Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/14/25: Hostages Freed, Trump Says War Is Over, Trump Says Megadonor Loves Israel More Than US, 1929 Crash Repeat

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss hostages freed, Trump says Gaza war over, Trump says megadonor loves Israel more than US, 1929 crash happening again. Ken Vogel: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/devils-advocates-kenneth-p-vogel?variant=43110856097826 Trita Parsi: https://x.com/tparsi    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Samihante, it's Anna Ortiz. And I'm Mark and Delicado. You might know us as Hilda and Justin from Ugly Betty. Welcome to our new podcast, Viva Betty. Yay! We're re-watching the series from start to finish and getting into all the fashions, the drama,

and the behind-the-scenes moments that you've never heard before. But you were still bartending? I didn't know that. The barpack is like, is that you? And it's a commercial for Betty. And I was like, I could have to go. I quit. Listen to Viva Betty on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

The NFL is rolling. That's right. And you should be listening to NFL Daily as we march along to Super Bowl 60. It's in the name, NFL Daily. So you'll have fresh content in your feed all season long. Join me, Greg Rosenthal, in an all-star cast, a co-host for previews and recap of every single game. NFL Daily will keep you up to date

with everything you need to know so you can sound smarter than all your friends. Listen to NFL Daily on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited.

Ends 2-826. Open to legal residents of the 50 U.S. States and D.C. 18 and over. For complete details, how to enter, prizes, and official rules, visit Toyotas Game Day Giveaways.com. What's up, everybody?

It's snacks from the trap nerds and all October alone. We're bringing you. You the horror. Bookety, boogity, boogity. We're kicking off this month with some of my best horror games to keep you terrified. Then we'll be talking about our favorite horror and Halloween movies. And figuring out why black people always die further.

And it's the return of Tony's horror show. Sidewise written and narrated by yours truly. We'll also be doing a full episode reading with commentary. And we'll cap it off with a horror movie battle royale. Open your free IHard Radio app and search trap nurse podcast and listen now. Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. So we're going to take a look at the hostage exchanges that happened yesterday. Who are they and what kind of condition were they returned in? Trude Parsi is going to join us to talk about what we can expect next. He is a phenomenal analyst taking a look at some of Trump's comments trying to read the tea leaves about what the next phase may look like. Trump is pulling back the curtain on how his foreign policy was just out and out bought by Mirren. Madelson, just saying the quiet barred out loud. Truly an extraordinary clip will play the whole thing

for you. We are taking a look at economic indicators and ask the question whether it might be 1929 again. Very, very concerning some of the things that we are seeing. We're also taking a look at Galane Maxwell. The Wall Street Journal had an extraordinary piece about how she had a secret meeting and what her life is like at this club fed prison camp. Kamala and Hillary have some thoughts on the past election, Mark Maren and Obama also have some thoughts on such things. And Ken Vogel is going to join us. He's out with a new book about foreign influence. Ken has been one of the best reporters out there in terms of tracking the influence of money

in politics on both sides of the aisle. So really looking forward to speaking with him, to him about that. Yeah, that's right. Thank you to everybody who has been signing up at breaking points.com. You got your great AMA yesterday without me, without Emily, which I think is what the fans want. I'm joking. Breakfulpoints.com to support us. If you can't, no worries, just please hit subscribe on YouTube to the channel.

It really helps people find the show. Also, if you're listening to this on a podcast, rate us five stars, and send an episode to a friend. It's what word of mouth is always what helps us grow. I feel like Sager, even when you're not here, we get lots of questions about you. Do you? Yeah. I guess I'm an enigma. You're very fascinating.

I'm an enigma to the people. Yeah, mostly about marijuana, though. I just wish it was not. known for something else. I just wish that. Oh, come on. You leave you. Yeah, I love it. Let's be honest. Let's be honest. I love it. I love it. I drink your bonged tears. Let's go to get to the hostages. All right. So yesterday we had the exchange of hostages from both the Israeli and the Palestinian side. The 20 remaining living Israeli hostages were released alongside roughly 2,000 Palestinians, most of whom had been picked up post-October 7th. Thousands of Palestinians remain in Israeli custody.

Let's go ahead and take a look at some of the VO of the Israelis being brought back home. You can see the cheering crowds, the Israeli flags. They're being transported here in buses. You can see them exiting these vans to cheers and, you know, big smiles on their faces. You can only imagine how delighted their family and friends are to see them alive. It's going to be a bit more difficult. Some of the bodies of the deceased hostages were sent back as well. Some of them, they are having trouble locating.

So that process will take a bit more time. This was all men who were released. By the way, there was a bunch of discussion about the fact that it was all men yesterday. The reason is because women were prioritized in the earlier hostage releases. So what remained were 20 men. Some of them had been kidnapped

from that Nova Music Festival. A number of them had been in the IDF and were taken on October 7th. So that's the joyous exchange on the Israeli side. take a look at the Palestinian hostage release as well, you know, coming back from these Israeli prison camps. We've talked to quite a bit, actually. There's been a lot of reporting, including in the Western media from the New York Times, about the treatment of detainees in these Israeli prisons.

And here you can see, you know, someone's son just being lifted up to embrace him. You can also see some of the dire condition that a number of these Palestinian hostages were in, which goes back to what I was saying about we know in these prisons. in camps, you know, lack of food, lack of water, lack of sanitation. We know about the, there was that right to rape protest. So we know about torture and abuse that occurred. And you can see this released hostage saying exactly that, that they don't let them sleep. They threaten you. They say that they killed your children. They say that there is no Gaza left. And this is just, I mean, this just broke me to watch this man who was just released to find out that his

three children were all killed by the Israelis while he was being held. And one of his daughters was about to have her birthday. He had made her a small bracelet, and now he's broken, finding out that his family is gone. So, you know, this is the reality of what it is in Gaza. You know, there's joy and reunions and, you know, children who finally have a smile on their face. And a bit of an increase in in aid trucks coming in and some hope that maybe the intense bombardment is over. I will say there were some indications that Israel's already violated the ceasefire in a number of ways, but some hope there, some joy, some relief, some beautiful reunions, some people coming back and finding surprising that some of their residence remains, and then you have these other

stories that are just utterly, they'll just break you, you know, where they're being released and finding out the family's not there. They're coming back to find their home and finding is complete in total rubble. 85% of the Gaza Strip has been turned into rubble. So, you know, still continue to be a lot of pain and suffering going forward. Yeah, I mean, the entire scene is heartbreaking. You know, first of all, for these Israeli hostages, you spend two years in captivity, crazy, you know, to be able to come home. It was the driving force of the war.

Then the Palestinian hostages, I mean, there's so many of them as well. And, of course, you know, they haven't been highlighted nearly as much in the Western press. the reason we thought it was important to put both side by side. We can feel joy for everybody who is coming home, and especially for the people of Gaza, they get to breathe for a day, right? And that of itself is a huge accomplishment. And it is something, though, that I said this in our initial segment about the ceasefire when they eventually agree to it. We all need to sit with all of the claims that were made over the last two years. The claim of the war was to free the hostages. did not work. The vast majority of the hostages were not rescued in a military mission. They were

gotten out through three successes ceasefire diplomatic negotiations. And in fact, many more hostages were killed. Yes. Through the kinetic warfare. At least. Then were rescued. And that's just in the acknowledged ones. I mean, who even knows? Like right now there's all this dust up over the return of the remains. But part of the, I mean, look, who knows what Hamas and all of them are saying maybe they didn't kill them. Nobody really knows. But they're like, hey, you're the ones who killed them and we can't find their bodies because they're really buried under inches of rubble, which seems somewhat believable, or at the very least possible, in this negotiation. But the point I think we just have to sit with is it actually was that simple the entire time. And I think that is so validating for so many

critics of this war, because for years and years and years and years, we were told under this previous administration, we can't just tell Israel what to do. And it's like, oh, no, you can. Now, Why did Trump break? I will never know. There's reporting in the past, what is it, that he actually knew about the Qatar strike, but then afterwards he appears to kind of freak out about it and he calls the Emir and he apologizes. He makes Bebe read the hostage statement live in the Oval Office being like, I'm very sorry that I attacked you. He creates the Charmel Sheikh dialogue. They sprint to a ceasefire. By all indications at every single turn, he told Bebe, it's over. And he keeps saying it over and over again when he was asked in Israel. He just, they said, what, what's your message to Prime Minister, Netanyahu, who won't say that the war is over. He said, the war is over. The war is over. Do you understand me? The war is over. I don't know what it is exactly that broke him.

