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Happy Wednesday, Welcome to Counterpoints. How you doing, Emily, I'm good, Crystal.
Those Counterpoints doesn't exist anymore. It's all breaking Points.
I was going to say breaking Points, but there's the Counterpoints logo. We have some things to work out it, right, we'll figure it out when soccer's back.
That sounds good. So we have a big show today.
Donald Trump is in the Middle East, some great drop site reporting to talk about actually on the serious situation. But Trump gave a hell of a speech in Saudi Arabia that we're going to go through.
Yes, and he's now he's on his way to Doha.
That's right.
Maybe you're gonna pick up his big beautiful plane. Yeah, we're also going to have a mire to bone join us. He's a Haretz columnist going to talk about what this means for the genocide in Gaza and whether or not we're going to actually see an end to this or And as I was talking to Amir about this yesterday, if Trump doesn't end that this week, almost certainly thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people will die in the
coming weeks. Like this is at a critical moment. So the question is is Steve Whitcoff and Trump they got eat you know, Alexander out. Are they happy and they just move on and they just leave thousands of people to their fates, or does he actually put a stop to this or we'll talk about you know, this kind of pivotal moment here. He's also pushing his big beautiful bill Congress. This is happening, that's right.
No, I mean the second component of their trade war is getting this tax bill passed because they see it as well. We'll get into all of this, but they see this as a necessary component of the trade where you can't have the trade war or without as they see it, these big tax cuts or the continuation of these tax cuts.
But people, the trade war's not on the bottom there yea. Trump basically gave up this weekend in his talks with China.
But even if you keep a ten percent global tariff, they want to have all of these incentives to be sure, and they don't feel like the markets will continue to react.
As they are.
It's a fragile situation if they don't get the tax cuts that they are promised, the continuation and tax cuts they are promised. The Scott Besson has been pushing one hundred percent right offs some building and factory equipment, so all of that stuff is on the line in a big reconciliation bill that Congressional Republicans with their razors of majority are trying to stuff all kinds of stuff into, from AI to salt deductions to run nonprofit exemptions.
And they were the House was in sessions like four am.
So we're going to bring you all the details from that fight. It's a big one. Also, Ruan the Jake Tapper Alex Thompson book on It's called the Original Sin on the cover up of Joe Biden's health is causing a stir. A big excerpt was published yesterday and The New Yorker about Biden failing to recognize George Clooney at that now infamous LA fundraiser last year.
Go ahead, yah know if you remember, that's when things started to break, because Clooney came out publicly right in the New York Times, right yeah, and I was like, it was like, I don't think that this guy really is up for another term. And now we know that specifically Joe Biden did not recognize George Clooney, which would put Joe Biden in the point zero zero one percent of people I don't know about the world, but certainly in the United States who wouldn't recognize George Clooney.
It's George Clooney.
Plus they have had a relationship as Clooney.
And if you don't, it's George Clooney.
Yeah, I mean the man is very recognizable. Yes, So it's a man's There's a raging debate once again about the media's role in all of this, and about the Biden family's.
Role and all of this.
So we'll bring you the details on a huge day in the Diddy trial yesterday Cassie testified with some really not just Cassie, other sestisfied too. But Cassie's testimony was as wrenching as you can imagine. So we will dip into the trial and bring you some important updates on
how that is proceeding. Let's return to the Middle East, Ryan and start with Donald Trump making his way through this trip, giving this massive speech in Saudi Arabia yesterday that you can tell usually tell from writing, but the writing of this speech was meant to be very consequential.
Yes, Trump doing a regional tour.
He's going to hit cutter, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, He's very deliberately and conspicuously skipping Israel in two thousand and nine. And I've seen some people compare it to Obama went to the Middle East and on what the right calm an apology tour. If you go back and read the speech he gave there, it's very similar to Trump's.
They're coming at it from a different angle.
Trump Obama was saying that the United States needs to step aside and just allow the Middle East to you to develop itself and that nation building. He at then you know he was attacking George W. Bush was the wrong thing to do. Trump now saying basically the same thing that, and he's also going after the same guy, George W. Bush. Like, so the only thing Obama and Trump really agree on.
Is that George W. Bush really screwed up that region.
It brings the whole country together, really, yeah, except for like Michelle Obama, who's still yes.
We can all rally around that.
Now. The difference is, I watched the entire Trump speech. Uh, and of course the first like fifteen minutes he's talking about how many counties he won in the election. Red stands Ford Republican all to the specific number of counties that he won. He makes sure that he makes sure everybody at this REDD conference knows that he won all seven swing states. And so Obama didn't do that. Obama didn't go over his kind of county by county loss.
I mean he could have.
He could have. Yeah, he had some interesting things he could have pointed, you know, yeah, yeah, and people people seem to love that. So when he gets into the historic nature of the speech, that's when it does become very interesting. So let's let's roll.
This is the piece that's kind of going viral in the Middle.
East before our eyes. A new generation of leaders is transcending the ancient conflicts of tired divisions of the past and forging a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce not chaos, where it exports technology not terrorism, and where people of different nations, religions, and creeds are building cities together, not bombing each other out of existence.
We don't want that, and.
It's crucial for the wider world to note this great transformation is not come from Western intervention, no less, or flying people and beautiful planes giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs. Now, the leaming marvels of Riad and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so called nation builders, neocons, or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars
failing to develop Kabal Baghdad so many other cities. Instead, the birth of a modern Middle East has been brought by the people of the region themselves, the people that are right here, the people that have lived here all their lives. Developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your own unique visions and charting your own destinies in your own way. It's really incredible what you've done. In the end, the so called nation builders wrecked far more nations than they built.
The interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves. They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves.
So there's an interesting through line here from Obama.
And in an interesting contrast, Obama in his speech was talking about how this isn't for the United States to decide, you know, how the Middle East is going to develop, It's for the people of the Middle East. And the people in that room really blamed him when the Arab spring kicked off a year and a half or so later, and said, look, you got all these people's hopes up
that actually that they can control their own destinies. And if you notice Trump's phrasing, he says the people who are here, and then he's like the people here, like the ones that I'm looking at. It's like, I'm not talking about the Arab streets, so to speak. I'm not saying that you need democracy. We're not exporting democracy to this region anymore. Look, you're a king, you have to crown prints over here. These are your cultures, this is your tradition.
Cool.
You guys in this room have developed this stuff, and I'm going to support you to do that. So it's and the reason I say it's an interesting through line is that if you want to spawn to that, let me know. Otherwise we can go to the Syria thing, which is which is an interesting connection.
You know.
I mean, I think that's a part of exactly what you're talking about.
Yeah, because like so, one of the things that flowed out of the Arab spring was the uprising in Syria, which began non violently and then turned into a civil war that then Cutter was funding elements of it. Ua was funding elements of it, Saudi was funding elements of that, the CIA was funding all sides of it at different points. Russia gets in, gets involved, and it ends with former terrorists taking power and setting up a meeting or trying to set up a meeting with Trump.
But be like the.
Acman al Shara, this Heyrean president went to Iria trying to meet with Trump with an offer to the United States saying, please lift sanctions on us, and we will open up all of Syria to American oil and gas companies. So a delegation went to Damascus recently met with al Shara, returned here to Washington last week. I sat down with them and a group of other reporters and wildly and
left that meeting. I was like, we need to write this fast, Like this is an on the record offer from al Shara to the United States saying we want We're going to we will allow American companies to do all of the reconstruction. We allow American companies to exploit the oil and gas. It's it's not a completely clean offer because the Kurds control a lot of the oil and gas. So it's like, can you really give away the curds oil anyway?
Uh, that's just a minor concern.
Moz and I like were raced to write it up because there's reporters from the Times, the Posts, you know where else at this meeting. Nobody else wrote it. Like, nobody else wrote the piece. It's hilarious. So that so that offer was made last week and he said, I'm gonna be in real I'd love to give me five minutes with you. I will give you this store.
Well, other people not taking it seriously because it's so unorthodox.
But I think political story. I think it was the editors, any of the reporters, were all like, well, this is this is really interesting?
Maybe yeah, maybe if you if you know.
Donald Trump, you know that that's completely serious, like if you followed him closely and taken him as a serious figure, not just this like flat caricature.
You know, he hears something like that.
They're speaking his language, and they're doing it sort of cleverly and strategically.
Yeah. I don't know.
I don't know what on Earth's up with them.
Weird.
I don't know, something the weird is going on.
So in this speech, the biggest news he made besides I think the speech itself is news because it's kind of reframing and framing his approach to the Middle East. But the specific news he made was on Syria. And this is the kind of the end of the arc that begins with Obama. Let's let's roll a one here, and.
Also with President Ernigan of Turkey who called me the other day and asked for a very similar thing, among others and friends of mine, people that have a lot of respect for in the Middle East. I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at great this, Oh what I do for the Crown Prince, Oh.
What I do for the Crown Prince. I think Tom Barrack, by the way, is uh friend. I think he was referring to a friend who asked him to do it, who has experience in the region. I think that's Tom Barrick, and look him.
Up google Ryan Grim good.
Friend of Trump's. But in any event, so Trump is saying, hey, I'm gonna lift sanctions.
And massive applause and standing ovation.
I owe what I do for the Crown Prince, and actually he loves the Crown Prince. So how are can serve?
Is responding to this particular element of it.
I mean, it's really interesting because everyone seems like they're on the right at least on board, and except for the cutter stuff and we're going to talk about that in the next block. Has generated a pretty significant backlash. But I think this what did he say? Commerce versus chaos? That dichotomy that he landed on in the speech is an interesting one because commerce often brings with it lots
of geopolitical chaos. In fact, the sort of original sin of America's relationship with Iran came because of commerce, which is like has the entire Middle East, you know, to this very day in upheaval constantly, and it's because of what the United States and the UK were doing with oil. And so I think most people on the right see it as you know, it's interesting you talked about the through line with Obama's first trip in his first term on the apology tour, as people on the right called it,
and I think there was some truth to that. But I think a lot of people right now look back and say, gosh, we should have been apologized right when Trump said in that speech, the nation builders destroyed more than they ever built. Again, if John McCain had won the presidency in two thousand and nine, in two thousand and eight, and then in two thousand and nine said
that to Arab leaders overseas, the backlash would have been incredible. Yeah, I mean it would have been a completely different world.
Yeah. And we learned speaking of nation Builders, that there's a new report I forget. I think it might have been the New York Times that the Biden administration and the Harris team had put together this massive plan to basically completely destroy Yemen over a period of like a year and a half or something to take on the Hoothies, but they didn't do it because they wanted to wait for either their reelection or to let Trump do it. So like that the nation building and the interventionism is
still very much a live faction. Trump is not just pushing on an open door, like there is resistance to this, and so that does make itrential. It's ironic that he has to agree with Obama while the Obama position is now a real minority faction inside the Democratic Party.
