Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/29/25: Israel Shatters Ceasefire In Gaza, RSF Massacre in Sudan, Hurricane Slams Jamaica

Episode Date: October 29, 2025

Ryan and Saagar discuss Israel breaks ceasefire, RSF massacre in Sudan, Hurricane slams Jamaica.   Ben Smith: https://x.com/semaforben    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 need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breaking points.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Wednesday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. Bro show. People live for the pound. Two bro shows in a row on Wednesday. Two bro shows in a row. That's right. All thanks to my crazy schedule. Thank you for having me, Ryan. I appreciate it here on Wednesday. Always a pleasure. Well, mostly thank you to Emily for letting me swap around with her. Oh, my God.

All right, here's the tough part of the job. What do we have today? Israel. Okay, we're going to start with Israel breaking the ceasefire, bombing parts of Gaza, where you talk about their pretext. We'll analyze some of what that is. Then Ryan is going to give us an update on some horrific developments in South Sudan. Sorry, no, in Sudan. I'm not exactly familiar. The RSF, there's a UAE back. militia and lots of killing. It's just a horrific, horrific story. We're going to talk about the storm. Hurricane Melissa made landfall yesterday in Jamaica, as well as the fact that there are thousands, thousands of American service members currently in Caribbean waters, remember, as part of this Venezuelan regime change operation. And there's some big question marks, actually, as to their own role. Are they going to continue with drug interdiction? Are they going

to help with hurricane relief? They themselves potentially could be at risk from scoring some sources that I spoke to. We're going to get over to Open AI. There is a new story from ChatGPT that nearly a million people are actually interacting with chat GPT on the issue of mental illness and suicide in addition to a major whistleblower inside of ChatGPT warning not to believe Sam Altman's claims about AI pornography, which I believe we covered in our last question. We did indeed, and it's a very disappointment because I really, like my last guess was to just trust Sam Altman.

And if we can't trust Sam Altman, who can you trust? Yeah, if we can't trust Sive Altman, who indeed can we all trust? By the way, you'll all be happy to know that the state of California has helped Sam Altman and Open AI transform into a for-profit company. So now we can just get rid of that pesky little nonprofit status. How lovely for him. Yes. Thank you to the state of California, to Gavin Newsom and all the officials there who assisted the multi-billionaire.

We are going to talk about Sami Hamdi. Ryan, you're going to give us a breakdown on this. He's a British political commentator. He's critical of Israel, and he was detained at a California airport. Current, like, political prisoner in the United States. Has he been deported? Or is he, okay, wow, okay. He's still still in prison for his politics.

Some of the details there on Sammy Hamdi. Rings a little hollow, isn't it, whenever we critique the UK for doing the exact thing? Yeah. Yeah, a little tough. Let them speak freely over here, but if they come here, they're going to prison. That's right, exactly. All right, let's go to talk. We're also going to talk about Snap, actually, by the way.

We touched a little bit on it yesterday, But there's some brinksmanship going on within the current United States government about whether some 42 million Americans who are dependent on the SNAP food stamp program are going to receive some of their payments and benefits on Friday, I believe. There's some fiscal cliff issues, but there are claims that the administration actually could pay them if they wanted to. There's actually some Republican efforts to try and to immediately fund the SNAP program, but that is getting poured cold water on by the White House and by Senate leadership. So, you know, this is when the shutdown really actually might start to impact millions of people's lives outside of the DMV here. Not to say that it already hasn't, but in particular really a tangible thing in addition to air traffic control problems that we've seen across the country. Yep. And then finally, we're going to talk with Ben Smith about China.

He wrote a very interesting piece. Actually, I really liked it. And it says Trump is poised to end Washington's decade of the China Hawks. Very astute, actually, in terms of where things are going. you probably have tracked my own evolution on the issue if you've been watching over the last seven or eight years. And it is, of course, something that any future politician is going to have to grapple with. Before we get to that, thank you to everybody who's been subscribing, breakingpoints.com. If you can support the show. If not, no worries, please hit subscribe on the

YouTube video. If you're listening to this on a podcast, send an episode to a friend or rate us five stars. It really helps us with growth. Let's go and put this then up on the screen. Israel has resumed the Gaza ceasefire. Now, after some 104 Palestinians were killed in air strikes. Prime Minister Netanyahu ordered, quote, powerful strikes in Gaza as the ceasefire breaks down. I'm going to kick it to Ryan because Ryan, I don't really know. There were two separate instances of their claims for the ceasefire breakdown.

