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At the end of last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Ukraine had tried to assassinate him and his family. Donald Trump confirmed that he believed that this had happened. Since then, we've heard almost nothing about it. We wanted to walk through this wild story that has just completely kind of evaporated from Western press attention. Matt Bivens his in his sub stack The one hundred Days, wrote about it recently and put this first element up on the screen.
This is a the whole the whole piece is worth reading, but we'll.
Former editor of the Moscow Times, I believe.
Yeah, you know, Mett, very serious reporter, and stitch together this timeline which is which is, which is quite wild. It's December twenty eighth, and so a lot's going on. Then you're starting to have the protests in Iran. Trump is meeting with Zelenski and also with net and Yahoo and mar A Lago and also capturing Maduro like so tons and plus it's the end of the year. Nobody's paying attention, right, everybody's checked out. I was skiing, as
a matter of fact, literally literally checked out. I was checking in, but checked out. So it's easy to miss an attempted assassination of the head of it superpower or.
Yes, especially major nuclear power.
The government is strained down play it.
Yeah, so what happened?
And so.
We put up D two here, which is relevant. We'll come back to this.
So Putin has ordered CCD CCTV to be turned off around him because the US and Israel or Israel appeared to use this in their assassination of iotol Kamani and others. So Putin, just because your paranoid doesn't mean you're wrong. So on December twenty ninth, Trump was asked about a claim but that Putin had just made that Ukrainian drones had swarmed his family's compound and in an attempt to
assassinate him. And here's here's what Trump said on next sitting next to standing next to that, on December twenty ninth.
Straight straight on his sudden.
Yeah, I don't I don't like it. It's not good.
I heard about this morning. You know, tell me about it.
President Putin told me about it early in the morning. He said he was attacked. It's no good. It's no good. Don't forget, you know, the tomahawks. I stopped the tomahawks. I didn't want that because we're talking about you know, it's a delicate period of time. This is not the right time. It's one thing to be offensive because they were offensive. It's another thing to attack his house. It's not the right time to do any of that.
So then a couple of days later and put up D four, wal Street Journal and others report that actually, we didn't do this, Ukraine didn't do this, didn't happen. So Trump was then asked about it again on Air Force One.
You said that you were really very angry with the Ukrainian president Silinski, if he was the one who conducted that strike on Putin's residence.
I don't believe that strike happened, right, So Putin.
Had said in that phone call to you that that strike happened. You came out and said that, and you believed Putin. There was some criticism there is.
Something that happened fairly nearby but had nothing to do with this one.
Why did you believe Putin in that moment and then go say that about nobody.
Knew at that moment. I mean, that was the first I heard about it. I said that his house was attacked. We don't believe that happened. You know now that we have been able to check, But that was the first thing I ever heard about it. We just hoped that Russia and Ukraine get it settled. Then you know, it's costing us nothing. In fact, we make money.
So if you had a hard time hearing that as Trump saying, we don't believe that happened anymore, and so Putin says, okay, hold on a second, you think it didn't happen, We've enroll D five here. He released a video of what he says and what he says, are Ukrainian drones that crashed in the forest. They released also kind of a flight map that showed I think ninety one drones that they counted that moved from Ukrainian positions to this compound where the fam Putin's family was apparently staying.
And it's offered and they met with the American ambassador and said, you want to, you want to, you want to look at them, and go ahead, you can, you can, you can study them yourselves, like we shut down a bunch of these.
Some of these crashed like here they are. We didn't hear you.
Know any We don't know if the CIA ended up obtaining some of these or not. Uh Zelenski at the time called it a fabrication. He said this, you know, Putin is trying to blow up the piece deal that Zelenski and Trump were talking about in mar Lagouh. Putin said, no, Zelenski is actually trying to blow this up. Zelensky has now taken a different tune.
In June fourth.
On June fourth, he wrote a letter to Putin filled with a bunch of you know what might as well be expertives put up d D seven here, he wrote, he writes this letter, Uh, this is Zelenski.
We often hear that you are comfortable with this war.
Of course, not in those cases when it comes to the security of your residence in Valdy or your parade in Moscow.
Your own life is valuable to you.
Valdi is where the compound was, where his family was staying, and where Putin says.
That they tried to kill him. He was asked.
So.
