Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/20/25: Israel Blows Up Ceasefire, US Journo Attacked By Settlers, Rand Paul Shreds Trump On Venezuela, Bolton Indicted & MORE!

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss Israel blows up ceasefire, US journo attacked by settlers, Rand Paul shreds Trump on Venezuela, John Bolton indicted, Pelosi challenger says Dem tea party is here. Saikat Chakrabarti: https://www.saikat.us/en Jasper Nathaniel: https://x.com/infinite_jaz    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.

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And I'm Maitego Mejahuan, and this week on our podcast, Hungry for History, we talk oysters plus the Mianbi Chief stops by. If you're not an oyster lover, Don't even talk to me. Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way.

Bring back the OsterCon. Listen to Hungry for History on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your 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 the future. 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 Monday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have Crystal. Indeed, we do. A lot to get to. So the ceasefire in Gaza was back off. Now it may be back on. We're going to take you through the TikTok of exactly what happened and where we are now as best as we can figure it out. We're also going to be joined by Jasper Nathaniel. You guys may remember him. We've had him on the show a number of times. He's a journalist and activist. He's been covering the attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. He himself was lured into a trap by the IDF, chased by murderous

settlers. And then the U.S. Embassy said, even if you, like, need our help, we're not going to help you. So he is going to join us to break down exactly what happened, how it connects to broader context of what's going on with Palestinians and two Palestinians. In addition, we've got more news in terms of Venezuela, more boats blown up, more international fallout, more indications that we are rapidly speeding towards a potential regime change war. John Bolton indicted. George Santos, sentenced commuted. A lot going on there. New revealing Epstein docks that Saga is going to break down for us. And Shoycott-Trakabadi, who is the former AOC chief of staff and is now challenging Nancy Pelosi in her congressional seat is also going to join us to break down his race and how he sees the future of the country and the future of the Democratic Party. So a lot of interesting stuff. He's a smart guy. I've always enjoyed reading some of his takes and I'm interested to hear some of what he has to say about that. race. Thank you to everybody who's been supporting the show, Breaking Points.com. We do want to give you an example of why we need your support. Let's go ahead and put Crystal screenshot up here on

the screen so you guys can all see. Crystal has been posting on TikTok and you can see that multiple of her posts about Israel are now, quote, ineligible for recommendations. So everybody go follow Crystal. By the way, follow me as well. I have joined TikTok. I've given in to the... I only have 350 followers, though. Just keep this up for a second, though. It's kind of interesting. The Miriam Edelson one was like literally the only Israel one that they allowed me to keep up. That Gavin Newsom one is literally just me throwing to the clip of Gavin Newsom being like, APEC, what's that? It's interesting. That's why it's wild. Crazy. And so that one and then two others that I did talking about the ceasefire deal, ineligible for recommendation. So you can

see the new Zionist takeover of TikTok has taken hold. And it is just a reminder. of how vulnerable we are. Like, we rely on these big tech platforms. And, you know, it's not always a safe bet to do so. So that's why your support means a lot to this is, this is what we're dealing with. Crazy though. We're alive today on YouTube. What I think we can all learn from this day, from the Spotify, from YouTube, no one's

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is taken away. So anyway, look, we're not just talking for real. We design this business very intentionally to make sure that our subscribers are the one backbone that we can always rely on. So please thank you very much if you can't support us, breakingpoints.com. All right, let's go ahead and get to the Israel ceasefire and who the hell even knows what's going on there. It really is like totally shocking, I think, whenever we break down everything that has happened with the lead up to the ceasefire, it also really vindicates a lot of the people who are like, hey, just hold on a second before we're all celebrating.

We celebrate, how about this? We celebrate the release of the hostages, which actually did. happen. The rest of it, wait and see. Yeah, exactly. So on Saturday, I'm just going to take you through the timeline of what transpired and brought us to this present moment, which is rife with a lot of uncertainty as it has been from the beginning. Let's go ahead and put A1 up on the screen. So Saturday at some point, we get this news from Barack Ravid, you know, official stenographer of the U.S. government and the Israeli government. He says, according to the State Department, the U.S. has informed the guarantor nations of the Gaza peace agreement of credible reports

indicating an imminent ceasefire violation by Hamas against the people of Gaza. This planned attack against Palestinian civilians would constitute a direct and grave violation of the ceasefire agreement and undermine the significant progress achieved through mediation efforts. The guarantors demand Hamas uphold its obligation under the ceasefire term. Should Hamas proceed with this attack, measures will be taken to protect the people of Gaza and protect the integrity of the ceasefire. The U.S. and other guarantors remain resolute in our commitment to ensuring the safety of civilians, maintaining calm and the ground advancing peace and prosperity for the people of Gaza and the region as a whole. So anyone

who's been covering this looks at that and is like, oh boy, here we go. They are giving Israel basically cover to violate the ceasefire agreement. You will also know if you've been watching this closely that Israel has been violating the ceasefire agreement effectively since that agreement went into effect. More on that in a moment. Then we see, let's put A2 up on the screen, there was some incident that occurred, okay? And initially there was a lot of confusion about who killed who and what exactly happened. We got some clarity on that. I'll get to that at a moment. But in response to this incident, Israel begins bombing Gaza in what they described here as a major ceasefire violation. Heavy Israeli bombing rocks the Gaza Strip on Sunday. They write killing

at least 15 Palestinians in a major violation of ceasefire, more than 100 airstrikes were reported in Rafa and Khan Yunus in the south, Jabalya in the north, and parts of central Gaza. Among the sites hit were a cafe, a mobile phone charging station, a group of journalists, and a house sheltering displaced people. The Israeli military said the strikes were in response to an alleged attack by Palestinians on its troops in southern Rafa involving a rocket-propelled grenade and sniper fire. Israel's Channel 12, furthermore, said political leadership has also decided to halt the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza until further notice. So we have Israel bombing wild throughout the strip, the south, central part of the strip and the

northern part of the strip, saying they're going to cut off all aid. Okay, that was again another key part of the ceasefire agreement was the least 600 trucks would be entering per day. And they said at this point, we're also not going to open the Rafa border crossing, which I don't think that they've opened to this point anyway. go ahead and put A4 up on the screen because Ryan and actually also Sagar were able to get the news of what this incident actually was. So Ryan writes here, soon after the explosion in Rafa, I'm told by a source familiar, the White House and Pentagon knew that the incident that again the Israelis were using as a pretext to do it all out, once again, assault on the Gaza Strip, that this was caused by an Israeli settler bulldozer running over an unexplored exploited ordinance, contradicting Netanyahu's claim that Hamas has. popped up from tunnels after Netanyahu said he was blocking all aid from entering Gaza in response

and unleashed a bombing campaign. The administration conveyed to Israel, they know what happened. Netanyahu then announced he would reopen the crossings in a few hours. So, Sagar, the long and short of that is, again, their bulldozer ran over one of their unexploded ordinance. So they basically blew themselves up, claimed it was Hamas, and used that as a pretext to cut off all aid, collective punishment, wildly illegal, obviously, and brutal and cruel and contrary to the ceasefire agreement, and go back to all out assault on the Gaza Strip. Now, the administration deserves credit here because they apparently came and said, no, we understand what happened. This was not Hamas. And you were going to, we're going to go back to the ceasefire. The ceasefire

is going to be enforced. Now, they only get so much credit because Israel's already violated the ceasefire literally roughly 50 times. But as best we can tell, that is the chain of events. underscores how Israel wants to go back to the genocide, and this thing is incredibly, incredibly fragile. It requires constant vigilance from this administration to keep it even approximating being on the rails. Which is the thing, Netanyahu, so Trump is in one of his moods where he wants peace, which is good. Listen, I'll take it. It's one of those. Apparently, he berated Zelensky in a meeting for over two and a half hours and said, listen, man, you're either going to lose.

You're going to have to give up and decided not to give him long-range missiles. that seems to be the mood that he's in on Friday. We'll see how it lasts until Sunday. But what the Israelis are banking on is eventually we'll get away with this. And I think they're right. I mean, it's one of those where consider the amount of management that it's going to take on the U.S. side to have to debunk every Israeli claim. Or, like, for example, is every single time that the Israelis want to restart it,

are we just going to have to put Jared Custer and Steve Whitkoff on a plane, which they are right now, if anybody's wondering, they left Miami and are on their way to Israel to try and to solidify the ceasefire. The amount of attention that this is going to take, not just from the low level, but from the very top of the administration because the only person that can actually stop Netanyahu is Trump himself.

So you have to elevate it through the interagency process, send it up to Trump. There's just no way. We know this White House. There's no way that they can stick to this for days and months and years on end. And this is the eventual end game. Meanwhile, I mean, should we all sit with this?

They straight up lied, as usual, about this bulldozer. But here's the issue is this time, I'm not exactly sure how the U.S. had like perfect intelligence and they were immediately telling reporters like Ryan, Kurt Mills and others. They're like, this is bullshit. It didn't happen. What about when it's ambiguous? We have no idea. Or what about when Hamas genuinely does? Like, I mean, they are on a campaign of retribution. Like, we already saw Israel trying to use that as a reason to break the ceasefire. I want to sit with that because that was kind of the original parts of the ceasefire violation. If we look to the very top, some of the things at the stage department had said, they said, quote, a planned attack against Palestinian civilian civilians. would constitute a direct and grave violation of the ceasefire, which is incredibly ironic considering

what the Israelis have done to the Palestinians. But let's sit with what Trump himself said, which Ryan and I covered on our show last Wednesday. Trump endorsed Hamas retribution. He said, I don't have a problem with it, to be honest with you, because they were killing, I mean, according to them, nobody really knows, but they were killing people who were either, quote, collaborators or people who stole killed children for food and sold it on the black market. Yeah. I think Trump also just got no villains. Gangs and was like, oh, course you got to get after the gangs. Get rid of them. I mean, listen, you know, in the absence of law and order, somebody has to fill the void.

So for Hamas, this gets to a much bigger thing, which my original take had been before the Israeli lie, had been, who is going to govern Gaza? And when I say govern, I'm not even talking about the high level political entity. True governance starts at the street level. If you were a looter and you sold food on the black market, well, somebody has to deal with you. Right now, the only person is Hamas. Who are the troops that are going to enforce that? You said you want them to lay down their weapons. They have ruled that place for what, 18, 19 years now, almost at this time. There is no police or other governed authority.

