Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/22/25: Kushner And JD Try To Tame Bibi, Trump Sues DOJ, Trump Lashes Out At Mamdani

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

Ryan and Emily discuss Kushner and JD on Gaza ceasefire, Trump sues for $230 million from DOJ, Trump lashes out at Mamdani.   Jon Powers: https://x.com/powersjon    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hey, I'm Kyle McLaughlin. You might know me as that guy from Twin Peaks, sex in the city, or just the internet stand. I have a new podcast called What Are We Even Doing? Where I embark on a noble quest to understand the brilliant chaos of youth culture. Each week, I invite someone fascinating to join me to talk about navigating this high-speed rollercoaster we call reality. Join me in my delightful guests.

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then just totally muffed up the landing. They stole $17 million and had not bought a ticket to help him escape. So we're saying like, oh God, what do we do? What do we do? That was dumb. People do not follow my example. Listen to Crimless, Hillbilly Heist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News keeps you on top of the biggest stories of the day. My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day.

Stories that move markets. Chair Powell opened the door to this first interest rate cut. Impact politics, change businesses. This is a really stunning development for the AI world and how you think about your bottom line. Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon 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 this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. All right, happy Wednesday, everybody. Emily, how you doing? Doing great. We have a big show. We have multiple guests, and we're taping a weekend show today as well.

That people should definitely make sure to tune in for. That'll be a good one. That's right. Last week, Crystal Sager had Ken Vogel on to talk about his new book, Devil's Bargain. Oh, no, devil's advocates. Yes, devil's advocates. It's about representing the worst people in the world. And they told everybody to buy copies of it. Not enough of you did. So we're having him back on. We will keep having him on until you send this book to number one. Yes. Yeah, because we rely on a lot of Ken Vogel's reporting on corruption in D.C. and around the world. So I want to get back. Also, just a great reporter. Yeah, and he's had a really interesting career, which is what we want to talk to him about today and get into the entire question of lobbying here in D.C. and how he covers it. So I hope everyone tunes in for that. But Ryan, we'll be talking about pretty big news yesterday out of Israel, J.D. Vance, has some comments about what the future of this peace plan actually may materialize to look like Donald Trump could be paid $230 million by his own Department of Justice. We'll break down. and the New York City mayoral election continues to titillate every single day. So there's some AI we're going to run for everyone, but also just updates in that race. Grand Platner, big updates in the Grand Platner race. I mean, big in air quotes. Yes, Grand Platner, the Democratic Senate candidate in Maine.

Now that Janet Mills is in, all of Schumer's oppo is coming out. Schumer has endorsed. We'll talk about the latest that's been thrown at him, and we'll also get a response from Representative Rokane, who has endorsed him and is standing by him. We're also going to talk about Karin Jean-Pierre, who is making the rounds to promote her latest book and keeps getting confronted with the question of why should anybody listen to anything you have to say? Yes.

And her answers have not been very persuasive. Yeah, no. And yet here we are listening to what she has to say, but we're listening to tell you that you shouldn't listen. So it's a little meta. And then we're going to be talking about energy. Yeah, we'll be talking to CEO of Clean Capital, John Powers. We've been looking to get some clean energy guys on to talk about what the kind of commercial market has been like for them, both in the wake of the build back better

and then also the one big, beautiful bill, how that has changed what it means to bring on new levels of energy production and what that's doing for energy prices. And Ryan wandered in here this morning saying that he's going to know the future president of Ireland, like someone you talk to a crazy person, you just sort of pat on the head and you're like, okay, all right, bud. But he actually might. Yeah, the Irish presidential election is on Friday. And when I was in Dublin, a couple, maybe a couple months ago at this point, Abu Bakr Abed and I, as well as our friends from the ditch over there, interviewed Catherine Connolly in the Dublin pub, the basement of a Dublin pub. She had just launched her presidential campaign. She is now on track, I think, to become the next president of Ireland. So we're going to play a little bit of our interview from back in July or August, whenever that was. Looking forward to that.

So everyone stay tuned. Let's start in the Middle East, where Vice President J.D. Vance weighed in on where things stand right now, because the peace deal, as Crystal and Sager have covered, is obviously in a fragile place. That's no surprise. Here's J.D. Vance yesterday. The president actually put out a truth this morning that I thought was very instructive. We know that Hamas has to comply with a deal. And if Hamas doesn't comply with a deal, very bad things are going to happen.

But I'm not going to do what the president of the United States has thus far refused to do, which has put an explicit deadline on it, because a lot of this stuff is difficult. A lot of this stuff is unpredictable. I don't think it's actually advisable for us to say this has to be done in a week because a lot of this work is very hard. It's never been done before. And in order for us to give it a chance to succeed, we've got to be a little bit flexible. I think what you're seeing from our Gulf Arab friends, certainly from our Israeli friends,

is a certain amount of impatience with Hamas. But we're going to keep on working at this process. Terms of the 20-point plan that the president put out there is very clear. It's supported not just by Israel, but by all of our Gulf Arab friends. It's that Hamas has to disarm. It's that Hamas has to actually behave itself. and that Hamas, while all the fighters can be given some sort of clemency, they're not going to be able to kill each other,

and they're not going to be able to kill their fellow Palestinians. Now, again, that's going to take a little bit of time. So Vance is in Israel. If you were listening to this and not watching, you would have seen Jared Kushner flanking J.D. Vance, not really a surprise, but Vance made some additional comments relevant to the Kushner question. Let's roll A2. Well, Jared's the investor here.

I'm not going to give you a percentage, but look, What we've seen the past week gives me great optimism the ceasefire is going to hold. And if we get from where we were a week ago to a long-term durable peace between Israel and Gaza, there are going to be hills and valleys. There are going to be moments where it looks like things aren't going particularly well. But given that and given the history of conflict, I think that everybody should be proud of where we are today. No reconstruction funds will be going into areas that Hamas still controls. And as far as the demilitarization goes, once the ISF is up, there needs to be a security force that they can feel safe from that in order for it to be the transition to be complete.

So that needs to happen. There are considerations being happening now in the area that the IDF controls, as long as that could be secured to start the construction as a new Gaza in order to give the Palestinians living in Gaza a place to go, a place to get jobs, a place to live. So that's one of the many things being considered. And so that last clip was actually of Jared Kushner himself, who is quite literally an investor in the region. A question about it. His firm Affinity Partners has investment from the Saudi Royal Fund. Let's put investment in quotes. Yeah, investment in Qatari.

It's an investment. It's just not necessarily looking for percentage gains year over year. That's right. So, Ryan, with J.D. Vance, Jared Kushner in Israel right now, J.D. Vance is the one who invoked the term optimist. So if someone was looking for this peace deal to hold, does the last 24 hours leave them optimistic? Yes. And you can gauge that by the Israeli reaction, like, you know, rage at the idea that Hamas should be given any patience. He was pressed, you know, repeatedly by Israeli reporters throughout that event to say, will you put a timeline, you know, Hamas is already supposed to have returned all of the bodies. they haven't yet. Shouldn't we be allowed to open the war again?