Also recently, a drone which may have been Ukrainian, maybe in Russia, We're not sure yet. I think it went into Romania and it crashed into the top of an apartment building and it injured I think a grandmother and her grandson with some like burns on their arms are okay, but it was scary, you know, hit a building. New York Times wrote about this big giant Western coverage like this, this errant drone that hit this NATO country.
We need to do war about this. And so.
Putin was asked about this drone and in this press conference that will play this for a second. But what he based says is okay, like let me see the drone. Yeah, we'll study the drone and you can just look at the drone and then you can figure out if it was Ukrainian or Russian.
He's like, either way, it was a mistake, said us.
People could look at them.
Just go and look at the drone.
And he says, just like we did with the drones that tried to kill me, that we turned over the drones.
So World d eight.
Here, the same is happening. Here has happened here and until we received some objective data, like the data that we handed over to the representative of the American administration, the data and the debris of the drone that hid the residence of the Russian president. So we gave the findings. If we receive these data from them, and then we can share our estimates of what happened.
So not to say that Putin doesn't lie. Putin obviously lies. President's lies. Putin lies a lot, But in this case, he's turning over the material itself for us to examine.
Assuming I mean, sure, I guess it could have been tampered with. But yes, he's saying, then you could examine whether it's been tampered with.
And you can just like look at the like here, here's here's a drone. We say it's crashed in the forest, here, like you know, here's our chain of custody here, Like I guess you can always just disbelieve everything, but at some point, like if you do launch ninety one drones, like it's going to leave some evidence behind.
Right, we also have the pre existing evidence that the president at first seems to believe Putin right, And just one quick point on my end, Bivens points out. He says in summary recent in recent days, both Zelenski and Putin have again referenced an attack on Putin's home and
family carried out by US supported Ukrainian droones. This is the same attack that Trump initially believed in but then scoffed at after the CIA formally told him it never happened, but it clearly did happen, which suggests the Vin says that the CIA is giving false briefings to the president, So that then becomes Germaine when you're thinking about Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and all of these other places, China and Taiwan around the world where we're in hot conflicts or potential
hot conflicts. About if John Ratcliffe and his CIA is under Odie and I outgoing Odie and I and Tulsa Gabbard where we know they are conflicts seemingly between Odie and I and CIA. What information is getting to the president that's extremely important and obviously right now we should mention Ukraine is saying that missiles hit a military plant really far inside of Russia, so all the way like five hundred and sixty miles from the front line according to BBC.
Yeah, I guess it's Telsa Gabbard ode and I maybe she can come on the show now that she's retired, she can talk about this assassination temp attempt. I don't know if people have quite under stand the fire that we're playing with here.
Yeah, I'm going to send a comment request actually on.
This right now because excellent. All right, give them the report back. Let's do it.
Next up, Jane Kim.
One of the least discussed but perhaps most important races in California that was decided recently may have been the one for Insurance Commissioner. There will be two Democrats that will move into the general election. One of them, Jane Kim, had the endorsement of Bernie Sanders and was running on a platform of insurance for all, which and we're going to talk about what exactly that means. But first to start with a little bit of the message that she ran on to finish first in this top two.
I'm Jane Kim.
I'm running for Insurance Commissioner to fight for us, and I'm not going to take a dime from the insurance companies. I'm running to make insurance available for everyone, to lower costs right away by capping excess profits and CEO pay, and to write a plant to guarantee healthcare for every child in California.
Joining us now is Jane and Kim the number one of the top two finishers for Insurance Commissioner. Ben Allen, State Senator, was the second. I believe he's welcome to join as well. But Jane, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for having me.
So we wanted to talk to you because insurance is one of these and this is not health insurance for correct me if I'm wrong, there's some relation.
So this office oversees the three point three trillion dollar industry and it regulates all types of insurance, but managed healthcare plans.
Right, So we wanted to talk to you because insurance is one of those things that is not.
Talked about very much.
Although it's everybody has to think about it whenever they're making any serious decision. They think about it when they get there, when they get their bill every month. And it's right at the intersection of basically everything you know, climate, earthquakes, you know, natural disasters, and the ability fires, fires, and the ability to kind of continue a functioning human civilization, like it's that important.
Yet it's that under discussed.