It could be, we talked about it with Jeremy. Frankly, a lot of the domestic political strife that has happened now, you know, the wide awakening of a lot of the youth. But I think everyone should just sit with this. At the end of the day, with Russia, with Ukraine, with Israel, with every other person. proxy conflict, it actually is as simple as the president of the United States calling somebody up and saying, you're done here. It's over. So Zelensky's coming here on Friday. Potentially we'll get ourselves a deal here. But let's learn a little bit of that lesson is at any point, you can stop the weapons and you can say, it's done. Do you hear me? And that's what these people, these Israel critics,

or these pro-Israel people have always tried to drum into our head. Israel's a sovereign nation. It can do what it wants. We just have to support them. We have no say. They have their own internal affairs. It's all fake, right? Because for all the years, Crystal, that we sat here and said, oh, Smotrich, he could do a deal, Ben Gavir and all these people, they can do the government. Where are they now? Where's their red lines? Zip, nothing after Trump just says, hey, it's done. It's done. It's done. And for that, I mean, again, you killed potentially hundreds of thousands of people, tens of thousands, at the very least, inflected immense pain and suffering, and you didn't actually get what you wanted to be done. You said you wanted to destroy Hamas. Yes, Hamas gave up

power, but part of the deal is that Hamas gets amnesty. They get to give up their weapons and they get to become a legitimate political party. That's actually not the destruction of what you originally claimed. I mean, their entire model of the war was World War II unconditional surrender of the Japanese and of the Germans. Well, I didn't see any Nazis, you know, who had to just give up their arms and they get basically completely, you know, back aloud into the government. I don't remember the Japanese militarists. Yes. Yes. I was not. All right. I mean like Warner von Brown. Yeah, I mean, sure. Well, but it's complicated. We got the rocket out of it. All right. Maybe it was a good deal.

But I mean, I think there's a lot to linger on there. And I really appreciate you underscoring that point because, you know, we're not geniuses or rocket scientists here. But when I go back and think about our commentary post-October 7th. We said, number one, your goal of eradicating Hamas, it's impossible. Like, through military means, it's impossible. The only way you can accomplish anything approximating that is through diplomatic negotiations, through giving people in Gaza a better alternative to Hamas. And, you know, so from the beginning, it was clear, and we weren't the only one saying military analysts, you know, even, you know, Israelis who had formerly been in government were saying the same thing. You are not going to accomplish your goal of

eradicating Hamas through kinetic warfare not happening. Number two, we said he doesn't care about the hostages. The hostages are just an emotional tool for his to keep his own population on board with this. And that was never more clear than the first ceasefire under Biden when you had an exchange of hostages. And it was, you know, it was abundantly clear that they were not able to retrieve hardly any. I think there were like maybe like two hostages that were actually rescued through some warfare, actually, by the way, killed, like, hundreds of civilians in the process of this military action. That was really clear. And number three, from something like October 9th or 10th, effectively this deal was on the table from Hamas.

All for all. We'll give you back all the hostages. We want all of our hostages you're holding back. We will give up power. They were not particularly, like, wild about governing the Gaza Strip. Like something approximating this deal has been available the entire time. The only thing that changed was the willingness of the American. president to say, we are done. Now, caveats. There, like I said, already indications that Israel

has murdered a few more Palestinians, that they are already in low-key ways violating the ceasefire. Israel has violated basically every ceasefire that they've agreed to. They're violating the ceasefire in Lebanon right now. It will take a lot of focus and commitment from this administration, even to just maintain this ceasefire. That's before you get into any sort of, of rebuilding of Gaza. That's before you get into anything that approximates a long-term political solution that could bring actual peace and coexistence. We are so, so, so far from that. But it's really key that people understand all of these years, these two years, these horrible days, the death, the starvation, the suffering, the turning Gaza into total and complete rubble,

85% decimated into rubble. All of it was for nothing. It was for nothing. You know, the Israeli hostages, some of them were killed over the course of that genocide, the untold number of Palestinians, you know, the fact that they can't even find some of the hostages in the rubble, what does that tell you about how many Palestinians are dead and lost in the rubble and not being counted in the official statistics? Like, I think we all know that the official number of dead wildly undercounts the number who were actually killed as a result of Israeli bombardment. So it was all for nothing. It all could have ended so quickly. It all could have come to the

same conclusion almost from the very beginning. And because you had Netanyahu still, by the way, is committed to going back in and continuing the death and destruction. The only thing that is holding him back is the American president. And this was what Hamas was banking on. Like, they understood that strategically. I mean, that's what Jeremy would always tell us is, they're like, it's not that we like and trust Donald Trump. But he's the only one. He's literally the only person in the world who can make this thing stop. So we have to throw our chips in with him. Let's also, look, Biden should escape nothing here because he has been proven wrong at every turn. To remember, the Biden administration refused to engage in real diplomatic negotiations with Hamas. You have to give

Trump credit, basically from the Whitkoff days forward. They were willing to meet with them. And you know, the inside story of how this all came to pass has now been reported, at least the official version from Barack Ravid, the initial times when the Qataris kept presenting the stuff to the negotiation tables to the Hamas, they said, we don't believe you. We need to hear it from the United States itself. And so what happens? Whitkoff and Jared Kushner got into a bus. They drove to the Hamas Villa. They met with them one-on-one, which remember the Biden administration, again, refused to do for some bizarre reason. And at the end of the day, Wick-Koff looked them in the eyes and he said the president says that the war is over if you guys sign this and they said okay we have

no choice but to believe you they would have done the same under biden and so you know this is where the you know high-minded liberalism of the biden team of anthony blinkin of jake sherman these guys are clowns they presided not only of the destruction of gaza of the blank check bear hug but rhetorically kind of call-out strategy they refuse to do anything to actually end the war and you have to look at the results for what it is, is that you had two ceasefires and the actual end and the release of the hostages under Donald Trump. And the reason why is because of the ability to engage with Hamas itself and to provide them at least some guarantees. That is always how this war would have ended. Biden could have ended it, you know, over a year and a half ago. He didn't do

it. Now, look, caveats galore, as you just said, with Trump, he also gave them a blank check for years. He rhetorically was probably more prosor old than anything. But I think what, you know, some of the more supporter, realist supporters of Trump have always said, is like, yeah, he's schizophrenic. He goes from one day to being Miriam Adelson's boy to the other of being like, Israel will not annex the West Bank, and BB, you're done. And you never know which Trump you're going to get on any given day. We finally got the good one after a while, but it's really not about Trump himself. It's about proving all of those defenders of the Biden status quo wrong, because they are, there's no defense of the way that they handle the war. And I'm still angry about it, because

Because, you know, one of the thing is about them is they always seemed as if they were at the mercy of history, like they were at the mercy of Israel and that they were at the mercy of Russia and Ukraine. No, we were the primary actors. That's what we have said here on the show from the very beginning of the outbreaks of this conflict. We had the ability to drive and to shape events, if not outright dictate them, from the Ukrainian side to even to the Russian side in terms of direct diplomatic negotiations from the battlefield. Israel is not, I mean, think about some of the stuff that Biden let Israel get away with, which frankly really expanded the war. He not only allowed the bombing of Lebanon, he allowed the bombing of that Iranian hostage in Syria, and then we defended Israel when Iran struck back at them.

He's the one who emboldened and shaped the political environment such that being pro-Israel was basically just selling them in weapons and then rhetorically backing them up, set the table for Trump and for Netanyahu to expand the war to, what, to six. different countries. It's shocking to sit and to think about the Middle East now some two years later. And it's funny, you know, the pro-Trump people are all saying, oh, it's a much safer Middle East. We'll get to that, I think, with Treats of Parsy. But I mean, honestly, what we have had is the prevalence of, like, Israeli, basically foreign gangsterism from Iran, Ban Ban, you know, either drawing the United States in or whatever. You could describe it. Having America,

have your back secretly, nobody will really know the full story. Whatever happened happened. You had the overthrow of the Assad regime, the installation of a literal al-Qaeda figure who is pro-Israel. I'm okay. Can we sit with that again? No, everybody just seems to brush past it. You had the decimation of Hezbollah of Lebanon. You had, I mean, I'm forgetting the number of countries. I'm forgetting the number of countries that they bombed now at this point.

Hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. support now over decades, not to mention tens of billions, since this war began. and also the diplomatic isolation, both of Israel and of the United States. So that sets the table for whatever comes next. And that's where leading into the treat to parisy segment, we also, there's so much exaggeration. I was watching Fox News, as I often do in big moments, just to be like, okay, you know, what's to spend? And they're like, oh, he has finally brought peace to the Middle East. And I was like, guys, like, oh, whoa, I'm like, look, we can rejoice for the freedom of the hostages, which we do. We had the families.

Griffin interviewed the father of one of the hostages who was released. It was just released. We rejoiced for him. We sat with, we sat with a early member, remember, in Israeli. We had here on the show. We had him here in the studio. His sister was taken hostage by Hamas. We rejoice for her freedom.

