Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/17/25: Zohran DOMINATES, Shapiro CONDEMNS Young GOP Chat, Dem On Kill Tony

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

The Breaking Points team discusses the NYC mayoral debate between Cuomo, Zohran and Sliwa, the "young" Republican group chat leaks, and we're joined again by Delaware's State Rep Medinah Wilson-Anton who recently did a stand up set on Kill Tony.  Follow Medinah: https://www.instagram.com/madinahfordelaware/   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. Johnny Knoxville here. Check out Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, my new true crime podcast from Smartless Media, campside media, and big money players. It's the true story of the almost perfect crime and the Nimrods who almost pulled it off. It was kind of like the perfect storm in a sewer.

That was dumb. Do not follow my example. Listen to Crimless, Hillbilly Heist, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Two rich young Americans move to the Costa Rican jungle to start over, but one of them will end up dead and the other tried for murder three times. It starts with a dream, a nature reserve, and a spectacular new home. But little by little...

They lose it. They actually lose it. They sort of went nuts. Until one night... Everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years, until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. America, y'all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns.

Listen to Graves County on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season, ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. 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. Hey, guys, happy Friday. How's everybody doing? Hey, good morning. Wonderful. How are you?

Griffin, we just discovered as muching on a Zinn. The 6 milligram. We're talking about Young Republican group chat, so I'm getting a character. That's right. I was at that Oval Office press conference yesterday, and I was watching Bobby Kennedy, and he was going to town on his Zen. Oh, the Sperm count press conference? Yes, the sperm count press conference.

You have to have Zin. If you're talking about sperm count and you're not nicotine to the gills, then you're doing it wrong. They put sperm in those. Wow, Griffin. All right. Let's get to the TV. Anyway. A bunch of stuff.

I think we're going to start with Zoron's debate, right, last night. Well, I mean, there were other people there. Zoron's an interaction, obviously. There's a new poll. I don't know if you guys saw from Fox News that has him over 50%. He's actually gained ground since Eric Adams dropped out. He's the one who's actually benefited, which is hilarious. So he's at 52%.

I know, Cuomo was at like. 30, 28, something like that. And when they tested on the issues, he beats Cuomo on every issue, including, like, crime. So it's over. You can imagine if you're still supporting Eric Adams at this point in Eric Adams's career, you're not actually going to move over to Cuomo. You're not looking for a Cuomo type at that point in your life. Right.

Yes. You're either a Slewa, you're Slewa or you're a Zoran at that point. If people don't understand how much these people like hate each other, too, you know, it's not like, like Sliwa hates Andrew Cuomo. So the idea he would drop out of the race in order to assist Andrew Cuomo was always somewhat preposterous. But you have to know something about these personalities to understand that, you know. That's a great example, which leads us to our first clip where Slewa calls out Cuomo about who will stand up to Trump. Let's take a listen. Why?

Because I said to him, don't you dare. We don't need it. he backed down and he will again. So that proves a good relationship for the president. The president is going to back down to you, Andrew Cuomo. I know you think you're the toughest side of the lie. But let me tell you something.

You lost your own primary, right? You were rejected by your Democrats. And you have a difficult understanding that what the term no is. You're not going to stand by Donald Trump. I agree with Curtis. You're not going to stand up to Donald Trump.

And he can't stand up to Donald Trump. Trump who knocked him right on his took us. We have a follow up. You negotiate with them. You don't fight with them because only the people of New York City will lose. We do have a follow. Why? Oh, so good.

Knocked him right on his took us. Makes you want to live in New York City, man. You know what? To be, it makes me like so nostalgic for when I did live in New York City. And Slewa, I used to do, so when I first started going on cable news, Fox News as a Democrat is the easiest place to get on. So I was on Fox News. and Fox Business all the time.

And Slewa was a regular character, especially on Fox Business. So I met him in the green room, you know, and was on panels with him all the time. And he's just such a specific New York character that you can't help but feel some, like, level of affection for the guy, especially when he's, you know, knocking Cuomo out with such a great, like such a great banger line there. So good. I love people who actually believe in what they're saying, you know, like that's a different, to Crystal's point, it's a different kind of policy.

politician. He is one of those politicians. He's like a, it's like if Bernie Sanders were a right-wing New Yorker. I can see it. Yeah, Bernie with that hat would go hard. Whoa, true. Be a different election. So, yeah, and Sleevo would also, he also took hits at Zoran over the night. He did, Slee was doing this funny thing where he would gesture to both Cuomo and Zoran and say, Cuomo, you're the architect. Zoran, you're the, you're the, you're the apprentice. And they're both the same and they're both going to, uh, you know, ruin New York City. And he made this point that even Zoron won't be able to stand up to Trump because you don't, you don't bully Trump. You negotiate with Trump or Trump will pull the funding for New York City.

Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. So trying to use like Trump has threatened to pull funding for New York City. So trying to use that as like, you know, his own campaign argument, like using the mob boss's threat against Zoron. How much of the, so I didn't watch the whole thing. How how many uh how many israel questions were there how much should we get into the the weeds of Tel Aviv policy it was light it was only like 45 minutes of the first hour where everyone watches so it was a light touch do we have some of that griffin yeah let's take a look and you know it revolves uh mainly around uh quomo quomo would bring it up even if that wasn't really the question um but first let's do some callouts here from quomo that include uh another streamer

that he mentioned as well. I did applaud President Trump and his administration. I think it was a great accomplishment. I hope the peace holds. The parliament will not denounce Hamas. Israel, Gaza and New York City. The assemblyman will not denounce Hassan Piker who said America deserved 9-11. The assembly was just said in his response.

All right. So that's Hassan reacting to it a little bit. If you're confused on the podcast. Will you condemn Hamas, Hassan Piker? Hamas and then Hassan Piper. Sadd-Pyker. Hamas, Hezbollah, Hassan, the three H's. Yeah. I mean, but seriously, think about this.

Let's think about this, for real. Okay. Cuomo went hard on this direction, not Hassan Piker specifically, but on like Zoron's an anti-Semite in the primary. And he got his ass handed to him by, you know, 12 points, overwhelming, come from behind, like, all of that. And Jewish New Yorkers are, majority of them have been supporting. Zoran. So how did you not learn from that? That actually part of Zoran's appeal was that he had a different

perspective on Israel and was always able to like pivot back to yeah, but like why am, why are we focused on this and not New York City affordability? How did he not learn any of that? And who is in his ear advising him that here we are what two, three weeks out from the election day that you should be raising Hassan Piker as a major issue? Like do you think that New Yorkers are really, you know, this is the litmus test that New Yorkers are divided along, whether or not you will condemn Hassan Piker, just on every, I mean, it's just, I don't know, it's just complete insanity to me. Let me steal, man. Or Ryan, you go first and then I'll steal man.