So why don't you explain it to this? Right. If you're going to break a ceasefire, better to have two pretexts rather than just one pretext. The irony being, of course, that Israel has been out of compliance with the ceasefire from the beginning because a key part of the agreement was that it would flood in humanitarian aid. They immediately reneged on that agreement. Humanitarian aid is not flooding in. If we lived in a world where we just followed these things in a neutral and dispassionate way, we'd say, well, that is a violation of the ceasefire. I suppose now Hamas is going to just carpet bomb Tel Aviv as a response to Israel breaking the ceasefire.

But let's get into the two pretexts. The first is the claims of an almost identical situation in Rafa where a, what they're saying is that there was basically a cell, and this is within the realm of possibility, that a cell of fighters, whether it's Islamic Jihad or Hamas, gets cut off from the rest of the forces and they don't have access to the knowledge that this war has ended. like people on all sides have acknowledged that this is a this is a possibility and that if you come on these fighters there may be conflict and that is not ipso facto a breaking of the ceasefire that should launch a full-scale war so according to the israeli side that is what happened we don't have any information from the hamas side which or the islamma jihad side which would if it was a fighter who or a group of fighters who were trapped like we wouldn't actually be able to get any information from Maser, PII.

Like, they just, they wouldn't, they wouldn't know about that. This is a group they would have lost touch with many, many months ago. The last time they claimed this, according to my sources, it, it was, in fact, them just running over an unexploded ordinance or an IED, and then claiming that they had gotten into a confrontation. And they never backed up their claim of having, you know, confronted Palestinian fighters with any, any body cam footage any any actual anybody captured any any evidence any drone footage any evidence whatsoever ballistic forensic anything that would have shown that their story matched up so

I think that at this point we can say that the explosive the story of them running over the explosive is we're going to lean in that direction so one Israeli soldier has been said by the Israeli government to have been killed so that that that happens you're not going to they're not going to name a person, a soldier who died, who didn't die. So somehow somebody, some Israeli soldier did die. We also have, and we can roll a two here while I'm explaining this. So this is according to, this is drone footage put out by the Israeli military, which, and you can go and find the longer video, which claims to have found evidence that Hamas is playing games, with the remains of captives.

This is actually an Israeli soldier who was killed about in 2024. And Israel at the time was able to recover most of his remains, but there was some portion remained with Hamas. And basically what they're saying happened in this footage is that they kind of moved it to a particular area and then called in the Red Cross and called in a photographer and said, look, like, we found this body here. And then they turned it over to the Red Cross.

And what Israel is saying is that this is evidence that they're playing games and they're stalling for time and that, in fact, they do know where more of the remains are than they're letting on. This still remains to develop. We don't know exactly yet what happened here, but you can watch the video and see for yourself that the Israeli claim, look, on its face,

seems to have some merit to it. And this is what they have released, as you said. So, yeah, I mean, this is one of those. Right. And we also have to be extremely careful because any government should be, should be, should have its claims treated with extreme skepticism. But Hamas is the government too. Yeah. So it's like, listen, I, I, we have no idea.

There is, I mean, this is part of the difficulty in the post-war collapse of Gaza is that, you know, is there any centralized Hamas in terms of, you know, Right. And the more Hamas tries to become centralized, the more they criticize. Exactly. The more they get criticized, the more they get bombed now. And should 102 people have been killed? 104, I think, is this morning. 104. Yeah, 104 Palestinians killed as of this morning in retaliation. We don't exactly even know what the retaliatory strike was, who the people were that were involved. I do know.

And let's think about this. In either of these scenarios, okay, let's say that you did catch them playing games with these remains and stalling for time. Does that justify a bombing campaign across Gaza that kills more than 100 people and wounds more than 200? And if they did encounter a fighter who had been stuck for eight months in a tunnel and he popped up and there was a firefight, does that justify? Right. Killing 100? Well, let me just read from Representative Marjorie Taylor Green. Israel's military says Wednesday that the ceasefire was back on in Gaza after killed 104 people. including 46 children. 46 children, exclamation, are these not war crimes?

Question you can ask for some. Those are by definition. A question you can, yeah, it almost seems quaint, frankly, after what we all lived through. We will also note that, you know, from the administration, they're still trying desperately to hold this thing together. Let's put this up here on the screen. This is a three vice president, J.D. Vance, telling reporters that the Gaza ceasefire will hold, despite today's exchange of fire, quote, the ceasefire is holding.