California, as we think about it over here, is fairly corporate dominated, and so I'm curious, you know how you managed on a kind of anti corporate campaign, with an anti corporate campaign, how you managed to kind of break through. What was the message that you were bringing that was able to kind of get beyond the clutter that's usually thrown up by the insurance industry to make sure that they control this critical position.
So this office is created in nineteen eight by the voters California to be the backstop between forty million Californians and this trillion dollar industry. And this industry is an industry that is doing quite well. In twenty twenty four, property and casualty insurance netted one hundred and seventy billion dollars, and so this narrative that they're going bankrupt is just
simply not true. Meanwhile, we are required to have insurance to drive to work or to school, to on a home, or to open a business or a nonprofit of any kind, and the system is failing. Rates are going up, they're canceling our coverage, and even if we have insurance, they fight our claims every step of the way. And so we ran on the message of a more affordable California and that this office should be the champion of consumers and not a lapdog for billionaire corporations. And this message
resonated across the state of California. We ran on a platform talking about new ideas, at least to the US, a single payer home disaster home program guaranteed for all that is publicly run and nonprofit. We talked to expanding our art existing low cost nonprofit auto insurance program and Medicare for kids. And as you can see from our results, we're plus eight in the top two. We didn't just win in San Francisco, which is my backyard, which we're
plus eighteen. We also won in Los Angeles County, where my main opponent resides, and we're in first place in Republican and rural counties across the state of California, which just showed that Californians are tired of the status quo and they want to see someone who's going to champion a more affordable California.
I think it made such an important point that you're required to have insurance to operate into complete basic functions in the state of California and of course in other states. So he tell us a little bit more about what you would be able to accomplish in this role, like what's possible, what gives you hope that you could actually do should you be elected.
Yeah, So this is an executive office that regulates this industry. And by the way, there's a zero federal oversight of insurance, which is also really interesting. So it's regulated by the fifty states, and it has this as I say, on who gets to build wealth in this country? Right? I mean, you can't drive to work without auto insurance, you can't
own a home or open a business. As I mentioned earlier, and as was mentioned earlier, it sits at this very interesting intersection of this what everyone is feeling, the wealth, inequality, climate disaster, and fairness, and ultimately what people want is they want a fair and level playing ground. And this is what this office can do. It regulates the industry, sets the ground rules for how property and casualty industry plays in the state of California, in the most populous
state in the country. And so there's a couple of things that I have talked about. One one of the biggest fights is around claims. And we're seeing this whether you live in the Palisades or in Paradise. And so one, I want to freeze your rates when you file a claim. You shouldn't be utilized for using the business that you've been paying into, often for decades. Second, I want them to pay you interest every day they deny, delay, or underpay a valid claim. That is actually a big part
of their business strategy. Their main business is not really insurance, it's their banks. They take our premiums and they invest it in the bond markets. By the way, they're huge institutional investors in fossil fuel, which is driving climate disaster, and then they cancel coverage on the homes destroyed by it. So they try to keep their money in their float for as long as possible. So I also want to create a financial disincentive from doing that by having them
pay you interests. The other is that we want to really cap their profits, and that's something that the insurance Commissioner can do. In the rate setting, you ACA mandates that eighty five cents if every dollary paying premiums goes
back into paying claims. I think we should do the same for home insurance, maybe at sixty five cents a dollar, not even as high, or an auto insurance seventy five cents a dollar and making sure that and by the way, currently in California, it's roughly around forty nine cents of our premium dollars go back into paying claims and make sure that they're not spending it just on shareholders, CEOs and Super Bowl ads.
So what that's wild?
So of the of every dollar that goes into the insurance industry in California, forty nine cents comes back and claims, what's the other fifty one.
CeNSE go to?
Now, presumably, if I'm going to like kind of steal man, let's say the insurance industry argument, they'd say, well, for for disaster insurance, they don't hit every year, you know, so we need to build up massive reserves so that when they do hit that we can pay them off. So maybe you would need to stretch that out over a longer time horizon than one year. But like, what, so what are they where's that other fifty one cents going?
How much is going to that reserve and how much is going to profits or to kind of the operations required to keep their cash flow business going.