No, I just say, if that didn't work in the primary, I can't think of who the voter is, to Crystal's point, who it's going to work on, like, in the general by just dialing it up a little bit more. Yeah, it just doesn't make sense. Unless Cuomo was thinking about his post. like mayoral campaign career like when he was thrown out of the governor's mansion the first thing he did is get a whole bunch of pro-Israel money together and set up this organization that he said was going to combat anti-Semitism at the time scott stringer uh said this sounds like a fake vehicle for his

mayoral campaign and he's not actually going to spend any of this money fighting anti-Semitism him. Scott Stringer turned out to be precisely correct. It became a vehicle for his mayoral campaign. In the meantime, he volunteered to serve as one of Benjamin Netanyahu's defense attorneys at his crime against humanity tribune. Incredible. So you can imagine, like, if that's what he understood his career path to be after the governor's mansion, he's probably going back to that well after the mayoral race. So this may be less about. something that's going to work for him strategically in the campaign and more like, well, let me just kind of foam the runway for my landing here.

Gotcha. That's interesting. And that Hassan Piker, he would see as useful to him and setting himself up for that post-failure career is interesting. I don't know. It's, I mean, it's just wild to watch. Like, it seemed like

when I saw that, it felt like a dream. Here's Zoran. disavowing Hassan. It's genocide. And I find the comments that Hassan made on 9-11 to be objectionable and reprehensible. And I also think that part of the reason why Democrats are in the situation that we are in of being a permanent minority in this country is we are looking only to speak to journalists. Yeah.

Yeah. So I agree with all that. And yeah, taking it rough. Ryan's probably right. Crystal's probably right. I guess if you were, if I'm putting myself in the shoes of someone who is more. right-leaning who is a Zionist and they see a content creator as big as Hassan or whatever

associating so closely with the campaign I guess it makes sense to mention it like if I were to say the reverse or a reverse example let's say there's a right-wing politician that hangs out with Nick Fuentes a lot maybe someone would mention that on stage they would definitely mention it on stage but I mean this was the tactic that ones are on Mamdani the primary against all the odds, granted Cuomo is a terrible candidate, but he has a lot of name recognition and money, as we know, was constantly driving home the question of affordability, which we saw him just do again on that Martha McCallum interview in Fox News, ask him about Israel and Hamas. He returns to affordability almost immediately. He does not waste breath on the culture war trap questions. And so I'm not even saying some of those questions are entirely objectionable, unlike these debate questions. But how Andrew Cuomo has like the, The lack of humility to learn from that is astounding. It's not a stunning. It's not surprising or anything like that.

But he had this example on a silver platter of this, like, New York was crying out for someone who just would talk about making life easier and cheaper in the city and more just in the city. And he can't, like, that's all he has to do. I get it. I get it. He's behind double digits, though, so you'd think maybe he would come up with a new tactic. Yeah. I think the only thing, I think the only thing that could save him now is like a 300,000.

word bill acman post that's i think the only thing that could help me pull it off here in the end yeah a dollar per word acman acman came up in the debate yeah i'm donnie made fun of them for having acmen he made fun of him for having acmen support that's great i think i think another place where zoron started to have to tread some water and sort of was in sort of the the hot seat for a second was on the subject of policing that was another area that quomo was hitting zoran on saying oh look at all he's mentioned all these tweets that have been deleted or a sentence from Zoran. He mentioned Zoran flipping off the Christopher Columbus statue in like 2020. And I think it was a moment where the moderators asked Zoran, okay, you've changed your position since in 2019, 2020 tweets.

What was the journey that made you evolve that made you change your position on the police Department on defunding the police. And then Zoran had to sort of wade through a lot of the 2020 politics. He had to mention George Floyd. And it did feel like the area where Zoran was on on the most shaky ground the entire night. You know, I saw him in the Martha McCallum interview where she was like, will you apologize for these tweets? And what I thought was effective was he was just like, yes, absolutely.

I've been apologizing privately. I'm happy to offer that apology here publicly. And it felt so, like, not Weasley. You know, it's very hard for anyone, really, to be like, yeah, I was totally was wrong about that. Just I will apologize. I'm not couching it. And like, if you were offended, then here's my journey. And here's why I was actually right, blah, blah, blah. And by doing it so forthrightly, it kind of gave her no, nothing to work with. You know, there was no real follow up question that she could do from that. I think that's totally right. They want a broad public apology for the things that you suggested about them. Will you do that right now? Absolutely. I'll apologize to police officers right here because this is the apology that I've been sharing with many rank and file officers. And I apologize because of the fact that I'm looking to work with these officers, and I know that these officers, these men and women who serve in the NYPD, they put their lives on the line every single day.

And I will be a mayor that both... What changed your mind about it? You know, I moved to the city when I was seven years old. I grew up here. And two of the things that I thought often about was safety and justice. And growing up here, learning about the case of the exonerated five, learning about Sean Bell, learning about Eric Garner, learning about Michael Brown, and then in 2020, the year where all these tweets are referring to, it was the year when George Floyd was killed.

And it felt like safety and justice had never been further apart. And it was actually Eric Adams in 2021 who said that New Yorkers need not choose between these two things. And so one of my focuses was, how do we deliver that? justice. And now what I know, having represented 100,000 people in Western Queens, is that to deliver that justice, you have to also deliver that safety. And that means representing the men and women in the NYPD. It means representing the black and brown New Yorkers who've been victims of police brutality. It means representing the Muslim New Yorkers in my district who were surveilled on the

basis of their faith. All right. Can I just say that is a much, like, slicker media trained version of Zauron in some ways that, I don't know if you guys have, I have the same take. When I saw that interview, I was He's really playing it safe now. He's up double digits. And he's feeling conservative, like lowercase C, conservative about the interviews at that point. But yeah, I agree, Crystal. When you just say yes, I apologize. That is the one thing politicians are trained not to do is to just speak like normal human beings. And like, yeah, of course. So it makes sense that his campaign being like more in touch with new media and where institutional trust is. incredibly low among the public understands that. Yeah, and I think, too, obviously there's a, you know, a campaign reason for this and public safety continues to be a large concern for New Yorkers. As I mentioned before, in Fox News poll, he's actually leading among the candidates on public safety, which is kind of extraordinary, especially given some of his past comments and given the fact that, you know, the last election went to Eric Adams, who was a former police officer and ran on like, we're going to ramp up the police and all of those sorts of things. I also think there's a governing reason to do it.

I mean, he is going to need to work with the NYPD, and especially if you have, which I think is very likely, a similar, like, federal agent invasion as they've done in Chicago, you're really going to need to work with the NYPD. And, you know, in order to protect citizens of New York from this federal agents that have been, you know, whether it's ICE or CBP or FBI or whoever is roaming the streets and masks and, like, you know, you know, ramming their cars into vehicles and abducting people off the street and beating them up and spraying them with pepper, pepper spray, et cetera, you know, you're going to need to have an effective collaborative relationship with the NYPD. So I think from like a tactical governing sense, there's a practical reality there, too. So, yeah, Ryan, what you got? No, just one other thing from the poll that Crystal mentioned, yeah, Jewish voter. according to this Fox News poll, currently 42 for Cuomo,

38 for Mamdani, and 13 for Sliwa. So 58% against Cuomo. But, you know, within the margin of error between Cuomo and he is edging. But he is edging, Mamdani. Interesting.