That doesn't mean that there aren't going to be little skirmishes here and there. We know that Hamas or somebody else within Gaza attacked an IDF soldier. He said notably avoiding a definitive assignment of blame on Hamas. We expect the Israelis are going to respond, but I think the president's piece is going to hold. Despite it, that seems interesting. Ryan, can we compare with the statement of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. And this to set context for Rubio here, this was on Air Force One before these incidents. And I feel like Rubio, the way he's,

he poked in here and put his face in front of Trump, sort of green-lit what came next. As we talked about last week, there's now this deconfliction zone, where the U.S. says that any response to a ceasefire break has to come through the United States. The United States is going to make sure that the peace is maintained through this like 200 service member unit

and this deconfliction zone. And Netanyahu said publicly, We appreciate the Americans, but of course we'll never allow that. We are our own sovereign people. And so there's been a tug of war over, you know, who gets to break this ceasefire? Can Israel just unilaterally break it? And then you have Rubio coming out and basically saying, yeah, Israel can do whatever it wants. So listen to Marco Rubio on Air Force One here.

You're talking about the strike against the Basin and jihad individuals? Yeah, look, Israel didn't surrender its right to self-defense. Obviously, the ceasefire is based on obligations on both sides. By the way, we'd also like to see Hamas speed up the return of hostage bodies. We still have 13 hostages to Americans, included. But we don't view that as a violation of the ceasefire. They have a right. There's an imminent threat to Israel, and all the mediators agree with that.

So, leaning a little closer to Israel there. But at the same time, as you heard them say, we don't consider the slow release of the remains to be a violation of the ceasefire. And that's been a huge issue in Israel. Because they really believe that they have all of the bodies and they're writing about it. And actually, one of the things that Hamas has responded with, they say, quote, we confirm that any Zionist escalation will hinder the search excavation recovery of the bodies, which will lead to a delay in the occupation's recovery of the bodies of its dead.

Later, Hamas issued a statement calling on mediators to take immediate action to pressure Israel to restrain its escalation against civilians in Gaza and to compel it fully abide by the ceasefire agreement. What's crazy this morning is Israel now is saying that they are back in full compliance. of the ceasefire. So it's one of those where, I mean, I don't really know what ceasefire means if you just get to bomb and attack each other based on whatever you want. And IDF Reservis, by the way, was apparently killed in that Tuesday attack. I did find it interesting in Rubio's comment.

He said, Hamas or Palestinian Islamic jihad. Maybe you can explain to this. They are not party to the ceasefire, correct? No, they are. Well, but this is when I'm trying to get at it. Is it like politically, yes, but this is what I'm saying in terms of the action. control within inside of Gaza, as in who know? I mean, you know, there's roving, there's no central law and order. There's people with guns, you know, in an area which has been bombed to nothing.

It'd be like saying that, you know, in the middle of a Mad Max collapse that certain looters or something speak on behalf of the entire population, it just doesn't really work that way. Right. And just the way that the kind of defense of Gaza worked over the last two years, you'd have all of these different units who were pretty stationary. Like they would move around, but like if you're the Bait Hanoon Battalion, you stay in Bait Hanoon. You're not kind of shifting around the strip. And so for operational security, obviously there is not a lot of like electronic communication going on between a lot of these units because, you know, Israel has that entire thing, you know, tapped and wired. And they're going to, and they're going to map out these, the different flow.

of communications and just then start carpet bombing any areas they see being lit up. And so that was always a question going into the ceasefire, exactly what you're saying. Like, okay, we've got the negotiators in, you know, in Doha agreeing to this on behalf of PIJ and on behalf of Hamas. But do they speak for every, you know, guerrilla unit in, right, in Gaza? And the hope was basically from from the mediators and from everybody involved was that that they that just the pressure of the momentum of the ceasefire would then kind of basically work to persuade this is more persuasion like you're not ordering like these guys these guys are armed and they're in these and they're out there they can make their own decisions so yes that is a that is a live question here which

when when Israel then kills more than a hundred people think about what that does to the psychology of these fighters who didn't like the idea of the ceasefire to begin with because they're like that you know that we think for whatever reason and then like look we told you this was it was it's been three weeks exactly three weeks I'm saying look we told you Israel was never going to abide by this now they just killed another hundred people for for nothing right and uh the so the health ministry you know caveats etc. Forty-six children, 20 were women of the 104 Palestinians who were killed. Interesting. Yeah. In terms of the Israeli response there, we do have some of the initial views of what that

looks like. Let's go and put this image up here on the screen. This was immediately yesterday in the aftermath of what some of the attacks actually looked like, and all of this actually is in line with this new yellow line. We can put that up here on the screen for the Wall Street Journal. Right. Again, maybe you can help explain it a little bit to the audience. This so-called yellow line was the demarcation line through which Israel would control the ceasefire. But from the Wall Street Journal, they're saying a trip to the Gaza yellow line shows that Israel is digging into its positions. Right. And seems to creating some sort of permanent berm for some sort of buffer zone.

