5/5/25: Trump Says Recession OK, Buffett's Warning, Houthis Strike Israeli Airport & MORE!

he's going to join us off the top. Then we're going to be joined by special guest host Special celebrity guest host fuldzerprizing journalist Glenn Greenwald. I want to get us take off the top of just you know, overall impressions of the Trump administration that I've got a bunch of news I want to dive into with him. This hoofy strike on the Israeli Ben Gurion Airport, the boycott's bill that actually was pulled, a very rare apac l here,

So that's an interesting one to get into. There was a big deep dive into John Fetterman's mental and physical health. Almost appears like another democratic cover up of his specific situation. His staffers are speaking out, so a lot to get into there. Claudia Scheinbaum is hitting back at Trump after he offered to what an offer to send our military in to Mexico to fight the cartels. She is saying

no thanks to that. At the same time, the Trump administration is wang designating suspected gang and cartel members as enemy combatants, potentially another path for them to attempt to deport people with no due process. So very interested to get Glenn's take on all of those things. Also going to have a journalist join us from Australia Australia has just sort of followed the footsteps of Canada with their election results. The Liberal the center left party coming from

behind to really secure a landslide victory. The Prime Minister there, Tony Albanisi, is going to he was re elected his opponent actually again, like Canada, Canada not only lost the overall party election but also lost his own seat. And America and reaction backlash to Trump's policies has a lot to do with that. So really looking forward to getting the view from down under there. Let's go ahead and get to it. Very excited to announce a special edition

of Breaking Points. Let's put this up on the screen. Guys, We've got the Baby Points edition. Sager is able to join us for the top of the show here as he navigates his life heading into a very very important day.

It's just it's incredible. So seriously, thank you, especially the premium subscribers and others who enable this. And I am very glad to be able to hear to talk about tariffs and specifically about baby strollers. It's a very relevant thing in my life right now. And so yeah, I think that's a good hook.

play the clip of Trump. You know, we don't know the gender Jillian and I of what we're having, but if it is a girl, I guess I will only be able to buy was it three beautiful baby dolls, and because little girls notoriously do not need more than two or three little dolls. But yeah, okay, let's get to them.

now happened. We have a massive like market volatility. In fact, though the US economy is suffering one of the greatest like supply shocks in American history, almost comparable to COVID, except this is a self induced supply shock. And I know we've been warning about the shipping drop and how that wall manifest in terms of shelves and all of that, and that's just going to be ever present here because it's going to take months for us to see some

of this. And already we're seeing this like crazy run on iPhones, on strollers, on other importable goods or important goods like things like television's consumer electronics. But what about six months from now. I'm also thinking about the fact that we're in May, so you know, six months from now, whenever we're in the holiday period of whenever people are going to be shopping for gifts, think about Cyber Monday and all these other things. Q four one of the

most important quarters in all of retail. Just consider, you know what those recession comments and how they can come back to bite you. It is also fascinating because Trump's simultaneously is a student of like some political history. Now, he recently was talking about and texted new Ganggrich about read my lips, no new taxes. This was the infamous

line that's sunk Judge George H. W. Bush. I mean, if you don't even think about your political fortune, you know, somewhat in the future for the Democrats in the midterm elections, it's very obvious that that recession clip and others of him talking about this are going to be massively impactful

for Republican chances. I know that there's a takeout there that Trump doesn't care about the midterms, But from a purely self interested level, it's like, dude, do you want to spend over one hundred and fifty million dollars in legal fees because you Pete Hegseth, Mike Wall, all these other guys like every elon, every you know, potential mini

scandal or any of this other thing. You are going to spend your ass living before Congress and adjudicating contempt and you know, like subpoenas from the House of Representatives for your entire presidency. This is a tale as old as time from I remember Benghazi and all this other nonsense that we were forced to live through. I mean,

this is just classic waves of an administration. But I mean the only alternative is this is what he believes, and there is just no shaking, you know, his foundational belief. Every once in a while you're allowed to rushing into the Oval office and to cause the Trump truth or whatever that will implement a ninety day pause. By the way, where are the deals?

from the United States. So it seems like everybody else seems to be doing it actually pretty well. It seemed like a major shock to or actually politically, I know, you guys are covering to Australia today, it's like, oh cool. You know, it's like you're basically ushering in like global centrism. I'm sure that was definitely the project of the Trump administration. So it's just been a colossal failure, stupidity predicted. And it would be funny if there were not millions of

people to be affected. Like I mean, the stroller thing is just a minute example, you know, for someone like me, But I mean, you know, it's only what one of the most important periods of your entire life, and you know, just to think about people who are struggling, who are out there who need a stroll. You know, I've talked about this. You're not allowed to leave the hospital if you don't have a car seat. It's okay, good luck.

Over ninety four percent of them come from China, so if you're having a kid six or seven months from now, I know you're probably not thinking like this, I would buy one today, and you know, if you can't afford it or something like that in the future, you're going to have to try and buy secondhand. That's not really something that I want people to have to do, right, And so these are really bad things that you're inflicting on people's lives.

should be content with. Let's go ahead and take a listen to Trump on that.

now too. But the idea is if you're one of the insiders, you're going to be able to consolidate even more power because who's going to get decimated by these tariffs? Amazon and Walmart, they're going to have a bumpy path. They're going to make it through small and medium sized businesses.

So actually, I think the Mao analogy is accurate because really what it was is that Maoism the cultural revolution others, if we used ideology, I've got a good mouth book behind me actually, which was used as a tool of ideology to purge anybody who was not sufficiently like you know, who is not sufficiently like worshiping the culture personality around him, including some of the most effective people like Deng Jahouping and others, while cultivating this era of stupidity where it

was all supposed to be in service of like the Great Cultural Revolution, of the peasant class and then that effect was like famine while a lot of these other people either lived large or a mass large amounts of power. I think the Soviet system very similar. So the stupidity and the corruption you know, within it, and it's kind of baked in I think to the general ideology. But yeah, I mean, really what it comes down to is this

is antithetical. I think to a lot of the reason, not only the reasons why trump Ism, if there is such a thing, was popular. I mean, if we really do think about why Trump even won the overall election, people were not just a set about inflation or up set about immigration. I think in general, you know, the American spirit has a lot of social libertarianism to it, where the idea is is that we don't want to tell you what to do, just go ahead and live

your life. We want to make everybody rich and or better off so that they can be able to do whatever it is they want to do. And so it's pretty different. You know, whenever the president is telling you the number of pencils that your child is allowed to have at school or the number of toys that you're allowed, like, look, you know, maybe he's right crystally you know a lot better than I do. Maybe kids don't need a bunch of different Barbie doll But what if you want to

buy it for him? Okay, you know what if you know I already know that. If you know, if you have a daughter and she's five and she's asking me for if I have the money, it's happening. All right, that's probably a bad thing. But like I'm going to buy it, and that's that. It's one of those where it's kind of grotesque, you know, to be lectured by the leader of the country as to what you're allowed

to spend your hard earned money on now. And and you know, just finally, because now I've been beating this

Trump for a month. If we wanted to start a program of building children's toys which are super safe with no lead, where we know exactly where they're made, and we're supporting like small businesses and people who are craftsmen and others who have been working on this for a long time, and it's somebody's dream, you know, to be able to open a store and they get a tax credit and all that, I would be all for it. I would say that's fantastic. It's great, let's get it

out of China. Let's make sure that these are actually to a very very high safety standard, unlike many children's toys that we have right now. But that's not what's happening, right you know, It's like instead, you're just cutting off from them, and then you're not really helping anybody over here. And in fact, you know who's the best off, Like you said, it's Amazon, and it's Walmart or any of these other places which are just gonna use loopholes to

be able to stock pilot inventory. Or you know, right now, Walmart is actually discounting even though they're eating a ton of loss. Why to nuke everybody else because they can afford it. They have a tons of on their balance sheet. Same with Amazon. I don't know if you I talked about this on Wednesday. Amazon literally told it's we're not accepting price increases, right, which, yes, what You're screwed if you have a supplier you need to sell on Amazon.

