Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/2/25: WH Short Circuits On Corruption Allegations, Larry Ellison TikTok Takeover, Pro Israel Crackdown

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Saagar and Ryan discuss WH short circuits on corruption allegation, Larry Ellison TikTok takeover, Pro Israel crackdown on social media.   YourFavoriteGuy: https://www.tiktok.com/@yourfavoriteguy?lang=en   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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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. Yesterday at the White House spokesperson, Carolyn Levitt, was pressed on the question of how is it appropriate that son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who no longer has an official role in the White House. House, but does have business antagonists all throughout the Gulf, is allowed to be involved with those countries.

Let's throw this. How did the White House decide that it is appropriate for Jared Kushner to be working on matters that involve Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, three countries that combined have given him more than $2.5 billion for his investment firm? I think it's, frankly, despicable that you're trying to suggest that it's inappropriate for Jared Kushner, who is widely respected around the world and has great trust in relationships with these critical partners in these countries, to strike a 20-point comprehensive, detailed peace plan that no other administration would ever be able to achieve. And so Jared is donating

his energy and his time to our government, to the president of the United States, to secure world peace. And that is a very noble thing. 20-point plan has not actually been accepted yet by Palestinian factions. We're waiting on word on that. Jeremy Scale at Dropside has a good story, interviewing some top PAJ official and others on, or Top Hamas official, on where they stand on that. But setting that aside, there's something so deeply instructive about the... Carlin Levitt finding it offensive to even suggest that $2.5 billion might be.

influence Jared Kushner's objectivity. Well, he's widely respected around the world, right? He's very widely respected around the world. The elephant in the Middle East has been Steve Whitkoff, who is friends with, you know, friends are probably frenemies. Because, like, you know, they're both in real estate and development. So they're, you know, they're, and they're both raising money from the Gulf.

So that puts them in both in competition and in some harmony here and there. Whitkoff himself has been working on issues all over the world, but in particularly the Gulf, while his two sons, Zach and Alex Whitkoff, have been going around the globe with their tin cup out, filling it with either Bitcoin or dollars. We can put up this next element up on the screen is New York Times investigation into Alex Whitkoff, where Mid East Envoy pitched peace, his son pitched investors, and they haven't dead to rights here. So basically, as Whitkoff is working on the ceasefire framework and with Qatar as the mediator with the most amount of influence over Hamas, Alex Whitkoff of the Whitkoff group, which also has Steve Whitkoff as a member.

like Steve Whitkoff sold some of his shares but is still an owner of the Whitkoff group even if he wasn't it's his sons so there's you're not delinking that yes but he still is literally an owner of the Whitkoff group so his son Alex goes to the gulf and hits up the cutteries and says we want money for this for the Whitcough group like give us money for these investments and the and the cutteries confirmed it the history here is very instructive um in 2016 17, when Jared Kushner was actually in the White House, his company went to Qatar to try to get a bailout for their 666 5th Avenue property. So in 2007, Kushner at the time bought, I think it was for $1.8 billion, the biggest Manhattan real estate purchase in history. And then like the next week, the bottom fell out of the real estate market and the Kushner family because of this Jared Kushner father. was looking at destitution. The loans were coming due to 10-year loans. Loans are coming due to 2017. He goes to the Gulf as he's a White House official,

hits up the cutteries for money. They look at it and they're like, this is a terrible investment, and they turn him down. They thought they were getting an investment offer. This was not an up-and-up commercial transaction. This was a shame. a shakedown. Within weeks of them saying no to this, the UAE and Saudi Arabia nearly invade

with their actual militaries. Instead, they launch a blockade. Yes, I remember this. On the economy of Qatar, which had a base with 10 to 20,000 service members. Rex Tillerson immediately comes in and slams Saudi Arabia and the Emirati saying, what are you doing? These are our allies. We have a base here. You cannot blockade this country. Jared Kushner comes in. And all of this has been since been reported and was reported at the time by us. He comes in and says, oh, no, no, it's fine. We're siding with Saudi Arabia and the Emirates over the Qataris here. That blockade lasted all the way through the Trump administration, badly damaged the Qatari economy. Only when Biden came in, did they finally lift, did they finally lift it? And I talked to a very high-level official from

Qatar who said, if we had known what the cost was going to be of saying no to the Kushners, we would have paid it. We wish we had paid it. So that sets up Whitkoff. And so although Kushner, day two of like his post-white House time, gets a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia into this, quote-in-court. Which we've extensively talks about a private equity fund, which is, there's no evidence they've invested any of it. Well, Andy, remember, Ryan, that the internal documents released by the New York Times, they were like, this isn't a good investment, but we're going to do it. Can you clip's got some of those documents? Yeah, they were like, well, we're going to do it because of the state power involved.