Okay, and he says, no, have some patience. He's like, well, what about a timeline? A week, two weeks. And he kept coming back to them and saying, look, you know, a lot of these bodies are under thousands of tons of rubble. So this is a logistical challenge. And it's, it was an interesting kind of contrast between what Vance was describing, which is kind of the real world, which is very rarely described in this situation versus the just made-up ideas. The diplomacy.

Yeah, about how like we just need to go root out evil. Yeah. And it was, so it was kind of jarring to see the contrast between the two things being presented there. And so in Kushner and Vance, they asked Jady Vance, are you here because of the, you think that the Israeli overreaction

on Sunday to that incident in Rafa, which is disputed about, you know, what happened. Are you here because you think Israel overreacted and you're trying to clamp them down? And he said, no, no, no, I was planning on coming anyway. But the answer wasn't convincing. It seemed very clear, and it seemed clear to the Israeli media, that Wittkov, Kushner, and Vance came basically to babysit. And they, while they were there, they talked a lot about this deconfliction center where they have 200 American service members in the neck of desert who are basically going to be in an operational center with the IDF.

And that is being received in some quarters of Israel as a humiliation, that this is the United States kind of taking over control because they don't trust Israel to abide by the terms of the ceasefire. Now, what I was told over the weekend when I was reporting on that incident that happened in Braffa is that it was. was, and so if people didn't follow that, there was, it, the IDF claimed that there had been snipers and, you know, terrorists jumped out of a tunnel with RPGs and there was this massive complex attack and then somehow they snuck back into, into Gaza, well, they were in Rafah and they snuck back into, you know, behind the Israeli lines. What I was told is that it was this 200-member American unit that discovered very quickly. No, that's not what happened. And that's how the information then got relayed, you know, higher up the chain of the Pentagon. And so that that shows

like the way that this deconfliction process is supposed to work. And clearly people in the administration believed, or did not believe, I should say, the Israeli story because they were leaking as much to Kurt Mills and others. Right. Right. And Netanyahu on Sunday afternoon announced a complete full-spectrum ban on life essentials going into Gaza in response to what he said was this attack. Hours later, he said, actually we're going to resume allowing in Life Essentials Monday morning, which was just hours away. So you could tell that something had changed. And so to your question, I think that's the reason there was some optimism, that this deconfliction center is becoming a real note of power in the region. And so

if the IDF wants to restart the war, restart its attack in a full-scale way, you know, they're going to continue doing what they call mowing a lot, which is killing one to a dozen Palestinians every single day. And they have this imaginary yellow line that now they're, now they're allegedly they're going to start putting down little markers every 200 meters to say if you go beyond this yellow line will kill you. They have been killing people beyond this line that doesn't exist except in maps. And no Palestinian really knows where it is. And if they go over it, they shoot and kill them. So they'll continue to do that. But in order to ramp it back up to the levels we were seeing before, they'll have to go through this deconfliction center, which is run by the Americans.

And for now, the Americans don't want this to break wide open again. So on that note, did you see this exchange between Zach Whitkoff? I sure did. This was, I mean, this gets... An Aiton-Ishberger or whatever? Yeah. And this goes to, I think what you were describing behind the Vance Kushner motivation in going to maybe the way to describe it as babysit, this process.

because Zach Wittkoff, who is the son of Steve Wittkoff, got into a very interesting exchange on X that they all did it in the quote tweet way, so it's really hard to actually read through. But basically, Fischberger was attacking Wittkoff and Kushner because, quote, their close ties with the Qatari government actually significantly prolonged the conflict because it kept them under the illusion that Qatar was an honest broker throughout this war. Zach Wittkoff, very defensive of this process, and it just shows you how deeply tied to their legacy, people in this administration, people outside of this administration, like Jared Kushner,

who does not have a formal role, want this peace process to be. He says, Wittkoff and Kushner didn't, quote, prolong anything. They worked around the clock to bring Israelis home safely. It's easy to criticize from afar. It also shows how little you understand about complex foreign policy issues of a simple thank you might be more appropriate and they went back and forth for a really long time. And Whitkoff was essentially, Zach Whitkoff, that is, was essentially defending their relationships with the Qataris in the sense that Ryan, you were saying there's something jarring about hearing the realism of these guys

who are business people come in and not use these like diplomatic platitudes, but just kind of discuss it in a way that you don't hear in Washington. Well, also, Leslie Stahl asked in her interview on 60 Minutes, asked Whitkoff and Kushner about their conflicts of interest, and one of them said, what you call conflicts of interest, we call experience. Yeah, it's so good. I thought he was going to say,

what you call conflicts of interest, we call $2 billion in our pocket. Yep. So what is the complaint here? If we get $2 billion and everyone's at peace, what's the big deal? Yeah. Zach Whitkoff, for his part, is, you know, he ran around Pakistan, shaking them down for crypto, ran around the Gulf, shaking them down for deals for Whitkoff's company, which Steve

Whitkoff is still a part owner of. So like Zach Whitkoff is out doing all these deals, benefiting the company that his dad owns. Now, I say all that, and I'm the team Zach Whitkoff in this argument that he's having with Fishberger, because Fishberger's point is ridiculous. because he's saying this would have ended much sooner if it weren't for this Qatari corruption. Like Fishberger and his whole crew hate that it ended at all. What do you mean ended sooner? You didn't want it to end, period.

This deal has been on offer for a very long time and you haven't wanted to take it. The underlying argument that Fishberger was making is the Doha attack brought about the... Right. And Zach is like, that's idiotic. You tried to kill the negotiators. We were moving toward a deal with these negotiators.

You failed to kill him. You killed the Ohio son, killed four office workers. You killed a security guard. You injured his wife. You injured their grandkids. But that didn't, like, that didn't bring us to a deal here. What brought them to a deal is Trump saying it's time to make a deal. Actually, that's it.

Like, he said, look, it's over. You're taking it. Stop being such a whining baby. What was his phrase? Why are you always so negative? Yeah. Or play the victim. I think we've heard that one.

Let's Whitkoff saying they play the victim. Whitkoff and then, sorry. Yesterday in the press conference said something very fascinating because there's been this reporting that Whitkoff keeps telling Israelis stop acting like victims privately. You're not the victim here. He told Ben Gavir, stop acting like this victim all the time. Publicly, yesterday morning, he said I was just in a meeting with 10 hostage families. and released hostages.