Good luck, team man, You're done. I'm already starting to see it. A few little products that I buy no longer available on Amazon. Oh wow?

this up on the screen. We've been covering Timu and San and they're the way they're impacted by the TERRAF.

So in addition to everything that's been done, Trump is now rolling back that deminimous loophole exemption that you have had your eye on for a while, Sager, that basically lets these low cost producers ship directly to consumers here in US, and so long as the amount is under eight hundred dollars, they have been, you know, been able to bypass any sort of customs, imports, duties, et cetera

that is being rolled back. It's going to have a huge impact on Timu and Shan, but also it's going to have a huge impact on Google and Meta and any sort of online platform that depends on ad revenue, because the numbers around this are quite astonishing. They'd flooded Google in the US with ads for the goods they sell.

Those started to disappear from the platform in April. On April fifth, t accounted for nineteen percent of all US ads the almost twenty percent of all US ads displayed on Google Google Shopping.

good or not let them stay. It's about plan. It's about the fact, like you just said about advertising, it's like a fast fashion or making sure that people have access to bigger things or other things to be able to buy. You know, there's like a cultural component obviously

the government can't get deeply involved in. But more broadly, the other thing with the Trump administration is you just never know if this is real or not, Like is this part of some sort of concerted strategy because de Minimus, we've covered here now for several months, has been on and off approximately five or six times. So if you're a company, like or anybody else who's thinking about, like, oh my gosh, tema machine's going away, maybe we can start.

I'm trying to think, what was that brand called American Apparel, something similar like a not fast fashion, but like a mid tier fashion band made in America. They had quite a bit of success actually, if I recall. But the point is that if you wanted to bet, you know, on building something here on Sore, how do you know that overnight Temy and Shean are not going to be able to come back. Look at the TikTok thing. It's literally a piece of legislation that Trump just decided that

he's not going to enforce. Whether you like this or not, this is a ridiculous way to make policy. And the whole point is that it's just freezes investment all across the US. It punishes us consumer. They're seeing only things that are subtracted. There's nothing being added. There doesn't feel as if not only there's a steady you know, handed at the wheel, but they're just generally thrown into complete chaos.

And that is just not really a way to live for people who are not you know, it sounds stupid about shopping or whatever, but you know, like you said, twenty percent reduction in Google AdSpend that has some pretty reverberating effects across the economy. Take us out of it. I mean, do you know how many I would venture to say that almost every American who owns stock probably owns some share of Google that's fifty sixty percent, whether you own it for this S and P five hundred

or not. Think about if you live in an area which relies on Google, they build you know, data centers or anything. So that's the other thing is about the downstream overall economic effect of what this stuff looks like, is you know, their fiftieth and sixtieth order consequences to just sucking all of this money out of the US economy. And I think that's what I really object to.

to isolate China. Fast forward today, Japan is so antagonized, their publicly calling US proposals absolutely unacceptable and are threatening for the first time ever, and on national TV to sell their holdings of US treasuries as a tool of economic warfare against the US, in other words, of policy intended to isolate China as achieving the exact opposite outcome.

reserve people. They know exactly what they're doing. That also as an indication not only of how they're feeling it at the governmental level, but broadly how they're seeing, you know, being able to push back against the US as a democratic thing, which has really not happened in a long time in Japan's from an it's very isolating, you know, And so not only is about a failure of policy, but it also does show you that the amount of uncertainty now injected into global trade is such that the

overall effect for the US consumer it takes months to shake out. And I think the most interesting part of the port of La Ceo there was him saying even if it were there was a pause on everything, that it would still take a month for it to come back. So, I mean, what is that like a lost quarter of

overall US GDP? Like, that's a lot and we just had what the negative print on the number, and it's a little complicated, and I know you guys have talked about that in terms of the because a big part of is a number of imports and things like that. So it's not perhaps as catastrophic as people may think. But I'm very curious to see what that next figure

looks like with this overall drop in trade. And I also feel for a lot of those dock workers, truck workers and others people who really I mean, they were going through it already, and you know it's already in terms of the decline, but you know, trucking, what is it the number one industry for non college educated men in the US be able to earn over one hundred thousand dollars per year it's why it's one of the

reasons is the most popular industry. Get paid a decent amount of money, you get to set relatively some of your own hours, and you have a decent amount of freedom. This is just takes it away from you and that's financially devastating, you know, for people, and then yeah, you're going to start looking at other things. I saw.

a month too. Like let's say there's a deal the executive director there are the Port of La saying would take a month to sort of shake things out based on COVID, I feel like that's kind of optimistic because there were so many reverberating impacts that, you know, because once you the truckers aren't getting enough work, then they leave and they go to other jobs, and then you don't have enough truckers, and then you know the dock where like, there's a whole compounding impacts that are hard

to anticipate in advance, So I feel like a month is kind of a best case scenario, assuming that everything goes relatively smoothly in being able to unwind all of this. Two quick indications here before we moved onto Warren Buffett. We can put up McDonald's on the screen Burger Chains saying that terris are hurting sales after reporting largest decline since the pandemic. Apparently also their like biosque situation in the stores is also a big flop, which I would

agree with. It takes so much freaking longer to order on those dang kios than just telling someone your order,

So please bring back to human beings. In addition, Apple they say that the terriffs could cost them nine hundred million dollars almost a billion dollars just this quarter, and Tim Cook says there's actually some extraordinary factors that make that number less this quarter than it could be in quarters moving forward, and Sager remember Apple is one of the companies that has been a beneficiary of some of the larger exemptions to the tariff policy, so this is

also being seen as a pretty dire indicator.

for them to navigate. But I think the point was, now, multiply that by the average fortune five hundred CEO and you're like, oh, well, this is one of the best companies in the whole world. Then just think about what that's going to mean for so many others. I don't, Yeah, because they had already shifted.

a look. He got a ten minute standing ovation at the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting where this was announced. You can see, you know, see everyone standing there for him, and he made some interesting comments during his remarks here in addition to announcing his retirement on the trade war and on global trade in general. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.

discussed with Japan. But you know, we also should look to his financial strategy for if anything, let's disregard maybe his like broad ergy of political views, and we can say is definitely an expert in making money. If anybody ever wants, there's a great book about it him. I think it's called Snowball, which I read that and several years ago fantastic book just broadly about like who this guy is, what makes him tick, the strategy behind all

of it. It's actually really Warren's life tracks the development of the modern US economy, and since he's one of the greatest investors on paper ever, you know, seeing his mind kind of work through those decision points at those critical moments in US economic history is just a great way for not only to understand Balfit, but also to understand kind of everything that's happened. But to take this out of it, look at what he is currently betting on,

and his mind still works quite well. They're sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars in cash because of uncertainty, and that is a giant red signal right to the overall US, to the equities market, to the banking sector, to the consumers, investment investors, and others for how they should be thinking in terms of whether they should outlay anything. And so that kind of hold back for where if you have the cash, you should just go ahead and

keep it. That's going to have big impacts no matter what, because people look to Berkshire Hathaway to make their own investment decisions. And I think that actually is the most critical part of Warren Buffett, at least in his importance right now.

America and Coca Cola. Now we don't know for sure whether there were any sales, you know, during this period recent period of market well not sales purchases during this recent period of market volatility to draw down on that cash balance, but based on the comments he made at that meaning, it seems like he's still very unimpressed with the direction of the market.

