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Morning, everybody, Happy Friday, Emily and Ryan, I see you guys.
Great to see you guys.
How you doing doing good? Thanks Emily for jumping in for me yesterday. I appreciate it.
Oh, no problem, No problem.
And I guess we've had counterpoints this week, but we've decided it's not really counterpoints anymore.
So I just like that we work it out in front of everyone. The reality TV we thanks to have our meetings right here.
Yeah, it's transparent, so there's a lot going on. I want to get to you this Morre. We'll see how much of this we get through. Right, We've got a massive ground evasion happening in Gaza and things not looking very good on the ceasefirefront in general. We've got some other foreign policy thinks, some very interesting comments from General Stanley McCrystal that I want to get you guys reaction to. And also some discouraging movement or lack of movement in
the Ukraine. Talks that are supposed to happen in Istanbul as well, so get to that. See if we get to some of this Republican tax build the latest in terms of potential compromises and roadblocks there. We've got some economic news. We've got some significant developments on the migration front. There was a hearing Supreme Court with regard to Trump's ending birthright executive order that has implications not only for that but also for the ability of district judges to
issue nationwide injunctions. So that is definitely worth taking into and wanted to tackle. I wanted to dig a little bit into the abundant debate Sam Ceter and Ezra Cline, a lot of clips flying around. I know, I watched the whole thing and I thought it was pretty interesting.
I watched too.
Do you watch the whole thing too? I did awesome. Yeah, so I pulled a couple of time codes and we can just take a look at that as well. That part it'll probably be in the premium half. So if you guys want access to the full thing, make sure you subscribe at Breakingpoints dot com. Thank you to everyone who has who has made these Friday shows possible. Anything else you guys got on your mind before we jump in.
Well, I was gonna say Sager did post yesterday, so we can. Okay, he did, Yes, he posted, So Sager is official.
Yep.
Hold on, did he post a picture?
He? Yes, he did, he posted. I believe they call it a carousel.
Let me, let's pull this sucker up.
Yeah, I'm looking for it. Hold on, I did not know. Sometimes I avoid Sager's Twitter.
It's on Instagram.
It Oh, it's on Instagram. Okay, yeah, all right, hold on, hold.
On, Yeah, you know, I always I'm much more willing to air stuff on like Instagram.
Instagram is much kinder than Twitter. People are just assholes, you know.
Yeah.
I don't need people on Twitter have seen my kids or anything like that. Yeah, it's just feels different.
Here we go, Okay, here we go, here we go. All right, now it's making me log in.
Oh my god, really I would probably have to log into Instagram too, I'm like never.
All right, well, anyway, go look at Soccers. It's Jillian and the baby doesn't say the baby's name, Am I allowed to reveal that? I don't know? Beautiful? Beautiful, beautiful, very excited.
It was a very pretty name.
Yeah, I love that. Mixed between that his heritage and her it's very beautiful.
And yeah, they were in the nick you for a little bit, so it was I'm sure Soccer really appreciates. He mentioned that in the Instagram post and I just had an outpouring of support from you guys, and I'm sure that he is incredibly grateful for it.
So and I'm looking forward to his monologue after he gets to nick you Bill like that those can put you into seven figures.
True, he's gonna be Luigi posting before we know it.
He's been Luigi posting for years.
All right, let's go ahead and get to the news with regard to Gaza. Let me pull this up on the screen. It's actually your reporting. Well, Jeremy's reporting technically from from drop site, saying that you know, as these talks are going on right now, somewhat pessimistic that there's going to be any progress on a ceasefire. And I mean, Ryan, this always comes down to, at the end of the day, like the US could make this stop whenever we want to.
Biden could have, Trump could And there's this always learned helplessness of like, oh, well, they're a sovereign nation and they can do what they want, but we know the reality is that they can't do what they want without us backstopping what they want.
Right What a superpower means if it doesn't mean you can have influence over your client states. A Haaretz reporter posted some news this morning that is kind of a mirror version of Jeremies, where she writes Israel's position is this is a quote from an Israeli source. Israel's position is rigid. Hamas hasn't folded, the Americans have lost interest. Trump is on his way home, and Witkoff is not currently dealing with this matter. He left it to us.
The source added that Whitcough quote doesn't have a plan of his own and is waiting to hear what Israel wants quote, and since we don't want anything, he has nothing left to do. And so this marries neatly with Hamas's analysis, which is that they don't have confidence that Witkoff is going to be able to or going to be willing to know pressure Israel enough to get them
to a place they don't want to go to. What we've since learned about the release of Eton Alexander is that the private assurance that Hamas got in order to engage in that good faith transaction getting getting really nothing in return on paper, was that the Americans would agree to kind of finally put some pressure on the Israelis. How the Americans interpret what it means to put pressure on them remains to be seen.
Sort of like the facilitating the release yeah yeah, Rightia.
And one of the fears among both Palestinians and the families of the of the hostages who captives who remain in Gaza is that Witcough and Bowler, having succeeded in freeing the last living American hostage captive, would move on, would kind of lose interest in it, and then would and would pivot to focusing on Iran and other things and just let and let things just go to hell, go further to hell. And you know, that appears to be a possibility. There are material constraints though that exist.