So if the solution is debatification like we did in Iraq, we take all the... the weapons away, civil war, chaos, which is exactly what they're advocating for. They're like Hamas, you have to unilaterally disarm. Meanwhile, the pro-Israel gangs get to keep their weapons. Well, what do you think is going to happen? Then they're going to go and they're going to kill everybody. Right. And then who's going to defend them? So of course, they're going to come up, rise. So without a centralized governing authority and a literal occupation by the United States, the UAE, or Saudi Arabia, this is the end state, which we've all desired. And it's not one that I think that people are going to put up with, because in a lot of ways, it all

starts now, like the war as horrible as it was. The actual, like, next step starts today with the political civilian administration of the Gaza Strip. And so the demand that Hamas not carry out its law and order executions or whatever has to be then replaced by some sort of central figure, some sort of central-backed legitimate authority. Or you're going to have Iraq and Afghanistan all over again, which are already on the road to. And then same with the Israelis. They're legitimately, I think, going to be able to claim chaos and attacks on them because nobody can stop it.

Nobody is going to say, oh, you don't carry out attacks on. No one's going to go and arrest somebody's going to go in and try attack Israel, right? So the vacuum, the same terrorist vacuum that created ISIS, that created al-Qaeda in Iraq, that create, I mean, the entire story of Afghanistan is about to play out again. And I actually think it's going to be, frankly, like, just as disastrous because you not only have a bombed out place, you have 1.7, 1.8 million people, whoever's left is alive that are desperate for anything. I mean, people in those sorts of desperate straits, they'll go along with, you know, the most radical party. If they can stop shooting and looting, that's how the Taliban rose to power in the 1990s. So I see a lot of dangers.

I see a lot of dangers ahead inside of Gaza. And it's just so clear. Like, if you had any doubt that the Israelis didn't want to just find any. excuse at any point to get back to all-out war, I think like that should be completely dispelled. At first you had, you know, this flap over, oh, they're not getting us the remains of the hostages quickly enough. Even though in the ceasefire deal, everyone understood, this is going to be very difficult. And by the way, the Israelis are blocking any like heavy equipment, earth-moving equipment

to be able to dig out anything from the rubble. So how are you supposed to pull this off? So that's the first thing that they try. Oh, Hamas is violating the ceasefire in that way. again, as an excuse so that they can get back to their all-out war. Then you have the, you know, oh, suddenly they care so much about Palestinian civilian life. And they're just appalled at what Hamas is doing in the streets and the campaign of retribution. Then you have whatever this thing was with the bulldozer where, and it's really interesting

to me too, Saga, that the State Department had some sort of a warning of an imminent ceasefire violation. And then they, you know, use this bulldozer thing as a pretext where they just literally like blew themselves up with their own ordinance, unexploded ordinance, lie about it, get caught. And so, you know, this administration has to come in and enforce. And what the Israelis do and what they have been doing, let's put A3 up on the screen. Again, this was before this bulldozer situation. The Israeli army had already committed 47 violations of the ceasefire killing 38 people

wounding another 143. One of those instances, they killed 11 members of a Palestinian fan. family. Deadliest single violation of the ceasefire that took effect at that point eight days ago. Among them were seven children that were killed in that attack. So you know what they do. And they're doing the same thing in Lebanon. They see what they can get away with. And they keep pushing the envelope. Keep pushing the envelope. And so they went a little too far with this bulldozer bullshit. They got checked a little bit. But they're going to keep trying, keep pushing, keep pushing, keep pushing.

And that's why, you know, forget about phase two and governance and reconstruction and all of that is so far off. And they are so far at odds from any shared vision between, you know, the U.S. Palestinians and Israel. But even just maintaining this very new ceasefire feels increasingly, I don't want to say impossible, but extraordinarily, extraordinarily difficult. Look, I mean, I would say impossible in the long run, just considering U.S. policy with Israel. It just seems, frankly, like, so difficult. I'll read you another quote just from yesterday, Israeli television from Ben Gavir. Quote, now we have received the hostages. We must return to war and open the gates of hell upon Gaza.

That's a national security advisor. Smotri said what? He said, we will have Jewish settlement inside of Gaza. Let's sit with the reality of all this. And how are they going to react when it's increasingly clear? Hamas is just back in charge. Because who else is going to be in charge? Which is all.

It's funny because it's like a horseshoe moment with the Israeli right wing where they're like, but wait, we can't, the whole point of the war was to say Hamas is no longer in charge. And then for many of us to be like, yeah, that was an impossible goal. But they're like, no, but we have to continue the war. And so the fact that Hamas still has at least some political administration capability will, democratic support to enforce something on the ground shows you already that the war itself was a failure. Again, it's impossible without occupation. We've tried this a million times throughout history.

The Israelis have no interest in actual civilian administration of Gaza. They'd rather just them all leave. And so in the absence, then now what? You know, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, the U.S. would have to step up. I'm not for that at all. I don't think we should occupy, you know, Israel's mess inside of Gaza. So what's going to happen? Just hectoring tweets from the State Department and threats of death from the Israelis.

And just a constant mowing the lawn effect. Now, with Trump, you know, himself, he's got these grand plans. So here was this most recent interview with Maria Bartrauma over on Fox News about his plan for Gaza, take a listen. Could be developed and you said you wanted to develop it. Do you have plans for that? Not me as an individual. The U.S.

I liked it as like Freedom Place. You called Freedom Place. And we would get all of the people that live there into decent homes throughout the region. If you look, Egypt has a lot of land. Jordan has a lot of land, you know, right next door. A lot of countries have a lot of land. So I had an initial vision that we would get them, look at Gaza. I mean, there's nothing standard.

The whole thing is it's all rubble. So it's not too hard to top that. So he says, freedom place you could call it. Again, not possible. You need full-blown occupation. You need a U.S. administration of Japan, of Germany. And those are the only two successful ones. It's not every recent experiment that we have done.

It didn't work. The likely modal outcome in the Middle East is we destroy a regime, we decimate and immiserate the population, and then we have a long experiment where we try to impose something, and then eventually the most radical element inside of that society will probably rise to the very top. Yeah. So, congratulations. Well, and as someone who's opposed to immigration and really, you know, makes a lot of his politics around that, he sure does like to create migration crises, you know, so switching millions of people,

whoever remains in the Gaza Strip out of Gaza. I mean, it's just, and the phase two of this, I don't even, it's really not even worth bothering to talk about, to be honest with you, because it's so prepossed, this Tony Blair and Trump's the head of the board and no, Palestinians will be able to stay, but then here's the president again being like, no, they're going to leave. They're going to have great homes in other countries where, I don't know, they've got room in Egypt, surely. Egypt has its own

major political issues by the way major economic issues like they're not super keen on absorbing a population that is destitute and completely and thoroughly traumatized like every single individual in Gaza is going to need so much care and assistance to get them back

to being able to function in society I mean it's just insane what's been done to these people you can't even wrap your head around a little on the children the medical care you know the lack of nutrition the amputations and so not only is it, you know, a difficult situation when you have a migration crisis anyway, but then you have this incredibly traumatized, you know, like population suffering from all these health care anyway. The whole thing is insane.

Like, there's no contemplating of what this could look like in any way that's going to be livable for Palestinians, let alone just the Israelis have no interest in doing anything other than complete war and ethnic cleansing until there's nothing left because at this point, that's what they see as a final solution. Like, that is on the table and not just for far-right total psychos, that has become a far more acceptable endpoint for a broad swath of the Israeli population. And that's what this administration, like, they will have to be so focused and committed and willing to use all the levers that they have to force some sort of an outcome on the Israelis. And, yeah, it's hard to imagine. It's theoretically possible.

I don't personally see it as I mean, look at Ukraine. We were, Zelensky comes to the Oval. We berate him. It looks like the war is going to end. We finally get Putin's summit. Then afterwards, we have this grand meeting of all the Europeans. Nothing comes to there. Absolutely nothing changes on the battlefield. Trump gets mad at Putin, says, I'm going to give you the Ukrainians long-range missiles. So that's where we're ending up. He actually even said maybe Ukraine can take back all of Crimea. So that's where we were. Then Ukraine Zelensky comes to Washington. And this is all from behind the scenes reporting. We're not exactly sure. probably most of it at least from the Ukrainian side, Trump berates him for two hours, has a phone

call with Putin and says, why don't you just take all of Putin's terms? So we're back. I mean, I don't know which where we went. Now imagine being on the Israel side, right? If you're the Hamas people, yeah, you took the deal, this hostages are gone, but the incentive side on the Israel, on Israel is now, they don't even have to care to pretend about the hostages. That's right. Anymore. And I mean, the ceasefire has been, what, like 10 days? And they've tried to break it three times. Seriously tried to break it three times. How is this going to last for two years, three years, five years, ten. I mean, I don't see it. Yeah, and Israel still controls 53% of the guys of the street. So, and then, yeah, you have the civilian problem that I talked

about with literal, like, law enforcement. And yes, it's great that aid is going to be there. Eventually, somebody's going to beat somebody up for something. Who's going to do anything about that? You're going to have cops? Like, no, you're going to call somebody and they're going to have rise of gang violence. Like, that's what happens in these scenarios. We've had, unfortunately, we've played it over and over and over again. You don't even have to be all that, you know, intelligent to see where things are going. going. So anyway, all right, speaking of gang violence, Jasper Nathaniel, journalist, American journalist, has been in the West Bank,

ruthlessly attacked by these Jewish settlers inside of the West Bank, basically told to fend for himself by the United States Embassy. So let's go ahead. Tell the fuck out by the United States Embassy, to be honest. Let's speak to him. 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 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. Samihante, it's Anna Ortiz. And I'm Mark and Delicado. You might know us as Hilda and Justin from Ugly Betty.

We played mother and son on the show, but in real life, we're best friends. And I'm all grown up now. Welcome to our new podcast. Viva Betty! Yay! Woo-hoo! Can you believe it has been

almost 20 years? That's not even possible. Well, you're the only one that looks that much different. I look exactly the same. 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. You're going to hear from guests like America Ferreira, Vanessa Williams, Michael Yuri, Becky Newton,

Tony Plana, and so many more. Icons, each and every one. Lissette. And someone, like, comes running up to me, and it's Selma Hayek. And she's like, you are my ugly betty. And I was like, what is she even talking about? Listen to Viva Betty as part of the MyCultura podcast network,

available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Iba Longoria. And I'm Maitegamesa Juan. And on our podcast, Hungry for History, we mix two of our favorite things. food and history. Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells, and they called these Ostercon, to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster.

No way. Bring back the Ostercon. And because we've got a very Mikaasa esucasa kind of vibe on our show, friends always stop by. Pretty much every entry into this side of the planet was through the Gulf of of Mexico, not of America. No, the America. The Gulf of Mexico,

continue to be so forever and ever, especially in the Pesie. It blows me away how progressive Mexico was in this moment. They had land reform, they had labor rights, they had education rights.

Mustard seeds were so valuable to the ancient Egyptians that they used to place them in their tombs for the afterlife. Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We are very fortunate to be joined this morning by Jasper Nathaniel, who is an incredible journalist. You guys should go subscribe to his substack, Infinite Jazz, and a great friend of the show who just witnessed and experienced something incredibly wild. Jasper, great to have you.