Bezos here selling about five billion in Amazon stock, and I believe the same is the case for some of the other major tech CEOs who have taken a massive hit to their balance sheet. So yeah, they're taking money off the table and they're hoarding cash. Just like Warren Buffett. We've talked about this if in an era of uncertainty, businesses hoard cash. When you hoard cash, you're not making investment or hiring employees or doing any other different things that you may do. And not good. Not good.

they are all extremely barish. And I think you know, Berkshire Hathaway here and Duck Bezos and other billionaires would be sort of emblematic of that.

big decison or not like deviating. I think on the institutional side, they also, as we're talking about just broadly, like they have investors, or they have shareholders, or they need to be able to plan for the future, They're not thinking about it similarly, and so for them, the problem, you know, the retail guys always discover is that those large forces are much more market moving and important than

you are. You know, with your one hundred dollars a month or whatever that you're auto buying the S and P five hundred. And this is the problem, you know, with major capital and their control is that the hey are the ones you decide the fate really for all of us, they're major decisions and so whether we like it or not, they're the ones who are really pulling the strings here.

Press Crystal Welker. There were a number of moments that were noteworthy, but I wanted to get your reaction this one specifically where he says he's not sure if he's got to follow the Constitution.

your expectations. What parts of it are you know, pushing further the attacks on civil liberties, some of the authoritarian tactics, et cetera. Just what's your view of how this is all going now that we're more than one hundred days in.

I started to make two quick points about this. One was in that interview that you just showed with Meet the Press. I do think that a lot of times, so many of the scandals that became these kind of red alert you know, eleven on the outraged scale scambals are the byproduct of Trump either trolling or not being very clear. He's not Actually he's a very effective speaker, but he's not a very cogent or clear order of his thoughts. They often get very confused. He becumes from

some in the middle of sentences. I think what happened there was not he wasn't saying I think that, oh, we may or may not have to abide other constitution. The context for that was the Brigo Garcia case, where the Supreme Court, by a nine to zero ruling, ordered the Trump administration to do everything to facilitate his return and then report to the courts what it is that they were doing to be able to prove that they

were complying with the Supreme Court order. When President Trump, you know, days later, met with Bukeley in the Oval office and a reporter asked him about that, like, hey, the Supreme Court told you get him back. It was obviously he hadn't read the Supreme Court opinion. I don't think it comes to a surprise to anybody that Trump

doesn't read Supreme Court opinions. And so he sort of said, I'm not sure, and then he asked Stephen Miller, and Steve Miller stood up and explicitly and directly lied to Trump, saying, President Trump, we won on a ninety zero ruling. It was ninety zero in our favor, saying we don't have to get him back. And I believe Trump believes that

to this very day. So I think in the interview, when she was saying do we have to buy it by the constitution, that could be a question of do we have to obey lower court judges or does the constitution require you to get him back? But having said that, just on that one issue, I do think that there is this They came in very prepared, and I kept hearing that throughout twenty twenty four from Trump people. We

know what we did wrong on the first term. We didn't know what Washington we had too many people in the administration and sabotaging us. They came in with a very clear plan, most of which Trump explicitly discussed during the campaign, and it was all about eliminating any impediments to what Trump wanted to do, not just in the executive branch, but in the entire country colleges and media outlets and

dissidents and activists. And that is where I think have been so radical and so extreme, and a full scale, very well coordinate attack on anything that might impedede Trump.

the Constitution any number of ways. I mean, you know, they think they have a case that they can take to the Supreme Court about the Empowerment Control Act, but power of the purse is long rested with Congress, and they just feel like they can do whatever they want with regard to not spending funds that have been appropriated, fire whatever they want, run rough shot over the government. Obviously, with regard to the Alien Enemies Act, they just decided, like,

we don't have to offer due process. Another brazen violation of the Constitution. The assault on free speech with regard to college campus is not just with regard to foreign students, but also with regard to pressuring universities to you know, withhold diplomas from American citizens.

to abide by the typical understandings of the Constitution. One of his very first executive orders was to say, hey, we're going to end birthright citizenship, which the language of which is plaine of day, Plain is day inside the Constitution. That's one of the ways that I feel like Trump two point zero is different than Trump one point zero, where there was a lot of merit to the well,

I'll take him seriously but not literally. This time, I feel like you do kind of have to take him literally based on the actions that they have taken thus far, which really have indulged his most maximalist instincts.

second term. This is what I will say, though. I remember when Wolsonar got elected in Brazil in twenty eighteen, he had a long history of just the most alarming and disturbing statement to like, first thing I'll do is close the Congress. You know, Pinochet didn't throw enough people

out of helicop on and on and on. And as it turned out, when he got into the question, was our Brazilian institution strong and willing enough to confront him even if it means risk, And the answer ended up being yes, he ended up being actually a very weak president. I think that happened in Trump point one two. There was such a mobilization of every institution to try and

stop him, in my opinion, almost excessively. What we're seeing now, though, Crystal, is some serious pushback that I think can be meaningful. Like I said, Trump lost nine to zero in the Supreme Court. Yes, they're ignoring it. They're not facilitating his return. That's going to go back to the Supreme Court and we'll see what the Supreme Court does. You see other cases where they lost on a nine to zero ruling

as well. With the Alien Enemies Act and whether due process is required before they can deport people in the Supreme Court said absolutely, not only that, but advance notice is required as well. A Trump appointed judge just you know, three days ago last week said he doesn't even have the right to invoke the Alien Enemies Act because we're at war. So I just think that a lot of what Trump is doing is extremely disturbing, extremely alarming. We're

still in the first three months. We'll see if they run out of energy, if they start having internal dissent, but more importantly, whether our institutions can really confront it.

the with the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. They drafted it, they held it, they got the people they wanted to deport in place ready to board the planes before they released it publicly. You know, there were attorneys, who immigration attorneys who were starting to get wind of it. That's the reason they were able to cobble together this last minute hearing where the judge says, hey, you have to even if the planes are the air, you have

to turn them around. And again they just ignore that and oh, well they were over international waters.

cowed by Trump two point zero. I think a lot of the media's instinct has been to bend the knee and basically bribe Trump to leave them alone so they can get their mergers through, et cetera. You initially had a Columbia University really bending the knee in particular, and

other universities getting to follow suit. Now you've started to have led by Harvard, You've started to have a little bit of backbone demonstrated with the universities, a little bit of backbone now starting to be demonstrated by the law firms as well. Still waiting a bit on the media, I guess we have a few signs of that as well. But you know, I agree with you that the now that Trump has become so unpopular, and I think the tariffs have been particular stapped of a lot of popular

support and institutional support as well. I think there's more pushback than there was previously, but I'm concerned about how much damage they can do before things are rained in and as you know, because you've covered this better than probably anyone, once the executive claims a power for itself, Once an executive tramples on our rights, it's very hard to put that genie back in the bottle.

During the campaign twenty sixteen and then even during the Trump presidency, one of the things that bothered me and concerned me about the liberal reaction to Trump, you know, like the maximalists, hair on fire kind of reaction, and that just being things like Russia, eate, I mean, like, you know, just reactions to a lot of the policies, is that so often things were depicted as some sort of singular trumpy and evil that was this radical departure

from the American tradition. I remember the first time I really was irritated by this was when Trump invited the Egyptian dictator Sissy to the White House and the media went berserk and said, this is no American president would have done this, embraced a dictator like this before, and I was like, what, that's the whole history of the post World War two era American presidents embraced dictators pretty much every month. It's what they wake up and they do.

