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Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints. A lot of Trump news today, can you believe that? I mean, just let a day at ends and wy Yeah, not like Donald Trump making.
News all over the world.
That's right, all tell of it.
Actually good And we're not going to do an entire segment on this, but we did want to let you know that the Senate passed the No Tax on Tips Act.
Yeah, it's fantastic.
Let me we give credit to two people that are despicable. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump got together wrote a bill.
He's not gonna come back on the show if you do that, right, and.
Pat I just said something nice about him.
They wrote a bill and it unanimously passed the Senate because the center really cannot hold if you have left populism and right populism actually genuinely working together, because then you're at like a seventy thirty issue or eighty twenty or ninety ten, like who's against tax on tips?
So well, nobody, because it was a unanimous except the vote was unanimous.
Yeah, literally, it still wouldn't have happened if the populist wings didn't push it and for left populist didn't really push it. This is yep, this is Trump. Well, i'll give us one of Trump.
Kamala Harris mirrored it at one point in the camp page. It was like, yeah, okay on tips.
There you go. So it caps.
The income cap is one hundred and sixty thousand, so if you make a less than a hundred and sixty thousand.
I was reading the bill and we'll see if it fades.
In or not. You get it.
Basically, a twenty five thousand dollars tax credit against against your taxes and what they mean, and it's against cash which basically means you can cheat because as long as you you can just say you got twenty five thousand dollars in tips and write that all off of your income tax. Now, most people aren't paying that much at that level, so it's kind of basically wipes out your tax bill.
Yeah, it's fantastic, great bell.
Actually, well, and now it has to pass the House. We'll see. Yeah, great bell, but it should Why wouldn't it pass the House?
I think it'll be just fine. It's a good it's a great sign that it was unanus.
Costs two or three hundred billion dollars I think, yeah, over the next ten years.
So it's in Golden Dome territory. Yeah, a lot less than the Golden Dome.
Actually, probably just scrap the Golden Dome and pay for it.
Well, we're going to get to the Golden Dome because there's all kinds of news on that front. We'll explain what the Golden Dome is, who might pay for it, who might be in charge of constructing it. His name rhymes with d Love, Trusty, So we'll get into all of that. We have news. Obviously, probably you've already heard leaked news about Israeli Plain for Iran that we're going to get into right away on today's show. Will then be going through some Trump comments that Donald Trump made
yesterday he was on Capitol Hill talking with reporters. We got some pretty interesting tedbits out of that. We're going to talk about Sudan as well.
Ryan, Yes, apparently DHS sent twelve migrants from ME and mar Vietnam elsewhere against a judicial order to South Sudan, and a judge has ordered them to not let those migrants out of US custody even if they're in South Sudan in case he decides that they need to come back, because he's already indicated that this was a flagrant violation of court orders.
Well, speaking of flagrant, Bernie Sanders was on flagrant, We're going to have a conversation about the appearance that Bernie Sanders made with Andrew Schultz on flagrant and it's really really interesting. We're going to combine it with a New York Times article about how Democrats are looking to astro terf influencers to the tune of millions and millions of dollars. So we will break all of that down, Congressman wrote, Conna is here. He's going to respond to Jake Tapper's
appearance on Megan Kelly's program yesterday. Some of his recent town hall stops. Rokanna's recent town hall stops have been pretty interesting, So there's a lot to break down with the congressman and Elon Musk speaking of him, he says he's out of politics. So he literally said he is going to stop giving money to politics unless he thinks
he has a good reason to do it. So that's a huge change, a multi multi billion dollar change for the Republican Party for their incentive structure and for the influences outside influences on policy going forward.
Yeah, and we're also going to talk about the potential breakdown of talks between Iran and the United States when it comes to the nuclear deal. Steve Whitkoff pushing the US position to zero Uranian enrichment, including for civilian purposes, the iotol A commandee pushing back against that, and Israel now saying well, maybe we'll just bomb them.
Yeah, we'll get into that. Make sure to subscribe at Breakingpoints dot com. We do the Friday shows now, they're really fun. In the second half is paywalled for our Breaking Points subscribers. So if you want to do that, go ahead head over to Breakingpoints dot com. If you can't, no problem. Make sure to like the videos, leave us comments, all that good stuff. Subscribe and subscribe wherever you're getting your podcast. We appreciate it so much.
So.
Yeah, let's start with this news from CNN, which sourced it to American intelligence officials, which suggests that it's a strategic leak out of the US. They are claiming, we'll put this first onle On Sing that they have intelligence that says that Israel plans to go forward striking Iranian
nuclear facilities without the United States. Now this comes after Steve Whitcoff, Trump's envoy who is in charge of trying to strike this nuclear deal which is ongoing, like we have not these talks have not ended, said that enrichment, any enrichment at all, is becoming a red line.
Let's roll wit cough.
Well, the President has been very clear he wants to solve this this conflict diplomatically and with dialogue, and he's given he's given all the signals. He's directly sent letters to the Supreme Leader. I have been dispatched to deliver that message as well, and I've delivered it. And but on the other hand, we have one very very clear red line, and that is enrichment. We cannot allow even
one percent of an enrichment capability. We've delivered a proposal to the Iranians that we think addresses some of this without disrespecting them, and so that's important. Were we we we want to we want to get to a solution here and uh and and we think that we will be able to. But everything begins from our standpoint John, with a deal that does not include enrichment. We cannot have that because enrichment enables weaponization, and we will not allow a bomb to get here.
Well, Trump was in the Middle East, there was this floating of an idea that there could be a basically nuclear and civilian nuclear Richmond cooperative among like the Amirads, maybe the Qataris, Saudi's Iran, and Iran said, fine, I think that's a great idea. We're happy to like contribute, you know, research science and be part of this, but we also want our own program m hm like so that you can't just like cut us off at a moment's notice and then your entire civilian program gets shut down.
Which is a you know, a big deal if you have you know, half your country relying on civilian nuclear power. And so the the Israelis have been pushing and the pro Israel faction within the Trump administration have been pushing very hard to say zero in Richmond has to be the red line because they know that Iran is not going to accept that.
Well, I mean, it's also just like, sort of in substance, a pretty reasonable red line from the perspective of the American people who listen to the bellocost rhetoric from Iran. And I'm not saying I actually support the zero enrichment target, because I don't think I do it. I don't think that's a reasonable way to come to a deal. But I guess in substance it makes sense why you would say zero enrichment from an America.
You would, yes, I can imagine that that would It would poll well, no NOMA.
They want Hey, that's yeah, exactly, that's their logo.
Meanwhile, Israel has been threatening UH to bomb Iran for decades now is and is now, according to American intelligence officials, planning drawing up plans to do so even without the United States, and even while the US is in negotiations with Iran, so you can imagine why from Iran's perspective, they're like, doesn't sound very trustworthy.
Separately, Israel keeps.
Referring to their idea of zero enrichment for Iran as the Libya plan.
Mm hm.
And we know how Libya ended. Libya gave up its nuclear weapons and then the West overthrew Kadafi and he was sodomized to death.
And we now have Trump Tower Tripoli, so things are going well, Yeah, we came, saw he died. Is that the Hillary Clinton line?
Yes, that is and Libya is now.
I think what Israelis would like, what the Israeli government would like Iran to be, which is a complete and total shambled failed state that therefore can't pose any threat whatsoever beyond the kind of the threats to the world public that failed states actually do present.
Yeah, and we have a response here from Hamini, so we can put the next element on the screen. It always sort of tickles me in a way to see him posts, right, So he says for the Americans to say, que, we won't allow Iran to enrich uranium is utter nonsense. We aren't waiting for anyone's permission. The Islamic Republic has certain policies and it will pursue them. And that's really the flip side of what I was just saying about
the American perspective on zero enrichment. If you're Iran, of course there's I don't need the United States permission to pursuing my own sovereign foreign policy.
So and they already enriched uranium, like we already do it.
Well, yeah, and so we'll see how far this is able to go. I wanted to point out the byline on the CNN story includes Natasha bertrand also Jim Shuddout, who is an Obama appointee. So it's interesting when they're they're sourcing is sourcing this to US intelligence?
Jim and the Obama he was.
