Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/28/25: Kamala 2028 Run, Trump's 2026 Election Plot, NBA Gambling Scandal

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss Kamala floats 2028 run, Trump's plot for the 2026 midterms, NBA gambling scandal erupts.   Pablo Torre: https://x.com/PabloTorre    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Johnny Knoxville here. Check out Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, my new true crime podcast from Smartless Media, campside media, and big money players. It's the true story of the almost perfect crime and the Nimrods who almost pulled it off. It was kind of like the perfect storm in a sewer.

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So we'll find out soon. This person writes, My neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals. And now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they might be part of okay. Hold up. A real life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue, Dakota. Find out how it ends. Listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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. 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 breaking points.com. So we've got a number of pieces here on the direction of the Democratic Party. So Kamala Harris has been doing her little book tour and taking some interviews.

And apparently, she's seriously contemplating running for president. And again, guys, let's go ahead and take a listen to this. Gen Z and Latinos, in some numbers, moved across to Trump. You stayed in your comfort zone, didn't you? That was the Democrat's problem. I received 75 million votes from a variety of people.

But in the electoral college, you were not finished. I'm not finished. Are they going to see a woman in charge in the White House? In their lifetime, for sure. Could it be you? Possibly. Have you made a decision yet? No, I have not.

But you say in your book, I'm not done. That is correct. I am not done. Oh, my God. I don't know. I take from that that she is intending to run again. I want it. It's crazy to me, Zogger, because, I mean, number one, okay, how did your two presidential races go?

Number one, in the Democratic Party, you didn't even make it to the first votes. Okay. So that was your first time out of the gates when voters actually got to see you in debates and, you know, like how this was going to go. And they were like, this is not working for us. You had to drop out. Then you're handed the nomination after Biden has pushed down of the race. And you lose. And, you know, I'm sympathetic. Like, I think it was a very difficult hand she was dealt. But she also made some really key mistakes. And it's just incapable of being sort of like a normal person. And, you know, going out in the world, everything is poll tests. she doesn't really believe in anything. It's just like, let me put my finger in the wind and try to figure out where the electorate is. And people sense that. And now, like, I could have been open to, you know,

some growth and some development if she was in the fight now. But this is just, let me write a book and let me do some self-aggrandizement. At a moment when, you know, sort of like channeling a democratic base here, like they feel, and I feel the country is under imminent threat that there is all this horror that is being put in all these communities across the country, all of this crazy shit that's going on that we're covering every day, where have you been? Like, if you want to be a leader, that doesn't mean you just show, oh, here I am and look at my

resume and aren't I next in line? No, you actually have to lead. People want to see you out there fighting. They want to see you at an ICE protest getting arrested. Like, they want to see you at the Stop Oligarchy Tour. They want to see you rallying for Zoron. And all you're doing is your little self-promotional book tour. I mean, I find it utterly disqualifying, honestly, her absence and her lack of interest in what is happening in the country and the fights that are going on right now. And I have to think that the Democratic base is very much going to feel the same way. It's crazy to me how out of touch this lady is. Yeah, I don't know, though. But at the same time, if you look at the polls, she's always up there. She's got like four or five. The Democratic base,

while previously, you know, might be showing some fight and all of that, they still are deferential in some ways to previous party elites. Do they recognize – but do they recognize that the failure is Kamala's or do they just blame Trump? No, I think it's – I mean – I would like to know. I don't know. I genuinely think – like, you know, even with regard to the primary polls, already she's not number one anymore. No, yeah, that's true. Already, you know, Pete Gavin, AOC was number one in a recent poll. And Gavin in particular, you know, I think Gavin sucks and we play the A-PAC, like, oh, that's interesting clip. And I think he's going to run into, you know, a few brick walls himself.

But he is in the fight, you know, and the Democratic base certainly appreciates that. But no, if you look at their disgust with current Democratic Party leadership, you think they're going to go back to that well again, like the person who was a proven loser? Absolutely not. And yet the way this worksogger is like, I'm sure she has people around. her who were there just to like glaze her and prop her up and tell her she's amazing and that everybody still loves her and they're just waiting for her to you know come out and have her coronation or whatever because they profit like they're in position they're the consultants who are going to do the ad buys and place the media buys and get the cut the percentage off of that

and you know they know that she can raise some money from she's got all these donor connections or whatever and so they have a personal financial interest in telling her that the country wants her and that there's some interest in her running for president again. It's insane to me. Yeah, look, I hope you're right. I want it to be that way. I still am skeptical. I just think there's a weird reverence for these types of figures. There's a long history, unfortunately, of California Richard Nixon famously lost the election, you know, ran for governor, lost as Kamala apparently had thought about it and still was able to prevail in the primary and in the general election in 1968. So there is this weird thing that we have in this country of some sort of reverence.

I would hope that you are correct. But also there's the theory of spoiler, right, where she could have enough people. Here's my thing. Will enough people speak out vehemently against her? Elites from which they have some trust. Obama, you know, Biden even maybe. Pete Buttigieg, others who served with her who are like, this woman is incompetent. She lost as the presidency.

We can't go down that direction. I hope so. way Andrew Cuomo was... Yeah. He was abandoned. That's true. But he lost the primary. You know? Yeah. Exactly. I mean, but yeah, that's the thing. But heading into the primary and it's not like people spoke out for Zoran Mambanani. Everybody just stayed silent. I mean, I guess silence itself is something. That's what I'm saying. I don't know that it matters what Obama or, you know, certainly Joe Biden has to say about Kamala Harris.

I think the base is in a very, very different place now. And, you know, like, Grand Platner is a perfect example of this. We saw two polls that had him way up on Janet Mills. There's another poll that came up that had her up. But he did a town hall last night in a town of like 2,200 people and got 700 people there. And they were the most like normy, white hair liberal-looking Democratic-based voters that you could possibly imagine. It's just a different moment now. You know, they tried the Biden way. They tried the Kamala way.

And it failed. And at the end of the day, they're not going to be, you know, they're not going to listen to those folks. again, MSNBC has lost their credibility. All sorts of liberal outlets have lost their credibility. I truly think that they are in a very different place than they were last time around. And by the way, these are the voters that also at least had the good sense to reject her in 2020 as well before she even got to the, you know, got to the starting line. So, you know, I look, we'll see. But even if I just think about Gavin Newsom, like, I think Gavin Newsom, like, I think Gavin would eat her lunch.