Okay, so let me start with their business model. So part of their revenue is, of course are premiums. And by the way, at least in the last few years, our premiums have outpaced what they have paid in claims, despite at least in California as some of the biggest fire claims payout in history. Too. They take our premiums and they invest it in what they call their float, so they invest it in the bond market or fossil fuels, and so all of this is a part of their
revenue model, and they're doing exceedingly well. Every billionaire invests in insurance. It makes a ton of money. And so when I say sixty five cents to a dollar, we're just talking about the premium revenue. And so the remainder goes to their shareholders. It goes to CEO pay. Of course, some of it goes to their reserves, it goes to their advertising. And what this office can do is that it can shine a light in terms of mandating that
we understand where our dollars are going. And by the way, this message resonated in Tuallomee County and Nevada and El Dorado, which are more rural areas of California, and it did well in Republican counities like San Diego, Riverside and in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, paulse. You know, insurance industries don't treat you differently because you're a Republican.
Everyone is feeling fleeced by the insurance industry and they see their rates go up, they see their coverage get canceled, and then they hear about how much money these industries are making. And one example I'll just give is in April, a Travelers, which is in the top ten of property casualty industry, announced that they did so well just in the first quarter of twenty twenty six. They had two point two billion in excess capital. What did they do
with it? They didn't provide discounts or refunds to their policyholders. They didn't invest back in the communities that they have profited from in the form of resilience, sand fireproofing, and floodproofing, which would collectively make us all safe. They gave it
all to their shareholders. And one of the reasons why I'm proposing a single payer, nonprofit, publicly run disaster insurance program guarantee for every home run or in California is that I want to claw back some of those premium dollars that we're already spending and have them stewarded by the public. We would invest those premiums as well, and when we have excess capital, like New Zealand, we would
invest it back into floodproofing and fireproofing and resiliency. And so there are two ways to lower your risk, right because ultimately that is what is driving up the cost of insurance. And if you want to make insurance affordable and available, you have to actually address risk. Private insurance market prices risk, and so we would take a portion of that revenue and actually invest it in making us
collectively safer. While the private insurance market reduces their risk by canceling covers are what they consider their sickest homes or their homes with pre existing condition. And by the way, this is not our idea. This is modeled after what we see in New Zealand. Frans and span also a form of a publicly run disaster in transfer all program.
Canada very interestingly has single pair auto insurance in some of their provinces, and they also use access capital to invest in roads and filling potholes because they know that that also will reduce risks in the future.
Yeah, there seems to be some real parallels there between the arguments for single payer healthcare as well, that the government would then be incentivized to do preventive medicine and to invest in clinics and and other you know, in primary care to try to make it so that people go to the er less and which is also then better for society.
People don't want to get sick. People don't want their houses to burn down.
I would imagine that one of the criticisms or the questions that you get that this is the thing that occurs to me is.
Okay, but what about that?
What about that house that's in the area that has burned down, well, you know, six times in the last ten years.
Or whatever, like that's.
A very real part.
Yeah.
I was just going to add like that's I randomly did a long investigation to the NFIP, the National Flood Insurance Program a while back, and it's what Ryan is saying is a real thing, at least with the NFIP, is that you have a house that keeps getting rebuilt like twenty times in some cases in a very dangerous flood zone. Which it's not just a problem for the raids, it puts people's lives at risk.
So sorry Ryan to interrupt you, No, that I think Emily and I have the same question.
What if you have a publicly run if you have a public option or a single payer system, how do you make sure that the public isn't helping somebody, you know, build a house on stilts every year.
Yeah.
So this is a big problem throughout the state of California. Because of our train and the size of our state, our geography, we experience almost every type of disaster climate disaster that you can imagine, much slides, floods, fires, and one thing that we have been thinking a lot about is that we would want to guarantee disaster insurance for existing homeowners and keep in mind right. Many of these homeowners moved into these parts of California long before they
became wildfire distress zones. In fact, what we call the WUUWI, the Wildfire Urban Interface, has grown one hundred and eleven percent since twenty eleven, so the wildfire regions moved into neighborhoods and areas. In many ways, we don't want to penalize these homeowners, many of whom are actually working class and middle class homeowners, not just wealthy vacation owners and the Palisades and Tahoe. They have nowhere else to go.