And there was a and so much of what I feel like going through these first three months of the civil liberties onslaught is it reminds me so much of those Bushheney years. You know, when I began writing about politics, where the big framework was is the administration could do anything. It could put people in prisons with no charges in the middle of an ocean, or kidnap them or torture them, or spy on people. And the if you raise questions about it, the answer always was, why are you defending

the terrorists? And he would be like, what the whole point of what I'm saying is that you don't know if someone's a terrorist until they get due process. And that's and you know, they invented all these radical presidential

theories about why they can ignore congressional law. And there's an article today by jack Oldsmith, the Bush Cheney DJ lawyer in the and Harvard law professor in New York Times basically saying that most of the policies Trump is embracing, all being radically extended in more dangerous form, come from precedents that Obama won, that Biden won, that George Bush

one on the extent of presidential powers. And he says, that's really the main problem this country has is we've made the president into a king, which you know, is exactly what the founder sought to avoid.

some you know, very ominous developments that we'll track. The last thing I wanted to get you on is something that Michael Tracy has been talking about is the way that this Trump administration seems to think that national security, or deeming something a national emergency, as with the tariffs, is a kind of cheat code to be able to just do whatever you want without having to worry about laws, Congress, courts, due process, etc. You see that that's the Alien Enemies Act,

that's the exploration of declaring cartel members any enemy combatants.

That's the justification for the tariffs as well. And that direction, to me is also very unnerving because Historically, the courts have granted the executive a lot of bandwidth to declare what is and isn't a national security threat, what is and isn't a national emergency, etc. So they feel like they can just stretch that outrageously to be able to claim effectively wartime powers here at home, you know, with massive blowback on our own citizens, not to mention immigrants who are here as well.

We obviously don't have anything remotely close to that. You know, FDR use the Alien Enemies Act to detain huge numbers of Japanese Americans and concentration camps on the grounds that they're alien enemies, and the courts have often approved of these over the decades, creating this you know, almost omnipotent presidency. But most presidents have had some restraints on what they were willing to do political ones or ethical ones or whatever.

And Trump is taking that to the fullest extent. And you know, again in the War on Terror, that's what

was happening. And well, and then finally you did have pushback from courts, like in two thousand and eight the Supreme Court rule that even Guantanamo detainees have a right of habeas corpus to go in and see the against them and to question it, and huge numbers prove their innocence from that, showing the dangers of just allowing the president to treat people as guilty before they've been found guilty.

But again, I think that Trump is exploiting in a very dangerous way a long history of expanding executive powers, in part because people in Congress don't want that responsibility. They're happy to let the president make tough decisions because they just want to get reelected.

smoke there rising in the air. This is, according to the Wall Street Journal, a significant target, a rare hit of such a significant target, and happened just hours before the Israeli cabinet voted unanimously to expand their war in Gaza. There were a number of injuries, no fatalities, however, and the Houthis are saying that they are going to continue. They're saying that they're instituting an air blockade. I don't think they have that those capabilities, but they certainly demonstrated here.

The US and Israel attempted to intercept this missile. They were unsuccessful, and so you have it, you know, causing some damage to there near the airport.

them underground, how to disperse them. It really made them stronger. And it's so interesting that you say that throughout twenty twenty four, Biden was bombing the Houthis almost every day, not nearly to the extent the United States is now bombing them under Trump, but still nonetheless bombing the every day.

And I don't know if you've seen it, but in mid twenty twenty four he did an interview Trump did with Tim Pole, who asked him about the bombing of Yemen, and Trump denounced Biden, saying, yeah, these democrats, they just want to go all around the world bombing people. It's totally unnecessary. Why would we bomb the houthis At least then from like an America first perspective or whatever, Hoothies really were attacking American ships because they blamed us correctly

for arming and funding Israel's destruction of Gaza. Once that ceasefire happened, the who he said, We're not going to attack anybody anymore. Our cause is done, and they did stop. And then once Israel quickly violated the ceasefire agreement by blocking humanitarian need from entering the ceasefire required them to do so, they said, we're going to resume our attacks, but only on Israeli ships, so not on American ships.

They hadn't attacked American ships for two months when Trump suddenly decided he was going to not only reinstate, but radically escalate the bombing campaign of in Yemen. And it is such an interesting test in some way for MAGA, in that they've claimed one of their main goals of their political movement is to end Middle East wars, and here you have Trump totally gratuitously restarting one, and there's been some muttering, but not very much pushback at all.

He's trying to appeal to a certain audience. But once that gets swatted aside and Steven Miller comes in over the top and basically says, no, this is what the boss wants everybody. Okay, great, you know, fift pound fire, American flag emoji, et cetera. And that, to me was sort of lost in the also significant and serious conversation about use of signal and all these sorts of things

and kind of the process of it. But the fact that there was next to no dissent about a policy that everyone knows to have failed, and also by the way, is illegal in my view, should be authorized by Congress. And you know, this all just played out in this very casual signal chat where we know now there have been massive strikes on innocent civilians. There was a migration center for a number of African migrants who were killed, and this just goes almost unremarked at this point.

signal chat is interesting. I mean, I think Jadvance I would give him a little bit of space in that he knew he was, you know, communicating with a bunch of people who don't care about civilian casualties at all, don't care about the implications of starting a war, so he was trying to kind of play into their you know, prejudices and beliefs. Maybe I'm being naive, but you know, he was trying to cater his argument to that crowd,

saying I think this is a mistake. You know, he was clearly opposed to it, but it was a very timid, very meet. Soon as he got pushed back, he said, no, no, don't worry if it happens, all supported publicly. And then when Pete Haig says showed, look, we just you know, just destroyed this whole building, this residential building that they bombed an apartment building because they thought a hoothy commander was inside with his girlfriend. It was a residential building.

now she too is a supporter of it. And I know we're talking about Mike Walts in a second, but this, to me is one of the most alarming parts of the Trump administration is you do have some ideological diversity and disagreement in some areas, but what has been made abundantly clear to everybody is that the only relevant metric is not where you stand in this issue, where where you stand that at you, but absolute loyalty to Trump.

So when Trump speaks, you nod, you defend it, and you carry it out with your greatest enthusiasm, and the slightest hint of disloyalty puts you under suspicion or even getting fired. And that is the climate that I find so chilling, because it's not just for the White House, but they're trying to make it for the country as a whole.

Israel respond to the hoothy attack against our main airport and at a time and place of our choosing to their Iranian terror masters. And the post that he, you know, he quote tweeted here says every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon from this point forward as being a shot fired from the weapons and the leadership of Iran and Iran will be held responsible and stuff for

the consequences, and those consequences will be dire. So yeah, there are really there are ideological battles that are playing out within the Trump administration. We've seen this person in that person getting fired, Mike Will, most notably being, you know, given the much less prominent and significant role of UN ambassador. But some of these battles are also less about ideology and more about personality conflicts as well. So it can be kind of hard to suss out what exactly is

going on here. But there's no doubt that BB is trying to do everything he can to draw us into war with Iran. President Trump so far has been interested in negotiating with Iran. I think that's one area of this administration that I can say, you know, that's to his credit, and I hope he continues in that direction. Nor do I have But it's not like I have a lot of confidence that we're going to have the patience to wait out what will undoubtedly be difficult diplomatic maneuvers here.

Donald Trump Junior is part of that. Make of these people what you will make of their motives, what you will The reality is that they have been on a very over coordinated campaign to try and persuade Trump that this will destroy his legacy and destroy his presidency. And then you have this other camp, of course, that Mike Waltz was in. That Marcar Rubio, though, is still in.