Yeah, so I guess there is more of a constituency in a general election of more conservative Jewish voters, right? Yeah, but it's really within the margin of error there. So it's like neck and neck. Also such a statement. on like if you told somebody in 2022, like if you just wrote this out on paper and said a candidate who just posted a couple years ago, queer liberation means defunding the police is going to be

ahead in the mayor and probably is going to be the mayor. They would be like, well, what had to happen for that to be the reality? And it's like you ran Andrew Cuomo. You ran Andrew Cuomo and got everything behind him because the crime issue for New Yorkers is obviously front of mind. So it's a Testament A to how Mamdani has handled it, obviously, but also just the awfulness of his opponents, too, that I think have made it much easier for his message to land. Yeah. And Zoran is going to be such an important figure once he is mayor of New York, because I have no doubt that Trump is going to want to pick a fight with him. I have no doubt that there's going to be a huge spectacle that we are all, you know, in store for here. And, you know, Trump has being a New Yorker himself and having this big chip on his shoulder about how. how like Manhattan elites never accepted him as part of the, like, upper crust. And then you've got this young, good-looking, charismatic socialist who's like, you know, everybody's falling in love with and falling over themselves.

I mean, he charmed Martha McCallum in that interview on Fox News, like, right out of the gates. So, I mean, I think this is going to be a central sort of conflict in our politics moving forward when so on his elected mayor. Agreed. Yeah. Not a lot of suspense, especially I don't think a lot of motion. after this debate either. I would be remiss because Sauger's not here.

He would want me to flag this other moment in the debate that for him, I think, would be a big deal breaker for Zoran. Let's take a listen. Have you ever purchased anything in a cannabis shop? And if so, what did you buy? Mr. Mumdani? I have. I have purchased marijuana at a legal cannabis shop.

Okay. She was like such a like dated question, too. The anchor just went, okay. like who is this question for you know what is this revealing to us about these candidates really well slywa that gave an interesting answer oh did he said he said after i was shot five times by the mob i used medical marijuana yes he also said ryan that he also said that he he slewa said he doesn't go into yellow taxi cabs because he was shot in the back in a yellow taxi cab oh yeah that was The question is, if you have to get from point A to point, be like, how do you do it?

And Zoran said something like, I will take the train or I'll take a cab. And then Cuomo said, I'll take an Uber, I'll take a cab. And then Sliwa said, well, after I was shot in the back of a cab in like 1979, he told the whole story by the Gotti and the Gambino families. I mean, that's the thing is Slewa actually remembers, like the real, like bad, correct. crime days in New York, you know, those are, that's kind of like his formative years and how he forms his political identity. I remember seeing him on, I don't know, it may have been with Hannity and Hannity was asking him some fearmongering question about like, oh, my God, have we elected a socialist, communist, isn't this like that in New York City? And he was like, yeah, we've had

these kind of characters before. It's going to be fine. It's just non-plus by it. Yeah. Clearly, he hates Cuomo much more than Zoran, you know. Yeah. And Cuomo said LaGuardia is the best mayor in New York City's history. Yeah. A socialist. Who Zoran really, you know, admires and sort of models himself after and his campaign after.

Mm-hmm. Interesting. Yeah. Well, yeah, here's the quote. Oh, you got it. Yeah. Quote, I try to avoid yellow cabs. As you know, I was shot in the back of a yellow cab in 1992

by the Goddies and Gambinos. But I find my way around. If I have to, I Uber. Someone needs to make a movie about this man's life, honestly. Yeah. Is it got to be Scorsese? Yeah. Oh, totally. He has 19 cats.

19. That is wild. Go off in the comments if Slewa needs a breaking points interview for this election. Why not in full 20? Why do you stop at 19? That's right. Yeah, Slewa should definitely have him on. Cuomo would also like, you know, make claims about his candidacy.

And then Slewa would like counter him with like weird New York. historical facts like Cuomo would be talking about funding of a of a subway line and then Slewell would be like oh you know the Central Park horses you know they used to get drunk but now they don't and now they're you know they're tired and they're sick he's just such a a facet of New York and he should run for every election um he does pretty much so you're getting your wish yes um so should we move on yeah what do we got next All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved,

until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her. We know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer,

and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn, or any of that other stuff. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up.

Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. a hundred and one year old woman, fall in love again. And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke. And he got down. And I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power.

Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother tried to solve my problems through hypnotism. We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super-church. charming all the time. Being more able to look people in the eye. Not always hide behind a microphone. Listen to Heavyweight on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Pointer, chair of Women's Health and Gynecology at the Atria Health

Institute in New York City. On this show, I'll be talking to top researchers and top clinicians. asking them your burning questions and bringing that information about women's health and midlife directly to you. A hundred percent of women go through menopause. It can be such a struggle for our quality of life. But even if it's natural, why should we suffer through it? The types of symptoms that people talk about is forgetting everything. I never used to forget things. They're concerned that, one, they have dementia. And the other one is, do I have ADHD? state. There is unprecedented promise with regard to cannabis and cannabinoids, to sleep better,

to have less pain, to have better mood, and also to have better day-to-day life. Listen to Decoding Women's Health with Dr. Elizabeth Pointer on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening now. All right. So, folks, we've got a Republican group chat that leaked that we wanted to mention here. This is an article from Politico that says, I love Hitler. Leaked messages expose young Republicans racist chat. Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about

gas chambers, slavery, and rape. They've got a graphic here. I'm not going to read them all, but I'll just, I'll read a few to give some texture. Some of the quotes, a lot of these are from New York young Republicans, and this is kind of surrounding a election for the next leader of like the national young Republican party and sort of a group chat discussing the race. Some of these tweets say everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber. You're giving nationals too much credit and expecting the Jew to be honest.

If we ever had a leak of this chat, we would be cooked for real for real. I'm ready to watch people burn now. and some other, you know, some other slurs and just some, you know, other general stuff about Jewish people and black people. What are we to make of this, folks? What are we, do we want to start with Emily, the youngest Republican on here? Well, can I also, I was just going to clarify one thing, because I am flattered in a sense by the young Republican moniker because apparently these people were up to the age of 40. So I wanted to make that clear when we're talking about young Republicans. These are like by and large professionals who have, you know, chief of staff or this or that politician who have actual roles in Republican politics.

So this isn't just, you know, some 17-year-old Gropers mouthing off in some chat. Right. No, because J.D. Vance, I think, refer to them as kids. And a lot of people have because you hear young Republicans and a lot of people confuse it with college Republicans. but actually somehow the young Republicans are actually much less influential and consequential than the college Republicans. So they have real jobs, though. I just mean the organization, like young Republicans, YRs, as it's called itself, is like, I don't even know if it's like an open secret. I don't even think it's that secret. Like they're so powerless and unimportant. Now, that said, Griffin, the quotes that you read off, they are like being, they think they're being Mimi and EdgeLore.

and it is so cringy and I think probably does, probably is rooted, not just in them trying to be edge lords and funny, but like the repetitive nature of it is like there's some genuinely pretty gross sentiments, I think, lurking beneath the surface of whatever they're doing for the young Republicans. And the memes actually in response have been excellent too of how much of a quote master race these guys really are you can show some of the pictures yes

I'll throw some of what you guys are talking Crystal's favorite is that someone posted one of the great tweets I think of all time that they have bodies built to survive a golf cart crash and I was a little offended by that that hit home for Crystal I took that personally yeah I took that a little personally

as a survivor where's the where's the lesbian wedding photo one we have that one Keep scrolling. That kind of describes a lot of them. Yeah, keep going on. There it is.