So can you just explain because I believe that the yellow line that was originally agreed to has now changed and they're actually occupying more of Gaza and they initially agreed upon. Right. So the deal was, okay, Israel will withdraw back to this yellow line. And then as soon as they do that, we'll release, we being Hamas, will release all of the captives. And so Israel withdrew back to this yellow line. Hamas reads all the captives. And then people start going back to their homes. People came close to this yellow line, which is not marked anywhere at the time. Still is not really marked. And so they go to, say, Eastern Gaza City, where their homes are, and they would be shot and killed. Like, an entire bus, a family, in a bus, the entire family killed inside this bus. And so you had then this kind of contradictory impulse on both sides. Humanitarian organization would say, well, wait a minute, this is not fair. You're not marking, like, you're not even telling people. What kind of sick game is this?

Like, people just have to guess. And as well, we published maps, they should be able to look at the map. But people can't even recognize their own neighborhoods because it's just complete rubble. And think about as you think about as you're walking through your own neighborhood, like the different ways that you know how to get around. Like there's this giant tree, there's this yellow house at the corner, there's the gas station here. Now imagine you've been away for eight months. You come back, the tree is gone, the gas station is a pile of rubble, the yellow house is a pile of rubble, the red house. that you knew it was a pile of rubble.

Like, at that point, how do you even find your way? So saying that, hey, there's a map on Facebook that you can look at isn't very helpful with people. Then they said, okay, we're going to put out yellow markers like every 200 meters or something. Also not extraordinarily helpful. Now they're building much more significant reinforcements. And then you see the contradictory nature of it. They're like, oh, wait a minute.

So now basically this is just going to become your territory. Because what's inside the kind of Hamas-controlled area, if you want to call it that, is basically western Gaza, but not northern and southern, and then not the eastern part either. It's just the inner slice of it. And all of the kind of agricultural area, lots of area that used to be heavily populated is all within this Israeli zone. and they ironically I saw some I think propagandists calling it like free Gaza it's like no no

the part that's occupied by Israel can't really call that free Gaza but what they're what they're setting up is just never leaving this this area like that that seems to be and that's what the Walshry Journal suggests here that like they're they're reinforcing this

in a fundamental way and the irony being that they were negotiating over whether the buffer zone at the edge of Gaza would be 800 meters or 1,200 meters. And now Israel seems to be trying to create a reality where they're just way inside there. And so broadly here with the ceasefire line, what do you expect, you know, in terms of how this all plays out? Because it flagged by our producer Mac, let's put this up here on the screen, Netanyan's testimony, if you're all wondering, in his criminal trial was cut short today. yesterday over quote security developments that happened in

amazing coincidence it just keeps happening doesn't it so it's one of those where is it every single time that he's going to have to testify that there just happens to be some sort of pretext in gaza like at the subject of these really political you know sphere of what's happening and then apparently america is just you know fine with them violating the ceasefire and encroaching here on the yellow line it just it looks very grim and all the cynics you know initially talking about the ceasefire seem pretty vindicated, I think, today. Yeah, I wish we would just give the guy asylum. Political asylum, get a place in South Florida.

Like, it is, it is not fair for 100 plus Palestinians to have to die so that he can delay a criminal trial. That's no reason for anybody to lose a life. Right. Just, just end this. Like, it's, yeah, but yes, this is. been, this is whenever he's gotten into political trouble or criminal trouble over the last two years, you've seen strategy change and tax exchange around the attack on Gaza. And we're still seeing that. The Crying Wolf podcast is the story of two men bound by injustice, of a city

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Yeah, so Sudan mass killings happening. In the town of El Fasher was where the kind of Syrian Army capital has been in North Darfur, and there's been this civil war going on since 2023, and the UAE has come in heavily, United Arab Emirates has come in heavily on the side of what's called the RSF, the rapid support forces. And a year ago, the U.S. State Department said to RSF is committing ethnic cleansing in Darfur and in Sudan.

And the support of the UAE has continued to pay. so you can put up A8 here. And so El Fasher finally yesterday, and over the last couple days, but it's kind of now fully fallen to the RSF. And what you're looking at here are a ton of people rounded up by the RSF, who, as we understand it, and there is much more disturbing video that would confirm this that we're not going to show you here. were then executed.

And this is not the first time that the RSF has taken over a city and estimates of civilian massacres as a result have been over 10,000, like in a particular city. Like this absolute horrific bloodbath. If we put up A9, a lot of the OSIN people online are saying they have never seen visible blood. Blood.