Before we make too much of Mike Waltz's firing, his replacement is Mark Rubio and Cotton Lindsay Graham, that whole crowd, along with of course the Israelis Now, I do think you know, I'll just tell you this story. I debated Alan Dershowitz about seven months ago in New York, and the proposition was something like the us of Bambaran's new Court facilities, and I knew I was going to come and say, Yeah. I knew he was going to come and say, of course, because he's Alan Dershowitz and he's

an Israel supporter. Aaran is like six and a half seconds away from having a NUCRO weapon. So I wanted to come and show how long those warnings, those same exact warnings have been emanating from Israel supporters, and it

actually shocked me. You go back to like the late nineties throughout I mean, it's been like twenty five years that Netnyahu and his loyalists inside the United States have been trying to learn the United States into a war with Iran by saying over and over, you remember that chart, that that primitive cartoon that Netnya who brought to the

un of the ticking time bomb. They are desperate and have been desperate to get the United States to go and destroy This is not about destroying the Nucro installations. They want to change the regime and reinstall the Shah, the Chavon's Sun. And I do think there's a part of Trump instinctively that would like his legacy to be

like I ended Wars. I was the peacemaker. I think some of the blocosity we saw exactly the same thing from Pete has Hexstts this weekend, where he, you know, basically said exactly what Nanya who said, Aaron be unnoticed. We're going to pick a time in place of our choosing to make you pay for arming these. Hopefully that instinct that I really do believe is real and Trump, with conflicting instincts, will be able to be kind of manipulated.

The problem is, as you know, Crystal, they withdrew from the Iran deal, and so any new deal has to be significantly stronger than the Iran deal for just Trump to justify why he pulled out. But that's very hard because the Iramians had negotiated to their fullest extent and got to the own point where they wouldn't go any further. And the question is how do you get in some middle brown where you're not going to warp but getting an Iran deal that isn't the Obama deal.

have Marco Ruvio in. That's not really an improvement. And put the next one up on the screen. They're talking about Stephen Miller being the potential replacement for Mike Waltz, and Miller's the guy who in the Signal Gate chat is ultimately sort of the decider and seemed to be the one who was representing the position of the Boss.

To your point earlier about I do think that Trump just believes whatever Stephen Miller is telling him with regard to the Alien Enemies Act and what the Supreme Court said. I think he even believed Stephen Miller just telling him like, oh yeah that his knuckles totally said MS thirteen, even though it was the most embarrassing photoshop of all time. So in some way, Steven Miller already occupies this position of extraordinary power. But he is I mean, he is

an extremist. He has been aggressive about wanting to deport anyone who's pro Palestine. He, like I said, was the one who came in and said, yes, let's bomb yem and let's go forward.

people would be immediately understanding of that. But I also thought, like anyone who reads that Washington Post, and Washington was thinking, wow, there, but for the grace of God, go I because when is the last time that was punished conspiring with Israel to advance and prioritize interests, its interest over American interests.

But again this I found this encouraging too, Crystal, even though Mark Rubio is his replacement, even though Steven Miller and a bunch of other you know, radical zealous defenders of Israel are very much lurking in high positions of power. Because I think what irritated Trump is not just the disloyalty part of it where he met with that Yahoo kind of behind Trump's back in a way that Trump perceived it, but also you know, obviously he talks to

Mike Waltz every day about key foreign policy decisions. That's what that job is, And it seems like every day Mike Waltz kept pushing Trump and pushing Trump and pushing Trump to ignore a deal, just saying, forget a deal, it's not even worth it. You can't trust the Iranians. That is the Tom Cotton Lindsay Graham position. And I think Trump has decided no, he wants to do a deal. He's going to do everything possible to do a deal. I do think there'll be a war after if they

don't get one done. But when you have the person next to you pushing you to war, and there's all these comments, remember the list trainy comments. He gave big, big speech about MEO cons how there's a pathology in Washington of people who just constantly want wars. And I think he came to see Mike Waltz as one of those people three months late. He's always been that person, but I think that in this particular case, it just became too much.

And so yeah, I think the uh, I guess the Iranian the the desire for war with Iran was a little too aggressively pushed by Mike Waltz. He didn't quite understand the Trumpian psychology and how to handle this appropriately. And apparently he also pissed off Susie Wilds and treated her like she was a staffer. And so she was like, Okay, buddy, have fun at the UN Let's go ahead and get to this, this Boycott's bill that I know you've been

tracking really closely. In fact, Glenn, why don't you go ahead and set up what this bill was meant to do, because it is, unfortunately in line with some other legislation that has previously been passed into law. Seemed like I had a head of steam co sponsored by Mike Lawler and Josh Geidheimer, so you had bipartisan support, and yet it ended up being, at least for now, they pulled the vote, and looks like APAC may take a rare l on this one.

very strong Israel supporters. Israel identified like ten or fifteen years ago that one of the main threats to their ability to dominate and repress their neighbors is that there was a growing boycott movement centered on American campuses that they were afraid of because it was modeled after the one in South Africa in the eighties that was driven by campus activism and that took down the apartheid regime.

And they set out to decide, we have to put an end to this whole idea of advocating a boycott. They got the EU to criminalize advocacy of boycott's as the anti semitic. They got that expanded definition of anti semitism, and now they're doing the same thing in the US.

The thing that always made amazing me Crystal is so few people know that in thirty seven American states, mostly Red states but not all, it is a requirement if you want a contract with the state that you have to sign a loyalty O saying you do not support and have never participated in a boycott of Israel. You can boycott American states or other countries, just not Israel.

And now that law was the basis for what Trump did in a twenty eighteen which is he said it's now a felony if a company participates in a boycott sponsored by another country that the US government doesn't support. So let's say, like Iran wants to boycott Israel, and some company participates in that boycott even though the US

government isn't. That's a felony to do. And now this new bill would expand it to include not just government, not just led by or advocated by foreign governments, but also international organizations, and it would include people who are boycotting Israel out of conscience and conviction, and it would

turn them into felons. And I think, finally, this is almost like a bridge too far for a lot of people in the Senate, who, by the way, are also angry that the HI definition prohibits anybody from saying that Jesus participated in the killing of Jews, even though the Bible kind of implies that in some ways. Yeah, so I think they're kind of going too far.

the screen. This is from drop site, which did a fantastic job covering this And actually Ryan was saying the amount of social media attraction they got from covering this bill was like extraordinary, So I think there likely was a massive effort, like a huge number of people probably called their congressman, and we're saying do not vote for this bill, and you know, on both sides of the aisle, so I think there might have been a public pushback

here that was important too. You can see the Democratic co sponsors. You got a handful of them here, Gotttheimer, Moskowitz, morel Davis, and Gillen. You have a longer list here of Republican co sponsors, I mean, and the primary sponsor is this guy, Mike Lawler. It's also interesting to me this is a blatantly unconstitutional and extremist bill, and yet Lawler is seen as this quote unquote moderate. He's in a swing district in New York. I think he's very

much in jeopardy for election this time around. He's just got re elected, so he's been there a relatively short period of time and is the type of district that could easily flip in a wave election year. But in any case, you know, I thought this thing was going to sail through, and now they've at least pulled the vote for today. I did not think it would get through the Senate because I didn't think they'd be able

to garner enough Democrats to overcome a filibuster. But you did start to get You had Marjorie Tayler Green and can see two up on the screen. She I think was the first person who came out and said, listen, I'm not going to vote for this.

be voting no on this bill as well. And you had Charlie Kirk also chime in and weigh in on this debate with his commentary. There was one piece of this that kind of irritated me. But we'll see if you had the same reaction to it, he says. Tomorrow the House will vote on HR. Eight sixty seven, a bill that will criminalize private boycotts of Israel finds up to a million dollars in prison time up to twenty

years bills like this only create more anti Semitism. I think that's true, and play into growing narratives that Israel's running the US government.

be watching very closely. So I guess I am kind of curious what is going on here because if you look at Marjorie Taylor Green's record, if you look at Charlie Kirk's record, Thomas Massey put in a little different category, like they're all on board with kidnapping students off the street for daring to publish an op ed that.

can't afford to keep doing this. It's time to cut off all these wars that were fighting, that are earned in our interest and keep the money at home. And I would always say, oh, that's so persuasive. Does that apply to the financing and army of Israel as well? And of course they would start studying and trying to find reasons why somehow they ration out was different, when of course it so blatantly wasn't. I think what you're

starting to say. And there was another Marjorie telling Green tweet about Iran, very you know, vocally saying we cannot go to war with Iran. We are sick of supporting a fighting wars for other countries in the Rea that have huge nuclear arsenals, which obviously means Israel. We're sick of fighting words for Israel. You know, chrise if you look.

