Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/23/25: US Gaza Master Plan Revealed, Hannity Demands Venezuela Regime Change, WH Demolitions, Graham Platner Tattoo

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss US Gaza master plan revealed, Hannity demands Venezuela regime change, White House demolitions, Krystal goes to war for Graham Platner.  Andrew Yang: https://blog.andrewyang.com/p/noble-mobile      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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We'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? Each week, I'm calling up my friends, like Bill Nye, Lily Singh, and Pete Buttigieg, to talk about everything from the space race to movie remakes to psychedelics. Put another way, are you? high. Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to here we go again with Cal Penn 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. Let's go ahead and start with this D1 guys. So you've got Bibi getting asked whether or not Israel is a U.S. protectorate. Pretty interesting comments here. Let's take a listen to that. Israel is becoming some kind of a cell state or protectorate of the United States,

not only advising it what to do, but also commanding what to do. Why do you both comment on that? I want to put it very clearly. You know, one week they say that Israel controls the United States. A week later they say, the United States controls Israel. This is Al-Gwash. We have a partnership, an alliance of partners. We share common values and common goals.

We can have discussions. We can have disagreements. there, but on the whole, I have to say that in the past year, we've had agreement, agreement, not only on goals, but how to reach them. And I think we're pursuing them successfully. So interesting, too, to see the vice president standing there while BB has taken that question, Sager. Yeah. It is about as close to a screw you as it can be mustered in diplomatic speak, especially when you tack on this. Let's go and put the next part up on the screen. The Knesset, while J.D. Vance, the vice president, was in the country, approved a bill to apply Israeli sovereignty

in the West Bank. Quote, the proposal would say that the laws, judicial system, administration, sovereignty of the state of Israel shall apply to all areas of settlement in Judea and Samaria. It is a 25, 24 vote after a, quote, heated discussion. And it is one where they stipulate not only what I just read, but that it would actually apply in principle. So the difference here is that technically it was symbolic. The government is not going to officially carry this out. Now, frankly, considering how we have covered the West Bank at this point with Jasper Nathaniel, it already exists, but it's effectively a symbolic thing at this point. Nonetheless, it was, again, as big of a diplomatic FU as they could muster, not only from BB, because it was not just

the protectorate conversation. The private conversations, at least some of it were leaked to various different reporters, where J.D. is begging them, basically, saying give the ceasefire a chance. It's like a meme. Please give peace a chance. They're like, please, please, just try it. You know, you may enjoy it. It may actually work. And in addition, not only to the ceasefire conversation that's been happening with the U.S. administration and others, is that they're not doing enough to address the actual underlying dynamic of the government itself. Like you had Smotrich and Gevier, two, members of the government who are outwardly, I mean, this is just today. He says, this is from Smodry.

If Saudi Arabia is telling us that in return for normalization, they want a Palestinian state, we will say, friends, no thank you. You can continue riding camels on the sand in the Saudi desert. Okay? And these are the people. Like great friends. These are the people whose troops are supposed to be patrolling Gaza. Right.

And then in addition to the fact that the plans being flow. And providing the money for the reconstruction. And providing the money for the reconstruction. They don't want any of this to work out. And it's like America is stuck pretending. this dreamlike state where the Israeli government actually wants a ceasefire. They don't want a ceasefire, period, at all. Why do we keep the pretense? Like, guys, just be honest about what's happening here. That's one of the things that drives me the most crazy about foreign policy

is how much pretend. There is, how much fakery there is from, you know, American politicians who have to pretend BB is different and his government is different, and that they're not out there just openly saying, we are never giving Gaza back to Palestinians, we're going to stay here forever, We're going to have settlements. We're going to push them out of the Gaza Strip all together. They're just openly saying, and then we just have to pretend that we don't hear it. Or American politicians just pretend that they don't hear it and they don't actually know what's going on. It's one of the things that makes me the most insane.

On the West Bank point, I mean, J.D. Vance was annoyed by this because it created an uncomfortable situation from when we could put D2B up on the screen. He says that he was unhappy about it. The vote in the Knesset on annexing the West Bank was strange. If it was a political stunt, it was a foolish political stunt. I was offended by it. We will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank, and we were not pleased with this vote. Of course, the reality is they have allowed Israel to annex the West Bank. This was a key priority of top donor, Miriam Adelson, and they've allowed mass settlements to go forward, including, as Jasper Nathaniel has pointed out, some extremely consequential ones that basically end the viability of a Palestinian state to include the West Bank.

Mack also just sent us this. apparently they are getting rid within Israel entirely of even the language West Bank in favor of the biblical term Judea and Samaria. So another symbolic move to assert their own sovereignty over this area and these people. The parts of the West Bank that are supposedly controlled by Palestinians, you know, it's the Palestinian Authority, which are collaborators anyway. But in reality, you know, Israel controls the nature of their day-to-day life, where they can go, what they can do, whether they can harvest their olives, free from

free from rampaging settlers or not. And so de facto, annexation has already happened. It would have to be rolled back. It would have to take, you know, this administration or another actually asserting themselves and saying, this is unacceptable, and here's what it's going to look like, and here's how we're going to get to some sort of peace and justice for Palestinians for that to happen. Right now, they've got their hands full, just keeping Israel from going back to full-blown slaughter within Gaza. So at the same time, let's talk a little bit about the idea for quote-unquote phase two. We could put D3 up on the screen. So this is some Wall Street Journal reporting. And it dovetails very well with what we were talking about in the West Bank, the reality in the

West Bank, because this plan looks a lot like they want to turn Gaza effectively into a new West Bank. So the headline here is a U.S. plan splits Gaza in two, one zone, controlled by Israel and won by Hamas. Now, the reality on the ground right now, and they say Jared Kushner floats a plan to rebuild the Israeli-controlled half of the Palestinian enclave until Hamas can be disarmed. So right now, the reality on the ground is Israel is still occupying 53% of the Gaza Strip. And anytime anyone gets close to what they call the yellow line, which doesn't exist like in reality and physical reality, just like on a map and in their heads,

anytime any Palestinian gets closer that or wanders over it, they shoot and kill them. That is what we've seen in this quote-unquote ceasefire. So they want to use the part that they occupy as effectively a cudgel to begin the rebuilding process there and allow potentially some of their, you know, vetted, like, gang-affiliated people into that area. And then to use that to pressure Hamas as like, now you have to disarm because Palestinians want to come over and live in this reconstructed area, and we're not going to do any reconstruction in the area that the overwhelming number of Palestinians remain in and that you remain

in control of. So that is the idea. You know, interestingly, people just caught this. I didn't note this from the 60 Minutes interview with Kushner and Whitkoff originally. But in that interview, and this is going to be DZero, guys, Wittkoff talks about how they've been developing this, quote, unquote, master plan for two years. And Jared Kushner gets a very uncomfortable look on his face when Whitkoff uses that language. Let's go ahead and take a look at that. Part of the plan is the reconstruction, the building, rebuilding of Gaza. And you're builders. You've been in real estate. As you said, it's extremely complex. Tell us more about the plan and how much it's going to cost? Where's the money going to come from? And who's going to award the contracts?