Thanks for having me. Good to see you, man. So I saw these videos on social media of you being chased down by a mob of violent Israeli terrorist settlers, and we can put some of these images up on the screen and you, of course, have been documenting abuses against Palestinians in the West Bank for months at this point. If you could just take us through where you are and what the hell we're looking at here.

Yeah, I'm in a town called Tremesaya, which is just outside Ramallah in the central West Bank. This is the first day of the olive harvest for the village. Basically, everybody went out together as a group because they, They knew they were expecting settler violence. And so everybody drove in a caravan to their individual plots. And basically from the very beginning of the day, we were seeing violent settlers. The first road we tried to take, there was a settler with a gun, just sort of menacing us. But then things got really bad later when we were trying to.

to leave the fields. And we got tracked by, on one side, there was a couple of settlers who would not let us pass. And then on the other side, there was an IDF Jeep. And so I got out of our car to go up to talk to the soldiers because the people I was with were, they were not white. They're Palestinian Americans, actually, which is an important point. But I was the only white person, basically. So, So I got out, my hands up, walked up the hill to talk to them. They're aiming their guns at me, which is pretty much how soldiers talk to you in the West Bank. And I shouted to them, like, we are being trapped by settlers who are not letting us out,

and we need safe passage. And they started saying, what are you doing here? Blah, blah, blah. Like, it's a little back and forth. And I convinced them, like, we're really just trying to get out and we need your help. And they said, fine. Okay, you can come. So I went back into the car, we drove up.

They told us, the soldiers said, wait here. So we waited, maybe a minute. And then the Army Jeep just sped off out of nowhere. And left there was two settlers on an ATV, one of them with a gun, and a couple other Palestinians. And basically, to fast forward a little bit, the other car had been smashed. had its tires slashed by settlers, and they were having trouble getting out. And so I was trying to help that car get out when the videos you just showed, about a hundred or so settlers just emerged from the hills.

And I just started running. We all started running. I mean, they originally tried to go in the car, but in the video, you can see the car gets overtaken. They dragged the driver and the passenger out, and they both miraculously escaped. And we basically ran for our lives. And when I got back down to the car that I had been in,

one of the settler who was basically right on my tail, who is the guy who you see in the video, in another video, which maybe you'll show, really big guy with a really big club. Yeah, we do have a video. But B1B, B1B, guys. Okay, so basically he smashed. our windshield and then he runs ahead and that's a video of him just beating an old lady,

an elderly lady who had been picking olives. He knocked her unconscious with the club and then he hit her twice more when she was on the ground. And then he kept running and then he beat two activists actually, two European activists. And I went to help the lady. This is that scene And right now, she has a brain hemorrhage. Last of her, she was in the ICU, but she had stabilized. So that's good news. But it was just total chaos. I mean, it was pandemonium.

And, you know, this is, funnily enough, this is a wealthier town in the West Bank that is 85% American citizens. actually. So it's people who go back and forth. And they've been pretty insulated from a lot of what, certainly what like the shepherding villages and the Hebron Hills face, because, you know, they have money and they have blue passports. And only in the last couple of years had they really started to feel the heat. And I think that yesterday was a very clear indication. that, I mean, this was a message sent by the settlers in coordination with the IDF, that you are, we will hunt you down and will hurt you or will kill you and we'll do it on your own land. And nobody is spared, not old ladies, not American journalists, not farmers, anybody in our path, anybody on their own land will be clubbed. and you know this is like if i wasn't there yesterday um nobody would know about this

or maybe it would be a little story right it's happening everywhere every single day in the west bank and um it's it's one of those things where it's like it's really hard to explain just how shocking and brazen and cruel it is and i don't just mean like the scene itself that, you know, you see on video, which I guess is pretty shocking. But like, these settlers have literally stolen their agricultural land and occupied their farmhouses. So they've built like these nice, and when I say farmhouse, think more like small mansion. I mean, again, these are like wealthy people. They put a lot of money into building up little homes in their olive fields.

And the settlers are now living in them. Yeah. They're hitting them and launching attacks on the home's owners from those houses. And in collaboration with the IDF, which is another important part of your story, Jasper. Can I also add a corollary? Hey, Jasper, where are all these settlers from? Did you hear any familiar accents? I didn't hear anybody talking. They had masks on and they did not say a word. So that's a good question.

I mean, they're probably from all over. Some of them were probably from Israel. Some of them could be Russian, American. They could be from anywhere. Sorry, Crystal, can you repeat your question? Oh, I just said an important part of your story is that these are not rogue actors because that's the way, you know, oftentimes in Western media or, you know, Joe Biden's administration sanctioned a couple of these most psychotic characters. They act like they're, they're fringe characters, but in fact, and your story demonstrates this, they're working in collaboration directly with the government and with IDF assistance. Yes. I mean, bigger picture, like the Israeli government provides an unbelievable amount of financial backing and, you know, political backing to the most violent settlers, including the actual murderers. They often arm them. They give them, they, you know, these settlers, what they do is they peel off from a settlement and they basically like put down a tent somewhere and raise an Israeli flag. And then the tent becomes two tents.

And then a little home is built, and suddenly they've got controlled this whole area. And even under Israeli law, outposts are illegal because you need to get, you know, authorization to build a settlement. But Smotrich, what he's been doing, the finance minister in Israel, is offering retroactive authorization to outposts. Wow. So the people who are out here stealing land, terrorizing Palestinians, are getting full backing from the government in doing this. In terms of the IDF, listen, the most generous reading for what happened yesterday, just for, you know, to give them the benefit of the doubt, is that they really fucked up. They, sorry, excuse my language, but they didn't, okay, they didn't know that there were a hundred settlers hiding just, you know, in the trees. And maybe they thought the two settlers that were already there, you know, even though one had a gun, they thought, oh, he'll probably just leave on his own.

And it was just like they messed up and they left us to get attacked. My experience was that they let us up, left, and then immediately the settlers came out from the hills and chased me and chased us. And I want to also say, like two weeks ago, I wrote a story. about Palestinian Americans who have been killed in the West Bank. And I went with their families to Washington, D.C. as they, you know, in a completely futile effort sought accountability. And a number of those kids who were killed have been killed right around where I am. Because, again, this is where a lot of the Americans live.

So right now, I'm staying at the house. of Muhammad Ibrahim, who is the 16-year-old Palestinian-American, who's currently in Israeli military detention. He's been there for over eight months now. His first cousin is Sepulah, Musil, who was beaten to death by a band of settlers, probably exactly like the ones that were chasing me, could even be some of the same people. About a couple kilometers away from here is where Seifullah was beaten to death. Talfiq was shot dead by an Israeli sniper, about a five-minute drive from here. So, I mean, I am really in the heart of where the Americans are killed.

The Palestinian Americans are killed. And, you know, so what we witnessed yesterday or what I witnessed yesterday, this is what happens here. This is what they do. I mean, you know, it's a lynch mob. And I'll tell you, they're terrifying. I mean, these guys are terrifying. And they have guns.

And people know they are not afraid to kill. And they're not afraid to club old ladies. And so it is, it's quite effective what they do. Now, I'll just add, the residents of these towns also understand that not only do they want to get to their olive trees, because it's, you know, in part, it's their livelihood. There's other places, I should say, they're much more dependent on their olives here. Since there's a little more money, it's a little bit less so,

but they're still a deep symbolic value. But what they think is that if they stop going out into the fields and they let the settlers just run the hills, they'll be coming for the village next. Settlers famously are never satisfied. They get all the agricultural in, and then what they're going to see is a lot of beautiful homes. And they're going to go for those homes.

I do want to make sure, I mean, I think, you know, your testimony is incredible. I also do want to make sure we talk about the role of the U.S. Embassy here. Can we put B2B, please, on the screen just to show your exchange, text message exchange here with the U.S. embassy. You said, we've talked about, we've told the Israelis that they plan, you say, we need American protection. We are Americans. You repeatedly say, I am an American tourist. Can you protect me? and they say, no, the protection of American citizens is the responsibility of the host nation government.

You reply, are you implying the Israeli government will protect me and other Americans here? I don't understand. The IDF directly led us into an ambush, and they reply, that is what is supposed to happen. Yeah, so effectively, they told you drop dead. They said we will do absolutely nothing for you. You know, you are a United States citizen. You are also, you know, in the home of people who have duels, or I guess, American citizenship. You're in a village with a lot of American citizens. And these people are being left completely, completely out there by their own government? There's 60,000 Palestinian Americans in the West Bank, and most of them are in this area, and they get zero, zero protection from the United States, from the State Department.

And, you know, if you look at those text messages, he says to me, it's the host nation's responsibility to protect American tourists. And if they don't do it, we pull our embassy from there, like we did with Syria and with Venezuela and I think Yemen. So, and then he acknowledges Israel was actually failing to protect Americans. So by his logic, they should have pulled the embassy out of Jerusalem. But instead, of course, you know, Huckabee is as close as ever with Netanyahu. And I do not believe we're considering pulling out the embassy.

So look, I don't need to explain the just like gross double standards with America's kid gloves that they use with Israel or just the relationship, but I have to say, you know, I was not subtle there. I told them before that exchange, we spoke on the phone. And I said to, he had seen the video. I can't reveal the guy's name because it was off the record. But I said, listen, man, I was very close to being killed. Like, if those guys caught me, we saw what they did with the old lady. What do you think they would have done with me? And I'm going back out to the fields tomorrow. to document it, and I need you to protect me. And they said, no. So there it is.

I want to put before up on the screen to your point about, like, there are no safe places, safe people, nothing. So this is this Christian village that Huckabee had previously made a big deal about and gone to visit and now being attacked also by Israeli saddlers. I saw a video in this, you know, you were speaking to some of the same about, like, for people who don't know, you know, a longtime activist practice has been to, as a Western or a white person or an American, to be present during the harvest, during other critical times, because there was a sense that, like, okay, well, they won't murder the American journalist, surely.

So this will provide some level of protection to the Palestinians, or they won't murder the European activists. So this will provide some level of protection. And that that thinking, like, that is no longer the case. Anyone in everything is a target. There's total impunity. You know, it's like they know that they could, they could have murdered that old lady and there would never be any. They would never be tried for it. They certainly wouldn't be convicted for it. There would be no justice from the Israeli justice system for anyone who is other than, you know, a Jewish Israeli. So is that your experience as well that, you know, American journalists or European activists, they are now just as much a target and nothing is off the table in the way that perhaps it used to be.