Yeah, and so I think some of the Cutter battle is a proxy battle for that people who don't necessarily want to say openly that they and maybe they don't even want to think openly that they support ground invasions in a place like Iran or more confrontation with Iran. But I think some of it comes out in the cutter fight. It feels like an easy battle for the people who are hawks to take Trump on. Now, I will say I think a lot of the American public and I think the same thing about the plane.
We'll talk about this later, but the.
American public looks at this and it's the same thing with Obama, if it gets us closer to peace and stability. We can have a raging debate about whether it does, but if they get that sense, they'll support it.
Yeah. So at the same time, the p k K just a couple of days ago, this is the are militant group in Turkey that's been waging war for you know, for Kurdish independence for decades, just a couple of days ago, said it's wrapping up business at their at their congress, they voted to dissolve themselves. And so everywhere you look in the region, there's something kind of seismic going on with with Iran kind of at the center of it, like with Witkoff and Bowler or in wood Coffer particular.
Still you know, still still pushing hard to bring to bring Iran in, you know, against the objections of Israel, which we'll get into, you know later when we have our guest on. But it does seem like the time is ripe to kind of reshape this Middle East, and in ironically in the exact way that Obama wanted to do, because you know, he did the deal twenty fifteen to say like look enough, like let's like let what what's why are we doing this, like why why are you guys all at war?
And Obama and I think Trump too.
They all want to do it because they want to focus on other stuff.
We've seen this throughout the trip, by the way, even just where he talks about, oh the things I do for the coperience. So he was being driven around in a golf cart by Muhammad bin someonee. Yesterday, they brought out do we have this guy's They brought out the.
Place donald's trailer.
Yeah, we can roll through some of these videos that you can see on the screen, but they brought out a McDonald's trailer.
YMCA is playing while this is going.
Yep, they played the YMCA, which some noted is.
A right after his speech.
Right after his speech.
Here's just like just like a Trump rally.
Yeah, here's what Sam Altman and MBS having what appears to be a very friendly conversation.
Which drives me insane. Why is Sam Altman there?
Well, you know why, come on, you know what, there's this.
AI guy.
This is very very awkward signing ceremony where they're sitting at tables like twenty yards apart from each other, maybe ten yards apart from each other. Here's the famous McDonald's trailer that they rolled out for Trump, because that man loves McDonald's and they know how to they know how to work with Trump.
Pats lay a fish all the way out and riodd.
But you know, the what I was getting at with this is I think Trump has this sense that he wants, if you're going to do the anti nation building thing like Obama did you also, or Obama tried to do early in this term before you know, drne striking US citizens and all of that, if you if you want to be in that position, Trump believes that you have to frame it differently, that you have to look like you're the winner, not that you're prostrating yourselves yourself to
these powers. And so with the Iran deal, for example, I think there are some it's looking like there would be some significant differences, but broadly the point is the same, why why is this? Like?
Why are we not just ending this?
Why are we continuing to allow people to come in between the peace process and set things back decades and all of that. Trump is just the difference between Trump and Obama is that he knows the people who would have been furious at say John McCain, for going to the Middle East and saying is something about, you know, anti nation building in two thousand and nine, actually probably were anti nation building, meaning it's about tapping into the sort of nationalism.
Right.
So like the people who end up voting for Trump, who maybe voted for Obama too, by the way, were just as opposed to George W. Bush's foreign interventions, but they didn't want to apologize for it, and I think Trump has That's a difference between Trump and Obama, and I think it speaks to Trump knowing his constituency, which is which is different.
I also think Republicans love to talk about Trump derangement syndrome, and it's it's definitely a thing Trump plays, blaming of a role in triggering the derangement.
You take medication for it.
I take medication for it. The Obama derangement syndrome was unlike anything related to Trump. I think there's like the derangement was so much wilder for people who are old enough, and if you're not old enough, you can google this. One of the big scandals when Obama went over to the Middle East of the first or second time, they said he.
Bowed to the king, and that was Saudi Arabia. It was yes, Saudi Arabia.
Yeah, so he bowed, And how dare he like it was an impeachment worthy allegation? Like how dare this American president bow to a Saudi king? In his speech last night, Trump starts reading this line about how because of his amazing first hundred days and he's cleaned up everything Biden has done wrong, the US now has the most dynamic, incredible economy in the world, and he stops himself. He's like, I can't believe I almost said that right here in
front of the Crown Prince. Of course, Crown Prince, you have the greatest economy. Your economy is incredible. I would how awful would it be if I even finished that sentence? Like, go find the clip. It's it's classic comical Trump, and like, what do you like? So he's up there on stage debasing himself in front of this crown prince, yes, and doing it like fabulously.
With the YMCA, which people were pointing out is a gay anthem in Saudi Arabia, is sort of a well.
That's pretty funny. That's almost more a troll of the Crown Prince than a bow to him. But the speech itself. He was just bowing constantly to and all. Look Saudi Arabia, like the citizens of Saudi Arabia are doing well. Their economy overall is not better than the United States. Like it's it's a broken economy that's kept alive by oil. Congratulations, like good, good for you. You can pump oil out of the ground and spend the money, but doesn't mean
you have a great economy. And for Trump, it's just lavishing with praise. If Obama would have done that, Like it's just different. Oh yes, just different worlds.
Two.
The two live in just completely different media environments.
Sam Altman was there, by the way, because I think we've covered this before. Ran Saudi Arabia is a massive investor in AI and what Trump.
I'm not surprised he's there.
It's just that I just don't like that this Ai king pinn No not a part of our elite.
Well, the same thing with Elon Musk. And you know, we saw Elon Musk sitting down with Mody what two months ago, with all appearances of being a representative of the United States government at that point, but you know, also a business leader with massive interests in the Indian market, and that's what Sam Altman was doing there. There was also like Jensen Wang was there, Andy Jasse was there, And what Donald Trump is trying to do and maybe
you can flesh this out more. Ryan to that point again about commerce versus chaos, which sounds almost like Fukuyama. By the way, interesting because there was literally a McDonald's trailer two countries with McDonald's just won't go to war with each other, right, But it sounds in that sense a little like the exact ideology that people who are now regurgitating the Samuel Huntington thesis are are have sort
of staked their worldview in opposition to. But Ryan, the what trem is trying to do basically is spur massive investment between from actually not just Saudi Arabia, other golf states.
That he's visiting this week.
And your point about Syria is an important one, But that's what he's trying to do, is basically like explode the business interest between the United States and places like Saudi Arabia. Probably cutter too.
And you'll like this, so we can we can roll a eight here. This is Trump being asked if he did have the meeting with the serre and president he did, which is kind of fun to think, Like dropsight was the first report this, that's crazy. Shara wanted to meet with Trump and then at Riodd and they're like, hey, okay, let's meet, let's do this. We're just we're just out here making deals for Trump. Shara formerly what number two we ran mozel for isis or something like it was
like a formerly al Qaeda, then rebranded it as Nousra. Like, this is a guy with a very interesting pass. Let's see what Donald Trump has to say about his meeting with a guy who up until very recently had a ten million dollar bounty on his head for being a wanted terrorist.
How did you find a Syrian president? Right right?
I think very good, young, attractive guy, tough guy, you know, a strong pish, very.
Strong fighter, very strong pass. He's a fighter. Last Yeah, he loves the hoot these too, well, they're very brave. He respects Yeah, he respects strength, yes, whether that that's yes.
And if you are a member of a designated terrorist organization at war with the United States, he respects you even more because he sees, you know, his beefy generals giving the given the briefings, about all the different munitions and billion They dropped a billion dollars worth of weapons on the hoo Thies and they would stood it, every bit of it. And Trump's like, gotta respect that and yes, strong like strong past.
Yeah.
Yeah, So I.
Think it's important the I think the backdrop to all of this is important.
This is a six we can put this on the screen.
So the Wall Street Journal did a big report ahead of the trip, laying out and this was a gargantuan task. This is a breaking point graphic from the Wall Street Journal article. But they were I mean, it must have taken them a long time to get all of the straight These are all of the different deals right now. We'll read them for you if you're listening to this that Donald Trump and his family have in the Middle East.
So residential towers are going to be constructed in Dubai, Jedda and Jedda and Dublin, and.
The al Qaeda guy offered one in Damascus too.
Damascus. Yeah, I think that's what I meant to put there. Okay, So then there's oh yeah, not Dublin. Yeah, it's supposed to be Damascus.
Yeah, And then they have one in Dublin.
Two.
There's the Trump owned luxury golf course and Cutter stable coin by the Trump organization has two hundred billion dollars in funding from the UAE and Saudi Royals two billion two billion in.
Funding from the UA and Sadi Royals.
Royals of three states have committed three and a half billion dollars to the Kushner Pe Fund.
State backed funds have.
Raised six hundred six billion dollars for Trump advisor Elon Musk's x Ai. Dubai just made a deal with the Boring company, or is trying in the process of making a deal with boring company for an eleven mile tunnel network.
And the Saudi.
Prince is a nephew to the king has is an investor in Xai.
I mean this is like and then one other put up, this is a four. They announced this. This is the thing that you were signed that you were that they were signing. That we showed that footage one hundred and forty two billion dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia, which would be the largest.
Arms deal.
I think that we've agreed to the largest security pact we've agreed to. They're talking about a four hundred and six hundred billion dollar kind of trade and business commercial agreement. Trump is saying it might go up to a trillion. Take that with a huge grain of salt. The entire GDP of Saudi Arabia is like one trillion m hm. And so that's that's a fake, made up number, you ei.
They're not going to send every penny of their GDP to the to Trump, but they're going to send as much as they possibly can.
Yeah.
And you know, you and I and probably a lot of our audience are the like naive remaining critics of this level of corruption in the Trump orbit.
And we can get into that in the next block, which I think is interesting. Yeah.
Right, it's very much baked into Trump is. I completely understand that. So I think the important way to see what's happening this week is that Donald Trump absolutely openly believes that the best way to do business with these countries and the best way to achieve peace with these countries is to have these entanglements, these deep financial entanglements with these states, no matter how problematic they are, no matter how much they don't want you to play the YMCA like, you have to have these.
And it's very it's actually sort of.
A mirror image of the way that they approach policy domestically in foreign policy, with like family ties, personal ties. Trump admires that and likes it, and.
It speaks to him.
And that's why he has these great relationships with the Saudi countries is because he does believe that commerce will win over chaos and not cause the chaos, because he's seen that happen from his perspective at least, I mean, I don't agree with that, but he believes that he's seen that happen as a businessman. Look at Steve Whitkoff, for example, a close friend of Donald trump'ss we'll talk about talk about him when we talk about Cutter too,
but big investments in the space. So I don't think Trump is in any way hiding from the appearance and reality of corruption.
He's kind of embracing it.
He wants that to be the foundation of the policy going forward. Is that there are deep financial entanglements between government and business.
President Donald Trump is facing increasing pushback for accepting a four hundred million dollar plane from Cutter. Here he is on his old raggedy plane Air Force one, responding to some of this criticism.
