5/20/25: Trump Bailing On Ukraine, Dave Smith Vs Ben Shapiro, Epstein, MKUltra CIA Secrets & MORE!

confusing to me, is still very confusing to me. Tim Dillon gave an interesting interview to CNN about whether he's part of a new establishment and his interview with Jadie Vance. Definitely want to get your thoughts on that. Cash Batalon Dan Mongino say actually nothing to see there in terms of Trump's assassination attempt, and also Epstein definitely did kill himself, so everyone can just move on. And then I'm not sure how long Dave will be able to stay for,

as I want to respect his time. But we've also got a lot of updates Israel going full mask off on their completely genocidal plans, updates with regard to deportations, a member of Commerce is actually being charged by the Trump administration for alleged assault of an ICE agent. And I'm going to interview and author with a new book out on mk Ultra, which should be really interesting. So lots of good stuff to get to before we jump in.

If you can support us breakingpoints dot com. Thank you so much to everybody who's become a premium subscriber that has enabled us to expand to five days a week. With that, let's go ahead and jump in. So, as I just mentioned, President Trump spoke yesterday both to Zelenski and to Putin separately, in hopes of, you know, coming to some sort of a resolution to this horrific war. He was asked some questions about it by the press corps after the fact. Let's go ahead and take a

listen to a little bit of that. Did you ask President Putin to meet with you about what about Ukraine?

we got to get going. And I did say also, if I thought that you couldn't do it, I'd step away, because what are you going to do. We don't have boots on the ground. We wouldn't have boots on the ground, but we do have a big stake. And the financial amount that was put up is just crazy.

without the US as a broker. After phone calls with Putin and Zelensky, Trump posted that quote, Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a ceasefire and more importantly, an end to the war. Putin's readout of the call was more tentative. He offered no substantive change in the Kremlin stance. Well Zelenski implored the US leader to not distance himself from efforts to secure piece. The only one who benefits from that is Putin, Zelenski said in a statement.

In remarks that indicated Washington maybe stepping back from a role as a mediator, Trump said the conditions for a deal could only be agreed by the warring parties because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of. And Dave, to be honest with you, I am having trouble following the pieces of where we are with this at this point, because you know, we had the big Oval Office blow up with Zelenski, then the minerals deal was off. Then the minerals deal is

back on. Then there were going to be negotiations in Istanbul. Then Putin doesn't go, Trump doesn't go. Then we have these phone calls. The Europeans are pushing for sanctions on Russia. Lots of Republicans also pushing in that direction of leving additional sanction. I mean it's already extraordinarily sanctioned on Russia to put pressure on them. Now you've got these phone calls. So are you making sense of where we are with regard to this war?

made it sound on the campaign trail. I do think that at least, you know, there's a lot of things that Donald Trump is getting wrong as president, but at least he does seem to want the end goal to be an end to this war. And I will say I just find Zelenski's comments appalling that the only one who would benefit from a peace deal would be Vladimir Putin. I mean, how about the young men that you're conscripting, or maybe not such young men that you're conscripting, who

are dying by the hundreds of thousands. I mean, how about the American taxpayer, how about the European taxpayer, how about the you know, even as even though it's unfashionable to say, how about Vladimir Putin's conscripted army. You know, so often in these wars we just end up thinking, you know, in these collectivist mindsets. But like the young Russian boys are also being forced into this conflict.

I'm you know with you. I thought after the Oval Office blow up that that would be the end of the mineral deal. Unfortunately, it looks like I was wrong about that, and I think that's a disaster for America to get drawn in more. But from what I've heard from people kind of on the inside, and this does match a lot of the reporting. The real obstacle here is not even that Putin doesn't want to make a

deal with Donald Trump. I think he would be happy to is that Putin doesn't trust that the permanent government is going to keep to its word. And while he is the bad guy in this war, and he launched an aggressive war that's killed hundreds of thousands of people, he does have a point there that you know, as we've seen over the last many years. I know Bernie Sanders thinks we just became an oligarchy yesterday, but actually we've been one for quite a while.

But regardless, the point is that there's going to be a new president in a few years, and there are already, you know, the forces that really control the government, who are very at odds with Vladimir Putin.

they're wrong about that. And so let me actually play for you. Jd Vance made some interesting comments yesterday as well with regard to this, and see what you think about this piece. Guys, this is a five. Let's go ahead and play that.

I know the President's willing to do that, but if Russia is not willing to do that, then we're eventually just gonna have to say, this is not our war. It's Joe Biden's war, it's Vladimir Putin's war, it's not our war. We're going to try to end it, but if we can't end it, we're eventually going to say, you know what, that was worth the tribe, but we're not doing anymore.

Obviously Russia has you know, significant advantage in terms of the longer that this war goes. There's signs that the Ukrainian frontline is kind of collapsing right now, you know, I do I think Zelensky's demands for what he would want to see in terms of an end to the war, which is a total Russian withdrawal from all areas, are just completely unreasonable unlikely. So where does that leave us all? Do you think?

yet he demands a security guarantee. But then Donald Trump will kind of sell this mineral deal as if that's what it is, and of course the major problem with that is, well, it's kind of twofold.

promising here? And look, I'll take I'm much more non interventionist than even Steve Bannon is, and I I would say that, Look, I know, people, I did a debate.

in the Donbass region back on Ukrainian hands. Because this would be the ultimate victory for Russia, but it would also be a victory for the United States of America. There is absolutely no need for US to be you know, you could argue that it made sense after World War Two, with Western Europe destroyed in the Soviet Union in the East, that America had to guarantee put Europe under its nuclear

umbrella and subsidize its defense and guarantee its protection. But we'th thirty six trillion dollars in debt and you're up is rich. It makes absolutely no sense of Russia's GDP, I think is what a third of what our government spends every year. There are no threat to take over all of Europe, and so there's no reason why Europe can't go at this alone. And I think if we did that, we'd be in a much better situation.