We'll always have. We rejoice for the Palestinians who have been able to come back. But we cannot sit seriously and say that there has been brought peace to the Middle least. We have a diplomatically isolated Israel. We have the Palestinian people of at least some two million made probably less, to be honest, at this point. Who knows? 1.6, 1.7 million. Nobody really knows how many people are alive. They are now about to be governed by some insane coalitional provisional authority of Gaza run by the West. Will they be sold for parts? Will they have states whatsoever? Like, what is that going to materialize? Are we just going to see that Hamas really?

rise again, you know, with all of the discontent and of their treatment? Can you imagine being one of those people? Are you just, are you, are you truly done? How can you be demilitarized after something like this? Or if you are, then it's going to have to come from the U.S. Germany and Japan model and everybody sign up for 70 years of occupation of Gaza. Maybe that's on the table. I don't know. I didn't vote for it. I can say like that. I don't think a lot of you did either. I don't think this was a successful direction in terms of deradicalizing anyone. Because, I mean, just imagine that you're one of these kids that was bombed for your formative years. You know, if you're seven years old, basically all you've known in your life is, like, being bombed and shot at and fleeing for your life and displacement and your loved ones being murdered and you being starved to death.

Like, do you think that that's going to engender feelings of love and peace across the population? And so, which again are things we've, you know, said from the very beginning that this was no way to go about achieving some sort of. of a sustainable piece. So all of that remains. I mean, there's a real risk that, you know, yes, Trump was doing his whole victory lap at the Knesset and in Egypt and what I, oh my God, I should get the Nobel Peace Prize.

Like, and at the same time, bragging about, oh, I gave Israel everything they want and they used it in this, you know, very harsh way. I mean, he, you know, for months and months was a monstrous war criminal overseeing a genocide. And that just doesn't get washed away. And there's a real risk that if this thing isn't kept together, and if there isn't anything approaching a, you know, a sustainable,

I can't even say just, but a sustainable solution here, that that could end up looking like a bit of a mission accomplished moment. But, you know, for the time being, we're, you know, we're relieved that at least there's a lull in the kinetic overwhelming force that had been applied and wielded against these people in Gaza. It's unbelievable. Just a couple of other updates. We can put A7 up on the screen. DropSight is reporting on the influx of aid. This is another thing I mentioned this yesterday, but I just have to. But given all of the lies and the propaganda, oh, it's not Israel that's blocking the aid. It's the UN. They need to get their acts together. It's the Palestinians who are like storming the trucks and the trucks can't get through.

That's why we have to have GHF. GHF is gone. As part of the deal, the UN in other aid organizations are allowed by Israel to flood the area with aid. So far, however, the amount of trucks coming in continue to be insufficient. According to the Gaza government media office, they said only 173 aid trucks entered the strip on Sunday. I believe the number is there should be something like 600 trucks a day getting in to, you know, for it to be sufficient for the population. Convoy included three trucks of cooking gas, six of solar fuel for bakeries, hospitals,

generators amid severe shortages after months of blockade and destruction. Authorities warn the amount was a drop in the ocean of Gaza's needs, stressing over two million residents require a sustainable. large scale flow of aid, fuel, and medical supplies. And you can see the photo is from October 12. So two days ago, is hungry crowds strip aid trucks amid catastrophic hunger and deprivation. So there's still a, you know, incredible need there. One of the things that I was seeing as well is, you know, the Israelis have withdrawn from part of Gaza. They still occupy a significant portion. And the part that they occupy is actually the area that has any sort of fertile

farmland. Most of what they've, what withdrawn from is the sandy part where nothing can grow. They also, as we covered yesterday, thanks to drop site news is reporting, they also, Israeli soldiers, you know, torched and destroyed anything they could on their way out, including this key wastewater treatment plant in Gaza City was basically the only remaining even somewhat functional wastewater treatment plant in Gaza City. So just to give you a sense of the, you know, the enormous challenges and suffering. that remain. Let's go ahead and put the next one up on the screen. You know, I don't think we could show these images enough to really give you a sense of what this, when they say

they're returning home, like this is what we're talking about. 85% of Gaza has been turned into rubble. There are, remember when we were all eyes on communists, you know, all eyes, all eyes on Rafa. Remember that? All eyes on Rafa. I mean, Rafa is, Rafa's destroyed. Yeah, that seems quaint at this point. I mean, unbelieve. And again, I mean, that was Biden, too. that was supposedly a red line. Well, Raff was wiped off the map. You know, Con Yunus wiped off the map. Gaza City largely destroyed. So most people who are coming back are saying, I have nothing to come back too. There's nothing here. It's destroyed. This family home that's, you know, that I build or my grandfather built or has been my home where my children grew up, like gone, gone, gone, not to mention

all of the, you know, all the normal things we take for granted. The shops, the schools, the, you know, the parks, like every constituent element. of just normal day-to-day human existence was intentionally wiped off the map. And again, for people who claimed, oh, this is the most moral army in the world, and this is just a war of self-defense, a just war of self-defense.

You know, Jared Kushner saying some bullshit like that while he was in Israel, look at that and tell me that's self-defense. You didn't even destroy Hamas. You just wanted to, you just wanted to murder these people. You just wanted to destroy the life and wipe off the first. face of the earth, any sign of Palestinian life and survival and culture. So, you know,

it's a lot of pain and heartbreak that continues there. Yeah, it is, it's shocking. How we, and by the way, let's sit with this too. Now in some ways, the work begins, not only in terms of Gaza and how it gets, how it gets governed and how, you know, aid begins to flow in. The moment journalists start to go on in there and to document, it's going to be drop after drop, after drop. I mean, can you imagine, you know, to be able to go into Rafa, communists, especially into North Gaza, which has been, you know, screwed with since October. Nobody's been there for two years. And all the journalists who were Palestinian are dead. So at this point, especially with no bombardment, and you have live television cameras because the Rafa crossing is now open and people

are going to start to go in there. Doctors are like, we don't have to rely on secondhand testimony any there. It's only a matter of time until the actual national news crews, the Clarissa wards, the Trey Yanks and all these people start to go in completely unimpeded without IDF censorship. Right. Without their IDF babysitters. It's going to be a different world when you get live cameras of masquerade. I mean, who knows what's down there, right? And ordinance everywhere, graffiti. And we have a lot of this already from firsthand account, but it's another thing to actually go through and to report it all. And so, When you have that, it could be, honestly, years of stories that start to come out.

I mean, just think back to some of the great, if you think back to after war's end, you know, everybody in history, we kind of stop reading the book there. But there's a lot of life that was lived in between. And for years, people grappled kind of what the scene was like and what happened and what this commander did or that. And then the international situation with, again, the governance here. There's so many pitfalls for, will there be a. a Palestinian Authority. What's going to happen to the West Bank? Trump says he won't let Bibi annex it. Bibi says that there will be no Palestinian state. What happens then? Trump is demanded,

we're going to talk about this retreat in a moment. He's demanding Abraham Accords, a normalization of relations from all the Arab states. For all of them, a prerequisite, allegedly, is Palestinian statehood? Will they stick to that? I mean, I wouldn't put it past them to move beyond it. So who knows. It's going to be, there's a long, long, long road ahead. Well, and as an indication of how opposed Netanyahu is to any sort of, you know, Palestinian statehood, which has long been his position. Yeah. This is not a secret. He's very open about how this is one of his primary missions is to block the, you know, indefinitely, permanently, permanently the creation of Palestinian state. One of the people they refuse to let out of their prisons is Marwan Bargudi, who is seen. I mean,

he is actually from a rival political party to Hamas, but they really advocated for his release because he's seen as this potential unifying Palestinian force who actually could potentially be head of state of a unified Palestinian state. And they said, nope, absolutely, that guy cannot go out. There were also a number of people, some, I think, 150 roughly Palestinians that were on the sheet to be released, were released, but they were deported to other places. So those families were expecting them back and then find out that no. Actually, they were shipped to Egypt, I think, primarily and are barred from returning to Gaza. So, and then we've been trying to track this doctor who had been detained by Israel and imprisoned by Israel.

And his name is very unclear whether or not he was part of this release or not. The last that I saw, they haven't been able to get updates from the family over whether or not he was actually released. And I just want to remind people that Israel still holds thousands of Palestinians. as prisoners, as hostages, most of whom they have no charges filed against. They just pick them up, largely, quote-unquote, military-aged men, but women and children as well. And, you know, they just pick them up and hold them and use them in, you know, the same way, basically, that Hamas used the Israeli hostages as leverage so that they can, you know,

have this bargaining chip and continue to emissorate Palestinian people. So important to keep that in mind as well. Yeah, that's right. All right, let's get to treat to Parsi. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush. Parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed.

There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal. glad. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and Order Criminal Justice System is back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight.