There it is. That's the one. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I have a lot of thoughts on this. I guess the first thing is like this is the least surprising thing of all time. I mean, look at who is one of the most popular creators for young right wing, young right wing men is Nick Fentez. So they just had a, there's another scandal going on this week where some Republican congressman's young stafford posted American flag with a swan.

There's a, like, there is actually a Nazi problem among, not just among young Republicans, because we also have a DHS account that's tweeting out things like remigration. We have an administration that is changing the refugee policy to only bring in like basically German Nazis who are being, quote unquote, persecuted for being too anti-immigrant, which is a little weird that you're bringing in immigrants because they're anti-immigrant. but anyway, them and like the white South Africans, you have Trump openly, you know, acknowledging, oh, we can't let Stephen Miller's truest feelings come out because they would be utterly repellent to the American public. And Trump reportedly joking in a private meeting in 2024 about how Stephen Miller only wants 100 million people in the country and they should all look like him. So, you know, if anything, I'm shocked that it's not even worse than what these messages ultimately are. And I think Hanania's piece on, like, the based ritual in the Republican Party probably captures the dynamic the most. You know, it's the inverse of what was happening in progressive spaces. Yes. During Pronoak, where there was, like, a virtue signaling cycle where, you know, everyone's, like, positioning to be the most pure and the most lefty and the most, like, you know, identitarian and whatever. And on the right, there's this, you know, this ritual of, like, who can be the most defensive.

And that's how you get your clout points. And then, you know, it starts off as like a meme and a joke and it ends up with Stephen Miller in the White House with ICE agents, raiding cities and doing Kavanaugh stops and picking up anyone who looks Latino and, you know, is in a quote unquote true American and his conception, blood and soil conception of what that should be. And after after Vance kind of jumped in and gave permission to defend these kids, kids, he was very clever in calling them kids, these young men, you saw. like a whole bunch of other people, Matt Walsh and others, you know, saying we need to stick together. Like, we need to do not throw these people under the bus. If we throw them on the bus there, you know, first they came for the Nazis in the Republican youth group chat. Yeah. And then all the young Republicans were gone because they were all Nazis.

Right. And then so Ben Shapiro, I want to bring him in because he had an interesting pushback. Griffin, I have it if you don't have it. I got it right here. Oh, you have it? Okay. Well, and let me just say this is like, I'll tee this up. This is a long-running debate in right-wing circles for years now, which is that, and maybe you guys have picked up on it even from the outside, but that the media baits you into,

and actually some people on the left think this too. The media is baiting you into tossing other Republicans under the bus and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, first of all, you guys are in media. like this is sort of where where Ben gets a ton of pushback is that he's willing to punch right and so that's that conversation that they're having

and they have a show where they disagree with each other over the Daily Wire where they fight about things and so they fought about this this week basically I just say that because some people have been posting clips of Matt Walsh being like here's Matt Walsh

getting lectured by Ben Shapiro but like the whole show is them fighting each other. It's called Friendly Fire. Again, I'm not even disagreeing with the motivation of the Politico story. In fact, even on my show today, I talked about the motivations of the political story, which, Matt, I agree, are completely scurrilous and designed to distract from the sort of violent rhetoric we've seen from the left. But it has led to, I think, a reactionary

response on some parts of the right to say there should be no policing ever at all. No social consequences should ever attend to things that are said on the right, that it's basically just pure my side versus your side. The problem I have is, number one, I think that's moral, and number two, I don't think that's pragmatic. I don't think that's moral because I think that there are things that get said on the right that are really, really, really ugly and pretending those away doesn't make them go away. I think that they're rising. I think that they're getting more common. I know that my death threats from that side are getting more common. I know I have more security because of that, and it's not just from the left. I have lots of security from

the left. And I also get lots of security from the right. Matt, I think a little bit earlier today you tweeted that kind of your litmus test is the people who are trying to kill you. And I totally get that. I also have that litmus test. The difference is that I think that if somebody tries to kill, Matt, there's a good shot that it's going to be a leftist. If somebody tries to kill me, it's a freaking Agatha Christie novel. I just don't know which direction the bullet is coming from at this point, given the sort of various and sundry radical extremes that exist. I'm not going to say that the right is equivalent to the left in this respect, because I don't think it's been mainstream to nearly the same effect on the right that it has been on the left. But to pretend that

it has not infiltrated a lot of very important spaces, I think is sort of whistling past the graveyard. Well, and the other part of that, I mean, I will say I'd like speak to conservative college students and groups a lot. And I don't think what those wires are doing is common. I don't think it's entirely out of the ordinary in the like based ritual sense that Hanania. And it's it's a lot of like people who are in their notice like their 20s, like people who are in college during Trump 1.0 or COVID. and it does like that it is real and it is bad and people have to learn that it's not funny to keep one-upping to the point where then you've ceded yourself for actually having beliefs blossom out of that ground

because you're so buried in these layers of irony and like ironic racism and you just they get lost in the sauce and that is a real thing. And Ben's not wrong about that. So it's a huge debate, though. And people are, yeah, I mean, not well. And J.D. Vance, the very online types are very much on the other side of it. It's crazy. It's totally crazy. And I've mentioned this a bunch before, but, you know, the Israeli strategic decision, you know, to basically, when Obama was president and was pushing for the Iran deal to break with the Democratic Party. Like the thing that made them so strong for so long is that like the NRA, they had massive support in both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Once the NRA went full partisan Republican, it was actually only a matter of time until they kind of. started to fall apart. Like there's real strength in having a chokehold on both parties. But the Israelis were like

they would much rather isolate Iran and attack Iran than allow Democrats to do an Iran nuclear deal so they break with Democrats and they're like we're throwing all our eggs in the Republican basket.

And I remember thinking at the time, really? Like, is this a well-thought-out alliance? Like, do you know some of the undercurrents that are inside this Republican Party, and you're the ones that are constantly saying Zionism and Judaism are

linked. And so you're going to link up with a coalition, which has a non-trivial portion of genuinely anti-Semitic people. You're telling them, if they're anti-Semitic, then they're also anti-Zionists. So they kind of went the other way. A lot of these young Republicans are like, oh, well, I am actually. So therefore, I'm also anti-Zionist. It was just from a strategic perspective, it was like it was headed in an obvious direction. Although, like, you made the point before, Ryan, that, you know, in some ways Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians benefit, like the whole Israel project benefits from genuine rise in anti-Semitism because it bolsters their argument that you have to have Israel to have a safe place for Jews. I mean, the other thing, and you were making this point about imagine if half of this was surfaced in. some, you know, Columbia student group chat.