California is such an expensive state. There are very few places for them to relocate and move into, and so we would want to make sure that we covered folks and make sure that people aren't bankrupt or destitute. We wouldn't want to cover new developments in the WOWIE because we wouldn't want to give developers that type of incentive that they would get covered in case a disaster hit,
knowing that they are building in a waldfire zone. But we have a very big problem across the country because, as I mentioned, the WEI has expanded one hundred and eleven percent, So even if you live in a safe zone today, you may not in five or ten years. And so it's going to take way more than just insurance as a tool for us to become more resilient as country. We actually have to take on fossil fuels.
So we keep talking about how homeowners and the public is going to pay for these disasters, but we haven't yet talked about how we're going to hold fossil fuels accountable. And also are dependent on fossil fuels, so all we have to make polluters pay, and we need to. We need to revamp our land use and our building code as well to become more resilient. But the one other idea that we are considering is allowing structural coverage to
be used for relocation and replacement. So if your home does burn down, you can take the insurance that you get and instead of rebuilding that you're allowed to actually use it to move and buy another home.
Oh, because currently you have to end it right there.
Yes, yes, so that's.
A great idea.
Exactly, if you have insurance and you're down, the only thing you can do with that money is rebuilt.
Yeah, right now, it's a no brainer. Come on, come on, California, This is, and everybody else should do this and.
Everybody else right, it's not just California, I mean Texas, Florida, Nebraska. Actually the biggest claims payout is wind and.
Hail, right, fascinating, fascinating. Oh, Jane Kim, one of the two Democratic nominees for insurance Commissioner in California, Thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me and covering one of the most important jobs you may have never heard of, that really sits at this incredibly interesting fascination around economic fairness, wealth inequality, and climate injustice. And really excited to be in this race for this office. Thank you for having me on.
Yeah, I look forward to having you back whenever you come back on, assuming you do become the commissioner, it will be in difficult situations, no doubt, but interesting ones that we have to grapple with as a country and a society.
So glad somebody's thinking about it.
Were joined in studio this time by friend of the show. Wanted to Vid Rojas. He's an independent journalist. You can find his writing all the time over at Compact. He had a big, big story about his work kind of as a social worker with people who had come during the Biden surge and we're making asylum claims, and some big takeaways from the piece we want to talk about Claudia Shinbaum, We want to talk about some different things
happening around Latin America. Pete Hegseeth is actually at Guantanamo Bay today, but let's start just with some of the big picture takeaways that you had through your time spent actually working in this capacity with people who are trying to make asylum claims, who are trying to be here in the United States as long as possible during the Biden years. What'd you find out?
Yeah, so I worked as a social worker with what are called you see and accompany children. Those are miners under the age of eighteen who like come to the border without like parents or legal guardians, and so they're like held in a shelter and release of what are called sponsors, typically family members, but not always sometimes sometimes this and relatives and sometimes even people who they're not related to.
In the slightest we.
Should mention by the way, people may be familiar with us from a huge New York Times story on Javier Bessera, who is making the runoff in the Calivernia governor's race is going to be against Steve Hilton. This is a huge piece of baggage that Javier Bsara now comes in because while you were working in this capacity, New York Times in a deep dive on how many U sees ended up.
Go on, Yeah, it became a political issue. So I was a case manager and so basically, like my job is, once like these kids were released to sponsors, you have to check on them, make sure that they track their immigration hearings, get like pro bonomo attorneys, you know, have a roof over their head, stuff like that. And you know, this piece took me a really long time to write.
It was really hot to write. It's a very delicate issue and I wanted, like people from both sides of the aisle to take like the right.
Things out of it.
And that New York Times piece you mentioned, I can thankfully say that during my time there was only one case that I sid in the peace of a miner who went like that you just ran away and couldn't find them in anyway. Yeah, yeah, yea, yeah, that's another thing. I worked in South Florida, the Miami office of this agency. So like Cubans, Venezuela, Yeah, yeah.
South Americans, et cetera.
And well, you know, the thing about one of the main things for on Left of Center that I wanted people to take out of the piece is that, you know, there's this idea typically that it's.
Like, oh, you know, if you come here.
To arrive at the border, like you know, you must be really desperate, you're fleeing violent stuff like that.
That is the case.
But in my experience, and this is also reporting that has been done, the vast majority of these asylum claims are economic migrants, exactly, exactly.
Yeah.
So yeah, and I worked in twenty twenty two, twenty twenty three, I've had a tricuratus professional career of journalism.
Was kind of an accident.