From space. But what precipitated this? Well, so what precipitated this precisely is El Fosher has been basically surrounded by the RSF for a year and a half. And it's one of the remaining key strongholds of the

SAF their opposition. And so what precipitated the massacre was that they're they finally managed to break through uh and and take it uh what precipitated it more broadly is is gold you know basically you know Sudan has you know significant wealth underneath its and why is the UAE supporting this militia so the UAE well the UAE has this massive Africa play that's that it's been doing it has the UAE has the UAE has the UAE is supporting African oxy forces all over the continent, like absolutely everywhere. And the UAE, like Qatar, um, is technically a country, but it's, you know, it's more like an investment vehicle slash

mafia. Sure. Uh, that is, that is trying to figure out how to take this wealth that it, that has come out of the ground, this fossil fuel wealth that it's created in the last several decades, and only a several decades, like 50, years ago or so, this is a deeply poor area. Now it's like the richest place on Earth. They know that that's not going to last forever. At some point, you tap the last bit of natural gas and oil. And so their question is, what next for us? And what's next for them is that they are, they're building ports and creating alliances all over Africa for the continued extraction of natural resources and and funding all of these civil conflicts to make it easier for them to then

to then get access oftentimes kind of arming uh arming both sides of of the conflict but in this case they've really thrown their lot in with RSF and um we could put up A11 real quick to show that how how much this is escalating so this is the foreign uh foreign relations chairman saying um quote, the horrors, the Republican, the horrors and Darfur's El Fasher were no accident. They were the RSF's plan all along. I think that's true. The RSF has waged terror and committed unspeakable atrocities, genocide among them against the Sudanese people. The RSF must be called what it is, a foreign terrorist organization and officially designated as one. America is not safe or secure or more prosperous with the RSF slaughtering thousands. And so, you know, to hear Jim Rish of talk like

that, then makes you ask the question, wait a minute, hold on a second. So you're saying that our ally, the UAE, is major terrorist financer? Because that's what you have to say. If, like, if you agree with that statement, which is true. Can I, can I put my cynic ad on here a little bit? You know, whenever it's a conflict that doesn't involve Israel, unspeakable atrocities in genocide amongst them, right? Darfur was the original, one of the original, you know, quote-unquote genocides of the 21st century in the early 2000s after Rwanda. It was supposed to be never again. It actually didn't really work.

Why does America suddenly care? They say America is not safe or secure or more prosperous with RFSA, slaughtering thousands. Is there a deeper thing going on here, or is this just exposed, like, the human rights industrial complex? So I wish Ken Vogel was here, because I'm curious. like who's doing like which different faction Ken Vogel being the Times reporter that we interviewed yes you guys also interviewed who does all the foreign lobbying yeah it's a good question like what what foreign lobbying is going on that gets statements like this on the other hand

the the level of atrocity is reaching like heights that are uh difficult to ignore even for Americans when it comes to Africa you know Americans are pretty good at ignoring it what's going on in Africa just across the board and ignoring you know things almost everywhere including even people say oh what what about the protest around Gaza but you know Gaza like has significantly fallen off the last year or so the you know mainstream news also like it's just you know the US it's just not something that people are paying attention to um so yeah I don't know exactly what's going on in Washington that is making that is now putting this pressure on the UAE's proxies in Sudan but I'm sure they're and I think like kill they they also posted they were they were

a little bit more aggressive in what they posted on social media this time than the in the last mass massacre of 10 to 15,000 people didn't they didn't elevate it in the same way yeah but if I were the Sudanese I'd be like you you people are really going to lecture me about you know about mass massacres and you know after what you just funded going on in Israel they kind of have a point right and same with the UAE they're like really like you're going to talk to me about who I can send money to yeah whether it's in my strategic interest or not get out of here right what did the RSF that surrounded in an area and wouldn't let food and ate in exactly and then killing them yeah yeah I don't know it's dark no yes opening opening that

that and letting that out into the world I also think that explains a social media activity They're like, we can post whatever we want. Right, we can do what we want. We can do anything that we want. Look, because they're seeing it on their phones out of Gaza all day long. Wait a minute. They're doing this? Exactly.

We're going to do this. It's very sad. And I'm glad you are following it. I honestly, I hate to say, I haven't really been familiar. I followed Dark War a little bit back 20 years ago. Violence and Terror. So, exactly, you know, a lot, not a huge ton of like U.S. strategic interest or any of that in the region. But suddenly Washington is waking up.