You know, Israel doesn't like to recognize such things because they never they've never been had, They've never had to because the warehouses just keep getting magically stocked by new flights of weapons from the United States. But their reservists aren't showing up in the rates that they want them to show up. They're exhausted. All of this is discussed openly in the Israeli media. So what actual capacity they have to continue to pursue this massive invasion that they're
trying to launch from the north down. No remains to be seen. And if they start, you know, taking you know, significant casualties, do they continue to push forward. It seems like that's the only thing that's going to be holding them back at this point. That wit coough because Hamas is saying, we want an end to the war. We will exchange all the hostages, all the captives. Done, end
of the war. Israel withdraws more over, and a technocratic Palestinian administration with whatever Western relationships you want, you know, kind of takes control of Gaza, like that's what Hamas wants. Israel wants to keep the war going. Those are irreconcilable positions. Yeah, and so only only the US can reconcile them by insisting that the war end. And so far the indications are that would Coffs not going to do that.
There was a piece in Heratz let me get your reaction to all of this. Emily Ryan was mentioning the hostage family concerns, and Haratz was also writing about that. They said, they're concerned over there's a massive ground invasion right now. I'll show you some of the images in just a minute, but hostage families are deeply concerned. They say the next hours are going to determine Hostage's fate.
And I was struck by this quote here the families called on net Nyahu and President Trump to reach a breakthrough in the negotiations in Doha, sang, these are dramatic hours that will decide the fate of our loved ones and the future of Israeli society.
They're absolutely right about that. I mean, they should be terrified right now. I think everyone understands what's so terrifying about that at this moment, especially I mean the the strategic approach or the the I guess see, here's the huge problem for them over and over again, is what's the end at this point? What is the end goal?
What is the you know what, what is the clear outcome that Netanyahu thinks that this can is achievable at the end of this And I don't think anybody agrees that it's to the satisfaction of the hostage families of the Israeli public. And that's because he's of course himself being torn in different directions and consistently giving more.
To the Israeli right.
So it's it's an incredibly bleak situation for the hostage families right now. I understand why they would feel.
Terrified and just real quickly the reason I keep switching back and forth between hostages and captives because we're always told but we're now down to the down to a place where everybody who's being held was in combat like
these these are soldiers, so that makes them captives. And you know, the international laws of war say you're not supposed to trade prisoners of war for military concessions, but you can trade them for other prisoners of war, and it's normal that you release them when the hostilities are over.
This argument that Israel is making that they should release the prisoners of war and then immediately continue the war would be outside of this the like pattern of how that goes like, that's no, no, no countries would do that.
Yeah, And that language is important because the Israelis always refer to everyone they're holding as prisoners and everyone regardless of whether they're IDF or not, held by hamas as hostages. And that language is very intentional and.
Well everyone is hamas or combatant correct.
Exactly exactly, and you know, is often echoed by by the press, so that that note is very important. And just to get to the the invasion you know that we're seeing right now, We've got numerous accounts from the ground. These are you know, we're all compiled, We're being eliminated. People saying it's hell tonight, our families are in danger, intense escalation, We're being eliminated. Now, we'll never forgive you.
The bombing never stops. They've gone crazy. You know, some people are reporting that these are some of the most intense bombings that they've experienced during this entire onslaught, which is hard to imagine. We also have some some images coming out here that you can see of you know, the rubble being bombed. You know, there's there's nothing left here that's still standing, but yet it's still being bombed.
We have this reporting Ryan from you guys over at drop site from yesterday evening starting saying during the last ten minutes, Israeli forces launched a new raid west of Baile Lahia is that right north of got as a an Israeli airstrike on the shu Jai neighborhood east of Gaza City. This Israeli forces bomb a house in Beer al na Jah west of Jabalia Camp north of Gaza. Injuries as a result of Israeli bombing of a house, Martyrs and injuries as a result of the Israeli bombing
a home. So you know, huge indications here that this is a quite large scale ground invasion. We also had this heavy reinforcemance in the Gaza borders and gearing up for what's expected to be a brutal slaughterhouse like invasion, and you know we're already seeing some of the aftermaths of that. At this point.
The IDF soldiers keep posting their positions. It's an incredible lack of discipline.
I think they got them. I think Kamas is finally about to be over forever.
This this will do it. Yeah, that's what that was. Unus to Raleigh, who's as soon as anybody uh in the IDF posts anything, he seems to be like immediately on it. And yeah, so they're like giving away their positioning.
Any the things are more depressing than watching what should be the end stages of a conflict and seeing people die and seeing further destruction when there are potential negotiations on the table. I mean, if you look at Ukraine right now, people feel similarly, and they should. It's just the most bleak and upsetting thing to watch play out.
And Ran, what is the significance of the timing here? It's not an accident. This invasion is happening, and this, you know, massive escalation in the violence is happening as these talks are unfolding, as President drum is wrapping up his trip to the Middle East. You know, what's the significance of this time?
Originally, what they were saying in Israel that they were going to give the talks in Doha time to work themselves out and see if they could come to some type of resolution and they would wait until Trump had left the region before they would launch their massive assault, assuming that the talks failed. Uh, it now seems like they're pushing that ahead of schedule. It's kind of a slap in the face to Trump.
Is it a run related at all?