Everybody was crying. He talked about how it was such a privilege for him to be in there. And he said, you know what? There was not a single victim in that room. So he's now saying it publicly to their face. Stop with this victim crap. We're sick of it. Well, and the reason that exchange between Zach Wichkopf was,

or I think is important right now, is that it shows you why J.D. Vance and Steve Wittkoff and Jared Kushner are in Israel right now in that they believe it's possible a trip wire is sort of intentionally tripped and everything falls apart. And so I think actually Ryan, your description of babysitting is accurate. That's what's happening right now. Exactly. Yeah, Jeremy yesterday just described it as like basically putting a leash on the attack dog, which I think is also maybe a better one. And that doesn't mean that they won't let that attack dog loose again at some time in the near future, but just not yet. Like Netanyahu's idea that Trump

could do this gigantic victory lap, Tramble Shake, and nominate himself repeatedly for the Nobel Prize, and then he's going to blow the deal up within a week? Yeah, yeah. The guy, a little quick there. Yes. I know you wanted to mention the Israeli rights reaction to all of this reign. Yeah, they've been talking about it as a humiliation. And actually, some of the Israeli left, there is no Israeli left, but the Yerlipede types have been saying Netanyahu has brought us to a full vassal state that we are now, like, thoroughly and obviously under the thumb of the United States, where Trump is just explicitly and publicly dictating to us what we can do, whereas that, you know, obviously the U.S. being the most powerful country in the world

can like tell other countries what to do, but to do it so brazenly, they say is like a real slap across the face of Israeli dignity. And it is like we like would the U.S. like allow like there's a, there's you know, American troops and a giant American presence that is kind of controlling is what the Israelis can do in response to what they perceive as breakdowns of the agreement. And the big conflict that's coming is Trump keeps insisting that Indonesians or Jordanians or some other Arab or Muslim troops come in as part of this stabilization force. As Kushner was talking about in that clip, you watched, Netanyahu absolutely does not want that to happen. But Netanyahu is kind of boxed in. Because when he tells, when he, I just imagine

him going to Trump. Like, let's say Indonesia is like, all right, we got 20,000. and guys we're ready to send. And then I was like, I don't want them. Trump's going to blow his top. What do you mean you don't want them? Are you always so negative? I'm solving this for you. Yeah. But they don't want more Muslim people, especially with guns in Gaza. They want fewer. So that's going to be an interesting conflict when it comes. Early days, early days. Now, as the administration tries to augment this very fragile piece, process. The Russia peace process, the Ukraine peace process is falling apart. An official told CNN yesterday, an administration official said there are, quote, no plans for a summit between Trump

and Putin, quote, in the immediate future. As CNN notes, the change in posture comes after Trump said the leaders would meet, quote, within two weeks or so pretty quick. After they spoke by phone last Thursday, it's looking less likely that'll actually happen. This is another quote from an administration official. Secretary Rubio and Foreign Minister Lavrov, Sergey Lavrov had a productive call. Therefore, an additional in-person meeting between the secretary and foreign minister is not necessary, and there are no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future, according to that administration official in CNN. So Rubio and Lavrov spoke over the phone on Monday, and it seems as though any hopes for this Budapest summit fell apart

afterwards. Yeah, what Trump needs is small powers that he can just tell what to do. Like with Hamas and P.I.J on one side and then Israel on the other, he can, with enough force, kind of dictate, at least in the short term, what the terms are. Whitkoff is now going to apparently mediate between Morocco and Algeria. That's something that they can bite off. Maybe. We'll see. That's been a long simmering conflict. We'll see. Russia? Like Trump can't just tell Putin what to do. And Trump thought he and Putin were on the same page. Turns out they're not. So he's just flailing. Yeah, I mean, we've seen it play out in public where on the one hand Trump is like going full John Bolton, neo-conservative towards

Putin, and then the next day going full like Jeffrey Sachs, like realist. And, you know, the narrative gets spun that he's fully in one direction or the other. But this is actually Trump's bizarrely transparent negotiating process playing out where it's almost like insulting to your intelligence. When he goes, it's like, we're just going to conquer Putin and take him out and all of that. Like, we know what you're doing. We know exactly what you're doing. He just can't believe that Putin won't take yes for an answer. Yeah. It's not going so well for Donald Trump. who was supposed to solve this in 24 hours, according to his own. And he's addressed that and said it hasn't quite been that easy. To your point, Ryan, that he thought he had a little bit more

sway than he actually does. So we'll see, obviously, in the future, how this continues to evolve, but right now looking pretty bad for peace in Ukraine. Yeah. So maybe he can reach peace with Venezuela. Like, that's another thing he could do. Even less likely. Just like not, but all he has to do there is not attack them. Even less likely. We'll see. I already got the ships down there. What do you do? Right? CIA's down there. Doing their work. I have faith. He could just not bomb them. Hey there. I'm Kyle McLaughlin. You might know me as that guy from Twin Peaks, Sex in the City, or just the internet's dad. I have a new podcast called What Are We Even Doing, where I embark on a noble quest to understand the brilliant chaos of youth culture. Daddy's looking good. Each week I invite

someone fascinating to join me, actors, musicians, creatives, highly evolved digital life forms, and we talk about what they love. Sometimes I'll drizzle a little honey in there, too, from feeling sexy in the morning. What keeps them going? And you're maybe my biggest competition on social media. Like when a kid says bra to me. And how they're navigating this high-speed roller coaster we call reality. In Australia, you're looking out for snakes, spiders, and .

Right. Hey, he's no train McDougal. This is like the comment section of my Instagram. Join me and my delightful guests every Thursday, and let's get weird together in a good way. Listen to what are we even doing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the new podcast, Hell in Heaven,

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Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, is Donald Trump set to get $230 million in what would essentially be restitution pay? from his own Department of Justice. If he asked Trump, he says actually that it's the just outcome here. So let's go ahead and roll some of Donald Trump's comments. This is B-1. Who's asking for what?

Are you asking the Justice Department to pay your compensation for your federal investigations into you? Are you asking them to pay compensation and how much? Into me? I don't get any compensation. I do it for nothing. I gave up my salary. into me? No, it's going to be the Justice Department.

Are you asking them to pay you compensation for the federal investigations that happened to you? And how much are you asking for? Well, I guess they probably owe me a lot of money for that. But as far as all of the litigation and everything that's going about, yeah, they probably owe me a lot of money. But if I get money from our country, I'll do something nice with it, like give it to charity or give it to the White House where we restore the White House. So that was at Donald Trump's DeWalley celebration yesterday.

Reporters were asking him about a New York Times story, which we can put up on the screen, that reported President Trump is demanding the Justice Department pay him about $230 million in compensation for the federal investigations into him, according to people familiar with the matter, who added that any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit. The Times reports the situation is no parallel in American history, as Mr. Trump, a presidential candidate was pursued by federal law enforcement, and eventually won the election, taking over the very government that must now review his claims. It is also the starkest example yet of potential ethical conflicts created by installing the president's former lawyers atop the Justice Department.

