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Week this month if you use promo god BP free, so stick around for that. Also, you get the AMA Ask Me Anything, Lives and all that fun stuff. So go ahead Breakingpoints dot Com if you want to try it out. Ryan, We have a big show to start with today. Elon Musk is now on a rampage against administration. He just left. We have updates out of Gaza. We have Truck Schumer with an incredible video.
That looks like an attack on her on basically.
About Taco Trump Taco Trump, so stick around for that. We have a little exclusive from the State Department this morning pertaining to a controversy over one of their employees. So we're going to do that and talk about updates from Ukraine. Joy Reid is way in more on why she left MSNBC, so we have some video of her and Wanda vid Rojas from Compact joins us to talk about Trump's the conflicting what do we say, the conflicting tradiction, Yeah,
the factions in Trump world. That seems some people seem to want a new policy in Latin America. Other people seem to be clinging to the Cold War mentality. And no surprise there, but Wandavida has been covering all of it, and he's going to join us to talk about that.
Yes, indeed, all.
Right, let's dive in Ryan with Elon Musk. Playbook actually counted that Elon Musk posted thirteen times over the course of six hours yesterday, rampaging against Donald Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, which we can announce we can now abbreviate helpfully as BBB, which is by BBB. Is that the grade of your watching this?
So let's put are they mimicking build back Better?
Is that what they were trying to do there?
Or the Better Business Bureau? There's too many triple bes. This is literally that's.
Where the bond rating is going. If you passed this, if we're.
Lucky, so we can put this up on the screen. Elon's tweet here, I guess we have to call it a post on X.
We don't know what we don't, he goes.
Tweet, he goes, I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous pork Field Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it. You know you did wrong. You know it, He adds, it will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to two and a half trillion dollars and burden American citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt. Right, there is a lot to
talk about here. I just want to start by saying the central premise of Republicans pushing the big beautiful bill is that that two and a half trillion number is wrong, that the Congressional Budget Office is underestimating the growth that'll come as part of this bill. So Elon Musk is not just pushing back on the bill. He is now adopting the counter Naar narrative. And he's not the only one. You know, people like Ron Johnson and Rand Paul are
as well. But this is a man who is like a week out of his special government employee status at the White House, and he sounds a whole lot like Rand Paul. And again, Elon Musk was not going anywhere near significant criticisms just a week ago.
I'm on the Musk side here because there's two, you know, two types of quote unquote growth that people might be referring to. One is asset inflation, which is basically the stock market goes up and we get a housing bubble, and certainly the more debt we circulate and you know, the more like let's say you start having bitcoin backup treasuries, Like, yes, you can get a run up then in asset prices. That's not economic growth, though, because the way to get
economic growth either expand productivity or invest or. You invest in things that you know yield back, you know, actual returns for people in the real economy, and cutting taxes for the rich doesn't do that because unlike, you know, Elon Musk might be the exception among billionaires because apparently he doesn't spend a whole lot of money.
You know, he doesn't have like fifteen different.
Houses, is fifteen different children probably, Well.
That's true.
He probably spends on all of his different children in the amount that a normal billionaire spends on their houses. He also flies everywhere. It's not like he's living a cheap.
Life's a monk.
The point is he's so rich, and these other rich people are so rich that giving them more money doesn't mean they spend more. If you give a normal person a little extra money, if you give a mouse a cookie, they're going to spend it. Yes, yeah, I mean actually if you give him as a cookie is sort of the explanation for how this works. But if you give a regular person money, they're going to spend it because there's things that they want that they can't have because
they don't have enough money. If you give a billionaire another fifty thousand dollars, they don't even notice for the most part, might see his uptick in this in the stock market. So that that's why I think to the higher estimate is probably more accurate. Now, if I want to nitpick him, is there pork in this bill? Pork is where you're like, hey, we're this community center or this bridge in this district in Kentucky is going to get seventy five million dollars.
There is there some of that in there.
So that is definitely a nitpick because no, I'm what.
They're going to do is the Trump administration will then do it for them rather than put it in the bill.
Yeah, and that's sort of similar to the Biden Infrastructure Bill. But that's actually part of the problem that some people like Elon Musk and Ran Paul have with it is that it hasn't fully dismantled. So Republicans are chalking this up to Elon must be mad that it gets rid of some of the EV like Biden's EV support package.
It's crazy, like who spends one hundreds of millions of dollars and gets well, I mean he got all his investigations knocked away. But yeah, he's getting absolutely routed when it comes to the government benefits that he was getting.
I just don't know how important that is to him. I mean, it's important to Tesla, But how important is Tesla? How important is Tesla in his portfolio?
Is leverage? He is highly leveraged. His collateral is Tesla's st Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, that collapses. Then the bankers start calling, and the bankers he does not have the kind of bankers that you want calling.
These are people who are like.
Hey, why don't we meet in the consulate in Istanbul, the Saudi consulate in Istanbill to talk about you're a little bit overdue on your latest payment and then you go and then you leave in a bucket.
So he's actually by complaining about pork, asking for pork for Elon. If that's his definition of pork, which is, you know, something that's inserted into the bill to please the very particular or niche interest of the donor class, is not really the technical definition of pork, but there is. Some people are upset that there haven't been This is up out in the Wall Street drawer. There haven't been. There There isn't enough dismantling of the Biden agenda in
this bill. But that's of course what's upsetting to Elon. And this is where Trump right now is between a rock and a hard place, because moderates say the bill is already cutting too much, and then people like Rand Paul and Ron Johnson say the bill is not cutting enough. And that includes now, I suppose Elon Musk. So let's go ahead and roll a three. This is Rand Paul on Fox Yesterday, Fox Business Yesterday.
In a separate post, Trump said there's a false narrative about spending in this bill. He said it is quote single biggest spending cut in history by far. Kentucky Centator round, Paul joins me. Now, missus, Senator, I know you want more spending cuts included in the bill. Can you tell us what specifically you'd want to cut.
Yeah, it's even more than that.
The biggest objection I have to the bill is adding five trillion dollars to the debt ceiling. I'm actually very supportive of the tax cuts. I don't accept the CBO notion that the tax cuts will lead to deficits. The reason I believe there will be more deficits is they're raising the debt ceiling five trillion.
We know that this year.
Most of the Republicans, not me, voted to continue the Biden's spending levels in March, so we're going to go through September of this year, and the deficit.
For this year is going to be over two trillion.
If you're borrowing five trillion, that makes me think you're going to add over two trillion, maybe two point eight trillion next year. So it doesn't show me that you've turned around. If you look at the spending cuts, it's complicated because it's at one point five trillion. It sounds like it's enormous number, but it's over ten years. So it's one hundred and fifty billion a year. They're also increasing spending for the military and for the border three
hundred billion. That's actually more than all the Doze cuts that we've found so far. So something doesn't really add up here. And I can't be on record as being one who supports increasing the debt by five trillion. I think that's irresponsible. The bond markets are already starting to show that their skittish over this. We got interest rates of over five percent on the ten year bonds. There are real problems we face as a country and we can't just blithely go on the way we have in the past.
So Ron Johnson also specifically said that he's very concerned about how the bill will affect the bond markets, which is a completely reasonable concern. Interesting, yeah, right now he's no. And they say they only need four of them. That's the line that you keep hearing from Rand Paul and others in the Senate. They only need to band together four people, and that could mean an unusual marriage between right Susan Collins.
So is Utah liberals gonna We'll see.
But there, I mean, you might not even need that because if you combine the fiscal hawks with the moderates, you're already easily at four.
So well Collins, Collins get the four.
Collins will be wobbly on because of Medicaid. That's she's already indicated.
Your asking Mains senator to cut energy assistance, oil assistance for working people in winter in Main.
Then also, this is where it gets even worse for Republicans.
They have to gets called there. Yeah.
Also last they then have to kick this back over to the House to approve the changes. And everybody remembers that this only went over to the Senate because Mike Johnson cut a deal with some of the fiscal hawks in the House to basically rubber stamp it and say, we trust the President to work with the Senate to get a better deal, but we don't like this bill. We're not voting for this bill. We're voting basically to send it over to the Senate and to get the
ball rolling. They want to have this bill done. Donald Trump continues to push to have this bill done by a month from today, July fourth. They want the bill to be signed and enacted by the fourth.
Of July, trying to get it done fast.
Otherwise you start losing to the recess and you're into the fall, and then you're into midterms. So it sounds ridiculous because we're only a few months into the presidency, but it comes up really. Midterms come up really fast, especially because Congress gets so much time off.
And so the House hawks they want the bill to get to add spending cuts in the Senate, right Whereas in order to get the senators that are wobbly, to get Ran Paul, you'd have to do more cuts like the hawks in the House want, But to get Murkowski and Collins.
You'd have to do fewer cuts, right yah.
And the Pentagon just you can't like, we're doing a trillion dollars for the Pentagon and that's all there is. Like there's no nobody can come in and be like, hey, guys, what if we didn't like massively increase the Pentagon budget.
So this is where Elon Musk, while he's siding with Rand Paul. Here you also heard Rand Paul throw a little bit very subtle dig at Doge, saying that the spending is higher than the Doge cuts and that's because a lot of Republicans in order to get this bill passed, which by The way is, as we've talked about, a really critical element of the tariff agenda. So they believe that the teriff Agenda, this is the sort of necessary supplement to it that creates an industrial policy for onsuring.
We could debate whether or not that's the case, but it has things like one ride offs retroactive to January twentieth for factory building, manufacturing building, all that kind of stuff. I think the corporate tax rate going from twenty one to fifteen is industrial policy. So they feel like this
is an absolutely essential part of the tariff agenda. All of that was predicated on the idea that Doge was going to find so many cuts in the government that they could basically do whatever they wanted to do with this bill.