So I I could you could imagine that, you know, the work the the worst things get in Gaza, then the more difficult Israel believes it becomes for the US to strike a deal with Iran. Uh, that might not be the case. Like you're seeing, you're seeing you saw Syria do this, You've seen you saw Yemen do that,
the who thies do this. You're seeing people, you know, decouple agreements with the United States from agreements with Israel in a way that we haven't really seen in the past because a lot of these groups are encouraging the
isolation of Israel. So it may it may be a miscalculation, you know, the kind of it's weird to call it a hope, but the hope among people was that this was the kind of murderous death rattle of this conflict, that that they were just going to you know, do as much killing of people that they were aiming for Mohammed Sinwar. Some others adjourn A lot of journalists have been killed in the last week because they think the
window is closing for the killing. Uh, that that may end up not being true, and we may just get this mass murder spree plus then the continuation, plus this this imminent starvation. You know, this, this humanitarian crisis is reaching levels where even the IDF is acknowledging this, uh and and even kind of create and creating tensions even inside the IDF.
Right.
Yeah, And lastly, before we get to miss Rachel and all of that, there was Ryan. My understanding was Israel was pushing various humanitarian organizations to participate in basically creating a quote unquote aid program that would be used as a weapon of war, and those those humanitarian agencies said, no, thanks,
We're not taking part in your war crimes. And Israel has now announced this partnership with the US to implement this this quote unquote humanitarian aid program that would require you know, would have very few distribution points, would have very limited calories, would likely force civilians to have to traverse you know, active war zones in order to you know, get the nutrition. They need to survive. What do we know about what's going on there?
And even that hasn't been agreed to. And we could go back to this Hawaretz reporter earlier who spoke with an Israeli source, So she adds, this is Eliza Roskovsky. She adds, Israel has not yet approved the entry of humanitarian aid via a US backed relief fund. The source added, even if it does, the aid would be symbolic, symbolic. Quote, maybe five trucks here, ten there nothing meaningful for two million people, the source.
Said, Jesus.
So even there, like even this carved up, you know, trimmed down, cynical, exploitative version of humanitarian aid, they haven't even agreed agreed to, and if they do would be just just just for the images of a few trucks going in, so that all of the pro Israel accounts can then post these images of these trucks and be like, look, see what are you complaining about?
Right?
Can you imagine any other nation sending food to their adversaries? Yeah? Well, I think we all know who the real villain though, is in all of this, guys, and that's miss Rachel. Let's all agree on that has something we can all unite behind who has dared to actually care about the children who are being starved and murdered and maimed.
Really, that's right. It's extra ridiculous about this controversy.
Yeah, that's exactly right. And so the New York Times wrote this piece, why tat celebrity Miss Rachel waded into the gaza debate? I mean, first of all, the framing of this is insane, right, wading into the gods of debate. She is caring about children who are being starved, like and you know, who have had their limbs blown off and are now amputees, and whose families can't provide for them. In what world is there? I mean, unfortunately it is a debate, But in what world is this properly framed
as any sort of a debate? And then Metti is pointing out here, I'm embarrassed. In the New York Times, they publish this piece on Miss Rachel, in which they cite a ridiculous anonymous right wing website Stop Anti Semitism, while indulging the mad mad claims she may be funded by Hamas The New York Times put this in their piece. The allegation that she was funded by Hamas. I mean, what can you even say about this?
Yeah, it's an anonymous troll account makes a lurid, absurd claim, which is that's what trolls do now blaming the trolls, and then the New York Times grabs that claim and slaps it into their article and makes her respond to it.
She had to issue a statement like, what in the world are you talking about it?
She's not getting paid to do this. NBC News managed to have an even more absurd framing. Their headline was Miss Rachel doubles down on support for children in Gaza. Doubles down is for anybody who's new to this, idiom means you're in trouble and you're doing something deeply controversial, and you're, you know, facing cancelation, and yet even in the face of all of this criticism of your reckless actions, you double down. The headline doubles down on.
The claim that Haitian migrants are eating the cats and dogs, Right, Miss Rachel.
Maybe I can pull this up. Miss Rachel doubles down on support for children in Gaza. Yeah. Here it is, like, just in case you think I'm making this up, this is the headline. Oh my god, Rachel.
You'll read her quote there. It's sad that people try to make it controversial when you speak up for children that are facing immeasurable suffering. Why is this an article?
Yeah, I mean, if you're going to do an article about it, you have to frame it in terms of the insanity of the people who are attacking her for this, Like that's the only appropriate framing. So yeah, okay, you can quote anti semitism, stop anti semitism, account trolling account as like example number one of the wild and insane and baseless claims that are being made about this in the way she's being demonized for supporting children. Here's the
Fox News version radical nursery rhymes. Missus Rachel just went from nursery rhymes to hammas tied headlines headlines.
See that's interesting. It's a meta they're using the meta framing or the meta media framing to do guilt by association.
Yes, defending Gaza stats on an anti Israel platform. I presume they're talking about Zete over there right with Mehdi while skimming over October seventh. If you're a parent, will that change whether you allow your child to watch her?
So?
Yeah, they use the fact that the New York Times and NBC News and everybody else covered this to accuse her of being affiliated with Hammas tied headlines.
It's ridiculous.
And when people think that they're being reasonable, they will say, but why is she singling out Israel's killing of all of these children? And to Emily's point, A, she doesn't. She speaks up for children all over the world when they're suffering.
Yeah, also particularly Israelly kids.
So she's yes, and she'll speak up for Israeli kids absolutely, But b there have been more than seventeen thousand children killed in a year and a half in Gaza. If you add up Sudan, India, Pakistan, Ukraine, other conflicts, there have not been. They would they don't add up to that many children being killed, and not only that, right now, there are about a million children in Gaza, a million who have very little to eat and very little to
drink and no medical care. Like there is not a child in Gaza immediately to write as we speak, who's not suffering. So why wouldn't she speak out specifically for them? Yeah, that's important, Like why do you single us out? Well, it's singularly horrific.