Now, something that's getting lost in a lot of this, because it's a few paragraphs down in the Times story, is, quote, Mr. Trump submitted complaints through an administrative claim process that often is the precursor to lawsuits. The first claim was lodged in late 2023, seeks damages for a number of purported violence, of his rights, including the FBI and special counsel investigation into Russian election, tampering and possible connections to the 2016 campaign. That's according, again, to people familiar with the matter and the second complaint was filed before the election last year in the summer of 2024 and accuses the FBI of violating quote Mr. Trump's privacy by searching Mar-a-Lago, his club, and residence in Florida in 2022

for classified documents. It also accuses the Justice Department of malicious prosecution in charging him with mishandling sensitive records after he left office. And Sarah Bedford over at the Washington Examiner points out, again, both of those claims for damages were filed before he became president again when he was in the middle of spending. As she says, millions of dollars defending himself against politicized cases that ultimately got thrown out. She also pointed to the DOJ paying out settlements and partisan cases. The FBI agent Peter Strach and Lisa Page, as you may remember, got $2 million over. They're firing.

they were texting about going after Trump with the FBI. So it's not entirely without precedent, but Ryan, when your own DOJ is then in the position to approve basically the restitution claims almost impossible to disentangle the personal, what is even the word for that? The conflicts, I guess. Conflict seems like an understatement. What's even the conflict? He wants the money and he's going to take it. The conflict, I guess, is with the taxpayer who he's going to take it from. But why are you all complaining? This is $1 from every adult in America. It's $1 to the Trump Defense Fund. It's $1. You don't have $1 for our president for what you did to him. One dollar. I mean, from you and you and you and you and you and you.

$2 from Ryan Graham. If he could do that, he would definitely say, okay, $3 from every Democrat. But yeah, so he like if you're... Wall just got 10 feet higher. If you voted for Trump, you're still paying him a dollar. Yep. Actually, it's a little less than that. So what are you really complaining? Because I think the adult population in the United States is about $250, $260 million.

And he's only asking for $230 million. So it's more like 95 cents from every American. Of course. He should send every, we should get a photo of him and we can put up, like a save a president, like just for $1. It's like the Sarah McLaughlin. You can build this president, a ballroom. The arms of an angel. The ballroom will be beautiful.

Yeah, he's currently tearing down the east wing of the White House. And he's, he doesn't mind illegally moving money. Like, he does it all the time, moving it. Like, you cannot, as president, just take from one congressionally appropriated bucket and move it over to another. He does that all the time. So why is he even going through this whole rigmarole of he's going to take $230 million from the Justice Department?

and then he's going to hand it over here to his construction buddies building the ballroom. Just take the money. You're present. You're stealing it from all over the place all the time. His back and forth with reporters

somewhat amusing because the New York Times report was from anonymous sources. Trump just gets asked about it on camera and it's like, yeah, they owe me. Right? Like this is like the way the Times wrote the story is that this was like a very

very high level piece of investigative journalism and is very controversial. and scandalous. And then Trump's like, yeah, they owe me money. It gets asked by a reporter, and he's like, yes. Yeah, pay me. I mean, they really could have just called him probably. They didn't need to rely on the anonymous sources. They could have used the biggest source in the media. I would suspect that he was one of the anonymous sources. Not impossible. Actually, is Maggie on there? Nope. Tyler Page it, though. That's possible. Well, good reporting by the New York Times. Utterly preposterous, utterly outrageous. Like, there aren't enough words for the idea that a guy who's made himself already a billion dollars through his like crypto

scams, he and his kids running these crypto scams where he's getting all these people who want things from the American people. So he thinks that because he's president, they want things from him. So people should therefore legally be able to bribe him. Give him crypto, give him money. Because he really believes he's like Napoleon. Like he's the revolution. He's the state. He really believes that. But he's not. The government is, in the United States of America, supposed to be a representative of the American people. It's the American people's money. It's the American people's government. Remember when he posted the Napoleon quote, he who saves his country violates no law, right? I'm paraphrasing, I think. Yeah, I think it was made

up Napoleon quote, too, right? Oh, was apocryphal? It might be. I don't know. Either way. Who cares. He posted it. I think it all caps to, actually. Of course. Yes, yes, these claims were filed before he was president, probably from Trump's perspective, it would make sense. Drop the claims. He doesn't need $230 million from the U.S. government to go into construction. He already has millions and millions of dollars from the tech companies that he just threw a dinner for, not just tech companies, but all of these companies that are funding the White House renovations.

Who is doing this work? You cannot get people to show up on job sites in Washington, D.S. see because of ice running around everywhere. Who's doing this work? This is interesting question. Well, they also have said that Treasury employees, because this is the East Wing, have to stop taking pictures of the construction. Basically, the only place you have a good view is from Treasury. You really can't see it if you're, I mean, press barely can see it. So, I mean, maybe some people with, like, telephoto lenses are able to get pictures, but it's really hard to see. So, no idea. But on top of all of that.

Basically, he has, his net worth has ballooned because of crypto, or the Trump family, net worth as a ballooned because of crypto. It will certainly benefit him when he is out of office. The $230 million in compensation from taxpayers, basically, could just be dropped now that he is president. These were claims that were filed before he was president in damages. He won. So it doesn't need the money.

Could just drop it and then have no significant conflict of interest questions. floating over the administration. But I feel like maybe we're just beyond that, Ryan. Right. Donald Trump, I will not take a salary because I care so much about the American public. Keep this $400,000. But I will take $230 million from you. 230. Well, 230. Well, two 30. Well, part of this, it's more understandable, I suppose, as like a punishment and a disincentive for further corruption if you aren't in the process of attempting to remake, reorganize the Department of Justice itself.

So he controls the Department of Justice right now, which is obviously the predicate for this entire story. So if he's worried about punishing the U.S. government and creating a disincentive, which, by the way, I was poor, the DOJ acted horribly throughout the Russia collusion investigation. The punishment looks like Donald Trump getting reelected and completely reorganizing and dismantling the DOJ, the $230 million in potential payment. seems like, you know, small potatoes compared to him reorganizing the FBI and the DOJ completely on, like, as president. So it seems like the thing to do would just be, drop the claims.

Hey there, I'm Kyle McLaughlin. You might know me as that guy from Twin Peaks, sex in the city, or just the internet stand. I have a new podcast called What Are We Even Doing, where I embark on a noble quest to understand, the brilliant chaos of youth culture. Daddy's looking good. Each week I invite someone fascinating to join me. Actors, musicians, creatives, highly evolved digital life forms. And we talk about what they love. Sometimes I'll drizzle a little honey in there too from feeling sexy in the morning.

What keeps them going. And you're maybe my biggest competition on social media. Like when a kid says bra to me. And how they're navigating this high-speed roller coaster we call reality. In Australia, you're looking out for snakes. Spiders and f*** voice. Right. Hey, he's no Trey McDougall.

This is like the comment section of my Instagram. Join me and my delightful guests every Thursday. And let's get weird together in a good way. Listen to what are we even doing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the new podcast, Hell in Heaven, two young Americans move to the Costa Rican jungle to start over. But one will end up dead. The other tried for murder. Not once.