I will be honest with you, even though I obviously see what's happening here. Any time I start to see the word genocide and all that's being turned, just thrown around by the State Department, I'm like, something's going on here. You know, I don't know exactly what it is. I'm a little suspicious. Suddenly Marco Rubio cares about human rights and all of that. I'm like, I don't know about this. Yeah. And we could end this overnight too. And we're like, look, UAE, you're getting sanctioned and your whole little sovereign wealth fund here. They're not going to do that. But they're not going to do that. They will never do that. Right. So we're fine. First of all, for what we did. We're fine with it. Saudis and Yemen. This is just a lot. longstanding U.S. policy. I'm always just fascinated about what we get, what everyone in Washington starts to care about. The reason my spidey senses go up is I'm like, it's never about the actual killings.

There's usually something else going on. And I'm just, you know, I'm skeptical. And the UAE sees this as a sphere of influence for them, too, they can have geopolitical advantages. Like, they, no, the UAE hates Hamas as well. And there was this push a year ago. What if we get everybody in Hamas to just go to Sudan? So, and so in order to do that. that the RSF has to like then take over all of Darfur which they basically now control like there what what they are also finding is the same thing that Israel's arguing to the public which is that you can actually just do the ethnic cleansing you do the genus like get away with it and then people will forget about it it's more important to win and then people will just move on

so RSF is right now in a brutal fashion winning yes well look at Azerbaijan in Armenia the same right same exact thing yeah but not that I apparently here cared. The Crying Wolf Podcast is the story of two men bound by injustice, of a city haunted by its secrets and the quest for redemption, no matter the price. White victim, female, pretty, wealthy, black defendant. Chicago, a white woman's murder, a black man behind bars for a crime he didn't commit. I had 90 years for killing somebody.

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Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Big Take podcast from Bloomberg News dives deep into one big global business story every weekday. A shutdown means we don't get the data, but it also means for President Trump that there's no chance of bad news on the labor market. What does a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich reveal about the economy? Our breakfast foods are consistent consumer staples, and so they sort of become outsize indicators of inflation. What's behind Elon Musk's trillion dollar payout? There's a sort of concerted effort to message that Musk is coming back. He's putting politics aside.

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Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. We have an update here from Ryan Hall, the weather YouTuber extraordinaire, who does a fantastic job. We have been covering, of course, just noting the Category 5 Hurricane Melissa, which made landfall yesterday with Jamaica, some 185-mile-per-hour winds. Here's what he had to say. We've got a breaking update from the National Hurricane San Francisco. center. This is a special tropical cyclone update on Hurricane Melissa at 1 p.m. Eastern Category

5 Hurricane Melissa made landfall in the southwestern Jamaica area near New Hope. This is now confirmed to be one of the most powerful hurricane landfalls ever recorded in the entire Atlantic basin. The 185 mile per hour wins and a central pressure of 892 millibars. Those numbers are historic. Historic numbers, he says, and we have some video guys. It's going to put that up there on the screen now that it has made landfell, you can just see some of the images that came out of Jamaica and some of the damage already. We're still in the initial phases of learning exactly what happened. They say that Cuba actually evacuated some 750,000 people ahead of the storm, but you can see the infrastructure and some of the images that were coming out of Jamaica

and also noting just generally like the overall damage and, oh my God, I mean, that's just so terrifying, right? In the middle of the Caribbean Category 5, one of the most powerful storms literally ever recorded. So it's pretty scary that this is happening. Not to mention, as I said, that at the very same time that you can see, you know, look at that difference in the image here. It's just totally nuts. And what I think Ryan and others were noting was the level of the intensity in the storm. So obviously there's some big, you know, domestic questions here. First of all, you know, this is just the beginning of hurricane season. We are in the middle of a government shutdown.

Are the Weather Service in the National Oceanic Administration and others who track some of these hurricanes? Are they going to be fully up to staff? But, you know, one of the domestic angles that I just think nobody's really paying attention to are all of these thousands of service members who are in the middle of the Caribbean. Put this up here, please, on the screen. You know, it says Hurricane Melissa collides with the U.S. military mission in the Caribbean. Military campaign against the drug cartels, a legend. I love to say that. Legend drug cartels in Latin America could soon reckon with the natural disaster and humanitarian crises in the region.

Eight warships collectively carrying 6,000 troops, several dozen aircraft are assembled in the region for the Trump administration's military strikes. But many of the personnel are also trained apparently to respond to natural disasters, serving on ships with a long track record of doing so in the South Com area. The Hurricane Melissa obviously is going to cause a tremendous amount of damage in the region. And kind of one of the longstanding things that the U.S. would always do is when there's a hurricane in Haiti or somewhere they'll show up with a big show force, drop off a bunch of aid. So it's a genuine question here as to whether they're going to do anything or whether they're just going to stay parked there to try and blow up as, you know, fishermen drugs, boats as possible. That's one. But second is just it highlights that despite this, the fact that it is hurricane season, these thousands of service members are in these waters. and the USS Gerald Ford, one of the large aircraft carriers in the world, is headed there right now as we speak.