Like, one of those messages, one, one text message would be the one text message in a Columbia student chat, yeah. Like, we're five minutes ago where he's saying, hey, if you express the wrong sentiment about Charlie Kirk, you should be fired. And now suddenly, oh, these kids, you know, they don't know what they're doing. Like, give them so grace. Yeah, sure, they said, I love Hitler and they're talking about gas chambers. But, like, who among us?

Who among us can judge? Yeah. So, and, you know, the ADL put out some. incredibly weak, you know, lame message. It's just so clear they don't actually. They did say something. Yeah, I can, I can find it. Pull it out. But very, you know, very, very light touch kid gloves. Sort of like when they finally felt compelled to say something about Elon Musk, you know, is that sort of similar vibe. Now now, boys. They don't actually care about anti-Semitism. They care about opposition to Israel, not like genuine flourishing anti-Semitism, which again, we only have to look at the fact that Nick Fuentes is maybe the most popular creator among young Republican men to understand that this is a real phenomenon and not like a one-off and not just a joke. The so interestingly, the ADL dropped its lobbying relationship with Ballard yesterday. That is the Susie Wiles firm and the Pam Bondi former firm. And so that was, they terminated

their lobbying relationship. The disclosure dropped. Politico influence had a little story about that, which was kind of interesting amidst all of this. I hadn't actually connected the fact that it was happening in the middle of all of this uproar, which they were definitely dealing with internally at their office. And what Ben was talking about with the left is that he's saying it's not as mainstream, it's not as mainstream. And that actually exposes a kind of interesting blind spot for Vance and Walsh here, which is they're upset about these universities that have like segregated dorm rooms. That is a thing that started to come back in the 2010s. It's like you, this is, this is an affinity dorm for only black UCLA students

or something like that. And then the insistence in critical race theory classes that white people are necessarily racist because white people all bring, you know, inherent biases to the table. And we don't have to get back into the whole CRT stuff. But I'm just saying that's where they're saying there's this disconnect. But what's interesting about that is to then turn a blind eye. This is the argument Ben is making. To then turn a blind eye to similar versions of that argument happening from identitarians is not consistent. Identitarians on your own side is not at all consistent.

And it's not at all consistent with like the documentary. Am I racist that Walsh made? And I think he came on our show to talk about at the time. and had a little debate about Haiti with Ryan. Crystal's viral for Puerto Rico. Ryan's viral for Haiti. We should really just be doing the show from the Caribbean. It's the future.

But there is a real inconsistency there and what they just don't. I don't understand why for Matt Walsh, he sees like a Fuentes as, quote, his side. Like that's what's interesting in and of itself, right? Like, as Fuentes, do you really see yourself as like a brother-in-arm? with Nick Fuentes? Is he like right?

And if so, hmm. And there's a real thing. And think about the self-delusion at work here where he says, okay, this stuff is more mainstreamed on the Democratic side, but not on the Republican side. The vice president of the United States is defending these young Republicans. He's the, like, stop thinking of yourselves as like marginal figures. He's the vice president of the United States. That's true.

no world in which something like this comes out on the Democratic side and a hypothetical vice president in a Democratic administration defends it. They throw those young people absolutely right under the bus and back over them. We just, we just watched Zoron condemning Hassan Barker, you know, like, for saying, like, I don't know, whatever he said about 9-11. I mean, he condemned the comments, not specifically Hassan, but yeah, I mean, it just shows does show you the disparity. And then I look even more beyond J.D. Vance and think about Stephen Miller, who apparently, internally in the White House, they call the prime minister and who is running not only the, you know, the National Guard mobilization and the Operation Midway or whatever the hell that's called, the, you know, like terror attacks, midway, like mass terror attacks that are happening in Chicago led by the federal government. But he's also leading the, you mentioned the Caribbean. I don't think I want to be in the Caribbean right now. He's leading that effort in. terms of he and Marco Rubio, regime changed in Venezuela. We just found out that the latest fishing boat that they blew up was a couple of fishermen from Trinidad and Tobago. So, and this guy,

okay, he's Jewish, so he has a different view on the Jews. But otherwise, his ideology is pure white nationalists. I mean, there's just no denying it. Like, that is his goal. He wants there to be a white ethno state. He thinks the only people that really count as true Americans are people. that are not only white, but happen to agree with him and agree with Trump. And he is going about, you know, effectuating a plan to try to consolidate effectively one party control. Now, will they be able to succeed at that? I think it's a tall order. I don't know if they have the capability and the competency, et cetera. But there's no doubt that's the goal. So what is reflected in these chats, it's almost quaint. I mean, we see it. I just went and looked at the replies from this America First

account to they shared the Ben Shapiro clip we just showed. I mean, everyone is like, yeah, you're, you know, Jew that owns you is like pulling your strings. It's overt. It's out there all the time. And it goes all the way out to the top of this administration. I think in a sense, I think we should be relieved that J.D. Vance felt the need to like sort of infantilize them and not just outwardly embrace what they're saying here because I think we're probably like two years away from the line from the White House just being like, yeah, they're right. I agree. Hitler was great because I see that.

I see that as being the direction that the party is going in more and more and more every day. So for him to go ahead. Isn't Vance always crying about like, oh, they're attacking ICE. They're calling us Nazis. And then you go to their group chats and they're like, we are Nazis. So it's tough to navigate. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's just navigate.

That's very diplomatically put. Yeah. It was just, I mean, but to Griffin's point, this is actually interesting. Like, to his point, if you have an opportunity here to say this is what is not accepted, this is why all of these claims are spurious and people are wasting breath. And then you're like, well, you know, it's a silly media distraction, you know, not worth punching right at these kids. Then you're missing an opportunity to make your own point. And so the kids who find themselves like working in politics tend to be the most online and they tend to be, which is from this perspective, not a great thing, they tend to be the ones that are buried in these layers of irony. They got online during COVID. And I know these kids aren't kids, but 20s and 30s. So they are like way too online and probably different than your average like young Republican voter, not like young Republican member. But one of the things that like going back to my first job out of college was at a conservative youth group and we were putting together

a lot of these lectures. A bunch of them were with Ben at the time. And then there was this debate. The college Republicans were wondering about like hosting Milo Unopolis, who was saying all kinds of crazy shit at the time. And they were bringing Milo to campuses. And I remember like always being on the side of having these conversations and saying, listen, you are dealing with people in their teenage years and their 20s. It is not the same as dealing with your average person in, you in their 40s and 50s, their brains are still developing. And when young people's, I'm not talking about when these people are 28. I'm talking about in 2020 when they were 17 or whatever, 19 or whatever,

whatever this irony you think is funny and amusing and whatever these outrageous statements you find to be like polemical or provocative, it's hitting differently with 16 to 23-year-olds. It's not the same thing at all. They're not picking up on all of the irony. They're not picking up on you saying like, ha ha, wink, wink, non, non. This is funny because I've been called a, you know, Nazi for 10 years. They don't see that the same way. They don't have the background.