And he has the same donor base. I want them to have a fight. Like, I want them to have to come out and be like, she's a. an abject failure, and we're not going down this path ever. They're not going to do that. Like, the elites in the party, they're not going to do that. But I don't think it matters. Like, the voters themselves will render the judgment.

And so, you know, Gavin has the same, these are donor creatures, like her and Gavin, these are establishment donor creatures. And he's a much better political animal and political, like, than she is. And they have similar donor bases both coming out of California. So if I even just think about him versus her, let alone the AOCs or whoever is to emerge over these coming years that are much more charismatic and much more finger on the pulse of where the Democratic base is. I don't think she's got a prayer. I truly hope so. I just remain cynical about some politics. And it's one of those where I want to see

the election status. Who knows where things are going to be in 2023? I could just, it's not that I count her out. It's I don't count out the machine. The machine is powerful. And at the very least, like they convinced this, like, you're saying the voters will weigh in. I'm like, they didn't in 2024, right? I mean, they just handed her ass the nomination and she literally got to run for president with no pushback. Even now, everyone can admit KJP was a disaster. We can admit Kamala, but there has there been like, remember, oh, I forgot the DNC, what is it called, the retrospective, the autopsy, how they won't examine Kamala. Like, nobody's blaming this woman. Nobody in the party even today can be like, you were a disaster. Nobody can say it.

the powerful. Yeah, but I just, you know, in the way that 2020 went down is in terms of like Bernie being defeated and everybody rallying around Biden was these elite figures and the media apparatus still had sway. And when they said Biden's our guy, the base flipped immediately. I mean, it was stunning. They do like that does not exist anymore, doesn't exist anymore. And Platner, I mean, a long way to go and I'm not saying that he's going to, I don't know what's

going to happen in Maine. but, you know, they threw everything they had at him. In a 2020 era, it would have been enough. He would have had to drop out. Like, you wouldn't even gotten to this place to start with, right? Janet Mills is here. She's the sitting governor of Maine. Of course we're going to back Janet Mills.

Like, who do you think you are? And so the fact that he can even stay in the race and is, you know, at least a 50-50 shot to be the nominee tells you it is a totally different day in the Democratic Party. Yeah, because I don't know if he's going to win either. My only question is a bet. No, you're right. Is that in the old days, he would have been done? Yeah.

Is that they would have been like, oh, other people. You have a Nazi tattoo. Yeah. Like, and you can stay in the race now as a Democrat, and people are flooding your town halls. That is a very different moment for the Democratic base. I wanted to get to get this because I love it. So Kathy Hochel, again, this is another sign that the things are very much shifting and influx in the, with the Democratic base.

Kathy Hochel felt the pressure to go and rally with Zoron at this rally was Bernie, AOC, Zoron and Bradlander and others and Kathy Hokel, who had positioned herself previously as this very like moderate centristy figure. And the crowd chants at her aggressively taxed the rich because Zoran needs the Albanese cooperation in order to fund things like free child care. And she has opposed that.

And so the crowd is aware of that. And so they're chaining tax the rich. Zoran has to kind of like come out and save her so she doesn't get booed off the stage. And so she gets asked about this moment. It's a very common Harris answer that she gives here. And she pretends she didn't hear. She didn't know that they were saying tax the rich. She thought they were saying like, let's go bills or something like that.

Let's take a listen to D2. I thought they were saying let's go bills. I wasn't sure when you're up there, I heard some noise. I heard a lot of tears. But later on it became clear to me that I know there's a passion for that. Oh my God. Let's go bills and Queens. Incredible. Incredible. It reminds me because remember what was it on Medicare for all? Kamala. like raised her hand saying that we should get rid of all private insurance and then she thought better of that. And then she, oh, I didn't hear the question. I didn't understand. There's also the infamous fuck Joe Biden chance that turned into Let's Go, Brandon. So there's been a lot of those there. Everyone, anyway, look, again, I'm newer to football, but let's go bills and

queen. Come on, all right. On a day when the Jets won, get the fuck out of here. Yeah, you know what they were saying. And she even responded. She was like, I hear you. Like, the way she responded, indicated, she understood what the crowd was ultimately chanting at her. This is an interesting clip, too, the Morning Joe creatures coming out, and Joe Scarborough is sort of like accepting the rise of Zoran, Mom, Donnie. This is D3. Let's listen. Mom Donnie, there I did it right, and they've been Bernie Sanders. And what do they have in common?

They have a populist message, and yes, people are going to say, oh, they're socialists or socialists, socialists. Yeah, they said that about Barack. Obama, too, and he kicked Republicans' ass twice. So it's that populist message that they're putting out there that even, there are times that even Steve Banner goes, yeah, what AOC's saying there, I agree with. And a lot of people, like in the populist wing of the MAGA party, agree with a lot of that stuff, too. Same thing with Lisa Kahn. And what she was doing about breaking up monopolies.

There is a lane for populist Democrats to run in and to win. Lisa Khan. He's a big Lisa Khan fan. Lisa Khan fan. Jesus. Amazing stuff. But, I mean, for him to, you know,

give Zoran, not back Cuomo or stay neutral or whatever, I mean, this man hated Bernie Sanders back during both of his runs. So, again, shows you he's trying to have his, you know, finger in the wind of where things are old. Well, he's in New York City resident. He wants to stay on the good side.

And, you know, we'll see. I do think it's all interesting. Actually, he probably lives in New Jersey. I don't know, but he lives in Connecticut. You don't think he's a Manhattan guy? I think he's a Connecticut guy. He does give me Connecticut guys. I'm going to look it up while you're talking.

I don't know. At the same time, him and Mika are so into the social scene. I kind of think they are, so here's my theory, because I know that they have a house in Florida. They are six-month-in-one-day people in Florida. And the rest of the time, Manhattan, Penn. Oh, damn. I would have guessed. I would have guessed Manhattan penthouse for five months in whatever, 29 days for tax dodging status. They do also have a place in Florida.

Okay. All right. See, I knew that at least. Yeah. Yeah, let's stick with this, though, because I think this is fascinating. This kind of gets to the Soron point. Let's put this new chart up on the screen. This is from a new kind of centrist platform thing called deciding to win. And they put out a bunch of polling on the Democratic Party. And I thought this was absolutely fascinating. This is the change in the frequency per 1,000 words of select terms in the party platform from 2012 to 2014. So the mention of jobs from 2012 percentage change to 2014 was minus 47%. Economic is minus 48%.