It's funny because right before this, well, to answer your question, yes, that's always been my experience. But however, just before this, I was back in the olive fields and I actually just posted this video on Twitter immediately before coming on. I was back in the fields on the, on the, exactly where I was attacked yesterday, exactly where the old woman was clubbed yesterday. And it's a peaceful day there. There's no settlers around. And the IDF is patrolling and going up to the olive farmers and asking if they're okay or if they need anything. Now, do I think sincere? No. Do I think it's going to last forever? Absolutely not. But it's very clear why this is happening. And I know for a fact, because as I was there, a police commander pointed to me, he recognized me from the

video. He wanted to talk to me. They're doing the, you know, I'm going to call the charade of an investigation. Maybe they can prove me wrong. You know, they insisted that they're taking it very seriously. They were also so disturbed by the video of me getting chased and the old lady getting hit. And they're going to go after that man and get him. And I said to them, look, prove me wrong. You know, I've never seen it happen. I just came from Masafriata, where Aude Hataline was murdered by Yenon Levy. Yenon Levy is still walking free. He's still doing construction there. Violence settlers don't get arrested. Prove me wrong. So look, do I think that what happened yesterday and the coverage of it is going to, you know,

change everything? Absolutely not. But my point is it does show that the Israeli government or the Israeli military or both, they are responsive to this kind of thing. Now, we've all watched what they've done in Gaza for the last two years. Obviously, you know, they've committed a just horrific genocide and have largely just like batted away, you know, shamelessly battered away every accusation against them. But in this case, it could not have been more clear that the fact that all these people saw what happened is why they had a safe day of harvesting their olives today. And so I think that, you know, it's a, there's a balance between wanting to, fully acknowledge what you're saying, Crystal, which is that the settlers, the violent settlers act with complete impunity. But there is evidence that if we show the world the kind of violence and brutality that they're facing, you know, maybe they'll have a day of good harvesting, which is some pressure. That's an important point. All right, guys, everybody needs to subscribe to Jasper Subsidac, Infinite Jazz over at Substack. And Jasper, please be safe. And, you know, we really

appreciate your work in your physical and intellectual courage. Good to see you, man. Thanks for having me. 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. and 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. as Hilda and Justin from Ugly Betty. We played mother and son on the show, but in real life, we're best friends. And I'm all grown up now. Welcome to our new podcast, Viva Betty! Yay! Woo-hoo! Can you believe it has been almost 20 years?

That's not even possible. Well, you're the only one that looks that much different. I look exactly the same. 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. You're going to hear from guests like America Ferreira, Vanessa Williams, Michael Yuri, Becky Newton, Tony Plana, and so many more. Icons each and every one. All of a sudden, like, someone, like, comes running up to me and it's Selma Hayek.

And she's like, you are my ugly bitchy. And I was like, what is she even talking about? Listen to Viva Betty as part of the MyCultura Podcast Network, available 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. 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 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. turning now to venezuela some very troubling stuff a new statement from the president saying that maduro offered everything but that that's not enough let's take a listen maduro offered everything in its in his country all the natural resources he even recorded a message to you in english recently uh offering mediation he has he has offered everything he's offered everything you're right you know why because he He doesn't want to fuck around with the United States.

Then take it. Take the deal. Take the deal. It's a good deal. We get some oil. They get some sanctions relief. We all move on with our lives. There's no more Venezuelan migrants trekking their way to the United States.

I like it. It's a good deal. And instead, I have no idea what has pervaded. I would really love, and this, I'm not trying to say, I'm not trying to not blame Trump. But something in his information environment has changed, or at least around. around Venezuela. Because remember, this is the administration, which had Rick Grinnell, who, by the way, is one of the better members of the administration.

He's the guy who was the U.S. Special Hostage Envoy. He negotiated with Maduro for the release of some citizens. Yeah. He was directly engaging with Maduro, apparently about some future deal. Things were actually on the right track. But then here's what happened. Mike Waltz, the retard in chief of the National Security Council, got himself fired. Marco Rubio got himself elected, or selected from.

the National Security Advisor, the first person since Kissinger to be the dual NSA Secretary of State, he runs American foreign policy to a degree, again, not seen since the Kissinger days. And I warned about this from day one. I was like, guys, Rubio, because everyone said, guys, Sagar, don't worry about it. Rubio is a reformed neocon. I said, maybe, maybe on Ukraine. Or at the very least, not reformed, he'll listen to what he's told on Ukraine. He'll listen to what he's told on other areas.

But I, and I, again, bookmark it. You can go watch what I said on Lexington podcast. I was like, what I am deeply worried about is Venezuela. It's an issue, which I know, because I know these South Floridians. They're obsessed. It's monomaniacal. And they don't have the requisite level of pushback in Washington because we haven't seen these psychos in power since the 1980s.

So everyone's kind of forgotten how obsessed they are with Latin America. I knew the political constituency. He's the guy who'd been pushing for regime change in 2019, the whole Juan Guaido situation. He posted that photo of Gaddafi next to Maduro. like this is deep for him, for his ideology. So he comes into power and immediately somehow has convinced Trump, again, despite the fact there's no data that Maduro is like the chief fentanyl smuggler of Latin America, which, no, it's called Mexico.

It's the Mexican drug cartels. Those are the people who are sending fentanyl here. It has nothing to do with Venezuela. And yet he's somehow convinced him that this is the number one fentanyl smuggler of the United States. Now we're bombing all this Caribbean, you know, the Caribbean waters, international water. doing all these crazy drone strikes, which I think Trump makes him feel good, right, to do that. But the thing is, is that there's a far cry between that, now greenlighting the CIA regime change ops, which you covered in our last show, and then also now openly demanding,

basically his removal from power. Like we are, if you, and we're about to go through all the other stuff with the military, the media is not taking this stuff seriously. This is genuinely the closest that we have come to an actual legit regime change war, probably since Iraq. And I think everybody is just, everybody just kind of thinks, oh, it won't happen. It's like, the pieces are all there, guys. It's like December 02 over here, except nobody is on Fox News or nobody, frankly, in the legitimate media, they're, you know, trying to, they're pointing out the different chess pieces as if they're individual. They're like, U.S. Admiral fired, drone strike. You're like, no, put the totality. Look at where things are going.

Like, we're looking to the checkmate scenario. They're very bad at that in general. And, I mean, part of what is so troubling about what Trump says there about, like, yeah, they offered us everything is because I think the reasonable cope would be like, oh, he's just doing all this to pressure them to get some kind of a deal. So if you're saying, like, oh, no, they offer me the deal of my dreams, but I'm still going to bomb random. I'm still going to authorize the CIA to do covert regime change operate. Like, then there's no off ramp. Like, if he offered you, quote, unquote, everything, and you're still moving forward, that is an incredibly, incredibly dire indication.

You know, I don't know. I've been trying to think about this, too, because there are pieces of it that don't totally make sense. So I think you're right. I think in this administration in particular, some of these characters have realized that Trump isn't going to check what they say. So they can just tell them things. Yeah, they can just say anything. And they have seem to have a good. Again, this is not to deny him agencies, just try to understand the inner workings of this administration.

You know, Rubio has an ideological fixation on Venezuela, right? In the same way, Biden was a dime, the will committed Zionist. Rubio was like a died and wool committed neocon when it comes to Venezuela, certainly. In other areas, maybe he's more flexible. But Venezuela, that one is locked in. And then it benefits Stephen Miller and his, like, war on immigrants because you've got the Trendor-Iragua piece. And if you're labeling drug traffickers, you're labeling them, like, enemy-comer.

combatants that gives you a free hand to do a lot of the things that he wants to do as well. It's a legal thing, too. If you're in active war with somebody, then you can claim it's, it's more of a legal justification. No, it gives you just, it gives you, I mean, I think it's abhorrent. I think what they're doing, by the way, what they're doing is illegal with, even with this, you know, paper thin justification they're given. But it gives you the, like, the cover to do the extrajudicial assassinations that we're seeing in the Caribbean. It could potentially be expanded into the U.S. There's nothing that would keep it from also being used on this, on, you know, U.S. soil. So Stephen Miller likes that from his ideological perspective. You know, I have to think

with Trump, they've been talking about Trenda, and really making that, like, a big thing for a while now. And so I think that has fueled his interest in this regime change operation. Like, I think maybe he genuinely is convinced that there's some Maduro, Trenda, Ragua, gang, cartel, fentanyl, whatever thing that fits with his political brand. And, you know, and then you have the other other ego piece of they tried to do it in his first term and they failed. So he feels kind of humiliated that they did this one, Juan Guaido thing. And by the way, Max Blumenhal has an interview that is really worth listening to with the guy who was alleged to be the head of this like secret plot to overthrow the Medoro regime. The U.S. government, the first Trump administration

denies they had any involvement here, but you can go and listen and you can see some of the documents that are coming out in discovery with this guy as well. But he says they were trying to foment this secret plot using former special ops he was a former green beret in order to within Venezuela overthrow him the overthrow the Maduro government at that point. So in any case, there's also an element of just like his ego being bruised by the fact that this thing didn't work out the first time around. Yeah. And the psychoanalysis, again, all here matters because this is how it works right under currently. As I just told the story of Ukraine, we've gone through four different Ukraine policies literally in the last six months. So who knows what you're going to wake up and get?

Rand Paul, by the way, speaking out vociferously against these drugs. You've got to give the guy credit, very principled person, at least on this issue. Let's take a listen. President Trump has authorized military strikes against suspected drug boats in the Caribbean. As you know, so far more than 20 people, Senator, have been killed in six different strikes. Do you believe that these strikes against these suspected drug boats are legal? No, they go against all of our tradition. When you kill someone, you should know if you're not at war, not in a declared war, you really

need to know someone's name, at least. You have to accuse them with something. You have to present evidence. So all these people have been blown up without us knowing their name, without any evidence of a crime. And for decades, if not centuries, when you stop people at sea in international waters or in your own waters, you announce that you're going to board the ship and you're looking for contraband, smuggling or drugs. This happens every day off of Miami, but we know from Coast Guard statistics

that about 25% of the time the Coast Guard boards a ship, there are no drugs. So if our policy now is to blow up every ship we suspect or accuse of drug running, that would be a bizarre world in which 25% of the people might be innocent. The other thing about these speedboats is they're 2,000 miles away from us. If they have drugs, they're probably peddling drugs to one of the Islands of Trinidad or Tobago off of Venezuela, the idea that they're coming here is like, it's a huge assumption and really shouldn't you have to present some proof. It is the difference between war and peace. In war, though, you don't ask people's name.

But if they want all-out war where we kill anybody and everybody that is in the country of Venezuela are coming out, that has to have a declaration of war. It's something that is not pretty, very expensive, and I'm not in favor. of declaring war on Venezuela, but the Congress should vote. The president shouldn't do this by himself. Props to Rand Paul there talking about how these strikes are not only the legality, but also just the sheer kind of craziness of the policy. And I want to put, so let me, again, take you through the chess pieces.

One of the pieces of news that we covered last week was about this U.S. military admiral, or U.S. naval admiral, who had visited the Caribbean. And he had done that twice since the big buildup. and we actually looked at that as a piece of significance because of the huge buildup, naval buildup. Well, it now turns out, let's put this up here on the screen, that he has now had to step down. This is from Southcom.