And this struck me the other day. Almost every day, literally there's some major event that comes from Washington, like a policy initiative or an executive order or a resolution, or a press conference or some big social media campaign from our politicians in Washington that are all about Israel. Like it's every day they talk about Israel. Every day

they want to do something for Israel. And I do think, like those free speech abuses, it's starting to create this backlash, Like, wait a minute, I thought our whole movement was about America first, Like We're going to focus on the forgotten person and the working class and the downtrodden in the industrialized cities, and instead we're spending all this time on Israel, in attacking American civil liberties, on behalf of this foreign country.

And I do think it's starting to create some real resentment, not like in little spaces, but some growing resentment. Rampaul a huge speech on the State for about the attacks and free speech from thishri Bill, and those are significant. Once that starts happening within a movement, many respected and influential voices within the movement saying the same thing, it can really spread quickly, and let's hope this does.

like you know, Marjorie Taylor Green or whatever. I don't know what's in our heart, But how do you feel about the fact that there is kind of a horseshoe with people who hold of you like Nick Fuentes and those of us who are trying to be principled about free speech and principled about Hey, let's not like endlessly bomb babies. This seems really bad. How do you intellectually gropple with that sort of thing.

people with like good faith concerns. I mean, like people on the left used to worry about how it would drive down wages for the American worker, or how it would make cities incapable of absorbing them all in a humanistic way. And the fact that some people are on one side of the debate and who have really malicious ideas and others have well intention ideas, I think you just have to separate them out. But it doesn't impugne

the fact that there's this coalition itself. And you know, you could say that on the other side of the that issue too, people who want open borders were big corporate interest and now there's a lot of liberals who believe that are not open borders but far less repressive and restrict ones. So on the one hand, I get

what you're saying. And this whole idea of America First, you know, goes back to Charles Lindberg and the isolation is for World War Two, who thought we were getting involved in World War Two because the Jews were kind of prompting us to do so. So that is the tradition out of which America First non interventionism grows. But I also think these people do have a because if it were only if they were only applying it to Israel, I would say, Okay, this is probably driven by anti Semitism.

They're also against the US involvement in Ukraine. They think that's just as much of a violation of the America First ideology that it's globalism. Pretty much, any military invention around the intervention around the world, that's how they see it. So yes, of course there's lurking anti Semitism, like every other bigotry and every faction. I personally don't think that's

the driving thrust of all of this. I think they're starting to make it's becoming unsustainable to keep saying America first on the one hand, and keep voting one bill after the another in putting attacks on a civil American about this one single foreign country.

basically boomer Republicans. But even among Republicans, there's been a shift in public sentiment. And I do think that there is power in It's just so brazenly incompatible to say I'm America first, and yet I spend all my time thinking about talking about and passing legislation for the nation of Israel and hanging to it or where an IDF soldier uniformed into the halls of Congress or whatever you know,

like it. Just I think from a public perspective, it's very hard to sustain that position, and so I do think you see some representatives who are having to bend some to that reality. I'm just you know, on a whole I'm just much more cynical about these people, just based on the track record. Yeah, I mean, they're still all voting for more weaponshipments to Israel in lockstep, like

there is no dissent on that whatsoever. They're all on board with, Hey, let's just disappear any college student who participated in a protest we don't like, Let's just disappear and detain them and deport them and do whatever we can and attack the universities in this like in this the ultra the Wokesters could never have dreamed of the authoritary tactics being used to constrain speech at universities in defense of this one supposedly oppressed minority group, right, And

so I just don't see anything approaching a consistent principle being applied here, which is why it's almost confusing to me that there was any descent on this bill whatsoever.

now adopt completely. That said, you know, you mentioned these polls, and there's clearly a very substantial decline which we haven't seen in decades in American support for Israel. And while yes, a big part of that is due to almost uniform Democratic reversal on this, a big part of it as well are younger Republicans, Republicans under the age of fifty,

who have had a massive jump. I think it's now a majority of people who say they disapprove of Israel is really just it's like older Fox News watching Republicans who still have maintained their support for Israel. And if there's one thing politicians know it's public opinions, so I'm sure they go to their town halls and are constantly

asked about this. Of Apak is not going to disappear overnight, the Israeli lobby is not going to disappear overnight, nor is these decades long dogmas about how we have to protect Israel. But I do think that these things happen gradually,

you know, through these incremental changes. And then also I do think once people get desperate, like once Israel supporters really believe they're losing the debate, they resort to increasingly extreme tactics like censorship and other things in a desperate hope to win, and it fuels the backlash.

steel town, et cetera great profile. Then tragically, during his campaign suffers a pretty severe stroke, is still able to defeat doctor Oz even after having a debate performance which was very clear this stroke had significantly affected him, and then once he gets into the Senate, his politics almost completely change. Now in fairness on Israel, and Ryan did all the reporting on this, he had even before the

stroke been like, I'm pro Israel. And by the way, you know APAC and your affiliated groups, just tell me what you want me to say.

the screen. Because some of Fetterman's staffers decided to speak to New York Magazine about what they are seeing behind the scenes. And you know, if you take them at their word, they're basically describing another health cover up, kind of akin to what we saw with regard to Joe Biden, where the stroke did really change his personality, made his

views more extreme. Also have created, you know, this pattern of really erratic and frankly dangerous behavior at the headline here all by himself, John Fetterman insists he is in good health, but staffers pass and present say they no longer recognize the man they once knew, They say. His sixteen hundred word email this is Fetterman's, came with the subject line concerns contained a list of them. Sorry, this is one of his staffers who was sending an email

of their concerns. From the seemingly mundane, he eats fast food multiple times a day to the scary, we do not know if he is taking his meds, and his behavior frequently suggests he is not. Often see the kind of warning signs we discussed. Gentlelsen wrote Conspiratorial Thinking Megalomania. For example, he claims to be the most knowledgeable source on Israel and Gaza around, but his sources are just

what he reads in the news. He declines most briefings, never reads memos high high as low lows, long, rambling, repetitive and self centered monologues, lying in ways that are painfully, awkwardly obvious to everyone in the room. It's got to put the next piece up on the screen. Members of his team told this journalist this was an early warning

sign that something was off with their boss. In early February twenty twenty three, after Fetterman had indeed been sworn in, members of the Senate gathered the Library of Congress for a caucus retreat. Betterman, fresh off a hard fought victory in the Cycles Marquis Race, should have been riding high, only he wasn't. Stafford recalled getting a text from a person the retreat asking if their boss was okay. Betterman was sitting at a table by himself, slowly sipping a

coke and refusing to talk with anybody. Later that day, another staffer heard an alarming report from a journalist Betterman had just walked obliviously into the row and was nearly struck by a car. Fetterman went on to make statements that shock people. In opposing a ceasefire. With regards to Gaza, he said, let's get back to killing. Person who heard

the conversation told me, he said, kill them all. In a statement, Fetterman denied the account, adding any reference to killing was solely about Hamas and I do support the destruction of that organization down to its last member and Glenn. In another part of this article, they describe his wife being in tears. You know, she's a sort of liberal humanitarian. She was upset over his position on Israel and Gaza, to the point of, you know, being quite emotional about

it and saying, listen, they're bombing babies. You can't have this position.