The who's like a deputy advisor to the China ambassador. Pretty interesting time period China ambassador. But when they say the US has obtained new intelligence suggesting that Israel is making preparations a striker on in nuclear facilities, that's the first sentence of the story. And Ryan, I'm like, yep, yeah, yeah, the intelligence. We needed the intelligence to tell us that. So it's definitely a leak from US intelligence for some purpose, right, yeah.
Aimed at There's a cynical, malevolent version, which is that the US actually is going to help Israel with this attack and is leaking this now so that they can say we didn't have anything to do with that, that was all Israel. Or on the more benevolent, benign explanation would be that the US is leaking it to try to get ahead of Israel. Well, let's say, do not do this. We're watching you, we know you're thinking about this.
We're in the middle of negotiations. You do not have the right to blow up our diplomacy, our foreign policy.
So and I think putting the puzzle pieces together with the Barack Ravine leak yesterday about how Trump frustrated with Netson Nahu, which is sort of an echo of the Biden leaks to Barockravied about how the American President's frustrated. Yes, when you're frustrated but you don't really think you were going to do anything about it, you just go to Barock Revied and you tell the world about it.
But you'd leak to CNN two.
Yes, And I think that's I actually think putting those two together that you have the Trump administration trying to suggest in the media that they're at the end of the rope with Israel, they're you know, really frustrated with Nahu and then leaking this to CNN as well. I mean that that looks to me like a pretty clear indication that they're frustrated with Israel. They actually are frustrated with Israel.
Yeah, and there were reports that Trump has been you know, shown a lot of pictures of suffering children inside Gaza that are the result of you know, not letting any food in since March. Second, you'll have this bizarre argument from Israeli propagandist that it says, look, it doesn't matter, look like this, this is all hollywood, This is all fake.
There's plenty of food. It's like, you haven't let food in since March.
Second, Like, what do you think happens when two million people don't get fed for that for that long? Like you think, like it's just an insult to basic common sense.
Well, they're also saying that it's part of their strategy, and.
It's definitely saying, yeah, is it part of your strategy or not? Right? Right?
Because those I mean, it's wasn't Smotrich just out like yesterday talking about how it was part of the strategy. I mean, it's it's not like they're denying that it's intentional.
And what Smotridge added recently, as I think you guys talked about, is that they are now going to allow in a very minimal amount of aid, just enough to relieve Western pressure.
Like kipeda a day for your yeah, yeah.
And so they are doing that. They've let in maybe five to ten.
There's some reports that maybe ninety seven trucks got in. Now you would need you know, five hundred a day. That's and that's not even accounting for the backlog of two months of starvation. So the indication that they're feeling pressure is that they let in any at all. It was clearly feeling no pressure at all. We know what
their approach is. Zero trucks of foods, zero trucks with medicine, zero trucks with tents and any of the other you know, you know, supplies necessary to keep people alive, just and what I'm talking about the basics like soap and like other other things for basic hygiene, Like an entire city, not city, but a region of two million people need to stay alive.
True to Parsi, who've obviously had on the show many of times, many times posted just yesterday, the number he says something is happening. The number of government officials from around the world who I've heard in private conversations called Israel slaughter in Gaza a genocide without qualifications and caveats, has increased dramatically in just the past weeks. The dam is breaking. Donal Trump himself obviously just got off his
trip to the Middle East. So you can understand how Trump, who's sort of this like hyper pragmatist, much more than he is in in ideologue, compared at least to previous benchmarks of like neo conservative ideology that's brought into the West wing, you could understand why he in particular would be responsive to them.
And in the Senate, forty six Democrats, all of them except for Fetterman, signed onto a resolution, very simple resolution, calling for Israel to allow aid in and there was
a debate on the House floor yesterday. Jim rish the top Republican and the Foreign Foreign Affairs responded by saying, well, look, all Hamas has to do is surrender and to return the hostages and we'll let in food aid, which is I don't know if he realizes or not, an admission that you're using starvation as a weapon of war, which is a war crime that you just you cannot do that, and it is also a mission that wait a minute, may also it also got him to admit the.
Actual crisis underway.
Meanwhile, a lot of Senate Republicans will not come forward and say Israel needs to let aid in, even though Trump is saying it.
Yes, well, I shouldn't come senator, he was in the Senate, but he did say yesterday.
His boss says it.
Right, he but it's it isn't. I mean, Mark Rubio five years ago, I don't think would have ever said what he said yesterday, which is that Israel.
Ken he said yesterday.
He wouldn't, right, Yeah, maybe yeah, he said yesterday that Israel can allow aid in and defend itself at the same time, something to that extent, which again the typical paradigm everyone knows this would have been for a Republican
politician with such dogmatic support for Israel. But I repeat myself, would have never would reject the paradigm of the question, would would reject the premise of the question about that would say, Israel, you know, has every right to act in its own interest and defend its own people and do whatever. We trust the Israel. Yeah, exactly. So kind
of kind of interesting. But you know, the cynicism when people see Biden talking like this, Kamala Harris talking like this, and now Donald Trump talking like this, especially as Trump is kind of in the middle of trying to get it ill done and leaking fresh in the White House's leaking frustrations, then yeah, I don't think the cynicism is unwarranted at all. If the pressures lead to a better outcome and to peace, then that's good, even if it is utterly cynical.
Yeah, if Israel did actually bomb Iran against both the public and private wishes of the United States, used United States weapons to do it, and blew up US foreign policy and diplomatic approach to Iran, I would think that even the US Israeli relationship doesn't survive that completely intact.
But what do I know.
Yeah, we'll see now, Ryan, We're joined by a guest.
Yes.
Eric Maddox is a podcaster from California who was detained and roughed up in Israel.
This week, and he's going to join us to talk about what that was like.
Let's get to it.
Joining us now is the host of the Latitude Adjustment podcast, Eric Maddox from California. He's joining us from the West Bank. Eric, thank you so much for being here. So you were in the recently in the old city of Hebron when clip clip of you being detained and dragged away by Israeli forces when went viral around uh the internet. We're for people who are just listening to the podcast. We're
rolling this here. Can you can you tell us kind of what you were producing first of all, when when they came upon you, and what what preceded this this moment, and then we'll get into what happened afterwards.
So in brief, Hebron Orli and Arabic and Arabic is kind of the entire occupation of the West Bank condensed down to miniature, where in some cases in the West Bank, trying to travel from city to city you'll be faced with checkpoints and occasional incursions by the Idea and police.
In the city of Hebron, it can be street to street just trying to cross.
You won't be forced across from checkpoints I show id and subject to all man or of harassment from settlers who are literally living on top the Palestinian shopkeepers and homes and also invading their homes, stealing their homes, et cetera,
and pushing them out of the city. So every Saturday for some time now, there is a march by the settlers through the old city of Hebron, which is still you know, a place where Palestinians live and do their business, and it is overseen by protected by the Israeli forces, the police and to something I would.
Imagine the idea as well.
And that's what that''s what I was there to document along with several Palestinian journalists on the past Saturday, four days ago. And so what happens is the Israeli forces will show up preceding the arrival of the settlers, who are given like this really bizarre entitled tour that forces Palestinians shopkeepers to shut down their business while the Israeli police are pointing their rifles at children, at the elderly, at the infirm I mean, this isn't just my opinion of something I've seen.
I documented all of.
These things as they were happening, and at a certain point you can see the settlers that are maybe I don't know, thirty meters away, and at that point, I mean, I was complying with all the orders of the Israeli police and at no point, I should make it clear, at no point was I told to put away my camera or to stop filming, or to hand over my camera. At no point before I was tackled in the same
and we were complying, like come back pedaling. And as we're back pedaling, they're screaming at the shopkeepers and various people in the street to abandon where they are to get inside closer shops, kicking their stuff around.
In otherwise making their lives hell.
And at a certain point, when I could see the settlers in the background, I just shelled out, you know I've been seeing My first time in coliss I was sixteen years ago.
Okay.
I've had colleagues, journalists and colleagues that I have worked with killed in Gaza, and we're now facing well close to two hundred journalists and associated media personnel who've been assassinated in Gaza since October seventh. And also the routine harassment, detention and torture of Palacinian journalists in the West Bank. So I mean this is personal to me as well as something that I think should be, you know, a concern to all people in journalists, especially around the world.