Three questions. I think it's going to cost a lot of money. What's a lot of money? You know, the estimates are in the $50 billion range. It might be a little bit less. It might be a little bit more. I happen to think that that's not a lot of money in that region. You have governments that are going to jump on in. So the Middle East countries are going to provide the Yeah, what you'll see European participation and so forth. I think the beginning of this plan is how to get it going. And that's that's what me and what me and Jared work on all the time. The money raising we think is the easy part. We think that happens relatively quickly. But it's the master plan. And we're working with a group of people who have been working on master plans for the last two years. So there are plans already. We have plans already. We have a master plan already. And by the way, and Jared's been pushing this and we're working together on it. And I think if the world saw the progress so far, they'd be pretty impressed. So Whitkoff says they've been working on a master plan for two years now. Yeah, this is the master plan. And this is basically the West Bankification. They still have control. All of this falls apart. It's really hard to take it seriously because it's just, it's fake. I mean, look at the comments from the finance minister about Saudi Arabia. Who do you think the people?

people would be responsible for, quote-unquote, disarming Hamas would be. It would be the UAE, Saudi Arabia, the U.S. J.D. and Trump both say no U.S. troops will ever set foot on the ground in Gaza. Great. I mean, honestly, I support that. But eventually somebody's troops have got to set foot on the ground to have political administration. Their plan is like some phase rollout where they'll just encroach space by space. Hamas will be allowed. And then they'll slowly de-hamasify it. How? How do you do that? Like, what does that look like? At a certain point, it's all just recreating the same dynamic as Iraq, Afghanistan. These people have no actual plan.

In the absence, chaos will reign. Israel will continue to shoot and to kill. And eventually some sort of mass attack or whatever, either Hamas will do, maybe Israel will do, we'll see. And then we'll be right back to where things were. That seems like the modal outcome at this point. I don't really see another way that it could go. Well, and like I said, this quote-unquote master plan that they're laying out, It really does look a lot like the reality in the West Bank.

And so if you're going to be trying to get Palestinians voluntarily to go into the area that Israel controls, I mean, you're basically, you're getting them to voluntarily go into a direct military occupation where every aspect of your life is controlled by the Israelis. And so, you know, in the West Bank, you have three different areas. This was all set up in the, under the Oslo Accords. You've got areas A, B, and C, different levels of control by the Israelis, theoretically, and part of what has now become actual reality as Jasper's lay down is that even in the areas that are supposedly under Palestinian control, your life is actually determined by the Israelis.

And, yeah, I mean, this is also why a lot of people have moved from feeling like a two-state solution is this, okay, well, if you're just going to annex everything, then give people rights and just have a one state. But of course, that would be wildly unacceptable to the, to Netanyahu, to Smoters, but not just them, not just the extremists. I mean, it would be wildly acceptable to any mainstream Israeli politician for Palestinians just to actually have citizenship because then you have this quote unquote demographic threat. They have big families and they have, you know, they have already about half of the, if you look at, you know, all of Israel and Palestine put together, it's about half of the population. So pretty quickly you have this very different

political reality if you actually allow them to have rights. And that's where the core of this campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing and occupation, That's where this all comes from because they cannot, they cannot permit a situation where Palestinians have any sort of political say in their system. Yeah, the political administration of the entire system just looks like even more hopeless than ever before. Also, in terms of the U.S. dynamic, just look at what it takes to get Israel to stick to the C-spire, at least in limited ways.

The vice president, the U.S. envoy, the president's son-in-law all have to be in Israel all the time just to be like, hey, please give this. The U.S. intelligence community has to monitor every explosion in Gaza just to make sure that the Israelis aren't lying about it as a pretext to go back. How can we possibly stick to that dynamic forever? I mean, I talked about how the schizophrenia of the administration, just so I know it's a Ukraine's, but everybody stick with me. Because in the last week, it has been a masterclass by the Trump administration. Literally, less than a week, actually, six days. So six days ago, Vladimir Zelensky met with Trump but the Oval Office.

He called Trump, or he called Putin, and he berated Zelensky for not agreeing to peace terms. That was six days ago. And he said, I won't give you any long-range missiles. In the interim period, he set a new summit for Budapest between him and Putin, and it looks like things were going in a more pro-Russian direction. Three days ago, the Secretary of State and Lavrov, the foreign minister, have, quote, a disastrous phone call, whatever that means.

The Budapest summit is canceled. They say they have no immediate terms. Yesterday, President's Secretary Scott Besson announces major Russia sanctions against the regime and the Wall Street Journal reports that now long-range missiles are on their way to Ukraine, which will be used to strike in tomorrow. That is six days of what we just watched from berating Zelensky to give up the Dunbos region to giving to giving long-range missiles to Ukraine. Who knows where we'll be six days from now?

Right. Okay. Now apply that to Israel and to cease. Yeah, we're in a ceasefire. today, who knows what will be tomorrow. This guy is rebuilding the East Wing. That's what he at. Apparently, I'm not joking. I heard a story that he currently has two different types of marble tabletops in which he is asking every person who comes to the Oval Office which one they prefer. That's his current actual interest, not this. So good luck to anybody who's a

ceasefire believer or anyone because a week from now, six days from now, who knows what you're going to wake up and get. And that's why I would bet on the Israelis know what they want. Trump doesn't know what he wants. It's interesting that it was Rubio that had a quote-unquote disastrous call with Lavrov that blew everything up in terms of a direction of, you know, having the Budapest meeting and all of that sort of stuff. And that's the thing is I think this president, this is not to deny him blame. He deserves blame for everything that's happening under his government. Yes, it's his government.