dismissed that. But what we've seen from him is not just like sort of pro Israel lip service, but like almost like a psychotic joy in seeing the destruction, wanting it to continue, on top of an extremely hostile posture to anybody who raises it with him. You know, he tries to be just as kind of offensive and alienating as possible in the ways that he speaks, which I don't think was the John Fetterman that we saw regularly

prior to this stroke. I'm always a little hepotant to comment in someone's mental health or or psychological state, in part because I'm not a professional, but also because it's hard to assess people from a distance, but I do. It is so interesting to me, you know, when he had that stroke, every Republican I know was saying, you know, he's a vegetable, how can he possibly run yet alone win? And the minute he comes out and says I'm a

big supporter of Israel. They're all like, Wow, his brain recuperated. He's one of the most sensible people in all of Washington. That really is all it takes to cure your mental health and still problems.

presidential canon. Now I think that's preposterous because much of the Democratic base hates this guy at this point. But you know, so That's why I don't I don't have any reluctance about it because I think there has been such an inclination among both parties, but in particular Democrats

have had some of the worst examples lately. If you think about Feinstein, if you think about Biden as well, of trying to cover the reality of members and the president himself who were in decline, who were really not capable of fully functioning in the job. And I think it's an outrage to democracy, and I think it's an outrage to you know, Americans who deserve capable representation.

same for senators. I think the only difference I would put there is that the reason Americans concluded that Biden had those problems was because they sow it for themselves. And we've seen some public, publicly disturbing behavior from Fetterman. There was that you know, video circle circulating of him refusing to put on a seat belt and God and giving aggressive about it. Yeah, but no, I agree, it's it's a it's a huge issue, and I think you can see major changes in fetterman.

Like it's one thing to say I support Israel, I care deeply for the Palestinian civilians, this needs to end, whatever, But he talks about it with this like glee that Palestinians are being killed, not just a moss but in the most horrific ways possible, and that to me is mentally disturbing.

I guess. And then she got pushed back from a lot of people, but Josh Barrow in particular, she responded to, is put D four up on the screen here as well as she says, here's the thing, Josh, I'm consistent and consistently I have the soul of giving people dignity my fall up questions as did or did Sharif Street, the chair of the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania know about this?

should have raised these concerns with Chuck Schumer. But if the problems are as severe as is being depicted here, there's no one in the Democratic caucus who doesn't know there are issues, and none of them has chosen to do anything or say anything because you know, it's a Pennsylvania swing state seat, difficult to win, etc. So, and he's more or less a reliable Democrat vote, so they just kept their mouths shut.

And then so many times people who have been political hacks or parties spokespeople in apparatics or government officials end up not just appearing on these networks but as hosts. So now they're supposed to have a much different role. But you know, you look at Jen Saki or Simone Sanders, there's plenty of them on Fox. They're exactly this same.

I mean, I listened to Gen Saki. It sounds like she's giving White House, you know, press prefings, and of course Simone Sanders is there as a Democratic Party representative.

And the idea that if you have somebody like this in your cauctus, it's fine to talk about it privately but not publicly is such except it's such contempt for the American people, you know, like we close ranks, we cover things up, and especially after watching what happened with Biden and how destroyed how you know, credibility that destroyed, destroying that was for Democrats and the election in the media, it's amazing they sell think that way.

with the crossover with Fox News. You see it with the crossover with MSNBC in particular, and I think it

comes out here. I mean the instinct to care, I get it on like a human level, but the instinct to think that like protecting the feelings of Joe Biden was more important than defeating Trump if that's your view, or you know, of advocating for issues that you're not going to be able to if there's not a Democrat in the White House, or just the interest of public, the public having transpad garancy around what's going on with the President of the United States, then I think you've

got your your priorities pretty screwed up for someone who is holding themselves down as like a neutral journalist and analysts.

order to combat the cartels. She said no, and told him Mexico's sovereignty is inviolable and it is not for sale. We will never accept a US military presence in our territory. This is something that Trump and this is part of

Project twenty twenty five. A lot of Republicans have been talking about, Hey, we're going to designate the cartels as terrorists and then we're going to be able to use these powers that presidents have grabbed Post nine to eleven in order to basic wage war without having to get permission of Congress. Trump also yesterday evening confirmed that he had made this generous offer to Mexico. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.

They're evil, and you know, we had three hundred thousand people died last year from.

it would have all the same failures. Have been extremely well armed groups, like way more well armed than the Taliban, and we couldn't win after fighting the Taliban for twenty years. I think the broader issue here is this is a difference with Trump point two point zero, is that he's so high on his own victory, his stature in the world, that when he speaks, he really does speak as if

he's kind of the leader of the world. Like he talks about, you know, he said, I want this, I want this, I want this, Panama, Greenland, ecent ter of Canada. But also when he talks about like getting the war in in Ukraine, he'll say, Boutin needs to change this. I don't like this, and then he'll turn around and tied the Ukrainians so that they're all competing for his approval. And this mentality is really alarming, Like we want to

go do this in Mexico, they better say yes. And I think the requirement of absolute loyalty to Donald Trump inside the White House makes all of that so much worse because he just gets that reinforced every day.

And so the Republican movement, not just Trump, but the Republican movement really set out on an explicit project to make sure that would not be the case this time around. And so this bombing the cartel's policy flows directly out of that. And we could put this next piece up on the screen as well, which is also extremely troubling. So they are exploring labeling some suspected cartel and gang members inside the US as quote unquote enemy combatants. Me

just read a little bit of this article. So they say this is a possible way to detain these individuals more easily and limit their ability to challenge their imprisonment. According to multiple people with knowledge, the enemy combatant designation could also be applied to suspected narco terras outside the US, The people said, as a way to potentially give the US justification to conduct lethal strikes against them. And so this reads to me, Glenn as basically the courts have

struck down the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. I do suspect when that ultimately gets to the Supreme Court, they are probably also going to say this was an improper invocation on the merits. But in addition, they've been blocked from continuing to use this in various jurisdictions. The Supreme Court has said, you have to to facilitate release, you have to give some form of reasonable notice and due process, even for the individuals who you want to

be able to sweep up in this. So they're saying, okay, well, that pathway is maybe not really working out, so instead we'll use this enemy combatants designation to do a different and run around the Constitution and not provide any sort of due process. Expanding on some of the actions that were taken, you know, starting in the Bush administration and all this of course comes in the context of their

analysis of who is a suspected alien enemy. Who is a suspected Cartelo gang member could be something as simple as like a tattoo or that you hail from a certain part of Venezuela or they suspect you do.

all these issues, you know. I remember David Frump had to cover story in the Atlantic and it was something a huge picture of Trump and it said like, this is how authoritarianism is created. And I was like, is that like a playbook from your knowledge in the Trump in the Bush administration, because these are all the things that you did. A lot of this did get some restraint,

but it is true. They're playing on a vulnerability in American in American politics, which you referenced earlier, that the Supreme Court becomes extra deferential to the president when he has claims of national security and war and we're waging

you know, we're in a war. An enemy combatant is who we're killing, because it basically eliminates all constraints and it has all the same problems, all the same damages, all the threats to liberty that the War on Terror had, and if you add on top of that, like an actual military action with our southern neighbor in Mexico that they don't want, that would be one of the gravest violations of sovereignty in many years.

that they caused a lot of the problems. Now, so I think forgiveness should be you know, kind of off limits.

the Conservative Party confusingly Liberal party in Australia. But in any case, Peter Dunton, just like Pierre Pauliev in Canada, actually lost his own seat. That's how bad the jobbing was. So just set up the dynamics here and give us a sort of top level view of what happened.

strong in the polls. It was looking like it was quite a good contender and perhaps even going to win in around November December, about the time that Donald Trump came to power, and very similar to us we saw in Canada, which was also a center right opposition. The party sort of slumped in the polls over the early part of the year and particularly part of the campaign, the electoral campaign the opposition he did particularly poorly. But it was an absolute drubbing. It was blood on the streets.