That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the new season. the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Internet is something we make, not just something that happens to us. I'm Bridget Todd, host of the Tech and Culture Podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet. There Are No Gros on the Internet is not just about tech. It's about culture and policy and art and expression, and how we as humans exist and fit with one another. In our new season, I'm talking to people like Emile Dash, an OG entrepreneur and writer

who refuses to be cynical about the East. internet. I love tech. You know, I've been a nerd my whole life, but it does have to be for something. Like, it's not just for its own sake. It's a fascinating exploration about the power of the internet for both good and bad. They use WhatsApp to get the price of rice at the market that is often 12 hours away. They're not going to be like, we don't like the terms of service, therefore we're not trading rice this season. It's an inspiring story that focuses on people as the core building blocks of the internet. Platforms exist because of the regular people on them, And I think that's a real important story to keep repeating.

I created There Are No Girls on the Internet because the future belongs to all of us. New episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Listen to There Are No Girls on the Internet on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Whenever I got through the window, I tried to pick him up and his body was stiff. I'm Ben Westoff, and this is The Peacemaker, a true crime podcast investigating a string of mysterious deaths at a prestigious Missouri University. and the fraternity brother at the center of it all. A few years back, two fraternity brothers died by suicide, just weeks apart, in shockingly similar ways.

Both were discovered by the same student, Brandon Grosheim. I laid him down, and I tilted his head back, and just anything mouth and mouth in CPR. At first, people gave Brandon the benefit of the doubt, but when three more acquaintances died the following year, the tide turned. The lawsuit says Grossheim was was one of the last people to see each victim before their deaths.

Was he profoundly unlucky, or was something much darker at play? Listen to The Peacemaker Podcast, starting October 14th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Joining us now is Dr. Treata Parsi of the Quincy Institute to help us break down the entire Charmalt Sake Summit. Sir, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Let's go ahead and start then with Donald Trump.

He flew to Egypt after appearing in Israel before the Knesset. He's claiming peace in the Middle East year has finally come with several world leaders behind him. Let's take a listen to what he said. This is the day that people across the region and around the world have been working, striving, hoping, and praying for. With the historic agreement we've just signed, those prayers of millions have finally been answered. The war in Gaza is over. humanitarian aid is now pouring in, including hundreds of truckloads of food and medical equipment. We're also agreed that Gaza's reconstruction requires that it be demilitarized

and that a new honest civilian police force must be allowed to create a safe condition for the people in Gaza. I don't know what it is. I like the tough people better than I like the soft, easy ones. I don't know what the hell that is. It's a personality problem, I suspect, but this gentleman from a place called Turkey is one of the most powerful armies, actually in the world. It's much more powerful that he even lets known. If you look at some of the recent conflicts, he was at the top of him, and he was winning him, and he did win him, and he doesn't want any credits, he doesn't want anything. He just wants to be left alone.

He's a tough cookie, but he's been my friend. And every time I've ever needed him, he's been there for me. He just made a big deal today, so we'll smile. A lot of pomp and circumstance in Charmel Sheikh there at the summit, Dr. Parsi. What's your general read here on some of the claims about peace in the Middle East withstanding the hostage deal right now? We're quite a bit away from peace, but we do have to say, though, that this is a very important and welcome necessary step.

There's plenty of flaws with this deal. There's plenty of things to be worried about, but something has happened that is absolutely crucial. And that is that the United States, for the first time in several years now, actually has put pressure on Israel. That is the key to a lot of these different things. A lot of reasons that's why a lot of these regional leaders are coming and giving this exaggerated praise for an effort that has not yet even begun to yield results beyond the ceasefire and the hostage release is precisely because they want to continue to encourage the United States to do something he hasn't done for years, which is put constraints on Israel, put pressure

on Israel, and stop looking at the region solely from an Israeli lens. That's why they're so excited. They know very well this. This may not work out. But if for the first time the U.S. President is willing to try some of these tools, tries the instruments of prector, they want to be as encouraging as possible. Is that enough? No. There's a lot that remains to be done. But without this pressure, we would not have a ceasefire, we would not have the release of the hostages from both sides, and we wouldn't have anything that could potentially start a real process to solve the actual core issue, which is the occupation of Palestinian land. So let's play this out a little bit.

What will it take, even just for the ceasefire to hold, and then what further would it take for there to be something approaching a resolution? Well, for the ceasefire to hold, Trump needs to do what he didn't do between January and March. He first pressured the Israelis into a ceasefire back then, but he did not sustain that pressure. And by March, Bibi Netanyahu managed to essentially weasel his way out of that agreement and restart the genocide. This time around, clearly the demand from the Arab side and from the regional states has been that Trump needs to own this process as much as possible, make it as personal as possible, fly to the region, give all of these speeches, have all of these things

in order to make it as difficult as possible for any party, particularly the Israelis, to violate the deal because by doing so is to be in direct defiance of Trump himself. So, you know, that pressure needs to be sustained for this to work out. Once it gets to the issue of the core problem, I think here the United States needs to really take a step back and recognize. For so long, we have said that we need to get out of this region. I think that is absolutely correct.

The United States is completely overextended, has put way too many bases and troops in the region that is of increasingly little strategic value to the United States. But to do that type of burden shifting, we need something to shift it on to. We can't just shift it onto some sort of a vacuum. If the United States uses this momentum now to be able to help, not lead, but help creating an inclusive security order in the region, then I think we will have that mechanism, that infrastructure to ship the burden onto. For that to work, however, you cannot let the cancer of this continued conflict between Israel and Palestine to continue. You need to resolve the

Palestinian issue. So I think we have to recognize that a creation of a Palestinian state is in the direct interest of the U.S. itself in order to be able to get to a security architecture that is crucial for the U.S. to be able to disengage militarily from this region. One of the things, Dr. Parsi, they are pushing hard is the Abraham Accords. Let's take a listen to Trump, encouraging all of those states to join. Let's take a listen. Everybody's going to join the Abraham Accord. I like to say the Avraham.

I love Avraham, but somehow it doesn't sound as good when I say it as it does when some of my other friends say it who's from the region. Pronunciation and all of that, notwithstanding, he is still encouraging those states to join. And why is he so wedded to that framework and does it have any chance of success? Well, it's interesting because it also seems as if he has changed what that framework actually means. The framework from the outset was a very erroneous one. It was actually designed to keep the United States militarily engaged in the region. It was about organizing the region, half the region, against the other half, and particularly bring the Arabs and the Israelis together in order to contain Iran.

This is what the U.S. has been doing for the last 30 years, started off with dual containment back in the 1990s. This was just giving it another name and making the Arab-Israeli component much more explicit. Of course, it didn't work. It was sold as a peace plan, but in reality, it threw the Palestinians under the bus and paved the way for October 7th, because it was very clear that if you're closing the path for the Palestinians to achieve their rights to a state through diplomatic means, then eventually at some point it's going to translate into armed resistance, which is exactly what it did. So that part of it, I think, is dead in the waters. Most countries in the region are not eager to normalize relations with Israel.

We saw, for instance, according to Turkish press at least, the Turks warned Trump that if he actually gets Netanyahu to come to Egypt, the Turks will turn around mid-air and go back. They're not going to attend that session together with Netanyahu. So if they won't even be on the same stage, and those are two countries that actually have relations, you can just imagine what the others are feeling like. But then there's also this other confusing thing is that he's saying that he wants Iran to end the Abram Accord as well. Well, if Iran is in the Abram Accord, then there's no longer an Abram Accord because the Abram Accord was centered on the idea of isolating and containing Iran. Unless, of course, he's suggesting that he wants to have regime change in Iran and after that bring them into the Abram Accord. But that would also then be a clear failure, a broken promise to his base. which he said no more regime change wars.

Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of what Trump did have to say about Iran. But I think Iran will come along. They've been battered and bruised and, you know, they need some help. They have big sanctions, as you know, tremendous sanctions. I'd love to take the sanctions off when they're ready to talk. But they can't really survive with those sanctions. Those sanctions are very tough. But at some point, they're going to say, we want the same.

sanctions off. We're going to end up with peaceful. I think Iran is going to be fine. I know so many Iranian people, they're great people, they're smart, great, great people, engineers, lawyers, I mean, they're academics. So what did you, what did you read into those comments? I think we have to remind ourselves that this is pretty much exactly the same thing that he was saying back in January and February. And by June, he bombed Iran despite ongoing and rather constructive negotiations taking place. So Tehran is extremely skeptical. They believe that there is a high risk that diplomacy with the U.S. at this stage is just

another guy's facade for an effort to lull them into a false sense of security in order to bomb them again. I think that is understandable if you're sitting in Tehran, but I think it's also exaggerated. I don't think Iranians had much to lose if they had actually showed up in Sharmishia. They were apparently invited. and Trump wanted them to be there. I think from their standpoint right now, their options are not particularly good

and the risk of actually engaging is, in my view, less than not engaging. Now, I think there's a critical element that needs to be fixed in order for this to actually be a negotiation and not what Trump actually seems to be looking for, which is a conversation about Iran's terms for capitulation. The Iranians are not going to capitulate.