But I think he has checked out of a lot of pieces of it. He's obsessed with his renovations. He likes that, the physical legacy that he can leave of his hideous, tacky, gold taste. Um, that's the thing that he actually cares about. And so he's like, yeah, Marco, you talk to Lavrov. Yeah, um, Stephen Miller. Why don't you run the immigration thing? Why don't you guys work together on the Venezuela regime. Oh, you want to do regime change in Venezuela? Sure, be my guess. Like, look, go and make it a little personal project. He's outsourced a lot of parts of this. Even, I mean, even on the economic piece, it doesn't feel like he is as hands on and engaged with it as he was in the early days of this administration. So, um, so the kind of focus that would be required. to keep this thing on the rails, it's hard to imagine. And let's keep in mind also, even with Jady Vance there, they're still taking their freaking, like,

let's annex the West Bank and call it Judea and Samaria, votes. And all we can muster is like, I was offended by that. Okay, but you're not going to do anything about it, are you? Yes, it's like, what are you going to do? I actually really wonder, because, yeah, he's on his way back to Washington now.

What's going to happen a week from now? Because, like I said, with the Trump administration, they're going to be on Ukraine now, you know, for the next three days. And by the way, Venezuela, which we're about to cover. You get mired in that. Who cares about the Israel ceasefire? This is the problem. You get yourself into too many things.

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Let's get to Venezuela. There's a lot of moving parts, but the major breaking news, President Trump from the Oval Office yesterday, saying that he will soon notify Congress that land strikes on Venezuela must begin. Let's take a listen. Legal authority, if they do comes. Yes, we do. We have legal authority, right? We're allowed to do that.

And if we do by land, we may go back to Congress. But we have, this is a national security problem. They killed 300,000 people last year, drugs. These drugs coming in. They killed 300,000 Americans last year, and that gives you legal. authority. We have a national security. Really, I will say this. When you look at the people we're dealing with it, we know them. We know the people coming in. We know the boats. We know everything else. We're allowed to do it. It's in international waters. If we don't do it,

we're going to lose hundreds of thousands of people. Now, they'll be coming in by land a little bit more because they're not coming in by boat anymore. There are no boats in the water. There are no more boats. We know the boat almost immediately. You know, it's pretty unusual when you see somebody with a fishing rod and five engines on the back of the boat. You know, you don't need that to go fishing. Wait, wait, wait. And we will hit them very hard when they come in by land. And they haven't experienced that yet, but now we're totally prepared to do that. We'll probably go back to Congress and explain exactly what we're doing when we come to the land. We don't have to do that, But I think, Marco, I'd like to do that.

You may respond to that. So, yeah, now we are going to come to the land. Let me just explain a little bit because the sea campaign has actually heated up over just the last 24 hours. There was a new announcement of a strike on drug traffickers, but actually in the Pacific or alleged drug traffickers, I should say, that was actually in the Pacific Ocean. So this is now a two ocean front war. Now, I mean, what you look at from the expanding. nature, not only of the boats, but of the rhetoric in terms of striking the land, would obviously be a massive escalation. The reason why he says yes to notify Congress is all of this is currently

being done under a drug interdiction mission, but none of it has actually been justified, presented with evidence. There is, frankly, I mean, look, Ryan and I are working on a big Venezuela story right now. I can't give away all the details. The one tidbit I can offer is that there is not one shred of evidence internally that fentanyl is on any single one of these boats. Not one piece of evidence that fentanyl is on these, which is, again, I mean, this is the rhetorical justification of the strike. By the way, what he says there about the boats. Again, small tidbit that we can offer, these boats would have to stop and refuel some 20 times in order to get to the United States. The current intel is that they're not heading to the U.S. is that they're most likely heading

to different places in the Caribbean, namely Trinidad. and Tobago. By the way, everything I just said, Rand Paul also just echoed on TV. So I'm not giving anything in particular really a way. I'm just telling you that that's from based on our reporting. That's what we can able to offer you. So this is all part of a regime change operation. There's just no other way to describe it. Maduro quite literally offered up everything by Trump's own admission in addition to numerous reported outlets about some of the behind the scenes talk. So this is, I mean, look, this is where things are trending right now. Trump genuinely believes the best way to get access to Venezuelan oil is to overthrow the government.

The drug thing is a pretext. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with minerals, which will show you here in a little bit. But it's scary. It's scary. There are a few things to pick up on from his comments. So let's be clear, what they're doing is random murder in terms of attacking these boats. I mean, the few details that we've had at this point, some of the people who were murdered who had been identified were like random fishermen. So maybe some of them are drug traffickers. We don't know that any of the literally any of them are. And they have now killed dozens of people without offering a shred of evidence that these

are even the individuals that they claim. And Sager and Ryan's reporting that they have zero evidence internally that any of these boats have fentanyl on them, even though that is what they are telling the American public, that is in and of itself a bombshell. That's number one. Number two, when he says we're going, you know, they're going to come to the land. Maybe we'll go to Congress. We don't have to go to Congress.

Maybe we'll go to Congress. Let's be really clear about what that means. So right now, we have random murder of potential fishermen in, you know, the Caribbean and in the Pacific. What he's proposing is random murder of people here on the land. That's what that expansion means. So they are trying to claim the power to arbitrarily, you know, unilaterally just murder random people that they announced the public or drug trafficking. without providing evidence, that is the power that they are trying to claim. Maybe they'll go to Congress and maybe they won't because Trump doesn't seem to think

that they have to. So that's number two. Number three, let me read to you what Pete Heggseth tweeted out in response in, you know, to announce this latest murder at sea. He says because some of the language here is very important. So he says today at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War, carried out yet another lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by a designated terrorist organization DTO, yet again, the now deceased terrorists were engaged in narco-trafficking in the eastern

Pacific. We're just supposed to take their word for that, by the way. The vessel was known our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotic smuggling, was transiting along a known narcotrafficking route and was carrying narcotics. Three male narco-terrorists were aboard the vessel during the strike, which was conducted in international waters. All three terrorists were killed and no U.S. forces were harmed in this strike. These strikes will continue day after day. These are not simply drug runners. These are narco-terrorists. bringing death and destruction to our cities. These DTOs are the al-Qaeda of our hemisphere and will not escape justice.