The plane that you're in right now is almost forty years old. And when you land and you see Saudi Arabia and you see UAE, and you see Qatar, and you see all these and they have these brand new bowing seven forty seven's mostly and you see ours next to it. This is like a totally different plane. It's much smaller, it's much less impressive, as impressive as a and you know, with the United States of America, I
believe that we should have the most impressive punt. So anyway, so they said to me, we would like to ineffect who would like to make a gift. You've done so many things, and we'd like to make a gift to the Defense Department, which is where it's going. And they said, well, that's nice. Now some people say, oh, you shouldn't accept gifts for the country. My attitude is, why wouldn't I accept the gift we're giving to everybody else? Why wouldn't
I accept the gift? Because it's going to be a couple of years, I think, before the voetings are finished.
Why wouldn't I accept the gift.
This has roused democratic leadership and a bunch of Republicans to finally get up and offer a little bit of criticism of Trump. Here's both Senate leaders Schumer and Democratic leaders the leader of the Senate leader House, Schumer and Jeffreys pushing back through all those.
News of the Gatari government gifting Donald Trump a four hundred million dollar private jet to you as air Force one is so corrupt that even Putin would give a double take. This is not just naked corruption, it is
also a grave national security threat. So, in light of the deeply troubling news of a possible Guitari funded Air Force One and the reports that the Attorney General personally signed off on this clearly unethical deal, I am announcing a hold on all DOJ political nominees until we get more answers.
And Donald Trump is publicly defending accepting a four hundred million dollar flying palace from a close ally of Iran and Hamas. I mean, you can't make this stuff up, which is why even some of his closest Maga sick offense have made clear this is a plane too far.
Close ally of Iran, and I must we have a giant military base there. Anyway, Here's Ben Shapiro agreeing with Chuck Schumer and a keen Jeffreys let's roll that one.
That's not America first, Like, please define America first in a way that says you you should take sacks of cash from the Katari royals who are behind Al Jazeera. It just isn't America first in any conceivable ways. If you want President Trump to succeed, this kind of skeazy stuff needs to stop.
My problem with taking this plane from Qatar is I do not think the President of the United States of America should sit and fly on a plane purchased with the same money used to murder American citizens.
And the most powerful person who's not in the White House in the United States. Laura Lumer also came out against Trump. Put up B three. Here's saying, I love President Trump, but this is ridiculous. Come on, get out of here. You can't accept a four hundred million dollar gift. And then then then she dips into hersophobia.
Rare that Ben Shapia Laura Lumer agree something, and.
With Schumer and Jeffreys as well.
Yes, but I think just quickly Trump would to Ben Shapiro say, oh, it's easy to define this as America first. He just basically did it in the clip that is like the plane is too small where the United States of America and where this makes us have a better relationship with another powerful potential like hostile in a potentially hostile area. So he would have no problem answering that question. You know, I think the problem for him at this point is that most people aren't buying his argument.
So joining us more to discuss the implications of all of this is Howret's journalist Amir TBone. Amir, thanks so much for joining us. That the timing of this, uh, just kind of delightful, just hilarious. Right before he travels first to Ria, then to than to Doha with a series of historically consequential decisions in front of him, we hear that he's going to be getting his four hundred million dollar plane. How is this news being received in Israel?
I'll say two things about it. Number one, you may recall that in February, Prime Minister Metanio came to the White House to meet President Trump and there was a lot of thought in his close circle what they could give him in order to create a good atmosphere and kind of, you know, give him a gift, really okay, and let's put it in his terms, And eventually they brought Trump a golden deeper, right because related to that famous operation in Beirut with all the his balla beepers
that blew up. And so they brought him a golden deeper, pretty small, and there was a whole ceremony where NATANIAO gave it to him, and you know, I don't think that made much of an impression. I also don't think it was real gold. It was probably goldfill. And then you look at the Kataris, who how they're playing the Trump game. You know, they give him a plane and god knows what's in that plane, and I mean, who would be surprised if there are all kinds of other
gifts flying with it. So they know what they're doing in terms of appealing to President Trump, and they are better at this game than anyone else probably, Okay, I
mean they're not giving him something small, you know. And I have to say about a week before his trip, I was talking about this with a friend from the newspaper from atz Hein Levingston, who writes about diplomatic affairs, and he mentioned to me that he watched a news segment where a Katari official was talking about the country's deliberations whether or not to buy new planes from Boeing
or from Airbus right basically American or European. And after the Trump plane story came out, he wrote, I feel ashamed of myself as a journalist. I thought the gift that we're going to give Trump is to buy Boeing planes for Qatar. I'm not on their game. I don't even you know, not even close. They may do that as well, but that's the change. But the really is giving Trump a Katari plane from Boeing. Yeah, they know
what they're doing. They're good at this and the other thing I want to say, And you're putting aside all the just unbelievable nature of it. If it helps end the war in Gaza, I would say give you know, Katar can buy a second plane for Sara and antaniao be the wives. If it brings an agreement to end the war in Gaza, release all the hostages, stop all the suffering and the death. Maybe that's what we need right now. Because I'm a bit hopeless this morning. I
got to tell you, I'm seeing the negotiations happening. They're in Qatar for ending the war. I don't think it's moving fast enough so whatever works at this point.
Yeah, and we want you to we want to stick around for an update on those negotiations and where that's going to go. First, let's unpack a little bit more about of this situation because here in the United States, from my perspective, at least Israel and its backers here in the United States, in Joe Biden had a fierce
ideological supporter, like it, absolutely unapologetic supporter of Israel. Yes, he like pressed net Yahoo to allow you know, a couple hundred trucks of aid in every day, and for you know, three or four days he withheld two thousand pound bombs after you know, a series of like over the top massacres. But otherwise carte blanche for Israel's war effort or if you would even call it that at this point, and they fought him and traded him for the most transactional politician the US has had in that
office for as long as anybody can really remember. And if you're going to have the most transactional office, like you said, you've got to be on your game, and you know, gold plated beepers.
Are just aren't going to do it.
So is there any reflection in Israel about a strategic error, a blindness, and throwing out.
These democrats.
Who are we going to who were willing to self immolate for Israel and for Israel in exchange for this guy. It's like, can just be out, you can just be out.
Bid. I'll tell you what, Ryan, I think it's a little too early to reach the conclusion that Trump is actually changing the Biden policy on Gaza. I think you're right that we saw some important arenas in the Middle East recently where he was willing to go against the stated position of the Attenbiao government. We saw it on Syria.
Tania appealed to the Trump administration not to lift sanctions on the new Syrian government because of the jihadi past of ahmedu Shara abul Jolani, the new leader of Syria, and Trump ignored Natania's requests and went with the policy that was advocated by Muhammad ben Salman of Saudi Arabia and President Erganov Turkey and lifted all the sanctions of Syria. Met Ahmedushara in Riad, and yes, he asked him to
join the Abraham of course with Israel. And I'm sure the new Assyria and President told him we'd be willing to consider it once the war in Gaza is over, okay, because they're not going to do it while Israeli planes are bombing and killing in Gaza. That that's just not going to happen.
Realistic.
So on that issue, obviously a disappointment for the Natania government with Trump's policy on Yemen. I'm sure you've discussed this, the fact that he reached a ceasefire with the Hussies that does not include their continuous attempts to launch missile stward Israel, including one that landed at Bengurian Airport is whereas only intern National Airport last week and almost every day now you have about a million people in Israel running into bomb shelters because of the hoof is while
the American seas fire stands on Iran. I think we'll have to wait and see. We don't really know what is the actual content of the negotiations, and what we hear from Stephen Witkov every week is different. Right one week it seems closer to the Israeli position, the next week it seems more detached from it. Wade and see. But on Gaza, I think that's where Nataniel is playing the fiercest game right now against Trump, and that's where he's being the most really kind of, you know, bare
knuckles approach. He's not willing to budge on the American attempts to move toward ending the war and releasing all the hostages in one deal. I call it the end the nightmare deal, okay, and the nightmare that for Israeli is claring. My family started on October seven and has been going in an every day sense in Gaza and
in the region broadly. Okay, this is just a nightmare, and if we don't end it soon, it's going to get much worse, because right now there are preparations for another military operation in Gaza, and I don't want to think what would happen. This is very personal for me because I have a friend who has held hostage there for five hundred and eighty six days now. On rem Iran was kidnapped by Hamas from my community Keeboard, snachal Os,
on the border with Gaza. We fear for his life, and we know that President Trump and they want to end the war. We know that. And honestly, guys, Biden wanted to end the war too, Okay, he had his whole. If you remember, in May twenty twenty four, almost a year ago, he presented a plan to end the war, but he didn't really use any leverage to actually bring
about that result. And right now I can't say for sure that there is a change on the issue that Trump is actually going to use the immense leverage that he has to bring about an end to the war. Maybe something will emerge out of this visit right now to Qatar. We are all hoping and praying. We haven't seen it yet.
Well, let's put on the screen here some of your points actually that you've made, Amir c One. We can start with one, So, Amir, you posted on ex trump statement now on the release of hostage of Don Alexander is the first time since January twenty twenty five that he explicitly mentioned ending Gaza War as part of a deal to release all hostages and finish the nightmare that began on October seventh. Huge positive sign. Only he and
Whitkough can do it. And then we can move to the next element where you point out a mirror less than a day since his return from Hamasque captivity, the pro Nesta Yahoo channel fourteen is attacking it Don Alexander and his family on live television because his mother thanked President Trump for a Don's release and not Prime Minister Netta Yaho sick twisted, narcissistic behavior, and I just want to ask him here if you could tell us a little bit, share a little bit about how this is
being received domestically in Israel. The developments just in the last couple of days. It's been really I can't remember. You're seeing such an interesting or interesting sort of political dynamic between the US and Israel.
Interesting. Surprising is maybe one way to put it.
Unprecedented. Yeah, listen, Yeah, you're right, because let's look back what happened here, Okay. Dan Alexander is this twenty year old guy, grew up in New Jersey, son of Israeli parents.
When he was eighteen, decided he wants to go back to Israel serving the military, and then he was taken by Hamas on October seven and held in terrible, inhumane conditions for so many days, you know, tortured and went through hell and for a long time there was an attempt to release him as part of the broader deal.