Yeah, it is singularly horrific, and it's being done with our tax dollars also, and that too, as a US citizen, done with our tax dollars. One more note on this. I don't have that pulled, but there was a student what at NYU who in his speech mentioned the atrocities in Gaza, and they're pulling his diploma simply for one mention of this because they say, oh, well, you didn't tell us you were going to say that, so we're stripping you off. You're a diploma. I was just just insane,
just absolutely insane. I wanted to running out to you know, Middle East, and Trump's very friendly meeting with the new head of Syria, which is very interesting in and of itself.
He's very attractive, very strong, very tough past.
Yes, very strong, very strong past, tough guy, tough guy, yeah, attractive, just unbelievable. Stanley mc crystal made some really interesting comments here that were clipped by Ken Clippenstein that I wanted to only let me get your reaction to this, because I just think this is extraordinary. Hold and I probably have this on two point. Now, let me change it.
There we go.
Okay, The reality is people who are enemies often evolve into not being a ry bees, and people who were terrorists evolve into something else. MONOCOLM Began was a terrorist in his early days. Nelson Mandela was labeled a terrorist. And so many people who feel very strongly about something actually exhibit a force of will and then they can mature and evolve into being more.
I'm so, uh, what do you what do you make of that?
Sounds like someone who fought uh in the decades after the United States armed the mujah Hadeen and after and you guys were like in media during the Crystal period of the Afghanistan War. But holy smokes, is that some cope man?
I mean, also, it's true like that, let's get the no lies detected gift out for that one, Like it's accurate.
Like and uh mentioned a baggon was interesting to me too, because that never gets admitted. I don't think I've ever heard that mentioned on Western TV.
They had to drag My Crystal out to talk to Katelyn Collins to get that out in the open. Yeah.
Yeah, and for for people like don't know that you can look look that up. This this was, you know, one of the founders of the state of Israel and it was it was founded you know, by you know, terrorist organizations who drove the British out with bombings of civilian.
Some of them self described as terrorists.
Yeah, absolutely they were. They were not you're goon and the others they were not. They were not afraid of the label terrorist like they embraced it. And yeah, Nelson Mandela and you know, he was involved in violent resistance to apartheid, but before he was jailed. Like, that's very true.
And what's amazing that Joelanni or al Shara, whatever you want to call him now, has actually made this exact same point because when he was asked, hey, weren't you like in al Qaeda and the two thousands and and killing a bunch of Americans And he was like, look, I was young and hot headed and I thought the American invasion was an atrocity. And you're like, okay, this is true.
This is true.
It was like it was, it was really bad. And he's like, but you know some of our tactics, you know, I regret, but you know, I'm no longer young and hot headed, and it's.
In the past. Ryan, This is true.
People are different in their twenties and their forties. It's usually not an Al Qaeda or an Ice terrorist that we're hearing it from who's now shaking hands with Macron and Trump.
And it's wild to hear the crystal talk about terrorists like, you know, they're they're young, they're idealistic, they're really passionate about a particular cause and that.
But if we're serious about, you know, we want to win hearts and minds and de radicalize, then what do you think it means?
The other thing is it just exposes how fake and political the word the label terrorists is. And I don't think that's ever been probably more on display domestically than it is right now, when you know, miss Rachel is being labeled basically like a domestic terrorist and.
The actual Al Qaeda guy is we're taking hands.
With Trump and they still have what a ten million dollar bounty on his head. Technically they took that off, they did take it out, Okay, well there you go. Recently had a ten million dollar bounty on his head.
I mean Syria in general, it has just been the best example of that period, Like over the course of a decade, it's just been funding all sides. But then it's all terror. It's just a completely ridiculous situation.
That it was.
I think it was maz Ryan who posted He's like, this is the perfect coda to the war on terror. Watching the former al Qaeda head of al Qaeda in Syria shaking the hand of the United States president.
Yeah, yeah, what a summit.
Incredible and of course, you know, very nice for Israel that this guy is ready to just you know, hand over the goal on heights effectively. Ben Norton had a good summation here. Let me put this up on the screen and read off his his commentary about what unfolded here. The US helped overthrow Siria's independent government. Now it's unelected president is the former leader of al Qaeda. Trump had a form a friendly meeting with this al Qaeda extremist
and praise him is great. Trump said, he's young, attractive guy, tough guy, strong past, very strong past fighter. Trump vows remove the suffocating US sanctions. That's good to collapse the previous Syrian state. The rebranded al Qaeda leader promise Aeria will normalize relations with the colonial Israeli regime is committing genocide against Palestine and people. He also pledged to give US corporations control over serious natural resources. I think Ryan
you said on a previous show. You know, the people who said this was all a CIA plot, I don't know that it was, but you know it would add up, it would add up.
Little, yes, indeed, but a little ridiculous there though, to say that al Shara is unelected, but then to call Asad quote independent, Yeah, ok, yes election? Sure what election did did Asad's dictator's son.
Win?
And how independent exactly was he? But yes, like the people who said that this was just a giant you know, deep state plot are are looking pretty good right now.
I mean, it's also the new Trump dichotomy. It's not new, but he crystallized it in his rid speech this week where he was talking about commerce versus chaos, as though this is a dichotomy and commerce itself will head off chaos, which again so a lot like Tom Friedman.