Middle class was minus 79%. Economy minus 50. Work minus 19. Veteran minus 31. Criminal, minus 30. Small business, minus 23. Equity, plus 766. Reproductive plus 766. LGB plus 144. Guns plus 725. Climate plus 150. And white, black, Latino, up 11,000 or 1100% in percentage change in the Democratic platform. By the way, another thing that they note, just to kind of the managerial, bureaucratic creep of the Democratic Party platform is, it just became super long. It was pages and pages and pages long. And what I thought was so instructive, I think I borrowed this from Josh Barrow,

one of the best things Trump did for the Republican Party platform is he made it like two pages. He was like, we're going to make America great, safe, and awesome again. And that's it. No policies, like really inside of it. And it was deeply, like it was short. It was understandable. What this kind of demonstrated to me

was all of those like constituent check marks around land acknowledgements, trans, LGBT. immigration, you can see the job all starting to go down in there. Like, that was the cultural takeover over any economic message. And fundamentally, like, that's what went wrong for them. I just did that event with Hassan Piker. Even he agrees with me. He's like, yeah, liberals use this bullshit to get away from talking about even the most, like, basic problems of Americans. And, like, that's why they lost. I mean, Sagar, look at what they're trying to do to Zoron, like, right now in the New York private. Like, oh, he's not, he doesn't care about Jewish people enough. And, you know,

he's not going to protect. Yeah, you're right. You know, I mean, they have never stopped doing, they're still doing it. Even as they're still blaming the, oh, it's the left's fault that the Democratic Party went to woke. I've seen Liz Smith talking about this online. And now they're trying to, you know, cancel Graham for like his old Reddit posts and his tattoo and cancel Zoron because he was insufficiently like whatever with the, you know, didn't say whatever magic words they want him to or condemn whatever magic freeze they want him to. This is, this is the liberal playbook. Now, I'm not going to say, so there's the.

the originators of this direction, because they saw that post-financial collapse, coming into the later part of the Obama years, you can see this economic discontent, you can see the rise of this like Bernie-style populist energy in the party. And they've got to block it. And rather than, you know, saying, oh, well, they realize that just selling the same old centrism isn't going to work. So Hillary in particular, of course, Ryan wrote the book on this literally, Hillary in particular, I'm going to sort of position myself like I'm actually to the left of Bernie because he doesn't care enough about racism. He doesn't care enough and talk enough about sexism and breaking up the big banks isn't going to end racism. And that is what she uses aggressively to defeat Bernie and his movement and tag his followers as toxic Bernie bros who are misogynistic and racist and sexist. So they roll out this playbook. Now then the Bernie Sanders wing adopts a lot of of this language as well. So they sort of join in this project. So then you have a whole of party project that is in this very, you know, cultural identity direction. Of course, Bernie always holds on

to like his core populist values, but adopts a lot more of this language. But it really does come from liberals trying to defeat the left. And again, we know that because they're literally still using that playbook to this day. So I do think I have, it's a longer conversation about this whole study that they did. It's, you know, it's a lot of centrists like Biden. people and whatever that put this out. There's a longer conversation about that. But this chart in particular, I think, is very useful and very instructive over the reason why people rightly felt that this party is really not focused on economic issues. They, you know, have abandoned their commitment to delivering for the working class and, you know, are, you know, talking about things that

are not core to my life and feel disconnected from me and that I may, you know, really disagree with. people are not crazy to feel that way is the bottom line. A hundred percent. You know, the other thing is, is if you look at the most unpopular Democratic positions from the same graphic, number one, is the least popular position is abolish the police. Number two

is prisons. Number three, provide free health care to illegals. Four, lowering the voting age to 16. Five, cutting police budgets by 10. Six, getting rid of tracking in schools. Seven, increased refugee admissions. 10, restore affirmative action and college admissions. Like, all of these are

cultural policies. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. And it's one of those, yeah, no shit that the right wins. I've been trying to say this now on the show for like five years. I'm like, if you're going to cling to this stuff, you just have no idea how you're able to lose it. You know, there's a fascinating new polling as well from the argument magazine. Yes, I know, cringe, centrist, et cetera, but polling is polling and we're allowed to discuss it. They even say on immigration, the vast majority of the concerns around immigration are driven from crime and from disorderly conduct. That's what people just like, they don't seem to get that disorder and the fact of like encouraging

more criminal policy, the fact of lack of control over life is a huge reason why conservatives and right wingers win elections in this country. I have literally been trying to hammer it home for years. Culture is a huge part of it. Everybody says, oh, we shouldn't talk about it. But, like, if that's ultimately what becomes probably the sole thing that kind of is really up to people in power, then no shit we're all going to fight about it. And it's like one of those where, you know, I still don't think that the Democratic Party has particularly learned their lesson. Or at the very least now currently.

Like, I'm personally skeptical. I could see it still going in that direction. Well, the view I have is that you, like, I really think that the analysis is where you just, oh, okay, let's pull everybody's position and let's try to locate ourselves in the center. Like, that is not how Trump won. In fact, this like thing that just came out, which is overall the message is like, that's why Democrats need to be more centrists. That's the takeaway, which, you know, we get these similar analysis a million times.

It reminds me very much of the autopsy post-2012 when Mitt Romney lost and there's a similar Republican like, we need to move to the center. We got to do something different on immigration. We're losing Latinos. We're never going to win them back. And then Trump comes in as like, fuck you, I'm going to be radical on these issues, actually. and completely transforms the electorate because he has a forceful narrative,

and he's not out there polling his, but he takes a lot of positions that are wildly unpopular. But he has a story that he is selling that made sense to a lot of people, and he sells it aggressively, and people feel like, oh, and he's gonna fight for, like, I believe that he's gonna say the things

and do the things that he needs to do to write the wrongs and allow the heroes of his particular story to succeed. You guys know all the ways that I think that story is bad and wrong, etc. But he has one. Democrats don't. Instead, they do these analyses and they look at the poll and they try to situate themselves in the middle rather than telling a story and demonstrating people that are going to actually fight for something that makes sense, that lands,

that has a logic that resonates in people's lives. So that's why some of these analyses are really like, it's interesting to get the information. And there's, you know, I'm not saying it's like not useful at all. But I think that way of doing politics is actually the way the Democratic Party has been trying to do politics, assuming the public sentiment is static, assuming this is the way that people actually choose their leaders. And it's just not how politics actually works. Very true. Absolutely right. And I'm glad you said it. I do think, though, that what the graphic proves is that the cultural mentions actually became the dominating thing that they became no. Agree. Yeah, I agree. That's, that's all I'm really just pointing out is that how much of these are

an albatross around the neck and because they still don't really stand for much. I'm personally still skeptical going into the midterm elections that that's happening because again, you know, at this point, the Tea Party was an organized force. There were dozens of candidates all across the country. There was money behind it. And everyone says, oh, that's just because, like, I'm sorry, you guys don't understand. Yes, there was money behind it. There were literally organic chapters rising up across the nation, you know, in the same way

that No Kings was. But the problem is that no Kings doesn't have a policy platform. Like they don't have an ass. They don't have anything. They're basically just anti-Trump. And anybody could be anti-Trump, from Dan Goldman to Graham Platner. That doesn't mean anything. So if you don't stand particularly for something, then how does this work in 2020s 8 when Trump is gone?