But at some point when people in the Trump administry, specifically Adam Bohler, who was in charge of hostage negotiations, realized that NATANIAO and Ron Dermer, his right hand man, we're wasting time and we're not serious about moving into the second phase of the January twenty twenty five ceasefire. And then we saw, of course that you know, the
ceasefire collapsed because Natania wasn't willing to continue. They began an independent effort to release only Idan Alexander, who is the last living a hostage who was a dual Israeli American citizen. There are also four hostages who were murdered on October seven and are held by FAMAS. Their bodies are there, but Idani is alive, and Adam Bahler went to meet directly with some of the most senior people in Hamas without notifying Israel a bat and there was
a whole crisis about this. In March, the Trump administration suspected that it was leaked by the Israeli government after they found out about it through intelligence. In order to aboutage those negotiations. Two months pass and eventually again the
Americans try a separate channel with Ramas Barakravid. My friend wrote a very interesting article in Access about how exactly was negotiated and they succeed to reach some understanding with Ramas we don't know all the details, and Haramas releases Idan Alexander, so that by itself is incredible and like you said, unprecedented. And in Israel, everybody is happy that Idan is out. Okay, this young man came to Israel
to defend the country. He didn't have to do it, could have gone to college like everybody his age in America. So everybody is really happy for him. But we're also asking, wait, what does this mean? Is there a difference between an Israeli citizen who also has an American passport and all the others. If you're taken hostage by a terror organization, you better have an American passport or otherwise your own government. I mean, I don't even want to continue the sentence,
but it raises really disturbing questions. And then the second part of it was that yesterday his mother l gave a short statement to the press at Efield Hospital in Tel Aviv, were already done is recovering, and she thanked President Trump and mister Whitkoff, and I think also Adam Boehler, and she thanked you know, the soldiers who fought to bring her son back and the doctors who are treating him.
And she did not thank Prime Minister Natanielle. And I think for obvious reasons, because he's been stonewalling, he's been wasting time, he's been avoiding a decision to make a deal in end this war. And again there is suspicion that he harmed the previous attempt to release her son.
And as a result of this, you had this ugly phenomenon of pundits and media people and people with large following on social media attacking her and attacking him her son simply because they you know, she thanked President Trump and not Prime Minister natataniel and that. I also wrote a column about it today in how it's it's unbelievable,
it's despicable. And instead of attacking her and saying why doesn't she think, you know, maybe we can just move along to actually do a deal, bring out all the other hostages, and end the war, and then we won't and then we can have a lot of time to fight over who gets the credits.
Yeah, and so there are a couple of different reactions. You could have as an Israeli public to that, like one is the one that you're describing like anger at the mom like, how dare you?
We don't have it.
But there's this amazing clip I'm sure you've seen it where wick Cough and net Yahoo are talking and wit Cough thanks nt Yahoo for not getting in the way of the deal.
For not sabotaging it.
Basically like an absolutely striking thing to say while in a public call.
And maybe this is w.
And Ryan and Ryan I want to interrupt and just note that the very situation that this guy is an Israeli soldier and an Israeli citizen and Withitkoff is the one who greets him and then gets his own prime minister on the phone, is by itself, you know, unusual. I mean, why should we But that's just the situation
right now. And this feeds into a greater feeling that you hear from a lot of the families of the hostages who tell the press that they get a lot more empathy and a lot more support and a lot more understanding from people in the Trump administration, especially with coof and Adam Bohler then they get from people in the NATANIAU government, and they have more meetings and more briefings and more access to mister Whitkof and the others working on this issue in Washington, then in Jerusalem, where
many of the ministers in Nataniao's government look at them with scorn and they look at them as a burden that is hurting the war effort. Yeah, so that's what we've come to. It's very sad, all right.
So the one the one response would be, well, let's burn burn this woman, uh, you know, for you know, being disrespectful to the Prime minister who you know, so so selfish, so selflessly like, didn't sabotage the deal, So they can't you know, can't he get some some gratitude for that. The other reaction would be the one that you alluded to earlier, which is what is wrong with my government that you have to have an American passport for them to care about you. Why don't they care
about the Israeli citizens? So why isn't why isn't that more predominant? Why isn't that driving the politics? And what what did you mean earlier when you were saying that you feel a lot of pessimism this morning about the about the state of the negotiations.
Well, the two things are connected to one another, because you've seen in public opinion polling that around seventy percent of the Israelis tomorrow morning would gladly take the deal to release all the remaining hostages and end the war. This is something that has a lot of support in Israel. The government is refusing to do it. There is no real external pressure on a TANIAO to do it because Trump so far has not crossed the rublicon of actually
applying pressure on a TANIAU in this direction. And you showed my post from a few days ago where I noted that he used those words for the first time, you know, and the brutal war. Those were the words that Trump used in a post on x That was the first time he even wrote it or said it. So the movement on this is slow, and as a result, a lot of people feel depressed and feel helpless because they want the war to end, the hostages to come
back in this nightmare to be done with. And there have been demonstrations, some of them very large, and you know, it's hard to keep momentum all the time, but people have out again and again into the streets, and yet N'tagnell completely ignores this, and it's not clear that there is external pressure that would lead in a different direction, and that leads to a sense of despair and hopelessness.
And I really hope we'll get some news out of this visit by President Trump that would change the momentum take it in a different direction. I do believe that he and Witkock can do it. I think they have enough, you know, especially after this visit and after he does released.
They have a strong public standing in Israel that most of these really public would one hundred percent support such a move if they decided to go for it, And even if there was some kind of a confrontation that evolved as a result of it, I don't know that they're there yet.
Well, and just my question that is, what are you looking to see from Donald Trump now? He is in Calor today, we're just talking about color, he was in Riod. Are there particular Are there particular interactions or statements other than kind of the obvious as you were just mentioning that you might expect to see from Trump that would give you more hope, Amir.
I think it's very important that he keeps staying out loud in a very clear way. What he wrote on sund I think it was on Sunday regarding this. You know that all the hostages in the war, and I think it's important to put a proposal like that on the table and create broad support for it. And that will be easy because this is what the Saudis want, this is what the Qataris want, this is what the Immiratis want, this is what all the world wants, really,
and you can create strong momentum toward it. That would also create a momentum in Israel for people to come up and say, Okay, let's do it. And I want to remind you that Trump really one of his biggest goals before he embarked on the strip was to expand the Abraham Accords and add Saudi Arabia to the normalization a pact with Israel. Well, the only reason this isn't
happening is because of the war in Gaza. And the Saudis are willing, are interested, they want to do it, but they can't do it while bombs are dropping and people are dying in Gaza. That's something that they just can't do because of their own domestic public opinion. And this is something that is also I think, you know, in Trump's clear interests to get this problem out of the way. But of course it will involve a direct
confrontation with Ntaniel, who doesn't want to do it. And it's up to President Trump and mister Wick to the side that they're willing to go that distance and to actually do it. They're the only ones who can. I mean, you're hearing other countries, you know, Britain, Germany, France, everybody's saying it's time to end the war and are using
very strong language. You know. McCrone yesterday said, and this was an interesting choice of words, by the way, he said, what the Nataniel government is doing in Gaza is beyond shameful. And he didn't say Israel even he sent Antanniau government, because I think he's been briefed that today most people in Israel want things to go in a completely different direction, want a hostage deal and an end to this. We're not hearing anything like that yet from the White House.
There's some interesting tea leaves in his Rio odd speech yesterday, and I want to play a little clip and you tell me if I'm reading too much into this because sometimes I'm prone to do that.
But let's roll c seven here.
The transformations have been unbelievably remarkable before our eyes. A new generation of leaders is transcending the ancient conflicts of tired divisions of the past and forging a future where the Middle East is defined by commerce not chaos, where it exports technology not terrorism, and where people of different nations, religions, and creeds are building cities together, not bombing each other out of existence.
We don't want that.
I mean, I know, if you notice that, that last part looked to me like an ad lib, like he's reading off the teleprompter, and then he goes to, we don't want people bombing other people's out of existence.
We don't want that.
Like that that that felt like something he added in who else can you be talking about? Like, I mean, I guess Irun? Yeah, I think that was a real out of existence.
I think that was the reference to Iran. I think on Iran. Trump is more kind of, you know, willing to go beyond the limitations of the classic you know, specifically in the Republican Party, you know, the politics around this issue. He's willing to push it more on that
in order to get a deal. And I think one of the reasons is reflected in the difficulties that he found out once the bombing campaign against the ruth Is went into its fourth or fifth week, that the Americans were bombing every night, again and again, and the hoof Is, despite taking the hits, continued to cause a lot of problems.
And they actually managed to take down several American drones that were very expensive and almost shot down from what I read in the news, you know, advanced American planes. And you had these, you know, weird accidents on the Harry Truman Air Force carrier. So I think at some point, you know, Trump said okay, let's cut the losses and get a deal here. And I think going into a war with Iran would pose even greater complications. You know,
of course America can bomb he runs nuclear facilities. That's obvious. Okay. The United States has the ability to do it technically, it's not even a question. There is a question whether Israel can do it alone. I don't know the answer, but it's clear that the United States can do it.
But then what happens next. Let's say you bond it for four or five straight days, What happens on day six, What happens on day seven, if they attack Saudi Arabia, if they attack the Emirates, if they attack American military basis, if they carried terror attacks against Americans in the region, what do you do then? And I think that's, you know, perhaps something that the campaign in Yemen brought to Trump's thinking.
You know that there are also limitations to the use of power in these situations, especially when you're fighting against people who are religious extremists, who don't really care to die in some situations, who have a messianic worldview. And I think that is also influencing his thinking right now about the Iran negotiations.
So yeah, my last question for you a mirror is basically how this dynamic where potentially the Israeli far right is realizing the limitations of the deep entanglement with the United States. I've seen that sort of cheered in some corners, especially here in the United States, as a good thing. And obviously these really far rights these this is potentially a good thing, and probably not even just the far right.
You can understand why because in a sense, it looks like, Okay, Israel can do what Israel wants to do in the United States doesn't have to be you know, if you're ISRAELI doesn't have to be the kingmaker anymore. Israel can serve do what's in its best interest without having to get permission from another country. And the arguments for this are myriad, and I'm just curious though, if you could
maybe give us what the I mean. There's a downside to it too, and the downside might be actually an unleashed nets in Yahoo, an unleashed israelly far right that could make the problems that are already there even worse.
What do you make of that?
Yeah, I understand the argument, but I'm not convinced by yet, because I think Israel needs the United States for many many reasons, and the relationship with the US is one of a kind for Israel. There is no replacement for it. There is no other country in the world that can
replace the US. From the Israeli perspective, I don't know another country that would be willing to offer Israel such generous military assistance and intelligence sharing and to make the defense of Israel from its regional enemies part of its own national security strategy. In some cases, There's nothing like it.
Anywhere else in the world. And there is no country in the world where you have such a large part of the population expressing such positive views towards Israel as you have in the United States, with Christian Evangelicas and large parts of the Jewish community and more broadly than American public. And I think the real question for Israel is what you're seeing politically right now in the United States. Maybe not with the Trump administration. Maybe there it's a
little early, you know. I'm on the side of caution about this Trump versus bb narrative. I see, like I told you, I see it in some places. I don't see it on Gazza yet. But I want to give you something that was amazing for me. Over the weekend, Tom Friedman wrote an article in The New York Times that was very critical of Natania. Not for the first time, obviously, but the language was pretty strong. He basically appealed to
President Trump and said NATANIAO is not your ally. And that article began spreading amongst some corners of the American right until no other than Steve Bannon shared it on his own social media network, basically writing fact in capital letters. I don't remember Steve Bannon sharing an article by Tom Friedman that's like hell freezing over right, yes too, kind of two distinct corners of the American media ecosystem. And to have them in agreement on this statement that NETANIAO
is not an ally of President Trump's agenda. That's something that should be concerning to his readise and it shows how the political winds are shifting in a direction that in the long term, could be very bad for Eastrael.