This is where I start to worry about your people, my pav pol. Yeah, that anybody took seriously the claim for Elon Musk that he was going to cut a trillion dollars and at one point he said it was going to be two trillion dollars makes me worry about them, makes me for viewers and for regular people whose media diet has been telling them that there's waste, fraud and abuse shot through the federal.
Government, their entire lives.
I don't blame those people who believed that this was going to be possible.
I don't even blame Elon Musk.
He's just drug addled like tech guy who just like most tech people, like, doesn't know anything outside of like this very narrow area, but thinks they're experts everywhere.
That's just his personality types. So I don't even blame him.
But the people who've spent ten decades in Washington thinking that Elon Musk was going to come in and identify trillions of dollars in like painless waste fraud abuse, that makes me worry about them if they were not just cynically using him. Steve Bannon, friend of the show, you know, was saying from the very beginning, this is a fraud.
And now they wouldn't go to the Pentagon, right, And now he's been saying, look all of these people in Washington, these Republicans in Washington, didn't want to make the painful cuts, and so they just put their faith in Elon Musk that he was going to find this this trillion dollars. He didn't find it, he was never going to find it, and so he marched them into this place where now they've got all the tax cuts ready to go and
the Pentagon spending, but they don't have the cuts. The cuts were never there because they weren't willing to go after power centers like Medicaid and Medicare. Fraud is on the provider side. It's the it's the private equity owned doctors. It's the straight up fraudulent just you know, just put bars around Miami. Don't let anybody leave until you find every Medicare fraudster. Yes, I mean, ask Rick Scott medicare fraudster. Who's the senator from my from Florida, Like ask him, like, hey,
how'd you do that? And he could tell you in like two minutes. Oh, it's really easy. You just claim that you did services that you didn't do, and you send that to the federal government. The federal government, with no questions asked, sends you money and we're like, oh, well, we have AI now that could maybe detect that stuff. Like maybe you have to send an actual photo of Oh you say you sell wheelchairs, you say you sell scooters, Send us a picture of the scooter and we're going
to reverse Google search image of that thing. Make sure you didn't just pull it off the web. You can stop this stuff.
It is.
It's not that difficult.
But what's difficult is doing it politically, because these are white collar criminals who have bought off the system and have gotten themselves elected into the system. Well, so that's why you weren't going to find the trillion dollars.
It's partially a matter of semantics too, because when they say things like widespread fraud and abuse, I actually agree with that, But so what are they looking at right now? Like one hundred and sixty What is one hundred and sixty billion in cuts from dose?
That's the top line nonsense.
The way to actually calculate what they really saved would be how much is Congress quote unquote rescinding.
That's money that was spent.
But then because you found the fraud abuse, Congress can just take it back, and that's nine billion.
That's insane.
Two of that is NPR and PBS, which you don't need Doge to like defund NPR and PBS. That's an ideological thing that they can just do. So that's seven and a bunch of that is like leases and lit's just stuff that and God help us if any of that actually saves us money, Like this is probably stuff that you cut that seven billion dollars, it's going to end up costing the federal government more money down the road. But okay, fine, seven billion, he found seven billion. How
do we know that none of it was fraud? Because have you seen a single headline about DOGE referring a frauds Department of Justice? It's a lot of would that not be just leading everywhere? Well, there we got them, ladies and gentlemen, you.
Got them definitely. Okay, So this is what I mean semantics the waste question. Yeah, I mean, but if you're saying widespread to the tune of two trillion dollars, which is what he projected, what you end up finding and let me say, plenty of waste at the Pentagon that they could have gone after. So no, I do think there's.
Like why are we doing?
He could have been like, hey, guys, why are we building another nuclear triad?
Like we don't need it?
Like they're talking about spending a trillion dollars yep on a new batch of nuclear weapons yep. You could you could be like, hey, number one on the agenda, what let's just not do this, yeah, and make people argue why you should do it, Like, actually, all right, we heard the arguments we have enough nuclear weapons that we can kill everyone on the planet one hundred and seventy five times over.
We're good trillion dollars.
Saved that you would that would actually but guess what that would mean special interests who are involved in that nuclear program would it would have to take a haircut, and they don't want to do that.
So that is to say, the question of how widespread it is versus the just amount of money that we spend on medicaid for example, Medicare, Medicaid, social Security, it just pales. And the Pentagon budget too, although you could actually just delete the Pentagon, you could go to the entire defense budget and it would not make a dent in the deficit, which sounds crazy, or in the debt, i should say, which sounds crazy, but's true. At the manhattan'stude,
they've run the numbers on that. So it's just like the fiscal hawks there have run the numbers on that. It's it's really really good.
It would get your it would get your lines closer, which is what the market really cares about.
Yeah, yeah, it would be helpful for that type of.
Thing doesn't close everything because you've got thirty trillion dollar debt right now roughly.
It's I mean, it's still pale. Like Actually, defense spending pales in comparison to how much money the expenditures, annual expenditures on Medicaid, Medicare and those things.
I mean, if if you took a trillion out, then that thirty trillion dollar dead starts to shrink. However, actually it doesn't.
It does.
It does then it is the American military that makes the dollar the reserve currency. Right, so the whole thing collapses without the military.
It's so much fun.
But maybe you don't need a trillion dollar one.
But that's what gives people like Ron Johnson pause. And this Ron Johnson from the Tea Party Wave by the way, who is talking about how now is not the time to be cutting taxes and he specifically has looked at the same said to look at the bond markets. He was just on Tucker Carlson Show actually making this case,
making basically an extended case against the BBB. So the Trump administration has a month to somehow get these dug in factions to the same place and I mean Rand Paul has said that he is ready to compromise, that he is he understands he's going to have to compromise.
If you are Mike Johnson and you have been giving Elon mus cover for months, you are just beside yourself and furious about this right now because he didn't find the cuts that he was supposed to find, and now he has the audacity to criticize your bill because after it is it is. At the same time, you also look at someone like Mike Johnson, you say you have the audacity to talk about government spending and then put a bill like this on the table. So just I
don't honestly, I don't know where they go. I mean, they're desperate, which means that they'll be willing to make significant compromises. I don't know that they even have a good idea of what some of those compromises might look like going forward. And that's pretty important for the way that they see the entire economy. The American economy is sort of hanging on whether or not they're able to get some version of this past. We will see Ryan
how that ends up. We will continue to follow the story.
Ryan, Let's move what's the next thing to watch on that, and then we'll go to So.
John Thune is meeting with Donald Trump at the White House today and they're hitdling on policy in the particularly tax policy. So we'll see what comes out of that.
It's going to be daily negotiations. I mean, I actually think Trump has had sort of a lighter schedule the last couple of days because he's working the phones and taking meetings try to get people into the same pay or onto the same page on this which it's just sort of at this point unfathomable what you can do to build up bridge, but they have a month to try.
Pierce Morgan has gotten increasingly fed up with the arguments that he's been hearing from defenders of Israel on his program in a way that I think is symbolic of the broader shift in Western media and politics going on at the moment that there have been a couple of viral moments just from the last twenty four hours. One of those we wanted to play here this is Natasha Hasdorff, who is a UK lawyer who represents Israel and went
on with both comic Dave Smith and Pierce Morgan. Though you'll see that Dave Smith plays the same role that you're going to play in this which is just watching.
So let's do that.
I was told by the investor to the UK it was a blood libel for me to suggest that Israeli killed children.
No, I don't believe that was the case. I want to do with targeting children. There is a difference because we are hearing that Israel's targeting children and that couldn't be further from Well.
Last week, nine out of ten children in one home where two doctors reside were killed in an air strike. What was that?
Remarkable?
What was that?
That has been based only on the basis of hearsay.
You don't believe that story?
Nation, I want these stories.
Wait, wait, wait a minute, you don't believe those children kill I have.
Seen conflicting accounts, and I want that story to be properly investigated before the international media runs with it.
Do you think those two parents, one of whom I think, operated on.
One of the children.
I have a question.
Do you think that those two doctors, the parents they just made it up? Why the nine of their ten children had been blown to pieces by and Israeli is right?
If this is true, you don't believe it, well, why.
On earth was artificially generated imagery used to promote this story when it first I've got to say, what.
You've just said about that family is despicable.
We've seen time. Sorry, it's despicable.
Somebody you talk about blood libel, like David said, you talk about blood libel, you talk about lies. You're talking about promoting propaganda. And who you sit here as a lawyer and you say that you do not believe those nine children were.
I didn't say that. You're putting it in my mouth.
Do you believe it or not?
Said that they were conflicted?
Do you believe it?
And it needs to be invested?
Do you believe it?
I thought you would be.
The parents said nine of their ten children were killed. Do you believe them or that there's two doctors make it up?
They haven't said that directly as far as I have seen, I have seen secondhand accounts and hearsay.
But it's important to ask why are these civilians still there? Why is it that you know?
It's important to usk whether you believe that family have lost nine of their ten children.
I want to know why the international don't do you don't?
And this goes to the point that I would say about Israel generally now in this wall, Israel says they don't believe anything everything. Every story that comes out about the deaths of civilians in Gaza, someone will pop up representing the Israeli governments saying it's propaganda, it's not true. I've heard it's.
Not right Emily the most revealing comment from her. I thought maybe it was accidental, but she said why are those civilians still there? Which I think what she's referring to is that, like six months before these nine children were killed, there was an evacuation order given for that area where they live. The problem with these evacuation orders is that they Israel does not they don't expire. They'll say, okay, we're going to be the IDEF is going to be
operating in this area. Everyone from this neighborhood leave, people leave, IDF comes in, and then the IDF leaves, and then everyone from the neighborhood comes back, and then six months later they bombit and say, well, we told you to leave. But the underlying quote there, what are these civilians still
doing there? I think represents this like deep, something deeper, like they are very frustrated that there are still civilians in Gaza twenty months later, I thought, why have we not fully expelled everybody yet, Like, what is going on here?