Or if he's not running or whatever again, how does that manifest, right? That'll be the true battle. And I'm just not sure, even with these Tea Party candidates, like what do they really stand for. You could be a Platner. You could be, I mean, there's going to be some Democrat out there that wins in an R plus 25 district. Spanberger, right? You could argue that she could be whatever, like a banner. She is like underperforming, though. Yeah, I can listen. I'm right. But it's one of those where you could technically say it. CIA Democrat. Yeah, don't definitely say it. But I mean, we'll move on. This conversation will continue. But I think Zoran is proof point number one. I think

the midterms will be proof point. Number two, we'll see what happens there, what type of candidates are able to come out of primaries. You know, if Graham beats the sitting governor of Maine, it's going to be huge. That would be a huge indication. You know, Abdul Al-Saiyat, of course, in Michigan is another one. We're watching closely, you know, what happens with with Choycott. There's a bunch of different candidates like this that are going to be very interesting to watch. So that'll be another test point. But the ultimate test will be, of course, in 2028, picking the next leader of the party. It was going to be 2028. By the way, last thing, all eyes, New Jersey. I'm very interested in New Jersey in that governor election.

They are tied for one point right now. If Republican wins in the state of New Jersey, that's actually going to be crazy. Here we go. 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? You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies, but I'm also an author, a White House staffer, and as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host.

Along the way, I've made some friends who are, experts in science, politics, and pop culture. And each week, one of them will be joining me to answer my burning questions. Like, are we heading towards another financial crash like in 08? Is non-monogamy back in style? And how come there's never a gate ready for your flight when it lands like two minutes early? We've got guests like Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Lili Singh, and Bill Nye. When you start weaponizing outer space, things can potentially go really wrong. Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now because it is. 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. I live below a cult leader and I fear I've angered her. Well, wait a minute, Sophia. Adia knows she's a cult leader. Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast, so you'll find out soon. This person writes, My neighbor's been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals, and now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they may be part of a cult? Hold up, Sophia. A real-life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue. But according to this person, contractors are tearing down the patio to find out what's going on with their ceiling, and her neighbors are not happy.

Well, she needs to report them ASAP. She did! And now they've been confronting her in really creepy ways. all the time. So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. What's up everybody? This is Snacks from the Trap Nerds podcast, and we're bringing you the horror every week all October long. Kicking off this month, I'll be bringing you all my greatest fear-inducing horror games from Resident Evil to Silent Hill, me and Tony bringing back fire

team on Left for Dead 2. And we're just going to be going over some of the greats. Also in October, we'll be talking about our favorite horror and Halloween movie and figure out why black people always got to die further. The umbral reliquary invites any and all fooling, brave

enough to peruse its many curiosities. But take heed. All sales are final. Weekly horror side quests written and narrated by yours truly. With a full episode read and a commentary special. And we will cap it off with

horror movie battle royale. Jason versus Freddie. Michael Myers versus the 80th thing with the little tongue muster. October, we're doing it Halloween style. Listen to the Travenor's podcast from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Well, friends, we have arrived. It is time to fully sound the alarm about the midterm elections and whether voters will actually get to have their say in anything approaching a fair or meaningful way. So, in a recent interview, Steve Bannon, understandably, we got a lot of of attention for insisting Trump would be president again in 2020 because he is a, quote, vehicle of divine providence. But in that same interview, Bannon also had something to say about

the U.S. Congress, which is, of course, directly relevant for the midterm elections. I think that to avoid actual civil conflict, which I think you're seeing right now the beginning of the harbinger of it, if you want to stop that, you have to bind together tighter. We as a populist, nationalist movement, it's a MAGA movement. We need to do, like the redistricting fights, we need to get, this is why I was down to Texas, we need to get the house in a situation that is permanently defendable by the MAGA movement, right? So it's a blocking mechanism. And take that, like I said, you move maximalist strategy with a sense of urgency and you seize the institutions. And that's what we're doing right now. I don't see, I don't see how that is a

recipe for diffusing this crisis. I think that what happens is when people feel shut out of power and interest groups cannot get representation and cannot get an input into the way that policies made, that's precisely when you end up with civil war. I disagree. Because there is no certain of it. Seize the institutions get the House in a situation where it is permanently defendable by the MAGA movement. So is Bannon just blowing smoke here? After all, he's not Trump. He's not a Trump official either. In fact, if you look, though, at everything the Trump administration is saying and doing, it is undeniably clear, they are in the midst of executing a sophisticated plot in an attempt to rig the midterm elections in favor of Republicans. This plot has several

different elements and, of course, no guarantees of success. But we need to grapple with what we are facing right now. So I'm going to take time to go through each of the various elements. Top line, though, first element is personnel. Federal government divisions dealing with election cybersecurity and civil rights violations have been gutted and replaced with 2020 election, deniers from the stop-the-steel fraud. Second, executive orders. Trump has signed several executive orders seeking to consolidate control of election mechanics, voter rolls, and even election machines in his hands. A Republican operative, by the way, now owns Dominion voting. Third, gerrymandering, Trump is pressuring Republican states to redraw maps to block out Democrats and is getting

a major assist from the Supreme Court most likely. Fourth, threats. Trump is sending election monitors to California, New Jersey, deploying National Guard in blue cities, and threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act. All of this is occurring as he repeatedly insists elections are rigged, undocumented immigrants vote illegally, and mail-in ballots are fraudulent. Taken together, you can see they are serious. They are operating on a variety of fronts. They are unwilling to accept the verdict of voters. So let's start in depth with personnel. According to New York Times, Trump has installed a number of Stop the Steel wackos in key election-related roles after gutting departments which previously dealt with election integrity and rights.