And as long as they think that that is what Trump is looking for, they're going to be very disinclined to get engaged, in any real diplomacy with him. But if Trump goes back to his original red line, which was no weapons, not the Israeli red line of no enrichment, then I think there is a deal that can be had. And the Iranians have signaled clearly that they're open to that. And in fact, they were very close to a deal on that issue. The question is, it seems like Trump thinks that Iran is in such a weak position that he has

no choice but to capitulate. I think that is a misreading. Iran is in a weaker position, but it's not going to capitulate. And if you keep on insisting on it, you're more likely to get into a new round of confrontation rather than a deal and diplomacy. One of the things I've worried about, Dr. Parsi, is that with Gaza, at least not over entirely, but quieter. Netanyahu still needs a war to justify his own political position.

Well, what is the unfinished war, which he continually keeps bringing up Iran? And so we have the snapback sanctions in place. We have the European Union and all of them acting much more hawkish. actually does seem to me as if conflict seems more likely with Iran at this point as a result now of this so-called ceasefire dealer, whatever, whether it holds or not. But it makes it seem as if politically, to justify his own position, his own security doctrine, that he has to go in search of monsters to destroy. I think, unfortunately, you may be right on this one. I don't think in the next two weeks, I think in the immediate term, the risk has gone down, whereas the risk actually

was pretty high. But by the end of this year, if this is not resolved, and the Israelis keep on pushing, and as you said, they need some other conflict. They also have the option of really restarting it with Lebanon, but the price for their end, of course, is to be able to defan Iran entirely. I think one of the things the Iranians committed a mistake about is that they never engaged, not just directly with the U.S., but they should have had just the conversation with Trump himself, whether it was the foreign minister or the president, because Trump, for him, everything is personal. Diplomacy is utterly personal. Just talking to Witkoff is just not enough. And I think there may have been a chance back then and there may still be a chance now

that if there is that type of a direct conversation, both sides will get a more realistic view of the other. From the U.S. side recognizing the Iranians are not going to capitulate, you push for that, you get war. From the Iranian side recognizing, you can't play this game any longer of not talking directly to the U.S. In fact, swallow your pride, talk directly to Trump. That's the only chance of actually getting flexibility from the American side. And Dr. Parsi, lastly, it's important we try to think about what Netanyahu wants because he's proven very effective at manipulating American presidents, whether it's this one or the last one or a bunch of other ones besides. Do you think that he is done with Gaza or wants to go back

into, you know, all-out kinetic warfare in Gaza as well? I don't think he is in the slightest finish with Gaza. In fact, I don't think this is what the Israelis wanted at all. I think what happened here is a combination of two things. One, that there was this massive plunging of the standing of Israel in the America first constituency, which is Trump's core constituency, particularly in the last couple of months, it really accelerated. And it started to become a political liability for Trump.

In fact, he said to Netanyahu, according to his own conversation, as he conveyed it to Sean Hannity, he told Netanyahu, you can't continue fighting the world all the time. He's essentially telling him, you're becoming a pariah, you're becoming isolated. And this is costing me a lot because you're asking the United States to arm you, to defend you diplomatically, spend a lot of political capital to constantly bail you out of things. Enough is enough. I'm not going to walk into the midterm elections with this liability. If that is, and I think, of course, the strike against Qatar, which was this massive

overreach by the Israelis, kind of was the trigger that shifted the debate inside of the White House on this issue and pushed them in the direction that we're seeing right now. So I don't think Netanyahu wanted any of this. He wanted to continue the finding. He wanted to have an annexation, not just of Gaza. He wanted to use Gaza as a way of distract the world from what he's actually doing in the West Bank right now. So this is a major uprooting of the plan that he had.

I don't think he's abandoned the plan. I think he's bidding his time to see when will Trump lose attention, shift his focus elsewhere, and when is the next opportunity for Netanyahu to restart this once again, just as he did in March. Yeah, very, very important analysis, sir. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it. Thanks so much for having it.

December 29th, 1974. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently the explosion actually impelled metal, glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of. enemy emerged. And it was here to stay. Terrorism. Law and order criminal justice system is back.

In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The internet is something we make, not just something that happens to us. I'm Bridget Todd, host of the Tech and Culture Podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet. There Are No Grows on the Internet is not just about tech. It's about culture and policy and art and expression, and how we as humans exist and fit with one another. In our new season, I'm talking to people like Emile Dash, an OG entrepreneur and writer who refuses to be cynical about the Internet.

I love tech. You know, I've been a nerd my whole life, but it does have to be for something. Like, it's not just for its own sake. It's a fascinating exploration about the power of the internet for both good and bad. They use WhatsApp to get the price of rice at the market that is often 12 hours away. They're not going to be like, we don't like the terms of service, therefore we're not trading rice this season. It's an inspiring story that focuses on people as the core building blocks of the internet. Platforms exist because of the regular people on them, and I think that's a real important story to keep repeating.

I created there are no girls on the internet because the future belongs to all of us. New episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Listen to There Are No Girls on the Internet on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Whenever I got through the window, I tried to pick him up, and his body was stiff. I'm Ben Westoff, and this is The Peacemaker, a true crime podcast investigating a string of mysterious deaths at a prestigious Missouri University, and the fraternity brother at the center of it all. A few years back, two fraternity brothers died by suicide, just weeks apart, and just weeks apart. shockingly similar ways. Both were discovered by the same student,

Brandon Grossheim. I laid him down. I tilted, I tilted his head back, and proceeded to get mouth and mouth in CPR. At first, people gave Brandon the benefit of the doubt. But when three more acquaintances died the following year, the tide turned. The lawsuit says Grossheim was one of the last people

to see each victim before their deaths. Was he profoundly unlucky? Or was something much darker at play? Listen to The Peacemaker Podcast, starting October 14th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Turning now to a side comment to Donald Trump, and yet probably one of the most revealing comments of all time, is Trump praising mega donor Miriam Adelson while he was in Israel, and in particular making a comment about how he once asked her whether she loved Israel or America more, and she would. He couldn't answer, so he assumed Israel. Let's take a lesson. Look at promises from many other American presidents.

You know that. They kept promising. I never understood it until I got there. There was a lot of pressure put on these presidents. It was put on me too, but I didn't yield to the pressure. But every president for decades said, we're going to do it. The difference is I kept my promise and officially recognized

the capital of Israel and moved the American embassy to Jerusalem. Is it that right, Miriam? Look at Miriam. She's back there. Stand up, you know. Stand up. Miriam and Sheldon would come into the office. They'd call me. I'd call me.

I think they had more trips to the White House than anybody else. I could think of. Look at it sitting there. innocently. She's got 60 billion in the bank, 60 billion. And she loves, and she, I think she say no more. And she loves Israel, but she loves it, and they would come in. And her husband was a very aggressive man, but I loved them. It was a very aggressive, very supportive of me. And he'd call up, can I come over and see you? I say, Sheldon, I'm the president of the United States. It doesn't work that way. He'd come in.

But they were very responsible for so much, including getting me thinking about Golan Heights, which is probably one of the greatest things to ever happen. Miriam, stand up, please. She really is. I mean, she loves this country. She loves this country. Her and her husband are so incredible. We miss him so dearly. But I actually asked her, I'm going to get her in trouble with this, but I actually asked her once I said,

So Miriam, I know you love Israel. What do you love more? The United States or Israel? She refused to answer. That means, that might mean Israel, I must say. We love you. Thank you, darling, for being here. That's a great honor. Great honor. She's a wonderful woman. So, that, by the way, is something that would get you banned from social media previously. It's something that would be considered anti-Semitic, actually under the government's definition.

Let's go ahead and put B6, please, up on the screen from our friend Glenn Greenwald, as he says, is that under the new expanded IHRA hate speech, rules, Trump forced American universities to adopt, accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel or to their alleged priorities of Jews worldwide than to the interests of their own nations is considered an act of anti-Semitism. And yet, in this case, he tells a personal anecdote in which he directly asked Miriam whether she loved Israel or America more and she wouldn't answer and that he thinks that she meant Israel.

If you have any doubt, by the way, about her husband, he once said that it was a regret that wore the American uniform in battle and not the Israeli uniform and that his children wore the idea of uniform. You people think I'm joking. Look it up. All right. It's a direct quote from Sheldon Adelson, the main funder of birthright. Visited the White House more than anyone else. Okay. All right. It's not an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. It is literally a fact. And yet, look, in some way, I talked about the duality of Trump. He is both the mega Zionists and the guy who tells Bibi to shut up and to just go along. In this case, he just says the quiet part out loud. He told us all

the truth. To him, it's very obvious. He's like, she's got $60 billion. She gave me $100 billion, or how much, $100 million, just for this campaign. She gave me $100 million, just for this campaign. Part of it was I let Israel annexed the West Bank. I guess she didn't fully get everything that she paid for, but she got a lot of what she

paid for. And he said, out of his own mouth, he said, Miriam, you know, in his own estimation, loves Israel more than she loves America. Yeah. I mean, there's like really, honestly, no analysis needed for this clip. It's very self-explan He said it. Trump is on here bragging about how his foreign policy was for sale. And this is the lady who bought it, at least with regard to Israel. Talks about some of the actions specifically he took in the first term where he recognized Jerusalem as the capital, moves the American embassy to Jerusalem, recognize the goal on Heights, which under international law are part of Syria as being part of Israel.