Yeah, the McDonald's like, we'll spread our you know, this is how we'll spread democracy around the world. Now it's like, how what will spread our ability to conquest everywhere? And you know, for on behalf of Elon Musk and other oligarchs everywhere.
Well, and Jelani has apparently been pitching Trump and Trump's team openly on having Trump towered Damascus, like it was within a part, intentional part of the strategy that he's approached these negotiations with. And it, I mean, the sanctions are gone. So something worked. And it wouldn't surprise me if that was it, because it's worked in other golfs. It's worked in golf states where there's Trump construction happening
all over the region. So this is it's not new, obviously, but I think Trump is this week has just said we are mirroring. Now the Trump family is like mirroring the way business is done in some of these golf states.
And yeah, well it actually ties in with this story Pro Publica published about the Trump administration leaned on African countries the Goal Camp business for Elon muss. This is an expansion of the reporting that Jeff Stein had already done over at the Washington Post about the way the State Department is pushing countries to you know allow and starlink and partner with Starlink and you know, aggressively doing so.
And they really went deep on some of the I mean just like mob boss tactics that are used here and the tariffs fit into it. So you've got the stripping of USAID, you know. And so the the basic dissolution of that agency and subsuming an under the State Department means that Marco Rubio and the people who are under him can go directly to a country and say we're going to take your funding if you don't if
you don't partner with starlink. The tariffs mean, like in the case of Lesotho, that you can go in and say, hey, we're going to smack you with these fifty percent tariffs and you're going to be economically dead if you don't take up us A starlink license. This has worked in numerous cases where countries have basically folded and said okay, fine.
And so you know, I was thinking, Ryan, how with the destruction of USA, I d you know there the principle was, Okay, we're going to give you some healthcare and we're going to be able to get things that are in US interests, whether it's securing raw earth minerals or whatever it is, putting pressure on their government, whatever it is. With the idea, this would be in quote
US imperial interests. Now, the idea is we're going to use those same levers except to the sort of like sol and exchoolsive benefit of Elon and the Trump family, and we're going to operate it directly from the State Department. We're going to couple it with this terif regime so that we can truly go and get whatever we want for our personal business interests around the world.
Yeah, that's that's basically what's going on here. Elon has been very very quiet lately. I've noticed, Yeah, and I'm not sure.
Grock not so much, but Elon, yes'.
Crock been quite loud. Grock not so much. I mean, Starlink is a good product, but it's got yesterday.
There did you you got it set up yet?
Now I'm doing that today.
It's not too hard, and it's it is, I admit it's.
Face in the middle of the day.
It shouldn't really, it shouldn't need the hammer of the the US foreign policy apparatus.
Apparently Bezos is launching a competitor product product and other companies are as well, and so Elon feels under pressure to basically lock in create a lock in a sort of like global monopoly, and especially interested in Africa because that's the fastest growing population in the world.
In order to secure Starling's future. It's not just a residential product. It has massive commercial and defense uh business. Absolutely, It's not just sort of like another Amazon device or even Tesla. It's it's such a significant defense. I mean, it's been completely part of the world and the conflict in Ukraine, that's part of the conflict in Gaza.
So it allows Elon to conduct his own foreign policy effectively. Yeah, and we saw that with Ukraine, like, regardless of how you feel about the decisions he made there. First the providing of Starlink to Ukraine was very critical, and then he you know, did not allow its use I think in Crimea like there were decisions that were made that were meant to coerce Zelensky and the Ukrainians in terms of the tactics that they were allowed to deploy. So he was using Starlink as a tool to you know,
coerce the Ukrainians. And again, regardless of whether you agree with what Elon thought about those things or not having that much power in one unelected billionaire to be able to conduct his own foreign policy and coerce nations as he sees fit. Is not something that I think any of us should be signing up for.
Yeah, from a national security perspective, you would think the government would want competitors out there. If one guy controls the communication apparatus for your military, yeah, and he controls you.
That's that is exactly right. I also wanted to just mentioned Ukraine. Let me play for you. So these negotiations are going down in Istanbul. You know, there's originally, I think some decent hopes that there might be some progress made here between Ukraine and Russia. But then we learned Trump is not going and Putin is also not going. I think the expectations have been significantly diminished. Here's Trump getting asked about Putin not showing in Turkey. Take a listen.
Oh hold on, it helps if I share it. Here we go.
Uh No, I didn't anticipate. I actually said, why would he go if I'm not going? Because I wasn't to go. I wasn't planning to you I would go, but I wasn't planning to go. And I said, I don't think he's going to go if I don't go. And then that's turned out to be right. But we have people there, Marco, as you know, he's doing a fantastic yet Marco's there Secretary of State, and we have people there.
But I.
Didn't think it was possible for Putin to go if I'm not there, Jennifer, So.
He's saying, he, you know, I'm not disappointed. I didn't expect them to go. As I mentioned, I think Rubio and others have been downplaying expectations for what can be accomplished there. And for Zelenski, Emily, you know, he really wanted to have some sort of a ceasefire in place before these talks even unfolded. He was not able to achieve that. And now I think what I read this morning is that he was on his way there and then when it was revealed, Okay, Putin's not going, he
also sent a delegation instead of himself going. So that's kind of where we are there.
Yeah, that sounds right, and it sounds like now Trump is leaving this big trip. Actually not much closer to an end in Gozla. We're in Russia Ukraine in that conflict either. And he started the week and I think Trump World had very high expectations for kind of moving by leaps and bounds over the course of the week and is now leaving. And it's interesting because we talked about this a good bit when we were discussing Israel earlier.