They're coming into their political consciousness right now. And again, their brains are still developing. So what people find to be jokes and irony, I just think they're playing with fire, particularly with young people with whom it doesn't. And that's not like, that's just, that's just, that's just, real. I've seen it happen. They're playing with fire. It just doesn't land the same way with people in that demographics. Like when you're working specifically with young people, my argument has always been you have to be like extra, extra careful. You don't have to be an outrageous gatekeeper

William F. Buckley tossing out the birchers performatively. That's the big debate in conservative circles right now. But when you're working with students, it actually is really different. You have to actually be careful with that. Yeah. Well, to be fair, the White House did condemn one member of this group chat, and that would be the guy who leaked it to the Politico. That was the thing that they found condemnation worthy is that any of this was surfaced, not anything that was said in the chats, but the fact, you know, that someone like blew the whistle on them and exposed them to the public. That was the part that they were upset about. And to Griffin's point, like, J.D. Vance is insanely online. Like, he is, he is a creature of this, you know, of this edge lord of these edge lord spaces.

And even like with the 20, 30 year olds, whatever, like you meme it enough times, you meme yourself into these positions and they stop being a joke and they start just being like, you know, I'm, you know, now I'm a griper and now I believe that we should have segregation again. And now I believe the Jews control everything and like this is actually my worldview. And there's a lot going on here with this. I mean, if I'm to put my sociological like step back from my just disgust at seeing these like losing. is embracing Hitler, you know, we do have, our society is in crisis, right? We are in crisis. We have a sense that the whole, and I think a reality, that the whole thing is crumbling and falling apart. We have life expectancies, which are falling off a cliff, which is kind of the most basic level of how is a nation doing that you could possibly look at in certain areas of the country worse than others. So in the South, where Republicans are disproportionately, you know, acute, what's the word, where they disproportionately live? you have 20-year lower life expectancy than like in the northeast. And you, you know, meanwhile, you have all these existential threats. You have this sense like what is going to happen with AI and I can't afford a college degree and I can't afford health care and I can't afford a house and what am I as a man if I can't do these basic things? Like you've got a lot of people who feel like losers who feel like their life is headed in no kind of direction who want desperately for some sort of like meaning. and they're increasingly finding it in, like, being a Nazi grouper and getting told by their friends, by their also fat loser friends, that that's, quote-unquote, based. That's, you know, that's a big part of the dynamic that's going on here that we have to grapple with.

I think identitarian politics are really dangerous in times when economic, when there's economic misery. Yeah, it's absolutely true. There's no doubt about it. And that's the sort of thing that actually can lead you to, like, a civil war. You know, when you have that sort of identitarian ethnic strife, those are some of the warning signs of, you know, total societal collapse in a way that is like, you know, hot and involves guns. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like when you've got a bunch of young men who are, I mean, we don't have to broach the entire debate about young men now. But, like, when you do genuinely have a lot of young men who are underemployed or miserable in different ways, can't afford houses, have lots of student loan debt, it's fertile ground, fertile ground for unfortunate ideologies to blossom. I would say so.

All I know is what I've been told, and that to have truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said.

They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season at free,

subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart. How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again? And I help a man atone for an armed, robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke.

And he got down. And I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother tried to solve my problems through hypnotism. We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super charming all the time. Being more able to look people in the eye. Not always hide behind a microphone. Listen to Heavyweight on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

We had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles and you name it. But what they find is not what they expected. Basically, your stay-at-home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin. They go, is this your daughter? I said yes. They go, oh, you may not see her for like 25 years. Caught between a federal investigation

and the violent gang who recruited them, the women must decide who they're willing to protect and who they dare to betray. Once I saw her gun, try to take his hand and I saw the flash of light. Listen to the Chinatown Sting on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts. Well, on that note, our guest has joined us. Yes, our guest has joined us.

Do we want to do this in the public half or we want to go over to the next half? Public, yeah. All right, Ryan, who's our guest today? State Representative Medina, Anton Wilson. I don't know if she can hear us yet. People may remember from about, what, two, three months ago we had a state representative on to discuss her effort to stop the Zuckerberg-Musk attempt to rewrite Delaware corporate laws to advantage themselves substantially.

That effort failed, sort of, right? You can actually update us on that if you want. But people might remember her from if they're, if they're, if they're, are following us on Twitter from something quite different. She went to Texas, took the Greyhound to what I've since learned is called the Mothership. This is Joe Rogan's comedy, a little club. I learned that because I told people I was going to the mothership this a couple weeks ago, which is in fish lore, that's the Hampton Coliseum, down near where Crystal lives.

And people were like, oh, you're going to go to Rogan's Club. I'm not going to Rogan's Club. Obviously, I'm talking about a fish concert. What are you talking about? Don't be stupid. Medina was at the actual mothership. And they do a thing at the Kill Tony show where they have a bucket pole where you put your name. Medina can tell us more about it, but you put your name in a bucket.

Welcome to Breaking Points where Ryan explains Kill Tony. May or may not get picked. And you had told me that this was not the first time that you had been there. So you made this entire trek just for the joy of a Kiltoni show, which I'm sure was life-changing in its own right. But the second time it actually came through. Griffin, should we play a little bit first? I want to say, hi. Medina, yeah.

Let Medina talk. Hi, guys. What's on, Medina? Welcome back. It's always endearing when the host is like, let me tell you all about this person before you get to get to talk to them. I'm like, they're really excited. So I'm like, I love that. Thanks for having me back on a lighter note than last time.

Last time was a bit depressing. And Ryan kind of mentioned, yeah, it was a failure like most legislative efforts that I had, it seems. But last two weeks ago now in Austin, Texas was not a failure. It was a lot of fun. Wait, did we lose your camera? No, no, we're good. She's here. We got her.

No, no, mine. I lost it. Ryan, Ryan, I got this. Medino. What was the experience like? Did you have a fun time? Because, you know, I'm recording right now from Los Angeles. And some liberal comedians of Los Angeles, their nails will curl when they hear Kill Tony.

So what was your experience going in there? It was great. I had a good experience. I was nervous going in. I'm a black Muslim woman with Vidaligo. I'm a Democratic socialist. Yeah, there's a lot of things that they could roast me on. And I also was just nervous that I was going to.

messed up my minute of comedy, right? So, um, like Ryan said, it was my second time going down there. And as a comedian, any comedians that are listening or even folks that are just in the arts, they know, like, you got to put the time in. You got to do a lot of reps. A lot of times you bomb. A lot of times, you know, you put your name in the bucket. You don't get pulled. Um, I took the Greyhound bus from the Friends in Fort Worth to Austin. So I'm like, trekking on the bus. And last time I think I got home at like 4 a.m. or something. I would not recommend taking the Greyhound in the middle of the night. It's much nicer during the day.

But, and that's a low bar. It was a good experience. And I didn't mess up my minute. I was a little bit fast. I could have slowed down a little bit. But I didn't want to go over time and then get roasted for going over time. So overall. Well, we did a nice big intro, but we didn't get to your pronoun. So we should watch the

I'm in all of this. We were rude. We didn't ask. So let's roll it. We forgot to ask, Emily. Let's roll it. And it makes some noise for Medina, everybody. We're going to meet Medina all together now.