2.5 billion is nothing, you know, paid for level of influence in the potential future next administration. And of course, Jared Kushner was present at the press conference with Prime Minister Netanyahu and Trump. talking about the Gaza Lago future development, which he, of course, has been pitching privately since before the November 2000 election. Right, exactly. And so when, and Kushner actually instructed the Tony Blair Institute back in the spring, Times of Israel just reported this, instructed Tony Blair Institute come up with a post-war, post-war plan for redevelopment, and then Trump puts Tony Blair.

I did not know that. And Larry Ellison has given or pledged $350 million to the Tony Blair Institute. Wow. So this is an Ellison project. over here. And so that is the context for when Alex Whitkoff is going to Doha asking for investments. They understand that this is not a, here's a pitch deck and we think that you're looking at a good four and a half to five and a half percent return on your investment. It's a nice little country you've got here. Real shame if something would happen to it. And so the Whitkoff's

are deeply in bed with the Cutteries, which goes to the point that you were making at the top of the program, you get the Israelis complaining a lot about Whitkoff's relationship with Qatar. And it's like, okay, you know what? Yeah, we're going to give it to them. As they say in Ireland, fair play. Yeah, we're giving it to them. To be fair, the Qataris say that they did not invest actually in the fund, at least this specific time. They do note, quote, as recently as May, the Whitkoff Group did receive some $100 million from a financial

trust that is run by the private equity firm Apollo Global, which is partly owned by Qatar. They're going to find some way to not piss them off. The Wickhoff family's relationship with Qatar traces back to the first Trump administration, including Stittwickoff. By the time Trump was back in the White House, the relationship had evolved, and the Whitkoff group sought Qatar as a, quote, go-to source of funding. Now, the current White House is defending it, saying this is a smear of Steve Wickoff. They say Qatar has used its $557 billion sovereign wealth fund to amass global influence in the U.S. focal point has been real estate investment and that they have pounded more than

$4 billion into the Manhattan real estate market alone, including the plaza, the St. Regis, and a stake in the Empire State Building. Now, this has basically been a Gulf project now for some time, right? This is the Wickhoffs, Jared Kushner. This gets to the original question. But what I have not stopped been able to think about is Jeremy Scahill in our reaction to the Trump deal. He was like, look, Trump has an enormous amount of dollar signs in his eyes. And that's part of the reason that this deal may get done.

And I was like, oh, man, that is dark to think about in terms of why his own personal influence may want to see something like this happen. And Jared Kushner's presence there is not a surprise. By the way, all of this is a lead-in to an extraordinary diplomatic development that is honestly insane. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. Trump has now given Qatar a, quote, unprecedented security guarantee after the Israeli attack. He says, an executive order signed by President Trump Monday would provide Qatar a security guarantee with conditions similar to NATO's Article 5. Everybody keep in mind, NATO Article 5, by the way, I have a lot of issues with NATO as anybody watches this show knows. At the least, NATO is ratified by the U.S. Senate, okay?

There's a legal process through which we all agree, I guess, that we're going to do. die for North Montenegro or Macedonia or whatever. Stupid, in my opinion, but whatever. It's still ratified by our democratic process. Well, this is just by executive fiat that the United States will have similar Article 5 protection. They say the unprecedented security agreement says it will treat any armed attack on the country as a threat to the peace and security of the United States. I do not think people understand how insane it is to have an executive fiat order security guarantee. Not only is that not how it's supposed to work, it's wild. And it's one of those where, look, to the original premise of the question, does Qatari influence on the Trump people's orbit have anything to do with this?

I cannot rule that out. I cannot rule that out at this time. I think, I mean, can you imagine how pure a soul you would have to be for billions of dollars not to have any influence on you? Right, of course. It's just nonsensical. People are swayed by like a free app. You're exactly right. I mean, an appetizer, not a free app on your phone.