I think for his own, you know, political reasons. He's promised we're not going to give up any territory, and I don't think he's gonna move off of that. I think it would take a lot for him to move off of that, even though you know, it's devastating to his own to his own people, to his own country,

et cetera. I mean, probably what you would end up with is Russia continuing to you know, to march to take additional territory, and ultimately something approaching a kind of divided, failed state is what you would likely be looking at at the at the end of this. And you know,

it's would a, coulda, should have. But obviously the you know, the original sin was when there were peace talks with the chance of success in the very beginning, when the Ukrainians had a stronger hand and there was you know, more leverage that could have been applied to Russia. And you know the fact that the US and you know, with Boris Johnson, that they really scuttled you know, I mean this is just absolutely confirmed at this point that

they scuttled those potential talks. Note not that there's ever any guarantees. You know, that's the really what puts us in this horrific situation where at this point I don't think there is a great and a great solution that can that can really be achieved.

there for you. And look, I mean it's Look, that is a great like point that you made of Boris Johnson going over and killing the peace talks. But the whole thing from from NATO expansion to color coded revolutions that the CIA and the NED and the USAID were backing all through Eastern Europe to even just if you just think, you know, in the last eight years, we framed him like we always think about how Trump was framed for being a Russian spy, but that was also

framing Vladimir Putin. You had every leader of the CIA and the military. You know, I'm not just talking about like Rachel Maddow saying it. Think about this from the Russian perspective. When you've got John Brennan on television every day saying, this guy just launched an attack worse than Pearl Harbor against US, Well, how.

woke right situation. I want to set this up with some news with regard to Project esther It's called which is this plan that was hatched by the Heritage Foundation, which has really been implemented almost completely by the Trump administration to silence any sort of dissent from the Israel consensus. And we can put this article up from the New York Times. I mean, this is again, you know, the mainstream press reporting on something that both drop site News

and Zeteo reported on. I think I don't know quite a while ago, maybe a year ago, but they have some interesting details here. The headline is the group behind Project twenty twenty five has a plan to crush the pro Palestinian movement. Project Ester outlined and ambition w plan to fight anti Semitism by branding a broad range of critics of Israel like you and me, Dave as effectively a terrorist support network, so that they could be deported, defunded, sued, fired, expelled, ostracized,

and otherwise excluded from what it considered open society. Project Ester's architects envisioned outcomes that at the time might have seen far fetched. Curriculum believed to be sympathetic to a Hamas support narrative would be taken out of schools and universities. Supporting faculty would be removed. Social media would be purged of content deemed to be anti Semitic. Institutions would lose public funding. Foreign students who pushed for Palestinian rights would

have their visas revoked or deported. And they said, once a sympathetic presdential administration was in place, according to the plan, we will organize rapidly, take immediate action to stop the bleeding and achieve all objectives within two years. Now, four months after mister Trump took office, Heritage Foundation leaders are

taking an early victory lap. So when I look at these extraordinary efforts which have a you know, clear identitarian lens and are using authoritarian tactics to enforce that identitarian worldview, to me, that is the complete definition of woke. Now woke at this point maybe one of these terms that just needs to be retired because it's just sort of an all encompassing smear and people mean different things with it,

and it's become sort of like content free. But to me, using authoritarian tactics to enforce an identitarian worldview is the definition of woke. And so to me, when I look at this, this is the woke right, and not that it's all the right, but this is a Trump administration. Many right wingers are on board with this, and so when I started seeing this term woke right thrown around, I just assumed that was what people meant, because that's

really logical to me. You know, even some of the same language about like safe spaces and you know, we have a clip we could play, but I will just reference it of a rabbi and a hearing who was like, it's not enough to be ti Semitic, you have to be anti anti Semitic. And I'm like, oh my god, it is you know, the very same thing that we

saw on the left previously. So when I was informed that no, this term woke right is being used somehow against people like you who are dissenters from the Israel consensus, I just I've had a very hard time wrap in my head around it. So I wanted you to help me understand the contours of this fight that is going on here on the right.

is just a pure waste of money. And it does come with this other little nasty side effect of murdering children, which you know we should probably not do.

heinous violent crime. But by the way, I oppose the death penalty for other reasons. But you know, like, but this is such a good response, like how do you claim to be the pro life party and you you are unaffected by the fact that there are children dying, Like, I'm sorry. And then the same people who are pro life advocates will say, well, what's your plan for eliminating hamas? And it's like, wait, so now I have to have a plan. I can't just be opposed to the intentional

killing of babies anyway. But look, I mean, as I was saying the other day with Tucker, you have Ben Shapiro, who made his career opposing identity politics as a proud Zionist. You have people like Ron DeSantis who made his name as being the anti woke guy. But then as soon as the question of Israel comes up, it's like, oh my god, these college kids and they're hurt feelings, and

so all of it is just. And look, the most the most basic one to me is the shutting down of legitimate criticism with accusations of bigotry, which really was the calling card of the woke. That's what most people mean when they say the word. And what you have examples like Thomas Massey made the argument, Now, feel however you feel about this, I agree with it, but it

is certainly a legitimate argument. When he voted no for the Israel funding, he was like, look, we're thirty six trillion dollars in debt and we can't afford to fund other countries' wars. That that's it. And he's consistent on this. He votes against all these spending bills. And and then John pod Horritz from a commentary magazine, in response to this, called him anti Semitic filth.

so it's just kind of meaningless. But I do think that really and and you know, I'm curious to get your thoughts on this, but I've I've been saying this for years that I think many of the popular, the most popular kind of anti woke, anti social justice warrior thinkers. They all kind of got wokeism wrong, yes, all along, and this includes Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, all all of the guys who kind of were famous for battling it

out with these college students. They and this also includes people like James Lindsay and Brett Weinstein, I think, even who I like very much, but I do think kind of a lot of them they always viewed wokism as

a as the left taking over the liberals. And I do understand like there is a surface level plausibility to that to view things like that, because certainly, like the influences of critical race theory, and you know, even stuff from the Frankfurt School, kind of the cultural Marxism type stuff, the Long March through the institutions, these were left wing ideas, and so when you see every giant corporation and the political establishment regurgitating kind of left wing talking points, it's

easy on the surface to say, oh, well, look the left took over the liberals and now they're all a bunch of leftists. But it's really missing the point, and so many of them get lost in focusing. Unlike the intellectual history of wokeism and how you can trace it through the universities and what thinker said what, and you know,

but really that's not the interesting component to wocism. The interesting component is what happened right around twenty twelve when every single giant corporate media apparatus decided they were all going to go all in on this stuff.

took over the CIA, So what did happen. And what happened was after Barack Obama won his historic campaign in two thousand and eight on the promise of ending the wars and closing Guantanamo Bay and repealing the George W. Bush error catastrophe, he went the other direction and expanded it. And so for his re election campaign, he couldn't say, Hey, remember how I said I was going to close Montanamo Bay. It's closed. Remember how I was going to end the wars. Okay, yeah,

I expanded them. But but I'm for gay marriage, but I'm the f And so essentially what they did was in the in the wake of the occupy movement, they were like, hey, here's here's a Thaustian bargain for the left.