We will find them and kill them until the threat to the American people is extinguished. So that language there saying these are the al-Qaeda's of our hemisphere, that is the pretext, the linguistic pretext that they're trying to use and convince you of to allow them this unconscionable power grab. That's the way they're framing it. And I think, you know, the regime change part is terrifying. Like, everyone should be very concerned about that. But it should also be very concerning to you what they're already doing and the powers that

they're claiming for not only these attacks on boats, but now trying to claim for here domestically on U.S. soil. Yes, you're exactly right. It is literally just GWAT logic, GWAT rhetoric. And in some cases, the new rhetoric is actually more extreme than the GWAT because at no claim at time during the war in Iraq, even when we were spreading democracy, apparently, to Iraq and Afghanistan, did people come to the airwaves and say that Iraq should be the 51st state? But did not put that past Lindsey Graham and Sean Hannity on Fox News. Let's take a listen.

I had a chat with you this weekend. I thought you had a pretty darn good idea. And you said you were going to share it with the president. I want to know if you did. And that is this opposition leader in Venezuela that won the Nobel Prize that said it really deserved to go to Donald Trump. Sounds like a pretty good leader to me for the people of Venezuela and the end of narco-terrorism and a better relationship with the U.S. or if they choose maybe the 51st state, I don't know. Sounds good to be. Sounds good to me, 51st state of Venezuela. So, you know, we can't simultaneously be for mass deportation of Venezuelan migrants. What does Trump always say he's like they opened up the asylums they opened up the jails and they sent him here so

we're going to send them back and then we're going to create them and turn them into a 50% and then they're all going to be citizens okay uh okay uh let's not to mention the fact that it would cause mass illegal migration even if there was some sort of regime collapse again i don't want to get too ahead of the story Ryan and I are working on but so we have some bombshell stuff that we can report the intel stuff frankly some of the least interesting but the point I just want to stick to is there is no evidence that Maduro is actually like a large-scale drug trafficker, number one. Number two, there's no fentanyl on any of these boats. Number three, these boats, all the current intelligence is not even show that they're necessarily heading for the United

States. Number four, all of the powers that are being claimed by the administration are ones that the George W. Bush presidency and the Obama presidency use as sweeping powers to be able to drone strike and kill whoever they want. And five is actually Congress, because the thing is is that nobody's really doing anything about this inside of Congress. Like, look, this is, I always say this. The true, the true threat to America is real bipartisanship. The stuff that everybody just comes 98-0 votes on, things like regime change in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and you only have a few shitsters like Rand Paul and Thomas Massey willing to speak out. That's the real danger to the country. I don't see any large-scale demonstration or, you know, people like, look, I'll

credit, we're due, but let's be honest, it's like a minority congressman, a minority caucus in a minority ruling party of the House has no power to do anything. Like, there's no stand-up about authorities here. It's very scary and it's moving much quicker. Again, I really don't think that the media is covering this properly. Like, nobody points to the fact, a United States senator saying Venezuela should be a 51st state combined with regime change operation should freak everybody. It should be front page international news. And everyone's just like, oh, yeah. I mean, we just struck two, it's a two ocean war now. Like, when's the last time the United States even did a two ocean strike? I don't even know. And maybe just maybe the opposition

party should have something to say about that, you know? I mean, you have a few outliers like Rokana. But by and large, they are silent. I mean, it's just, disappointment doesn't even begin to describe it. It really is like they barely exist. And so part of the reason why the media it doesn't cover it in the way that it is because in the way that it should is because they aren't getting those signals from the opposition party of like, holy, this is really bad and making the case against this so the American people know what's going on and can evaluate for themselves whether or not they'd like to be in a regime change war against Venezuela or like to be blowing up random fishermen in the Caribbean or like to have those powers brought

here to domestic soil. And so, you know, there's, it's astonishing to me how little fight they have, how afraid they are of taking him on, on, you know, anything outside of these few narrow issues. And so that's part of why you don't have a, you know, mass upset over this in the population because there are so few voices that are actually speaking on against it. Yeah, I mean, also, let's say about MAGA, too. This is part of, part of why I think Venezuela is more dangerous than Iran, and this will sound crazy like the operation, is that there is no organized or there is no organized rhetoric, language, or project that takes invading Venezuela as a serious thing and opposes it. So on Iran, not nearly enough people

spoke up, in my opinion, but there was an organized effort on the right to speak up and to say that this is a bad idea to pursue regime change in Iran and to not allow the Israelis to go full on and actually do it. Now, they still might. But to be clear, at the time, there was a real organized effort and the White House felt some pressure. On Venezuela, they feel nothing. A huge part of the MAGA commentary actually believes the fentanyl claim. I don't know why. I mean, listen, Ryan and I will put

a story out soon. It just tells you this complete bullshit. You don't need to hear it from me. You can hear from a lot of other people. There's no fentanyl in Venezuela. Dea statistics say there's no fentanyl in Venezuela. But they're like, these people killed my cousin or whatever from heroin over. It's like, guys, no, they didn't, okay?

I'm sorry. I'm sorry that happened to you, but your literal emotions are being weaponized by the government for a legitimate neocon wet dream of overthrowing Venezuela. So the fact that there's no organized project actually seems to me like it's going to be more likely because what MAGA likes is the expansion of administrative power and strikes. It always feels good to blow up drug traffickers again. It's not necessarily any evidence behind that.

But they don't have a theory for how this can go badly. Like you can't simultaneously oppose mass migration, which I do, and which a lot of them ostensibly say, You can't talk about Trendyaragua and Venezuelan takeovers of neighborhoods and say that we're deposing the regime of Nicholas Maduro is going to do anything about that. Same thing. We have allies, neighbors in the region, Colombia. These are thriving big countries, Central America and also who we are reliant on to make sure that they are stemmed the crisis before it even comes here. Where do you think they're all going to go? In the same route that they did under Biden, they're going to flood the border. So just think about it. Maybe they won't make it here. They're going to make it to you. And so there's an entire theory that, you know, is so obvious but has not yet been articulated. And all they're hearing instead is Pete Hegseth, Fox News, and Trump, and others being like, oh, this is actually the highest and best use of our military. It's honestly scary. The internal dynamics.