Admiral Alvin Halsey is leaving less than a year into his tenure as the Pentagon escalates attacks against boats in the Caribbean Sea. And he is not only leaving it amidst the rapid buildup of 10,000 forces in the region, but of this new CIA mission and also the speculation, the scuttlebutt, at least from what I've heard around town, is he was one of those people

who raised concerns about some of these strikes, not just the legal justification, but the strategic justification as well. You put those two things together with him going away, it's not good. And also, by the way, can I remind everybody that there's currently no real journalists who are right now at the Pentagon today

who can't even ask, they can't even get the bullshit version from the Pentagon spokesperson while they're in the building. This is not good. This is exactly the time whenever you really need people with experience and others to actually, you know, put some scrutiny on what's happening. And, you know, there's not even any embeds, as far as I understand. There's no journalists down on the carriers, even tracking, see what's happening. Even in the height

of the war in Iraq, one of my favorite books, Generation Kill, there was a Rolling Stone journalist in the lead Humvee of the lead convoy going into Iraq. Like, we had some limited idea of what was going on here. Nothing. It's just government video. We don't know a damn thing about what's happening. 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.

from Ugly Betty. We played mother and son on the show, but in real life, we're best friends. And I'm all grown up now. Welcome to our new podcast, Viva Betty! Yay! Woo-hoo! Can you believe it has been almost 20 years? That's not even possible.

Well, you're the only one that looks that much different. I look exactly the same. 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. You're going to hear from guests like America Ferreira, Vanessa Williams, Michael Yuri, Becky Newton, Tony Plana, and so many more. Icons, each and every one.

All of a sudden, like, someone, like, comes running up to me, and it's Selma Hayek. And she's like, you are my ugly bitchy. And I was like, what is she even talking about? Listen to Viva Betty as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the IHeart Radio 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. 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 him. 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 the gun, I tried to take his hand and I saw the flash of light. Listen to the Chinatown Stang on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts. Those strikes in the Caribbean, every time we learn something about them, it turns out to be nothing like the way that it's being presented. Not that, okay, even if they were drug traffickers, it still wouldn't be okay. We've been interjecting drug traffickers in these waters.

You know, if you have to like blow them up, then they can't stand trial. What does that tell you about the case that you'd be able to make against them? But you had an instance recently where one of the people that we randomly murdered in the Caribbean was Colombian, at least one of them. And so the president of Columbia, who is very outspoken, leftist, says, Mr. Trump, Columbia's never been rude to the USA. On the contrary, it's greatly admired its culture. You are rude and ignorant toward Columbia. Read, as your Sharjah Affairs in Columbia did 100 years of solitude. And he assured you, you will learn something about solitude.

I don't do business like you do. I am a socialist. I believe in aid, common good and common goods of humanity. Greatest of all life put in danger by your oil. If I'm not a merchant, then much less a drug trafficker in my heart, there's no greed. I can never get along with greed, a mafioso as a human being whom embodies the best of capitalism, greed. And I am the opposite, a lover of life, therefore a millennial warrior for life, greed flees from us because life is more powerful. And as in response to this exchange, and he and Trump were going back and forth, Trump is now cut off aid to Colombia and is threatening increased tariffs on them.

Now, we aren't, like, Columbia receives a fair amount of U.S. aid, but not as much as it did at one point in like the early 2000s during Planned Columbia and that. era. But in any case, so this is, you know, some of the fallout going on. And Columbia is an important, but like large part of the cocaine production is in Colombia. So you want to deal with, you know, drug production and drug flows. This is a country you want to be able to partner with. Instead, we're antagonizing them so we can blow up random fishing boats in the Caribbean. Well, and if you put it together with what's happening, let's go to the next part from Trump. He went ahead and said that President Gustavo is an illegal drug leader, strong encouraging massive production of drugs all over Colombia has become the biggest. As of today,

these payments or any other form of payment or subsidies will no longer be made to Colombia. The purpose of drug production is a sale of massive amounts of products into the United States. So this is immediately, you know, cutting aid in response to the criticism. Colombia, of course, next to Venezuela. And actually part of what their difficulty has been is also dealing with a lot of these Venezuelan migrants, which they themselves have their own crisis with. It's causing a lot of political consternation in the country and has for some time. Let's again start to put some of the chess pieces together. Let's put this next one up here. Again, nobody blinks and I, apparently, B-52s flew off the coast of Venezuela in a recent show of

force. I mean, these are like nuclear-capable bomber. If people don't know what a B-52 is, it is genuinely one of the coolest aircraft that the United States military has. I got to see a couple when I was in Qatar and seeing them in the plane or seeing them in the sky, it's unbelievable. like the level of military might that they are. And so to take three and to just, you know, take it all around, Venezuela, off the coast, there's only one reason to do that. It's the same reason that we always fly them. It's a threat.

And so, yeah, they took off from Barksdale Air Force Base, and they just kind of circled around Venezuela in a huge show of force. All of this is just pointing in one direction. As you said, the cope is just basically, it's all negotiation. But I think here's the fear from Maduro. What if he's like, okay, this is it? I can't negotiate with these people at all. And so when the eventual time does come for negotiation, you say, no, forget it.

And then, you know, there's one miscalculation. All it takes is one errand to Venezuelan pilot or air defense or somebody to do something. And then, boom, I mean, that's why you don't get into very close situation. Why even be in this situation? He said he would give us the oil. Take it. Just take it. What's the problem?

I don't know. Last part, we just want to give a shout out to our friend Juan David Rojas, put this up here on the screen. He wrote a great piece. I encourage everybody to go read it, why regime change in Venezuela is bad for America. And he talks about specifically the last time the United States amassed this level of military might in the hemisphere was the 1989 invasion, which ousted Manuel Noriega. And while the assembled forces are inadequate for a full-scale invasion, decapitation strikes on government officials and state assets similar to NATO's 2011 intervention in Libya seem likely. And as he points out, you know, one of the reasons that this is happening is from Marco Rubio, the fact that all the statistics don't really add up whenever it comes to the found of fentanyl and everything coming here.

But he goes through the strategic justification. The notion that a post-Modoro government can promptly fix Venezuela is a disturbingly reminiscent of Washington fantasies about post-Taliban Afghanistan. Unlike Noriega, who governed six years to 1983 and 1989, Chavismo has ruled Venezuela for 27. has destroyed the country's institutions. On increasingly rare occasions when opposition candidates are allowed to prevail, the winners are then stripped of their constitutional powers. In 2024, to ensure Maduro was re-elected, the regime perpetrated election fraud,

so brazen that even some of his closest international allies called the results into question. Even in an ideal negotiated transition, it would take decades for Venezuela to restore a semblance of the rule of law. And nobody signed up for that. I don't want that. I don't want to be responsible for Venezuela. I don't think Venezuelans want us to be responsible.

Like, leave them to their own destiny at a certain point. Yeah, how much better would it be to make a business deal with them? That'd be great. It sanctions relief. And, you know, they can, like Maduro can sink or swim on his own. You know, if he's able to run the government in a way that people find effective and, yeah, let them to decide their own fate. I mean, that feels like what it should be, an America first type of a principle.

And there's nothing good. There is nothing good that will come of some. regime change more. And the other thing that Wanda V goes through is like, you know, there's a number of already armed and trained militant groups in and near Venezuela. So it's also not like there's, you know, all the ingredients for chaos and violence and death and destruction in a failed state. It's all there. And, you know, apparently that's what we're flirting with at this point. Absolutely, absolutely insane. Yeah. 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 killed her. We know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizens. 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 put it. poor guess 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 podcast. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Samihante. It's Anna Ortiz. And I'm Mark and Delicado.

You might know us as Hilda and Justin from Ugly Betty. We played mother and son on the show, but in real life, we're best friends. And I'm all grown up now. Welcome to our new podcast, Viva Bethi! Yay! Woo-hoo! Can you believe it has been almost 20 years? That's not even possible.

Well, you're the only one that looks that much different. I look exactly the same. 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. You're going to hear from guests like America Ferreira, Vanessa Williams, Michael Yuri, Becky Newton, Tony Plana, and so many more. icons each and every one.

All of a sudden, like, someone, like, comes running up to me, and it's Salma Hayek. And she's like, you are my ugly bitchy. And I was like, what is she even talking about? Listen to Viva Betty as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. In early 1988, federal agents race to try. 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 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. Turning now to John, Bolton, the former national security advisor, has been indicted. Let's go and put this up here on the

screen. Federal grand jury in Maryland returned an indictment on 18 separate counts, eight counts of unlawful transmission of national defense information, and 10 counts of unlawful retention of national defense information. These are from the alleged violations of the 1917 Espionage Act, which prohibit the unauthorized possession or transmission of national defense information. So basically, let me go through and read some of the key allegations inside the criminal complaint. The indictment, by the way, is public, so you can go through and read it for yourself. Quote, Bolton is alleged to have shared over 1,000 pages of diary-like records of his time at the National Security Advisor with family members or, quote, editors via his

personal email account while he was preparing his book. These records reportedly included sensitive classified information from meetings with senior U.S. officials, foreign leader discussions, and intelligence briefing. He is alleged to have printed and structured. stored classified material at his home in Bethesda, Maryland. The indictment claims that Bursal's personal email account, which he at times emailed to his wife and his daughter, were later than hacked by a cyber actor, believed to have been linked to Iran, and that hackers gained access to all of the classified information that he had stored there, that the representative, he told the FBI in 2021 about the hack, but he did not disclose the classified information was stored

in the account or that hackers had obtained the classified data. He's pleaded not guilty and said he's a victim of political retribution. Now, I mean, I think that that is probably true, that he's a victim of political retribution. But, you know, first they came for John Bolton, and I didn't say very much because it's John Bolton. And, you know, I firstly came for John Bolton, and I read the indictment. And it turned out that he did the very thing that he has accused others of doing and he is called for a crackdown, for government, you know, for government intervention, for a prison time. And so, yeah, that's mostly what I have to say after they came for John Bolton. Yeah.

Well, okay, so I think it's actually very interesting. I guess first, really technically, they did come for James Comey. Oh, and then Lizzie's James. First they came for... And I think those two prosecutions are much more... They're very different. Much flimsier and more bullshit. I mean, Letitia James is complete and total bullshit.

Comey, I mean, these prosecutors had to resign. Like, they had to put total flunkies in charge before they would pursue these charges. So this one is different. Now, what I will say here is, I think it's worth... pausing and thinking about the mind of not just John Bolton, but I think this is the way that many elites behave when they get into power. A hundred percent. They think about, okay, how am I going to position myself for my career, my book deal?