And so what Hillary Clinton does, recognizing that this progressive movement is a senate in the party, she tries to out left him by saying, you know, if you break up the big banks, that's not going to end racism, that's not going to end sexism. And so she substitutes in these cultural identitarian concerns for the universal class based concerns that were represented by the Bernie Sanders movement. And

by the way, it's kind of effective. You know, That's how you end up with Bernie Brose being to how they're sexist and they're racist and he doesn't care about civil rights and all of this stuff, and it works.

And then, you know, because it's effective, he and much of the left, I think almost all of the left, frankly, the elected left at least, feel the need to also lean into this language and this worldview, etc. But it comes from the neoliberals and the corporate establishment that want to virtue signal and want to you know, want to block any sort of more extensive or more revolutionary type

of reform. And that's where it really originates. So that has been something that has really frustrated me as well. And you know, and that's a good point and one last, one last thing on this and then it gets your reaction. But you know, you can see it now with how the corporations on a dime, they flip from their virtue signaling to like, oh, Mark Zuckerberg, I'm going to do content moderation in Austin. I'm gonna wear a big chang, I'm gonna get into fighting, I'm gonna go on with

with Joe Rowan. You know, you can see the way that they wore this as a convenience to meet the mom and then the minute the vibe shift is a oh, well we're done with that. We're going to be over here, you know, hanging out with Trump and his inauguration.

left using some leftist rhetoric. And so the focus because if you just think about it, right, the focus in the first let's say, ten years of the twenty first century from the left, like what were they protesting? Though they were protesting the war in Iraq, they were protesting the Patriot Act, and they were protesting the Banker baillouts.

get them distracted? They love the powerful, love a distraction, especially a distraction that hits the people against each other.

the postmodernists, listen to Noam Chomsky do it. Nobody on the right has ever torn them apart better than that guy did. He just absolutely destroyed their entire worldview.

given our nation's history and the history of humanity. If you care about egalitarianism and you care about abuse of power, well what's always the worst version of that has always been how racial minorities are treated, and not just in our society, but particularly in our society, and so to be accused of being racist was always the thing that would make liberals and leftists go like, wooh no, no, no, no, no, not me, I'm the opposite of that. That's what they

It's their whole identity. And so once you weaponized that, and you could see it even with Bernie Sanders, how weak he was. Those two girls were so obnoxious and came up and stole his microphone in the middle of his rally where ten thousand people were there to see him, and he went, okay, okay, go ahead, and here's.

Dillon clips. But on the woke right piece, it seems like a lot of what they're doing too is guilt by association, because you do genuinely have like overt anti Semites who are using the issue of Israel Palestine to you know, to ascend and they end up you know, backing some of the things that we back, but it does genuinely come out of anti semitone thinking of like the nick quentteses of the world, where it's like, you know, undeniable.

And so it seems like part of what's going on here too is to say, well, since you support some of the same things that they support, aren't you also in anti Semite right.

Ron Paul. I think he is single handedly a huge, huge factor on why the right wing went so non interventionist over the last few years, and a lot of it was because he was a Republican from Texas who's a very personally conservative guy, and he got on stage and said I oppose all of these wars, and right wingers would listen to him in a way that they just weren't going to listen to Michael Moore, like you should throw out a fat communist and tell me that's who I got a bit, I got to give up

my entire identity in order to oppose these wars. And then here you have a country doctor telling you, like, no, you can keep your identity, you just can oppose the wars. And so there is powerful social psychology to that, and that's why people use these tactics. But intellectually it's completely bankrupt. It makes no sense whatsoever that we agree left wingers and right wingers agree on lots of things, that doesn't

mean they're the same. And of course this tactic was this By the way, the same tactic is what was used on Jordan Peterson and Brett Weinstein when they were challenging the woke orthodoxy. They'd always be referred to as alt right adjacent, like as if they had anything to do with the fact that there were white nationalists, you know, in Charlottesville or something like that, because they're like one degree of separation where some of the people who like them might also listen.

every single day to basically help their recruitment efforts. But there is a huge and I believe much bigger percentage of the American people who just oppose this war because it's awful and it's not in our national interest to fund and arm the thing, and don't have any animosity toward Jews. So they know, Look, it's like it's always the same, It was the same when I debated Douglas Murray. They know they can't win the argument because it's indefensible

on every level. Then so they always have to go to these these tactics. But the world Right one is particularly ridiculous.

Palestine of like it's complicated, you just don't understand. And because the images have been so horrific and so constant and so undeniable, I think it has if you look at the polling of the American people, I take it has finally broken through, Like no, I am allowed to oppose the bombing of babies with my tax dollars and I don't need to know one hundred years of history to know that that's something that's wrong and that I oppose and do not want to be any part of.

Let me go ahead and move to this Tim Dillon CNN interview because there are a couple of parts here I want to get your reaction to that I think are interesting. So this is a long interview. I watched the whole thing yesterdays, about an hour long. They posted the whole thing uncut. The interviewer is a woman named el Reeves who became kind of famous for the documentary she did on Charlottesville when she was with Vice News. And so she asked him, Dylan, this question of whether

he is part of a new establishment. Let's take a listen to that.