I'll just say it. I mean, not that anybody listens to me, but you're getting taken for a ride. Like, this is complete BS. It's 100%. Every claim on the fentanyl drugs. I'm telling you. It's false, and they know it's false. They stumbled on the drug thing after months to convince Trump, because originally they're like,

oh, he stole the election. Trump's like, I don't care if stole the election. They're like, he's bad. He's a murderer. So? I mean, what? We don't have murderers that we do diplomatic relations with? Who gives us shit what's going on in Venezuela?

But eventually, they came down to drugs. He seems to believe it based on this fake indictment from 2020. And this new, what is it, the $50 million? Bounty. Bounty. Scary, man. Unbelievable. Yeah. It's, it is terrifying how easily people can just be talked into war. Like, all you have to do is hit whatever their like policy erogenous zone is. Oh, they're, they're narco-terrorist, fentanyl. And without any sort of critical thought, they're ready for the next regime-changed war.

And zero thought about what the consequences of be, of that will be zero thought about whether any of what they're being fed is truthful. Crazy. It's very disturbing to see. In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down. Unlock elite gaming tech at Lenovo.com. Dominate every match with next-level speed, seamless streaming, and performance that won't quit. So you can push your gameplay beyond performance with Intel Core Ultra processors.

For the next era of gaming, upgrade to smooth high-quality streaming with Intel Wi-Fi 6E and maximize game performance with enhanced overclocking. Win the tech search. Power up at Lenovo.com. 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 forces shaping the world's economies and financial markets can be hard to spot. Even though they are such a powerful player in finance, you wouldn't really know that you are interacting with them. And even harder to understand. Donald Trump's trade war, 2.0, is only accelerating the process of de-dollarization, which in a way is jargon for people turning away from the dollar. That is where the big take from Bloomberg podcast comes in, to connect the dots. How unusual is a deal like this? Unprecedented.

Every weekday afternoon, we dive deep into one big global business story. The biggest story of the reaction of the oil market to the conflict in the Middle East is one of what has not happened. Katie, you told me that ETFs are your favorite thing. They are. Explain that. Why is that the case? And unpack what it means for you. Our breakfast foods are consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsized indicators of inflation. Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I can't be the only one which is watched with great alarm as the entire White House East Wing will now be demolished in favor of Donald Trump's announced presidential ballroom. Here he is laying out the reasoning. Let me just, before we even play it, though, let me describe this. Of course, he had announced his plans for the ballroom. Whatever, okay, so he's going to build this new ballroom on the White House campus. However, what actually comes out now is that in order to build said ballroom, you have to demolish the entire historical part of the East Wing. Demolition pictures began to leak online. They eventually told them, hey, stop taking pictures of it if you work in the government and leaking it to the press.

Then they said, oh, only the facade itself will be destroyed. No, now they're coming for the whole thing. Here's Trump laying it out. In order to do it properly, we had to take down the existing structure. The way it was shown, it looked like we were touching the White House. We don't touch the White House. That's a bridge at last bridge going from the White House to the ballroom. Then you get into the lobby of the ballroom,

and then you go into the magnificent, the main room. And it's something that has gotten incredible reviews. something that's gotten incredible reviews shall we let's review it we'll all review it together let's play it let's put it up here on the screen yep here's the video that's the east wing that's a bulldozer they're tanking it down this is from above the fence again this is the historic east wing part of the white house where millions of tourists have gone i personally i've walked this halls a lot of times it's it's really nice if you ever you know, had the ability to go to the Christmas tour

or anything like that. That's it, you know, all right there, in favor of this, whatever the fuck this is. This gigantic new footprint, the East Wing, the ballroom. Look at that. Look at that. I'm sorry, you know.

Yeah, I don't even have words. It's like the tackiest shit I've ever seen in my entire life. I mean, just look at some of these renderings. On the left, you can see the tiny little West Wing where the Colenade, the Rose Guard, which, by the way, has already destroyed the Rose Garden as well. On top of what you can see for the West Wing,

the Oval Office, the magisterium of like the understated part of the Oval Office in favor of a Gilded Age breaker-style mansion of a ballroom, which will be used for how many times in a year? It's grotesque. I mean, look, I mean, the one benefit is that nobody in the, like nobody's paying for it, like in terms of the taxpayers. Yeah.

Apparently it's going to be some $300 billion, but even that, it's being sponsored by some major corporation. I mean, the thing. that just galls me about this is the taste. It's so disconnected from American public history, architecture, you know, anything that even remotely calls back to our reverence for our history. And, you know, of course, their cope is like, oh, well, Harry Truman remod. Yeah, it's not the same. Okay, it's just not. By the way, that one actually was in conjunction with the White House Historical Association. It was done because the White House was falling apart. Not because we need a fucking

ballroom so that you can entertain more than 900 guests. They even say they're going to modernize it, which makes me literally want to have a brain aneurysm, if you've ever been to the East Wing. The entire point of the place is that it has deep history. If you want to put AC vents or something like that, okay, fine. But nobody, I mean, I'm just imagining glass lighting and fluorescent lighting in the East Wing, and it's going to give me an overall brain aneurism, just looking at all this. Now, here's the final question. Do you agree? with Nira Tandin's take that the images of the White House could swing the election. I was like, look, Nira, you're after my heart.

I am one of those people. I am a White House swing voter. But even I am not naive enough to say that people give shit about the East Wing or the West Wing. I only, honestly, let's be honest, it's kind of an insider thing to even care because 99% of the U.S. population has never even been inside of the East Wing. I've probably been there 10 or 15 times. The blue room, the red room, you know, all of these gorgeous places. Even the photos don't really capture it.

You know, when I go in this place, I'm like, wow, FDR did a fireside chat here? You know, oh, this is where the famous George W. Bush interview and all that happened. I guess Americans just don't care. Trump certainly doesn't care at all, but I don't know. Maybe I can hopefully inspire some reverence for our great architecture in favor of whatever this is. It makes me feel very conservative. Good, good. I'm glad to have you. I mean, I do feel.

I don't know if I listen. I don't know. Maybe Nero's right. Who knows, right, what lands with people. And there is something, clearly Trump finds it to be somewhat of a political problem because, number one, he lied and said that the East Wing wouldn't be touched. Well, it wouldn't be touched at all. There would be no demolition.