Like, how am I going to profit off of this public service? And so when he comes into the First Trump administration, he immediately starts this text chain with his wife and his daughter, where it's, you know, he's calling it his diary. And he's sharing with them all kinds of this is, according to. the government story, right? He's going to be able to make his own case about what was going on and whether it was classified and it'll be able to defend himself. And I think he certainly has a good case that this is political retribution wouldn't have been charged under another government. I do think that that is the case. But so he comes in thinking, how am I going to parlay this

into a book deal? Which he did right, by the way. Yeah, he did. After the fact. So he's sharing with them all this stuff at the moment to keep track of what's going on and all the decision making that he's privy to, et cetera. Now, I think this is completely characteristic. of the way that many elites operate when they get into office. And it is also completely characteristic of the type of yes crimes that elites are usually like, yeah, this is fine. Of course I get to store classified info for my book and my personal email. Right.

Who amongst us? Now, if you're a whistleblower and you're disclosing something, you're sharing something classified in the wrong setting and blah, blah, blah, then God forbid. But, you know, and then also there's the irony, of course, of Trump with the documents stacked up at his bathroom or whatever, that will put that aside for the moment. But so now any elite who gets crosswise with Trump, the things that usually elites are just allowed to do, now they're not going to be allowed to do that. Now, I am okay with that if it's applied across the board.

The problem is that obviously it's done in this incredibly political way where if it's, it's just for Trump's enemies. And so it reminds very much of that famous saying for my friends, everything, for my enemies, the law. And with Trump, it's not just the things that actually were legitimate violations. They will also comb through your mortgage application and try to find some sort of bullshit whatever like they did with Letitia James. They're trying to do it with Adam Schiff and others to make a case against you, even if there really is no case to make. With this one, they happen to have a little bit more to work with. It just falls in the category of things that elites typically do

and get away with. But now that you're on the wrong side of the king, you're going to be made to pay. Yeah, like I, you know, sometimes the king actually doesn't miss. And on this one, Glenn actually flagged this fantastic clip of John talking about Julian Assange. Let's take a lesson. Well, I think that's a small amount of the sentence he actually deserves. He's committed clear criminal activity. He's no more a journalist than the chair I'm sitting on. The information that he divulged did in fact put many people in jeopardy. It undercut the ability of the United States to have confidential diplomatic communications, not just with other foreign governments, but in many countries with dissidents, people who even speaking to American diplomats could find themselves in trouble.

And so, you know, he's been complaining about his treatment over the past period of time. He's the one who sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy. Now he faces extradition to the United States. I presume he will get due process in the United Kingdom to determine whether extradition should go forward. And when he gets to the United States, he'll get due process here. And I hope he gets at least 176 years in jail for what he did. 176 years. Well, John, we'll see how you contest that whenever it comes to your own defense. Probably if we went back. I bet he said a bunch of stuff about Hillary's classified situation too, because at that point, you know, he was a loyal Republican. These guys, you know, it's like he said, about their egos.

You can, I mean, I, and I covered the Hillary email thing. And I remember one of my, one of the things that actually made me really angry about it is there was this naval sailor who accidentally shared pictures from onboard a nuclear submarine. And he had been charged with releasing information about classified information. And he, I think he was either thrown in jail, he got seriously like the book was thrown at him. And what he did was in no way comparable to what Hillary had done. And that was a clean hit because it's like she gets to get away with everything, whereas the normal, everyday people who are working inside the government when they do something even remotely close to that, by accident. Again, literally by accident, they get thrown in jail.

Here, you know, to your point, he's doing this to enrich himself. What great service has John Bolter never performed for the United States of America or for the business world? No, he trades off of his name and of his influence. I have some great stories about the speaker fees and other things that he demands whenever he would speak to, like, little student organizations that I have heard from around Washington. He's one of the notorious divas in this town who has writers in his contract, like he's Metallica or something. You think I'm joking. I'm not joking. Everybody here knows what I'm talking about. And so that's the guy. And so he did this to make money. That's what it was about. And he thought he was above the law. And so, John, no one is above the law.

Well, actually, a lot of people are above the law. We'll get to George Santos here in a moment. But now that you're crosswise with Trump, you're not going to be above the law. I did look it up. So with regard to Hillary Clinton using a non-secure personal server for official communications, he said in a 2017 interview that if I had done at the State Department, what senior U.S. officials like Clinton did, I'd be in jail right now and asserted that, you know, if he or any typical government official had done that, then they would face immediate prosecution and imprisonment. So that was his view before when he was on, you know, when he was closely aligned.

with the Republican Party, and this was a partisan issue. He was, yeah, nothing but the law for mis-sharing or, you know, misandling classified information. But, you know, on the other side of this, we've got the George Santos sentence commutation. And he was convicted. You know, it's worth remembering what he actually did. So he stole 11 different people's identities in order to, like, steal their funds to fund his life and his campaign, convicted of, you know, took money from his campaign and used

personal slush fund. There was a lot more besides that he did. And, you know, it would be one thing if it's just this one guy. I will say the way he was treated in prison I found to be, he was in solitary confinement, which I think, you know, is tortured and shouldn't be used on anyone, let alone, you know, a person who's convicted of basically like a white collar crime. But in any case, he joins a list of nine other Republican congressmen who have had their sentences either commuted or been pardoned. If you are on Trump's good side and you've seen the way that, you know, people have paid money to get in Trump's inner circle or hire a lawyer who's close with Don Jr. or whatever, then you can commit whatever crimes you want, as long as you say the right things about Trump.

I mean, here we have 10 Republican congressmen who've been granted pardons or clemency from Trump with Santos just being the latest one. And so, you know, that is the reality of this regime. The notion that there is any sort of impartiality is completely and utterly dead. It is all political. It is all I will, you know, go after my enemies. If you say nice things about me, if you're going to tow the line, then I will, I will pardon you. I will commute your sentence. And that is very important because it gives all the people around him a sense of impunity.

Because they all know, even if they are committing crimes, certainly if they are committing crimes on his behalf, they will face no accountability because as long as they stay on his good side, he will pardon them. He will commute their sentences. And so, you know, that is the broader picture. Bolton is a complicated one because, first of all, I think he's like one of the great villains of our politics. And second of all, because he genuinely, I mean, according to the government's case, again, he'll have the ability to make his own case, whatever. He genuinely did handle, mishandle classified information, you know, applying his own what he's said in the past to his own actions. he would be worthy of prosecution.

And by the way, another thing we didn't mention, which another very negative fact for him is Iran did actually hack into these messages. That's actually worse than Hillary. And we're able to, yeah, and we're able to glean some information. We're trying to threaten and blackmail him with the information that they had been able to obtain. So you do have, you know, a foreign adversary that's able to gain access to this information, et cetera, very negative set of facts for him. But then you added to the overall picture of like this being part of a retribution campaign.

I think it is true that under another administration, including another Republican administration, or back when he was a, you know, loyal Republican under another Democratic administration, I don't think he gets prosecuted but for it being this particular administration. Yeah, I think you're, one could make the case that it was political not to prosecute it, that actually the Biden administration led him off of the hook because they liked him because he was on TV criticizing Trump. So maybe we're just riding the ship. And, you know, the next time, jokes aside, this is an interesting question.

when the Democrats are in power then, why would they not, why should they not then use this new standard against it? Like if you're, why would you not prosecute Jared Kushner? Why would you not prosecute Steve Whitkoff? Why would you not prosecute any of the people? I mean, I'll put Stephen aside because it's kind of a separate thing. But I don't know. I've, I've seen that, considering the No Kings protest, we're about to talk about which Schweikot later on today, that's kind of what the base wants. And so I wonder what direction that they're going to go. What do you think? I think that a litmus test in the 2028 primary. will be holding some of the Trump administration officials to account.

I don't think Whitkoff and Kushner at the top. I would say Stephen Miller, Christy Noem, are towards the, you know, towards the top of the list, maybe Russ vote. But Miller would be, you know, target number one, maybe Elon Musk. I think that it will be a litmus test of like, and there's a fine line. We can have this, we won't dwell on. We don't have to have a long debate about this right now, but I'm sure it will be a conversation we continue to have. there's a fine line between, you know, politicizing and retribution and just going for blood. And I think a lot, some of the problems we have in this country right now is from elites acting with impunity.

So I do think you need some elite accountability for crimes that are committed. I'm thinking of, you know, I'm thinking of the war criminals in the first Bush administration. Again, John Bolton. I'm thinking of the bankers who never went to prison. And when you have a vastly unequal society by wealth, and then you have a show of elites who are able to commit overt criminal acts, especially acts against the American people, and do that with impunity, then that does contribute to like a total societal collapse. So, yeah, I think there will be, I think there will be some of that. Now, do I see a Gavin Newsome, like, going through people's mortgage applications and just inventing things out of whole cloth? No, I don't say, I mean, remember, these are the people who couldn't get around to appointing Merrick Garland and decided it should be Merrick Garland, who was like the lamest person on the planet in order to even go after like the guy who was their main adversary. That's who Democratic Party elites ultimately are. So I think you're right where the base is, is they definitely want to see not, you know, not like exactly what's being done in the Trump administration, but they want to see some accountability for these things. The question is whether their elites are.

Whoever gets elected is going to have the stones to do any of that, and that's a very open question. All right, let's see. 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. 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 that y'all said it. 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. from Ugly Betty. We played mother and son on the show, but in real life, we're best friends. And I'm all grown up now. Welcome to our new podcast, Viva Bethy! Yay!

Woo-hoo! Can you believe it has been almost 20 years? That's not even possible. Well, you're the only one that looks that much different. I look exactly the same. 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. You're going to hear from guests like America Ferreira.

Vanessa Williams, Michael Yuri, Becky Newton, Tony Plana, and so many more. Icons, each and every one. All of a sudden, like, someone, like, comes running up to me, and it's Selma Hayek. And she's like, you are my ugly bitchy. And I was like, what is she even talking about? Listen to Viva Betty as part of the MyCultura Podcast Network, available on the IHeart Radio 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.

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 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. So this morning, we are joined in studio by a gentleman who is challenging Nancy Pelosi in the Democratic primary for Congress, also former chief of staff to AOC, Shoycott Chakabody. Great to have you.

Yeah, thanks for having me here. Good to see you, man. Welcome. Glad to have you in town. I wanted to start with, I know you were at the No Kings protest in San Francisco. Yeah. We've got, you guys can put some of these images up on the screen from around the country. I know the estimates were in the many millions for these actions across the country. In my little town in King George County, they even had, like, pretty decent number of people, which is something I've, like, never seen before. Just talk about your, you know, experience in San Francisco and what your interactions were like with the people who came out for it. Yeah, it was a lot of fun, you know, and it was energizing, it was like electrifying.

It was about 50,000 people in San Francisco that showed up, way bigger than the last one, because I went to the last one as well. And people, I mean, it's just, like, gives you some hope. I think that was the main, overall meaning sort of vibe, I'd say, I got there. And it was, you know, peaceful. Like, there's nothing even bordering on violence, right? No Antifa attacks. No Antifa attacks.