If you weigh again a few comedians with podcasts verse all of the people that supported Kamala Harris, you know, Democrat Toner. There's billionaires, big people. If the idea is that me and a few comedians have more power than multi billionaires, huge media institutions, of whole political party apparatus, I just don't think most people are going to buy that. I think it seems like a great way to excuse running an unpopular candidate on a platform that American people weren't sold on.

politician is not attempting to leverage that. But right, what Tim is saying about how you have Look, you have the three letter agencies, you have the Congress and the Supreme Court and the presidency, and you have huge gigantic news corporations, and you have Hollywood and academia.

they're spot on about that stuff. The point is that it's not that any of us are the new establishment. It's that the establishment lied through their freaking teeth over and over and over again to the American people, to the point that the American people just went, we don't believe a word you say anymore, and because it was they were intentionally lying to cover up their unbelievable levels

of corruption. And again, like you could just rattle these things off, but like in the twenty first century, what has the establishment handed the American people? Okay, like they we got nine to eleven, which they did not protect us from. Then they lied us into war after war after war, each one being a catastrophe, lying us through

the entire thing. I mean nineteen years in Afghanistan, they were saying, the army we're building up is doing a great job, and they're going to totally keep the Taliban down as soon as we leave, over and over, you know, like we were just going through the stuff with putin lie after lie after lie, the stuff. The way they screwed Bernie Sanders out of the nomination, just blatantly cheated

against him. Then they just blatantly interfered in the election in twenty twenty, you know, silencing people.

the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court. There's been a huge cultural shift. You know, the podcast sphere that Tim Dillan is part of was you know, broadly supportive of Donald Trump. The richest people in the world are behind the you know, the the MAGA movement at this point, they're all lined up behind him at the inauguration. Elon Musk is literally the richest person in the world and probably the second most powerful person, if not the most

powerful person in the country. And so you know, if if that, if that grouping, if that ecosystem of power, doesn't represent some kind of establishment, then to me, the word is just completely meaningless. At this point, one saying like Tim Dillon or you or like you know, Theo vonn or Rogan or whatever, like the pinnacle of these

noun but part of the ecosystem. Like if you are, you know, broadly in sort of that ecosystem, then I think it is fair to say, and I do think you're right that in part it's because the previous quote unquote establishment had so clearly failed that there's been you know, a kind of regrouping and an interest in alternative voices, certainly in terms of the media ecosystem.

old boss. And you know, I would say that the tactics deployed by the Trump administration are extraordinary and beyond what we've seen in the past. Just the overwhelming leveraging of the state, students being kidnapped off the street for

writing out eds, et cetera. But I mean that also speaks to the fact that even though there was a revolutionary energy and a rhetorical challenge of the status quo that was represented by the Trump movement, like some of the pieces are too just you know, continued upholding of the status quo. And I would say, you know, as evidence of that, you know, another tax cut for the wealthy coming up in the you know, as a follow on to his tax cuts for the wealthy in the

first administry. Again we have differences on e but you know, the Ukraine War is still going on. We still have saber rattling with Iran, we still have crushing of dissent in you know, an accelerated way, et cetera.

behind Donald Trump or not. Obviously there were a lot of billionaires behind Kamala Harris as well, but those billionaires that did get behind Donald Trump, what I will say about the Kamete podcast sphere, which I do find to be pretty interesting, is that all of them, every last one of them, is anti war. And I'm not saying that that means that Donald Trump is anti war, or that they were right to support Donald Trump, or that Donald Trump's administration will end up working out that way.

But one of the things that is really interesting is, like, dude, I mean, you saw, I know you were talking about the other day theo Vane's recent moment where he's talking about the genocide in Gaza was really I thought it was really beautiful moment. And I mean, certainly, like Joe Rogan has been great on this issue, Tim Dillon is probably the best out there at just mocking the whole thing. I mean his bid about has Sam Harris has a meditation app and then supports bout it was like one

of the funniest things I've ever seen. And so I think that one of the things that I think is really positive about this is that going forward, this is kind of the new standard, is that politicians are going to have to sit down for these unedited, unscripted long

form conversations. I actually thought my good friend Andrew Schultz did a great job with Bernie Sanders the other day and got some really interesting moments out of him that, like I never Bernie Sanders in so many interviews in the last ten years, and I never saw anyone get some of the stuff that Andrew got out of him. I think the the Democrats and the left more broadly speaking are going to have to figure out how to

play this game too. And I think and I think Bernie Sanders was good for him for going on and like.

That audience is and in new media, the incentive structure is not really different. I mean, it's if anything, it exacerbates some of the worst elements because you see people become even more aggressively audience captured because there's more of a connection there. There's no wall between you and the advertisers whatsoever. So there's you know, that direct concern and

there's still and you see this. I mean, I'm sure you have in mind people as well who just want to suck up to the powers that be and do the propaganda for their audience, and all the incentives are aligned for them to do that. So I'm a little less I'm a little more wary of the shift. While being very cognizant of the failures of you know, legacy media,

I'm also wary of the shift. And I also feel like, you know, I do think if you're going to have the president on the vice president on et cetera, even if you are a comedian, you do have some sort

of responsibility to press them on. Okay, you say you're anti war, but here's what the track record was in the first administration, or well, then why are you taking all this money from Maria and medalson Like I think, I think there is a responsibility to do some of those that pushback in those interviews, even if you are not yourself a journalist, if you're giving someone who has huge power or aspires to huge power this tremendous platform.

kind of fascinating in a way. Like the stuff him getting into, like his brother killing himself with alcohol and stuff like that, I actually thought was very interesting.

me to see that. And I will say that on the Joe Rogan interview, I actually thought that Joe Joe exposed something in Donald Trump when he asked him about the election that I think nobody else has been able to. And part of that is because it was a friendly environment and they were just having a conversation.

a thing? Yeah, of course, but that's that's a lot better than corporate capture. I mean, at least you're be responsible to your audience and not some weapons.