People went wild. Not twice. Stunned. But three times. John and Anne Bender are rich and attractive, and they're devoted to each other. They create a nature reserve and build a spectacular circular home

high on the top of a hill. But little by little, their dream starts to crumble. And our couple retreat from reality. They lose it. They actually lose it. They sort of like nuts. Until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News dives deep into one big global business story every weekday.

A shutdown means the... We don't get the data, but it also means for President Trump that there's no chance of bad news on the labor market. What does a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, reveal about the economy? Our breakfast foods are consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsized indicators of inflation. What's behind Elon Musk's trillion dollar payout? There's a sort of concerted effort to message that Musk is coming back. He's putting politics aside. He's left the White House.

And what can the PCE tell you? that the CPI can't. CPI tries to measure out-of-pocket costs that consumers are paying for things, whereas the PCE index that the Fed targets is a little bit broader of a measure. Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And he's also threatening, not threatening to use the power and using the power of the government to go after his opposition, you can put up B3, and actually a good story in Barry Weiss's free press, inside the Trump-induced chilling effect on liberal philanthropy by Gabe Kaminsky takes a look at what the effect already is of Trump saying in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination that he's going to go after all of the groups that he blames for it.

And who he blames for it is like liberal nonprofit organizations, which is to me patently absurd. But setting that aside, he has threatened to use the IRS to go after his opponents, which is completely new. Like you had this like kind of fake lowest learner scandal 15 years ago from the Obama administration where like the Republicans are like, oh, they're going after conservative groups. they also went after like medical marijuana groups and they're like they went after more conservative groups than they did the other yeah maybe more conservative groups probably being shady about their non-profit status i mean come on the medical marijuana groups i mean they were also being shady so they went after them too yeah um like and now they don't go after anybody uh except so that they had years of non-enforcement now what trump is going to bring back is selective enforcement and and the qualification will be

do I perceive you to be part of the broad opposition? Do you represent an interest group that has something to do with somebody who voted against me? And so what Kaminsky was finding here is that it's already basically crippling liberal foundations because it's making it very hard for them to raise money because nobody wants to be, you know, have the, you know, to be under the watchful eye of the IRS or the DOJ. they're spending the money that they do have on security and on high-powered lawyers to go through their books and make sure that, you know, they're completely buttoned up because now they're all expecting that somebody's going to be looking through everything. And there are some cases

where the Biden administration here actually deserves some blame because there was this one case where Israel claimed that like these five human rights groups in East Jerusalem or the West Bank were actually terrorist organizations. Europe demanded all of the evidence for this. Israel handed over no evidence, and Europe was like, we're not counting this. This doesn't work. Biden, of course, was like, oh, well, Netanyahu says these are terrorists. They must be terrorists.

And it just accepted, even though there was reporting that the Biden administration knew this was all made up, they just accepted it and didn't push back. And so now the Trump administration is coming in and saying, saying, ah, this American nonprofit did a, you know, has a fellowship program with this Palestinian nonprofit. And Biden said that they were terrorists. So therefore, you're terrorists too. It's like, Jesus Christ. Well, and it's going, I mean, so this report, we'll read a little bit from it here. One head of a nonprofit told Gabe, who's a great reporter, we've had him on before, quote, everybody is concerned across the board about being investigated. That person

oversees a nonprofit that has more than a billion dollars in assets. Another told Gabe, it is directly impacting the ability of groups to raise money. There's a chilling effect across the entire nonprofit sector. That's echoed actually by some groups on the right. So in the report, Lawson Bader, the head of Donors Trust, quote one of the country's most influential right-leaning nonprofits, told me that he has heard from many liberal foundations since he told the free press in late September that the stream of retaliatory rhetoric since Kirk's assassination has the potential to weaponize philanthropy in a way that is anathetical to, philanthropic freedom. There's another, there was another Republican who was talking to Gabe

about something similar as well. So philanthropy roundtable actually is, I would say maybe right-leaning, quote, under, they say philanthropy is under attack and that they, quote, stand firmly on the side of philanthropic freedom and defending the right of Americans to give how, when, and where they choose within the bounds of the wall. Now, one interesting part of this, though, Ryan, is it sort of reminds me of weaponized FARA enforcement, so foreign agents registration act enforcement. Some of the quotes in here are about non-profits just like cleaning up their activity and like hiring general counsels to make sure that they're actually operating in compliance with nonprofit standards because that is a thing. There are nonprofits that are just like wildly

out of compliance and it's normalized with nonprofit standards and they get all of the tax benefits of that. But interestingly here, Gabe quotes Jason Smith, so Republican of Missouri, saying that organizations who are influenced by our adversaries and who actually actually counter to U.S. national influence should not benefit from tax exempt status. The days of turning a blind eye to bad actors in the U.S. nonprofit sector are over, Jason Smith told Gabe. I'm reading that and thinking I know he is implying what you just described, Ryan, about potential, like, quote, Hamas connections. Sounds a whole lot like APEC could be in trouble. Under a future Democratic administration, I guess Mom Doni can't be president since he wasn't born here.

But, yeah, under, I don't know, I can't even think, under President Plattner. But see how he... Let's say that President Plattner can say that A-PAC is... Comrade Plattner. Yeah, Comrade Plattner. Yeah, supportive Chairman Plattner. That A-PAC is allied with an organization that is. is the government of Israel that is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

And so, therefore, yeah, should be itself dissolved. I guess that's, I can't imagine a world in which that actually happened. Smith was very careful to use the word adversaries. Organizations are influenced by our adversaries. But the law is really not just adversaries. It's foreign control. And so it'll be like, you can see how this is setting basically doom spiral precedent. but we have yet to understand exactly how they're going to implement this.

There's obviously the MPSM 7 that Ken has reported on and talked about a lot that you can understand how it already is having this, quote, chilling effect that gave reports on. Now, there are, and you and I would probably disagree on this, I do think there is money that goes from groups like tides to groups that do like bail funds for some of these protests in Portland or it was in Minneapolis. And I think there's probably reason to look into whether they're going beyond just bail funds. Like you and I might disagree on that. Like actually funding demonstrations that are organized for the purpose of being like rabble-rousing, breaking laws, and the like.

Well, what I would say, but most of these organizations in my, experience across the board think that they're they are aligned with the democratic party like they're part of the democratic party orbit and they're talking about like tides and such yeah and and and the groups that tides funds or or passes money through to they're basically part of the democratic party and they all think that violence street demonstrations hurt democrats like that's it's that's a like antifa lefty thing to want to you know get kind of rowdy in the street. But they've supported bail funds for like Antifa organizations and that sort of thing.