Why are you even still there?
And that brings us to this absolute calamity of an effort at AID distribution. Over this week, it's been a wild week because over the weekend, you remember, there's this massacre at about a kilometer from an AID distribution center. The IDF initially claimed that it had not fired any shots whatsoever. They sent an email out to some reporters that said, off the record, we did fire shots at the direction of suspects because we told them to stop
coming at us and they kept coming. So we did shoot, but we don't believe that we shot any right, They.
Said that off the record, and an email that also include the denial.
Right that also include the denial.
And so a reporter sent me this and like, Hey, I can't use this because I've agreed to receive these emails that are off the record. You haven't agreed to this, So I published that. So they're like, Okay, yes we did shoot, but we don't know who was hit, and like maybe there was Hamas And then they released this video that they said was hamas gunman doing the shooting.
Turned out that was at a different day, at a different location and where it was in Communis and it was gangs that were backed by Israel who had stolen aid and we're selling it and people who wouldn't pay
them for it, they were shooting them. So that fell apart the watching post yesterday, should this like incredible like correction that said, while three eye witnesses talking about the weekend massacre, while three eyewitnesses told the Washington Post that the gunfire came from the Israelis, Israel denied it, and we did not give proper weight to the Israeli denial in our original article. I can't imagine any other shooter
who would get that kind of grace. Even though three people said they saw you do it, you said you didn't, and we should have put it that you said you didn't right in the headline while this debate over the level of Israel's culpability of the weekend massacre was ongoing, I.
Say, by the way, I don't even object to that, because people can make up their own decisions about people are supposed to give weight on their own without necessarily being handheld to the journal, sayway, and.
So while this debate has been going on about what was Israel's responsibility for the massacre on over the weekend, there has been a masker every single day at a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation a distribution site, including just recently, including and again last night.
We can roll b one.
This is This is imagery from yesterday evening Gaza time where the Gods of Humanitarian Foundation announced that it was going to be pausing distribution because the Boston Consulting Group, which was the consulting for American consulting firm that basically did all the work to set up GHF, announced that it was leaving. They said, this was pro bono work and we're putting on leave the partner who brought us
into this debacle and we're not helping them anymore. Conflicting reports came out that they were they were sending million dollar invoices for the work that they've done here. I'm sure we'll see that sorted out in court.
Either way. The word goes out, Okay, we lost our consultant.
We're not We're not gonna We're not gonna do dis Truck drivers leak to their friends and family and Gaza. Hey, there's going to be a convoy going through that. That was Western Gaza City that you see. So a massive crowd convenes in Western Gaza City of starving people who are there hoping that they're going to be able to
like a truck will stop. And then what happens is when the truck stops, they just unload everything right there, and whoever is close enough to the truck and strong enough to like hold on to the bag of flower gets to like leave with the bag of flower in this hunger game style situation. And so while this chaos is unfolding, and what you see in the video there is people running from gunfire, different reports of where it was coming from, helicopters, quad copters. Again, you know, you
get you get denials. We can put up this next element, which I think is B six. So as we're going back and forth over you know what happened? Who did the shooting? Most of Babutoha, who you guys may remember. He's the Gaza poet who won a Pulitzer prize this year. He got this video where he says, I've just found this video posted by a mean's friend. The man's name. The man's named Amin Samir Khalifa. He documented the moment when Israeli soldiers opened fire at them yesterday morning. Amen
was killed along with over thirty people. The Israeli forces denied their responsibility for the killing, and the media changed their headlines. Can you tell us who killed Amen and the other star of people? And if you go find this on his feed, it's just an absolutely horrifying scene of explosions in gunfire. And then tell yourself this is billed as an aid distribution site. This is why you don't militarize aid distribution sites like they turn an AID
site into a war zone. For the first sixteen seventeen months of the war, the UN World Food Program, World Central Kitchen and others, you didn't see images like this. Occasionally you would see the flower Masacre, which involved the IDF. You saw World Central Kitchen trucks getting hit by the IDF. But you never saw the World of Food Program shooting at hungry people. And you never saw scenes of warehouses
getting mobbed or trucks getting mobbed. It's only when this program has taken over that that you start to see this. And I think because Pierce Morgan is covering this stuff every day that that's what accounts for his turn.
What do you think.
It's I think Piers Morgan as such a you just said turn, as such a staunch defender of the Israeli government and the Israeli side of the conflict, is representative of something that we've covered in general, which is the public sentiment in places like the UK and the US just shifting over the course of the post October seventh War in ways that I just people like the barrister he was interviewing are not at all prepared for. I
think it's catching them off guard to some extent. It was a really dark exchange, a really dark exchange in that video, and just watching the last video we watched and hearing thinking back to her point about why artificially intelligent videos a I generated videos had initially come out. That is so so dark when you think about it.
We're going to see that now exactly.
Anytime there'll be a masker going forward, there will also be some AI related content that comes out as well, and the people who carried out the masker will say, well, look, this part's fake, so maybe all of it's fake, and.
They may generate it.
They might generate, right, and that's.
Really really you may generate it as a shield. So it's just quite frightening to hear that line. It does I think grind smack of desperation. And the only other point I wanted to make is I think Piers Morgan is wrong. I think she actually does believe that the family was killed. I think that's probably why she didn't want to really answer the question. And that's to your point about the more interesting or the most interesting line being that why were they still there? Why were they
still in Gaza? I think she probably does believe that they were killed, and just doesn't feel the need to or doesn't feel like it would be advantageous for her to defend it. And so it's easier to say, from the sort of public relations cynical perspective, well, we don't really know what happened. The answer is that they believe the government believes that's the collateral damage.
Yeah, here's the exact line from the Washington Post. The Post didn't give proper weight to Israel's denial and gave improper certitude about what was known about any Israeli role in the shootings. The early versions fell short of Post standards of fairness and should not have been published in that form. This is after Bill Ackmen, like snitch tagged Jeff Bezos on Twitter.
I was like.
And saying that, like, this is the kind of thing that is producing anti semitism around the country.
It's like, No, the Washington Post reporting.
On these massacres is not what is driving anti semitism. And to me, none of it should be driving anti semitism either way, because Israel is a state and I refuse to allow Israel to claim that it represents an entire religion of thousands that is thousands of years old like that, that, to me is what everyone should be drawing a line at this that these actions do not represent Judaism.
Like how anti semitic would it be to say that they do.
The Bill Ackman niche tweet is it's a way to use that expand the definition of anti semitism to use as a shield that protects a political actor, a state actor from scrutiny, do scrutiny that would apply to any political or state actor in a conflict.
So their new version written to satisfy Bill Ackman says, while three witnesses said the gunfire came from Israeli military positions. The Israel Defense Forces denied the allegations, saying in a statement that an initial inquiry indicated that its soldiers did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the distribution site.
Then they add An.
Israeli military official later said that troops had quote acted to prevent several suspects from approaching unquote them overnight and fired warning shots at the group.
Well wait a minute, which is.
It, but that there was quote no connection between this incident and the false claims made against the IDF.
Okay, yes, so we.
Did shoot at those people at the time that this is said to have happened, but there's no connection between that. I have never seen a line that is closer to These are not the droids you're looking for.
Than that one.
Okay, yes we did it, but there's no connection between this incident and the false claims made against the IDF. Oh, these are not the droids we're looking for.
It's dark, really really dark stuff.
Meanwhile, the Gaza flotilla I believe it's called the Maldine is getting closer. We can put up this next element getting closer to Gaza. This borderline suicidal mission, which includes Greta Thurnberg and roughly what a dozen or so international activists. I'm trying to think if I see any Americans on here. I do not see any Americans on board this ship. We can put up before they posted this image or this this audio of a drone flying over top of them rolled before.
Hey everyone, this is Diaguablon here on board and Madeline. We are on our mission to break the stage of Gaza. Is that they're nine and there's a drone on.
Top of our ship.
We need your support right now, right now. Please tell everyone demand a safe passage. If this is an attack, we need your support right now.
This, of course, is after Lindsey Graham effectively called for Israeli sink the ship.
What do you say?
I hope that Greta can swim, And a bunch of other kind of pro Israel influencers we're making the same remarks that wouldn't it be great if Israel would just solve our Greta problem here and just, you know, sink this ship. After the twenty eleventh flotilla was rated by Israeli troops and I think eleven were killed.
So they're trying to distribute eight as my understanding, So how what do you think practically happens when they get so they I think set shell sail from Italy. So when they get can't I mean it can't be at this point too far away. What happens when they get there? Practically it would be your prediction.
I mean, they could just let them, Like it'd be wild if they just got out of their way and just let them land and let them distribute everything on the ship. There's no there's there's no way there's weapons on that ship. Just there's just no way, Like how suicidal would that be to have weapons on the ship, And so just let them give them meta food and medicines on the ship and let them just unload it and then go.
Back, go away Like that is a that is an option that is available to the Israelis at this moment.
That that that is not even being discussed in meetings about how to handle this is indicative of the tenor of the approach towards humanitarian aid. The best case scenario is that there's some Israeli naval ships that kind of stop the ship and turn it around within what Israel is considering the worst case scenari would be what happen in twenty eleven where they attacked the ship and board it and killed a bunch of people. And let's pray
that that doesn't happen. Yeah, what are we on next, Oh, Chuck Schumer.
We're going to talk about it ran, which is actually sadly a decent segue from this block to the next block, because we've seen the connection many times, so of course the last couple of weeks, but we do have a really incredible clip of Chuck Schumer, the most talented politician of his general.
That's right, and so let's set up to context here. So Steve Wikoff, who is managing both the Ukraine file, the Iran file, and the Gaza file for Trump.