He got to go on and like people are like, oh, he just seems like a normal guy. Like I think that's what most people took away from that. And Joe himself, when he previously didn't want to interview Trump because he didn't he said, I don't want to help him. You know, he recognized that there was power in giving someone three hours to just look like a normal, everyday guy. And so listen, I'm not I'm like, I'm not mad at

any of these people for doing the interviews. I think it's a very difficult balance to strike all of that, But I do think that it would be better served having more pushback and that you know, at least in you know, in the corporate media structure, there is some sense of Okay, we've got to ask the tough question, we've got to be prepared for the follow up, etc. And so, you know, that's my concern about the direction we're going in. And you know, at least, let me

give Trump the let me be charitable to him. He does all of those mainstream interviews too, right, So it's not like he's only but I think for a lot of politicians, and I see this because we have a lot of politicians who won't come on this show because they know we will ask them difficult questions. And I'm

talking actually more about Democrats than Republicans. When you have an ecosystem set up where you know, you can just go and do an hour or two hours or three hours or whatever and not get asked really a single challenging question. Of course, most politicians, that's what they're going to gravitate towards, because that feels a lot more comfortable.

It's it's ridiculous. But again it's like here we are like I don't know, you know, I mean, this is look if well.

And but I think that, you know, really the the kind of lesson here for anybody who's like, you know, who doesn't like the way, say Joe Rogan interviewed Donald Trump or something.

guy with the biggest show. What were you think of? What was the game plan here, Brian Stelter, You thought you were gonna take Joe Rogan down? Like how removed from reality these people are? And so look, I hope I hope that shows like Breaking Points continue to grow. I hope it gets to a point where, like, yeah, like if if a presidential candidate had to go through Crystal and Sega in order to get to.

clearly some high level conspiracy. I mean, the guy is like he's he's teaching at Dalton with no background that would like lead to that. Then he's at bear Sterns, He's made partner within like a couple years, he's like, I think, a billionaire, and no one can trace where he made any of his money. That doesn't exist, like that never exists. And then he's he's caught, and we have the prosecutor on record saying I gave him a sweetheart deal because I was told by intelligence that he's

connected to them. So then when he dies, he's in a secured prison and there's multiple camera failures. Like all I'm saying is like I don't even know if he did kill himself or didn't kill himself. I think perhaps he did under duress. Who knows. But the idea that

you're just gonna be like now, looked at it. Nothing to see here when you, like your administration ran on the promise that you were gonna release this stuff and then made a whole spectacle about giving it to some influencers, and really you release nothing.

Trump has put in, many of them, Bobby Kennedy, Toulcy Gabbard, Cash Pateel, Dan Bongino, Pete Hagsath, They've basically made a living and Donald Trump himself in calling out these crimes, and yet there is no move not to expose them, let alone hold people accountable. And I do think that there is gonna be like ultimately, and I think this kind of ties into the podcast or conversation. I mean, I'm actually fairly optimistic, like see where this goes over

the next few years. I don't think any of these people are just Trump sick ephants who are gonna love Donald Trump no matter what. And I do think that there's a realization universe.

the files. By the way that you know, the UFO one hasn't happened either, but the JFK one, we did get something. When it came to Epstein, he was always a little cag He was always like, oh, well, you know, I'm not sure, and we got to worry about people's privacy. And when Ghlaine when he was asked about Glaine Maxwell being in prison, he was like, I wish her well.

So there was always a weird It was very strange there with Trump with regard to Epstein, which is why is not a surprise to me at all that we've gotten less than nothing. You know, the binders that they gave to the influencers had documents that were more redacted than what Gawker had released in like twenty fifteen. That's

what we're talking about here. So that wasn't a surprise to be that we got nothing out of this administration with regard to him, because I mean, we know, like I'm not, you know, accusing Donald Trump if anything for Taylor, but we know they were associates. We know he was on the plane, we know that they were friendly in swimming in some of the same circles.

this pitdling amount of aid, and he explains why. He gave a speech Monday defending Israel's strategy of mass devastation and Gaza, saying humanitarian aid is only being allowed in quote so the world does not stop us and accuse us of war crimes. The goal, he insisted, is to conquer Gasa clear and stay until that area is dismantled beyond recognition. We could put the next one up on

the screen as well. Boasting of the scale of destruction, Smotritz said, we are dismantling Gaza, leaving it in ruins with unprecedented destruction and the world still hasn't stopped us. He also indicated that Trump and him and the Net Yahoo government are all sympatico with regards to what they want to happen in terms of a total ethnic cleansing

of the Gaza Strip. He said, quote the population will reach the south of the Strip and from there God willing to third countries as part of President Trump's plan. So this is crucial context for understanding what is happening, for understanding how bb Netnyahu and Trump and the whole BB's terrorist extremist coalition, how they all are apparently completely aligned in their final solution, end goal. And it's also important for contextualizing this pitdling amount of aid that is

being let into the Strip. And I'll have more on that in just a moment. Let's go ahead and put bib Netnahu's comments up on the screen here as well, which echo what's Mootrich was saying. He says, the Gaza aid scheme offers Israel symbolic cover to finish the genocide.

This is reporting from dropside quote drop site. We're going to take control of all the Gaza Strip, bb valwed Monday in a video released by his Office announcing that Israel would begin delivering minimal humanitarian aid, food and medicine only. Net Yahoo claimed to an international pressure, including from pro Israel, Republican senators and the White House, required the appearance of

humanitarian intervention. Put the next piece up on the screen here as well, so we can see this joint statement from the leaders of the UK, France and Canada, which is pretty extraordinary in terms of the pressure that net nyahoo is now responding to. We strongly oppose the expansion of Israel's military operations in Gaza. The level of human suffering in Gaza is intolerable. Yesterday's announcement that Israel will allow a basic quantity of food into Gaza is wholly inaccurate.