Well, that's all I'm talking about. It's bail funds for people who get arrested at demonstrations are different. Totally legitimate. I'm saying that there's, I think there's actually probably, and I'm not saying actually that the federal government needs to be weaponized to go into it, but I think that there's probably is some reason to suspect certain groups that have gotten money through pass-through entities. are actually using that money, not just for bail funds, but for supporting the demonstrations

themselves, not just coming in after and bailing people out. Oh, yeah, but yes, but demonstrations, that's right there in the First Amendment. Demonstrations that they know are not demonstrations. That's what I'm saying. That you think they're going to intentionally turn into riots? Like Portland, like Black Block Antifa type stuff. I would highly doubt it. That's like 50 Portlanders.

If you're in Portland, let us know. but like, that's like 50 Portlanders. Not just Portland, but in other places, like Seattle and the like. I'm trying to look for the WHO had some good reporting on this. I just interviewed them, actually, but I'm trying to remember where. Anyway, that's beside the point.

The bigger point is that the larger effort here, and this is what I should have started by saying, I don't think there's some like vast, widespread conspiracy to prop up using George Soros money, violent and Tifa rioters. It doesn't think that's the case. And I think what the Trump administration is doing is another example of obviously weaponizing the government in a way that is going to be flipped around the second there's a damn back in office.

It doesn't matter if it's happened to some degree before. It's going to happen on a higher degree now into the future. And something you said stuck with me a few weeks ago, Ryan, it's that when you start having this chilling effect on people getting into power or people organizing, whatever it is, you just incentivize people having action in the or exercising agency in the political process and that's dangerous for everyone right yeah it's like i'll be careful what you wish for because the galaxy brain argument would be that uh these liberal foundations are uh actually taking like public anger and and funneling it into and shepherding it kind of into a uh a democratic party led political process where it is it is muffled and muzzled and and kind of just dispersed in a way that doesn't actually then represent any threat to the system and that if you get rid of that then the anger has nowhere to go and so the anger then just bursts out wherever it bursts out in different populist moments because the the first analysis that people will have when they

start learning about philanthropy is like, oh, how ironic it is that the, the children and the grandchildren and the descendants of the Carnegie's and the Fords and all... Rothschilds. And the Soros is. Like, all of these, or the night, all of these, like, uh, oligarchs and plutocrats from 150 years ago, their descendants are now, you know, working against the plutocratic interest and, uh, working to uplift the, the working class and the public. And then after you've been in it for a while, you're like, oh, wait, actually, actually it's what we think it is. It is capital just, you know, exploiting tax policy in order to hoard wealth and using that wealth to actually kind of muffle discontent with this,

with the contradictions and problems that the plutocrats created 150 years ago. So go ahead and get rid of that and see what happens would be, would be one, would be the galaxy brain take. Hmm. Yeah, well, I mean, non-profit, we should do a full segment on, like, nonprofit laws, period, like, how they've just been... Yeah, the shorter version of number where they're, like, it's actually Soros and Tides that are holding people back. You think that they're coming for you to know, no, no, no, it's the opposite. Not yet. Yeah. Not yet. Yeah, well, we'll see. We will see, but it's... I thought it was a good report, so.

Something to keep an eye on for sure. And by the way, it's pretty interesting. that in this climate where criticism of Trump is like your ticket to ostracization on the conservative movement, that you have donors' trust and philanthropy roundtable saying anything, because it's literally a climate where, A, Trump is super sensitive to these loyalty litmus tests, and B, he's weaponizing the, like, he's weaponizing the IRS and others to go look at people's non-profit statuses. So that tells you how concerned people are about the precedent. that this could potentially set, and I think that tells you how serious the precedent that's being set is. So the fact that you have those groups talking about it is significant in and of itself,

even if, you know, you don't buy it and whatever, you think it's bullshit. It's a fairly bold thing to do in this environment to even make those statements if your donor stress for the Liannathy Roundtable. This is true. Hey there, I'm Kyle McLaughlin. You might know me as that guy from Twin Peaks, Sex in the City, or just the Internet's dad. a new podcast called What Are We Even Doing, where I embark on a noble quest to understand the brilliant chaos of youth culture. Daddy's looking good.

Each week I invite someone fascinating to join me, actors, musicians, creatives, highly evolved digital life forms, and we talk about what they love. Sometimes I'll drizzle a little honey in there, too, from feeling sexy in the morning. What keeps them going? And you're maybe my biggest competition on social media. Like when a kid says bra to me. and how they're navigating this high-speed roller coaster we call reality. In Australia, you're looking out for snakes, spiders, and...

Right. Hey, he's no train McDougall. This is like the common section of my Instagram. Join me and my delightful guests every Thursday, and let's get weird together in a good way. Listen to what are we even doing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the new podcast, Hell in Heaven, two young Americans moved to the Costa Rican jungle to start over. But one will end up dead.

The other tried for murder. Not once. People went wild. Not twice. Stunned. But three times. John and Anne Bender are rich and attractive and they're devoted to each other. They create a nature reserve and.

build a spectacular, circular home, high on the top of a hill. But little by little, their dream starts to crumble. And our couple retreat from reality. They lose it. They actually lose it. They sort of went nuts. Until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News dives deep into one big global business story every weekday.

A shutdown means we don't get the data, but it also means for President Trump that there's no chance of bad news on the labor market. What does a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich reveal about the economy? Our breakfast foods are consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsize indicators of inflation. What's behind Elon Musk's trillion dollar payout? There's a sort of concerted effort to message that Musk is coming back. He's putting politics aside. He's left the White House. And what can the PCE tell you that the CPI can't?

CPI tries to measure out-of-pocket costs that consumers are paying for things, whereas the PCE index that the Fed targets is a little bit broader of a measure. Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's move to the New York City mayoral election. Let's do it. All kinds of good stuff. Donald Trump, very frustrated that his man, Andrew Cuomo, is not catching fire as an independent candidate in the general election. Cuomo, I'm sure, becoming increasingly bitter at the Ackmans and the others in the world who insisted that he pursued this humiliating general election

race. But Trump, doing everything he can to come to his defense, let's roll a little bit of our good president here. But he's going to explain there might be some dark, deep, psychological reason where they want to vote the opposite way. I don't know what it is, but we have to win the midterms. Otherwise, all of the things that we've done, so many of them are going to be taken away by the radical left lunatics. I mean, we're going to end up with a communist mayor in New York. Can you believe it a communist? remember I would always say we will not have a socialist elected in our country. Remember I'd say

that all the time. And I was right. We skipped socialist. We got a communist elected. So I didn't tell a lie. I didn't tell a lie. I was right. We'll have a communist, not a socialist. Okay. Anyway, so he also accused Mamdani of posing, quote, posing with a terrorist. This This echoing what New York Post and R&C has said, this is because he appeared with an imam in New York City, Saraj Wahaj, who the right has been calling a, quote, unindicted co-conspirator of the 93 World Trade Center bombing. Technically not true, right.