Yeah, probably free app on your phone too. Yeah, you're exactly right. Yeah, it's like, you know, getting a $2.50 discount at Starbucks is enough to like cause a line for the drive-thru everywhere, sweat billions of dollars. not going to have any impact. I mean, I just think it's, I think it has not come under nearly enough scrutiny. Right now, it's mostly the pro-Israel side, which is furious with Trump for giving this security guarantee for Qatar. But this is the issue with the entire U.S. Israel relationship. Trump brings Bibi here. He's like, you need to call and apologize. And Bibi's like, okay, you know, whatever, right? He calls and he apologized.

He releases the photo of him apologizing the photo of Trump. holding the phone, and it's great, you know, good optics. But then instead of telling Israel, hey, don't ever do that again, we just invent some NATO Article 5 thing for Qatar to get them to serve as the mediators. Isn't there a much easier way to achieve what we're trying to do here to try and make sure that there is no attacks on Qatar, which is what? Who's causing them? Israel, right? Israel bombs Iran, which bombs or whatever, fires missiles at Qatar, face saving we all move on great all right how do you stop that don't let israel bomb iran simple don't let israel bomb katar simple why are why do we allow this to happen yeah because we have to

invent all of these quasi solutions right and it was a singular problem right they don't they don't trust Israel and they don't also they also don't trust us because there's this gaping open question that's that says wait a minute there's a an american military base right outside of doha how did Israel pull off a bombing if you say you didn't know about it? What good is your American military base if planes

can just fly in and drop bombs? Part of why I don't buy their information of course like there had to be a stand down order like because you've got people on the radar being like this plane is not on anybody's

like manifest what's it doing it's heading for downtown Doha and they're like just leave it alone We're good. Otherwise, it's like, what are you doing in this country? And so as Jeremy Schael also reported at drop site, two Arab sources told him that Marco Rubio told the Qatari's that he could not promise that Israel would not hit them again. Wow. Nobody in the U.S. has reported that because they don't have the Arab sources on that. And of course, Rubio is not going to say it. But they didn't deny it when we went to for comment. And so if you're the Cutteries... How can you not guarantee that?

You've just been told... Trump said they're not going to do it again. Rubio said... I don't know if they're going to do it. They might. Yeah, yeah. So then they go back to Trump and they're like, we need a security guarantee.

We need this in writing that you will go to war with whoever attacks us. And Trump is like, all right. Yeah, I guess he just didn't really think about it. What? Qatar's got no... You know, like you just said, they're beeping with Saudi Arabia with the UAE. What are we doing here?

You know, this is supposed to come... The Emirates go after. Right, exactly. It's conceivable. It's definitely conceivable. I'm sure we have kill switches in all of their weapons. So that presumably would be a pretty quick war. It's such a, you know, you really do have to marvel at the wisdom of the Gulf because for years they were like, look, all we have to do is bribe these people. You know, we'll pay them $100 billion, you know, dollars, Saudi Arabia, all this money, EA sport. Eventually we need to do a segment about that, the whole EA sports thing. Yeah, they're buying mad. It's kind of crazy. Saudi Arabia's buying

Yeah, they're taking it private with who? Jared Kushner. Oh, right. That's right. It's like, okay. But you put all this together, and just the way that this is all working, this is nuts. Like in terms of personal relationship, the White House being like he's a world respected. No, he's not. Okay, he's a joke. Everybody who's ever dealt with him knows he is a complete joke. The only reason that he has any money right now is because of his previous influence with the Trump family. Prior to that, him, his father, and all of that. He's father and all that, not a great reputation. Everybody knew it. And it's only because of his access to power and potential influence here on Trump that we are where we are. And they're denigrating that.

They're signing security guarantees with Qatar. And then this Whitkoff thing, as I said, you know, the Zionists have attacked him for a while as a Qatari asset, which they also ignore that Bibi's inner circle is also potentially a Qatari asset. Whatever. They're not consistent on the point. They took money from Qatar. As honest people here, Ryan, we have to admit it's not looking good here for the Wickoff group and their own potential influence. And this was the most likely way it was going to unfold once the U.S. after World War II was like, we're going to do this in dollars and we're going to just absolutely flood these families, not even countries, basically. We're just going to flood these families, the Saud family, etc., with ungodly amounts of wealth. They're going to then

have these giant pools of capital that they're going to figure out what to do with. And our political is going to figure out a way to make sure that they're basically forced to reinvest it all back here in bribes here in the United States. Hey, this is Matt Jones. I'm Drew Franklin. And this is NFL cover zero. We're just here to try to give you an NFL perspective a little bit different. Did you see the Colts Pretzel?