And before we let you go, I wanted to ask you about the kind of Israeli journalism community and how it's been responding to the unprecedented number of killings of Palestinian journalists. And this was brought to mind just yet yesterday. I guess it was two nights ago, we got the news that hassansala A, you know, one of the most prominent journalists in Gaza and all all of Palestine as a matter of fact, was killed in the burn unit
of the Naser Hospital complex. And he was he was in the burn unit because his tent had been struck in April outside of the Naser Hospital complex, which killed killed two journalists and badly severely wounded him. People will probably remember those the horrifying images from that strike of
the journalist burning alive. So the one the man who survives, is then targeted in his burn in his bed in the hospital and was not collateral damage like the IDF came out and said, he's a terrorist, and you know he was with other terrorists.
And we targeted him.
Their evidence for that was a photo that he had taken with Sinoar at one point, which all of his colleagues have talked about for years. This was many, many years ago, and Sinwar had been kind of underground for a while, out of out of public view, and came to a public event and he saw Hassan there, and Hassan being one of the most famous journalists.
And the pictures that he gives him a kiss or something.
He gives him a kiss, and Hassan told her a lot of his friends he was deeply unhappy about that. But as you know, you've been around, you know, public officials.
I think Ryan that specifically in this case, and I'm not fasting judgment, but I do want to bring these rarely perspective on this. There was also the issue that there were images of him that became very famous in Israeli and all over you know, the region on October seven, kind of embedded with the mass forces that attacked Israel. And I think there was this picture like next to a burning tank, and that was I think how most
Israelis came to know him and identify him. And that's why when the Idea you know, announced this attack, a lot of people kind of said, oh, this is the journalist from October seven.
Right, And I think that's what That's what struck me too, because you know, he was freelancing for the Associated Press and others at the time he went over the fence about an hour after the attack, and yeah, a lot of the images that we have a lot from that day.
We're taking through, you know, came came from him.
Which is but that's that's that's the job of a journalist, like a journalist documents scenes. So yeah, he was being there saying, oh, he's being a secret terrorist by but covering it as a journalist.
If you're going to be a terror, there are Their argument was that he was. Their argument was that he was, you know, knowledgeable about it. Part of it I don't know, okay, because that's not you know, I can't pass judgment on this. I do want to say that we have seen and a lot of cases during the war where you had
journalists being hurt. And I want to say, one person that I really appreciate who's spoken out about this is Trey Yings from Fox News, who you know, works for an outlet that is obviously very supportive of Israel most of the time, but on this issue of Palestinian journalists, he's spoken out again and again on the need to protect them. And from my point of view, you know, I don't want to litigate every terrible thing that happens
right now. I'm speaking about the need to end war and to put an end to it, and to bring the hostages and to end all of these turble because if we start litigating this case, in that case, so I'll bring you the Israeli perspective and what the idea is saying, you'll bring me the other perspective, and we can go on for hours, and I don't think we even have the time for those hours. What we really need is to say, how do we put an end to this? How do we situation It's a.
Good point in the time you would spend discussing the details of it. Thirty more Pala Sinians would be killed in another in another strike, and the and.
Yeah, we got to find a way. We got to find a way to put an end to this. And it's really in the hands of President Trump more than any other person right now.
All right, Amir Tabone journalist with Auretz, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you guys for having me appreciate it.
Author of The Gates of Gaza, by the way, terrific book.
Thank you Ryan, thanks for mentioning that.
Congressional Republicans are scrambling this week to try and finally hammer out the details of the big, beautiful reconciliation bill that Donald Trump has staked part of the success of his trade war on and also his legacy. That Trump tax cuts being made permanent would be a significant campaign promise coming to fruition, but also is seen by the President and his allies as a necessary sort of counterweight
to that ten percent global tariff. At the very least, and whatever reciprocal tariffs may be hammered out in the days and months ahead. They're hoping to use it as something of an industrial policy to attempt to juice the market and get some companies reshoring to the United.
States, we will see.
But the Houseways and Means Committee, literally I think it was eighteen hours. They just ended a couple like an hour before. We're taping this right now. On Wednesday morning, they had a marathon session marking up the bill throughout the evening and last night, and we have video here actually are ready of this bill getting protested in the Rayburn House office building yesterday.
You can see on your screen this.
Is someone sarcastically said like Boomer January six, although the original January so it was kind of Boomer January six Medicaid cuts, potential Medicaid cuts in the bill. So they were trying to get into the hearing and we're being an insurrection, Yes, an insurrection. We have a motorized scooter insurrection.
The Republic is secure from that insurrection attempt. We should make sure the public is aware.
Yes, everything is okay. And they were able to work till what like eight in the morning.
Can because of the terrorists outside there.
It would have been too hard.
But you know, this is a really interesting bill because with reconciliation bills, obviously you end up with these fascinating negotiation processes and they become you know, the smoke fell background deals, and we're just seeing the early stages of that played out playing out now, Ryan, we're seeing kind of what some of the pieces might be. But Mike Johnson, Speaker, Mike Johnson has a long way to go. Obviously, sen Up majority leader John Thune has a long way to go.
But Johnson particularly is in a very difficult position. He has a razor thin margin in the House of Representatives, and already his conference is divided deeply, not just over things like salt, which we'll get to, the state and local tax deduction, which we'll get to in a minute, but also just spending in general. So I want to start with one of the more interesting ideas. This is from the Senate side that Senator Ted Kruz has come up with for the bill. We're going to go ahead
and roll D one. This is the Magababy investment idea from Senator Cruz.
The idea is simple, which is that we're going to create an investment account for every newborn child in America at birth, and that investment account the federal government will seed with one thousand dollars, but that account can receive every year up to five thousand dollars in contributions from friends and family members and from employers, and those contributions grow on a tax deferred basis, and they can take
it out after they turn eighteen. What it does is it takes every child in America and it gives them number one, the miracle of compound growth, the ability to accumulate wealth, which is transformational. But number two, it makes some stakeholders. It gives them a stake in the American free enterprise system. And you ask how much they can save.
If you have a baby that is born this year, that starts with the initial one thousand dollars seed contribution over the next eighteen years, if five thousand dollars a year is contributed at seven percent growth, by the time they're eighteen, they have one hundred and seventy thousand dollars in this account. By the time they're thirty five, they have seven hundred thousand dollars in the accounts.
Rin I actually think this is a brilliant idea. I'm curious what you make of it. So if you I think the ustman is there's like three point six million babies born in the United States per year roughly, according to the Census Bureau so compared to other things we spend ridiculous amounts of money on, it's relatively cheap to seed an account with one thousand dollars per baby.
This is in the bill.
It is somewhat hilariously called like the Money Account for Growth and Advancement, so MAGA account, which is an appeal obviously to Donald Trump. I think this could be a very interesting negotiating trip maybe with the Salt.
The Salt Conference.
Yeah.
I mean, if you want take the money from the babies, if.
You I'm not against it. Free free money for babies, fine, like having a if people think that that's going to change the calculation on whether to have a baby when it comes to them, Like just you know, your first five minutes in the hospital is going to cost you more than that aside from all the other costs those who are having a baby. But if you're going to try to help kids out, help parents out, go for it. Yeah, have fun.
Well, I think it would be a fun negotiating chip with the Salt guys. You're like, oh, you want your state and local tax deduction tripled. Okay, well you're gonna.
Have to get rid of the babies to like you'll be fine with that. Yeah.
Well see, yeah, they would be fine with They absolutely would be fine with it, and sets up an interesting also an interesting one of those conversations about listen, why should those of us who aren't having children subsidize the people who are having children? And which could become a pretty interesting debate as.
Well, which yeah, I'd be happy to have.
Like what are you going to do when you're old, Like you want to live in a society, but you don't want children, Like get out of here, Like it's not how it works.
Children want the means to yeah, like have productive lives.
Yeah yeah, and also like just productivity in general, Like everything you do requires people to help you do it. And you know, if somebody isn't raising those children into people, how you're just gonna do everything yourself, even when you're ninety, Like, get out of here. That's not serious now the broad
structures here, right? Correct me if I'm wrong that the Trump initially said that he might like go with some slightly higher taxes on the rich, and then he had this bizarre truth post where he says, you know, I'm kind of for it, but I can see arguments against it. So you guys do what you want, and House Republicans are like, okay, cool, then we are definitely cutting taxes on the risk. Ye, it's up to us.
More tax breaks for the rich.
And then we have to break Trump's other promise, which is I'm definitely not going to cut medicaid, and so in order to pay for the tax cuts for the rich, you have to then cut a bunch of medicaid. And then to say, well, we're gonna get a give a thousand dollars every baby, yep, while cutting eight hundred billion or whatever from medicaid is kind of insulting to people's intelligence, I would think, right.
So to be clear, the baby part of that is actually in the bill, and the bill was it passed out of the committee just again like an hour ago after I think eighteen hours of deliberation on a twenty six to nineteen vote. So that's a party line vote.
It's going to the House Budget Committee. Now. It's about a four hundred paid, four hundred page bill, and there's all kinds of stuff being crammed into it, not just the baby stuff, but also Ryan somebody that you're paying very close attention to, the nonprofit status revocability from the Treasury Department.
Many people paying close attention to that one.
By the way, not just left leaning nonprofits, but potentially conservative nonprofits who could end up getting absolutely wrecked should a democratic administration turn that on them, as they did even before a law like that existed during the IRS controversy, the Lowest Learner controversy, which is more nuanced obviously than a lot of people on the right, remember, but was still nonprofits being targeted by the government. Is it's a slippery slope no matter what.
Do you think they'll pull this out?
Actually, yes, drop Site is a nonprofit. Yep, I thought, and be annoying to allow that's the Secretary of the Treasury just just be like, actually, don't don't we don't think so we don't like drop site yep, yep.
That could absolutely happen, which is why again I don't think this sends up in the bill. And another thing, I'm just going to skip ahead here, but D four this is about AI. So there was a little provision inserted into the bill. Matt Stoller pointed this out. It bans regulation of social media. He also mentions it's AI regulation. And one thing I heard yesterday is that some members might not have even been aware that this was dropped in.
I mean again, we're talking about a orange page bill and it's being flagged.
But you know, this is one.
Of the more interesting divisions in Trump's Republican Party is whether or not AI should be sort of unleashed or should be closely monitored because it is an apocalyptic threat to Western civilization. And all of that comes to a head in a question about these regulations going forward.
Now back to the broader problems. This is dtwo not.
Going to make it. I don't know, Come on, maggot.