They say, we condemned the abhorrent language used recently by members of the Israeli government. That's like Smotrich what I just showed you, threatening that, in their despair at the destruction of Gaza, civilians will start to relocate. Permanent force displacement is a breach of international law. And so for these nations to be we'll see if they follow through, we'll see what happens. But for these nations to be threatening some real potential sanctions on Israel for their continued

genocidal atrocities in the Gaza Strip. Is a significant development, and in fact drop site also reported on the fact that the EU is going to review Israel's trade packed over human rights violations in Gaza. That trade pack grants Israel terror free access to most of the EU market, It enables joint work in research, innovation, and security. It requires respect for human rights and democratic principles as a

core element. So this is some of the pressure that Natanyahu is responding to by allowing in this absolutely pathetically inadequate amount of aid, thinking that will give them cover to continue their genocidal assault and effectuate their and Trump's shared goal of completely ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip, pushing Palestinians out to third countries. We've seen there been reports on discussions with some of those third countries to know, to push them to take in Palestinians. This has long

been the parent goal. Now it's just being overtly stated to create so much misery and suffering and death and starvation in the Gaza Strip that Palestinians would be pressured to flee the area and allow Israel to totally annex it and take it over. So let's talk a little bit more about the quote unquote humanitarian aid being allowed in.

Put the next piece up on the screen. As of yesterday, five trucks, five trucks of aid had entered the Gaza Strip at a time when more than two million people were not sure how many Palestinians still remain in the Gaza Strip after all of this horror and death. Are living under siege, the majority suffering from famine and malnutrition. The entry of the trucks was purely formal and media driven, aimed at polishing the image rather than providing relief to

the starving and afflicted. Put the Al Jazeera tear sheet up on the screen. Necks. That provides a little bit more information. First trickle of eight and three months after Israel allows limited food into Gaza. By the way, there were also some indications that okay, five trucks or so have entered, and some of those trucks did not even contain food. Is the indication you read you a little

bit from this article from Al Jazeera. Un Aide chief Tom Fletcher on Monday said Israeli authories had cleared nine they say aid trucks to enter Gaza through the Karam abou Sealm crossing known as Karam Shalom in Israel, calling it a drop in the ocean when so many more supplies are needed to address a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian crisis. Figure is far short of the more than five hundred trucks that entered Gaza daily before the start of the

war in October twenty twenty three. Food security experts last week warned of famine amid accusations that Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war. Quote. Significantly more aid must be allowed into Gaza starting tomorrow morning. The numbers I've seen are that what really needs to enter is

roughly one thousand trucks per day to sufficiently feed the population. Obviously, five trucks, nine trucks is utterly pathetic and meaningless, and you know, truly backs up this idea that the Israeli government is just trying to provide some sort of a show so that they can continue their war crimes unimpeded. We also know over the past several days it has been one of the most horrifically bloody times. Hundreds of Palestinians killed just in the past several days. As Israel

has renewed their onslaught in Gaza. People are being forcibly relocated once again again. And uh, you know, the Trump administration, after making some noises about oh maybe we'll maybe we'll garner a ceasefire and securing the release of the American Israeli idea of soldiery down Alexander who had been taken by Hamas. After securing that release, it seems like they're, you know, allowing bb All systems go to do whatever he wants to do. So that's where things stand today.

Truly dire and horrific circumstance, and at least as of today, appears that Trump, Smotrich and bbnat Noaho all on the same plan with what they want to accomplish in the Gaza strip. All right, there's another story I wanted to get to here, some updates with regard to the Trump Administration's deportation policies. The Trump administration has announced that they are charging a sitting Member of Congress Lamonica Mackiver after an incident involving ICE agents outside of a facility in Newark,

New Jersey. That they are using for immigrant detention. So let's go ahead and put this announce up on the screen. This is from US Attorney Alena Haba. She says she is going to dismiss misdemeanor tres passing charges against Mayor Ross Baraka invites him to toward the ICE facility. However, she says she is going to pursue assault charges against Lamanica machiv Leave this up on a screen for a second.

I'll just read a little bit of that. She says, Representative Lamanica MacIvor assaulted, impeded, and interfered with law enforcement in violation of Title eighteen US Code, Section eleven a one. This conduct cannot be overlooked by the chief federal law enforcement official in the statement New Jersey, and it is my constitutional obligation to ensure our federal law enforcement is

protected when executing their duties. We also have a statement from Representative Mackivor on these charges, which, by the way, as of last night, had not yet been officially filed, but are expected to be filed. She said. Earlier this month, I joined my colleagues to inspect the treatment of ICE detainees at Delaney Hall in my district. We were our lawful oversight responsibilities, as members of Congress have done many

times before, and our visit should have been peaceful. In short, instead, ICE agents created an unnecessary and unsafe confrontation when they chose to arrest Mayor Baraka. The charges against me are purely political. They mischaracterized and distort my actions, and are meant to criminalize and deter legislative oversight. This administration will never stop me from working for the people in our

district and standing up for what is right. I'm thankful for the outpouring of support I've received, and I look forward to the truth being laid out clearly in court. This type of a charge, if they do in fact move forward with it, could result in prison time for this sitting member of Congress. So this all goes back to an incident that we covered. I actually got to

interview the mayor of Newark about what unfolded. The Mayor of Newark, alongside three Congressional representatives representing New Jersey, arrived at this facility that ICE is being used over the objections of the city. By the way, the city is suing ICE over the use of this facility, claiming they don't have the proper permitting. So in any case, these three members of Congress and the mayor decided to go

and attempt to perform an inspection of the facility. Now, there's legislation that was passed during the first Trump administration that allows members of Congress to conduct surprise inspections without requiring any sort of prior authorization of any DHS used facility. So they were well within their legal rights to conduct that oversight. The mayor, however's not included in that legal provision. So when he shows up, he's allowed to be on the property for some period of time, he said, roughly

an hour. Then the agents there said, okay, you have to go. He exits the facility onto public property, and then he's there for a while, and then he starts to get word that they are going to come and arrest him for alleged trespassing. That is when a very chaotic scene unfolded as these massed agents of the state attempted and eventually did arrest the mayor of Newark for this alleged trespassing. And now by the way, that charge

has been dropped. There was a rush of the crowd and the agents were struggling to get a hold of the mayor. And that is when the state is claiming, when this government is claiming that Representative McIvor quote unquote assaulted an ICE agents. So let's go ahead and take a look at the video. This is from DHS. This is some of the body camera footage. The woman in the red blazer here is representative of mcivory. You can see she's being pushed by the crowd at one point.