Right, which, yeah, not true. Foxx has had to issue a correction on its story about that. I see that the R&C is not corrected. It's hit here. So hopefully he sends them a little letter, because it's like, you can't do that. And I've seen like the Laura Lumer types say that, you know, this is somebody that the NYPD considered to be a threat and had under surveillance. It's like, bro, the NYPD had every mosque in the city under surveillance. Like the fact that the NYPD considers somebody to be suspicious who was Muslim in New York City does not mean that there was actually anything remotely wrong with them.

He was a character witness for the blind sheik, though, right? Because he was like, yeah, he was in the, whatever. He had been organizing, like, New York City. Yeah, and he's said things about, you know, women's rights and stuff. Gay rights, yeah. That people would generally agree with. He's also has a huge base of support in New York City. And that's why Eric Adams and Bill de Blasio, you know, peered with him, went to him

because they want to get his supporters to vote for them. He's like a pillar of the community. Yeah, and it was never, it was never, it was never, controversial until, you know, Mom Dani showed up, although I'm sure they tried to do something with de Blasio. If you go back and look. Eric Adams, I'm sure he got a pass. If you go back and look, there's, I mean, he's been controversial, but, um, and I maintain

that if a conservative was out there with someone who had said the things about gay people and women that he said it would have been a much bigger story, all that is to say. Who was, what was it that Trump had as his, like, preacher? Like, not his preacher, but like the guy at his inauguration. His inauguration. It was Paige or whatever his name, John Pagey or whatever. Oh, Hagey? Hagey said crazy stuff, obviously, about, but what, like...

That's like the guy doing the inaugural. Trump, I mean, I don't remember whether it was Hagey, but that would, obviously... Trump is a slightly different story because he talks to everybody. He talks to Alex Jones, he talks to, like... But if it were 10 Cruz or someone else. So who is Trump to blame Mom Dani from... No, I have no disagreement for me on that. No disagreement for me on that whatsoever.

But, again, I don't, I think it's true that this is very obviously much more of a controversy when Mamdani does it. And the coverage of the Mamdani stuff has been just the fact that Fox News had to issue a correction for calling him an unindicted co-conspirator tells you what you need to know about the standard for Mom Donnie going to see him. Now, Adrian Cuomo went on impulsive, spelled P-A-U-L. Impulsive. Everybody loves to do a name play. And I never did grim news. That was a really brave decision. You know how hard that was? I didn't. I didn't. Here's a little flavor of Cuomo on Impulsive with Logan Paul. Ladies and gentlemen, Andrew Cuomo. Thank you. Thank you. Why would you want to be the mayor of New York? We are at a point where we have to make progress. Momdani is a socialist. The child of wealth, never had to work, never managed anyone. If my Andami is elected mayor, Trump will take over New York.

So why is Mamdani currently leading the polls? He has appealed with a very simplistic solutions that would never work. Fast-free buses. Oh, yeah, that sounds good. Everyone was a fast bus. What are you going to be? Fast-you-old. Okay, Ryan, that's acts of desperation to me.

And, of course, he probably is openly desperate at this point. We've seen him down in just about every poll. Not looking good for Andrew Cuomo when you're going on impulsive. to laugh about kicking your brother's ass? I mean, Democrats should, you know, reach out, go on these different, oh, sorry, independence, because Cuomo tried to be a Democrat, and Democrats thoroughly rejected him. So he's independent on there.

But, yeah, he looks like somebody who wants this election to be over, annoyed at the fact that he has to compete for it, frustrated at the public for not allowing him to have this easy re-entry into public life and I guess just contemplating like what kind of big money organization he's going to like fall back on after his inevitable defeat in the upcoming election because you know and he keeps thinking that and Bill Ackman keeps thinking that if Sliwa, Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee, will drop out, that that would be the ticket for Cuomo. But it doesn't make any sense. Like if you are currently supporting Sliwa, you're, you either want some outsider who says like

wacky fun stuff all the time, which is not Cuomo. Or you are a very partisan Republican, and you live in New York City. And you hate Cuomo more than you hate Mom Donnie. at this point. Like, Cuomo has been, you know, the Republicans in New York hate Cuomo. Yeah. So on what planet, if Sliwa dropped out,

I would, the lead that Zoran Mamdani has over Cuomo, I think would actually expand. Like, this weird idea that, like, everyone would just rush to support Cuomo if only Sliwa wasn't there. It's just completely absurd.

So John Hagee, by the way, did the benediction when Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem, is what it looks like right now. And Hagee's one of these millennial, like... He's bananas. Apocalyptic. Like, we need all of the Jews in Israel to, like, burn so that we can bring about the apocalypse and whatever. He said the Antichrist will be, like, Jewish and half Jewish and gay. he said all kinds of stuff I think he said

Yeah so we don't have to wonder what would happen If Trump appeared with somebody Well Trump Views like that Right and I have looked it up He has appeared with Ted Cruz To undermine my point But he's yeah

But I mean like he's I'll say this Like if He has a following right He has a following And any conservatives Who are acting like This is

Like that it's utterly disqualified for Mamdani to meet with a community leader, whether or not you like that community leader, everyone does that. My point is just, I think it would be a huge media circus, but that was beside the point of what we were talking about. I genuinely think it would be a huge media circus, like the haggie stuff was at the time.

So anyway, don't need to get into that anymore. We could do a full segment on that. Let's take a look at this mashup from Bill Marshow last week when Andrew Ross Sorkin went on and said, we have a financial literacy problem in America. But the financial literacy problem in America is affecting the politics in America, which is that if you don't understand that if you actually decide that you think rent stabilization is going to somehow increase the supply of apartments and homes in the country, you've got it

completely backwards because what happens is the developers say, well, if they're going to stabilize the rent in this town, we don't really want to be developing in this town, in which case there's not going to be enough supply, in which case it's going to cost more to rent your apartment. That's just the way it is. And unless people understand that, when a politician stands up and says, excuse me, I'm over here and I'm very happy to give you rent stabilization and the free groceries and this and that. And then it doesn't happen. I think people are going to be in for a surprise. A couple things. Disturbed by the global, uh, um, the globalized, uh, the, what did you say that just, just, this made me crazy over the weekend. Do you see what he said globalized? Uh, he didn't

say globalized infidavile, but he did say that he wouldn't condemn it. That clip is so painful. Globalized the what? Globalized the, globalized the, globalized, oh, he didn't say it, but he said he wouldn't condemn it. I will say that he's one of the harder working guys in media. Like, he's doing a column for the time. I feel bad for him. He's doing that show every day. Yeah. He's probably meeting with bankers late at night to like, you know, like. I feel bad for him because of that. He's going to talk to his bankers. Also that. So, The guy's probably running on fumes. So I sympathize with people stumbling over their words.