But Witkoff, it did not seem to have the magic touch this week for some reason or another, because it actually did feel like leading up to this week, the momentum in both directions was significant. They got the minerals deal with Ukraine, they had really started putting pressure on Yahoo, and then over the course of the week it all fizzled.
I also ran, is this rift with Netanyahu thing? How real? How real is this? Or is this more? Biden had very strong words and very strong things to net nya who leads to the press. I just I can't really tell.
We'll find out, And you're right, I think to point to, you know, Biden's constant leaking to the press of how frustrated he was and how what mean things he said to Yaho on the phone, and then the gap between that and what was happening in the real world, you know, showed his fecklessness. And I think that the exact same
formula has to apply to Trump. And so whether Trump can get the ceasefire that he says he wants, and whether he can get the Iran deal that he says he wants and get the regional stability that he claims is his goal. Will then determine whether or not this split is real or not. And I think that's the only way you can figure that out.
It was obviously a heavy lift that he would come out of this week with leaps and bounds and significant steps forward. But so I don't want to say, like, oh, what a loss he didn't solve to like he didn't bring peace to the world, you know, on the course of his Middle East trip, But you think expectations were higher than what happened this week.
Yeah, I just I also feel it seems like he still hasn't learned the lesson that should have been learned from decades, but specifically from his first administration, that there is no full moving forward and renewal in the Middle East without Palestinians have some having some sort of a just resolution. And you know, the Abraham Accords were premised on the idea that we can just kind of like
pretend Palestinians don't exist and create these relationships. And you know, according to Jeremy's and others discussions with leaders of from US and other you know, uh, Palestinian armed resistance factions. That sense that there was an attempt to move on without addressing some sort of resolution for Palestinians is part of what sparked the the planning and the execution of
October seventh. So, you know, at the end of this trip, it seems to me very much like Trump still thinks that you can just go around the Middle East, get the deals that he can get for his own personal family, get his fourner million dollar jet from Qatar and whatever. And you know, if Israel is going to just keep genociding Palestinians, then you know, maybe in the future he can get a real estate deal there as well, which seems to be his ultimate end goal.
Commerce over chaos. Yeah, exactly to those two never come at the same time, as we know that they're never intertwined.
All right, let's talk a little bit about this the latest of the GOP tax bill, Emily, I wanted to hear your view from the right on how things are shaking down here. First of all, we got an estimate that the tax bills on track to add more than two and a half trillion dollars in the US deficit for the people who you know. This is from Jeff Stein. Republican tax reprosal emerging in the House of Reps would add more than two and a half trillion to the
federal budget deficit, according to nonpartisan but experts. That fiscal hit has trigger criticism from House Conservatives, who have at times vowed to vote against legislation that as the national debt already over thirty six trillion, House Speaker Mike Johnson may have trouble reducing the bill's price tag, as that would require either making fewer tax cuts or steeper spending
cuts in ways unpalatable to his conference. What is your son's emily of how important this number is, and this no matter how you slice it, given the things they want to accomplish, specifically the giant tax cuts for the rich, Like, as long as that's in this bill, it's going to be a giant budget buster, and you aren't going to be able to cut really enough even from the you know, relatively significant cuts they want to make to medicaid in
order to make up the difference. So on the other hand, conservatives like to do this math like, oh yes, but the tax cuts will magical themselves, and this analysis surely doesn't take into account all of the economic glory that is going to be achieved by, you know, further cutting the taxes of the richest people and corporations in the country. So how how's the right kind of reacting to this news.
I would expect there to be significant fights with the Congressional Budget Office in the days ahead. And the Congressional Budget Office does kind of suck in some respects. I mean, it's not like it has an easy job, but there's some funny math that gets done when you're trying to say how much stuff this will cost. So I think some of that will be coped. I think some of
it will be legitimate. I think that number is extremely important, and I think it's why right now you have Chip Roy basically are ready laying the groundwork and preparing people for his internal resistance, and a lot of Freedom Caucus members are going to be with him. On the Senate side. Ron Johnson penned a Wall Street Journal op ed this week, saying basically that the bill is the Titanic and that it's going to be sunk because of the spending levels.
On the other hand, you have the Salt Conference whining that their salt deduction isn't quadrupled rather than merely tripled. If not more, they would of course go higher than that. So the number is just going to be a red line for people like chip Roy. Tim Burchett is raising
issues already now about increased pentagon spending. So again, like, you can do this if you have a thirty vote margin, and you can allow people to take their little comfortable protest votes and sprinkle some pork in to get other people on the side that you need them to be,
and you can do these deals. But the deals that they're going to have to get done to overcome this problem, and that I would say, I mean, it's obvious in the House, but it'll also be a problem in the Senate because you now have people who have stuck their necks out for DOGE. You have people who have come out when it's extremely difficult. There are bureaucrats on the sidewalk with their cardboard boxes and the ferns, and people have stuck their neck out and VA cuts for example,
and said no, this is important. And then you're asking them to vote on a a budget bill or a budget busting bill that they then have to go home and answer for blowing up the debt and then while doing that, taxes for the rich and cuts to medicaid. And this is maga. It's not the Republican Party. I mean, I would argue they didn't understand it quite well enough in two thousand and nine either. But it's not the Republican Party of nineteen ninety nine. It is completely different.