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In a moment, we're going to be joined by our favorite guy. That's the TikTok handle for a TikTok content creator who is going to walk us boomers and Gen Xers over here through the new censorship regime that's underway over at TikTok. Related to that, we're going to discuss. us first, the politics of not just the TikTok takeover, but the man who's at the center of it, and that's Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who is the on again, off again, richest man in the world. He was briefly the richest man in the world when his Oracle stock blew up, went back downs, and now he's like, you know, neck and neck with Musk and these other oligarchs. But we can put up this new article that I have with Mertazi Hussein over at Dropsite.

The whole story is worth the read because we're getting access to a bunch of email correspondence from the 2010s in the late 2010s that is really opening up a window into worlds that have been occluded for a long time. And there's some really fascinating stuff that we're putting up. So to start with, Ron Prozer was at the time. of these email exchanges that we're reviewing here. The Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Marco Rubio, who in the email exchange, they call Mario Rubio, was a senator from Florida. He'd been elected in 2010 as a kind of pretty arch-conservative.

Like, he came up with a Tea Party movement, and he's launching a presidential campaign. So Prozer and Larry Ellison, according to these emails that we've obtained and that have not been previously reported are emailing back and forth about a variety of different things. They talk about having dinner, and then they start talking about Mario Rubio,

Marco Rubio. And Prozer says, and we can put up this first email exchange here between them, I had a great time to, Ron, at dinner. I'm looking forward to the next time. Larry says, P.S., I'll tell you how dinner goes with Senator Rubio.

And then we put up the response there. Larry, hi, how is the conversation with Mario Rubio? Did he pass your scrutiny? Did you have a chance to talk about Israel? Would love to chat. My cell is. Big hug. And again, thank you for a wonderful evening with you, Ron.

A few hours later, Alison responds in the affirmative. He says, quote, Hi, Ron, great meeting with Marco Rubio. I set him up to meet with Tony Blair. Marco will be a great friend for Israel. So this is 2015. Ellison then goes on to put $5 million into Marco Rubio's super PAC for the presidential campaign. Doesn't work out for him. As we know, Donald Trump gets into the race. Donald Trump wins. Marco Rubio, though, has now since become Secretary of State. Now,

so backing up, Larry Ellison, he is an oligarch who has really kind of snuck into our politics. He's He's played a very effective, long, and quiet game, although it's getting difficult for him to kind of escape as much public scrutiny as he has been able to in the past, just because of the sheer dominance that he's been able to display. Oracle is a database software technology that because it sells also to businesses has put itself kind of everywhere in the world, very quickly. quietly, even though, you know, Oracle's just, it's not one of the top companies that you think of, but when it comes to its, it's kind of persistence and its prevalence in your life, it's absolutely everywhere. Now, Ellison himself, I believe it was 2017, he made the largest ever donation to friends of the IDF, which is an American nonprofit that supports the Israeli military. And this line here, which says, I set him up to meet with Tony Blair.

That's key. So why on earth is Larry Ellison setting anybody up to meet with the former UK prime minister who's most known for going along with George Bush with the invasion of the Iraq War? So after he becomes prime minister, Tony Blair, sets up the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. Larry Ellison has given or pledged more than $350 million. I think we have an element on that one to the Tony Blair Institute. Uh, recent reporting, um, by the new statesman, uh, and, and lighthouse reports, uh, reveals what everybody had kind of already known about TBI, Tony Blair Institute, that it, it, it effectively has merged with Oracle in significant ways. Like, do you have board members who are both on TBI and also on, uh, Oracle, uh, you would have Oracle, uh, employees able to basically just jump into the TBI calendars and schedule meetings with executives. So they,

This new station published this report that interviewed tons of Oracle and Blair Institute employees and said, yeah, basically, we're one and the same here. The Blair Institute is acting as kind of a sales arm for Oracle. This is important because in the spring, this past spring, as Times of Israel just recently reported, Jared Kushner asked the Tony Blair Institute to come up with a post-Gaza post-war, post-genocide, reconstruction, and redevelopment plan. Some of those details leaked. So the Tony Blair Institute did put together this project.