This was what was on their wish list for the first Trump administration. Reportedly, what's on their wish list for the second Trump administration is the complete annexation of the West Bank. That has basically happened. I mean, if you talk to Jasper Nathaniel, in terms of the level of control that Israel exerts over the West Bank, and if you consider especially some of the increase in settlements, key settlements that cut off the West Bank from critical parts, so you've got already basically de facto annexation of the West Bank. And I will say, one red flag for this deal is how happy Miriam is about it. You know, that's one thing that... And the pro-Israel crowd generally.

That's one thing that's very concerning to me. Why are these people so hot? If he really stuck it to BB and, like, you know, drove a hard bargain, then why are they acting like they got everything that they ever wanted out of this? That's one thing to be concerned about. And also the fact that, like, he just openly says, look, this lady, she gave me $100 million. I mean, this isn't exactly what he said, but this is the substance of his statements. She gave me $100 million. I'm going to do what she wants me to do on this.

So what else does she want? How does she want this deal to ultimately be resolved? but just extraordinary for the American president to be in there like, yeah, I, you know, she gave money in my campaign and so I did what she wanted me to do, just out and out. And to reveal her sentiments. And this gets, we didn't get it in the show, but we're going to cover, maybe we'll Ryan and I'll cover it tomorrow. The A-PAC trying to rebrand themselves. Oh.

This is exactly the point I always bring up. So I'll give you, so the A-PAC people, what they always tell me is, look, these are Americans. They are American citizens. They have the right to engage in their politics. Well, when you literally have the President of the United States saying in this case that they have loyalty to a foreign country and they use their dollars to fund causes to promote more loyalty to that government, what world are we living in where that doesn't have to qualify for foreign agent registration? Or we need to change the law, honestly. Like, imagine the rules reverse. I'm of Indian descent. I'm not even a citizen of India or an overseas citizen or any of that. I actually rejected. They have this overseas citizen thing where basically it's like a multi-entry visa. I said no, even though it's a pain in the ass because I refuse to be a citizen even in name of any other country. And yet for them, they not only want the dual citizenship, they want also to be able to use their American citizenship to promote loyalty to this foreign government.

And listen, I mean, I guess, you know, you have the right to do what you want. But at the very least, like, you have to have some registration or disclosure purposes whenever it comes to that. And even that, they would say it's anti-Semitic. I just compared it to India. I would call out any Indian who is doing the exact, I'm calling anybody, Yugoslavia, whatever, okay? Serbia. Sorry, Yugoslavia doesn't exist. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry.

I've been doing some 1990s reading. So I have a globe in my desk, which still from the 1900s, which still has, like, the Russian Empire on it. So that's part of the issue. But my point just broadly is it's not an anti-Semitic point. I would say it about anybody. I genuinely would say it about anybody. Katari, but they want a special exception. They refuse to even acknowledge any of this.

And by the way, if Trump hadn't said it, whenever people like, you know, I know Scott Horton said that, I think on the Lexington podcast, whenever he was debating Mark Dubowitz, you know, he was called an anti-Semite, you know, for bringing up that point. When you literally quote the Edelson's and then point to their giving and. what their priorities are, you're called anti-Semitic. And then Trump just says the shit out loud. They've just, that card does, it just doesn't work anymore. And, you know, and it's a problem when you have genuine anti-Semitism because now everyone's like, well, was it really? Because you say that shit about like literally everything.

So let's, we've got a little bit of an update about how things are going over at Barry's CBS as well that we can put up. This is B-5. So now CBS News on their homepage is promoting some of the quote-unquote reporting. from the free press, including this article, some New York police department officers worry about Mamdani becoming the New York City mayor. So this is a type of partnership,

type of hard-hitting journalism that's being promoted now over at CBS News. I mean, it's just extraordinary. And it was interesting talking to Dr. Parsi about part of why this deal is happening now. And partly it's because, in Ryan's words, like Israel was bombing Trump's money in Qatar. I think that was a big part of the reason.

But the other part of the reason was the sense that Israel is incredibly isolated in the world. Like, it's impossible to continue running cover for them and stick with their propaganda. And that you have this significant faction, especially of young people in the America First Movement, who were like, how is this America First? And it was becoming a problem. And one of the ways you could tell that this was becoming an issue is because you have had this increasingly heavy-handed effort to censor any pro-Palestal. or Israel-critical commentary, including, you know, what's happening at CBS being one piece of that, what's happening at TikTok being another very important piece of this. So, you know, this was a sort of sign that they recognized they needed to get more aggressive because their

previous tactics in Hasbara were just utterly falling flat. So, so anyway, that's where we are. That's how things are going for, for Barry and CBS. There's our update. Yeah. With CBS. But if anybody is interested, Paramount Skydance stock is down 10.4% in the last five days. So we have. Yeah. I am pretty. Oh, yeah. Did I disclose that? Did I disclose that? I'm not sure. I don't think you have yet. Full disclosure. What I did on the day that the Paramount deal, acquiring Barry Weiss's company, the free press, was announced. I bought a put option on the stock for Paramount that it would crash by 25% in one year. And already, the stock is down 10.4% in the last five days. And currently we're recording this before the market is open. It's down another 1.17% as of this morning. So I can go ahead and check right now what I could sell and already exit my position for. If I wanted to, let's see, it was already

up some 18% whenever I checked it yesterday. So that is my own personal full disclosure here. Even though, yes, I am against sports gambling. I am absolutely for, I look, I put my money where her mouth is, right? I said it's a stupid deal. It doesn't make any sense and that it is indicative of ideology over content. And I'm going to stick to that. Any moron who's going to buy the free press for $150 million and wants to pay all cash for Warner Brothers Discovery is a moron worth betting against. And so that is my bet. Consider yourself fully informed audience. So Barry's big initial idea of her roundtable with Hillary and Pompeo or whatever, what ended up being was a discussion with Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice on the future of the Middle

East. And I'm just taking a look now. It looks like, looks like it got on their YouTube channel, which their YouTube channel, CBS News, has like close to 7 million subscribers. It looks like it clocked in at 15,000. Solid, very solid. Yeah. And when they live streamed it, it had like 100 concurrence. Let's keep it going. All right. Let's start a GameStop thing. Let's crash this fucker. All right. And by the way, all proceeds I will use for something that. that would make Barry, Barry Fury. I haven't decided exactly what it would be. But if I make any profit, all profit,

will go to something that would make Barry Wise. Well, it's sort of incredible that at least based on the stock price right now, the actual valuation for the free press was like negative million billions of dollars. I don't know. I need to look at the market cap overall of this company. Let's see, 18.74 billion. So down, yeah, that's as of right now. I'd have to do some back of the napkin math now person.

But yeah, anyway, so there you go. Consider everybody yourself informed. It's all in Dufant. I think the total price was like $200. It wasn't like a serious bet or anything. But again, all of the proceeds will make to some, we'll go to something if I do sell it for a profit that will make Barry Wise furious. Okay.

Let's get to the economy. December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The holiday rush, parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then, at 6.33 p.m., everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Apparently, the explosion actually impelled metal glass. The injured were being loaded into ambulances, just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, and it was here to stay.

Terrorism. Law and order, criminal justice system is, Back. In season two, we're turning our focus to a threat that hides in plain sight. That's harder to predict and even harder to stop. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The internet is something we make, not just something that happens to us. I'm Bridget Todd, host of the tech and culture podcast. There are no grows on the internet. There are no grows on the internet is the internet. not just about tech. It's about culture and policy and art and expression and how we as humans exist and fit with one another. In our new season, I'm talking to people like Emil Dash, an OG entrepreneur and writer who refuses to be cynical about the internet. I love tech. You know, I've been a nerd my whole life, but it does have to be for something. Like, it's not

just for its own sake. It's a fascinating exploration about the power of the internet for both good and bad. They use WhatsApp to get the price of rice at the market that is often 12 hours away. They're not going to be like, we don't like the terms of service, therefore we're not trading rice this season. It's an inspiring story that focuses on people as the core building blocks of the internet. Platforms exist because of the regular people on them, and I think that's a real important story to keep repeating. I created There Are No Girls on the Internet because the future belongs to all of us. New episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Listen to There Are No Girls on the Internet on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Whenever I got through the window, I tried to pick him up and his body was stiff. I'm Ben Westoff, and this is The Peacemaker, a true crime podcast investigating a string of mysterious deaths at a prestigious Missouri University and the fraternity brother at the center of it all. A few years back, two fraternity brothers died by suicide, just weeks apart, in shockingly similar ways. Both were discovered by the same student, Brandon Grosheim. I laid him down. And I tilted his head back and just anything mouth and mouth in CPR. At first, people gave brand in the benefit of the doubt. But when three more acquaintances died the following year, the tide turned.