And so when I saw this to something at a certain point, you know, it snapped for me. Is like as Snapper University students over the past nineteen months, we've been saying the same things that I was saying in this moment, which is free Palestine. I'm an American. I'm sure some of you who are in this settlement tour are probably American or European citizens as well. And I'm tired of paying for this with my tax dollars. This
is ridiculous. And then a certain point that is really started filming me the the police, and.
I just said, look like enough is enough. Do you feel brave flagging women and children in.
The infirm with your weapons? And this is when they charged me lunch for my camera. They wound up on the ground. I wound up on the ground and then I was immediately just beaten, handcuffed. And I can tell you what happened after what you saw in that footage, because that's the soft part everything after that was the actual like putting, beating, torture.
Right, So, and as and as you're as you're leaving, there's somebody there's somebody else filming you and they say you know who are you?
You say, Eric Matison from California. So the so these these.
Police who are who were dragging you out of there, they know you're a Californian. So they know what California did, right, Yes, I mean definitely they know what California.
The whole world knows what California is.
And this is not to say that because you're from California you should not be beaten and tortured any legally.
Attained like nobody should be.
However, it's to acknowledge the geopolitics of the situation.
So so they take you away, where do they take you? And what happens next?
I do underscore your point because that's the reason I'm coming on this show in any other media I do. This isn't about me as an American getting roughed up, and it was more than roughed up. I mean, I don't want to downplay it either. I was tortured for four hours and what was done to me doesn't even begin to come close to what is done to my Palestinian colleagues in the West Bank, for those who have been assassinated and continue to be persecuted, targeted in their families as well in Gaza.
So I want to make that very clear.
Anything that was done to me multiply that by many, many factors up to an including death my Palestinian colleagues.
So that's why I'm on the show.
That's what I want to call attention to, and also the just absolute cowardice and abdication of all moralists, responsibility and professional credibility by much of Western English language media, who should be, in my opinion, resigning en mass and protest at the absolutely abysmal coverage facilitation of this genocide has been going on for nineteen months.
And then I think that's a I think that's a valuable that's valuable contacts and a valuable caveat don't But as you said, it also does not justify violence against even for only four hours.
So what did happen to you?
So after I was out of First of all the people who called me, I didn't know them. They were just random people who happened to.
Be standing there. One of them you can hear on camera ask me, who are you?
And I don't know where I if I looked dazed, it's because I had my head pounded into the cobblestone streets well like several men with assault rifles took shots at me, and they escorted me, escorted to a gate, a gated area at the head of the old city, out of the view of the cameras, and that's when they just started beating the hell out of me. Punched me in the back of the head, throwing me on the ground, and then demanding that I get up. I'm
cupped and unable to move. And then they got me to the top of this hill next to.
An armored car.
And they didn't seem to be clear and what they wanted either, because some of them were told me to get in the vehicles and were told me to get out.
Then they hooded me, put a black hood over my head, told me to get on my knees. I refused.
I figured if they were going to do something terrible, I'd rather not be on my knees than they did it. And so at that point they threw me on the ground and started beating me more. They avoided my face for some reasons it might be obvious, but they started going through my things, confiscating my wallet, my passports, and then continue to beat me, put me in the military or the police vehicle. Continued to beat me in the
vehicle and the way to the police station. And at this point they had my camera, which was my phone, and they were twisting my arm to the point of feeling they were going to break it, and demanding that I unlocked my phone, you know, with like the biometric scan fingerprint thing, and I refused, and they were trying to open my hand and force me to use my fingerprint to open it, and I just quenched my fist as hard as I possibly could.
And somehow managed to avoid that.
I'm sure had it been Palestinian, they would have been brutal enough to where they might have broken me, you know. But so they eventually got me into the police station. The police were there, they saw what was happening, didn't do anything to stop it. I spent about four hours in the police station, at some points having my handcuffs taken off, being taken in to do like a preliminary discussion with the police officer who told me asked me
if I had a lawyer. I said no, so then they put me in touch with the Palatinian lawyer from Haifa. She told me that I was going to be interrogated, the right not to say anything, but it might be in my interest to actually tell them at least what had happened.
Then I was again puffed.
They let me get some water, but before I could drink from the water bottle, they rehandcuffed me, beat me some more, and then uncock me, took me back, did the interrogation, and at that point the police officer started asking me what was your opinion of October seventh? Are you affiliated with any anti Israel groups? Are you taking money from them? And I said, I don't see how these questions are any way relevant. Are you going to ask me about all the bruises that are all over my body?
And he said no? And I told them and he said, why are you in Israel? And I said, I'm not in Israel.
I mean I was hooded for some period of time, so unless you've taken me out of Hebron, I'm not in Israel. And he said, yes, you are, and then he tried to ask me where I had been staying and who I was affiliate with locally. I refused to answer those questions because I didn't want other people to be put in harm's way.
And I also told him I didn't recognize that.
He had any legitimacy as a law enforcement officer because he had no interest in conducting and actual investigation.
And then I was booked.
I mean, I guess like I was fingerprinted, They did the full biometric skin on my face, they took my mug shots, and I mean it just went back and forth between these procedural things that was odd. I mean, there was this weird like juxtaposition of like kind of benign procedural stuff with just beating the hell out of me and just this really casual attitude toward just sadistics treatment.
I could hear another pallete stating a guy around the corner from me being I imagine beaten severely because he was screaming his head off. I couldn't see him, so I yelled three palatine, got beaten some more, and then just mockery like pulding cameras in my face and a presumably taking pictures for Instagram, and I just said, right into their camera, I said, look, whenever this is translated into Hebrew, I want you all to know I'm surrounded by six heavily armed men.
Well, I'm handcuffed and I was taken here because I was taking pictures. You guys are not on the right side of history, et cetera.
When when they're when they're hitting you, you said they mostly avoided your face, Like where would they where would they hit you?
What would they what would they hit you with?
How many of the back of the head, back of the head.
Occasionally they would like try to sit next to me or on top of me, just to try and intimidate me. And so if I would move away or I when they're taking my picture, I would stand up and tell them to stop, and they would hit me or put use pressure points, like on the inside of my neck.
A lot of this was like, uh, what are called stress positions where they would take my head and force it down so hard that it felt like the back of my like my neck was going to break, putting their knees on their elbows on top of my head, but like against my hairline so that you couldn't see the bruise. A lot of the beating was like on the hairline so that the bruises aren't as easy to see. I mean, I do have bruises on my body. I mean you could see like a little bit on my
wrists here, et cetera. But most of it was done in a way to seem it was left intended not to leave marks. And again I'm sure had I been Palestinian, the treatment would have been far far more so.
Do and what, if anything, have you heard since being released from the Israeli government? What's it just the general reaction since the video has gone viral? What has the response been like?
So the charges weren't clear at all. I was told something along the lines of obstructing with the police action you can see from the video that I provided you guys, like the last thing thankfully that actually was recorded. They're charging me, and at no point they told me to stop filming, right, So the idea that I was in any way interfering is preposterous, not that that would even justify what they had done to me. The response has been from and I do need to be careful, I
think in some ways. But what I understand at this point is I've not been formally charged with anything. I'm just under suspicion of what I have no idea, and I've been banned from the city of Hibron for fifteen days from last Saturday, which honestly seems pretty light. Some people, some good friends of mine, I believe, swung it to action very swiftly, and I understand that congress people and other journalists, etc.
Were contacted. I don't know.
I haven't even had a chance to catch up because I'm still just dealing with this. All happened four days ago, so I'm still just kind of recovering. And then on the internet, I mean that all seems to go viral and about a day, and I mean people reaching out to.
Me privately, like through social media.
It's just been amazing, Like I don't think I've had one single and like I can't even keep up with all the messages. It's all been just supportive and that's been validating and also just it's done a lot to help me kind of process that experience. And it's also just that experience is humbling also, and like I don't know that I could have handled two days of that, And there's people that have been locked up for months,
years and treated worse than me. The entire times. Those are the people that have been that are still alive. Like I am not a particularly great person. I just had I just had enough. And everybody has their point where they just feel like, look like.
Silence.
The silence is no longer an option, and that like what everybody has been saying from university campuses all around the world for the last nineteen months.
I stand in solidarity with them. I stand in solidarity with the with the Palatinian people, and.