If you're following along, you saw that when Donald Trump announced that he was creating this board of peace that was going to be chaired by himself, he said the key figure on it was going to be none other than Tony Blair, which, which brings everything full circle. Obviously, at the center of all of this, is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who helped set up the TikTok deal. As a senator, Rubio, by the way,

was one of the most outspoken against TikTok the whole time. And obviously, Rubio plays a role as well in the diplomatic lead-up and the rollout of this Gaza plan, which, you know, if the reporting is accurate that the Blair Institute is, A, an arm, effectively of Oracle. Or is influenced by that. Influenced by Oracle.

At the very least. $350 million is going to buy you some influence in a nonprofit. I think we can honestly also. Yes. And being in regular meetings, and as this new state's reported, like, effectively, like, in allegiance to me, Ryan. I know there was a lot of liberal freak out about Elon and Twitter. I think the Ellison family is way more effective right now. I mean, let's think about this.

like we have the TikTok connection now in terms of the back like the data which will be processed through yeah e5 we can put that up there about quote i mean you can't even make this stuff up like after buying paramount the like larry ellison's son now wants to buy warner brothers discovery this is david ellison this is the guy who loves barry weiss well this is one of the richest families in the world who is now controlling cbs news paramount skydance which is one of the biggest movie studios, Paramount Plus, which means a ton of, like, the red meat content, which is create, you know, the whole Taylor Sheridan universe, et cetera. Now they want to buy WBD, so they would own CNN. They would own HBO Max. Now they're going to own TikTok, not to mention Oracle, which is the backbone of, like,

computer data centers of the entire world. Which already does the data work for TikTok. Yeah, like what? Right, is the original thing. So put that all together, and you're like, hey, whoa. Whoa. Whoa. We've been chasing the wrong shiny objects. That's what I'm saying. So, you know, leftists, wake up. Elon, yes, he's the villain of old. It's the Ellison family now. It's wild. It's wild. But, you know, he's also, he's weird. You know, Larry Ellison owns an entire private island in Hawaii. He owns a rich Carlton hotel and basically runs his own little kingdom. You can go read about it. It's wild. He's somehow, you know, been under the radar. Obviously, he's been very influential on Republican politics. But the level of control now, that this family has over American political discourse and particularly has like an unending

you know basically desire to shape American public opinion to be pro-Israel we should all be very very skeptical and so we also have a quote in this story from Oracle CEO Safra Katz saying this is from one of the emails we believe that we have to embed the love and respect for Israel right in the American culture okay like they're they're very explicit about that was from 2015 yeah right This is before this isn't even a thing. This is 10 years ago.

And to your point about Ellison and his interestingness, let's roll E6. If you think you're not bothered enough. Let's roll E6. Your body cams will be transmitting that. The police will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording, watching and recording everything that's going on. citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on.

When you come to government and what government's doing, there are obviously, there are artificial intelligence tools and some of them I know the Oracle have developed around financial management for government. But also, tell us a bit about because you're right at the forefront of this revolution, what it means for what government should do in terms of its digital infrastructure,

you know, digital ID, data, centers and so on. How do you take advantage of these incredible AI models? And the first thing a country needs to do is to unify all of their data so it can be consumed and used by the AI model. You have to take all of your healthcare data, your diagnostic data, your electronic health records, your genomic data. And you know, in the Middle East, in the UAE, for example, they're incredibly rich in data. Yeah, I'm out. I'm out on that. I regret to inform you it is too late.

He is now basically the most powerful man in the world. Just want to underline what he just said. Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on. See, this is where I'm just like, you know, might as well be China because at least there is the government. Right. And not Larry Ellison.

I would at least take the government. I'm being said, I would take the authoritarian Chinese government over that. Right, because there's at least some participatory democratic ways to pressure that government. Right. They don't have elections. Kind of not really. But here we're going to have the worst of all worlds because we'll have the outlet of fake elections

where people's anger at the system can be channeled into these days where you go and check a box when it goes into a void. It's just poof, gone. You've got to be careful with where you go down that road, Ryan. It might lead you to some interesting theories of governance. All right. Okay, let's go. Look, we try this one.

