Biden and Harris and just one I'm not really a political journalist, but one political note, I find
it disgusting to watch these kind of blue maga partisan democrats who never made a peep about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris facilitating a genocide now up in arms about Trump's AI video when they had nothing to say when their candidates were actually the ones creating the situation that now died Trump is presiding over as president. I mean, it just shows the rot at the center of some of our politics that partisan considerations are more important than what are your principles.
Yeah, of course, on the other side, you had, you know, people who were claiming to be anti war who are not perfectly fine with the Hey, let's just go ahead and ethnically glens the whole thing and take it for ourselves, for sure.
I mean there's there's a deep sickness on the other side of this as well. And you know, my favorite people are the ones that have both the you know, the Ukrainian and the Israeli flags and their sort of you know, Twitter bios. But absolutely and that extends crystal to the free speech thing. Like jade Vans when he went to the Munich Security Conference, he said things that
are absolutely true about Europe's approach to free speech. But perhaps the most pervasive and serious violation of free speech in Germany, for instance, is the criminalization of speech opposing Israel's genocidal war. Where you have not just Arabs in Germany being hit with criminal violations, but Israeli Jews who live in Israel are being given criminal violations for using
the term genocide to describe what Israel is doing. And you don't hear the Barry Weiss's of the world rallying for you know, the free speech protection of people in Europe who are opposing Israel's war. It just shows how kind of opportunistic and non principled so many of these voices are both among partisan Democrats and among many people within the Maga movement or the so called anti cancel culture movement.
Yeah.
Well, of course you wouldn't want to bring that up because they're bringing that same criminalization right here domestically, investigating you know, Columbia University in these other places and threatening
pro Palestine protesters with deportation. So you know that I think that would be a little uncomfortable for them to bring those pieces up, not to mention that they're aligned with that particular censorship, they're just opposed to censorship that happens to go against their own political ideological valance.
Jeremy, just to go back to.
This feel like, what are the moving pieces now? What do you think is going to happen next? And also, you guys have been doing such a great job covering what's happening in the occupied West Bank, Israel bombing Damascus and just being like, hey, you know, we're just going.
To take over parts of Syria.
Oh, and by the way, you know, I know we said as part of our Ceasfire deal, we're going to withdraw from Lebanon. We're not going to do that. We're
just going to occupy Lebanon as well. It really looks like if you had listened to, you know, the most hardcore lefties or the most insane ZIONUS settlers at the beginning of this conflict of what was likely to happen and what their ultimate goals were, you would be much better served and have a much clearer understanding of the direction things we're heading in versus trying to glean these things from certainly the mainstream press.
Yeah, I mean, look Benjamin Etnah, who is without a doubt a US backed arsonist running around the Middle East. And in the case of Syria, we're talking about Israel saying that the Syrian military cannot have any presence just south of Damascus, the capital of the country. And then when you look at the broader picture, ninety percent of the not just the refugee camp of Janine, but the broader Janine area have been forcibly removed from their homes.
Israel is going through systematically knocking down houses bulldozing up the roads, causing a sort of sense of terror to
just emanate all throughout the West Bank. At a time when then Secretary of State Marco Rubio bypasses Congress issues an emergency authorization to transfer four billion roughly four billion dollars worth of American bombs, guidance systems, armored bulldozers to go to Israel, at a time when Netnyahu is contemplating possibly ratcheting up military attacks on Iran again, when Israel is continuing to occupy five positions within Lebanon, when Israel
is threatening all out war on parts of Syria, when Israel is trying to formally annex and tear orze the Palestinians of the West Bank, when Israel is threatening to cut off electricity and water supplies right now to the Palestinians of Gaza, just as Ramadan is beginning, and while Netanyahu and his people are continuing to try to use the stamp of legitimacy of the United States to lie
about who's actually violating the ceasefire. The question is going to be called very very soon on what Donald Trump's agenda actually looks like for the Middle East, and it's pathetic that we sort of have to hope that he accidentally stumbles into something less than a continuation of the genocidal war. Such is the reality that we find because of a failure to stop this war when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were president.
Jeremy, so great to have you, And I was saying to Emily earlier, it's just incredible what you and Ryan have done at drop site and how indispensable you've become so quickly. Not that any of us are surprised by that, but kudos to you for your work because it's been so important.
But the Breaking Points Counterpoints community has been just an incredible boost for us, and we'll always be deeply grateful for the work that you all do.
That's really kind of you to say.
Thank you so much, Jeremy, and great to see you you too. All right, guys, thank you so much for hanging out with us today. As a reminder, we will not have a regular show tomorrow. They are doing the Joint Address to Congress or whatever it's called, the State of the Union that is happening tomorrow evening. We will be here at eight pm, all four of us at the desk, so we can assess things that happen during the day and also give you live coverage of that event.
So have a great day, guys.
We'll see you back here tomorrow evening