I also feel like the people who are perpetrating these crimes, we could feel like there is no place where they can be will be able to not be exposed to shame for their behavior, including including Palestine itself.
Did any of the people, any of the officers that you interacted with throughout the entire time, express any concern or reservations that they might be screwing up by doing this to an American, Not in the slightest.
Not in the slightest, I mean, who knows what's going on in their head and whether or not that they pulled their punches a bit, But I mean they knew where I was from. I did speak to a few of them in English, and there were then there were idf soldiers who came. I became like this point of curiosity where more and more of them kept coming and like asking me like what are you doing here?
They were asking me like how do you feel about Eurovision? The bizarre questions right.
Oh yeah, because they got like s another from Eurovision or something. But this is like great.
Before I think those were just it was just so freaking surreal. Sorry on so many levels. Yes, and while this is happening, and they were also just I kept talking because of the adrenaline and its telling them, look like, can somebody translate the word coward for me? Please tell them all? And I'm like counting. Some of them spoke Arabic, like they're Arabic speaking Israeli's Arab Israeli them assuming and one said his family was from Yemen originally, and so
I just counted off in Arabic. You know, want it the auto Scottie like soldiers? There's six soldiers, one journalist. Why it's the hotey Like with my hands behind my back, you really feel brave. This is something that you're going to be proud of showing on Instagram wherever you're planning on posting this. So no zero, I mean I talked to the police officer. He kept repeating things that I can't repeat. Every time I would tell him, look like,
are you embarrassed? Because he could close the door periodically and let them rough me up more than I would tell him, Look, you do realize what's happening when you shut the door and you just ignored me.
No, they'll concern at all.
Tell people where they can go to find your work.
Sure, they can find my podcast, which I'm going to be relaunching at Latitude Adjustment pod dot com or just find Latitude Adjustment Podcasts at Spotify, Apple, wherever you listen to them. And also you can find me on social media on Instagram at mathematics.
My name is Eric Maddicks.
Well, Eric, thank you so much for joining us, and we wish you safe travels back to the United States whenever you decide.
To come home.
President Trump made a significant announcement about the United States is impending Golden Dome in the Oval Office yesterday. Let's go ahead and roll B one to get a flavor of how Donald Trump described this project and pleased.
To announce that we have officially selected an architecture for this state of the art system. That we'll deploy next generation technologies across the land, sea, in space, including space based sensors and interceptors. And Canada has called us and they want to be a part of it, so we'll be talking to them.
They want to have protection also, so as usual, we help Canada who the best we can.
This design for the Golden Dome will integrate with our existing defense capabilities and should be fully operational before the end.
Of my term, so we haven't done in about three years.
Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world, and even if they are launched from space, and we will have the best system ever built. As you know, we helped Israel with THEIRS and it was very successful, and now we have technology that's even far advanced from that. But including hypersonic missiles, ballistic missiles, and advanced cruise missiles.
All of them will be knocked out of the air.
We will truly be completing the job that President Reagan started forty years ago, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland. And the success rate is very close to one hundred percent, which is incredible when you think of it, You're shooting bullets out of the year. I'm also pleased to report that the One Big, Beautiful Bill will include twenty five billion dollars for the Golden Dome to help construction get underway.
That's the initial sort of a down post, and we have.
Probably you're talking about general, we're talking about one hundred and seventy five billion dollars total cost of this when it's completed.
Well, according to The New York Times, that was actually also a suggest The Defense Department suggested the Golden Dome moniker, knowing that it would probably appeal to Donald Trump's like Israel's got an iron dome, Donald Trump, you need a golden dome.
A little bit.
Ballsy, though, for him to go for that, when he spent years with Democrats accusing him of taking a golden shower, He's going to have a golden dome preventing us from things raining down on us.
Actually, I take that back. He probably does think about that, of course. Yeah, he's very deeply.
Irritated by Yes, yes, he was bothered by that one.
Well, maybe the Pentagon. Actually this is really a way to continue embarrassing doal Trump the Defense Department, but it will be a pretty penny for the contractors in all likelihood. Lockheed Martin CEO is on Fox and Friends this morning saying it will be built domestically. Trump is saying it'll come in at about one hundred and seventy five billion dollars,
which seems impossibly low. The Congressional Budget Office is putting that more at five hundred and forty two billion, which in the context annually.
He said two to three years. CBO says twenty years.
Yeah, And in the context of an annual defense budget, that's more than two trillion dollars. It's not insane to propose a half a trillion dollar idea that could hypothetically protect the country from missiles, and if it does what the Trump administration wants it to do, which is enormously ambitious, but.
Missiles shot by who Normally, when you, of course, can fox some one of these things, like you, you have first spent the like propaganda capital to sufficiently scare the public into believing that a particular boogeyman or boogiey woman is going to be shooting missiles at us. And so therefore we need to spend all this money on a you know, you have to give five hundred billion dollars to Elon Musk to like build this thing because the scary people that we've told you about are going to attack us.
He just skipped right over that, Like are we such pushovers?
Now?
We don't even need to be propagandized into interfere We're just like, okay, sure, go for it.
Like who's who's shooting missiles at US?
I mean, sum.
Maybe, but no Iran?
No.
I mean, we're reaching to deal with them. North Korea is it's his best friend? Russia? Is it Russia?
It's China? It could be anyone, that's the point.
I mean.
And if it's China, come on, you think they can't get through a whatever Elon Musk puts together.
I think the rate of technological advancement has has been so rapid that the world feels like an extremely scary place, to the point where people don't need to be propagandized into some type of signal an urgent single problem. Although it's probably no coincidence that it's happening as the negotiations with Iran are unfolding, either, I mean, it would be.
Cool if star wars.
Could you know, first kind of break the fiscal back of the Soviet Union and then break the fiscal.
Back of the United States. It could kill two empires without ever actually getting built.
Well, you know that's I mean, it's a complete parallel obviously to the Reagan years because on the other side, Donald Trump is working on a massive tax cut proposition
right now. So as they're you know, sort of as you have your your deficit hawks freaking out about spending, you're also about cutting spending and using taxes to aspirationally juice the economy, then you're also trying to increase defense spending significantly with a massive expenditure here not Trump says again that he I mean, he's putting it way lower than the CBO estimate. That's half a trillion dollars, which is, you know, a significant chunk of the annual defense budget.
But you know, I think it's if it were to do what it said it would do, it would be a big deal.
Now, Trump also the budget, so.
They think about this, they're estimating a particular cost for a weapons project, has it ever come in under ever in the history of the world, So this would be the first one to come in under and it's going to come in at ninety under.
YEA.
Yeah, so it sounds good. Yeah, it sounds like a deal. So but again, here's bid for this.
Probably I will not build something and take five hundred billion dollars.
You will automatically be competitive, excellent with the rest of the contractors, and you could just take it like a ten year vacation.
Two.
Oh, Boeing's going to do Air Force one. Don't worry about it.
They're on it. So it's taken them a decade for Air Force one.
Yeah, this should be nothing.
We're going to build this in two years.
So the parallels to the nineteen eighties continued. Donald Trump was on Capitol Hill yesterday trying to negotiate with House Republicans in particular, who want to pass their bill. Actually they want to pass it today and send it over to the Senate because they really want to. First of all, they want, Johnson said, an genuinely arbitrary deadline of Memorial Day. But from his perspective, if you don't set a deadline,
then this is going to bleed into the fall. And so they really I think they want to do this by fourth of July. From the Senate side. We'll see how reasonable that is. But they actually were marking up the bill until what like six am just today. Once again, all those staffers pouring out for them tonight. They've they've
had a rough couple of weeks. But let's take a listen to Donald Trump after that meeting, chatting with reporters, and bear in mind that this is, I think a parallel with the nineteen eighties in an interesting sense that Republicans are trying to get a limited government stimulus. It's the extent that you can call it that while also blowing up the deficit past. And now you're going to face questions just like this one B three.
You campaign of lowering the price of groceries, Holy justify.
Cutting through this sisiness and the sill. Let me, let me just tell you.
The cut is going to give everybody much more food because prices are coming way down.
Groceries are down. Eggs. You told me about eggs. You asked me a question about eggs my first week. You said eggs. I said, I just got here. Told me about eggs, and there's going through them. If you know that eggs now way down, everybody's buying.