It'll just go up alongside of it. Like, no demolition whatsoever. Which I was concerned about, but I was like, okay, whatever. Maybe. Yeah, he's a builder, maybe. So, number one, he felt the need to lie about it and continues to lie about it. Number two, he felt the need to cover up the pictures and demand that no one take a picture of this. because so he certainly has some sense that this is at least not a great political look.

It's going to swing the next election. I guess we'll never know. We'll have to do some sophisticated, you know, political regression analysis to figure on if this was the factor. Maybe we'll see his approval rating fall off a cliff and be able to point to this renovation demolition and whatever. But it does make me feel very conservative. Good. It makes me feel because I, I mean, I do feel this sense of like this isn't your, this is all of ours. Like all of our nation's history, like all of these historic things that occurred in these spaces.

And you just feel the power of a king to just knock it down without asking anyone's permission, without going to the public and seeing if that was something that people are interested in. Like, forget the money, but just, you know, you've now destroyed a space that cannot be rebuilt. And I can't remember. I wish I remember who was saying this, but there was another progressive who was saying, like, why does this bother me so much? And their analysis, and I think this could be the, I think there could be something to this, is that it is a physical representation of like Trump and his long legacy that is now going to be left. And I think that's why he wants it as well. And so, you know, when it was just one term, and this was some of the emotions that I think we all grappled with when Trump got reelected, when it's just one term, that can kind of be an aberration. You know, Hillary is a bad candidate and there was backlash to Obama and all these kind of weird, you know, Russian, whatever was going, call me and whatever was going on, when he gets reelected a second time, you're like, oh, this is not an average. And wins the popular vote. Yeah. This, this is actually where our country is now. And so I feel like this is sort of a physical manifestation of that,

which is why I find it, I do find it really disturbing. I think that's fine from like some left point of view. I'll just give you a more value neutral one, which is that it's the White House. It doesn't belong to you, doesn't belong to anybody, is that you are at the mercy of history in a certain sense, as in you assume the office. The office doesn't assume you. Yeah. And that's really what it's about is that the point is that the office is supposed to be bigger than everyone else. All previous renovations. You're a guest in our house. I know this is genuinely, it sounds cringe and quaint at this point to even talk this way because this is how they talk on MSNBC, but it is unironically true at a very base level of, no, it's the people's house. It is the White House. Now, previous

renovations that have happened include Harry Truman. By the way, it was super controversial. When he added the Truman balcony. It was not, people were not happy about it. Uh, they basically added, added it for the pleasure of the president. I guess I've, it's been, you know, 60, 70 years so we can get over it. Uh, at this point, I'm still not over it. But it's one of those where the whole point is, if you ever been there, it's not that nice. And that's actually, I used to hate it whenever I would work there. But I have come to appreciate the charm of the fact that it is kind of a dilapidated office building. I don't know if you saw this. There's this, um, there's this viral photo of Nick Sabin, who was the coach at Alabama, and he had this beautiful wooden

office with all of these books and things behind him. And it just looked so vintage as if a place where a person works. And then his successor, I think his name is Kalin DeBoer, came in and turned it into like a glass T-Mobile store. And by the way, the team isn't doing as well under the new... But there was something about that, which was just so physically jarring, you know, for many people. And that's kind of how I feel about this entire thing is just looking at it. It seems disconnected. And actually, frankly, even that ballroom is just so reminiscent of like the worst architectural design of the U.S. history. But if we are living in a second gilded age, maybe it makes sense. I mean, it does fit with that. And I think that's the other part that that

bothers me to is, you know, this is some of the money is coming from the like extortion that he's doing on these, you know, tech platforms. And I think some of the like YouTube, um, field money is going to the one of the things that I saw. Yeah, I think so. Double check that, but that was the headline that I saw. And so, but okay, what are, what is his time and focus and attention going to? Building out this hideous, gaudy, like, you know, gulfy meets Versailles meets Mar-Lago ballroom for a bunch of rich elites who can come and suck up to him and pay tribute and bring their gold bars or whatever it is to get their, you know, their goodies. And so, even like the purpose of it is gross, let alone the visuals of it. So, yeah, it does,

it does bother me. I am, I, the pictures of it are visually jarring. Is it going to sway the election near? I don't know about that. I'd like to believe it, but I don't know. Us in Northern Virginia, you never know. You'll stand up. You just never know. Look, what I would hope is it inspires a love of history. And part of the reason why, you know, watching the transformation of the Oval Office and of, you know, the ballroom or the East Wing and all of this is because at least previous presidents, some had a deep reverence for the things that actually happened in that room. And I've told this story before, but one of the things that, you know, really hit with me whenever I was interviewed Trump, it was maybe the first or second time is the first time I ever

went into the Oval Office, I was like, that's the Jack Kennedy shot, right, you know, at the desk. And I thought about Nixon and Kissinger preying on the floor right before his resignation or Eisenhower and where he would play his goal, you know, all these things you've read about for years and years and years. And then I'm looking at this man. I'm like, he doesn't think about any of that. He doesn't even know about it. Maybe, I don't know. Probably not. But, you know, or Jackson. Like, is this portrait of Jackson? I'm thinking about even the oval room itself, such an unusual shape and the evolution of how that kind of came to be, the Resolut desk, the HMS Resolution. These are all the things that are like rolling through my mind. Now, that can be bad. It doesn't necessarily

translate to political success or to great leadership or any of that. But in that moment, I was like, oh, he doesn't care about any of that. And, you know, it's clear, obviously, in this is that, you know, imprinting this view of, like, who America is, is kind of in his own form. So, yes, you're right in that it is a physical thing of Trump's legacy. But more broadly, I think it is, I don't know, I think it's like a loss of history and a venerance of something. You can't get that back. You can't get back the East Wing. And however it does, they say they're going to modernize it.

I don't want it to be modernized. It needs to stay relatively the same. That's kind of how we treat most of these places. It's like if anybody in Washington has ever been to the Hart Senate office building, it's a glass construction box. It looks like shit compared to the Russell Senate office building. It's marble. When you walk the halls, you see signs like this was John F. Kennedy's office. This was LBJ's office.