I genuinely don't know. I would be more confident that the nonprofit one gets cut than that one. Also, taxing university endowments, fantastic populist left and right type horseshoe idea that's in the bill. We'll see how much that stuff survives at these colleges and universities have powerful lobbyists, and they are lobbyist lobbyists.
Did the up. I'm trying to do.
The mobbed up with lobbyists, But that's the best that I could come up with. D two is from Representative trip Roy Freedmacaucus guy, very much a leader in that space on the policy front. So he's saying there will be enormous pressure to quote get in line to support the bill because it does a number of things we support regardless of the merits. Though if we object, we will be called grand standards and we must comply by influencers in some elected officials. I won't care about the pressure,
he says. He asks, does the bill meaningfully reduce the deficit getting to one point five trillion in supposed savings
plus the tax policy. It's good, he says, but it still leaves more than twenty trillion dollars an additional debt in ten years, and most of the quote unquote cuts are beyond the Trump years, so beyond three point five years out, which is a fun way to do the math to get it to work out for you in CBO projections, And actually those Congressional Budget Office projections are something I think Republicans are planning to push back against really hard. Republicans and Democrats both do that ass Does
the bill offer any transformative changes on Medicaid or otherwise currently? No, it ignores the policy changes that matter. Meanwhile, Senator Josh Hawlly is saying, do not touch Medicaid.
It is what Bannon has made this point many times.
It is medicaid is what Maga is surviving off of, basically like this matters to working class populist Maga. But Senator Ron Johnson wrote not bed in the Wall Street Journal just yesterday, this is D five saying that it doesn't make enough cuts, sounding exactly the same note as Chip Roy. And this is probably a bill they're planning to get they would like to have passed around July. So we are a month and a half out, which
may seem like a long time. But trying to get Ron Johnson and Josh Holly on the Senate side together and then Chip Roy and Mike Johnson and the centrist Republicans together on the House side when you have such a thin.
Margin, good luck. D six.
This is a political article from yesterday from one of the caucus.
Yeah.
So this is Nikol Lootas saying, quote, the bill is dead and absolutely blasting Jason Smith, who's the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Lo Lotas said actually on Monday, quote the bill is dead effectively on the floor. The Salt Caucus has been having an absolute meltdown. So the Johnson Bill as of right now triples.
Let's tell people what the salt situation is.
So the state local tax deduction is a wonky thing that is actually a fascinating glimpse into how the Washington establishment works.
They get their way all the time because they pitch a fit.
It's people in blue states and particularly Republicans who talk a big game about fiscal responsibility, wanting their constituents to get a deduction from their state and local taxes in high tax states.
So those are typically blue states.
Right, So let's let's say you live in New Jersey and you pay, you know, seventy five thousand dollars a year in state and local taxes before Trump's reform back in twenty seventeen. You could take that seventy five thousand dollars that you gave to the state and the local government and count it basically towards your federal tax obligation. And so obviously, in order to pay that amount of money in state and local taxes, you have to make an awful lot of money.
So it applies to like the one percent, like the very top.
As you get lower, then it starts hitting more people top two percent, three percent, ten percent. Right now, the cap is is it thirty or is it ten? No, ten, Right now, it's ten.
But in the bill it's thirty, which is a tripling.
Right now, you can get if anything over ten thousand that you pay to the state and local government, you can't write that off of your federal taxes.
So what Republicans were arguing.
Is that that would push these blue states and these towns to reduce their taxes because they'd be pressured by their constituents.
Yep, that hasn't really happened.
So anyway, So that now they're just trying, they're trying to go back and get a higher exception.
Yeah, they shouldn't even be getting this tripling of it, but they have the audacity. There was some reporting from like hell people last night that they had to blow up with Nicole Malliatacas of New York, who has basically said she's okay with the tripling the thirty thousand dollars. She said that she's okay with that. That was a compromise number that Johnson landed on.
Anywhere, it's a huge issue in a lot of these congressions discs. It's a huge issue because they'll get thrown out. It's thousands of dollars per wealthy household. And people are going to be mad at me when I say wealthy because, like you know, in a lot of these cost areas, Yeah, families making four hundred thousand dollars a year are like, they don't feel wealthy. Families who make fifty thousand dollars a year are like, fu, you make ten times what.
I do exactly.
And when you hit a thirty thousand dollars deduction, we're not just talking about the people making four hundred thousand dollars.
Yeah, to.
If you're unhappy with a thirty thousand dollars deduction, you're doing really good. Yeah, you're not middle class at that point, no matter how expensive it is to live in these high tax states. So Nicole Malatakish's okay with the tripling was prevented from entering a meeting by the people who want that to go higher to forty thousand dollars because they said, quote unquote, she's against us. They didn't want her to go into the meeting with Mike Johnson. So
I confirm that with a source. And that's how brutal that this is getting just over the issue of salt. We're not even getting to the stuff about the Baby Investment Fund or Medicaid quote unquote reforms which we will be framed as cuts because in some cases they absolutely will beat cuts. They won't just be reforms, they will absolutely be cuts. And Josh Hawley recognizes that in substance
and in style, that that's sort of a disaster for MAGA. Now, Trump was asked questions about this on Air Force One.
Here's D seven.
This is a clip of Trump talking about the American healthcare system.
I would fight so hard to get a half a point and I actually had it down half a point for one year. And I was so proud of myself because that never happened before. It was always going up. Drugs only went in one direction, that's up. And now after studying the industry, it's a very complex industry, but I figured it out, and I said, it's not going to happen. But the Democrats fought very hard to keep
the prices of drugs very, very high. They really are to blame for this because they should have done something about it.
Okay, So he says it's a very complex, complex industry, but he thinks he's figured it out.
D eight.
This is him talking about zempic. And this is a little off topic, Ryan, but delightful and funny enough that we had to roll it.
A friend of mine who's slightly overweight, to put it mildly, went to a drug store in London and he was able to get one of the fat shots. I caught the fat shots, So Janet, you lose weight.
A lot of people laugh at that.
Some people got offended by I don't get offended by an.
I'm just glad I didn't use his name. He's actually a very rich guys are very successful, and he's glad he.
Didn't use his name.
No, he's very happy. He knows exactly who I was talking about. He called, he said that was interesting. He said he was very concerned that I might use his name.
It might slip.
Now he doesn't have to worry. But he went to London and he bought.
This uh ozempic will go over you one of those.
Yes, yeah, I'm not sure which one, but he bought he bought one of them, maybe a zeppich.
Okay, we had to include it the serious it's relevant.
It's relevant to the point, right, Yeah, I know that people oversees pay a lot less for pharmat suiticles, then we pay here. Trump's The framework of Trump's idea is solid, basically saying to a drug company, if you sell something for X price in another country, you have to sell it for that that low price here in the United States. Where he falls on his face is that you can't do this by executive order. Drug companies have lawyers. They'll take it to court, they will win. But you can
do it through Congress. Rocanna and Bernie Sanders have offered to introduce his idea as legislation.
They can put it in this bill.
By the way, he and you save a bunch of money then through Medicare and Medicaid, then you don't do the cuts. He's lying when he says that Democrats did everything they could to keep drug prices high. For the first time in decades, Democrats during the Biden there were actually taking on big pharma in a serious way. They could have done a lot more. I would have liked to see him do a lot more, but pharma caught a bunch of l's and so keep that momentum going.
Or is Trump going to do what he did in the first time, just talk a big game, write some executive orders, and then watch them get ripped up by the courts and then move on and just tell tell everyone that you uh, you know, did wonderful things on drug pricing, which is the kind of lie that doesn't land with your base because they buy drugs.
They know it, Like you can't. You can lie about some things.
You can't lie about what it costs to fill your prescriptions because every single day that you're going to the drug store, you know. So like, you know, we'll be nice to Trump and say we'll see if he actually takes it to Congress. What do you think, Willie? No, never mind, No, I don't think so well.
I think part of it is that they are continuously trying to make this point about executive power, so.
Well this is this will like make the opposite point because it's girls to be like, no, I can't do this, you need a law.
And guess what, we have a whole building.
It's this beautiful domed building is right down the street and strolled by Republicans on both sides of it, and there's only two sides so boomed, and you've got a bunch of Democrats saying that they're happy to do it, so just do it well, you said you're not scared to farm a lobbyist, Just go do it.
The problem is a lot of the people have to vote on the bill, are so let's tie.
On all this.
He's final to hang out with al Qaeda, but drug lobbyists is.
Not going to take them take that ten million dollar bounty off Golani's head.
Yeah, but so anyway, and.
We didn't make this point in the Seria block. He's from the goal on Heights.
His name is gnom to gare Is is like a derivative of that money. And in his deal with Trump, he's just basically handing the goal on heights Israel.
What an arc.
Yes, it is true.
The people who said that the CIA was backing this thing whole time are undefeated so far.
Yeah, Trump posted on true Social when I return from the Middle East, where great things will happen for America, we will work together on any and all outstanding issues, but there shouldn't be many. The bill is all caps great, We'll have no alternative.
We must win.
But now with the tremendous drug and pharmaceutical cuts plus massive incoming tariff money, our great, big, beautiful bill just got much bigger and better. So he's making the direct connection between what we were just talking about, the drug in and pharmaceutical cuts, the planned drugon pharmaceutical cuts, and the bill itself, and the tariff war. The gold nature of America will soon be upon us. Make America great again.
So all that is to say, where Donald Trump is trying to say the bill is great, Chip Roy is already signaling that he is conditioning and is conditioning himself, is conditioning his constituents in Texas and other budget hawks to be immune to Trump Like efforts to say this is a great bill, we need.
To pass it no matter what.
In the Tip Roy post, he's talking about how some of these cuts are fantastic. Tax part portion of the bilit he sees as excellent, but the bill is still irresponsible enough in terms of spending that he doesn't want to get behind it. And by the way, if you are a Chip Roy and you look at the fact that Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the Presidency, you have every right to be frustrated with a bill that jams in some of these priorities without making what
you see as important generational cuts. Doge is what at one hundred and sixty billion allegedly in cuts. So it's not making the two trillion or one trillion in cuts that they saw as something that would be a booster to this tax bill and a booster to the trade war in general, because you wouldn't necessarily need as much revenue coming in from reciprocal tariffs whatever else. So this is a huge, huge mess for Republicans. Everyone predicted that
it would be. It's not a surprise to Mike Johnson or not, like they're caught off guard by what a mess this is actually sort of untangling this not for them in the next six weeks with such thin with such than margins in Congress, needing to get a Chip roy on board, Thomas Massey on board, and then the moderate Salt people on board, then needing to get a Ron Johnson on the same page as a Josh Hawley.
Obviously the stakes are really high for them, But holy smokes, Ryan, this is going to be an incredible roller coaster, And as obvious as it sounds that they'll end up getting something done, I'm not sure that that's even the case. I think this is going to be a really bitter, bitter.