Eggs groceries down Energy's down gasoline is.
Now buying the buying gasoline now for a dollar ninety nine.
Yes, and eggs, I mean week one.
Yeah.
He had a great interaction with a reporter. This was Reese Gorman from NAUS. So notice, yeah, I'm.
With Trump on this one.
Yes. Same. This is before Andy.
Harris said that you've didn't adequately convince enough people to open the builder?
How free?
And you mean after this speech? They said, well, what do we see have to loads? I think it was a great great talk. Was in speech talked about that who do you work for?
Nerds?
Who nurse? I don't even know what they all that is.
Get yourself a real job, get a haircut, and get a job.
You were listening to that. What you missed was Mike Johnson awkwardly standing next to Donald Trump trying not to bust out laughing the entire exchange.
Trump is funny. We gotta give him that.
Oh he is funny now. B five though, is an interesting development as well. This is Wall Street Journals Olivia Beaver saying that when Donald Trump was delivering his message about Medicaid, which is basically he doesn't want cuts that don't have anything to do with quote waste Frawden abuse. He said about the Freedom Caucus quote I love the Freedom Caucus. Please leave them alone. Freedom Caucus are my guys.
How do you square that you don't?
You don't.
Freedom Caucuss are his guys who want drastic medicaid cuts. Yeah, Trump says, don't do drastic medicaid cuts, but also leave my guys alone. It goes back that thing where like the number one thing he cares about is do people like him? And freem cos people are clear that they like him, and he prefers that to them, agreeing with his populist policy of We're not actually going to hurt poor people to do this tax cut for the rich.
No, it hasn't always been that way. So when Chip Roy has pushed back on Trump, like raising the debt ceiling for example, Trump has absolutely.
Exploded on right primary you and yeah.
So, I mean, I'm curious how long this lasts. He does seem to be much more sympathetic to negotiating with the HFC guys than with Mike Lawler. This is the next element for the screen. This is a post from our friend Jake Sherman at punch Bowl. If he missed that segment a couple weeks ago. Just put it into your YouTube browser. Breaking Points punch bowl Sherman says that Trump went up to Lawler from the informal Salt Caucus and said, quote, I know your district better than you. Two.
If you because of salt, you were going to lose anyway. And that is because Lawler is pushing for obviously a higher cap on the salt deduction than the thirty thousand dollars, which is, by the way, all we're already very generous. It's already tripling the current deduction, so quite amusing.
And quote there from Trump, Lawla represents the Hudson Valley district north of Manhattan.
Trump might actually know it better than him.
His point is an interesting one, and it's one that I've made a mirror version of on the left at times like where it's like, look, you're not actually going to lose over this, so just go ahead and do it. And if you do lose over it, you were actually
going to lose anyway. So I actually I agree, I agree with Trump's analysis, and it's I think it is actually quite possible that he does not Lawler's district better than he does the salt thing if if you're not familiar with it, it means it stands for state and local tax deduction. If you are upper middle class in a place like the Hudson Valley and you have a million dollar house or a one point five million dollar house, even if you're making let's say three hundred thousand dollars
a years, is a huge amount of money. You know, all of it's going to pay this house. And then at the end of the year you get hit with these high state and local taxes. And it used to be that you could deduct all of those off of your federal taxes. Now now there's a cap on that they want to raise the.
Cap so it would basically be a very big tax cut for people who live in like million dollar homes.
Yeah, yep, no exactly. And so let's combine all of this together.
And those are Lawlre's people.
Those are Lawyer's people. And Trump to the to the point about he was making about the Freedom Caucus and about Lawler. What that gives right now is leverage for the Freedom Caucus to continue pushing for cuts. And when you ask, how do you square it to the quote
waste fraud and abuse that they see in Medicaid. And the problem is you have to be able to find sufficient waste, fraud, and abuse and do it quickly enough, because part of their frustration is a lot of this is funny business with the CBO projections in order to make the numbers work. It's still blowing up. What four trillion dollars, isn't it. I have to check the number exactly, but it's still a budget busting bill and that's.
A really what they'll what they'll say is that you're pushing all of the cuts to Medicaid down the road, and when we get to down the road, you'll undo the cuts. So you'll take the tax cuts now and you'll pay for them by promising to hurt poor people later. But when it actually gets to it, you won't do it because you'll realize, oh wait, we're working class party. Now, we're actually going after our own people who don't believe that they're getting a government handout just by their parents
being covered by Medica or them being covered by Medicaid. Well, this is because we've worked our whole lives, and you know this is health insurance for us. It's for our parents or for our children who are suffering.
It's particularly difficult when it's juxtaposed with other elements of the bill. For example, a massive corporate tax cut. So if you're going from twenty one percent to fifteen percent for corporations, yes, there would be there's some projections that say this this would be tax relief. I mean every projection basically says this would be tax relief for the middle class. The question is is it more tax relief for the rich than it is for the middle class.
Some that's going to depend on what happens with Salt, But I think it's especially difficult when you're passing a big corporate tax cut to then also go after a quote unquote waste fraud and abuse in medicaid. I think that's something that people like chip Roy are aware of and know that needs to be done sensitively, but also are saying we've staked out the amount of the amount
of political capital that we have put behind DOGE. For example, if you're Chip Roy, if you're a Freedom Caucus member, if you're Trump supporting member of the House of Representatives, your district is pro Trump, you have put political capital on the line for DOGE to cut waste fraud and abuse and to cut government spending, and now you're being asked to support a big spending bill. It raises the
debt ceiling by four trillion dollars. I'm reading a rundown here from Politico of what's in the bill right now. It spends three point eight trillion to lock in the tax cuts. You know. It's there's the car loan deduction, so interest on car loan deductions. That's a good thing. Child tax credit increased by five hundred dollars, although some people really want that to be a lot higher. Great tax hike on university endowments, so that goes from one
point four percent to twenty one percent. But it would cut six hundred and twenty five billion dollars through medicaid that right now, as political puts it is quote largely through new work requirements, and as CBO puts, it would quote lead to eight point six million more people losing their health insurance. It phases out clean energy programs, which have been sort of I'm not a fan of most
of what that's done. It has been something of an industrial policy, and localities around the country over recent years they do want to cut back food stamps in certain education programs. So the headlines if this bill passes over the next year or so are definitely difficult. When the bill also had a big corporate or will have a big corporate tax cut and all of that stuff in it too.
It's also idiotic just on a fiscal level, in the sense that, oh, you're going to save money by kicking seven million people off of health insurance.
Okay, let's explore this magical thinking for a moment.
Are these seven million people going to all of a sudden not get sick and never need any medical treatment?
Because that's great.
If that's the case, I support that a policy that would make seven million people magically immune to any disease for the next seven million years or.
Accidents probably not going to happen.
Those people, instead of going to their doctor because they have medical insurance, are now.
Going to go to the emergency department.
Emergency department is going to send them a twelve thousand dollars bill for showing up in the emergency department for whatever malay they had. That person doesn't have twelve thousand dollars. The health the hospital then is going to carve it up and send the bill out to everybody else or it was chump Canna yell at them to just eat it, like he's yelling at Walmart to eat the prices. No, like, if these people are still getting sick, we as a
society are still treating them. The only difference is it's going to cost us more to treat them because we've kicked them off health insurance. Yeah, absolutely so we're actually like even your deficit, cutting Medicaid cuts are going to long term add to everybody's costs, whether it's raising your own cost of insurance, raising the bills that you pay, tweaking private equity to like screw you a little bit harder next time you come into one of their hospitals, or adding to the deficit.
The only person or the only group of people that are are half and half system is good for right now as the same people who will benefit from this. And it's massive like conglomerates. It's not people, it's not the government, because we just have this mixed system. It's like half capitalist and half like democratic socialists subsidized.
Right where hospitals are required to treat people right, And I don't think anybody wants to change that law.