And all of them are just going to be sitting in these hurricane-prone situation. It's dangerous, number one, no matter what. And then, of course, it gets to the for-what question, which, of course, we've covered here extensively. Yeah, and so the Navy says they're monitoring the storm, of course, and are working to make sure that they're not directly impacted by it. But wouldn't that be great if the U.S. military actually, like, when the storm passes, they're like, you know what? Instead of doing regime change in Venezuela, we are going to, we're going to go to Jamaica. We're going to disembark and we're going to help everybody clean up here. We're going to really throw our back into this because we're all one people here. We're all one hemisphere. We're all together. Trump could even go over and, you know, throw the paper towels at people. He loves doing that. I don't expect that's going to happen, but I I guess anything's possible. Meanwhile, the, you know, the strikes continue. It does seem like they've moved more to the Pacific side.

Lately, they've moved. Those are striking boats on the Pacific side. And as we've said before, like, whether the boats have drugs on them or not, like, most likely, the people on the boats are actually fishermen. Like fishermen who are either, you know, paid an enormous. fortune to make one run, or are told, you're doing this run for us or we're going to kill your sister. Or a combination. Don't do this run and we'll kill your sister. Do the run and we're going to give you $20,000, which is more than you make in like five years. Yeah, this latest one, we're not exactly sure even where it took place. They said it was an international water somewhere

in the Pacific Ocean near the coast of Mexico. And apparently a, even And though 14 people were killed in the attacks, they said that there was one person who survived the strikes. According to Hegstaff, Mexican search and rescue authorities, quote, accepted the case and assumed responsibility for coordinating the rescue. The condition of the survivor remains unclear. Mexico's Navy said that it had dispatched a patrol boat and aircraft to safeguard human life at sea. The Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum at this morning said, quote, we do not agree with these attacks, said she had asked the country's foreign minister, as well as, representatives to meet the U.S. ambassador and says, quote, all international treaties need to be respected so that some 57 people now who have been killed in the strikes. The overall, you know,

picture of the strikes is, it just makes no sense, you know, in a lot of different ways, because all of this presumes a naval campaign or a campaign at sea for drugs. I mean, literally yesterday, Ryan, after being sent this report, the 2025 national drug, enforcement, DEA estimate, mentions Venezuela exactly seven times. Of those seven, they all talk about Trende Aragua. They only mention street-level drug trafficking, street-level small-level drug trafficking. It has no mention of fentanyl. I read extensively through the fentanyl section that was provided to me of this 2025 thing. The entire fentanyl section is focused on Mexico and land routes to the United States via the border.

These boats, this is trifling. It's not, it's literal. If anything, actually, listen, I don't want to sound like I'm defending cocaine or anything. But if you're going to use the fentanyl pretext, if the boats coming from Columbia, that's actually a good tell that it doesn't have fentanyl on it. Because that means it's straight up Colombian, you know, a pure cocaine. That's the pure stuff. That's probably what these people are paying for, right?

So, again, you know, I don't support cocaine. I would like for it to be burned at sea. If the boat comes to Mexico, then it could be blended with the fentanyl. Right. So if the boat goes to Mexico, it's actually a different story. And from what I read again, this is our own government. This is, by the way, Donald Trump's DEA put out this report just a few short months ago. And I'm reading through the fentanyl section last night.

They have the whole thing mapped out, even to the interstates of where all of the fentanyl is coming from, including the Chinese precursors that are making their way to Mexico. Mexico. All of this actually just spoke yesterday with a very knowledgeable source about what was happening inside of Mexico. Apparently, Shinebaum and others have pretty significantly cut down the amount of fentanyl coming across the border. There's two reasons. Number one is the border is much more close. So there's not as many migrants coming across. It makes sense, of course, so drug traffickers can't take advantage of that. But two is actually there's been a Mexican deployment to the U.S.-Mexico border, which is not entirely shutting down. I mean, you know, not feasible to say zero amount of fentanyl, but a much smaller. amount of fentanyl is currently making its way to the U.S. So most of these are just show of force strikes for a purpose which remains, you know, entirely mysterious unless you start to look at regime change in Venezuela, even though these are happening in the Pacific Ocean, not that, you know,

anybody apparently even keeps track anymore. Also, if this guy survived, so then why wouldn't you go get him? You know, why wouldn't you go send him to court? Some cartel leader over here, yeah. Of course. You remember that case of piracy? I was thinking about that recently. That movie, you know, Captain Phillips, the USS Mersk, Alabama, and they captured that, I forget exactly, his Somali name, but they captured the pirate, or FBI arrested him. He was repatriated to the United States by the FBI. He was actually arrested by FBI agents, I'm pretty sure, or he was transferred the FBI custody. He was put on trial, actually, here in the, I think he's in the U.S. federal penitentiary right now on the charge of piracy.