The, last house over here. We have had tried to get him on to talk about his new book, 1929. Didn't he come on with his Crisland Saga? I don't think he did. But I was listening to it this weekend. It's quite interesting. Okay. And so while I will sympathize with the stumbling over the words,

what I won't sympathize with is lecturing people about not knowing how things work and then objectively not knowing how things work. Yeah. Because he's talking about freeze the rent, and he's saying that that will disincentivize developers from building new projects, except the freeze the rent program that Mamdani is talking about would apply to particular buildings that are already in the rent stabilization system or whatever that would not necessarily apply to all new developments. And New York City housing law is extremely complicated.

There's rent controlled. There's rent stabilized. There's lots of other things. but to say that it would just blanket apply to all rent is just false. And he lives in, at least he works in New York. I don't know where he lives. So he should know that. So, and it's fine to like get that wrong, but he shouldn't get that wrong while you're also

criticizing kids for not having financial literacy. Well, I also think the question of like, where's the financial literacy among those who are overseeing the status quo? Like if you're missing that part of it and you're criticizing the person, people criticizing the status quo while arguably, I mean, I don't want to accuse them of defending the status quo in New York, but if you're just picking on the quote financial illiteracy of people who are now asking for rent stabilization, which I obviously disagree with, but there's a huge degree of financial illiteracy among the people who are overseeing the status quo. And if you're

just attacking the people against the status quo, never, you know, asking or kind of descending to the people who are overseeing the status quo, then your priorities are wrong. And then you wanted to talk about this AI slop that Cuomo's been serving up to people. And if you're angry about your electricity bill every month, you should be a little bit frustrated that Cuomo is using the juice to create, let's roll this utterly disturbing and bizarre AI ad. Hello, it's me de Blasio. You know, New York City's least favorite mayor. Today, I wanted to introduce you to my mini-meam Dani.

Hiya! If you thought my policies were evil, you're gonna frickin' hate this. Sure will, boss! In 2020, I cut $1 billion from the NYPD, which dramatically spiked crime. But I wanted to fund the police entirely. So evil, so unsafe. What are we supposed to do with that? This is profoundly embarrassing.

I don't know who's laughing at that I mean well who's the market for that you could laugh at it you could laugh at it you can't laugh with it it's a little too pathetic to laugh at almost you can't laugh with it but I can imagine some people like if you were stoned

yeah that's not what he's going for though then but you'd be so confused because in order to laugh at it you have to have some sense of what on earth it's trying to do and then if it doesn't do it the subversion of that is very funny but I keep like what come on come on guy what are you doing it's brutal but it's the desperation and again this is your king this is who trump wants to be the mayor of new york city oh i don't think

any part of trump wants him to be the mayor of new york city he just wants him a little bit more than he wants melmdani to be the mayor of new york city why is trump not riding for slywa it's great question like he has just as much chance as quomo and way more riz way more ris well, the AI stuff and the Logan Paul stuff, like, Logan Paul, like, he's got a huge audience. Does he have a huge audience of people who are going to vote in the New York City mayoral election based on an interview that Logan Paul? Probably not. But he's, like, Cuomo is down double digits to a 32-year-old Democratic Socialist. And just within the last, like, what, two weeks before the election, he decides to get this desperate. That's how bad. I mean, they,

His whole campaign has been really bad. It's escalating in its awfulness, remarkably. It really is. You wouldn't think it could have gotten worse. And here we are. Here we are. Can't wait for his kind of post-election analysis of what he did wrong in the general. That'll be good.

That'll be good. My favorite part is that he now is going around saying, why is everybody talking so much about Israel? This is a New York City mayoral election. Incredible. You made the whole thing about Israel. But he could have used it. that tactic in the primary when Mamdani was saying...

I'm going to rest Netanyahu or whatever. Yeah, I'd be like, why... No, but when Mamdani was saying, hey, he got... Mom Dani was praised for his excellent answer to that question in the debate, where he said, I'm not going to Israel. I'm staying in New York. And Cuomo then decides to get back in the race on a bold platform of learning literally nothing

from getting his ass handed to him by a 32-year-old Democratic Socialist in the primary and has continued to talk, talk, talk, about Israel, as though it's the only way he could possibly win the New York City mayor all release. So let's put this last element on the screen for this block. He was at a town hall on the Upper West Side Monday night with Alicia Boussel, who is, I believe the daughter, I'm sorry, the son of Ellie Boussel. So obviously the famous author, Holocaust survivor. And the quote from Alicia Boussel was, what would our fathers think that we have to be here

tonight in this moment, this moment that they spent their entire lives working to make sure never happened again, Ryan. Yeah, yeah, like to campaign with Elie Wiesel's son, while at the close of the race, while at the same time complaining that it's all too much. Too much about Israel is not well thought out as a campaign strategy. by the way everybody's read knight which is you know tremendous work of uh of literature uh he also wrote dawn you read that one i think we had to read it in school it's crazy it's like he it's like his character and a british soldier and he and his job is to execute the british soldier at dawn

you know because they were killing a lot of british soldiers um at the time and it's just him having a conversation with the guy that he'd have to kill in the morning it's really interesting interesting disturbing book but yeah so I don't know what like what's Cuomo doing here final thought on this and maybe you can explain it to me but the the right and it's not even just the right it's people like Andrew Cuomo who want at the same time to look at Mom Donnie as a radical left culture warrior and Cuomo isn't on the sort of, he's not on that as much

as some people on the right are, but saying this guy is queer liberation means to fund the police, that's my favorite Mamdani tweet obviously, but you can't have that and then say he's an Islamist at the same time. Like, that's insane. You can because nothing is required to make any sense. But like, that is

the narrative on the right right now about Mamdani is that he's... Queer Sharia law. Right, queer Sharia law. He's a political Islamist. Queeria law. I've heard people try to square that circle before, but, like, it's the same thing with Ilhan Omar. Or was it Shaquiri, a law. That's something different.

But it makes, like, that's, that, is that landing with anybody? Because it really, it does, you, it's on its face, the common sense question to that. It's like, you're telling me he's extremely pro-gay and that he now met with this imam who has said, you know, don't make, don't go out with sticks and look for a homestine. sexuals but make them feel uncomfortable. You're saying that Mamdani endorses that secretly, that he's he's fooling us into, he's actually like a full charia in Manhattan type person. To Trump's credit, he really just sticks with the communist thing. Like his friend Laura Lumer just goes 100% on the Muslim hit. Whereas Trump, I think, recognizes that that's that's absurd and just he goes just hard on the he's a he's a commie

yes that's i guess that is the trump's credit yeah we'll give him that one you might know me as that one hey i'm kyle mclaughlin you might know me as that guy from Twin Peaks, Sex and the City, or just the Internet stand. I have a new podcast called What Are We Even Doing? Where I embark on a noble quest to understand the brilliant chaos of youth culture. Each week, I invite someone fascinating to join me to talk about navigating this high-speed rollercoaster we call reality. Join me and my delightful guests every Thursday. And let's get weird together in a good way.

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