The same day he's.
Dealing with a negotiations between Hamas and Israel over US ceasefire, he sent a proposal to Iran around they're re entering.
The nuclear deal, in which Barack revealed it.
Axios reported the US conceded that Iran would be able to enrich at a civilian level, so there'd be Titans in spections. They'd have to blow up a bunch of their kind of weaponized program. No new centrifuges, but they would be able to pursue a civilian program.
That gets leaked to Revede.
Donald Trump then about five hours later, goes on truth Social and says absolutely no enrichment happening. Forget it Mullis, which then led head to Chuck Schumer injecting himself into the negotiations.
This way, when it comes to negotiating with the terrorist government of Iran, Trump's all over the lot. One day, sounds tough, the next day he's backing off, and now all of a sudden we find out that Witkoff and Rubio are negotiation eating a secret side deal with Iran. What kind of bull is this? They're going to sound tough in public and then have a side deal. It lets Iran get away with everything. That's outrageous. We need to make that side deal public. Any side deal should
be before Congress and most importantly, the American people. If Taco Trump is already folding, the American public should know about it.
No side deals, So Tago Trump, that's Trump always chickens out as the Wall Street phrase for it's okay to you go along on Because Trump is going to back off of his tariffs and now there's Schumer trying to use it to egg on a war with Iran.
So it leads to this open question of what's actually in the proposal?
It is there Richmond or is there not in Richmond? And we'll roll Samuel Aarry in just one second, who's a Palacinian who is very.
Well connected in.
And has connections to people who are familiar with the negotiations. We interviewed him yesterday at drop site. We can roll what he says about the enrichment, what's in? What's in it regarding enrichment? But think about this, what are the chances zero percent to one hundred percent that Donald Trump has read Wittkoff's proposal that he delivered to Iran? Because we're making news based off of what Trump says about the proposal, h so we should know.
Do you think he read it?
Did you see the report last week that Telsea Gabbard had been preparing to shift the daily intelligence briefing to look like a cable news segment. So it's not in you didn't see this, it's not You don't.
Have to read.
It, right, you don't have to read it, but that.
Do the like do it as a stand up from a couch.
Trump is famously not super interested in written text, and so that's it seems to me that through word of mouth he could be getting different versions of what's in the wit CO, what different spin in frame.
Exactly what Trump knows about that proposal is what he was told about it.
No way he read it. Now about my life that he did not read this proposal.
Samuel Arion, We asked him if he had any sense of what was in it?
And this is C five, let's jump to that one.
What can we understand about what the actual offer is from the US to the Iranians?
Right?
Yeah, I mean it's incredible that you have one person who's acting like the effective Secretary state. That's Steve Wickoff, someone has never been confirmed by anybody, has never been accountable to anybody except the Trump That's I think that's the first, probably in America's history, when it comes to one person, one void having all these very crucial files. You have the Gaza fhile, the Iran file and the
Ukraine file. Leaven that aside. My information, which is confirmed through what has been reported by in Iran, is that indeed the the the letter that was sent by the Americans does concede and this is this is very much confirmed, concedes the right of Iran to enritually. So that's that spoint's already been conceded by the United States, which opened the possibility of reaching an agreement. The second point, they
wanted to freeze the enrichment. The Americans wanted to freeze their enrichment and offered that they could be a regional hub by which they could be enrichment activities in which Iran can participate. Now the details are not very clear, but the Iranians are very much encouraged by the fact that the Americans have already conceded the point that Iran was not willing to walk away if it was willing
to walk away if that was never conceded. So the fact that the Americans have really considered this point that opens the passibility of an agreement. The Americans offered a three point sixty seven percent I think, whether it's three point sixty seven percent or more or less, obviously it's going to be less than twenty percent depending on the application,
is something probably that is subject to negotiations. But the Americans never talked about the ballistic program, the rocket program or the support of other non state actors, particularly when it comes to Israel Palestine. So having the fact that the Americans are not tying or linking these objects, and that the Americans conceded the point, the possibility of reaching an agreement now is much much higher than it was a week or ten days ago, or even months ago.
Will the Israelis accept this, Will they sabotage They will definitely do everything in their power to sabotage this. But again, because this is a state actor and the implications of any military strike on Iran is going to be catastrophe not only against US interest but globally it will be filled, I think the Americans will be very very careful not to allow the isoelists to subletype.
So you can imagine why the Israelies are upset about this, not only as far as our you know, our sources and Ravined understand it. It does allow some low level of enrichment and does not stop them from supporting amas nce A law, Iraqi militious. You know, the whole set of proxies as Bela and the ballistic missile program is something that is dear to the hearts of the israel government.
As well, because that is the delivery mechanism for the most part.
This is so you can imagine why they're upset, and humor is channeling that right.
New York Times this morning, the Trump administration is proposing an arrangement that would allow Iran to continue enriching uranium at low levels while the US and other countries work out a more detailed plan intended to block Iran's path to a nuclear weapon. The propose will announce to a diplomatic bridge intended to maneuver beyond the current situation, but the details remain big, and the two sides remain far
apart on some elements. So potentially what's emerging here is a pitch from whitch cough for a bridge, like to say, will allow low levels. But that's not the final deal. That's our bridge deal, and who knows if the other deal actually ever comes, But that seems to be potentially what the administration is landing on as an effort to sell this to the Lindsay Grahams of the world.
Yeah, which they don't seem interested because also they don't want No, they don't they don't want it to work because they don't want sanctions lifted.
Like that, and that's the key.
That's another thing that Samuel Arien talked about is that the key thing that isn't getting a lot of focus here in the US is that Iran's major interest here is not just the economic sanctions, which are increasing less important than the various terror designations they want because if you, as Cuba has found out, like the the fact that Cuba is listed as this like state sponsor of terror makes it so that they can't bank with anybody anywhere,
and they're like, what terrorism like, we're not doing any terrorism like that, setting Cuba side.
So we'll talk to talk about that with one roal US.
Yeah, exactly.
But Iran, you can make a stronger case if you believe that all of these organizations are terror groups which the US designates them. They know Ron does support them, so Ron wants, you know, those things lifted. And if they don't get that lift, what's the point We're not going to give up our turn to turn.
It if we don't get economic advantage out of it.
I mean, Chuck Schumer, actually I'm curious how you make it the way that Chuck Schumer is framing this, because there's the it's oppositional Trump framing. But we can put C two on the screen. This is polling from the Brookings Institution. Most respondents prefer a deal limiting Iran to a peaceful nuclear program. Only fourteen percent of Americans back
military action to Roy Aron's nuclear program. So, thinking back and how the Republican Party framed the Obama nuclear the Obama around nuclear deal, the politics of this for Chuck Schumer going after Taco Trump are also kind of interesting, don't I don't know what they're quite what they're thinking with this.
Ryan Well, either the utility or the futility of Taco Trump is demonstrated in this moment because I actually used the exact same phrase on TikTok.
I just Chuck Schumer and I are both you know, TikTok.
Natives, right, digital natives, and we both.
Went after Trump over this.
I went after him from the opposite side for undermining Witcoff's offer and called him Taco Trump for his truth social where he said there can be no in Richmond. Yeah, because he's chickening out against Schumer and then Yahoo and the rest are pushing on him. Schumer's calling him Taco Trump for the original witcough proposal, right right, So Taco Trump, it might not it might fall apart because it might
just be too useful. It's just you can just use it constantly, and anything that like is that vague that ends ends up getting drained a meaning and it loses its pop.
Well, it also sounds just kind of whimsical. It makes everyone think of tacos, which they love.
So putting something you love keeps being bothered by it, then it will it will maintain its resonance.
Well, he seems to not like it.
I was gonna say, so C three we can put on the screen. This is Access reporting that the DNC rented at Taco Trump to mock to mock Trump on the costumes.
He's not going to like that.
He's really not gonna like that. But at a certain point if it gets if it becomes like dem leadership cringe, then it probably does lose its power with Trump. It probably becomes a meme of how pathetic it is to see Chuck Schumer looking like he's literally in a nursing home, which I suppose literally is because he's in the Senate in that video that we played, like saying Taco Trump to what egg Trump into a nuclear.
Conflict and also putting tariffs on the entire world, Like this is what democrats are daring him to start a war with Iran and put tariffs, high tariffs on everybody everywhere around the world.
Right, right, things are going great, could not possibly be going better. So all is all is well. But Chuck Schumer is a star.
He is a star. You scroll back and see, like just the star power just pops off the screen, It jumps right out. How many takes that was? What do you think?
That's a good question because is he reading off a prompter? Did he have to memorize lines? Do they have Q cards where she gets the bottom un?
I think that I think he didn't. I think it was off the cuff.
You should be able to do that.
But it was third or fourth take.
Yeah, let's move on to Ukraine. Ryan.
Yes, so we're on the brink of nuclear annihilation in right here in Washington everywhere around the world. As the escalatory ladder continues to be climbed by by Ukraine.
We put this vo up here.
This is footage of the crimea bridge boom going boom.
This this was many months of planning. According to.
Ukraine, they strapped enormous amounts of explosives as you can see there to to the the base of the bridge. Apparently it's back up and running. So maybe we can take a step down.
One of the more important bridges.
Yes, the Crimea Bridge.
It's a it's not just a prize infrastructure project of Putin, but you know, economically and culturally, it's extremely important for connecting you know, Crimea with.
The say, the rest of Russia.
At this point, this comes after this you know wild drone attack that went deep into Syria. Going after the the Russian bombers that are used. You know that the Ukrainians will say we hit them because they're used for you know, bombing targets deep inside Ukraine. UH critics of the operations say they're a central part of Russia's nuclear arsenal, and you are playing with nuclear fire by going there.