So several of these new officials come from the so-called election integrity network. This is a far-right group at the heart of inventing lies during Trump's effort to steal the election in 2020. Now, in the newly, in the administration, in the newly created election integrity position at the Department of Homeland Security, Trump has installed a woman by the name of Heather Honey. She is a stop-the-steal nut who immediately jumped on official government calls when she was appointed to spread wild conspiracies about rigged voting machines. Prior to her appointment, she floated invoking a national emergency in order to gain control over state voting. Another wacko, a guy named Kurt Olson, has also been brought into the Trump administration to investigate the supposedly stolen 2020-2020 election. Just in case you were wondering if they had given up on those old lies, Olson helped cook up my pillow CEO Mike Lindell's 2020 rigged election delusions.

In addition to them, you've got the former DeKalb County Georgia Republican chair, Marcy McCarthy is her name. She was appointed to be director of public affairs at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or SISA. Marcy was at the heart of spreading Georgia voting machine conspiracies back in 2020, but perhaps even more critically. She was involved in purging thousands of legitimate voters from the roles in Georgia in 2024 in an effort that resulted in tens of thousands of voters losing their ability to vote in what appeared to be a racially biased manner. Now, that experience of Marcy's might be particularly relevant when you consider the election-related executive orders that Trump has been signing. So, back in March, Trump signed an executive order mandating more stringent IDs, recertifications

of voting machines under new rules that literally none of the existing machines currently comply with, and perhaps most troubling, this executive order granted Elon's doge access to voter rolls for quote-unquote fraud audits. Now, less you think that with Elon's departure, this aspect would be dropped, The Trump Justice Department is demanding that states provide them with their voter rolls an action that many even red states have actually resisted so far. The Trump DOJ has sent demands to 30 states already with intent to send to all 50. What's more?

They've already sued eight different states for refusing to hand over their voter rolls so far. An additional executive order seeks to end mail-in balloting, which of course is used more often at this point by Democrats, and reiterates the commitment to get rid of every existing voting machine. About those voting machines, by the way, you remember all the furor around Dominion voting machines supposedly rigged in 2020 by the ghost of Hugo Chavez or some such nonsense? Well, that company has now been bought by a Trump ally, the former Republican elections director in St. Louis. And in the announcement of the purchase, this guy made a point of nodding towards that Venezuela conspiracy and of saying he was going to prioritize complying with Trump's

executive orders. Dominion is being renamed Liberty vote now. Now, perhaps this guy is just trying to rebrand, trying to pander to the conspiracy nuts in the Maga Base, but half of the voting machines in the country are Dominion, and they are now under partisan ownership. Next, we've got, of course, the mass gerrymandering push coming directly from the White House. Three states, Missouri, North Carolina, and Texas, they've already drawn new maps and more heavily favor Republicans. Five more states are considering following suit, and a sign of what a priority this is for the regime, J.D. Vance, has visited Indiana twice to pressure lawmakers to draw new maps,

and Trump spoke directly with Indiana Republicans earlier this month. Just yesterday, Governor Brown called an emergency session to consider the president's demand. In addition, the Supreme Court looks set to deliver a major assist on this front, striking on parts of the Voting Rights Act, which would plausibly allow Republicans to eliminate roughly a dozen seats currently held by Democrats. Let's go ahead and put this chart up on the screen. So Nate Cohn did this analysis, and He found that the upshot of all of this gerrymandering, when you take into account democratic attempts to retaliate in places like California is that it could take Democrats winning the popular vote by as much as five points or six points in order to take back the House.

Five point popular vote wins. Those are the stuff of modern day waves. We're talking the Obama wave in 2008, the Tea Party wave in 2010. This slanted playing field, it doesn't make a House majority impossible for Democrats, but But it does make it very, very difficult. And that is, of course, before you consider all the other efforts that I'm tracking here today to shape who can vote and how. Now, the last category of election rigging activities is both the most ominous and the most

vague. And that is the threats which are emanating from this White House. Under this category, I place Trump's consistent rhetoric about stolen elections, his use and abuse of military, and his promise to send election monitors into California and into New Jersey. Just yesterday, Trump posted this on true social. He said, what's worse? The NBA players cheating at cards and probably much else, or the Democrats cheating on elections. The 2020 presidential election being rigged and stolen is a far bigger scandal. Look what happened to our country when a crooked moron became our president. We now know everything. I hope the DOJ

pursues this with as much gusto as befitting the biggest scandal in American history. if not, it will happen again, including the upcoming midterms. No mail-in or early voting. Yes, to voter ID. Watch how totally dishonest the California prop vote is. Millions of ballots being shipped, get smart Republicans before it is too late. So consistent with this baseless claim that California is rigging the ballot initiative to determine whether they can redistrict, Trump has announced.

He is sending DOJ election monitors into both California and New Jersey as a, blatant intimidation tactic. And of course, as you know, he has sent the National Guard into multiple blue cities and is flirting with invoking the Insurrection Act. And Secretary of War, Pete Heggsath, won't deny the development of a rapid response military force that could be deployed in all 50 states before the midterms. Secretary Hegeseth, sir, a memo circulating on social media details the establishment of a National Guard Response Force that's going to be trained in crowd control and civil unrest and deployed in all 50 states by April of 2026. Can you verify the authenticity of

that memo? And do you have any more information on the operations? I'm not going to answer particulars on something that may be in the planning process, but we definitely do have multiple layers of National Guard response forces, whether it's in each state, whether it's regionally, whether it's Title 10, active duty, whether it's Washington, D.C. We've got a lot of different ways that constitutionally and legally, we can employ Title 10 and Title 32 forces, and we will do so when necessary. So again, just so we're clear, we're talking here about a 50-state rapid response force that just happens to be in place in time for the midterms.

Just all of this sound crazy? I don't know, guys, using national emergencies to do wild stuff is kind of just how this administration operates. That's their whole shit. Not to mention Trump is the guy who literally already tried to steal an election, and they already hired a lady who floated using a national emergency to control elections. By the way, they've also got a pretty powerful motive. The more crimes they commit, more backlash they stoke, the more existential it is for them

to hold onto power and never let go. You don't think Stephen Miller knows Democrats want him to spend the rest of his life rotting in prison? The Trump administration are engaged in an all-out war against their political adversaries in an attempt to seize long-term control. That's what Bannon means when he says seize the institutions and create a permanent, defendable, MAGA majority. And what's to stop them at this point?

The Supreme Court, which has handed them 23 and 28 decisions on the shadow docket, the media, which is like being all bought up by the Zionist pro-Trump Ellison's or threatened with lawsuits to comply, the Republican House majority, come on, don't make me laugh. How about the Democratic House minority? That'll make me cry. It is ultimately on us. We need to understand what's happening. We need to track it.