And this is what we're getting. That's true. All right, let's get to TikTok. Hey, this is Matt Jones. I'm Drew Franklin. And this is NFL cover zero. We're just here to try to give you an NFL perspective a little bit different. Did you see the Colts pretzel?

That was my other big takeaway from that game. What was that? Oh, my. We think NFL coverage should be informative and entertaining. And twice a week. that is exactly what you're going to get. Listen NFL Cover Zero with Matt Jones and Drew Franklin on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcast. Toyota, the official automotive partner of the NFL, visit Toyota.com slash NFL now to learn more. But the humility in knowing that life is this classroom that we should never graduate for is what is going to keep you growing. And that's all that matters. World Mental Health Day is around the corner.

And on my podcast, Just Heal with Dr. Jay, I dive into what it really means to care for your mind, body, and spirit. From breaking generational patterns to building emotional capacity. Healing is a journey and wholeness is the destination. I'm going to walk away feeling very healed and feeling like, yes, I'm going to continue my healing journey and I'm going to get some keys from you. Listen to Jess Hilbert Dr. Jay from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, sis, what if I could promise you you never had to listen to a condescending finance, bro, tell you how to manage your money again. Welcome to Brown Ambition. This is the hard part when you pay down those credit cards. If you haven't gotten to the bottom of why you were racking up credit or turning to credit cards, you may just recreate the same problem a year from now.

When you do feel like you are bleeding from these high interest rates, I would start shopping for a debt consolidation loan, starting with your local credit union, shopping around online, looking for some online lenders because they tend to have fewer fees and be more affordable. Listen, I am not here to judge. It is so expensive in these streets. I 100% can see how in just a few months you can have this much credit card debt when it weighs on you. It's really easy to just like stick your head in the sand. It's nice and dark in the sand. Even if it's scary, it's not going to go away just because you're avoiding it. And in fact, it may get even worse.

For more judgment-free money advice, listen to Brown Ambition on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Okay, now moving to TikTok, which Larry Ellison is in the process of taking over, we're going to be joined by Guy Christensen, who is the creator behind the account, your favorite guy, guy. Welcome to Breaking Points. Thanks for joining us. Good to see you, Guy. Thank you, Ryan. So you're going to walk a couple boomers through what is going on over at TikTok. And so we've been talking offline. You've been trying to educate me with some success, but you know, you've got a lot of, it's a difficult task.

So it's not on you. So tell me what I'm going to remember. Was September, what is it, 13th or 23rd? September 13th. Okay. So what happens? What happened on September 13th? TikTok changed their free speech guidelines.

And it has to do with their new hate speech czar who was hired through ADL lobbying. Her name's Erica Mendel. She's an ex-IDF instructor. She's a former State Department contractor. And she says that Zionism is an identity that goes hand in hand with Judaism for her. And so TikTok hired Erica Mandel under pressure by ADL lobbying, which, you know, the national policy director takes credit for. And about two or three days after they hired Mendel, everyone who uses TikTok actually saw this, they pushed out a post notification when you open

the app, says they're changing the guidelines. And in these guidelines, they changed a whole bunch of things around that makes it so much harder to talk about Palestine. You can't talk about graphic incidents or violence in the context of a public interest. And they explicitly list war as something you can't talk about. They make it much harder to criticize the state of Israel as an illegal apartheid state or characterize the IDF as terrorist forces and the way they lay out criticisms of national origin. I also noticed that it said that if you mention, and I do reporting on TikTok now, and so I will say, like, I'll do this like one or two minute videos where I'm saying like, okay, this is, Hamas is responding to. And I don't even do the, like, I know that some

people will say like H because they're worried about the algorithm, not spreading their stuff. I don't care if it spreads the stuff. Because we end up then posting the video on Twitter and Instagram or whatever. So I just use all the words. But like, I will say like, okay, Hamas has received the take or leave at ceasefire offer from Trump and Israel. Here is what Hamas is saying. Here's what Palestinian Islam Shah is saying. Because I'm a news reporter. And like, those are the organizations that are involved in the news. And I saw, correct or I'm wrong, I thought I saw in the guidelines that every time I mention them, I have to then follow that up by condemning their existence. Is that like, how does this work? That's exactly right. They require anyone

who makes videos on TikTok now to explicitly denounce all designated terrorist organizations by the State Department when mentioned in a neutral context. So you can't just say. Instead of praise be upon him, it would have to be Hamas condemnation be upon them has said that within 72 hours they will respond to the That is so crazy All right so Guy