That's how it should be, in my opinion, just to ground people down to at least something that they are remotely connected to. I don't know. Yeah, I agree with you. It makes me very sad. It makes me very, very sad, especially for the future generations. You know, I had a dream. Because my wife and I, we'd done multiple tours, and we were talking recently, like, oh, we could take her to the White House. You know, and I'm like, now she wanted to get to see it.

That's right. Took that away from me. Yeah. One thing I will say about Nira's point is, I think if it was, like, Obama or Biden who did it, the Republicans would be able to make it. The right would be able to make this effective campaign issue. Yes, you're absolutely. Can the Democrats pull that off? I don't have that level of confidence.

I agree. I agree. In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down. Unlock elite gaming tech at Lenovo.com. Dominate every match with next level speed, seamless streaming, and performance that won't quit. So you can push your gameplay beyond performance

with Intel Core Ultra processors. For the next era of gaming, upgrade to smooth high-quality streaming with Intel Wi-Fi 6E and maximize game performance with enhanced overclocking. Win the tech search. Power up at Lenovo.com. 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. Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The forces shaping the world's economies and financial markets can be hard to spot. Even though they are such a powerful player in finance, you wouldn't really know that you are interacting with them. And even harder to understand. Donald Trump's trade war, 2.0, is only accelerating the process of de-dollarization, which in a way is jargon for people turning away from the dollar. That is where the big take.

from Bloomberg podcast comes in to connect the dots. How unusual is a deal like this? Unprecedented. Every weekday afternoon, we dive deep into one big global business story. The biggest story of the reaction of the oil market to the conflict in the Middle East is one of what has not happened. Katie, you told me that ETFs are your favorite thing. They are. Explain that.

Why is that the case? And unpack what it means for you. Our breakfast foods are consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsize indicators of inflation. Listen to the big take from Bloomberg News every weekday afternoon on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? So guess what, guys? Graham Platner's tattoo has made me more ride or die for him than ever. Let me explain my thinking here. So as Ryan and Emily covered yesterday, Maine Democratic Senate candidate, Graham Platner is under fire for a variety of old

Reddit comments and an extremely poor tattoo choice. So here is that tattoo revealed in a pick of Graham drunkenly serenating the crowd with Miley Cyrus's wrecking ball as a gag at his brother's wedding. Honestly, it's a good song. You guys should listen to it. Graham says he got the tattoo with a few of his buddies in the service during a drunken night of shore leave in Croatia. And it turns out it's not just a cool-looking skull and crossbones, but a Nazi insignia. Well, yesterday we received the update that he has already had that tattoo covered. Let's take a listen. and anti-Semitism are a long scourge on our society and a long scourge on our politics.

And I think it has no place in our world. For that reason, I have gone and gotten it covered up. Last night, I went to a tattoo parlor, and I got this to cover up the skull and crossbones. It's a Celtic knot with some imagery around dogs because my wife and Amy and I have two wonderful dogs that we love a lot. This far more represents who I am now,

I am now than even the skull and crossbones did, which I thought that it was. So now the tattoo is obviously still hideous visually, but no longer hideous symbolically. So what are we anti-fascist leftists and progressives to do with all of this? Well, the first and most important question to answer is, is this man actually a secret Nazi? Obviously, if the answer was yes, that would be disqualifying. But from the available evidence, the idea he's actually a Nazi seems utterly preposterous. Here, the likely, by the way, Palantir hacked Reddit leak is very useful. We can read through a wide variety of Graham's often-in-politic comments, which he made when he thought he had internet anonymity and no expectations of running for public office.

So what do we see in those comments? Well, some comments on sexual assault and race that are definitely not progressive for which Graham has expressed regret, and some comments proclaiming himself a psychedelic-taking communist and Antifa super-soldier, which would make him about the furthest thing possible from being a Nazi. For what it's worth, he was also a Michael Brooks fan, crediting the late socialist commentator with his political shift and mourning his untimely death. So between the fact that we actually have access to his edgiest shitposts and none of them are far right and the fact that I am personally married to a man who accidentally got a Metallica tattoo, while sober, I might add, but he thought it looked cool, so he just went for it, I do believe Graham's Croatia sure-leaf story and think we can confidently reject the theory that he is somehow a secret Nazi. For me, this makes the question of whether it continues supporting Graham or not, extremely simple and also vitally important. In fact, I genuinely believe that this Graham-Platner question is at the heart of what course the Democratic Party is going to take for the future.

Will establishment Democrats continue to limit the field to the most professionally boring and uninspiring people on the planet? Or will the Democratic base reject their smear tactics and force a new anti- oligarch direction? because if you are opening the gates to a broader range of candidates who haven't just been planning presidential run since they were like five like total psychos, you're going to get some warts. You're going to get some weird tattoos, some off-color remarks, some very messy life trajectories. The reward, though, is you get a party that doesn't give America the ick. As Emma Vigalin puts it, quote, Sensorious Hall monitor liberalism that refuses to accept growth in people unless you're a corporate centrist and all is forgiven, just ask Cuomo supporters, is far more of a threat to the Democratic Party. chances in the future than anything dug up on Graham Platner. And it's more than the Democratic Party's chances which are at stake here. Status quo neoliberalism has failed to deliver for people, and those failures are exactly what enabled the rise of fascism.

The question of whether the Democratic Party base can elevate new candidates with new profiles and most critically new politics is existential for the party and for the country as a whole. So Graham's tattoo also raises the question of what do we even consider to be a scandal? They want you to believe that a bad drunken tattoo is more scandalous than bad policy backing billionaires at the expense of ordinary people and support for genocide at the expense of our souls. We have to fight that view with everything that we have. In Maine currently, there's a choice between two leading candidates on the Democratic side. You've got the sitting governor, Janet Mills.

She's the choice of Chuck Schumer and the DSCC. As governor of Maine, she has opposed a millionaire's tax. She vetoed adding higher income tax brackets. She opposed hiking corporate taxes, but she did implement a cigarette tax, which will disproportionately hit the working class. Now, she did pick a fight against Trump, which I appreciate. But if it's not matched with a willingness to confront capital, it is not nearly enough. Mills also opposed local Israel divestment efforts in Maine.