Fight, or maybe they'll just continue the tax cuts as they are and not through the rest of it. But before we leave, before we leave, let's just put up D four one more time, just because just to underline
is how completely crazy this is. This was D four where they say, in general, accept as provided in paragraph too, no state or political subdivision thereof may enforce any law or regulation regulating AIDS, AI systems or automated decision systems during the ten year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act. That's just completely insane.
Yep, it is.
And you know that people say, if you want to know who your ruler is, ask who you're not allowed to criticize.
If you want to know who your ruler is, ask who you're not allowed to regulate.
Yeah, well, this is the type of thing that they drop into the bills. I think the same thing with the nonprofit They drop into these bills when the sausage is being made to then negotiate down from a crazy position.
Well, let's hope. Yeah.
Well, yeah, as long as people flag it and catch this stuff, I guess four hundred pages isn't that long of a bill all things consider, And yeah.
Fight, I'm narrow wide margins.
We'll see where it goes.
Right, Let's move on to the roiling controversy over Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's forthcoming book. It's not even out yet, excerpts are dropping original sin that details this cover up over Joe Biden's health of the course of the last.
Couple of years.
It is going crazy, like in political circles and dem circles. Just on the way here, I was listening to David Axelrod being questioned about it on NPR and still trying to you know, he's sort of blaming the Biden family and the people around Biden, which is interesting for David Axlrod, who, by the way, was one of the earlier voices expressing some concern. I think it was back in twenty twenty two. Axlrod was expressing some concern about it, which.
Is why he never liked Biden.
Never liked Biden.
I think this is some of the problems that we're going to get into with Tappers. I guess I would call it revision this history. Maybe Ryan I will talk a bit about that. Here's a clip of Tapper on his own network tasing one of the critical details in the book, which is that biden staffers considered putting him in a wheelchair while he was president, and.
An excerpt published by Axios that AIDS were privately discussing putting President Biden in a wheelchair for his second term because of his physical deterioration. Sources telling Me and Alex Thompson to Biden's team thought it was, of course politically untenable to have the president in a wheelchair during his reelection bid. They took steps to try to protect him in the images of his halting gait, including finding shorter walking paths, adding handrails to steps, using a smaller staircase
to board air First one. AIDS would also accompany Biden across the White House lawn to Marine one or from Marine one, not only to disguise what was going on, but in case he felt President Biden's doctor, a White House physician, Kevin O'Connor, warned behind the scenes that if Biden had one more serious fall, he might need to
be in a wheelchair for his recovery. Doctor O'Connor had long worried about the toll the job had taken on Biden's health, and joked behind the scenes that Biden's staff members were trying to kill him while he was trying to keep him alive.
The New Yorker published a very long excerpt of the book yesterday day that included some quotes from David Ploff, George Clooney, and Jon Favreau. And if we start with Pluff, we can put this up. This is E three Ploff speaking actually Ryan of Biden, of Obama advisors that really never got on the Biden train, at least maybe.
Behind closed doors at the time.
Ploff says in this book quote, we got so screwed by Biden as a party and just said it was He's just going off basically on how Biden was. Would you say, I think the vacation is selfishly runs for president and Pluff seems to have always been irked by it. But it seems also like we're getting most of this from a book being published a year after the president.
Well, a lot of these Obama boys really never liked Biden.
Yeah, he says, he totally fucked us and it's all Biden.
Yeah, but they didn't like him from the very beginning, Like they picked it was either him or Evan By, if you remember, because they wanted to.
Considered Joe Lieberman at one point.
No, that was McCain, That was right.
Yes, they wanted a white right leaning, like a white conservative working who would appeal to working class whites in two thousand and eight who were afraid of having a black president. Like that was the rationale. And so it was a there was it was a DEI pick. It was a diversity pick. They only considered white men. This
is like, nobody would dispute any of this. And because of I guess the caliber of the candidates, it was Dad like Biden and by and they went with went with Biden, and they then made it very difficult for him to run in twenty sixteen, such that he did
not end up pulling the trigger. I think they they made so many interesting mistakes along the way the Democratic Party, just tactical ones like by Biden beats Trump in twenty sixteen, I think because there's just the Biden, the onion guy who like you know, likes to like wash his car in the White House driveway. Yeah, like that guy peels enough working class votes away from Trump that Trump doesn't win that fluke twenty sixteen because Trump lost by three
million votes to Hillary Clinton. Oh, Biden is also he won this fluke, people like Obama would have crushed. This is what's crazy about our politics. Obama would have annihilated Trump, like Obama would probably still be president if it weren't for term limits, which is amazing, like all of this political chaos we've had because because you know, Obama can't run for reelection. I'm not an Obama fan. I'm just saying objectively speaking, like he would have won. I think
Biden would anyway. So they didn't want him to run in twenty sixteen. They did not rally around him in twenty twenty until it was either him or Burney, and then they're looking like, well, we definitely don't want Erney, so we might as well in that case, again, tactical decision Democrats are probably much better off if Trump wins reelection in twenty twenty and then he has to be the one that handles all of COVID and he doesn't
have four years to stew. Obviously, he never would have done January sixth because he would have won, so he didn't have to do it. And then he's and then he's out. He's probably unpopular because of the way hales COVID or whatever or he's popular whatever, but he can't run again in twenty twenty four. And now we have I don't know who knows we have now we don't have this, well, we don't democrats would like. It's hard to imagine a world where Democrats are worse off than they are today.
Let's look at the Clooney quote as well. So this is E four and this is all again from the big splashy New Yorker publication of an excerpt from the book Yesterday. Coloney says, it was not okay of that big fundraiser that became it's now a sort of an infamous chapter in the twenty twenty four cycle. Even publicly
could see something was wrong with Joe Biden. I believe there was some quote unquote cheap fake coverage afterwards where the media was criticizing the right for sort of ginting up a conspiracy theory with you know, clipped clips that were selectively edited.
Allegedly.
Coloney goes on to say, that thing, the moment where you recognize someone you know, especially famous person who's doing a fucking fundraiser for you, it was delayed, it was uncomfortable. And this is actually according to a Hollywood VIP, not Clooney himself, and an aid had to go into Joe Biden and say George Clooney, and then Biden goes, oh, yeah, hi George. And the quote from the book is quote Clooney was shaken to his court. The president had recognized
him a man he had known for years. So it sounds like what happened is Joe Biden is introduced and said, Hey, this is George And because you don't want to say Clooney, by the way, because that makes you look you know, hey, mister president, we have George here. He's holding this massive
fundraiser for you. And Biden is sort of like, hey, how are you in a way that doesn't reflect a like friendship that he's had for I guess a couple of decades with Biden, and Biden and Clooney have done some work together over the years.
Apparently I was just learning that.
But then he gets a sort of nudge, being like it's George Clooney and is like startled into recognition that you actually know this person. And this is a man who is not a candidate for president of the United States. He is the sitting president of the United States.
Let's put E five.
In July twenty twenty four. George Clooney does his gut.
I'm sorry, go ahead, no, no, no, I think that's an important point. That is July twenty twenty four.
So this is he writes his New York Times guest, Essay, I love Joe Biden, but we need a new nominee, George.
Clooney, because George Clooney behind just witnessed this.
Yes, so good for George Clooney to be like, he saw something in private and he immediately shared it with the public.
That was the straw that broke the camel's back.
But imagine that idea, sharing sharing what you know privately with the public.
But he read democracy well.
So sure, but he didn't do it until after the debate, So he didn't come out and say.
That until Yeah, when was that event?
That event I believe was a couple of weeks before the debate. So it's yeah, the LA fundraiser. I'm going to make sure that I'm right on that right now. But we can also put E five on the screen. This is John Favreau quote. This is obviously people know Favreau is the host of Potsa of America.
This is from the book.
This is how they describe it, with Favreau obviously being the source. That night. To Favreau, Biden seemed to have aged fifty years in sixteen months. This is when he met up with Biden. He was incoherent. His stories were meandering and confusing. Something about I Rock, what exactly was the point of this? He told one story twice. After the President left the group, Favreau asked the staffer about his demeanor. Oh no, oh, no, big deal. The staffer said,
the president must have been tired. It was nighttime at the end of a long week. This is again the sitting president of the United States. It was nighttime at the end of a long week. And I think Dave Wigel made a really good point. He says, the Favreau anecdote, which shows a sharp Biden in twenty twenty two and a lost Biden in twenty twenty four, is the emerging dem conventional wisdom. Basically that he started fading badly after the midterms, not unrelated.
To Hunter's trouble.
And I just want to say I agree that this is the emerging dem conventional wisdom. It feels like a concerted effort to rewrite history, and it is utter bullshit.
You go back to twenty nineteen.
Nate Silver back in twenty nineteen, I remember story about this yesterday, so I was peeling back all of this coverage. Twenty nineteen, Nate Silver said he thought Biden's age was probably the biggest handicap in his candidacy, and.
Astro said that, yes, yeah, well.
This is the Democratic candidates in twenty twenty were dancing around it, sort of like people criticized Bernie Sanders for dancing around Hillary Clinton's various liabilities in twenty sixteen. Nobody would just come out and say it back then, but everyone knew that it was a huge vulnerability for Biden because he was constantly messing up. I think at one point on the twenty twenty campaign trail he said he
was proud to be running for United States Senate. I mean, he had some real eye popping gaffes that were obviously I think age related. And it's subjective, but obviously age related. August twenty nineteen quote, this is in the hill. Biden has a tendency to make blenders late in the day. His allies say, his allies, you know it. This was Jamal Bowie in twenty this twenty nineteen, did I hallucinate last night because the Biden I saw was meandering and
visibly tired by the end of a debate. He was acting weird back of.
That day, just looking at September twenty ninth, my article about his debate performance calls him quote staggeringly incoherent. YEP, this is twenty nineteen, twenty nineteen.
And to be clear, that June fifteenth fundraiser we were just talking about that is before the debate. And Clooney writes his New York Times upbed after the debate, which I do.
Think is just like, is cowardly.
Maybe people at the time thought that they were better off expressing this through private channels. There's perhaps an argument to be made for that, but I think that argument is much more reasonable if you're just talking about a candidate. You're not talking about the sitting president of the United States who is running for reelection. So there's all kinds of frustrating stuff going on here. This is Chuck Schumer
e six. Chuck Schumer is now and a lot of prominent Democrats are going to continue to get questions about it. And just before we tee this up. Casey Hunt is talking to Chuck Schumer on CNN here, and I love that she is now suddenly playing the role of a very aggressive journalist.
And I love that Jake Tapper is doing the same thing.
And Alex Thompson posted some clips of himself and Tapper asking critical questions about Biden's age and his mental capacity in the months and maybe the last couple of years roughly of the Biden presidency, when to be fair to people like John Favreau, it did seem to be getting like precipitously worse, but it.
Started from a low point already.
All that is to say, yeah, I mean, I think this is one of those times where it's suddenly really easy because Biden is out of power, his family is out of power, to lean into this narrative and bolster your sort of tough bipartisan journalistic bona fides. But to me, it just means so so little, given that there was
a significant twenty fifth Amendment conversation to be had. For I would say, like literally every year of the Biden presidency, day and day out, this is sitting president of United States, Nobody talked about it.