I know you have compiled some can we have some examples Can we put these on the screen so you can just explain it again to a boomer like me Some of these things about Why videos are getting taken down Just walk us through these So just to put it into context

prior to the September 13 changes, prior to Erica Mendel entering the company, I looked at before I came on, the past six months, what happened? And I only had two videos taken down. And since September 13th, it's been 11. Wow. And it's not been that long since, you know, they switched over. So what you're looking at here are notifications, screens that TikTok sends creators when they remove their videos. And so you'll see on the left, I'm trying to submit an appeal. That was a video where I talked about Max's reporting and the Gray's known about Charlie Kirk

and his supposed to turn on Israel leading up to his death. And the guidelines make a cut out for public interest. And so I thought I could appeal, but of course not. They took it off the for-you page and all feeds, which you can see here on the right, where it's just visibility restricted. It's not eligible for the 4-you feed. That means nobody can see it unless they explicitly, like, open up my profile and go to my page and find the specific video or else they're not going to see it at all.

Huh. That is crazy. Do we have any more guys that we can show here? Let's put up this next one here. Yeah, so, yeah, we have a few more here. There's one here on the right where what is this one about exactly? This is, again, the gray zone report where any. I think it was.

I think there were multiple videos about Grayzone reporting that were removed talking about Israel or Charlie Kirk. And then on the left is actually a screenshot trying to show that there's no option to appeal. So there's no recourse for that. And what about these two? What do we see here? So the one on the left is you'll see your video is under review and can't be shared right now. TikTok does this thing. It's essentially a shadow banning where they don't actually tell you it's taken down, but nobody can see it.

So it's like in this limbo stage. That was a video I published last night that thankfully went through the review system. But it can get stuck in this limbo for up to 24 hours or longer, which is what happened with this interview on the video of the right, which is now able to be viewed in my profile, but it's not able to be pushed in feed. So it's stuck at like a few thousand views. And so, and this was an interview you did. You were at the ADC conference out in Dearborn, right? So you did an interview there and then it just, it takes like days for it to post? Yeah.

So it went up and I think it got, you know, sometimes I let it out in the feed. It got like 100 likes and then they took it off the for you page and for I think it was like 36 hours. And what are you saying in these videos that you think is triggering? Well, A, I mean, I think you've had some controversial interactions with them. Maybe are they like looking at you specifically or are you saying things in these videos that is triggering something or both? Like, what do you think is going on? I think that I'm not being targeted specifically yet, as far as I can tell. What all these videos have in common that have been removed since September 13th are that I'm talking about Israel.

I'm talking about, you know, Apex influence. I'm talking about Larry Ellison and the attempt to put TikTok under Zionist control. I'm criticizing Israel in some way. And it's the same thing I've heard from my audience, my friends who are creators. Ever since September 13th, they've had the same exact experience. Videos that are more informational and critical of Israel get removed. Sometimes like comedy videos lighter, criticisms of Israel can make it through. But that's been all of our experience.

And I did want to point out that in the new free speech guidelines, TikTok outlines these conspiracy theories that blame quote unquote powerful groups and are likely to undermine public confidence. And I believe that this is the part of the guidelines that they've been using to justify taking down videos criticizing APEC, the pros are a lobby, Zionist influence in the United States. It's so vague. I mean, that is so crazy, guys. So, I mean, yeah, I mean, the idea that you can't mention Hamas without saying I condemn Hamas is preposterous. How are you supposed to do any reporting, you know, whatsoever? YouTube tried to do this at one point where we weren't allowed to play videos of Trump claiming the election was stolen.

and I was like he does that every time he speaks like how can we possibly cover this and they wanted us to come in and they wanted yeah wasn't stolen right they wanted us to come in every time how am I supposed to do that how am I supposed to do my job but for you I mean I guess look at the very least that was done for our country right you know here we're talking about a different country guy in term I mean I don't know about your career or any of that are you going to be able to continue to make a living you and your other creators and etc that to rely on this? Like, how is this affecting the entire ecosystem of political creators on TikTok? So I would assume that it's demonetizing everybody pretty much across the board because another aspect of getting your video taken off the feed, taking off the four-you recommendation feed, is that if you get a certain number of these quote-unquote violations, they're like soft violations. You're like five of them in the span of a month. You're kicked out of the monetization program and You can't get any payments for any work you do on TikTok. So, you know, that's about a habit of me.