We need to educate our fellow citizens who may or may not share our political beliefs. but I hope are at least somewhat interested in continuing the very imperfect experiment that we have here with democracy because whatever the public is willing to accept, that is exactly what we are going to get. And so Sager lengthy and a little tedious, thank you for bearing with me, but I wanted to put all together. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breaking points.com. Here we go. Hey, I'm Kelpen. 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? You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies, but I'm also an author, a White House staffer, and as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host. Along the way, I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics, and pop culture. And each week, one of them will be joining me to answer my burning questions. Like, are we heading towards another financial crash, like in 2008? Is non-monogamy back in style? And how come there's never a gate ready for your flight when it lands like two minutes early? We've got guests like Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Lily Singh, and Bill Nye. When you start weaponizing outer space, things can potentially go really wrong. Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now, because it is. 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. I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her. Well, wait a minute, Sophia. How do you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast, so you'll find out soon. This person writes, my neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals, and now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder.

I think they may be part of a cult? Hold up, Sophia. A real-life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue. But according to this person, contractors are tearing down the patio to find out what's going on with their ceiling, and her neighbors are not happy.

Well, she needs to report them ASAP. She did! And now they've been confronting her in really creepy ways all the time. So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everybody? This is Snacks from the Trabner's podcast, and we're bringing you the horror every week all October alone.

Kicking off this month, I'll be bringing you all my greatest fear-inducing horror games, from Resident Evil to Silent Hill, me and Tony bringing back by our team on Left for Dead, too, and we're just going to be going over some of the greats. Also in October, we'll be talking about our favorite horror and Halloween movie, and figure out why black people always got to die further. Reliquary invites any and all fooling, brave enough, to peruse its many curiosities.

But take heed, all sales are final. Weekly horror side quests written and narrated by yours truly. With a full episode read and a commentary special. And we will cap it off with horror movie battle royale. Jason versus Freddie. Michael Myers versus the 80 thing with the little tongue muster. October, we're doing it Halloween style. Listen to the trapners podcast from the

Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Joining us now is Pablo Torre. He is a journalist. He is the host of Pablo Torre finds out. He is taking the sports world by storm. And for our purposes, he is an expert and one of the few actually doing some deep dives in the sports world. So Pablo, thank you so much for joining us. A lot of respect to your honor. Of course. Thanks for having me. I have too much to say, probably about all the things you're interested in, but happy to try. Well, we want to hear all of that. I have personally just watched with amazement at the coverage of this NBA gambling scandal. Let's go ahead and put this up here on the screen, some of your own reporting that we can share with our audience.

I'm sure they've heard a little bit here about the initial indictments in the NBA Chauncey and the poker games. A number of former pro athletes played at a private poker games organized by those indicted by the DOJ in Operation Royal Fush. one of them was Kevin Garnett in 2019. There are a number of other names who you list, Pablo. Why don't you break some of that down? And also just tell us how existential this is to the NBA. Yeah, so big picture first, and I'll tell you about some of the names that I've been reporting

that haven't been in the indictment for reasons that I think make sense and are also a bit chin-scratching. The story here to me is that the NBA set up an incentive structure. One of the first things that Adam Silver did as commissioner of the league, and he was hailed, almost welcomed as a savior of the sport, in part because he did two things. Number one, he orchestrated the transfer of power from Donald Sterling, a vowed racist, ban for life, to Steve Balmer, another character I've been investigating in a separate story, which I have too much to say about with aspiration and the

clippers and the salary capser convention that I've been reporting on. But the other thing Adam Silver did that fall was right an op-ed in the New York Times in which he said, gambling should be legalized and regulated. He was the first commissioner to come out and say that. This was one of his first acts in terms of taking over the sport. And so that incentive structure, which we've seen happen, and you guys have covered it as well as anybody, infiltrating the entirety of sports and sports media has created these incentives in which there is a menu of almost micro bets, which now carry legal markets for prop bets like unders on Terry Rozier, meaning you can bet on the underperformance of an obscure player like Jonte Porter, who has since been banned for life, by the way. And so all of this

is fruit from that tree. All of it is fruit from the Adam Silver op-ed to Jante Porter, group chat, and now banned for life scandal into what happens when inside information that could be seemingly microscopic in its scope. Will this player play in this game? Will this guy leave this game? Because he is in coordination with you, perhaps, according to the indictment, trying to also profit off of those incentives. All of this comes together. in a way that feels, if not existential, I think, the story of the era of money in sports that we live in. And so Kevin Garnett, Ty Lou, the head coach of the Clippers, also a character who's been

spotted at these games, one game in particular, April 2019, where Chauncey Billups was, Antonio Gates, former pro football player, Hall of Fame player. I'm not alleging that those guys were of the Chauncey Billups level in terms of what they knew or did not know, but they were used as whales, face cards, the government calls them, to draw in bettors in the poker world, which happens to be connected deeply with, of course, the world of sports betting. Right. And let's talk a little bit more about the specifics here, because some of the specifics are wild.

You say maybe those guys aren't the level of understanding potentially alleged of Chauncey Billups, who appears to have had knowledge that the games were rigged. These games were being set up by some of the sort of, like, classic New York. York mafia families. So give us some of the details about what was going on with these games and the way that they had them rigged so that they were, you know, raking in $7 million in the context of these rigged poker games. Yeah. So the connective tissue between these two indictments, and there are terrible puns all over this story, by the way, guys. So it's Operation Royal Flush for the poker stuff is Operation Nothing But Bet for the sports betting stuff. But the reason I went

back to the Jante Porter scandal is because the characters who overlap, some of those names you know, and I reported on this in July, because they were on that group chat with Jante Porter. These are all poker guys, poker associated guys, who turn out in one case to be also mob associated. And so in these poker games, Crystal, we're talking about X-ray machines that are hiding under the tables. We're talking about sunglasses that can read marked cards.

We're talking about rigged deck shuffling machines. That is the allegation in particular to Chauncey Billups and that. April 2019 game in Las Vegas, we're talking about technology in which people who were conspiring to rig poker games using NBA players as co-conspirators as whales to draw in the competition were also, according to these two indictments, in league with Chauncey Billups, identified as co-conspirator number eight in the sports betting indictment, to also get information around which players on his team that he is the current head coach. for the Portland Trailblazers would be playing in a game.