Until he was back on the ballot.
There was a freaking primary that could have been dramatically different. They could have actually been a competitive Democratic primary if the media was asking DNC leaders, was asking Chuck Schumer serious questions about this all of the time, not just every once in a while. So here's Casey Hunt talking to Chuck Schumer. Yesterday.
You sat next to Biden in the Oval office February twenty seventh, twenty twenty four, just a handful of months before the president took that debate stage, and it was later reported that you and other Democratic leaders were talking before the debate about having a plan, you and Hakim Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama. I understand you later denied that
that ever happened, but I am curious. I'm interested to know whether the man that you saw us sitting there on that couch on that day you were in there, you saw him up close and personal, did you really not have any idea that he was not fit to serve a second term?
Casey, we're looking forward. We have the largest medicaid cut in front of us, We have the cult federal government.
Because you lost a presidential election, and is that not Joe Biden's responsibility for deciding to run again.
We're looking forward.
That's it.
That's it.
Okay, Ryan, here's Jake Tapper in twenty twenty three. You're talking to Franklin four, who had just written that book about Joe Biden. Ford claimed that Biden would pass a quote mental acuity test, and Tapper goes, right, he's sharp mentally. I think the question is physical, right. More so this is twenty twenty three, he said of In twenty twenty four, he said of Biden's memory while talking to Adam shiff it doesn't seem great.
It's not horrible.
He does have issues here and there. It's not disqualifying, but he does have some memory issues. It's just again he's asking shifts, some tough questions in that interview, but had to couch it in that way because people were terrified of the White House. Their access was being threatened, significantly being threatened.
The Wall Street Journal.
Published a piece about that in what June of twenty twenty four, and it's just crazy. We look back on that piece as an exception. Should have been again coverage about that every single day, the commander in chief, guy with the nuclear codes declining every day in front of us, and I'm almost sympathetic to the point Chuck Schumer makes now saying we're moving forward, casey, because guess what, it's easy for the media to litigate this now and to look tough. And I get why they're covering it now
because they can look tough. They can look like they're turning the screws to Democrats. And it's still important. But it's like, yeah, at this point, we now have Donald Trump as president. The world is like changing rapidly every single day. It's not the stasis of the Biden years anymore.
Yeah, And you know, in the Democrats defense, they their leadership, Pelosi in particular, moves faster than the media. This was not a that's true like Biden's aids and allies remaining ones will say this was a media driven thing or there was this relentless media push for weeks. No, that's not that's not right. It was a Pelosi driven thing. And because Pelosi kept driving it, then the news media
kept covering it. But the media followed Pelosi and everything kind of followed the debate where he had a medical episode in front of the entire world. Yep, yep.
No, it's just really frustrating.
The two pieces of revisionist history, one that this somehow started in twenty twenty two, and two that there were corners of the media that were really tough on this the entire time, you know, Tapper said yesterday and CNN, he was asked by someone on the network who was giving an interview about the book, what was you know, why did why was all of this kept from the press?
Basically? And his answer was really interesting.
The person who was talking to him was like, why didn't we hear more about this in the media, And Tapper says, the bottom line is that the White House was lying not only to the press, not only to the public, but they were lying to their own cabinet. So he also says a lot of our sources wouldn't talk to us until after the election.
Yeah, and there's totally true.
But you could see it in public, yes, like everyone saw it, and you were running stories about cheap fakes. Like again, there were bullshit videos circulating by Republicans, absolutely, but to blow it up into a big narrative is different than just covering the bullshit videos that were being selectively edited. They blew it up into a big thing, literally taking the White House's press points when they knew because they were hearing off the record that the White
House was lying. Yeah, it's ridiculous, and I don't think anybody's falling for it.
No, And if Breaking Points was the dominant news coverage of the world, nobody would have been surprised at all.
We were covering it regularly.
Again, it's one of those weird moments when the media's relationship with the Democratic Party's establishment actually hurts Democrats because they if there had been good coverage of this, if the press wasn't so scared of the White House and the DNC and Pelosi world, they would have at the time they would have been covering the story much differently, and there probably would have been a robust Democratic primary.
Yeah, there should have been.
There would have been a lot more pressure on Democrats to hold a serious primary process and to not mess with it so and for people to not just get in line, yeah and bind it. Do a damn debate. He wouldn't even do a debate despite all of this. All right, let's move on to the Diddy trial, which was incredibly as you could imagine grim yesterday. Cassie Ventura victim and we can say, we don't even have to say alleged victim at this point because we have the videotape.
More of the videotape from the Intercontinental in Los Angeles has come out over the course of this trial. Let's roll this recap of day two. So the trial so it starts on Monday. This is day two being recapped on Fox News yesterday.
F one.
Cassie Ventura, who was still on the stand, has testified that she was a fan before meeting Sean Ditty Combs, describing him.
As larger than life.
She says when they were finally introduced, he began to control her life and every aspect of it. So Ventura, who was now married with kids and due to give birth soon, testified she was nineteen and there was a seventeen year age gap when she met Ditty and signed with his record label. She said their relationship turned sexual when she was twenty one. The pair was in a relationship for a decade.
She says.
At first it was private because Ditty was publicly with someone else and worried about optics. She says the rapper introduced her to freakoffs, which are at the center of the case. According to prosecutors, who described them as drug fueled sex performances with male escorts that Ditty coerced women into having while he watched. Cassie testified that freakoffs became something she did not want to do.
But felt like she had to to keep him happy.
She told jurors one of these encounters was happening when Combs was caught on camera assaulting her in this disturbing twenty sixteen Los Angeles hotel surveillance video obtained exclusively and released by CNN last year. Did He apologized in a since deleted Instagram post. She also said did He had mood swings and was often violent towards her, leaving physical marks, and that instead of music, freakoffs became a job for her.
She testified that the longest of these sexual performances lasted four days.
So that video of Ditty basically dragging, punching, kicking Cassaventura in the Intercone hallway in twenty sixteen, as we mentioned, there was more of that really one of the things that broke this Ditty story wide open when it came out and CNN, I think it was the first to have that video. The man, the security guard Israel Floras is testifying. Testimony from him I today included allegedly the claim that Diddy offered him a lot of cash from his thumb to his pinky to not tell anybody what
he saw. The defense tried to say, he's now including details that he didn't include at the time about how Cassie Ventur had a purple eye. Anyone who watches that video can see be very reasonable that she had a mourturple eye. Yeah, she's pregnant by the way, which is you know, makes it extra awful to have to testify about all of this, So, I mean, just completely awful.
Mark chuck co It's a former federal prosecutor who's done human trafficking cases, told Rolling Stone yesterday that the prosecutors are doing basically a shock and awe strategy.
That's his quote.
He says, they're they're trying to dismantle any quote, positive feelings as soon as possible. They really want to create an impression about him.
Right out of the gate.
So you know, he goes on to say the thing about videos, you can't really cross examine video, and that's the importance of the Intercontinental Security camera footage and also the testimony by the way of Israel Floras, the security guard who's called there to help a quote woman in distress, and is now saying actually on the stand that he was bribing. He was being bribed by Ditty to stay quiet.
And the reason that detail, I think is really important, Ryan, I mean, there are a million reasons that's really important. But this is a trial not just about Ditty. This is a trial about the massive business empire that popped up around Ditty that included in all likelihood a whole lot of complicity, a whole lot of people knowing over the years what was going on and staying quiet to
remain in proximity to power money. And so, just to be clear, he is accused of sex trafficking by forced transportation to engage in prostitution and racketeering conspiracy as part of that federal indictment that was originally filed in September of last year. He's also on two additional indictment superseding indictment, and is pleading not guilty to absolutely everything and completely denying this. Again, as the former federal prosecutor tells Rolling Stones,
this is a video. In the case of the twenty sixteen assault on Ventura. So it's just in the context of the actual charges against Tavey Weinstein, and actually this happened with the Bill Cosby case as well. Does look like there were shortcuts taken by federal prosecutors too, because they felt it was almost born of a hubris that these guys are obviously horrific in evil and the public
wants a scalp. But if you take those those shortcuts, you can end up with people getting released against Something that happened with Bill Cosby might happen with Harvey.
And that's why I think just.
The broader context here around a very high profile case like this is uh to be on the lookout for things like that. It doesn't mean that these people aren't awful criminals. Of course, there's a difference between criminal behavior and deeply unethical, abusive, horrific behavior in some cases, not always, but I think that's something to kind of keep an eye on in this trial because it's it's like those two trials as well.
I guess, yeah, Harvey one seemed to think, do you think he'll ever get out?
It's genuinely a question because there was some stuff that's just it's funny business that you do when you feel really confident about a case. And it's samely with the Bill Cosby thing. So yeah, it's it's not impossible that he gets out, so we'll see.
I mean, the backlash of that would be swift.
But you know, and I'm not in any way whatsoever, yeah, old and I'm not in any point whatsoever endorsing like the Candice Owen's effort here, but the trial itself is like that. You cannot take shortcuts in these trials because there's this public momentum against a certain character.
I have public mood swing, so you got to make sure you're buttoned up right exactly.
I haven't seen that in the Diddy case so far, but it's just this one is again, it's really easy because there's literally video. It's just easy to see the momentum building and the snowball rolling down the hill. It looks like it's a pretty tight case so far. But that is definitely and Cassie testifying, by the way, for what she's supposed to be on the stand again today, I think she might literally be taking the stand right
now while we're taping this. Uh. I mean, that's we're going to be incredibly powerful as well.
Yeah, he epic fumble of a billion dollar bag.
Seriously by Diddy here, not even like just a fumble, but a you know, decades long criminal enterprise.
It is hard to be a billionaire and get held accountable for anything. You have to You have to go pretty far.
You sure do, you sure do? All right? Well, Ryan, that does it for us today. We will continue to follow that trial obviously because again it's just in the context of a massive criminal enterprise that involved complicity on
many fronts. Important to keep an eye out on. It's a theme actually of the American elite is just you know, wanting to be a seen as an important political player, moral player, charitable person, and then in your own personal life either staying quiet when you witness people doing awful things or doing those awful things yourself. So important trial definitely to continue following, which we will do. Thank you to everybody, by the way for being a premium subscriber
the Friday shows. If you're a premium sub over at breakingpoints dot com, you get the second half of those shows, and as we keep saying, that's right, we're saving the good stuff for the second half. So thank you Breaking points dot Com. We appreciate it, and if you can't subscribe, we totally understand. Like the videos, comment the videos, subscribe to the YouTube channel, subscribe to the podcast.
Appreciate that as well.
Yes, yes we do. And I think I'll see you tomorrow.
You're here tomorrow with Crystal.
Okay, Yeah, so Sager is on his paternity leave. More needs to come on on that front, I'm sure, but Ryan and I will be seeing a lot more of us in the weeks to come.
Lucky you see you later.