One of those is UH retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who was asked about how, you know what what he sees as the risks of this Ukrainian attack, and he had a rather chilling response.
We can roll that sort of set up an analogy Mexico or Canada or any third party, particularly one that was approximate to our borders, launching missiles that hit Whiteman Air Force Base and destroyed B two bombers, or hit Barstow in Louisiana, or mine and destroy'd be fifty two bombers, or came in on Growton, Connecticut where a ballistic missile submarine was being serviced and hit it. These are things that during the Cold War we swore to each other
Moscow and Washington that we would never do. These are things that are so destabilizing that Putin would be in his every right with regard to all the lessons we have learned and their many to attack and to attack with nuclear weapons and to say to the rest of the world they provoked me.
They surely did.
And I'm not losing my devices for responding should I be really provoked by a first strike. And that's what you're talking about. Never never hit the assets that your nuclear armed enemy needs to assess whether or not you're attacking them. That's a no no, Always been a no no.
No.
One disputed that in Moscow or Washing, earn it, for that matter, in the other capitals in.
The world, see only.
I don't think that this justifies a nuclear response from Boutin. But I don't like the idea that we're even in the area. Yeah, of course where it's an open questions, like we should try to avoid being in the area the gray zone of nuclear response.
It's completely insane. Just slept walk directly into it. And right now on the hill today Richard Blumenthal, Lindsey Graham, our meeting.
They're back in the US.
They're back here and meeting with a top advisor to Zelenski actually today and pushing the sanctions past package and who knows what else.
The other thing they were just in Ukraine, they were just and cheering them on.
Yeah, and you're demanding more support from Trump, who's obviously frustrated with Putin and not without reason in the peace process, of course, but right the ease with which I mean Ukraine said that operation took several months according to CNN. It's crazy to me that when you watch the video you realize, I mean it just it seems like that should be a much harder target to hit him, and it's important.
Not underwater, and you know they also hit it, you know, several months ago. If you remember, there was a footage of the car like you're just driving along and boom all of.
A sudden, which is why it's kind of wild that they're able to pull it off after several months. I mean, that's one of the most obvious targets. But I think part of what's it's so obviously provocative to do that to the bridge, To do that to that bridge, so obviously provocative.
So yes, it's wild, it really well, these talks are going on, Tar talks are going on.
Ye. Well, and you can't that operation that we covered a Monday that went you know, more than three thousand miles from Kievan, Russia. That was, of course, literally the day before peace talks and assemble. So it's a message obviously, and they'd been getting hit really hard in the days leading up to it. But Ryan, we were hearing from Donald Trump for however long, that he would broke her a peace deal within twenty four hours. We are now pushing into the six month of his presidency and it's
getting worse. Yeah, it's not getting closer at all.
Yeah.
And meanwhile, there seems to be some operation happening against Darren Beattie, who was a top State Department official and one of the one of the key guys in pushing back against one of the key guys in what you call like the peace camp and.
The non interventionist Yeah. Yeah, he'd be sort of decried as an isolationist from the Lindsay Graham faction.
Yes, And so he's getting hit in the Telegraph with this With this article, the headline is Trump official who shut down Counter Russia agency has links to Kremlin.
Darren Beattie, who.
Alarmed the State Department with his pro Moscow views, is married to a woman whose uncle has ties to Vladimir Putin. By the way, as a former tabloid reporter at the when I was at Tough Post, the word tie anytime you see the word ties.
Or links, that is what's called a.
Kind of get out of defamation jail free guard because think about the word link.
Yep, you're linked to everything.
We are linked to Putin by doing this segment.
We're linked, yes, breaking Points, linked to Putin, yes, or untied.
To Putin, LinkedIn tie, LinkedIn tid Yes.
So we have a statement from the State Department here.
Yeah, this is an exclusive statement to Breaking Points from the State Department that says it isn't a coincidence that these attacks on Durn Batty are servicing as the administration is working to fight censorship domestically and champion free speech around the world. We will get back to that in
just a moment. These fake news outlets are so desperate to keep these censorship tactics alive and discredit the transparency initiative, they are publishing falsemeres on respective respected and effective employee at the State Department. Now. Der Baty is an enormously controversial person who was working in the sort of media punditry space before being plucked into the State Department. In this administration, he had worked in the White House.
I fired for speaking at like a white nationalist conference.
Right from the first Trump White House, right, yeah, exactly, and then it is brought in the second administration. Ruffles feathers for sure in the but especially among the interventionist crowd because they are probably more offended by his questioning of interventionism.
The white nationalism whatever.
It's coalition, Yeah, it's coalition. So anyway, we confirmed the State Department says passed all of his background checks. So this innu window about his wife and her uncle. It's interesting, Ryan, because to work in a key position in the State Department actually the Biden State Department went through this with what's his name, Rob and Iran stuff. No, that was Trump, but Rob Valley on Iran stuff. And it did eventually come out that he had some interesting links and ties.
But he was obviously, oh interesting, you'd obviously be be vetted. So his dinner and baby's wife gave a statement to The Times, the UK Times quote, far from being Kremlin aligned, Putin publicly denounced my uncle and his ownership stake in bosh Kirsta, where upon the Putin government stole his company from him. He has lived in exile for Russia for
five years. I'm deeply disappointed that the Telegraph would omit these material and publicly discoverable facts that completely undermine the suggestion that my uncle or I am Kremlin linked, which is the narrative backbone of the entire piece.
Links linked to the Kremlin by being adversaries.
It is.
So we'll find out.
If this is a get out of defamation jail or not. Because I met you know, this is the UK. It's much easier to get sued, it's much easier to win acclaim than it is here in the US. So yeah, like so right, the point is yeah, there is a connection between her uncle, which is like, come on, uncle, yeah, now, now you're responsible not just for what you do, not just for your for what your wife does, but for what no wife's uncle does.
And it turns out the wife's uncle.
Was actually beefing with Putin over some oligarch stuff.
Mm hmmmm hmm. And that's not really in the article, is yeah, so Ran it is amusing to see the State Department and being himself in his post on X said, for anyone who passionately supports President Trump and fights to advances of Jennifer the American people, media hit pieces come with the territory. Interestingly, that echoes the exclusive statement that we got from the State Department, which is suggesting that this is a hit piece timed specifically because of what's
happening in Ukraine right now. And you read the piece and can even take issue with Darren Beattie working in the State Department, can take issue with his views. I actually think that it is laden with innuendo and probably timed exactly as they're implying it.
Yeah, it probably is, but we shouldn't move on without just taking a moment to dwell on the ability of the State Department and Marco Rubio's people to apparently hold two completely contradictory things in their head at the exact same time. One is that their administration, quote is working to fight censorship domestically and champion free speech around the world.
You're like, I'm sorry, you're doing what You're fighting censorship domestically by going through the social media of every college student and then trying to find anybody who's here on a visa.
If every non citizen college student apparently, and.
Yeah, so you've got a permanent resident who protested Israel's actions at Columbia, Mood Khalil, a Green card holder married to an American citizen who has an American citizen daughter who he has never seen because he is behind bars for his speech.
And you every day are.
Fighting censorship, Like okay, anyway, just that they could say, like the fact that they could type that up and nobody's like, this kind of come off weird to like the whole world who sees what we're doing every day.
Well, it's important from their perspective messaging wise that they actually do lean into that, because their contention, it's not from their perspective morally inconsistent because their contention is that it's speech for US citizens, And so they've done things like get rid of State Department contracts with the Global Engagement Center and groups that have designed these censorship apparatus, and they what was it just last week, said that they were no longer giving visas to people who had
sought to interfere with the free speech rights of Americans. So again, I disagree obviously with the os Turk and Khalil cases and the way the State Department has handled those. We've said that, We've covered that many times. But I think from their perspective, you have to lean all the way into saying that we just totally brazenly are champions of free speech, because otherwise it would imply that they think they actually are curtailing free speech.
And what's amazing, though, is if you think about that, let's take let's take their explanation at face value and pretend it is on the up and up. They're saying, yeah, Okay, what we are concerned about is the speech of American citizens. If you're a foreigner here in our country, that is a privilege.
Just and shut up. We don't want to hear any criticism from you.
At the same time, they're telling other countries, if an American citizen is in your country, the First Amendment applies to them in your country, and they are not subject to your censorship laws.
Your people, if.
They come to our country, cannot criticize Israel and they are subject to our censorship rules. But when our people come to your country, they cannot be censored. Not that they would try to make anything consistent, but like, what's the principle there under which their citizens are not entitled to beach rights in our country, but we, who are the free speech champions of the world, insist that ours are entitled to it in your country.
I was gonna say, the really important point is about that principle period. Because the argument that Mahmu Khalil or Mesa Ostrik are undermining the US foreign policy goals, which is the provision that Mark Rubio has used to justify revoking the visas the principle of their speech, which in Ostrich's case was a pro bds op ed about the college student government and the administration at toughts that that is somehow undermining the foreign policy of the United States,
interfering with the foreign policy of the United States. Now the powers of that law are broad and actually probably should be reconsidered periods. Judge Trump said, yeah, let alone used but all those to say, the principle is that it is beyond the pale to be critical of Israel because it's hurting the foreign policy goals of the United States.
And I think what you're getting into there is criticism of Israel being anti Semitic, which is something of course that has been passed in bills in Congress before that Anti Zionism is anti Semitism and is a common refrain. And that's not free speech for Americans either, even though it's being applied in this case to people who aren't American citizens. The implications down the line are setting the stage for more censorship of American citizens.
And if we can tell other countries know what their speech codes and laws need to be with regard to American citizens, can we tell other countries that they must ban criticism of Israel within their countries too. Not to give ideas to anybody, but like just I mean, most of them don't need that idea. That's already they've already gone down that road.