It's happened to me a few times in the past two years as I've advocated for Palestinian liberation. But, I mean, how are we meant to do our advocacy when we can't even name the state? We can't reference their crimes. We can't discuss the censorship. And they're like, I mean, there's such a thing going on where you can't talk about Larry Ellison or Netanyahu meeting with American influencers. That's nuts. Yeah, but they can post their video. of talking with Netanyai.

You can't post about it. What do you think the long-term implications of this would be? Because there's this idea among the Larry Ellison types of the world and Marco Rubios and others that TikTok and Instagram really did change people's understanding of what was going, what was of Israel, because they were able to see the images of what was happening in Gaza, it, which then implies that there's some world

that they are able to create in which people would not be able to see those images. And I'm just skeptical that any amount of algorithmic suppression can fully suppress an ongoing assault of 2 million people on a daily basis.

It's got to, like, it's going to get through somehow. And to me, the YouTube Spotify in particular remain like the places where people actually go to shape their thinking and their ideology because that's where you spend more time engaged in thought in long form with this show or whether it's Rogan or whoever

you're listening to. Whereas TikTok and Instagram and the others, that's just kind of some basic raw material that I suspect you could get elsewhere. But maybe I'm wrong and maybe they actually can lock all this down. So from your understanding of how young people consume media, is there a way that they could actually algorithmically lock all this down? I think that it's pretty scary to see Trump talk about retraining the algorithm in connection with what Netanyahu has said about how this TikTok

purchase is number one for their eighth front of the digital war. It's going to be very consequential. And it's so, it's entirely possible that they can, you know, block out all Palestine related content, all left-wing content. It's possible. But I think that the cat's pretty much out of the bag here in America. If you had come and asked me a year earlier, I might be saying something different, but we're the majority who are here in America who are calling it genocide, what Israel's doing to Gaza. And, you know, I'm talking to people. I'm talking to people my age across the political spectrum all the time you know what the one thing i hear kind of of every single one of their mouths is the word apac they know and so when israel continues to make these

moves and become bolder more aggressive and desperate in trying to win back the narrative win back american support it's only i think going to backfire on them um you know the adel just got attacked by the right on x oh yeah we love just called we're loving group yeah right yeah i mean i'm eating it up anything to take down the adel but um you know every single time they they are exposed paying influencers seven thousand dollars a post and like in that recent ferra released by wiki leaks and responsible state craft it just brings more attention on them and people are not going to you know there's a rapidly declining trust in any pro-Israel voices they do see on social media or on news outlets

anymore. And so I think this is just like a losing game. It may even be a better strategy, I think, to try to start influencing this in the shadows once again. But I don't know if that's possible. Guy, thanks for joining us, man. And please do keep us updated. If you get banned or anything like that, let us know. And we'll keep everybody updated. But very insightful, again, as a boomer, doesn't use TikTok. I actually cannot believe those content guidelines. That is nuts. All right. Okay. We'll see you later. Condemnation. Thank you, guys. Thank you guys so much for watching.

Thank you, Ryan. There will be a Friday show tomorrow. Everybody enjoy that, and we will see you all later. See you then. your feelings about socks with sandals. And we're ready to share some possibly questionable advice and hot takes. God, that sucks so hard, though.

I'm so sorry. Can you out petty them? Can you match their pettiness for funsies? Yeah. All the things. Because aren't we all trying to get a little more better? Listen to more better on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

December 29th, 1975, LaGuardia Airport. The Holiday Rush. Parents hauling luggage, kids gripping their new Christmas toys. Then everything changed. There's been a bombing at the TWA terminal. Just a chaotic, chaotic scene. In its wake, a new kind of enemy emerged, terrorism. Listen to the new season of Law and Order Criminal Justice System

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