And so organized crime is an ancient story when it comes to secret poker games. You've seen a zillion movies along those lines. What's different is that there is now a legal sports betting market in which those same characters, maybe because according to the indictment and according to my reporting, you have athletes who've always loved gambling and card games, also an ancient non-surprise, might be in debt and or in cooperation with some of the unsavory characters that, you know, Cash would tell referred to as La Cosa Nostra, which is the literal Italian mob. And isn't that what happened with Jonte Porter that he was in debt to these guys?

And that's part of how this all goes down? Yeah, the reporting that I've been doing suggests that Jante Porter got into debt with a man named Amar Awade, who is identified in these indictments as a guy named Flapper. poker or Flappy, aka a mob associate. And the question of, and again, this is ancient, what happens when you get in debt to someone like that? They don't just want the repayment of the money. They say, I have another way that you can help us out.

And Jonte Porter, a truly obscure backup that no one would have known otherwise, ended up according to exhaustive group chat records, he ended up taking himself out of games, letting them know ahead of time, Sager, and that ended up being this thing that blew up the NBA last year. You know, Pablo, what I want to focus on is to zoom out on the system because, and let's put this up here on the screen from Politico, Adam Silver is now facing calls to come before Congress. By the way, he should because one of the things that you and I talked about previously, Pablo, is that the NBA cleared Terry Rozier of all wrongdoing. They did an internal investigation. They allowed him to play. And they said, hey, we did an investigation. He did nothing wrong. When the Department of Justice now comes out and says, actually, that's completely false, how can we ever have any faith in the word of the NBA, of the NFL, of these private sports leagues, which are directly in league with the betting companies? Like, what does this tell us about Adam Silver's credibility at this point? The conflict of interest here seems very obvious. And for anybody who's not a sports fan,

keep that lens of what should a normal business do here if they're faced with any scandal. In this case, in sports and the NBA, it turns out you investigate yourself and you therefore have the ability to turn the dial on how big of a public scandal is this. And of course, the NBA has seen under Adam Silver, I mean, look, they have taken the money on the table at the expense of what I would call various risks to its brand. And I'll just keep it at that level because I want to speak the language of what these corporations and sports and commissioners speak. They want to minimize the scandal and damage to their brand.

The bet that Adam Silver has made is that by getting into business, with legalized gambling, in fact, advocating for it, he could make the cost-benefit analysis work such that the benefits, the money on the table, are worth that roll of the dice, so to speak. And so when it comes to what did they know and when did they know it, the NBA, I talked to Terry Rozier's lawyer

who told us, they cleared us. The NBA clear Terry Rozier. It's why he was able to play and get traded to the Miami Heat, by the way, in a transaction that did result in an eight-figure salary pay out from the Miami Heat and a first round pick, which is for those not in sports, a big deal. And then the question is, so why didn't you, the NBA, the Heat are complaining, why didn't you tell us what you were looking into? Why didn't you keep the investigation going

if, in fact, a federal government was going to continue it, and according to my sources, never cleared Rozier, as is obvious based on the indictments. And so you have, in this case uniquely, I would say, a body with subpoena power in the government that has the ability to, by virtue of their interest in the story, hold the NBA to account when it comes to what did they want to know and when did they know it? In most cases in sports, Zaggar, as you know, there isn't that level of check. There are journalists, right? So that's what ostensibly I am trying to do.

But in the public perception, when you have federal indictments, it puts, with a real strong underline, what is actually the conflict of interest to play. Yeah, and so just for people who, you know, maybe don't know the incidents and out of the case, what Terry Rozier is accused of is basically like faking a foot injury in the middle of a game coming out early and then, you know, people who bet that he would underperform his normal statistics that you know of, I think, hundreds of thousands of dollars were able to cash in

because he planned to go out early and plan to sort of like, not throw the game, but throw his own statistics. Which raises the question, you know, how much of this, how much of the problem here is with these problems? bets, right, with the ability to bet on these very specific outcomes because then a player doesn't have to throw a whole game, they just have to underperform a little bit or just have to do, you know, something that, you know, like whatever it is that you're able to bet on. How much of the problem is, is just those prop bets?

And also, like, what's your sense of how widespread this is, are we talking a few bad apples or is this just like, you know, during the Barry Bond's era of baseball where it's just like, oh, yeah, everybody's juicing, that's just how the game is at this point. Yeah, that's why I framed it in terms of incentives, because what is happening is that the legal betting market and the scandals that crop up have all been around prop bets hitting on unders. So just for people who don't know how it used to be, if you ever watched a mob movie, right, like back in the day, you would need to fix a game by fixing the outcome of the game, meaning you need five players on one team to sort of coordinate in some fashion such that you actually impacted who won or lost. that's what typically bookies, the guy on your corner in your neighborhood in a dark alley, that's what they would allow you to bet on. In this era, because there's this exhaustive, almost like cheesecake factory length menu

of like, wait a minute, I can bet on pretty much anything. There are a zillion pages here for every player. You can bet on what color dildo gets thrown on the floor at a WNBA game. I've been sounding the alarm on this forever, Pablo. And, you know, one of the things it kind of gets to me is you just talked about journalism. This is a main thing I really wanted to talk to you about. You spent your life at Sports Illustrated and at ESPN, now you're independent. You are more famous than ever before.

I see your name dropped on every major sports podcast in the country, Pat McAfee, everybody else. But there seems to always be a hesitance. And it seems to me, you can tell me your observation that they are desperate to preserve their relationship to the league, to the NBA. They're afraid of platforming or emphasizing what you're saying, even though you're one of the few doing actually revelatory journalism in sports. So I'm curious if you could talk about that dynamic, like how difficult it is for an ESPN or people connected fundamentally to a private organization that has no obligation to give you anything to some of the work that you're putting out there and why you found so much success in a short period of time. Yeah, again, I point to incentives,

right? So I worked at ESPN. I was familiar in that era with a company in which there was literal billion-dollar business dealing with the leagues directly, but at the same time, an attempt to fund a newsroom that had some sort of firewall in between, right? Any media organization of a certain scale is familiar with that dynamic. What is so different now is that the pretense of needing to support journalism, and again, I'll use brand equity as the motive for any company who wants to consider this, that branding priority, the whole idea of we need to plausibly be a newsroom, an actual news gathering operation, that has sharply declined as the sources of money have shifted,

in this case, to the legalized gambling operators. And so what I found is that I didn't set out to do investigative adversarial journalism that would take me to the stories that are most directly in conflict with commissioners of the sports that I otherwise cover and love and enjoy as a fan. I did not set out to be the turd in some commissioners punch bowl, frankly. but the race that I am apparently competing in is almost devoid of other competitors. And so what's happened is that I'm the guy who's just willing to do it and I am obsessive about like wanting to get it right. I come again from a fact-checking background and a journalistic background and we request comment and everybody gets a chance to weigh in.

