Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/6/25: Trump Tells Bibi Stop Bombing, Greta Tortured By Israel, Trump Portland Invasion Blocked, Dire Warning On Revenge Loop

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump tells Bibi to stop bombing, Greta tortured by Israel, Trump Portland invasion blocked, dire warning on revenge loop.    Jeremy Scahill: https://x.com/jeremyscahill      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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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. you at breaking points.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. We're going to have Jeremy Scahill, joining us to break down where we are with those Gaza peace talks, a lot of developments over the weekend. So he will certainly

bring us the latest. He's also going to update us on the treatment of those seized flotilla participants, including one drop site journalist. So we'll get the latest from him on that. Also, we've got updates overnight as a Trump judge. smacks down Trump's attempt to send California National Guard to Portland, Oregon, a lot of moving parts there and a lot going on in Chicago. Portland in particular will break that down for you as well. We're taking a look at the economy. Soybean farmers are very upset over the tariffs, over China not buying any soybeans anymore, over the bailout of Argentina. One is speaking out in particular. We wanted to make sure to bring you that. We're going to update you on the ongoing

government shutdown. In particular, we've got some polls about how Americans are processing. What's going on, how they feel about the positions of the two parties and of the president. And we've got Van Jones having to apologize after a disgusting quote-unquote joke he made about dead Gaza babies to Bill Maher. So we will show you that and the fallout thereof. Yes, that's right. Thank you to everybody who's been supporting the show. We appreciate it breaking points.com. If you're able to sign up, we got our AMA live today that we're doing for our premium subscribers. If you can't afford a subscription, no worries. Please just go ahead and hit subscribe on this YouTube video. to the channel. And if you're listening to this on a podcast, just go ahead and send your favorite

episode to a friend or rate us five stars. It really helps other people find the show. But as Crystal said, let's go ahead and start with the consequential news here of this Gaza potential ceasefire deal, which may or may not be coming together. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. So over the weekend, breaking news here, quote, based on the statement just issued by Hamas, this is from Donald Trump, I believe they are ready for a lasting peace. Israel must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza so that we can get the hostages out safely and quickly right now it is far too dangerous to do that we are already in discussions on details to be worked out this is not about Gaza alone this is about a long sought peace in the middle east and all of

this is amid some serious fights between Trump and BB behind the scenes not exactly sure what happened but Trump seems to have had it at least for now with BB all that could change and this could all be ruse, but let's go and put this up here on the screen. We are now back to Barack Ravid headlines about how the president is fed up with Bibi. This time, though, it's Trump. And he says, quote, exclusive Trump on the Gaza peace deal. I said, Bibi, this is your chance for victory. And in it, he said, quote, Bibi this is your chance for victory. He was fine with it, Trump told me. He's got to be fine with it. He has no choice with me. You've got to be fine. And apparently also made some comment about how why are you

so negative all the time to BB. Why are he so effing negative all the time? That's what he said there to BB. I mean, part of the context here, however, is that despite Trump's protestations, they are continuing to bomb Gaza. We have some video of that we can put here on the screen. Keep in mind, all of this is after what happened, the Trump quote-unquote ultimatum or whatever you want to call it, where he said that Israel must immediately stop bombing Gaza. But you can see that this is going to be very difficult to finesse. There's already been some movement behind the scenes where I believe Bibi deleted a tweet where he had seemingly agreed or affirmed the peace deal. There's movement inside of the coalition. Remember, I mean, the Israeli cabinet explicitly

does not want this. They're parts of the Israeli far-right coalition backing up Bibi Netanyahu. Bezell Smotrich has already drawn a quote red line in the sand where he said, I will agree to no Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. They may be able to get around it because there's some alleged buffer zone here. Even people saying that Hamas agreed to the deal is not exactly correct because they did not agree to the entire deal in principle. They said we agree to parts of this deal. However, we're going to have to negotiate some finer points of which there will be talks in Cairo starting today with some representatives of the United States of Hamas. By the way, including one of the people Israel tried to blow up in Doha, Qatar. It was injured.

Yeah, who was injured in the bombing, pretty insane, if you think about it. And so, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think it could go in any different direction. This seems to be the closest we've gotten in a long time. That said, Israel tries to blow up the deal every single time. They have no incentive in their cabinet or their government. I'm pretty sure their people want this deal, especially to free the hostages because that's what part of it is. Hamas, I mean, they've been, at least in the last few peace deals, have agreed in principle to a lot of the U.S.

negotiate, but you can never count out the fact that this could all just be a ruse. Last time there was a ceasefire talk, they blew them up in Doha. Before that, I mean, they blew them up in, remember, they blew them up in Iran. They've murdered half of the negotiators. And there's a big question, too, as to whether these Hamas negotiators have any credibility with the battlefield commanders who are left inside of Gaza because all of the top echelon have all been killed consistently. So there's still so many things that could fall apart in this deal. And it really does just all come down to Trump. Right. Hamas crafted, and we'll get more from Jeremy on this,

Hamas crafted their response to make it, to lead with the yes, right? And basically agree to things that they've agreed to effectively since post-October 7th. Yes, we'll give you back the hostages. Recall, on the table from the beginning has been an all-for-all deal. We'll give you back your hostages. You give us back our hostages. So they have long agreed to that. Of course, they accept the aid provisions.