Hey, guys. So you can probably tell by looking at me, my pronouns are USA. Let's go. So good. I usually walk out to Bruce Springsteen born in the U.S. say, just in case. They have my passport back there. I identify as biracial

because my dad is black and my mom is African American. But my body, my body is gentrifying itself. Yeah, you know you have Vidaligo because it starts with a couple spots and then pretty soon you don't recognize the neighborhood anymore.

It's just not what it used to be. Best part about it. I have in the middle I go, though, is kids always come up to me and ask me, what happened to your hand? And I get to tell them, well, when I was your age, my mom told me to do something and I didn't listen. And she smacked the black off me. Listen to your parents. I'll leave it there. Thanks, my name is Medina.

So good. Yeah. I didn't think you rushed it. I thought that your timing was great. Oh, thank you. It feels different when you're up there. Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure.

So bad. No doubt. it. So when you're nervous at all, though. If you were nervous, you hide it well. Yeah. I mean, I was nervous and then it was like right before I went on stage, I was like, you can't be nervous, right? Like you're nervous, you're going to mess up. So I was, I was mostly thinking about what the producer just told me, which was when you get on stage, move the mic to the right, the camera, whatever, whatever, don't talk while they talk because your mic won't get. So I was like, all right, show notes. Like, keep that in mind. And, uh, yeah, it went,

It went about as good as I could have hoped. I made one joke, I think, during the interview that didn't land, but it could have been worse. Which was that one? The Stevie Wonder joke. Oh, well, because I think they just didn't get it. They're just too white, yeah. Which I said as they were talking, I was like, that's probably too black or record. So too are the rest of us here.

Yeah. Yeah, I wish I had the album in Reach, but there's this, there's a great Stevie Wonder album, it's hotter than July, and he's got the braids and the beads and it's just like, yeah. Now, black people laugh at that because they're like, are you saying you have a receding caroline? So this clip went super viral and especially people on the left who are just dying to have some connection with the like Joe Rogan world that used to be pretty left. I think people were just like, hey, it was like a shot in the arm like, hey, we can do this on the left.

We can, like, be funny and politically incorrect and survive and not have our, you know, progressive bona fides question. In fact, we can communicate, like, relatively dem socialist messages in some of these spaces. So tell us a little bit about what it's been like since going viral, since, you know, being at the comedy mothership. What response have you gotten? About what you probably could expect, right? Like, progressive folks have been really excited about it. Um, some of the, some of the, like, Kill Tony base was like, she's not funny. And it's like, all right. Like, I know I was going a little fast, but it was a funny minute. Like, you're just racist. Um, you just hate women. Like, um, but I'm kind of used to that too. Like, as a female comic, I've had multiple people come up to me after shows and be like, this is going to sound crazy. But like, you're the first funny woman I've ever seen. And I'm like, you're just a misogynist, dude. Like, um, um, Um, so it's overall, I would say it's been a really good, um, experience. I've gotten a lot of folks coming to my social media pages saying, like, I didn't know Democrats could be funny. Thank you. Um, or like folks that are like more independent that are just fed up with both parties as I am as well, right? As a member of the Democratic Party, I'm pretty frustrated with the direction at the party at the national level and at the state level, um, that has been going in in the past few years. So it's been, it's been nice to kind of find my people.

line. It has not been as nice to have my DMs get totally wrecked by like the freakiest of freaks on the internet, but, um, you know, that'll die down eventually. Griffin, Griffin, please stop DMing her. Medina, what about your colleagues for you? Oh, Ryan, you got a question. Yeah, go on. I'm just curious what you're like, lawmaking colleagues have said. So far it's been cricket. which means that they're chatting in the group. Which means it was a good set. Medina, my question for you is, you know, there's a lot of conversations post-Trump presidency

about the comedy podcasters, like going right wing or what have you. Like, what do you make of the current comedy environment? And I guess second part of the question is, do you think that you, I would consider you more a leftist than a liberal? Is that fair to say? Yeah. Do you think that a liberal would have a harder time on Kill Tony than a leftist? I think liberals have a harder time anywhere because they're boring.

Sorry, no offense to the liberals. But like, how dare you? Amy Schumer is voting for Andrew Cuomo. I don't know if you saw this. Like, I'm sorry. That's boring. Nobody's, nobody's interested in that. Like 2000 called and, you know, they're waiting.

So, yeah, I think if you are able to communicate your values, if you actually have values that are something other than just like, I don't know, you know, love is love or something. Like, it's got to get to be. than that like we got to talk about like economic issues people are dealing with which is part of the reason why i love taking the bus right like i can't afford to like run a car all over texas and fly around so i take the bus and then i get to hang out with people that take the bus and i think that's something that the democratic party leadership is sorely lacking is actually understanding what it's like to

like the other day i was like in the bank opening an account for my business and i'm like um give me a second i got to move money from here to there because like i only have so much money that's what the average american is dealing with right now um so i think if you are a leftist and you have any type of personality you'll do well in places like this um unfortunately democratic party leadership tends to push the most boring milk toast like that's not going to do well like i was talking to a a party friend of mine who was like yeah like kamala should have gone on Rogan and I'm like no she shouldn't have yeah what you mean like you cannot survive more than an hour long interview if you're trying to do a script like you have to just be yourself

and if that's not who's running it's not going to work on Rogan that's what I always said to this whole like oh she should have gone it's like a different candidate who could handle that sure we're talking about this candidate right like we should have run a candidate who can go on Rogan Who could be, there we go. Yes. And how long have you been doing comedy? Someone like Joe Biden. Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah, precisely. I mean, that would have been a good episode. It would have been more entertaining for sure. It would have been good content. Yeah, that's true. We beat, we did, we beat Medicaid. Okay, like, I shouldn't tell the story, but whenever I tell stories, I shouldn't is when they do well.

So, uh, yes. I went to the Memorial Day service here. I'm at the Veteran Cemetery, and I got, like, stuck in a little, you know, when, like, older people start talking to you, sometimes you get stuck, and you're, like, trying to leave and, like, there. So I got stuck talking to Biden, and. And he starts telling the story about how, like, I kind of was in and out of paying attention, like, in and out of consciousness, but he, he's telling this story, and he's like, yeah, and Putin, he was, he was mad at me because I shut down the USSR. And I was like, wait, what? Like, I came back. for the conversation. I was like, what did he just say? I shut down on the U.S.S.

Yeah, he's like, I put it. And I was like, you put it into, like, I was young then, but like, I don't think that's what happened, dude. Like, I'm pretty sure that was you. I don't think you're that guy, but. Was that this May? Yes. Good.

Yes. Good. Sign of life from Biden, at least. We have him the thing for ending Medicaid and the, and the. the USSR. And the USSR. Did he tell you about corn pop? Did you tell you about corn pop?

Was corned pop involved in ending the USSR also? That was the one-man show. It's a bad dude. I'm glad you told that story. I'm sure. I'm sure I'll hear about it. Biden in his prime was very talented, you know? I mean, I saw him both on the stump.