The lawsuit says Grossheim was one of the last people to see each victim before their deaths. Was he profoundly unlucky? Or was something much darker at play? Listen to the Peacemaker podcast, starting October 14th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Turning now to the economy, a blockbuster new interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin, who's got a new book out.

1929 says a crash could happen again, referencing the great crash that caused the Great Depression. Let's take a listen. And in the 1920s, people were saying stocks were going to go up because the entire world was buying into the U.S. I think that's very true. I would actually specifically point, actually, to a technology story back.

then which was radio radio the ticker symbol was radio the company was rca they also by the way not only had the technology for radio they had the patents for television and that was the invidia i mean that was the meme stock uh of that era because people were buying into this future that we were all going to experience and they wouldn't have been wrong right by the way the conundrum is i think the stock split adjusted at the peak was like got to five hundred and thirty some odd dollars and by 1932 was like $3. So there you go. He's making some parallels there about the parallels between today's market and the 1920s. Obviously, you could probably say that at any time about some stock.

People have been talking about crashes and all of that for some time. But, you know, it's looking a little bubbly. I think if you asked me, I spoke to a friend recently who said, if you really want to be scared, it's not March of 2000. It's January of 1999. So we're still at the early part of where things might go for the dot-com crash. I think the parallels, I think what scares me the most are those insular deals that I haven't stopped talking about here on the show. Because that's the type of stuff where you're like, you know, man, this stuff is not just fake, it's fake, beyond fake,

and everybody knows it's fake. It's like open AI announces a deal with a company. That company gets 10% of its stock to open AI. Then the stock goes up, and then the amount that they're paying is covered by the overall value. And this happens over and over and over. It did it with AMD. NVIDIA did it with another company.

Open AI just announced a deal with Broadcom. It's like they have figured out their secret sauce is that investors are so bullish on the promise of AI that even when they put cash out the door, as they cash out the door is enough for a requisite rise in the stock that if they take the stock, the value goes up and it's effectively nothing there. When in reality, nothing has happened. It's a five-year deal. Who knows?

Chips is a hard business. Can they really make them? You know, it's not that easy as we've all figured out. It's been a few years since the Chips Act. How's that going? Not particularly well in terms of our production. It's literally probably the hardest manufacturing business in the world. And yet, it's all premised on, oh, we eventually are going to get to a place of AGI and the profits and all of that are going to be so extraordinary and so unbelievable. And right now, the reality, it just doesn't exist. I was telling you guys yesterday, as the audience has been watching some more NFL. You know, it's pretty crazy and weird to watch Microsoft Copilot and Chat GPT running consumer ads on the NFL network, like on the various networks. So, for example, Microsoft Copilot is running ads right now about that dumb animation, like turning a photo of yourselves into anime. And they're like, Microsoft Copilot where you can free image generation for everybody. I'm like, really? That's what you're selling to people? That's the promise of co-pilot. Same with ChatGPT. They're like, use it to plan a vacation. or something. It's like two brother

and a sister driving through the mountains and I was like, so that's what all the data centers and all the shit is for? Is for this? It's like glorified Google. Right. Like Google Plus, right? Gemini, right? I mean, if you look at the ads for these, it's not impressive. It's not at all what it was sold

as. Now, is it a good research tool? Sure. Does it help some efficiency a little bit and all that? Yeah. But that's not, you know, worth the hundreds and hundreds of trillions of market cap of where we are. So that's why I'm starting, I'm just getting very nervous. But, you know, what my cope is and why the market can't crash, the whole economy is fake. This shit is way more fake than 1999. Back in 1999, we actually had, we made shit in this

country, like actual stuff. We had a lot more fundamentals. All of the bananas and all of that, at Wall Street subprime and all that hadn't happened yet. A lot of the fakeries and, you know, terms of accounting, et cetera. This is pre-Enron. So it's like, when I start to think about where things are today versus then, like I think we've actually gotten much more sophisticated at washing all this together. Building the House of Carnes and keeping it going. Yeah, I think we put the Superglow down and now it's not as easy to crash anymore. I could be totally wrong, but that's my cope.

I don't know. And here's the thing is like there isn't a lot of indication that AI so far has, you know, there's all this projection, oh, it's going to increase employee productivity. And so that's going to create all this GDP growth. There is not a lot of indication that that is happening yet. And we know that the vast majority of AI applications are not. like these companies that keep spending, spending, spending more money and acquiring different other companies and, you know, their stock keeps going up and up and up.

It's not like they're making money on any of these investments. So that's a bit of a red flag. So on the one hand, there's the risk of this technology doesn't really pan out to be as, you know, transformational as it was supposed to be. And at some point, there's a reckoning with that. And that creates a crash. The other possibility is that it is as transformational as being promised. And it creates a mass like layoffs and societal,

Humbold. So it's kind of a distressing story. Either way, you cut it. You know, the other piece of this is that with Emily and I covered this yesterday, I want to get your take on it too with the China trade war stuff. China really holds our fate in their hands right now. If they want to pull the pin on us with regard to rare earths, they can do it. Now, they have vulnerabilities as well, right? We're very interconnected in terms of our economies. But that's why on Friday, when they were like, oh, we're going to up. the export controls on export restrictions on rare earth minerals, why there was such a instant market freak out because they, I was just looking, China controls about 70% of global rare earths mining, 90% of refining capacity. That's a really important piece. And 92% of these type of magnet production that are critical for motors and EVs, wind turbines, and defense tech. All, like, all of this is very critical also for AI. So if our entire economy is a bet on AI, and we're deeply, deeply reliant on this country that Trump is, you know, set on antagonizing. That's a really dicey situation to be in as well. I don't know. With the China thing,

yeah, you're absolutely right about the rare earth minerals. I just don't know how much of the trade fight is fake. It's like one day, it's 100 percent tariff. The next day says it's not going to happen. By the way, as we are speaking, the Dow is falling the expectations because of U.S. tensions research, even though it went up over 1% yesterday when it looked like China tensions were cooling. All I know broadly is that, yes, we have serious, fundamental, and strategic risk whenever it comes to China. And there were a lot of easy ways to get away from that, as in not just chips, but even this. I mean, look at the, every tax bill, every time you touch the U.S. tax code, it's a massive missed opportunity. It's a zero-sum game. We only open

up the tax code every five years. So every five years, you have a bite at the apple. to actually do something. And in this particular case, they didn't really do much to boost any American manufacturing in the critical sectors that we need it the most. And our trade policy is so schizophrenic. Are we rarely prioritizing rare earth minerals or not? Not really, right? It's all just scattershot. It's not serious. And in the interim, at every year, China continues to go exponential. Now, I've seen a lot of criticism about, oh, you're glazing. Listen, we can acknowledge all of their problems, authoritarian government, bureaucracy, you know, a lot of it is for show in some cases, like the bridge, for example. There were some criticism of people who covered the bridge.

They're like, oh, you're buying into Chinese propaganda. I'm like, well, you know, even if it is a bridge to nowhere, it's still a remarkable engineering accomplishment. And the truth is that that's the way that they get the rural population on their side. I encourage people to read Dan Wang's book. People who live in rural China have watched in 20 years a literal exponential increase in their life. Now, compare that to Appalachia or to this. I was just looking this morning

at a graph of life expectancy. Southeast of the United States is life expectancy 20 years lower than the rest of the country. Who is doing anything about that? Is anybody doing anything about that? No. And so I look at that.

I look at the housing price. At the very least, the CCP pretends to give a shit about your problems. Sometimes they're actually really good at it. At solving them. Sometimes not. They give you a lot of propaganda.

But they don't even pretend here. That's all. What I admire is the level of seriousness for the critical industry and for their long-term thinking. I mean, people laughed, including me at Made in China 2025. I remember when I came out, I said this is a joke. It's true. It worked. I would say the vast majority, if you go back to 2015 and read the documents, most of what they set out to do, which is declaring independence in batteries, critical minerals, in airplane production, and in high-tech manufacturing. I wouldn't say they won entirely. They haven't achieved total autonomy, but they made a lot of progress. Now, compare the same rhetoric of 2015 in the United States about the pivot to Asia.