So if you do survive the attack, presumably, you would want to take that person, prosecute him, put him at trial. Instead, they're like, no, he can go back to Mexico. So then why did you kill him, right? It makes no sense. No. Yeah, and I was talking to somebody who did just recently left the Coast Guard doing drug interdictions in the Caribbean. And he was saying that you generally can, you generally can tell a fishing boat, you know, not a boat that's carrying drugs from a boat that is just, generally used for fishing.

Fishing boats will have kind of more people on them. Drug boats, they've got the extra motors. You can kind of see. He's like, but oftentimes it looks like they're gauging just by kind of trajectory of the boat. And he said they would do that as well. Like you'd look at the trajectory of where the boat's going, and that would be your first clue.

And he'd say somewhere, they'd be right about half to three quarters of the time on those. Because what they do is they go up to the boat. And be like, hey, this Coast Guard, stop. You know, we're going to board you and search you. And then they'd search, you're like, oh, okay, we were wrong. Sorry, go on about your business. Interesting.

But if you're just bombing them from the area, yeah, you're going to be right half to three quarters of the time. You're going to be wrong, a quarter to a half of the time. And this is all in international water. Nobody even knows where this is. Nobody knows where it took place. They say it's off the coast of Mexico, where, you know, to what extent? Literally, no coordinates, nothing, like just a picture. that's released by Secretary Hegseth from the department, you know, from the DOD, and you're just

like, okay, you know, that's the only information. And that's just to show everybody the bias to implicit. You know, why is the Washington Post saying against drug cartels? It's not even true. Like, there's no evidence that that's true. Right. It's crazy. Like, they just take this stuff and they run with it. See, even with Venezuela, like nobody interrogates the central premise at the heart of this entire thing. And it's ramping up. This is all, you know, it's slow. Slowly, slowly, slowly happening. And I think actually this week will be a big jump point for Venezuela,

not just because of the hurricane. Because the hurricane, like I said, the military is actually going to have to make a choice. Do we leave here and kind of abandon the pressure campaign on Maduro? Or do we try and go do some humanitarian assistance? Who knows? But that, you know, the resources are finite.

That's why all of this does connect together. Yeah, and it shows how quickly the conscience of a country can be corrupted because when you're watching like Duterte in the Philippines, where he's just going around, just executing drug dealers in the streets, like, you can, you can imagine how in the Philippines the debate would have turned to, well, was that a fruit seller or was that a drug dealer? Rather than we don't. I'm pretty sure that did happen at this time, if I remember.

Right. Yeah, yeah. That's what the debate would shift to rather than we don't want death squads just extra judicially killing anybody. Like we have, we've tried to develop a, civilized society. Let's try to keep that. And so you can see it in our own national conversation about this is a drug boat or is it not a drug boat rather than let's just not have death squads from the air burning people alive. It's who knows, who knows where things are going to go in all this. But everybody keep an eye on the hurricane. Obviously, first of all, just with the people of Jamaica is horrific who have to deal with that. And then we have our own troops who are in the waters. They themselves, the United States military, are going to have to make a choice, all while

this escalating air campaign against Venezuela continues. Hopefully, Ryan and I'll have some more reporting on that later on in this week. Hello, America's sweetheart Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you, about my new true crime podcast, Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, from Smartless Media, Campside Media, and Big Money Players. It's a wild tale about a gang of high-functioning nitwits who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist. Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he steals from rich and gives to the poor.

I'm not that generous. It's a damn near inspiring true story for anyone out there who's ever shot for the moon, 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 call? Holt leader. Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the Okay 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 Okay Storytime podcast

on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, everybody, it's snacks from the trap nerds and all October long. We're bringing you the horror. We're kicking off this month with some of my best horror games to keep you terrified. Then we'll be talking about our favorite horror and Halloween movies. And figuring out why black people always die further. And it's the return of Tony's horror show,

Sidewise written and narrated by yours truly. We'll also be doing a full episode reading with commentary. And we'll cap it off with a horror movie Battle Royale. Open your free I-Hard radio app and search trap nurse podcast. And listen now This is an IHeart podcast