You know, we all saw him wipe the floor with Paul Ryan in that debate. Like, he did have that thing when he was young. even with all the like you know the verbal gaffs and whatever like that was part of actually what made him um interesting to watch but yeah at this stage it'd be interesting for another reason i guess i got stuck with him a few times when he was a senator and we'd be in the hallway and like the other report there'd be no other reporters there and he's still talking i have no questions left and so like remember one time was a state i remember was a state of the union Union. It's just me and him. He's still talking. He's still talking. So I like, I take my recorder away to like try to signal like I'm not recording anything anymore. Like this is over. He keeps going. I like put my notebook like in my pocket. Put my hands in my pockets. Like, uh-huh, uh-huh. You got to get the book bag out. Put something in a book bag. That's when I know as a politician like, oh, all right. Okay, guys, I'll let you go. Yeah.

I have a thing I have to file. Like I've got. I've got stuff. I have a thing I have to file. Like I've got stuff I have to do. I'm like, don't, don't you have things you also have stuff you need to do? No. That's amazing. Oh, good. I should have asked him about the USR. He was top, you know, he's top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. So he must mean he helped funnel so much money to Reagan. Ryan, Ryan, I got to tell you, I did not ask a follow question. I'm not a reporter. Was he then? I just was like, when did he become chair? Yeah, let's, uh, Let's fact check his claim that he took down at U.S.S.R. Because at that, around that time, wasn't he a judiciary? He was, he was chair by like 90, what, what, 90, 91, yeah.

Because he's taking, you know, he's ushering Clarence Thomas the rule. Like right before I stepped out on the scene. 93 stepped out on the scene looking real mean. Yeah. Biden put us down a history of wormhole. Um, Medina, my final question for you is, uh, do you feel, I don't know, sometimes I think that their comedians, uh, are scared of posting clips, especially if they have like a normal job like, like, uh, like you perhaps. Are we in like a new era, uh, where you can do a standup set with some jokes that push, uh, into areas that normally you wouldn't be able to talk about in a workplace, post that and then go back to work. Like, what's our, What's your sense or your temperature chest on the broad umbrella term of cancel culture right now? Oh, that's an interesting question.

I mean, when I first started, so I've been doing comedy a little over three years. And when I first started, I was just using my first name thinking that somehow people wouldn't find out because, you know, I don't have a unique look or anything. And so I remember I was at an open mic, maybe a couple months in. And somebody afterwards came up to me and she was like, aren't you stay rap? And I was like, hate, found me. And honestly, like, my material that I do is almost, it's almost apolitical. Like, I did some political jokes when I was on the show because that's what I've been doing lately because it's top of mind for me as a Muslim woman, right? Like, in Texas, I literally did have my passport on me just to prove that I'm an American citizen because there are people who look at me and think I'm not, right?

So I've started doing more jokes like that. I also talk about that at my job. I'm in a privileged position in that I'm a Democrat for my job, right? So I don't have to worry so much about HR getting involved. I don't do jokes where I punch down or, you know, go after vulnerable groups where I would then get in trouble or something. So that makes a good year, I think. Not to cut you off, but I feel like specifically the kill Tony was someone that was like right

under the gun during the election. Like he did those jokes during the Madison Square rally, and Democrats really tried to, tried to cancel him for that. So it almost like guilt by association, like, oh, she went on stage with, with Tony. Like, how dare she? Like, is there any danger of that? Or like, seems like you didn't care? I don't, honestly, because I think it's important for Democrats to go on any platform that will allow them on to share that we're not a bunch of weirdo freaks that we have, like, values that we share with most Americans that we. We have a shared lived experience and we want to actually progress the country.

I think we have to just get over that. Like, if we're going to cancel every platform that helped get Trump elected, I guess we're not going on SNL. Like, is that what we're doing? We're not going to, right? Like, we're not going to go on, I don't know, NBC nightly. Like, come on. Like, it's just silly.

So I was really, I think, blessed to get pulled out of that bucket so that I could show the Rogan, you know, world that there are still Democrats that are funny. We don't all just, like, joke about whatever, you know, stereotypes they have about left-leaning comedians. Like, most of my material is about self-deprecation. It's growing up, you know, in a big household. It's the struggles of marriage and relationships, you know, having to drive on a road with people that have that novice driver magnet on the back of the car, right? And I'm like, you're novice? Let me teach you a lesson.

I'm cutting you off, right? like that's something that we all can you know relate to in a way so um i thought it was great and last year just about a year ago i was talking to some political mentors of mine and uh i was telling them i'm kind of like i felt at the time like i needed to pick my political career or my comedy career and i wanted to pick comedy i love comedy and they were like Trump just got reelected what are you talking about do both right like do both that's what people want And one of them actually said, if Dave Chappelle announced right now that he was running for president, do you think people would that an eye? Or would they be like, oh, snap. Like, I would vote for Dave, right? And that kind of flipped a switch for me where I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to stick to being myself, right? Like, when I talk about the Elon Musk bill, super serious, did my research. And when I'm doing my comedy, also like, you know, hardworking, put the time in, took the bus, did the open mics, bombed, bombed, bombed. until I got some material that worked, right?

So that's my plan. I think the Democratic Party needs to get serious about being normal. And I just want to shout out. Somebody messaged me on Twitter a couple days ago to laugh at this clip went viral and said, thank you. Please continue to be normal. And that's the biggest compliment I think I've ever gotten. I'm just going to try to continue to be a normal person.

And I think that the party needs more of that. Yeah, well, self-deprecation is very disarming, too, you know, and sends a message to you of, like, and we're not so self-serious that you can't, like, poke fun at yourself, you know. Absolutely. Great. Well, that's all. That was awesome. We love the set.

We're excited for your future Rogan episode. Any last questions before we let Medina go? All right. Thanks for doing this. Thank you, Mazina. I mean, do you, do you like, do you do stuff in Philadelphia or D.C.? Like, where can people find? Yes. Yeah. So I can share my link with you guys, but I will be all over the next month. I'm in Northern Delaware, so I do shows in Philly all the time. I'll be in Philly the next couple weeks. I'll be in Frederick, Maryland, some other spots in Maryland, New York, 28th of October. So I'm in the tri-state New York metro northeast area. And then I'll be in Florida early November. So come see me. Come hang out.

Check it out. Send it the link. We'll put it in the thing. Yeah, we'll put it in the email. Yeah, we'll put it in the link to the description in this video below. Thank you, Medina. And folks, we're going to stop here with this half of the show. If you want to see the second half of the show, go to breaking points.

Dot com to sign up. Get access to that. Get access to our AMA to ask us questions. And we'll see all you premium users on the other side. Bye, bye. Johnny Knoxville here. Check out Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, my new true crime podcast from Smartless, media, campside media, and big money players.

It's the true story of the almost perfect crime and the Nimrods who almost pulled it off. It was kind of like the perfect storm in a sewer. That was dumb. Do not follow my example. Listen to Crimless, Hillbilly Heist, on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Two rich young Americans move to the Costa Rican jungle to start over,

but one of them will end up dead and the other tried for murder three times. It starts with a dream, a nature reserve and a spectacular new home. But little by little, they lose it, they actually lose it. They sort of went nuts. Until one night,

everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County.

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season, add free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.