Nothing going on. And, you know, the thing I think is really important about something like this is it is also building infrastructure to actually get people out on the streets, right? So the fact that you can keep doing this, repeat this, I think we're going to have some real infrastructure to get folks out on the streets and to have some sort of real opposition if we need that. Well, that's kind of my question to you, because, you know, I grew up around the Tea Party age, camming of age in politics. And what I saw was not only the marches, but there was a

political infrastructure. And with respect, I don't see that same level. Candidates like you at this point in that cycle, let's say in the 2010 race, they had major money behind them to challenge incumbents. You know, I'm sure you're studying some of those runs. So explain that disconnect to me. Why is it that millions can take to the streets? But there doesn't seem to be a centralized, organized force. People standing up and saying, I'm done with the Democratic establishment? Or are they saying it? And I'm mistaken. What do you think? So there isn't the same, I'd say, kind of like moneyed infrastructure that the Tea Party had. But I do think this is one of the big divides between Candace like myself, like Kat Abu Ghazale, like

the newer folks who are running and the old guard, right? I think Candace like us, we are part of that. And we see our roles. It's not just trying to go into be politicians and legislators. Like we actually need to be organizers and be part of this sort of these protests on the street and actually be organizing civil society to create a real opposition party. So I agree, you know, I think what the Tea Party did was an example of how that actually happened on the other side. Okay. Yeah, one of the things that I have noted for a while now is different among the Democratic base in Trump 2.0 is that they really are frustrated with their leadership. Yeah. Pelosi no longer, you know, the, the leader in the House, Hakeem Jeffreys,

who, I mean, Pelosi, at least she had some Machiavillian instincts. Jeffries is just completely, seems weak. Schumer has been pathetic as well. And so when I see those images, you see the same level or even heightened level of dissatisfaction, anger from the base at what the Trump administration is doing and a leadership that they feel increasingly has let them down. That's very different from the first Trump administration where they felt like, you know, Nancy Pelosi and Schiff and others were like fighting for them and they were all aligned. I do think that creates an opening, not just for candidates like you, but for, you know, more of a sort of Sanders left populist ideology. because those are the people that actually are being caught fighting. Like, those are the people who have been leading the charge. And so if you have a base who's disgusted with the lack of fight

and you see that the fighters are people who, you know, tend to share our ideology, I think that does create nobody, not to mention the fact that the previous, like, liberal direction of let's not rock the boat and let's just try to return to the status quo has obviously completely failed. Yeah, I think it's twofold, right? One thing is when Trump won the first time, I think a lot of people, especially mainstream Democrats, thought that was just a fluke, you know?

And Trump getting elected again has gone a big part of the party in the base to just, you know, think about this as like, what is actually going on? Like, this is a real failure of the democratic establishment. And so I think there's two things that's going on where they're seeing the current Democratic Party being completely unable to do anything about what's going on in the moment with what I think is an authoritarian coup. And so they're looking for, you know, leaders who are actually going to take this moment seriously. They're not, you know, they don't want the sort of lay back and play dead politics. The backlash bill and we're just going to win on the in the next. selection off that backlash because that might not happen, right? But the other pieces, people really are thirsty for an actual vision to fix the deep economic problems that led to

someone like Trump. Like that's something I had to explain the first Trump term. When I was working with AOC, I had to try to explain, you know, Trump was a result of these larger problems. Yeah. I don't find that to explain that anymore. Everyone gets it, right? So now we're at a place where I just get to pitch what's our version of the vision for actually how to fix this because MAGA's not doing it, right? Maga's not going to fix it. Well, my question though on San Francisco is, let's be real, like, Nancy Pelosi is still tremendously popular, right? And her, among a lot of Democrats, I saw a recent unfavorable rating, like, 33% that was like total.

But in your district, you know, she has constantly never really had to take any of these primary challenges seriously. So I guess my question is, how do you seek to over, like, why is this time different? I mean, I've been doing the show with Crystal for years now. I'd probably interview to every primary challenger that has come to. Nancy Pelosi, I'm still here interviewing another Nancy Pelosi challenger. Why is this time different? Yeah.

So the bet with this race was that there's this deep dissatisfaction with the democratic establishment, right? Not necessarily Nancy Pelosi herself, but that people are really ready for change. And we actually ran a poll last month that showed a couple interesting things. You know, it still shows Nancy Pelosi is generally well-liked. You know, people actually respect her and like her. But when you ask Pelosi supporters, would they be willing to vote for somebody new? About 51% say yes, right? When you ask, and overall in the population, about two-thirds of the population.

And then when you actually pull her against me, first, one thing we learned is I've already cut the lead in half as down 25, now I'm down 13. And when we actually show a positive bio of her and a bio of myself, we end up winning the race by six. So people in the district are really, you know, basically they're at this place where we like we like her, we think she was great for a certain time. But clearly we need something new, right? And so the point is to just get across the fact that I'm, you know, I'm actually a serious candidate. I've got real experience in politics. and also everything I'm running on is overwhelmingly popular, not just in San Francisco, but across the country.

I'm running on things to actually fix our economic problems. I'm running on anti-corruption, and that's really resonating with the district. Is she for sure running again? She filed her. She's filed with the FEC. Okay. Whenever people ask her, like, are you definitely running again?

She always is mom about it, but the rumors are maybe it's going to be her daughter that ends up being her pick. Who knows? Doesn't she have two daughters? Christine. Christine. Okay, interesting. Right. Famous in Washington.

I would love for you to talk a little bit while we have you about you said, you know, you need to offer people an alternative positive vision. I think you've been one of the people who has been at the forefront of actually really thinking deeply about what that vision would look like. So talk a little bit about how you see that. Yeah, you know, I think it's basically, like to back up a bit, like I think basically for decades now, wages have been stagnant for most Americans while the cost of essentials have really skyrocketed, right? And I think at the same time, our country's just been really stuck actually being able to do anything big. We can't take on big projects. We've de-industrialized the Midwest. I think one real example of how bad our state capacity is, is I think of EVs in China, right?

Like, EVs in China 10 years ago, when they were starting to make them, we were being so smug about it. We were like, they're never going to catch up to us. Our technology is so great. And then literally last year, they were starting to make EVs our bed and ours, and we're just like, well, game's over. No way we can compete, right? That's it. It feels a little bit like that. Yeah.

I know, right? It's kind of true. But that's such a failure of imagination, I think, on our part of what can we actually do as a country. So, you know, part of what I'm running on is, I'd say, the things that people like Bernie or AOC and everybody runs on, which is we need structural fixes to things like health care, child care, education, these big cost centers, right? We actually need universal health care, universal childcare, universal childcare. But the other piece that I've been really promoting, this was really a lot of the Green New Deal work is we actually need, to have the government do a massive mobilization to kind of build up our industrial capacity

and our state capacity to do stuff, to build industries, to build housing, to build all the stuff that we actually need in this country to survive. And the examples we look at when we talk about this are, you know, a lot of the rich nations that got rich in the 20th century. Because if you look at the history of the 20th century,

basically every rich nation today, they went through these periods where they massively transformed their economy in really short periods of time. And the way they did it, is they really governed in a way that's very different from us. You know, they didn't just pass some policies. You had to actually have this movement that was organizing civil society

to kind of be on this mission. And often that mission was to get rich as a nation. And sometimes the mission in our case, you know, during World War II, is to beat the fascist. And you made real plans. You had institutions to finance and execute those plans. It's a whole different kind of governing. That's really been a focus of a lot of my work.

Okay, but to press you a little bit, you know, your part of the party that you've been involved with now for some time has not really had a good run in San Francisco, right? So San Francisco, Daniel Lurie beats London Breed in the mayoral race. You had Chesu Boudin who went down. It seems like the homelessness and the crime, which, look, no offense, like was definitely associated with a lot of the politics that you've been involved when some past was utterly rejected by a lot of those voters.

So like, why should I believe your vision for governance when the very city, which you probably had the most influence on, not you personally, but your brand of politics had the most influence on, basically became an emblem for a failed city in the United States. Yeah, you know, I really think that it's a backlash of government dysfunction, because I agree. You know, I think the San Francisco government has not actually managed to take care of the homeless people in our city and have them not have to live out on the streets, right? And I'm not sure Daniel Lurie is necessarily going to fix that either, and we're going to see the same backlash. I think there's the same reason at a national level.

You have someone like Barack Obama win on a message of change, and then when people feel like that didn't work out, you have something like Donald Trump win. I think people are really quite open to what the change looks like, but people are really sure that whatever, we're doing right now, that's not working. Are you worried that Trump's abuse of government power? Because in a certain way, he's kind of greasing the skids for what you're talking about. He's like, you know what, Congress, forget it, judiciary. Like, who cares? Who cares about laws? I'm just going to do what I want to do.

Right. In a certain way, he creates space for, you know, a more aggressive government policy. In another way, something Sarah and I've both been concerned about is like, you know, it gives libertarians a bit of an argument of, hey, when you've got this unchecked government is kind of a problem. Are you worried about a backlash to his abuse of government, making it more difficult for, you know, a vision such as yours that does require direct government action to be accepted by the people? Yeah, I'm worried about that, right? And I'm the kind of person.

I don't generally believe that there's, like, one system that'll fix anything. Like, the people do matter. And, yeah, you can have, you can use a powerful government for good and you can use it for bad, right? And the FDR, in my opinion, was an example of how we had a powerful government that had law state capacity. it to improve people's lives. So, you know, I think the job here is to try to distinguish that, to say that, you know, the stuff that's going wrong right now, that's because Trump is throwing out Congress, which, by the way, I'm not saying we throw out Congress, right? Like, FBR actually used to love going in front of Congress and, you know, defend his ideas, and that's how he felt

he could build political support for it. Not all the time, though. Not always. Not when they went against him, though. Okay. Yeah, no, but he did actually, he did all the committee. He actually showed up in front Congress, right? And which Trump has never done. And so, you know, I think more powerful if you actually bring civil society and the body politic along when you're doing this kind of big approach. You can't actually just go it alone and have the government just do something because you need to have the ion. You need the natural bias. I apologize for getting so specific. But like that is part of your job. We're going to be representing here. So I think about that mall in Sanford. What is it, the Westfield Mall? I bought one of my ties there. It's

empty now, right? It's because of crime. It's because of homelessness. I read an article recently in the Wall Street Journal. It's a multi-billion dollar boondoggle. They won't pay the mortgage. Like, what are you going to do about that? You know, at the end of, like, that was a great place. And now it got ruined. It got ruined by, again, a lot of that governance. And I'm just not hearing, you know, quite a bit about that. Look, I'm not going to downplay the issues around homelessness and crime.

That mall specifically, though, I do think there's been some misinformation around it. Because malls are not doing well all around the country. That's true. That's true. And we've got some, you know, the Japan Town Mall, Stonstown Gallery, and San Francisco, they're doing great. And they've managed to pivot to figure out a model that actually works. I get the feeling that Westfield just didn't.