No, no, absolutely not. And it's completely inefficient, and it's not good for anyone except for the people who are profiting off of all of it in the meantime. So it's you know, it's going to be this entire thing. If you're the Trump administration, you have promised to make the times permanent, and that will bring some relief to
the middle class. But you've also promised to get America's fiscal house in order, and you've promised to do these massive new defense initiatives, which, by the way, is the LOCKHEEDO is saying on Fox and Friends this morning. If it's built domestically, that could be a that could juice the economies in places where they're manufacturing parts of it. I don't even know what that's going to look like. I don't think anybody knows what that's really going to
look like. Reagan's SDI, which sort of gets laughed at, like Star Wars sort of gets laughed at. Well. Trump made an interesting point when he was rolling out the Golden Dome announcement that he was like, Ron Reagan wanted to do this years ago, but we didn't have the technology. Now we do the technology. SDI laid the groundwork for decades of r and d that came from that massive ambition. I'm not at all laughing at the idea of having like significant ambitions and sort of pie in the sky ideas.
I actually don't think that's that insane and crazy, and you know, we don't. It's fine to laugh at, but it doesn't always turn out to be a joke. You know. You can sort of nudge some things in the right direction when you do that. But this is a recipe for a fiscal disaster, and everyone knows it. But Republicans are locked in. They're locked in, and their best argument right now, what they're telling the Freedom Caucus guys, is that it's better than nothing if you're forced to choose
between the lesser of two evils. The lesser of two evils is going to be some tax relief for the middle class and some modest cuts. Because everyone knows. You know, even though you have both Houses of Congress and the presidency and a man who is whose presidency is predicated on a pledge to revolutionize Washington, whether you believe it or not, you have all of the political capital in
the world. And because the margin in the House is so small, you either take it or leave it, and they can lose like two people if everyone is voting. So I'm actually so very skeptical that this even gets across the finish line as a one big, beautiful reconciliation bill. It's possible that they end up having to break this up.
My bad is they figure out something.
The stakes are so high that it seems it seems easy to imagine people compromising.
Yeah, and it's easier to agree to something that actually doesn't even make any sense.
Law and then deal with the consequences later.
And none of this makes any sense.
Yeah, that's that would that would be that would be in line with what we normally tend to do. Let me talk about South Sudan.
Let's do it. Yeah, that's we'll go from Trump to Sudan and our tour around the world.
So President Trump began by sending migrants from not El Salvador to Bukelli's prison, notorious prison in El Salvador. There were then reports that he was looking at sending people to Libya.
There was some pushback on that. There are now reports that.
DHS has deported up to twelve migrants against court order, against an explicit court order, to South Sudan, a country on the brink of complete collect and civil war.
Put this first element up on the screen here that the judge has.
Judge has also Judges now responded again and said, look, what you need to make sure that these migrants do not leave federal custody because the migrants who are in and we can talk about this no. Christy Noman was up on the hill yesterday talking making this argument again. Rubio is making this argument as well, that look, these migrants, we'd love to you know, follow the court order and you know, return the ones that the court is asking us to return, but we don't hold them anymore.
Well, Kelly has them.
It's like, oh, well, what about this invoice where you're paying them to keep them. Doesn't that suggest that you have some control over them? Ah, that's just basically that's that's a broad grant that doesn't apply specifically to this
one individual. So this judge is saying, you violated the court order that says people have to have have a reasonable amount of time to contest their deportation, which is not the Apparently they gave the ones that we know about, they gave them like a couple hours and not enough time to like for the lawyers to do anything, and they handed the document to me and mar deportee in English and the person doesn't speak English.
They said, that's not enough time. You have to give them. You have to give them enough time, and so you have to keep.
Them now in you're in your control under humanitarian and under humane conditions, so that if I order you to return them, you can't come back with some catch twenty two argument of up too bad, already let him go.
I'm on Pharah right now, and there is a registered lobbyist on behalf of South Sudan who's a former Bush administration official. So that's Joseph Slavic.
I know him.
But that's what I mean. It was vocal group when we were looking at what was it Libya the attempted deportations to It was Libya, wasn't it. I'm trying to remember a couple of weeks ago.
Yeah, and Libya then said basically that they wouldn't allow it.
Yeah, and I don't remember. So, for to be clear, we have no idea whether or not the lobbyists facilitated that, but I did reach out to them and never got
a response, which seems interesting. So I'm really curious why they're making these I think it's very interesting what negotiations are happening behind the scenes with African countries to make these deportations happen, because the United States obviously is competing like Belton Road in Africa and is trying to have relationships with some of these countries in ways that compete
with China or provide leverage over China. So there could be all kinds of interesting stuff happening behind the scenes as to why they're making decisions for random country deportation basically, and.
It seems like this fits into the Stephen Miller I want, I want spectacle type of action, like to send to send somebody into a completely war.
Torn area.
Where there who God only knows what type of conditions they're going to face, you know, feels in line with his policy of like let's let's make this as vicious as possible in order to discourage any any migration. Uh So, Chris Van Holland and Marco Rubio got into it over over immigration speech and and basically the entire kind of Trump you know, first one hundred plus days in the Senate lest yesterday it went. It went for quite some time,
seems personal. Van Holland used his entire seven minutes basically to go after Rubio, and then Rubio insisted on having time to challenge to challenge him to come back, Let's roll a little bit of it.
I have to tell you directly and personally that I regret voting for you for Secretary of State.
I yield back.
I respond, well, first of all, your regret for voting for me confirms I'm doing a good job based on what I'm.
That's just clipping statementary.
Can I respond, mister chairman, you me I didn't.
Have, Senator, Please let the Secretary be happy to but then I can respond to his Your time's up, Senator, and willfully used. I might add, your reminds me to not represent the view of this committee. Well, mister Secretary, please, well.
I'd like to.
I can't respond to everything he said because much of these are untrue, but I'll go through a few. First of all, I'm actually very proud of the work we've done with USAID. For example, I don't regret cutting ten million dollars for male circumcisions in Mozambique. I don't know how that makes a stronger and more prosperous as a Nation. I don't reget psychosocial support services, I raised.
I respond, Senator, I'd ask you to suspend. You had seven straight minutes. I chose to use my time that way, mister Chairman, that's my pleast suspend that way. Secretary Rubew, Well, I can go on.
I mean, there's other things here. We spent two hundred and twenty seven thousand dollars for Big Cat's YouTube channel from usaid, we spent fourteen million dollars for social cohesion in Mali, whatever the hell that means. So I can go on and on. I got the list here, and there's more that I didn't even bring the whole list.
In the case of El Salvador, absolutely absolutely we deported gang members, gang members, including the one you had a margarita with, and that guy is a human trafficker, and that guy is a gang banger, and that and the evidence is going to be clear in the days of WA.
Rubio has the floor.
Chairman, he can't make unsubstantiated like that. Secretary Rubio has the floor. Pedrick Rubio should take that testimony the federal Fenator, United States, because he hasn't done it under oath.
Yeah, that's something else.
To me from from Rubio, because he has been one of the Senate's most vocal defenders of USAID for his entire political career, and now he's kind of hot. He's distancing himself from all of that support by finding a few kind of ridiculous, woke things that he can point to when he has supported it as as an apparatus of the of US foreign.
Policy, you know, for for many, many years.
To say that you had a margarita with this, the bou Kelly like dropped the margarita on the table between Van hollend and Abrio Garcia when Van Holland was an l Salvador and then quick snapped the picture.
Get serious here, man, I like how.
You pivots from like Chomsky to Stephen Miller in like half a second. And he's like going through all this ridiculous soft power usai D bullshit, and then it's like, so, yes, we did deport people to El Salvatory.
It's like zero to sixty yeah, And he's like, and we and the evidence will show It's like, well, from Van Holland's perspective, it's like, okay, how about when the evidence does show that you present it in somewhere where we can adjudicate it. You don't tell us that in the future we're going to present this evidence.
You know. Tybee had a really good post about the Ozark situation and how he and he brought.
Up Oster a couple of times.
He's like, because Rubyo is like, look, you come here, you burn down buildings which didn't happen, somebody did break a window, and you disrupt classes.
Then you know we're going to kick you out. And he's like, did rams of oz turn through that? All she did was co author and op ed.
And that's Ruby did not answer that question. And so yeah, this is the Your point about Rubio is an interesting one, a really interesting one. Actually, I'm with it, Like I'm applauding all of that except for the El Salvador oz
Turk insanity. And Taybi had a good post actually where he's he's taken some heat for saying at one point that the Secretary of State is claiming there's going to be evidence that these people harmed national security in some significant way to warrant the revocation of their visas, because he has the power to do it if legally, if they are a harm, if their threat to American foreign policy. That's the law that allows them to revoke the visa.