If they end up up getting rid of Darren Beatty. They can bring you in. There'll be a job open, you can come in.
Well, Beattie and I have both interviewed in ron Khan. Oh really, he did the last interview with him, Ron Khan before he was jailed. BET's very good on Pakistan.
Oh, that's that's quite interesting. He's an eccentric thinker.
This is undoubtedly true statement I say.
I was surprised when they brought even I was surprised when they brought him, all right, as the kids say, based.
Yeah, and it's not.
I don't think that Rubio was involved in bringing him in, to put it gently right, likely.
Not, Maybe Michael Anton and those guys. I don't know. That's a good question. We'll see. All right. Let's move on to Joy Reid. Ryan House did MSNBC anchor. Joy Reid is sharing more of her thoughts about why she ended up getting the act just a couple of months ago. Let's roll this first clip of Joy read in conversation with Katie Kirk.
I got to you know, NBC and I Twitter back in two thousand. I think I joined an eight or nine and the bosses were horrified, and anytime I would tweet anything, I would get calls I would get.
Please get off Twitter. We hate it.
They just they don't like that it pulls their talent and their reporters out of their control because now you're not running what you're tweeting through standards and practices. It's giving your personality directly to the audience, which they don't like because it's no longer managed and curated by them, and they don't want people breaking news.
I'm just not realizing that Katie Kirk has that famous picture of Joan Didion framed behind her on her podcast set, which is just to be fair, I have a Joan Diddion book on our set back here, but that's just Katie Kirk with the Joan Didion portrait. Is something just really getting under my skin this morning, Ryan, But that's neither here nor there, Joy.
Read guest hosts right while Sager's.
Out Katie Kirk, Kirk or Joy Read right, Hey, hey, you bring your men, see what happens. It's a it's a fine line between I've always said this, between Katie Kirk and Sager and Jetty they share many similarities. Yeah, so it's something I think about now be fun together, Yes, yes, something to somebody to think about producers. I know you're listening, but joy Read makes a fairly interesting case in this clip, by the way, and I will not be rescinding any
of my criticisms of joy Read whatsoever. But she makes an interesting case about MSNBC in this clip, which is that she didn't have the worst ratings at MSNBC, which is a low bar. By the way, she says to Katie Kirk, I wasn't told the ratings were terrible. It's something you did. You tweeted a terrible thing. She said. She had been being quote extra careful on social media at the time because there was a real anxiety, she
said about it, and that's kind of interesting. She says, it wasn't the ratings because we had just a ratings meeting a couple of weeks before that, talking about the fact that our show, other than Rachel Mattow, we were down the least after Tramp's the election win. So being down the least, but it's actually an interesting point because it's not as though, now that we have a few months in hindsight, it is not as though MSNBC is
actually trying to change its brand. It's not as though so when I saw the firing of Joy Reid, and I was like, this is this is interesting because Joy Reid was I think symbolically a very powerful representation of and maybe we disagree on this, but where MSNBC went wrong during the Trump years, which was this kind of sanctimonious doubling down on being the voice of truth and facts and nobody else could possibly or nobody who disagrees with me is on the side of truth or facts.
I'm on the side of truth or facts, and I will tell you what's right and what's wrong. And I thought maybe that they were getting rid of Joy Reid because they were trying, you know, however ham fistedly to go in a different direction. But they're definitely not really doing that. They haven't really made any significant changes.
Yeah, I don't Joy as being.
Differentiating herself in that crowd of people during the first Trump You think she had the same kind of approach as almost all of them did. The thing that did differentiate her from the pack was that she was consistently critical of.
Israel's assault on Gaza.
Like that was If you try to think about the things that make her different than other hosts, either on CNN or MSNBC, that's the only one that I can think of.
So she doesn't cite that. She says, quote, I'm a black woman doing the thing, you know what I mean, And so I'm not different from Mattow or Nicole Wallace. But quote, I think that there's a difference for Trump and hearing the kinds of criticism, specifically out of a black woman.
That is true, it.
Bothers them in a way, doesn't bother him like anything else. She says there's a fear of him, implying at MSNBC, we're seeing it everywhere. Uh now, I'll have.
To think she's right about that. Like, sorry, Trump people, I think she.
Is really that Trump has some issue.
Black women being critical of him hits harder for him than like a Rachel Maddow or certainly hits harder than like a white guy, especially good looking white.
Well, I guess this is a little bit different. But the man he hates more than anyone else is Chuck Todd. Chuck Todd seems to be just about anyone he likes.
Some of the other guys like who wrote the Enemy of the People book, people book, the CNN guy Jim Acosta.
Yeah, yeah, like he loves you can tell he loves.
He loves going back and forth with Jim Acosta.
Yeah, because he's that's a handsome newsman right there, you're fake news.
To isn't exactly out of central casting.
True, he wants them out of central casting. He wants his enemies to be good looking white eyes.
Now remind me. So I'm looking at this right now because MSNBC was spun off of so Comcast spun off its portfolio of cable news networks and that includes MSNBC. This was announced back in November. Reid was let go. That was what earlier the spring, roughly around March ish.
So that's why at the time I thought maybe MSNBC was just going in a different direction, which by the way, would mean it actually would mean getting rid of Nicole Wallace or at least like turning down the volume on the entire the Scarborough, the Scarborough Brazizinski disaster, which is I.
Know, like they all have to go, right, Yeah, I mean.
If they're trying to brand differently, at least you would. But but so she's saying she's basically lumping in the CBS settlement and other settlements, what ABC's Stephanopolis settlement and implying that MSNBC might have a similar fear.
Now, which I think is also true.
It's interesting because it's it's a question of whether Comcast still has so where they are in the process of actually spinning MSNBC off, is Comcast is there is there implication that Comcast is afraid or is it the MSNBC. Because MSNBC is a left of center network, I don't think would be particularly afraid unless they're trying to get sold. Because that was another thing. Elon Musk was flirting with
the possibility that maybe he would buy MSNBC. But you could easily see another like right wing billionaire doesn't have to be Elon Musk swooping in and buying MSNBC. And then at the time if they were trying to like ready it as a property for an acquisition, maybe that's what's going on, or maybe it's just hard to work with.
Yeah, I think it was the Comcast stuff.
Like Comcast is a terrible business whose the entire existence depends on large s for from the government regulatory for the most part, and so that is like the most vulnerable kind of company. So you don't want to anger the king, you know, if you depend on the king.
I don't know. I just Joey read. Yeah, I guess we'd probably disagree on this, but I've found her to be one of the more difficult, one of the representations of a lot of the stuff that went wrong during Trump era journalism, and to her credit, one of the
more interesting things she did. She would have conservatives, right wingers, mega people on and she made compelling television because she fought, and that's something that I think people like Rachel Mattow and Chris Hayes and Nicole Wallace I suppose should do more of. So I definitely give her credit for I agree.
Actually, I think the blue Maga stuff is totally fine to do as as content if you're going to have people arguing with you on there.
Right now, it's not my kind of thing.
It's not what I would want to watch, but like, if you're going to debate it out with people and then the fine, it's it's the it's the blue Maga echo chamber stuff that becomes really corrosive.
Yeah, I agree with that. Rachel Mattow I think has sadly fallen prey to though. I just think Rachel Matto is really smart and talented journalist and has.
Her monologues are always the long, like ten minute long thing she does the top.
Yeah, it was fun.
Well, they were also like masterfully crafted and the writing was like extremely compelling if you were watching some of those.
Where is this going? Where's this going?
Right?
The Trump one monologue that Rachel Mattow would do, which became kind of famous or infamous, but probably infamous after she claimed to have Trump's tax returns and all of Washington was watching. I even watched that, Yeah, I mean that night and it was like Heraldo at the vault by the end of it, like she had her scoop was like way over hyped what she actually had. But the writing was just masterful. So it's sad when people get kind of sucked into the universe where they just
have purged anyone who might disagree. I think the best segment on the debate between porn, the debate over whether there's porn in schools and the library controversies is between Joy Read and Tiffany Justice on Joy Reads on the NBC Show, And I recommend everybody watch that.
It's good because like it forces them both to learn what the other side knows and understands and thinks and.
That before you can rebut it.
Yeah.
So up next, we've got Wanda vid Rojas, who's that conservative, like kind of a heterodox conservative.
I don't even know.
If writer when it comes to Latin American politics roughly.
I mean he's conservative on immigration policies. I wonder we maybe we should ask him how he sees himself. But he does fantastically interesting and heterodox coverage of Latin American politics from Ecuador to Venezuela, to Cuba and to Mexico as well, and has been on a tear recently with some interesting coverage of Claudia Schinbaum front of the show
and also the world friend of the World Venezuela. We particularly want to dive into a story he's written on Venezuela because happening under the surface Parklading, under the surface of this administration is a divide over how to approach Venezuela between like the Rick Gurnell, Laura Lumer camp and the old school cold Warriors. So we're going to dive into all that with Wanda vid Ross right after this. As promised, we're joined now by Wanda vid Rojas, who
writes at Compact one. Thank you for joining us.
Thanks for having me guys.
Well, let's start with F two, which is a recent piece that you wrote for Compact that both Ryan and I found really interesting. The headline is Laura Lumer is
right about Venezuela. But the story behind that and what exactly Laura Lumer is right about is really important because just last week there was significant controversy over whether Chevron should get a real authorization to continue doing drilling in Venezuela basically, and that pitted Rick Grenell against the Marca Rubio kind of cold warrior camp, and in a really
interesting way because we hear from Rubio. Actually I literally just heard from Rubio last night at the American Compass Gallus saying that people are still clinging to the Cold War, that we had these Cold War policies meant to prevent uprisings, and then we kept those Cold War policies going forward, and you can you started assume in that context he was speaking generally, but that he was thinking about Ukraine
in particular. But Venezuela and Cuba, which we're going to talk about as well, are good examples of this too. So one, can you tell us a bit about what's percolating under the surface of the Trump administration as it relates to Venezuela and maybe more broadly Latin America, because this is I think a really really important and underappreciated part of what's happening over at state.