This is I think what they're really pinning it on her elbow there makes some contact with one of these masked agents of the state, and they are claiming this represents assault. I mean, it won't surprise you that very much. In my opinion, I think that she is right that this is blatantly political and his attempt to frighten other members of Congress from conducting oversight and from opposing this

administration's deportation policies. Overall, we know also that this administration has threatened those not just memory of Congress, but anyone who opposes their deportation policies as potentially providing material aid

to terrorist organizations. Seb Gorka, who is this administration's counter terrors are, has floated that so This is a dramatic escalation and as I said, could theoretically, if she was found guilty, result in Representative MacIvor being held in you know, having to serve a prison sentence for some period of time. So huge escalation here from the Trump administration, something they

have been threatening. You know. Tom Homan has been out there also threatening AOC and others over their seminars that they've given allowing immigrants to know their rights if they are faced with, you know, if a nice agent shows up,

if they are faced with potential deportation. He has also threatened representatives before with pursuing legal action against them, and the Trump administration has also lifted a previous guideline that required an escalation sort of up the chain of the DOJ in order to charge elected officials, so they have taken those protections off. So this is something they've been telegraphing for a while, and in this incident they've found their opportunity and the perfect excuse to go after Democratic

members of Congress. At the same time, there's a lot unfolding in the courts that I want to update you on going in both directions. So let's put this first piece up on the screen. The Supreme Court yesterday lifted a block on deportations of Venezuelans who'd been given protected status under the Biden administration. Let me just read you

a little bit from this article. So, the Supreme Court on Monday let the Trump administration for now remove protections from nearly three hundred and fifty thousand Venezuelan immigrants who had been allowed to remain in the US without risk of deportation under a programming program known as Temporary Protected Status. The Court's brief order was unsigned, gave no reasons, which

is typical when the Justices rule on emergency applications. No vote count was listed, although Justice Katanji Bran Jackson noted she would have denied the administration's request. The Justices announced they would allow the Trump administration to end the protections pending appeal of the case, potentially allowing the administration to

move ahead with deportations. The Justice also appear to suggest that some of the Venezuelans who had been able to receive documentation of their legal status before the Trump administration terminated the program could sue to challenge their deportations. In a separate case, the Justices on Friday criticized the Trump administration for seeking to provide only a day's warning to a different group of Venezuelan immigrants in Texas that had been trying to deport under the Expansive Powers of the

Alien Enemies Act. So with regards to this particular court ruling, they effectively sent it back to the lower courts, but they lifted the nationwide injunction that would have protected these three hundred and fifty thousand Venezuelan immigrants who had been granted temporary protected status under the Biden administration. They've lifted that nationwide injunction, so they are now subject to deportation.

Now they can go to the court and seek recourse there, and there are already cases that are making their way through the courts. So this isn't fully resolved at this point, but a significant win for the Trump administration when you're talking about hundreds of thousands of people who now have been stripped of their legal status that had been granted by the prior administration and could be subject to deportation,

So significant win there for them. That article can put the next piece up on the screen referenced another decision that came on Friday, in which the Supreme Court ruled seven to two to further enjoin the government from summarily deporting alleged gang members under the Alien Enemies Act. The government did not give enough notice, and the Fifth Circuit aired in refusing to provide relief. According to the justices,

so this is a seven to two decision. This has to do, as noted, with the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act and what sort of process is due to migrants who are the administration is attempting to deport under that act. So you'll re call that the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that they had to provide due process, and I believe the language of that original ruling was that they had to give them quote unquote reasonable notice. Well,

the Trump administration interpreted that as twenty four hours. Twenty four hours is reasonable notice in their opinion, in order to allow you to find a lawyer and gather your your arguments and file your habeast petition. The Supreme Court here, in assemned to two ruling, is saying no, No, that is not reasonable notice. That is not sufficient and is not consistent with the ruling that we had issued previously.

Now I would say they should have anticipated that this administration, given how bad faith they've been and how defiant they've been on any number of court orders, would seek to interpret their ruling in the most narrow and most bad faith way imaginable, which is exactly what they did and have laid out from the start what exactly that due process should look like and what sort of time frame

we're talking about. They didn't do that. But now we have additional ruling from the Supreme Court saying okay, twenty four hours, that ain't it. It's got to be longer than twenty four hours. Has a significant setback from the

courts on that one. And I will tell you there were so many Republicans who were really going wild after that decision and saying, effectively, it doesn't matter, we don't care, just ignore the courts, full on calling for outright defiance of what the Supreme Court had to say on this one because they didn't like the decision and the direction that it went in. A couple more just quick updates here.

One is, let's put this up on the screen. Those thousand dollars self deportation deals that the Trump administration has been offering the first flight of those has left. So immigrants who decided to avail themselves of this deal, they have now been on a charter flight and dozens of

them took off from Houston early Monday. Those are some of the incentives that have been offered for people to quote unquote self deport I think this is actually an important part of the Trump administration policy because they have been unable to effectuate their actual mass deportation on the level and scale that they would want to see and

that their boss hardcore supporters would want to see. Instead, they've been doing these, you know, outrageous spectacle spectacles of cruelty, like the deportation of people to this foreign gulag and El Salvador with no due process as one example, or get Mo or using the military flights potentially exploring a similar situation with Libya. So this is an important part of their program to try to actually achieve the mass deportations of their dreams and the other part of it,

but this last piece up on the screen. The Republican budget would make ICE the highest funded federal law enforcement component in the history of the US, bigger than the FBI, with a larger budget for detention than the entire Federal Bureau of Prisons. So currently they may not have the resources to do their full mass deportation, but they are working on changing that rapidly. Very excited to be joined

this morning by John Lyle. He is a history professor at the University of Texas, but more importantly for our purposes this morning, he is the author of a brand new book on the history of mk ultra. Was going to put that up on the screen book jacket Project mind Control, Sydney got leave the CIA and the Tragedy of mk Ultra and John joins us.