They had this old mall style. And they're in the middle of downtown where there's all this other region. retail. So yeah, I think crime and homeless has had something to do with it, but I don't think that's the whole story with Westfield. Okay. All right. I mean, I'll take your word for it. I just think it's more of like, it's, if there's a reason why, you know, people point to it as failed, not just the mall, but like, you know, retail, market street and everything. I remember visiting here. I said, I can't believe what happened to this place. And so that's why I'm just honestly a bit skeptical. Like, I hear big things about Green New Deal, et cetera. Sure, it sounds

great. But, you know, if that's actually how the governance itself of the city is, having visited, I mean, One of the critiques you've had, I know, is around oligarchy. Like, you're going to be representing probably one of the most per capita cities with billionaires. What's your plan to deal with that? There's going to be a lot of, you know, paper millionaires who are in that district who really like some of the more status quo. Is it going to be voters? Is it going to be them? Because I've seen a lot of them being prioritized by San Francisco politicians.

Yeah, we can't. I mean, there are a lot of them, but they're still a small fraction of the actual city, right? And if you look at people in San Francisco, if you ask them about this question of oligarchy, especially tech workers, actually, because I talked to a lot of tech workers. They hate it, you know, tech workers are really embarrassed by being kind of represented by people like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and David Sacks and they kind of are the first to be like, we need to show that we are not them, right? And so in San Francisco, though, when you talk about these failed policies, I think actually the failed policies is there is a result of the lack of state capacity on San Francisco's level, you know, and the fact that San Francisco doesn't actually build, you know, and part of my politics here is, and this doesn't always line up with progressives, but I do think red tape and and, you know, You're a YIMBY guy. I'm both. You know, I think the thing that the YIMBs, I think, get right is, yes, we do actually need to make it faster and easier and cheaper to construct.

But the thing I think they get wrong is that's not going to be all we need to actually get stuff built. You know, we actually need public financing, social housing, all these other tools to make sure we get the stuff built. Yeah. Your yes and on a button. I'm a yes and guy. Yes.

Let's talk a little bit about, because Saga brings up the, you know, tech-heavy district that you would represent. I mean, what are your thoughts on the development of things? AI, the likely, you know, mass displacement of workers, the way that would upend the social contract. You know, right now they're all in what I would consider basically race to the bottom, to speed, who can get, you know, their AI to HGII fastest without any regard for what the consequences to society would be. Right.

You know, I know you're a deep thinker on all these things. So what are your thoughts there on what we should do? Oh, man. I mean, I think it's so lame that right now AI is going to a place we're just going to have like a slop TikTok full of AI porn is, I guess, like the modifications strategy. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it is just like we've created a speculative bubble where we're letting the markets decide where the stuff goes and it's going to create complete dystopia. But I think of the AI question as kind of downstream from the fact that we don't have any capacity at a national level to do any sort of planning of where our economy goes.

Yeah. Right? And where some big disruptive technology like this, how it should be used. Because it could be the case that when you have very productive technology, the benefits of that is spread across more of society. It's not just accumulating to Sam Ellman. And there's one version of this where I equated to kind of automation in the car manufacturing sector. So when that started happening, when car manufacturing started getting really automated in Germany,

they have labor and corporations and government that all sit on the boards of their car manufacturers, right? And they do some planning. They're like, this is how we're going to do automation in our car manufacturing. And the result of that is sort of changed because EVs have really changed the game. But initially, the result of that was German workers end up making twice as much in wages as their American counterparts. They also made more cars per capita than American car manufacturing,

and they had more automation than America, right? So I think that's the way we should be treating AI. We need to actually have society have a say on how we're using this technology, so it doesn't just turn into, you know, slop news feeds. You mentioned tech workers. Where do you stand on the H-1B question? So you'd be representing a district of a lot of H-1Bs.

You talk about tech workers. A lot of those people have come to me said we're being abused by H-1B workers. What do you think about the issue? Yeah, I mean, I'm in the camp of we definitely need reform. Like, I do think we need to, I think we should detach H-1B from employer, like employees from employers, because I think it's a very exploitative system. And I think we need to have higher basically prevailing wage requirements on the visa so that it has an upward push on wages. So the result of bringing it, you know, so you really are bringing H-1B workers that you can't hire locally and it's pushing everyone's wages up.

But do you think these companies have been abusing the H-1B system? A lot of them would be in your district. Yeah, absolutely they've been abusing it, yes. I'm going to talk about the disconnect between where the base of the Democratic Party has been and where Democratic Party leadership has been on Israel in particular. If we can put F2 up on the screen. This was an interesting set of polls that was, I think, leaked, actually, that this is from Democrats in a variety of swing districts. So that was the sample that was taken here.

And they asked people for favorable or unfavorable views on the variety of things. So unfavorable for Israel is 50%. favorable is only 27%. Palestine, completely opposite. 60% favorable, only 13% unfavorable. Netanyahu has a 6% approval rating. A PAC has a 16% approval rating. The Israel lobby in general, 14.

The UN, 73 positive, and Doctors Without Borders 82. You can put the next one up on the screen as well. I just some other numbers to chew on with regard to this topic. In your own words, please describe your impressions of Israel. They ask here, 59% offer something that is negative. The number one response there was they're committing a genocide. On the positive side, they're kind of mixed. The number one is support the people, not so much the government. Number two is Israel has a right to exist. And then you've got some 12% that are more or less

neutral to their views here. Let's put the next one up on the screen as well. When thinking about the current crisis in the Middle East, you mostly have sympathy for Palestinians, equal sympathy for Palestinians and Israelis or mostly have sympathy for the Israelis. Five percent of the Democratic base say they mostly have sympathy for the Israelis. And yet their leadership overwhelmingly mostly has sympathy for the Israelis. You know, is this, does this feel to you like an important like litmus test issue for Democratic base voters? Because of course, if you poll, it's not the number one issue that most people say. Yet it seems like it's such a moral abomination. And so, such a failure, a moral failure on the part of Democratic leadership who likes to posture

like they care about human rights and they care about international law, that to me it seems that it has become an important kind of dividing line issue in Democratic primaries in particular. Yeah, I agree. I think it's become a proxy for the larger question of who do you serve, right? Are you actually representing people or are you representing money? Yeah. Because there's no, there's no explanation for why you would continue voting to send unconditional military funding to Israel, when your voters are telling you they don't want it, when you see the horrible genocide that Israel is committing with that money, when it's against our own law, the Leahy law says we shouldn't be doing this, other than money, right? That's the only answer. And, you know, I actually think you

see this on a whole host of issues. You know, there's a big divide between our voters are at on things like congressional stock trading ban, right, or banning the revolving doorworking Congress in the lobbying industry on big money and where politicians are at. And, you know, that's, honestly, it's a big political opportunity in some cases for people like me who are running, who are actually just running on these issues that are very popular. I mean, you know, we get painted as progressives, which I call myself a progressive, but it's really just popular issues. So what did you think of your old boss's decision to vote for defensive weapons to Israel? Is that a vote that you would take? I wouldn't have voted the same way as her, no. But, you know, I think if you look at, she did the same

vote as Bernie, they've been voting that way for a long time. And ultimately, she didn't actually vote on the bill. So, you know, no real money got sent to Israel there. Yeah, but the last of it. So you're saying no more A-2. What's your, what's your, my logic on it is, any money we're sending to Israel right now, like, I don't think they're being so careful about this is only going to defense, this is only going to offense. Any money we give to, to support their defensive capabilities, that's more money they have for their offensive capabilities. And those offensive capabilities are being used for abhorrent actions right now. Last question for you, did serve as AOC's chief of staff. She's talked about both as a potential

primary challenger, Chuck Shermer, which frankly, I think she would win in a landslide if he even decided to run again. And she's also talked about as a potential presidential contender. Do you think, you know, she could be an effective presidential contender? Do you think that she, you know, would have an ability to lead the country in that way? Absolutely. Yeah. I think, I mean, I think she is a generational talent. And I think she's incredible communicating. I think the thing she's got is twofold. One, she actually cares, which is rare in politicians. And she is able to explain things and do the kind of politics. is necessary for this moment? Like if we want to do big stuff, you know, if we want to actually

get the country to be able to do these big structural changes, you know, fix health care, get industrialization happening again, you actually need someone in the presidency who's able to communicate that and use as a way to build political will to do those big things. You're not going to be able to do it through a regular establishment Democrat who's just poll testing everything and figuring out what to say, you know, at the moment. See, that's interesting because when you came in, I remember when you became where chief of staff, because you're a shitter in Congress, which I like. I loved it. That's part of the reason I've always respected you.

But the critique I've seen from a lot of progressives has been that after you left, I forget your other colleague's name, after the two of you guys. Corbin, that's right. After the two of you guys left, it's like, now we're starting to play the Pelosi game. We're starting to go for the oversight committee, even though we're still not going to get it. Start to play ball with leadership. We're not doing sit-ins anymore. So what do you think went wrong or if anything went wrong? I don't think anything went wrong.

I mean, I left sort of in a planned way. Like I came in, I did the shit stirring to get the Green New Deal launch, got her office hired, and I had a kid on the way, and I got out. And, you know, I think she needs support, right? Like, that's the other piece of this is if someone like AOC does become president, she actually wants to do this big thing. That's really what it comes down to. Because it's not just about winning this presidency, we actually have to deliver at the end of day.

Or it is going to go back to some sort of authoritarianism. But she's going to need a Congress to back her up. And that's like a big part of my focus right now is I am trying to recruit people to run all across the country. I'm talking to people who are popping up primarying Democrats. We're going to need a movement to replace a whole bunch of these Democrats to completely change the party. And in that sort of environment, I think she can be very successful. Okay. All right. All right, Shoycott, tell people where they can support your campaign if they're so inclined. Yeah, go to my website. It's shoykot.us, S-A-I-K-AT-U-U-S. I know I mentioned in that poll that if all we do is get

everyone to hear about this campaign in the district, we're going to win. So we're doing a huge volunteer-run operation. So if you live in the Bay Area, you can come out to canvas. We've been canvassing every weekend. Again, like 50 to 60 people every day on Saturday and Sunday. That's incredible. But if you're outside of the district, we're doing phone banks from anywhere in the country. So please sign them to volunteer on our website or, you know, send a few bucks our way if that works. I'll be looking at your campaign with interest, sir. So we'll see you later. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you guys so much for watching. We're going to have to skip the Epstein segment today just because we went long. As usual, don't worry, we'll cover it.

Tomorrow, we'll see you all then. Hello, America's sweetheart Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you about my new true crime podcast, Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, from smartless media, campside media, and big money players. It's a wild tale about a gang of high-functioning nitwits, who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist. Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he steals from rich and gives to the poor. I'm not that generous.

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So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way. Bring back the OsterCon. Listen to Hungry for History on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Thank you.