And so if you have to go home and you're Josh Hawley, who's also saying no touching Medicaid, these are two maga Republicans Josh haller Ron Johnson Josh Holly saying don't touch Medicaid, Ron Johnson saying this bill is not brave enough and it's not making cuts that will make me support it. So this, this problem imperils everything for them.
So on the one hunt, on the one hand, that makes it easier for them to pass because if it's like, listen, the President is doing these tariffs no matter what, and you know your constituents are going to be screwed. If the tariffs don't come with tax cuts and incentives for on shoring, then maybe you can it's easier to muscle
people on board. On the other hand, if you're spending more on the Pentagon, and people have stuck their necks out on Pentagon cuts over the last ten I mean, it's just completely is it is more of a mess than people realize.
Rand Paul had had this to say to your point, Emily about the Doge piece. He says, it indicates this year the deficit will be over two trillion dollars, but it means they're anticipating close to three trillion for the next year. It's really a slap in the face at those of us who are excited about Elon Musk and Doge and all the cuts. Where are the cuts? If the cuts are real, why are we going to borrow five trillion? So what I proposed was this, he says
he wanted to. I put for a proposal. We voted on it to raise the debt sailing for three months.
Why.
Because I think we should vote on the debt sailing every three or four months to see if they're doing their job, if they promise us cuts and spending, not just the administration, I'm talking about congressional leaders as well. If the promises are real' vote to raise it every three months. So I put forward that amendment. Unfortunately, I only got a handful of votes. But you know, I mean he's saying some version of what you said. First
of all, the Doge cuts obviously are fake. They're actually costing the government more money than their quote unquote saving in.
Some sense because people have lost their jobs and districts.
Yes, that's exactly that's exactly correct, and causing all sorts of you know, problems for states across the country. And then you're asking people to further explode. And this is something we've been saying from the beginning, like, you know, they're not serious about Doge and about being so worried about the debt and the deficit, because if they were, they wouldn't be also proposing this like four trillion dollar tax cut on the road that's just several months away.
You know, Ryan, early in the Trump administration, I Trump Trump has so much power within the Republican Party. I mean, really, that's unquestioned. However, previously, what made them him and Elon so able to just effectuate whatever result they wanted with congressional Republicans was that one two punch of you of Trump with the political power, and you had Elon with the power of the purse, so to speak, where he was threatening everybody who would get crosswise with him with
funding their primaries. I think both of their power is somewhat diminished now because Trump is less popular than he was at that time, and you know, you're getting closer to midterms. Some of these Republicans have to face voters here shortly. And Elon was so embarrassed in that Supreme Court race that his political power obviously is vastly diminished. So even though I don't want to, you know, overstate the declined Trump's influencer or whatever, he still has a tremendous,
unbelievable group on the Republican Party. I don't think he quite has as much power with them as he did going in because he's also lost that you know, the punch of Elon feeling like such a juggernaut as well.
Ryan, that was true. But I'll just say quickly, like Chip Roy, Donald Trump has already fought with Chip Roy, and Tip Roy has prevailed. He has been fine. And that's like there are people right now when you have a big margin, it doesn't matter. You have the Thomas Massey's, you have the chip Roys who are going to make a big deal and say I'm just not doing it. But there are so many of those people right now.
For Trump, I think Chip Roy would rather lose an election than vote for a bill that explodes the budget and if he doesn't feel like it's a reasonable compromise, and he's in that point right now, because he was already posting this week saying there's going to be an enormous pressure campaign pretty implicitly from the President, because the President was meanwhile tweeting it's a great bill. So yeah, it's huge. It is such a mess for the economy, It is such a mess for the Republican Party.
The NBC is Ryan's reporting that Republicans are floating this compromise of faster Medicaid cuts, so I guess, you know, effectuating the same amount of cuts but in a quicker timeline and a larger salt deduction to try to strike some balance between what they describe as blue state Republicans and conservative hardliners on this bill.
And the reason they're pushing those faster Medicaid cuts is because they you know, what politicians in Washington always do is anything that's difficult politically difficult, they push that out into the back end of the ten year ten year window and they'll say, look, over ten years, this cuts eight hundred billion dollars out of Medicaid. And then you look at the details and it cuts zero for the first eight years, and then it cuts four hundred each
year of the ninth and tenth. And now that's not the exact structure of this one. It's a little bit closer in. But the idea then is that you tell your base you're doing a thing and then you don't actually do it. That's this is you know, Democrats have their own version of this. This is how Republicans you know, uh, do it to their base. And but fundamentally Republicans are in a jam between their rhetoric and reality because they have been for years, you know, been telling their base
that they can save trillions of dollars. Uh. Elon Musk said, two trillion, right by basically cutting crazy research that funds you know, transgender mice and finding and finding waste fraud and abuse right in the government. Yes, And minority friends who were watching DOSEE you know, go through the government were very hopeful that like awesome, like we're finally we finally got somebody who's rich enough he doesn't care, he's
going to go in there. He's going to find all the absurd spending, all the waste, fraud and abuse, and we're going to get our government under control. And it's not going to hurt me, it's not going to hurt the economy. It's not going to make the government actually less effective. It'll make the government more effective. The problem
is that this was always a lie. Like the government does have some inefficiencies, but it would take a serious, like collective effort to go in and reform those processes. You can't just go in and with a wrecking ball and fire everybody on probation and find trillions of dollars in transgender mice research like that that just doesn't exist.
There are trillion dollars of woke to cut down the federal pun exactly.