was the kind of the goal of mk Ultra. And the reason this started in nineteen fifty three is because right at the end of World War II, especially after the development of the atomic bomb, proximity fuses, radar science was starting to be seen as integral, integral to national security. And during the Korean War there were several American POWs who were captured and they confess to things that they didn't do. They confessed to conducting biological warfare against Korea,

dropping anthrax and typhus and cholera and bubonic plague. And the question within the CIA was why are they confessing to these false charges against them? And one concern was that perhaps the Communists have developed some method of mind control, whether it be hypnosis or drugs, and so if that were possible, the CIA wanted to determine how can we defend against that, or how can we offensively use something like that. The mind control might be the next arms race,

and we want to stay ahead of the Communists. Therefore, we're going to start this program mk Ultra to see what we can do.

as well. So talk a little bit about how that sort of existential mindset informed the extreme and wildly unethical nature of the experiments, the human experiments that they conducted.

profound effect. They'll worry was that if some foreign power wanted to dose a city's water supply, let's say, with LSD, maybe they wouldn't need that much of it. And so that was the concern about the existential threat and why mk Ultra went to the links it did in many cases to determine whether that would work. Some of the things that mk Eltra was involved in was dosing unwitting

people with LSD to see how they would react. Again, because if the Soviets, let's say, were to dose a city with LSD, we want to know how to defend against that and how to deal with people who have been surreptitiously dosed with this drug. So Mkultra personnel like Sidney Gottlieb, the head of the program, he would dose unwitting people with LSD to monitor their behaviors to determine what kind of effects this would have on them. This,

in several cases led to tragic consequences. The most famous person whom this happened to was Frank Olsen, who was dosed with LSD at a retreat with Sydney Gottlieb, and he ended up kind of having a psychotic break. His wife didn't understand what his mind state was after that, and a few days later he jumps out of a hotel window and dies.

these you know, sensitive national security information. So I know there's long been skepticism about the you know, the events surrounding his death.

was working on. And so Eric Olson and some others who were up the opinion that he was murdered think that maybe Frank Olsen started to have moral compunctions about what he was doing and maybe he was going to expose it, and so the CIA had to get him out of the way, and so they threw him out of this hotel window. I don't think that's the case. In fact, you mentioned that they had his body exhumed and analyzed to determine whether there was this blunt force trauma.

David Stars led that process, and he did determine that he thought there might have been some blunt force trauma before Frank Olson went out the window. However, there were several people on Stars's team who negated that conclusion and said that Stars was someone who kind of sought the spotlight and made things a little bit more sensational than we would have, and so we don't think that's the case. In fact, they said they thought it was consistent with

his head hitting the window on the way out. So I'm pretty skeptical of the idea that Frank Olson was murdered. There are several other people who were victims of MK ultra who had very similar symptoms to him. They've been dosed unwittingly with LSD and they ended up in psychiatric institutions for the rest of their life. So I think it's more likely that he had that same kind of psychotic break that several other people who are victims of this did as well.

ultra who sued the CIA. That lawsuit was eventually settled out of court, but as part of the lawsuit, the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, Joseph Row James Turner, famous civil rights attorneys, they took the depositions of dozens of people who were involved in this case, dozens of the perpetrators like Sidney gottlie Of, Robert Lashbrook, Richard Helms, the head of the CIA, eventually and they took several depositions of

the victims of mk ultra. Since this lawsuit was settled out of court, the depositions just kind of stayed in the papers of Joseph Row until he passed away, and those were donated to the Library of Congress, and I was rooting around in there and I happened to find these depositions, thousands of pages of verbatim transcript of him asking the perpetrators and victims of MK Ultra what they did,

what they went through. So it's so exciting for a historian because I can actually use dialogue now because I have dialogue between these attorneys and these depponents. And usually in fiction you get to invent dialogue. In history, you don't invent dialogue, and so you can't really have that exciting part of getting into the heads of the characters as well. But now with these depositions, that's exactly what I have. So that was one of the main catalysts

for wanting to write this book. I had so many great verbatim transcripts, thousands of pages. In fact, Sidney Gottlieb's transcripts of his depositions run to over eight hundred pages alone, So I have eight hundred pages of him talking about exactly what he did.

put anything past them. They'll do wild, you know, mind control experiments to try to create assassin animals, and you know, and try to mind control random unwitting subjects. You know, prostitutes dosing their clients and even some of their own, you know, specialists getting unwittingly dosed, et cetera. So it's hard to put anything past them when you have such an incredibly wild and proven conspiracy that is lurking in the background.

coming from the CIA itself. So the fact that the CIA did something like that, it leads the conspiracy theorists to say, if they did that, what else must they be doing today? And there are a few reasons why m k Ultra in particular is suited towards this kind of conspiratorial thinking. One reason, like you just mentioned, is because it is just so absurd that it opens the

door for any possibilities. The other is because in nineteen seventy three, Sidney Gottlieb, the head of this program, he retired from the CIA, as well as Richard Helms, the Director of Central Intelligence, and they decided when they retired to destroy the mk ultra files, at least most of them. They didn't get all of them. There were thousands of

pages that still survived. But the act of that destruction, the fact that they incinerated these files, really opened a Pandora's box because now anyone can say, well, we can't know exactly what mk ultra was in total, because we don't have those files. Therefore, maybe they were doing this,

or maybe they were doing that. The fact that we don't have those files really opens the Pandora box for anyone filling in the record with their wildest imagination, and that has led a lot of conspiracy theorists to argue that, well, maybe mk Ultra was involved in traffic king children, or maybe it was controlling celebrities like Britney Spears. Now that the Pandora's box is open, because those files are destroyed,

anyone can say anything about the program. However, I don't think that's a great mode of argument because it's kind of ironic. But we almost know more about mk Ultra than almost any other secret project. It seems counterintuitive because a lot of these files were destroyed, but we have so many files and sources on mk ULTRA. We have thousands that actually survived. We have the memoirs and interviews of people who were involved in this. We have thousands

of pages of depositions that I found. We have institutional records that have been released since, we have government reports. We have the Rockefeller Commission, Church Committee, Pike Committees, these congressional and executive committees that were set up in nineteen seventy four and five to investigate these past abuses. So

we have so much material about mk ULTRA. I actually think that we can know a good deal of what it was, and even better, we can know so much about it that we can know what it wasn't, and it wasn't something that trafficked and child sex slaves or whatever the conspiracy theorists are saying.