Yeah, that's a great point.
I mean, now that I think about, I saw that common elsewhere from Rubio as well. But yeah, that definitely doesn't apply to Latin America for him. You know, he's an old school Miami Hawk and his former constituents here in the state of Florida. I live in Fort Lauderdale. A lot of the only thing they care about is
regime change in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. And so you have this tug of war within the administration that's really interesting between you know, hawks like him, and then like in Congress there's the three Republican representatives for South Florida, madri Madea, Elvida Sare and Carlos Emenes and yeah, all, like I said, all they care about is regime change, and so any like new sanctions, any like you know, sort of favors or benefits that Venezuela, Cuba could.
Get in this case, since twenty twenty two.
Biden has allowed Chevron to pump oil in Venezuela. They have a license which allows them, you know, to explore in Venezuelan waters, and both administrations to get around the same time for a long time, right, And when Trump got in, I just assumed that he, you know, they would just you know, go maximum pressure again on Venezuela.
But what we saw is that the immigration hawks actually were open to dialogue because they wanted to be able to de poor people direct directly to Venezuela, which you know, they they weren't authorizing.
They're voting back and forth.
Thies I was.
Going to say one just quickly, the TPS revocation of that status temporary. Yeah, of course, three hundred and fifty thousand Venezuelans, so the number of deportations that they require cooperation with Venezuela otherwise they need to find other countries to send literally tens of thousands of people to. That's how high stakes it is for them, exactly.
Yeah, it's super urgent.
And so you've had this tug of war between the because there's these slim margins in the House of Representatives, they just have a two seed majority, so those three congressmen can sink basically anything that they want. So in February, they threatened to not vote for what was the continuing resolution, the like February.
Budget when there's gonna be a shutdown.
So the administration said, oh, okay, we're not gonna or renew Chevron's license. Then they backpedaled and actually did, and then so the Hawks got upset, and uh, you.
Know, we could talk about that more in depth.
Well, the key moment comes when Venice, when they when they do pull the license, I guess you know. However, briefly, Venezuela then pauses taking deportation flights and then the Trump administration sends them to Al Salvador instead.
So yeah, yeah, to walk through how.
This like pivotal moment in the Trump administration's immigration and foreign policy ends up getting decided by these kind of three counter revolutionary like South Florida Republicans who could not
be more the kind of counter to America. First, if you try to design it in a lab like that they are, they are very explicit that their most important priority is Cuba, and then Venezuela, yeah, and then and then Nicarwaga and then eventually at some point you get down to the North American country of the United States of America.
Yeah, it's horrible because it was definitely a contributing factor. I mean, you know, Steven Miller doesn't need all that much help to do his own psycho stuff. But you know, they they were for like a brief period, a few weeks because in days after Trump assumed office, they cut this deal with Maduro. Okay, you know, we'll renew of the license if you agree to take deportees. And they did for a time. Then they renagged and so, okay, we can't send people to Venezuela. All right, well let's
send them, send them to El Salvador. And was really horrible is that? At least, according to multiple investigations, one from The New York Times another from ABC, at least two hundred of the two hundred and thirty eight Venezuelans that they sent to a maximum security gang prison in El Salvador had no criminal records in the US and Columbia, Chile, Peru, a ton of different countries.
They were really thorough.
The administration denies this, but they also have refused to release the names or the you know, supposedly Hanu's crimes that these people committed. To be fair, around like two dozen actually had credible, you know, associations as being a gang numbers and committed crimes. Yeah, but the I mean, this is just completely incompetent, and it's like, why would
they do this? If you know, I would dispute the use of the Alien Enemies Act because you know, they said that that you know, they were terrorists and that Venezuela's conducting this invasion of the US through what uh So I think that you know, using Alien Enemies Act is wrong. But at least if they sent actual criminals, you could say, okay, all right, well why are we going to cry over criminals? And it just completely undermines their case. And it's also been a huge boon to Maduro,
like you know, he just goes out on TV. It's like, look at this, these forced disappearances to El Salvador. Look at how complicit the Venezuelan opposition is. And he's right because the Venezuelan opposition can't criticize Trump because he's their
chief political and financial backers. So it's been a colossal debacle where lumor comes in, that's really funny is that her and this Florida businessman wanted to renew the Chevron's license because they're saying, hey, you know, Trump has this agenda of energy abundance, we should be exploiting Venezuela's oil, not in not China because most of Venezuela's oil exports go to China. Obviously, she doesn't really care about, you know,
the deportations at El Salvado or anything like that. But you know, in a very narrow sense, she's you know, completely right. I mean, on its own term, sanctions have not achieved their intended goal of regime change, and it's just not going to happen, So why are we doing this? It just makes Venezuela more miserable. And yet, if anything, improving conditions.
There by allowing more economic activity, would deter migration.
And you know, there's something similar going on in Cuba.
We can put up f F one here, which is this political article about how you know where they say it's Cuba. Cuba tried to improve its relations with the US by cooperating with Trump's deportation flights.
It didn't work.
Cuba is facing sanctions and terror designations that make what the US is doing to Venezuela seem almost almost friendly. You've had an unspeakably large exodus of people from Cuba to the United States and to other countries or you know, in the in the hemisphere. People are reporting losing like enormous amounts of weight, like just there isn't enough food
to go around. Healthcare and healthcare is just is completely collapsing because the sanctions and the and the terror designation means you can't get spare parts even like from Europe or or anywhere else. Nobody wants to bank or do business with Cuba. So they thought, okay, let's let's cooperate on these deportation flights, and and that will that will end up benefiting us it had it has not. The
same hardline approach is still being taken to Cuba. I actually think, and you know, it's become a kind of a mantra that you know, it's been sixty years almost and we've been doing the same policy and we haven't gotten regime change. I think it's actually possible, given the absolute dire state of the situation in Cuba, that they may actually accomplish their goal in the near term, Like there could be complete collapse of the Cuban regime.
I don't know, but it like there isn't much left holding it up.
That being a long term goal of the United States, and now maybe even being in sight, what on earth would happen.
Let's say they get their wish.
I would imagine that creating another Haiti, creating a failed state on that island does not have the kind of immigration consequences that the United States immigration.
Hawks would want.
So let's talk a little bit about this weird country action at the heart of the rights approach to immigration. We're on the one hand, they want no migration or very little legal migration. On the other hand, they want these hard line policies toward Latin America that that cut off development and create failed states and plumbing economies that then produce mass exoduses of migrants towards the United States.
Yeah.
And you know, historically, and when we're talking about like what I call Miami neocons, they actually supported an open door policy with regards to Cubans, and you know, they had to backpedal more so with Venezuelans.
But you know, this makes perfect sense.
I mean, most people of Cuban descent Venezuela and the dead the Broguan descent are extremely hard line with regards to foreign policy towards their home countries, are extremely conservative. And you know, you have what's called the Cuban Adjustment Act, which is basically any Cuban who manages to stay here for more than a year and a day is automatically
granted residency. And this is you know, just electorally. It's great for Florida Republicans, and it's something that you know, exactly exactly I've argued against it.
It's it is a magnet.
For a ton of people on the island, and conditions are very dire. As you've said, it's something like two million at least have left since twenty twenty one. And you know, in the case of Venezuela, this is something I push back on some of my anti imperialist friends who say that, you know, the country's collapse, so it's
just due to sanctions. Well, that's not entirely true, because Venezuela is an oil estate, and their economy collapse before we impose sanctions on the royal sector in twenty seventeen. You know, twenty fourteen, the price of oil dropped massively, and you know, millions of people had already left before we impose sanctions. That said, imposing sanctions obviously will make things worse. Worse against sanctions whole scale. The case of
Cuba is another story. The current crisis has definitely been caused by sanctions, specifically putting them on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, which is something that went back and forth. Trump put them on the list, and the last days of his presidency, like January twenty twenty one, Biden took them off days before leaving office, and then Trump put
them back on the first day. Their economy is completely dependent on tourism and putting them on that list means that basically no one can do business with them, cruise ships and all the like. And actually Biden imposed further rules like that European tourists would have to report that they've been to Cuba. This is something that drops I reported on, Yeah, that they've traveled to a Cuban Obviously that's going to be a deterrent to tourism.
Well. And one, this is so interesting because the Trump administration and kind of seems like a two thousand and nine era Obama is on this reset tour of the Cold War. At least some people in the Trump administration would love to reset American foreign policy from the pattern that we were stuck in for decades during the Cold War. And that applies to Ukraine policy, it applies to NATO policy,
it applies to certainly Eastern Europe. But when it comes to Cuba, very very close around the backyard, Cuba does have is some measure of cooperation with China. Venezuela has some measure of cooperation with Iran in China as well, So it's not all on the US side, although we could go back into the tit for tat who pushed them into the arms of Iran and all of that.
But all I'm saying is it does seem like the time is ripe for the Grenelles and Laura Loomers to make an argument that a Cuba reset or a Venezuela reset would be in the American interest. I think about like Mara Gaza, Like what about Mara Havana, Like it just seems like there's an argument sitting there to be made to Trump about what can happen going forward. But I guess as long as you have Mariel virus Salazar and others. It seems like maybe there's just no path to that.
Yeah, funny story.
I actually found an article that quoted Trump in like the nineteen eighties and he said, yeah, something along the lines, Oh, I'd love to build a hotel in Havana.
Huh.
So, yeah, there's an opening there.
But unfortunately, Yeah, the Miami lobby is extremely powerful. I'm all for pragmatism.