But but yeah, yeah, you know, in my experience, these were all very hard working, loving families. But in my experience, again it was a small minority of people. Yeah, you know, we're like fleeing persecution from the Ortega dictatorship, the Cuban regime,
of violence, from gangs. The rest wanted typically just to work in the US and maney other families, and some of them, to be fair, also wanted to go back and that's another complicated aspect of this that because like you know, you like come here either illegally or stillicit asylum,
then going back to your country sometimes becomes difficult. But essentially for on the like the right side of the aisle, like I try to be very compassionate and talk about like some of these stories even like people who like didn't have in my opinion, legitimate claims of asylum. These are good people, They're not all criminals. On the other hand, the issue I saw under Biden was there was just
no enforcement once people were inside of the country. And you look at the data deportations inside of the country, Interior enforcement under in Obama's first term was like two hundred thousand a year, then in by Trump's first term, I was like one hundred thousand, and then by Biden's term it was fifty thousand. Basically, once you get into the country, you don't get deported, so you know, and there's like debates about this that oh a lot of
people were deported at the border. Inside of the country, not so much. And the problem with that is you get this insane backlog of asylum claimants, and that hurts actual assylees because you have so many economic migrants crowding out people with legitimate claims, and so my perspective is there needs to be limits. I consider myself a social democrat, an old school social democrat, and in the olden days, social democrats were more restrictive on immigration. Yeah, not because
like immigrants are bad or anything like that. It's just there needs to be limits to these things. Like you want to have controls on capital, there needs to be limits on immigration thoughtfully. And it's same thing with like deportation. A critique I would have what I've seen now under Trump is like you just have these deliberate this deliberate abuse what I find to be gratuitously sadistic policies. People
are detained for like a year on end. I have a line on the piece that's like deportation should be neither pleasant nor like deliberately performative. And like Chris Kobak, former Attorney General of a Kansas Republican, he stressed that the best way to do this is to have a national regime of eve verify on employers, meaning you punish employers for contracting a legal labor and that would be a lot more efficient than having an eighty billion dollar ice.
Yes, well, and the economic conditions of these countries, whether it's Cuba or Venezuela, is extremely relevant to our incursions into those countries continuing under the Trump Absolutely.
Yeah, yes, Indeed, when you know, when we destroyed Mexico's kind of agricultural economy, we've sent a massive win nineties because they have of Mexican migrants northward. Mexico now doing much better. There's a lot we want to get get through with you. So to move to Mexico real quickly, we could put up f one here.
Walk us through what.
Is the cloudy cloudy Scheinbaum was celebrating the launch of this like five thousand dollars you know, electric vehicle, this van. If you're not watching it kind of as Mac described, it kind of looks like a little airport shuttle. I would love to have one of these guys a tool around the neighborhood. Five thousand bucks. Yeah, like the smart cars, right yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaking of social democrats.
So what's so, what's going on with Mexico's kind of ev industry? Is this are are we headed to a place where the US is going to just be making you know, fifty to sixty thousand dollars, you know, gas guzzlers, while the rest of the country, while the rest of the world is just driving these five to ten thousand dollars EV's like, how long is that gonna last?
What is what is going on here?
And she's doing this on the eve of the World Cup Bush Mexican as well Mexican Games games in Mexico on Thursday. Lots of anxiety about potential violence. You ow and Girl had a good piece on that and those kind of tensions.
So there's politics in there too.
Totally, totally yeah that I believe.
It's called the Oina and it's not very fast. I think it's top speed, doesn't look for miles an hour, and so like some of the opposition have said that, oh it's basically just a glorified scooter, but I mean, yeah, that could reasonably get you around and like some big cities, like that's a flagship that the Mexican government had they wanted to have their own Mexican manufacture. Is there a Chinese partnership, Like what's the I don't think so. I
think it was pretty Mexican made. Now there's a ton of Mexican evs in China and a lot of anxiety of that if they'll ever be let into the US, and you mean Chinese Chinese vs. In Mexico that will be let in and I actually you guys bring that up with an after that's a good point. Like Mexican immigration, for instance, has gone down, all immigration to the US has gone down a lot, actually commers at this point, I think, so, yeah, there's even a lot of people that are going back and a.
Have to destroy way more going to Mexican that too, expats. Yeah, something like two million.