And so Tayabe is saying that's such a significant claim, there must be At one point he said something like he was like, maybe there isn't more evidence, but maybe there is. And so he was like, it doesn't there's some reason to say, like maybe there's something else going on here and it's never materialized, right, And so Taybi wrote a really I think it was like I forget the title of it. It was fantastic and everyone should go read it, but just being like, screw this over
and over again. You know, you can look at these examples with the visa revocations where it seems like they're eluding, and Ruby in particular seems like they're alluding to something and it never materializes. So that, I mean, he doubles triples down in that exchange with Van Hannen says we're going to keep doing it, which from a communications perspective is exactly the right thing to do. I mean, to not shy away from it and to not look like
you're wishy washy. So just from like a messaging standpoint, cynically, it's exactly the right thing to do.
But was it the case of Rumesa Ostark is that his piece timeline.
No, the timeline is good too. I'm explaining to do it might be that I'll find it. But anyway, the State Department, I don't know if you get this sense either. I think it's called ode to scum. But yeah, I don't know if you get this impression either. But it does seem to me like the State Department actually has slowed down on the visa revocations, the visa revocations, and they haven't done another like deportation to Al Salvador. They're doing the South Sudan. But how many was that? Well, yeah,
and what was the attempt for Libya was? I think around like fifty. They're doing these smaller number attempts, and first of all, they have a significant number of people
with actual criminal backgrounds. The said they're going to start with the worst of the worst, even that who their problem is why they're looking turning to Africa again to be cynical, is that they have all of these people with criminal backgrounds, even if it's nothing compared to what the eight million people that they claim to want to deport, they have tens of thousands of people that they need
to deport. If they say they want to deport people the worst, the worst with criminal backgrounds, who's going to take a bunch of criminals that are being deported from the United States.
This shows why it would be helpful if the United States was not such a bully that had such terrible relations with so many countries around the world. For instance, one of the people that apparently was sent to South Sudan is Bolivian. For why does the United States have such a bad relationship with Bolivia.
Well, we were involved with a coup.
In twenty nineteen and then an attempted coup in twenty twenty because and Elon Musk responded by saying, we will coup whoever we want in the context of all of the lithium reserves that Bolivia has. So yeah, So Bolivia is like, no, We're not going to take these people back. So a choice for us would be to not be
thugs around the world. And then if they have a criminal who has committed you know, who has committed crimes in the United States and is also here illegally, then that person would then be deported back to Bolivia, and Bolivia has no choice but to take them unless they have a blanket policy that they don't have a relationship with us when it comes to that because we are thugs who are trying to overthrow their government, which is okay, they make a fair point.
Yeah, now while you're looking for that.
Christy Nome, DHS Secretary, was also on the Hill yesterday and I played.
This speaking of their ability to do mass deportations because that's why Steven Miller is floating this idea. And by the way, it was also predicated on the notion legally, it must be predicated on the notion legally, there is an invasion happening this government. The Trump administration says that they have stopped the invasion and the border crossings have slowed to less than a trickle. So two things can't be true at the same time, right.
So Steve Miller has said that that if judges keep ruling against them, that they're considering suspending habeas corpus. So Maggie Hassen, new Hampshire Senator, live free or to die state and asked.
Christy Nome a rather interesting question. Let's roll that.
So, Secretary Nome, what is habeas corpus?
Well, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.
Let us spend their right. Let me let me stopbeas corpus.
Excuse me, that's that's incorrect.
Presidents corpus, Excuse me.
Now, I don't want to come off as some elitist that everybody has to know every Latin legal term out there.
There are no doubt people watching this right now who are like, what is habeas corpus?
I'm not even sure those people are not the Secretary of Homeland Security.
So that's cool if you don't know that.
Whose administration is flirting with the idea of suspending the writ of habeas corporus.
And so now the person that I'm talking to you right now who didn't know what that is, you will know for the rest of your life what it is. Yeah, a writ of habeus corpus means you are held illegally, in your your opinion, by the government, and you are able to petition for your release. It is the foundation of a free society that that you cannot be held
for no reason and without charges. And so if you're if you and even if you're charged with something, but you don't get a trial you can file one eventually and say, look, I'm not even getting a trial always you just charge me and you're keep me locked up here. If you notice, at the very end, she said President Lincoln used it, and it's.
True now, but saying using habeas corpus.
He did not. He did not round people up and deport them.
They declare habeas corpus. It's like Michael Scott.
And bankruptcy exactly.
Like also, we had open borders then, like we did not have this, that's not what we had this. We didn't have this system that they that we have now. So there was no deporting people. What what Lincoln did do is suspend habeas corpus in the time of war and locked up some like newspaper editors and other critics of his.
And you you could say that there's a shame on him.
He was also operating in a revolutionary time and maybe so maybe those were excesses.
Maybe not.
You know, he put points on the board, so I'm not gonna sit here. I'm not gonna sit here and second guests Lincoln. But he did he did suspend habeas corpus, which meant that if you were a newspaper editor who had written a mean op ed about him, which a lot lot did and mostly from the quote unquote anti warsaw they were these were like, you know, Southern sympathizers who hated Lincoln and wanted the war to end and wanted him to capitulate to the South.
Uh, he locked some of them up. And you know that. So that my, my, my twin impulses of press, press freedom.
This is like when you smashed the South and the slave class and the planter class are in conflict there. So that's why I'm not going to second guess Lincoln.
It's like sometimes when and I think Obama did this too, but sometimes when you are talking about China and like Ryan, relax, China was able to build things really quick.
China, we're all working, we're all working this stuff out.
It was a great question for Maggie Hassen, whoknew she didn't have any idea what that is? Well, she but this is the thing. She has an idea, so what it is?
And we mentioned the Lincoln thing because it shows that she's been briefed on this, because she didn't or she was skimming Wikipedia and just didn't absorb it. But habees Corpus is not the right the president to deport anybody he wants, like, or anybody at all.
You don't know.
If this were a like ninth grade Civics test, Yeah, that wouldn't even it wouldn't even occur to the test makers.
I think to make that one of the wrong answers, that's how wrong it is.
I am actually starting to think that Christina maybe one of the first sort of top level officials in Trump world who leaves their post. I don't know when the timeline will be, but I just feel like it's not worth great.
Lewandowski is a patron right and he's still in well with Trump, right yeah, yeah, yep.
I don't know if Corey Lewandowski has enough way to overcome Trump getting frustrated with a cabinet secretary, but.
He probably loves this, like going on Fox, I'll guss it up in the like ice gear.
Although there were leaks to the Wall Street Journal that people were internally upset.
With that, so was Trump upset with it?
I don't know.
I mean, this is that's that's that's pure Trump right there.
Yeah, But I think even for him, it's a lot you know, like if you're if and if you're getting some like basic stuff rung and everyone's mocking you. You know, it's that all the patients will workin at some point, and especially if it's combined with not the skuttle butt in like MAGA circles right now, like hardcore MAGA circles,
Bannon World, those places. People are really really frustrated with the pace of deportations because that was one of his biggest campaign promises and that is one of the most important issues to MAGA world, like the MAGA grassroots and right now. Maybe the benefit of keeping Home around is that she's a convenient foil, so you can kind of project frustrations onto Christy Gnome rather than onto Donald Trump.
But there's significant frustrations among his grassroots supporters with the pace of deportations.
It seemed to me that politically they finally hit on something smart recently where they started going to California jails. As you notice that, Like, so what they did is they said, Okay, yes, this is a sanctuary city. ICE is not allowed to interact with these the sheriffs, but if you illegally re enter the country a second time,
that's a felony. And so what they do is they look for people who've illegally re entered a second time and have been then arrested and are sitting in detention or jail or prison at a state level, and they go in and say, Okay, we know you've been deported once already, then you re entered, then you got arrested. Therefore that's a felony. Therefore the sanctuary city of the logic doesn't apply you. And here's a warrant, and we're
going to arrest you for that. And I think that they would have ninety plus percent support from the public on that because it's like, Okay, they've been deported once, they re entered, and then they got arrested again, And they would put Democrats in a really difficult position defending that chain of events, be like, well that's actually okay, you can enter multiple times illegally and commit crimes. Like they'd have Democrats over the barrel with that. So if
I were them, I would just lean into that. But they want they just want the viciousness, the cruelty, the spectacle.