Where are we today? How's the pivot to Asia going? It's literally 2025. What's the lead block of this show? Israel, Palestine. Who's Trump meeting with on Friday? Fucking Zelensky. About you. Like, oh, what? That's literally two conflicts of no importance in the grand scheme of things to the USA. And that's what everything is focused on, not to mention all the dollars, all of the attention in Washington. So it's like, that's what I'm talking about, is you have to zoom out. And I've seen this stuff from afar, you know, literally here in the city for the entire period of 2015 now to 2025. And I think we've actually made less progress if you look at manufacturing. If you look at the level of seriousness, divided politics, life expectancy, even COVID. We criticize them for zero

COVID. I certainly did. I thought it was incredibly stupid. But it turned out, you know, what they were able to do was actually exert even more control over their population. People predicted that that would lead to rise up in the... Hasn't happened. Literally hasn't happened. Yeah. So, you know, we have to stop putting our own values or expectations on this other country. And we need to live in hours. And truth is, we live in a financialized bubble where the cost of living is unbelievably high for the vast majority of people who make under $100,000. That's just, that's the truth. And that's not the truth over there. The life expectancy thing doesn't get talked about enough. Oh, no. It's such a

basic metric of how your society is doing. And when you see life expectancy, like, not just flatlining, but actually falling and you, you know, like that is such an indictment of a society and is also such a clear indicator that you're going to

have some fucked up politics to. That is like... Russia, 1990. There you go. How do you think Putin came to power? People are like, oh, he's so authoritarian. He just came out of nowhere and he tricked the Russia. I'm like, oh, we tricked them, or they were massively alcoholic. They got their economy destroyed. Their population decimated.

Their empire was, you know, torn apart by the West. Then the West created NATO and started marching it forward. This stuff doesn't just happen in a vacuum. Yeah. And not excusing Putin, we can sociologically understand why that might be traumatic for a population. You're exactly right here in the U.S. You have almost 10 years now of declining life experience. expectancy, massive obesity, pre-diabetic. Yeah, what do you think is going to happen? Where do you think

Maha and all of that comes from? People are so furious. And then uranized health insurance premiums are about to go double, all right? People are going to go radical. People are going to go crazy. When you start paying, I'm already paying like $9,000 a year for health insurance. For me, my wife and my dog, one kid. All right, so $9,000, I have a $14,000 deductible. $14,000. That will wipe out any average person in this country. Wipe out. You know, you one medical emergency, you're dead from a bankruptcy perspective. So put that on everybody else and just think about where that's going to go. You know who has something to say about that? Marjorie Taylor Green sounding off on prices and has been sounding the alarm about the spiking health insurance premiums

that are on the horizon. Let's go ahead and listen to that. Costs have not come down. I myself can tell you my apartment here in Washington, D.C., the electricity bill is $100 more than it was last year because you can look at your own bill and look at costs. Prices have not come down. That is a reality. People's wages have not gone up. That's another reality. And so Americans are continuing to have a very difficult time.

The thing that's amazing to me, Zahar, is this is such so basic. Like, it's so basic and so obvious. And everybody knows it. And yet for her to say it is, like, really remarkable. Because Trump demands, because Trump and the Republican Party, man fielder. You're not supposed to talk about it when he's in office, the tariffs, economy, and all of that is booming. And she's like, no, this is a reality. I think what I give her credit for is she always speaks, at least more recently, from a point of view as a mother

and as a congressman of this district. She talks about her children and about their economic crime. I mean, I think that is the only way that a healthy society can look at the political problems, are not only how does this affect me, how does this affect the next generation? Looking at you, boomers, looking directly in the camera at you, it would be nice if you guys started to think a little bit more like that. But that's the issue. You know, I see a recent clip, I don't know if you did, of Ron DeSantis talking about when you buy a TV, you don't have to pay taxes on it every year, comparing it to property tax. That's what you said about a TV. Yeah, that's the same thing. You know, the TV, apparently, you need roads and all of that to operate a TV. I'm going to lose it when I watch this stuff happen. Because, Kim, let's this Wall Street Journal piece, please. Stronger growth, weaker hiring. Forecasters see a split screen economy. And what is the split screen? It's exactly what we keep hammering home here, is at the top 10 percent, things seem fine. At the rest, below 100,000, yeah, it's not fine. And the split screen economy is one where without AI, we would be in a recession. Without all

of this AI fakery, we would not only have a top and bottom recession, we would be in a full-blown GDP recession. It's the only thing that is propping up the economy right now. And it's the only reason that rich people aren't beating the drum because their stock valuations and portfolios are sky high. But everything right now is weird. Gold, all time high. We covered that. Bitcoin is near all time high. Stock market near all time high. That's not supposed to happen. Like those are supposed to be countervailing, right? So, I don't know. The whole thing, it's making me crazy because it's just every day a stupidity marches on

and that's one more day that we're not doing anything about it. She's the only politician on the right right now which is actually trying to elevate that in the discussion and she's getting blown to hell for it

from Israel to prices. I saw someone calling her a California liberal. I was like, okay. If that's the standard now, we are cooked, like cooked if that's how to it's going to be. MTG is lib.

Yeah. Last piece here, This is kind of what I was referencing before about, okay, well, how is AI? How is it doing? How's it going? How's it impacting the workforce? Because part of the bet is that all of these companies are going to invest in AI. That's going to be where a lot of the revenue for these for AI companies come from, that it's going to increase worker productivity. We could put this last one up on the screen. There's just not a lot of evidence that this has really come through yet. Now, it might. It's still early days, right? And not just in terms of the technological development, but in terms of companies and workers, how to figure. out how to use the tech. There are some early indications that in coding effectively, which is a huge irony since we were all told, Learned to Code, that this is the technology of the future. That's like the one place where you can look new college graduates coming out

who have like computer science degrees are struggling to find work because that is the place where AI has been the most disruptive in terms of replacing entry-level workers. But outside of that, there isn't a lot of indication that the promises is bearing fruits as of yet. So, you know, some massive, like, mind-boggling amounts of money have been spent on this, the amount of resources that are being sucked up, your electricity bill likely going up, as Marjorie Taylor Green was talking about as a result of these data centers sucking up

so much power. Water usage, you've got wells that have gone dry when these data centers have located nearby, which is actually something I'm concerned about, where I live, where they're planning to locate a... Rise up, Crystal B. Karen. Rise up in city council and say, no. So, yeah. I'm a little concerned about that myself.

But in any case, all of these massive bets being placed. And as of yet, the promise and certainly the profit to go along with those massive bets has not come to fruition. Bingo. Yeah. Everyone watch it. It's like I said, it'll either come true like what they're claiming. There's three options. It'll either come true with AGI and what they're claiming, which is going to.

to lead to a massive surveillance, oligarchal state. You guys covered that yesterday, the pill, Peter Thiel thing. Number two is it won't come true, but because the economy is so financialized and so fake, is that we'll have like a modest period, but we'll have no crash. And option three is a full-blown crash. So I really honestly don't know which is worse because the status quo was bad, the alternative is bad, and the victory scenario was also. There's a fourth even more dystopian option, which is that one company achieves AGI

and has all the dystopian results we're concerned about, but because all the other companies, you know, lose the race, there's still a dramatic crash because it's only that one company that succeeds. And by the way, almost a certainty out of all of this is that more wealth, more wealth and more power is going to be consolidated in the hands of a few. How do you think that's going to go for all of us?

How do you think that's going to go for our society? I mean, already, I think the massive wealth and income and equality gap is part of what's fueling, you know, all of the turmoil that I see in our politics. So we're going to consolidate that even more. And we're handed to Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Marcus Zuckerberg, whoever else. And it's not even about like, I don't like any of those guys, but it's not even about whether they're good or bad people.

Like that much wealth and power consolidated, concentrated in the hands of one or a handful of individuals is just a very dangerous situation and, you know, with potential dire consequences. Sambiante, it's Anna Ortiz. And I'm Mark and Delicado. You might know us as Hilda and Justin from Ugly Betty. Welcome to our new podcast, Viva Betty. Yay! We're re-watching the series from start to finish

and getting into all the fashions, the drama, and the behind-the-scenes moment. that you've never heard before. But you were still bartending? I didn't know that. The bar back is like, is that you? And it's a commercial for Betty. And I was like, I quit.

I quit. Listen to Viva Betty on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. In early 1988, federal agents raced to track down the gang they suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin into New York from Asia. I had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles and you name it. Five, six white people pushed me in the car. Basically, your stay-at-home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin. All you got to do is receive the package. Don't have to open it, just accept it. She was very upset, crying.

Once I saw the gun, I tried to take his hand, and I saw the flash of light. Listen to the Chinatown Sting on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts. What's up, everybody? It's next from the trap nerds and all October long. We're bringing you the horror. We're kicking off this month with some of my best horror games

to keep you terrified. Then we'll be talking about our favorite horror in Halloween movies and figuring out why black people always die further. And it's the return of Tony's horror show, SideQuest written and narrated by yours truly. We'll also be doing a full episode reading with commentary.

And we'll cap it off with a horror movie Battle Royale. Open your free I-Hard radio app and Search Trapp Ners Podcast And listen now. This is an IHeart podcast.