What do we call that Mexic paths is not migrants? Well, probably not migrants. That's a that's another story. But we try to use language here like equally. So, yeah, American US migrants.
US migrants.
Yeah.
Well Pete Hegseth.
In making Mexican jobs laptop jobs that Mexicans won't.
Do in Gwandan Mobay today becoming another US official to visit the to visit the island of Cuba in recent weeks, raising all kinds of anxieties of course among the skeptics of a potential US intervention.
Now you follow this.
Very closely at one so with Hext now making the trip Radcliffe has made the trip. You're reading the tea leaves. What's your expectation about what could come in the days and weeks ahead.
Yeah, I think we'll probably see the strikes of something, some sort of Maduro operation. Who knows, maybe they'll even go for a full invasion. I mean right now, there's like they basically have all the same assets they had for the Maduro operation, around ten thousand troops. The thing is Cuba is a lot smaller, has more favorable geography, and you know, there's a history there.
And the lobby. I could see them pushing for this.
On the other hand, you know, with Iran that's complicated and actually trying this to our initial conversation. You know, like under Biden, it was something like three million Cubans left the island, half of which came here and especially to South Florida, a lot of people that I worked with. Now under Trump, if you didn't have such like restrictive policies at the border, you'd have millions of Cubans still coming in. And actually this is something that went under
noticed the Nicaraguan government. Yeah, in twenty twenty two, they remove visas on Cubans and that allowed Cubans to just go to Nicaragua and then straight to the US. They put visas back on apparently as a gesture to the Trump ad minister. Should guess it didn't work because they just got sanctioned a bunch a few days ago.
You probably talked to people who'd done that. I talked too, Yeah, yeah, who had done that too in Mexico. I went through Nicaragua and then right up to the US.
So and yeah, and so this is just to me logical that, hey, if you don't want to have millions of people coming here yet. On the one side, yet I disagree that, you know, the immigration policy should be so relaxed, especially with asylum.
I think there should be a lot of reform.
On the other hand, we shouldn't go about wanton intervening in all of these countries.
It's completely counterproductive.
Yes, give us a quick update while we have you on the elections. Elections in Colombia, elections, brew As is the believing government can fall brazilkly.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a lot. Bolivia. Yeah, I don't know.
I don't think the government is going to finish its term. But yeah, maybe support from the US will help there's elections right now in Peru and in Colombia. They're still counting votes in Peru. It's like the closest in La Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know a lot of people pointed that out that Peru counted however many votes, but yeah, there's like ninety seven ninety seven percent of the vote counted and it's like fifty point zero something to forty nine point nine to nine something.
So yeah, these elections, left is up by a little bit, slightly slightly.
The problem is the votes coming in now are mainly like super rural, which are in favor of the left, and and abroad that are super in favor of Fuhimori.
It's I always find it interesting that in South America the rural votes are more left wing.
Sometimes it depends. In Peru's interesting because a lot of these leftists, I call them base leftists. They're like socially conservative right, but you know, economically left wing and uh. And you know this makes sense because they're based is rural and so in like the highlands in Peru.
Uh.
This guy, the current candidate, his big promise was to pardon former president be Castidio, the guy with the hat, and this guy like he was like an evangelical, like pro life, like anti LGBT, super right way social issues and so this this guy Sanchez, is that he's not as like he he's a background as a psychologist, and so his track record in Congress was he said he's
in favor of like civil unions stuff like that. But he still like builds himself as like pro life and a man of faith and stuff like that.
But it's still left wing.
And so you know, the narrative you usually here is just that it's communism versus capitalism.
Looks like they're doing well in Columbia.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it looks like there's this crazy mob lawyer. He was a lawyer for like drug trafficking paramilitaries and former president Udie who's currently under trial and so.
Pardon him you never know, yeah traffick. Yes, well one front of the show. Go check him out on social media. Has a sub stack as well. I know you're taking some reporting trips to South America and all over Latin America in the days and weeks ahead. So thank you for joining us in the studio. It was a pleasure to have you here for the first time. You saw in the studio.
Thanks for having me you guys, of course, Well that's.
Going to do it for us on today's edition of Breaking Points. We so appreciate you taking the time to be with us on this Wednesday, Ryan.
Anything else, that's it.
Ryan has declared it is over all right. Well, Ryan and I will see you on Friday, crystalin soccer. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Have a great one, everyone,