And the fraud is is weapons makers, uh, you know, health insurance companies, it's health providers. It's like these private equity owned doctor facilities that are ripping off Medicare and Medicaid, like those are the places that you're going to find the fraud. But guess what, they have power. They make contributions, so they're not going after those.
Football So their stuff is small wall compared to that exactly found.
Out that like you can, you can cut the Reuters subscription sane, like Politico pro subscription no no, no no no no.
Punch Bowl yeah yes, the yeah, the White House can cut it, can make these agencies cut their punch Bowl subscriptions or cut you know, the dumb contracts that they have with maybe Rivian or Tesla or something like that.
But well between between Ryan saving the government that money for that fake Tesla contract or for a million dollars or whatever, plus what we're saving the government for the punch Bowl subscriptions, I mean, this is the real dog right here.
That's right. Efficiency, that's great, the.
Grim efficiency gotten way more done than Elon. Oh my gosh, we didn't even have to hack the Social Security database to do it. Isn't that incredible?
We didn't have to know.
It's almost it's almost as if he wanted all that data for something else.
Interesting. Yeah, maybe interesting, very interesting, so that he can feed it to Grock so that Greg can tell us more about the kill the Bores song and White.
Aside, last thought, some of these Republicans know that they have to outlast Donald Trump. So like there are people in the Senate who are up after Donald Trump's presidential term is over. And if you're that's not a Chip Roy, but again like to keep using Chip Roy as an example or Ron Johnson actually as an example who's just re elected. You know that you have political ambitions that are not just going to be whatever Trump says in
when is Trump's after twenty twenty eight? And so you're gonna have to answer to voters after Donald Trump is no longer president. And you don't know if Donald Trump is going to maintain his hold on the Republican Party. He probably will, but you have no idea what's going to happen and if you're going to get hammered for being mister doge, mister balanced budget and voting for a piece of garbage bill. So the incentives are not where Mike Johnson and Trump need them to be.
I got to get you guys to weigh in on this James Comey situation. Seriously, what in the I don't know what's going on. I genuinely don't know what's going on here. So Camy posted this picture on Instagram.
What a deeply weird person, truly, truly.
It says eighty six forty seven and his his caption is cool shell formation on my beachwalk. And then he you know, people were like, Okay, you're calling for the president to be killed? Is that what we're doing? Is that what's going on here? And you know they're apparently now like investigating him for this as well. But anyway, he posted this, he deleted the post, and he says, I posted earlier picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message.
I didn't realize some folks associate those numbers with violence. It never occurred to me, but I posed violence of any kind, so I took the post down.
He was the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York in addition to being the head of the FBI. He is damn he damn sure knows that eighty six. He knows exactly what it means, and he knows exactly what he's doing when he juxtapo is it with forty seven? Such a bizarre person.
I mean, as far as I know this, the only place I know this is from restaurants where you say like, okay, we're out of we're out of something. You know, eighty six chicken. We did once and a mayor. Everybody laughed, eighty six chicken? Like, kind of manager are you? How do we run out of chicken? So you just announced it to the step eighty six checking is off the menu. Uh, you can also impeach the president, like that's the way to eighty six. The guy also, yeah, so it doesn't.
Of course, but it's a euphemism for like, is it has it become?
I mean, don't. I don't honestly have a take, like I mean, I guess my only take is I think the Republicans are very hypocritical melting down over this, given like the level of the type of rhetoric that we hear from them all the time, and they'll suppose it like rejection of cancel culture blah blah blah. But I don't know, guys, maybe I'm naive, and maybe it's just because I'm like, if I saw those shells, I'm not sure that I would really put it together or think
that this was like a call for an assassination. I think he maybe like boomer brained enough and whatever to just be like, oh, this is kind of interesting. I don't know, Maybe I genuinely think that's a possibility.
Absolutely, maybe I don't think it should be well, but yeah, he's the FBI, he's a former FBI director. The idea that you're just tossing these shells up on social media, even if you just think it's like kind of interesting, like oh, it's.
Idiot code to decode here, I don't know. That's kind of the vibe I got from it. It's just on a character because he's such a like cautious person in a lot of way.
Remember when he was social media posting from the woods of Iowa.
He's so weird.
It's it's genuinely disturbing to me that that man had as much power as he did over the course of so many years. Used it first with Martha Stewart, which was when we all should have film on the line there and real ones dead now. But then James Comy continued to ascend the ranks, a prize there, and we know how his power was abused when he was overseeing trying to take shortcuts to get Trump out of office. And so it's just like, what are you doing, bro, Like just retire, you sold a bunch of books.
Good put the phone.
Lord.
Yeah, I guess that's it. It's a commentary on how even when you're at the beach, you still cannot resist, you know, posting in some way that's gonna it's going to get you in trouble.
That is so true. And the only thing I'm going to add to this is the fact that he deleted it and said he didn't know. It's also just like, dude, then why are you post it? Like if if this is truly innocent, lave it up like who cares? But what are you? He's just so he's a muss.
Well, that's where the boomer mindset comes in, is he didn't realize that the cardinal rule of social media is never delete, never apologize, be like miss Rachel and double down. Learn nothing from Donald Trump or Miss Rachel. Apparently. Yes, yes, all right, I wanted to. I wanted to get to this abundance debate with Sam Theeter and as Recline, And
so we'll go ahead this part. We're going to transition to the premium show for for these reactions, and we have a couple other stories I want to get to as well, the migration hearing as well. So if you want to get the full show, just governsubscribe Breakingpoints dot Com for this bonus section that we're going to get to here as well.
And Ryan