I think that what are the politics of that in South Florida? By the way, so just since you're there to talk a little bit about that too as well.
Yeah, it's uh, you know, these people are my neighbors, and I understand where they're coming from.
Actually, some of them, you know, actually lived.
Through really horrible things that were persecuted by these guys of governments. Some of them were tortured all these regimes. One thing that they'll do is that they'll withhold food to families in order to coerce them, you know, to vote for them or you know, attend rallies and stuff
like that. So I genuinely get where they're coming from in the same way that I completely understand where a lot of the anti imperialists, both internationally and like in you know, in the governments of these countries, like you know, Cuba for a long time was basically a vassal of the US mob and interests were huge. They had didn't have control of their own trading policy until trade policy until like nineteen thirty four. But through the plat Amendment,
I mean, really horrible stuff. It's it's kind of obvious that the revolution in fifty nine happened, but you know, and through a lot of it also there was just like dictators that were just kind of stooges of the US. So I get it. But because like the each side is so like maximal. On the one hand, you know, like the Cuban or Venezuelan regime is like, oh, because there's sanctions that gives us free rein to just you know,
kill people on the streets and prisoner torture them. Uh, And then the neocons just say, oh, well, look they're killing and torturing people, so we need to impose sanctions.
This is just the circular loop that's pointless.
And I wanted to pick up on something you said earlier about the way that this has really been a drag on the Venezuelan opposition because it it feels like systematically across the globe, Trump is hurting his allies and boot and boosting his adversaries. We just saw in South Korea, you know, the left center, yeah, winning the presidential election there, which you know, the Bannons of the world are calling, you know, Korea having fallen.
To the CCP.
But certainly the tariff, the you know, Trump's tariff threats to that region dragged down the Trump the Trump aligned conservative candidate.
Australia saw you know, lefties win there.
Canada saw its conservative movement just completely collapse. And now, yeah, in Venezuela, you've got Machado, who is being pushed on this question of what do you know, are you with venezuel As sovereignty or or are you actually an agent of a foreign government? And you know what had what has been her response and what's been the kind of the response of the public to that.
So the day, i think the day after days after they those Sea Caught deportations, she issued a statement on x saying that something along the lines of the Venezuelan should not be treated all as criminals. But she didn't actually you know, verbalize any sort of opposition, you know, put into words that like okay, you know, like the Sea Caught episode was not a good thing. So it
just kind of up in the air. And she has since still just told the line of the administration that oh Maduro is the head of danda Agua and is directing an invasion, which.
Is just completely insane.
There's been protests in Venezuela, rightfully so from the family members of people that are you know, like now contempted to life in prison inside the secote against Bouchele and against Trump. You actually had this Bouquele said that he'd be willing to do a prisoner swap of the Sea Cottu prisoners for if Maduro released a bunch of an equivalent number of political prisoners. And so that was just
kind of a spectacle for the two leaders. Uh Maduro actually a few weeks ago uh paraded this like little kid, the child of one of the Scott deportees, who they didn't send to Venezuela because they were worried for her safety. But then they send the mom and then they sent the kid, and so Adera was saying, thank you, Donald Trump, You're in a beauty of this. But we brought back so and so and it's just it's something else.
Yeah so she so.
Uh, while we while we have you, I did want to ask you about another really good piece you had.
This was for the Liberal Patriot.
If we can put up just the final element here, what the what democrats can learn from Arena which is the party of Amlo and Claudia Shinbaum and you had ah, you had a Let me see if I can find the deck to this article too. That the subtitle was, it sounded like it's written for Breaking Points. The Mexican left combined ideological diversity on cultural issues with a shared populist division on material concerns, which it's sort of like what Breaking Points has been screaming for years would be
an effective policy from either party. Uh, you know, ideological diversity on cultural issues a big tent there, and populous vision on material concerns. So what can you tell us beyond the headline that you know, for people who were just like hey, hey go Cloudia, but like what what what beyond that did Amloan Cloudia do effectively that Democrats could learn from and also frankly, that Trump could learn from, because he seems to have his own odd set of admiration for both of those figures.
Yeah, funny story.
Last night I got a notification from a pro Morena outlet saying that Caroline Lovitt defended shame Bomb that the Washington Post ran some sort of I meant to send you this. Actually, the Washington Post ran some sort of article that uh vuntional seizures at the border had mysteriously declined, and so Caroline Levitt was asked about that, and she said, it's not mysteriou is, it's because of our tough stance on the border and our strong relationship with President Claudia Shamebaum.
So that was kind of funny, that is and.
Probably like but let's be real, like that's probably true. Like ye, absolutely, state does have more control.
Both states have more control over fentanyl flows. Then I think that they let on.
Yeah yeah, well, and this is actually a really good uh yeah segue into that article. Shane Baum has done something really interesting. It's not entirely a U turn, but it's been framed that way.
Well, it is. It is kind of a turn.
She has taken away tougher stance on security than omlo ever did, and I think this is a lesson for progressive I'm a big critic of a progressive crime policy.
Uh, and I love what he did.
He actually, it's it's not quite entirely correct to say that it was like soft on crime. It was kind of soft on the cartel's. But in public security, for instance, if you go to Mexico's security is very militarized, and you see like a lot of troops, you'll see like these trucks with like soldiers standing on the back with these machine guns. But with regards to the cartels, he took a more hands off policy. His view was that the previous governments had, you know, they declared a war
on the narcos, and this just exploded violence. Before two thousand and seven, when Felipe Don't, a former president, came in, Mexico actually had a pretty low homicide rate equivalent to the US of like seven per one. And he came in and within months sused, we're gonna bring out the military, We're gonna go after the cartels, and this just exploded violence and it hasn't really improved much since. When came in,
he said, Okay, we're gonna shift the strategy. We're going to deprioritize seizing drugs, and going after Kingkins.
We're kind of gonna do damage control.
So when there's an outbreak of violence with the cartels, we're just going to send these huge deployments of soldiers to try to quell the violence. According to official figures, homicides went down like ten percent during his government, but disappearances were still huge, and this was a huge criticism against his government. Also, the critique was that it allowed cartels to, you expand their control over parts of the country.
What Shane Baum has done is that.
She's taken a more She's taken a tougher approach, but also a more strategic one.
So she's prioritizing going after like the mid level guys in charge of logistics within cartels, and it really prioritized drug seizures because one of the problems was that AMLO got rid of the fay and Alis, which a lot of people might be familiar with from the movies, replaced it with the National Guard. The National Guard was a military not a police entity, and so they didn't really have the training to do like investigative work and like
seizing drugs was a problem. So she's looked to professionalize the National Guard and is also looking to create an investigative police. In Mexico, things are a bit different.
You have.
The police don't investigate crimes, it's the prosecutors to do.
So she's created this.
Her security minister announced a few weeks ago the creation of an investigative.
Police, and so far the results have been pretty good. Drug seizures on.
The Mexican side have really gone up and homicides have gone down around twenty percent.
So that's extremely promising.
What's all happening pretty out in the open, So i'd imagine, if you know, there be a lot of gains to make out of the gate.
Yeah.
Yeah, And to be fair, yeah, a lot of this is due to pressure from the Trump administration through tariffs and the like whatnot. But going back to the point of the piece as to like what democrats can learn from what Ana, Yeah, that article is kind of a ten year history of the party. Was founded in twenty fourteen and in ten years, Wow, they managed to basically take over the whole country. And he, you know, some
people like would dispute this. I like to say that he was a traditionalist and he didn't really care a lot about social issues. I think that personally he was kind of conservative on some of the leg LGBT issues and stuff, but it wasn't really the focus of his politics. And the focus of his politics was all material raising the minimum wage, backing unions, securing Mexico's energy sovereignty. And that's a good lesson that I like to critique progressives on.
I think the climate change is very important, but working class people have a very different view of the energy transition. They think that, yeah, we should invest in renewables, and that's great. Below prices are really the priority you want to have in all of the above approach. And that's something that the liberal patriot really hammers home all the time.
It's better in the long run if we just invest in renewables, don't you know, generate a backlash among workers and bring down energy prices instead of trying to go full speed ahead and you know, go in on renewables which are unreliable. You know, the sun isn't always shining, the wind isn't always blowing. Uh and in South Florida exactly exactly, So what Morena has. The policy of Morena was, you know, we need to secure the needs of workers Omlow.
He prioritized refining after previous administrations had decided, you know, they were just going to import oil from the US and this brought down prices. He you know, he built this huge oil refinery in his home state of Talasco. And Shane Baum, well, she's a climate scientist. She cares about renewables. But so far she's been very practical, and especially because of the terriffs, that's forced her to prioritize
energy sovereignty. So her government is promoting partnerships and renewables and public private partnerships and renewables and in fossil fuels. Carlos Slim is actually a significant backer of a BANDMICS, the state oil company, which has had huge problems.
Want to beat Rojas, writer for Compact and other outlets.
Thank you so much for joining us. Welcome back any time.
Thankes, says n That was great, super interesting.
Yeah, big, big, want to beat Rojas fan. Even though you know we don't agree on everything, He's always got something interesting to say, right yeh.
So interesting, something different. It's interesting and different. Things parcolating under the surface of the Trump administration and we'll see where they go. It sounds like none of us are particularly optimistic that they'll be a true reset.
Yeah, there's a lot of entrenched, a lot of incumbent interest groups to deal with.
Yeah. Well, as a reminder, the monthly subscriptions are back, so BP free is the code if you want to try it out for a month breakingpoints dot com. The promo code is just BP free. You can get a free monthly trial. We will be back here on Friday with the Friday Show. Are you here tomorrow as well? Ryan? I am okay, so Ryan's in tomorrow. Then the three of us will be in on Friday, and the second
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