She threatened to veto statewide divestment efforts. She's been silent on the genocide and just generally towed the lockses the lockstep. pro-Israel line. She also happens to be the least popular Democratic governor in the entire nation and would end her Senate term well into her 80s. Do you really believe that that is the type of candidate that Democrats should rally behind for the future of the party, let alone the country? Now, Graham supports a billionaire minimum tax, strongly supports Medicare for all, wants to surge federal government direct housing construction to deal with housing affordability, wants to end the forever wars, and especially to end the genocide and bring peace and justice

to Palestinians. Now, with no public profile or political office, he has built a grassroots movement, both in Maine and around the country, of people who are inspired by his model of politics. This was just last night, by the way. He routinely garners hundreds of cheering supporters to his events. So, guys, is he a risk? Sure. Could court more come out? Sure. But Maine Democrats have tried to beat Susan Collins with standard issue, safe choices before, and all of them very safely lost. There is also, I should mention, another candidate named Jordan Wood in the race who is responsible for a network of scam packs and running exploitative fundraising tactics who

has probably done more to harass Democratic voters and scam the amount of money than perhaps any other individual. He's at 1% right now, by the way. So I'm encouraged by what I've seen so far in response to Tattoo Gate. Congressman Rokana, Senator Sanders, Senator Heinrich, they're all standing behind Graham. Even a sort of centrist-ish Democrat, Ruben Gallego, did not throw Graham under the bus. Here are Bernie's most recent comments. Clip is a little long, but I couldn't cut any because you guys need all of this pure quintessential Bernie.

I do have a question about your endorsement of Graham Platner. I thought it was the American health care system, no? Well, it's something he talks about a lot, right? Okay. Well, let me just say a few words. Number one, I am impressed that Meteor is so concerned about the tattoo that Mr. Platna has. Meanwhile, as a result of Trump's massive cuts to Medicaid, the estimate is that if we don't change that, 15 million people are going to lose their health insurance.

50,000 people are going to die. Maybe equivalent to the importance of Mr. Platon, it's time too. In terms of Mr. Platner, this is a guy who served four terms of, four terms. as in combat he was a Marine four tours of duty he was a machine gun he saw friends die

he came out of that war as he is acknowledged with PTSD got good treatment at the VA got his life together this is a man who served his country who suffered who had some difficult moments who said things that he

He should not have said, and he has apologized for them. But I think if this country is about anything, it's about understanding that every person, me, you, everybody else has gone dark moments in our history, and we go on. I think the issues that Graham is talking about, the need to deal with massive income and wealth inequality, health care is a human right, raising the minimum wage, are the issues that are going to resonate in Maine, resonate all over. United States of America. So you're standing by your endorsement?

Absolutely. Can I ask you about the tattoo? Do you think it's necessary that he gets it removed or covered up? Look. Once again, we are dealing with a collapsing health care system. As a result of Trump's policies, 50,000 Americans may die unnecessarily every year. And you were asking me about whether or not a guy should get a tattoo removed? Sorry.

He said he was going to remove it. Classic Bernie. I also spent a good bit of time reading through the replies from the Normie Dem pod save audience under their interview with Graham. I didn't see a single negative one. In fact, I've actually seen more nervous lefties than liberals, possibly because of our past John Federman trauma, which I do understand. But let's be real, guys, Fetterman did have ideological red flags in the present day, not based on some old post. The biggest red flags were on Israel, of course, and also that whole trying to murder a random black guy in his neighborhood situation. Also worth remembering, though, that Fetterman has literal brain damage, which,

apparently made him basically a different person. So it does seem like a pretty unique situation. The other intelligent critique I've seen from lefties is just basically, listen, guys, we got to pick our battles, and the Nazi tattoo guy is just not worth it. Journalist Adam Johnson, for one, tweeted this, quote, Do you think it's wise to piss away capital defending someone with a Nazi tattoo, someone with little pedigree on the issues that matter, and was a blackwater murk?

Does this feel like a good use of our time and energy? To that, I would respond, yes. This is the absolute best use of our time and energy. It is an essential use of our time and energy, and I will die on this hill. And to be honest, the shit posting, but mostly leftist Reddit posts, actually kind of laid my fears on the Blackwater front, and that was the most concerning aspect of Graham's lore for me personally. But on the political capital front, with respect, I think this analysis is just wrong.

It's not how political capital works. There's not like a well of capital. The left holds in reserve, which we have to budget across a variety of candidates and causes. In fact, when we go in for a candidate and stick with them and succeed, our political capital and our political power grows. We didn't abandon Zoran when he wouldn't condemn globalized the intifada and was relentlessly smeared as an anti-Semite and a jihadist. And standing with him, even when he was under fire, only grew our collective power. In the same way, you cannot capitulate to Trump. You cannot capitulate to the establishment Democrats who

helped to bring us Trump. A reckoning is happening right now in the Democratic Party. They know it and we know it. The leadership has lost control of the normie liberal base, making the kind of political revolution that Bernie dreamed about actually may be possible. They are out there asking Cory Booker and Gavin Newsom about A-PAC. They forced reluctant leaders to back a shutdown. They didn't want to do it. But if the Democratic establishment is able to get us to abandon Graham, they will use this playbook over and over and over again on every candidate who poses even the slightest challenge to the pro-Oligar consensus. And guess what, guys? Not all of those candidates are going to be as impeccably and improbably squeaky clean as Zoran Mamdani appears.

yours to be. People are messy. If you are going to be a party of people and not a party of creepy skin robots, you're going to have to live with some dirt, or in this case, some ink. And Saugger, we got a poll out this morning. I think we have it. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breaking points.com. All right. We've talked far, far too long. So enjoy the show. We'll see you a Friday show tomorrow. In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you. Don't let them down. Unlock elite gaming tech at Lenovo.com.

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Lenovo, Lenovo. Johnny Knoxville here. Check out Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, my new true crime podcast from Smartless Media, Campside Media, and Big Money Players. It's the true story of the almost perfect crime and the Nimrods who almost pulled it off. It was kind of like the perfect storm in a sewer.

That was dumb. Do not follow my example. Listen to Crimless, Hillbilly Heist on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and on my new podcast, here we go again. We'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? Each week, I'm calling up my friends. like Bill Nye, Lily Singh, and Pete Buttigieg to talk about everything from the space race to movie remakes to psychedelics. Put another way, are you high?

Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to here we go again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.