We provide all those opportunities as a quote-unquote mainstream news organization would. But the fact is I'm willing to get on bad terms when a comment. to the access that otherwise gets granted and the partnerships that are in play. If you're a sports talking head and your goal in life is to be on a set in which you talk about any of these sports, you should be aware that the people who ultimately have to green light your inclusion at that table sit in the league office, which is to say they don't want people who are going to actually jeopardize their business involved in their business. And likewise, if you're covering, for instance,

since Los Angeles Clippers, and your day-to-day livelihood is access to games, you're signing up for a way harder life if you decide to stick a toe into the stuff that I'm doing. And so I'm not naive, and I don't blame other journalists, reporters, whatever the term is you want to use to describe the different jobs that we do. I get the incentives, again, at play. I just think we're living in this desert, especially in sports media, but certainly broadly. You can speak to every facet of journalism across America now. But there's a desert when it comes to the quote-unquote toy department in which huge stories that reflect our national priorities and our national conflicts of interest are coming home to roost and there are not enough people covering it.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I have to think that the, you know, the corporate ad dollars are important part of that story, too. I mean, even us being outside of the sports media sphere, you know, many of our competitors take tons of money from these gambling topics. They just have an endless amount of money, it seems like. to throw at, you know, different personalities. And so I would think that if you're going directly, if you were taking that money and you see something untoward, you're maybe going to, you know, keep it to yourself

rather than risk that cash into your operation. Yeah, look, I am somebody who believes, again, I worked at ESPN, I worked at Sports Illustrated. I'm familiar with all the media companies in the world who have to make some level of internal firewall between business and news. I get that ancient attempt to do that. All I would say is if you are taking money

from any of the parties that you are also covering, you do at some point need to show through journalism that holds those parties to account that the firewall is plausible. And I think what's increasingly obvious is the implausibility of that firewall. And maybe it's because, again, the public demand for this stuff

has been characterized in these boardrooms as so low, like journalism, not going to make you money. And therefore, let's just go all in on the business of favoring our partners. But I think what you guys have experienced, that what I have experienced as an independent journalist, as an independent newsroom, is that there is such a demand for people who actually want to know the truth. People who actually want to know, what am I not being told and why am I not being told it about these institutions that I love, that I'm giving my money to? And so the pendulum has just swung in such a way that I think there's actually now a business case, obviously,

to get into a real journalistic operation. I just think that there are not enough places that are actively considering it along a profit motive as opposed to just a obligation morally or otherwise. You're totally right. And I see it everywhere. I mean, you know, the most successful sports journalists are basically just people who tweet press releases from the NFL and from their age. And from the player's agents, if a guy is really injured, you're going to be the last to know, right?

And they're going to be the last to tell you. You find things that, I mean, I found out this morning, Carson Wentz has been injured like weeks ago and is going under certain. Nobody said anything about that. And there's no incentive for the people who cover it to actually tell everybody the truth. So my last thing I do want to let you expound on is that salary cap story, in my opinion. Massive, massive scandal with like IRS implications, league implications, player implications. same thing touched on very little acknowledged by much of a sports media i do want to let you get some of the details out there because i want our audience to know how crazy and corrupt this is

yeah so this is a story that is also being investigated scare quotes around that i suppose by the nba and by walk tell the law firm that they hired as their outside counsel to look into this and so it's funny as i've been covering two stories the betting scandal and the aspiration clippers kawai leonard captrow convention scandal that the NBA has been tracking in parallel as well basically listening to the pod trying to figure out, like, what is the one guy here to make our life messy going to report next? And I say that not merely because I'm proud of the work, but just because I have an insight into the question of investigation. And in this story, it is the richest owner in American sports, Steve Ballmer, one of the 10 richest people in the world who we report got into business with a guy who ended up defrauding him, which is unfortunate because that same guy, Joe Sandberg, the co-founder of a climate change company called Aspiration, he has. had trusted, Steve Balmer had trusted, according to our reporting, to help him deceive the NBA.

We're talking about $50 million into aspiration from Steve Balmer. We're talking about $48 million guaranteed from aspiration to Kauai Leonard in what amounts to the most unprecedented in scope and in mess at this point, cap circumvention scandal in American sports history. And the reason this matters is because from a pure big picture perspective, let's say you don't care about sports. Just understand, sports ownership in America has never belonged more clearly to the richer and richer individuals that you might otherwise see all across Silicon Valley. And now, of course, into the Middle East and private equity. Sports teams go up and up and

up. The media economy that we spoke about is fragmented. Sports teams continue to appreciate in value. It's all green arrows. The richest people in the world want to buy them. And when they want to buy them, it turns out, according to by reporting, they get frustrated that there are actually some caps on their spending. So the things that the richest people in the world want more than anything else at this phase in their lives often, an NBA title or a star player for their team, they just can't buy. There are rules around fair play. They need to abide by. And so that is the story of Steve Balmer trying to get money to Kauai Leonard and the question around these 3,000 plus pages of documents that I acquired and the now nine anonymous sources who worked at

aspiration, who have testified to me that this was for caps or convention, it speaks to what the NBA once again is willing to find an investigation in which the check is not, for now, the federal government when it comes to Steve Balmer, but a dude with a podcast. And that's sort of the other thing that I'm working on to. Well, you know, keep it up, man. Yeah. Yeah. If you're out there, if you're listening, you have something to leak, send it to pop off. I would love to see you. I'd appreciate it.

My podcast would, in fact, appreciate it. Thank you guys. I appreciate you, too. Thanks, for coming on, man. Thanks, Paolo. Great to meet you. Anytime. Anytime.

Hello. Hello, America's sweetheart Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you about my. my new true crime podcast, Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, from smartless media, campside media, and big money players. It's a wild tell about a gang of high-functioning nitwits who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist. Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he steals from rich

and gives to the poor. I'm not that generous. It's a damn near inspiring true story for anyone out there who's ever shot for the then just totally muffed up the landing. They stole $17 million and had not bought a ticket to help him escape. So we're saying, like, oh, God, what do we do? What do we do? That was dumb. People do not follow my example. Listen to Crimless, Hillbilly Heist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her. Wait a minute, Sophia. How do you know she's a cult? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This person writes, my neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals, and now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they might be part of a cult. Hold up, a real life cult?

And what is a dirt ritual? No clue, Dakota. To find out how it ends, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.