Well, and part of it is that they think it functions as a disincentive, and it does, I mean, but they're also frustrated with the self deportation numbers, because that's seen as a sort of cornerstone part of how you're able to do mass deportations is that you allow people to use CBP home as it's been dubbed, and get you know themselves. It's like a thousand dollars subsidy for people to return or go elsewhere outside of the United States.
Right on Thursday, the President is attending a meme coin crypto dinner at his golf club outside of DC in Virginia, and Marco Rubio while he was in the Senate yesterday, got some tough questions about that.
Yeah, And to set the context for this, in order to come to this dinner, you had to be in the top two hundred purchasers of Trump's meme coin, so you basically had to give money to Trump directly, not even through a campaign fund directly, and then the top like fifteen or so get like VIP access to Trump. The top two hundred get direct access to Trump. And there's been reporting that the vast majority of the people who are in this top two hundred and in the
top fifteen are not Americans. So yeah, so that's what Murphy here is asking Rubio about.
Let me ask you about the dinner that's happening this Thursday night. The President has offered access to him to the two hundred top purchasers of his meme coin. Reports are that maybe about half or more of those individuals who will be meeting with him, many in a VIP reception or foreigners. Do you have a list of those foreign individuals who will be meeting with the president?
I don't. I don't know.
I think I don't even know there was a dinner on Thursday night, So I'm not sure what you're referring to.
So you don't know whether any of the foreign individuals who are going to be meeting with the president this Thursday night, for instance, are on our list of sanctioned individuals, or whether any of those individuals have connections to let's say, terrorist organizations abroad.
Well, I think if they had terrorist lenks, Department of Homeland Security probably would not allow them into the country. But again, I don't even know there is a dinner. You're asking me about something I don't know about.
Well, but listen, this is a dinner that the president is having. It is likely going to involve some very significant foreign interests. You have to be pretty wealthy in order to be able to get inside this dinner. Isn't that a relevant question for the Secretary of State. I'm at the same which foreign interests are going to be speaking to the president?
I mean, it's kind of naive to believe that there.
Aren't going to be in that room talking about national security matters.
Well, I don't think that that's the case at all, because that would be a but it was the case. The truth of the matter is I interact with government officials and others and governments of other countries. That's what I don't say. You're asking about a dinner or anything about I can't answer you because I don't know anything about this dinner. It's the first I heard of it. Like I said, I don't keep the president's social schedule. It's not on my phone, it's not in my pocket.
I don't even know. I can't comment on a dinner. I know nothing about it.
I kind of wish, from the democratic perspective that they would go after the corruption more than the national security. Like I'm actually not worried that there's going to be a suicide bomber sneak into the White House and blow himself up there or like whatever the other national security implications Murphy would be talking about. It feels like outdated. It is gross and thoroughly corrupt. What's what do you think of Rubio being like, oh, on dinner, I would
invite it that dinner. I don't know anything about that dinner.
He's like pissed he didn't get the social calendar. Yeah, no, I mean that's the only real answer that he can give to the question. It's entirely possible, it's true. I mean, I don't think Marko Rubio is trying to keep Donald Trump's schedule. He's probably not following crypto news that closely, although at some point it does have overlapped with the Secretary of States responsibilities. But it's obviously the biggest handicap.
I think it's the biggest handicap in the future of like right wing populism, which has been infiltrated and compromised by the tech community who is eager to some of them are true believing libertarians of this like libertarian populism. You know, that's that's relevant to crypto world, But that's of you know, Rosie that's looking at it through rose
color lenses. There are a lot of people who are just sort of people getting absolutely loaded off of crypto and using it to you know, wield even more influence over global politics. So Rubio in particular, you know, doesn't really want to get into that because he's a sort of a one of the figureheads, one of the like thought leaders in the world of mega populism. So he's particularly positioned poorly to face questions about that because it's a huge handicap for the movement that.
He wants to be a leader in, and I think for the country too. And let's just look at this from a big picture perspective for one second. And speaking of China, what's China out there building high speed rail, automated factories like robotics that seem to be several years ahead of US evs that are like five to ten grand and you have much longer ability to travel without it needing to charge better battery technology, and on and on.
What are we doing.
We're building crypto, blockchain and a golden dome to protect against what like. So the last twenty years were defined by the US spending ten trillion dollars failing to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, while China made leaps and mounds forward technologically and economically. The next ten years, we're just gonna like dump all our money into crypto and and like weapons projects, while China just continues along, like how do
we think that that is going to end? So it's and it's not just this dinner Thursday night in the United States Senate this week we can put this next element up on the screen.
H The Senate is moving forward on this key crypto bill, which is they.
Call it there.
They're gonna rate they're going to codify stable coins. Basically.
The the Democrats who objected to it, which were led by Elizabeth Warren u argued that look, what you're doing here is just you're just codifying Trump's ability to do this insanely corrupt thing into law. That this this things that giant give away to the crypto industry and is going to enable all sorts of all sorts of fraud. You had a fat you had fascinating split within the Democratic Party.
You can put up C six here.
Uh, this is my colleague Steven Dennis, Bloomberg reporter said some drama on the Senate floor during stable coin vote. The top crypto friendly dem Kirsten Gillibrand and Elizabeth Warren, the chief foe, gotten a heated argument on the Democratic side of the chamber. A third of the Democrats ended up siding with jilibrand two thirds with Warren. The crypto folks were watching this. You can put up C seven and put up a bunch of kind of stills you could see on C SPAN.
Yeah, So if you're just if you're just listening to this, basically Warren just chased Jilibrand all over the Senate floor. Yeah, just kind of berating her for this, for this bill, Like what are you doing, Like what.
In this moment in time with this insane amount of eruption washing and not just washing through Washington, because that implies there's something, there's some passive force. Donald Trump is and his family and Whitcoff's kid are like flooding Washington with crypto based corruption, and Agillibrand and a third of the Democrats are going to team up with Republicans to basically rubber.
Stamp that and be like that's cool, that's cool.
Now, if you put the earlier element that I put up from Warren, this is Stephen Dennis, a Blueberg reporter saying that Warren's not against you know, cryptoregulation, obviously, she's she wants to regulate it practically out of existence. He says, quote, you know, she said she'd be fine with stable coined legislation with proper regulation to protect consumers, which includes CFPB oversight.
Although the CFPP is getting nooked.
A ban on presidents profiting off their own coins while in office, it seems like a reasonable legislation protection against systemic risks from a failed token. In other words, you have a you have a scam token that that pulls in so much money that it that it takes down counterparties with it, and we get a financial crisis because of this stuff. And better protection against criminal transactions, and a ban on stable coins issued by tech companies and
other non financial companies. That's saying like, in other words, if you want to issue currency, this cryptocurrency, that you have to be regulated like a financial institution, because we we already did a great depression.
We did this whole thing before.
It's not just risk to individuals, it's risks entire the entire system.
Right because you we don't have an opt We don't have an option to say, you know what, I don't like this crypto stuff.
I'm not going to get involved with it. It's going to get involved with you when it takes the whole house parts.
Death Freed, Silicon Valley Bank, Like, we already have uh sort of warning shots that have been fired, so it's not insane at all. But of course the reason Kristen Jilibran uh and others are interested in advancing this legislation is because there's a truly insane amount of money in crypto that is now being It's the exact point that you're You're like, Warren is out there trying to tell Jolibran, what are you doing? There's so much right now as
the corruption is washing over the state. It was like, well, that's why joli Bran is doing it that you can be convinced to take an ideological pro crypto stance when people are throwing millions and millions of dollars at you and promising to be great allies for you going forward.
And the best talking point for it is okay, look we lost Crypto's here to stay, yeah, which is kind of terrible talking point if you ask me, because like, you know, it don't sounds rather weak to just give up like that. Because you're the United States of America. You can you can, you can do big things. But okay, let's pretend you can't. Say blockchain is here to stay. Blockchain is an amazing technology. Come on, you serious, really, blockchain.
We don't need to debate blockchain.
Whatever, good luck to us.
Exactly, that's the only place that we can leave it.