It's an electoral wipeout. So there's sort of questions at the moment in Australia regarding the future of this Conservative Party. Obviously it's still going to be there, but it's the number of seats has just been pretty much wiped out. So we saw obviously, we saw in Canada the Conservative Party there was unsuccessful and that the leader lost his seat, same as in Australia. It's actually been quite a bit

worse than Canada. There was talk of the government, current government in Australia being forced into a minority government rather than a majority of government. But it's a majority government and by a long way by about twenty seats, so it's been quite quite the outcome.

And it's difficult to know exactly what caused people to vote on the day, but clearly, I think over the President Trump's first one hundred days since inauguration, you've seen international markets, stock markets royaled a lot of uncertainty, and in those situations, people have voted for the incumbency, voted for the existing government whoever concerns with that sort of instability. In the threats, it was also raised quite a lot

regarding President Trump's threats against Canada regarding tariffs. But also you know, the sort of the talk around annexing and that sort of thing made a lot of Australians a bit nervous thinking, Look, you know, we're a very close partner with the US, as is Canada. You know this could be US, So I think that had quite a big impact. It's also noteworthy the opposition leader here, he was very keen towards the end of last year, sort of set up to this sort of maga side of

things making America great again. He was sort of very quite happy to be associated with that as the winds were to his back and to Donald Trump's back. But then as things sort of started to fall apart a bit and the wheels sort of started to fall off in the US regarding some of the more extreme statements from the president, we've seen that our opposition party sort of trying to backpedal a bit and sort of said, oh, look, well no, we're different. But by then it was very

much in train. One particular noteworthy point during the campaign was we had the opposition leader standing next to a senator from his party and he sent it and said, look i'm here.

price for that. You know. I was listening to some Australia voters talk about why they voted the way that they did, and certainly the roiling of the markets and the way that's affecting people's you know, uh, market accounts, et cetera. That was certainly a part of it, but it also just seemed like a general reaction against what was perceived to be an extreme direction from the US. I wonder if you could tease some of those things

out as well. What were some of the things that Australians felt were coming from the US that were contrary to their values.

difficult to tell. The polls were reflecting that the public wasn't as adverse to it as the actual electoral outcome states, but I think people were increasingly uneasy about this sort of this populism and this sort of extreme right wing, extreme right wing activity, as well as there's a lot of US style sort of disinformation groups, AstroTurf groups whatever you want to call them, that are sort of set up and pretend to be grassroots movements of ordinary Australians,

when in fact they're sort of run by fossil fuels entities and sort of bad actors pretending to be someone there not. So we've seen a lot of that surfacing in Australia the past twelve months particularly, and I think people have become increasingly aware of that. And we obviously have much smaller market in Australia, so when you have this sort of activity happening it's easier when it is called out. It's easier for the broader public to see

what's going on. Because we're much smaller, there's many fewer moving parts. So I think a lot of that's played a part as well. People have looked at some of the issues in Australia. We have very similar issues going on as on the East coast of the US there in particularly regarding offshore wind turbines. Now quite a few

studies and experts have been looking into this area. We're finding a lot of disinformation groups are AstroTurf groups in the US that have sort of been pretending to be environmental groups but are actually fossil fueled back fighting against these offshore wind turbines, obviously because fossil fuels want to continue their business model. A lot of those same groups, same entities, and same methods are being used on the

East coast of Australia. So I think a lot more people were sort of waking up to that and combining those two together, sort of recoiled somewhat and voted for the existing government.

thing the trade war. Okay, a new president can come in, they can change the policy, etc. But Mark Carney in his victory speech really spoke about a sense of real betray rail and a sense that even if the particular politician and the White House changes or the policy changes, that there's been a breach in the relationship that is going to cause Canada to go in another direction sort

of regardless of what happens from here on out. And I was just wondering what the view is from Australia about the US and whether there's been sort of an aravocable change in the way that the US is viewed by Australians.

that sort of thing. I think the relationship will remain regardless. It's strong, it's you know, it's not going anywhere. But I think it's sort of made people think a little bit hang on, maybe we should stand on our own two feet a little bit more, which you know, to some degree that's obviously a good thing. And look, I don't think there's any sort of terminal, long term damage done there. It's just made people sort of wake up a little bit there.

according to Transparency International. Over that nine year period, and that's with the exception of Hungary, with which Australia tired, So it's not very well known. But during that period we're obviously fairly high base. But we fell we fell down the list a substantial and a lot of that was due to Australia not having a National Integrity Commission, being a national body that oversees corruption or alleged corruption

involving politicians. So the Albanezy government he came to power, he promised this brand new National Anti Corruption Commission that was going to set up and have transparent hearings and all the rest of it to hold government officials to account. Now, he brought one of these bodies in, but they sort of kneecapped it behind the scenes and made it have actions all in secret. Basically, well it's hearings in secret,

so you don't know what it's doing. And it's been pretty much a major flop and it's been criticized from all sides. So I think a lot of people were very disappointed in that. He sort of made a lot of promises for his first term he didn't come through with. It was all about transparency and accountability, but as soon as he got in that all went out the window.

But I think what's happened over the past six months, with what's happened in the US and the Trump factor, that people have thought, well, look, you know, we'll kind of forget about that for now. We've got bigger issues. We don't want this conservative government coming in. And it's basically a few issues with the Conservative government. They're sort of, as the public's pointed out, they behind in the Times,

looking to rewind Australia a little bit. Rather than embracing renewable energy, of which we have plenty plenty of sun and wind, they were looking at actually introducing nuclear power in Australia for the first time, despite the fact that it was going to cost between two and five times as much for no real reason. It was just sort of an ideological issue. So people were sort of not

particularly happy about that. But so it wasn't a good opposition for starters, but the Trump effect obviously played a pretty big role.

about six percent swinging against him. Now, this issue with the nuclear reactors was something that's picked up We picked up on quite early on in the piece, and it was coming from a lot of the same actors, the fossil fuels groups. One of these in particular in Australia is called the Institute of Public Affairs. Now it's sort of a proxy almost for fossil fuels interests, and this is where Peter Dutton, the Opposition leader, launched his nuclear

reactive policy about eighteen months ago. So he actually launched at this fossil fuels lobby group and you're looking at these things of the small modular nuclear reactors that he was spooking. They don't actually exist anywhere in the world in a commercial basis, and they were going to cost about six times more than normal electricity anyway. So it was pie in the sky sort of stuff, and it was seen by many experts as just the way of

prolonging fossil fuels. So obviously they opened themselves up to this whole huge issue of nuclear power in Australia. And beyond the economics of it, you've got the issue of we haven't had nuclear power before. So a lot of people sort of a bit uneasy about the idea, and it brings up the whole spectrum of nuclear energy. And obviously he left himself open there and the question was, hey, look, you know, would you have a reactor in your in

your backyard and your electorate? He said, of course. And obviously people in these electorates were so.

major parties. So this is sort of a new model that came in and they were very successful and they called it the Teal Wave. Last time, around half a dozen and more independence came into power. This time around, those same independents are there. There's been a landslo to the ALP to the existing government which is center left. They have a majority of power, but the independence from

last time, the Till Wave, is still there. Most of those people, if not all of them, are back in again, as well as a couple of other gains, and that's more of a long term strategy to get more independence into into government into Australian government, with the idea being there's less power to the original backers, the original donors of the two major parties.