They do not want to be. Hamas does not want to be part of governance, that's easy for them to say yes to. All of this wild like Tony Blair is going to run the Gaza Strip and, you know, effectively, you're never going to have any ability to effectuate your Palestinian liberation goals. All of that part, they're like, we'll talk about that part. They did not agree to that. But they intentionally crafted their response to lead with the pieces they could say yes to in hopes that Trump would look at that and say, look, they said, yes, we're getting peace,

let's move forward, a sort of play to his ego. Now, that is what he has said publicly. He said, look, Hamas appears like they really want peace. Israel must stop bombing. But on the other hand, Israel has not stopped bombing. Some 70 at least Palestinians have been killed since Trump said, you must stop bombing. And there has been no insistence from Trump that Israel actually respect his wishes and the terms of this, you know, nascent peace deal in these negotiations as they move forward. On the Israeli side, yeah, Netanyahu has gone out of his way to poison every negotiation we've seen so far. And what he's broadcasting to the Israeli domestic audience is basically like, don't worry, we're never going to have to withdraw from the Gaza Strip. We're going to keep it under control.

We're going to get everything that we've ever wanted here. So as everybody heads to Cairo and these negotiating teams come together to see if there's something they can do here, there are a million questions to be answered about whether this is actually going to be. to be able to achieve even a brief ceasefire. So that's where things stand. And the reason I say it really comes down to Trump is because he's the one, ultimately, who has to pull the pin on Israel and say, no, we're done. We're not supplying you. We're not helping you.

You actually have to abide by these terms. He's the one also who has to ignore the voices in his own coalition like Lindsey Graham, who's out there saying, oh, look, Hamas said no to this deal. You know, you can't work with them. We've got to go immediately back to the genocide. So a lot of big questions this morning about how this is all going to or if it's all going to come together. It's very odd. I mean, front page of Horat's right now is, quote, Trump shifts into high gear to end war.

Netanyahu knows he can't stop him. I don't really know what that means. I mean, really what a lot of it is. The Netanyahu playbook is just to basically drag things out as long as possible. As you mentioned, we are meeting apparently in Cairo. Let's go and put that up there on the screen, please, from the Wall Street Journal. the ceasefire talks are set to start today in Egypt. And so delegations from the United States, from Israel, Hamas, and several other Middle Eastern countries are set to meet Monday for the anticipated

talks, but, quote, ending the nearly two-year-old war remains a distant goal. The parties are going to try to come to an agreement over crucial points, including Israeli military withdrawal lines in Gaza, the names of the high-profile Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for the remaining 48 hostages, including as many as 20 that Israel believes to be alive. Even if those talks succeed, they would not immediately end the two-year-old conflict. Trump said ahead of Monday that the first phase could, quote, be completed this week. I am asking everyone to move fast. However, the Secretary of State, whenever he was asked about this, said, quote, well, not yet. There's some work that remains to be done. And in fact, you know, even the hostage part of the

deal seems to be, you know, one of the easier parts in some ways because what they said is that the plan and the sticking points, which, to be fair, has got to be the biggest sticking point, is who gets to govern Gaza after all of this, the coalitional, provisional authority of Gaza under the auspices of Donald J. Trump and Tony Blair? I mean, that is, I mean, it's crazy. It's literally like a callback to the days of the viceroy and the British Empire. the region or the United States quasi-colonial project of 2003 in Iraq, which obviously was a massive disaster. That is not something that people are all going to forget in the Middle East. Many of the Middle Eastern negotiators at the table probably had to deal at some point with the Bush

administration with the invasion of Iraq, the fallout, the terrorism, and all of that. So in a lot of ways, you know, the ceasefire and the hostage deal itself seem to be one of the easier parts of this. And it's potential, if you're Hamas, you're in such a sticky situation, and same with the Israelis, where you know the moment that all those hostages are gone, you have no leverage. And so, like, that's the only thing that the Israelis really care about in terms of their population. That's, you know, even forcing some sort of negotiation on this, you, because you have all this stuff on the horizon, and if the hostages are gone, considering the U.S. and Israeli track record of the last eight months or so, could you really

fully trust the guarantee of the United States government, that the bombing would not, you know, resume. I don't know. That's part of where I just, I keep looking at this. I'm like, look, guys, they tried to kill you. They've literally murdered 90-some percent of your top negotiators. Every ceasefire has eventually resumed in conflict. To be clear, I'm rooting for a ceasefire. I think that people of Gaza need a break. And that's the only reason Hamas even feels enough pressure is that per Ryan and Jeremy, many of the people inside are like, I don't care what it takes, hands up. Just let, let, live. Who can blame them? Anybody on Twitter being like, oh, this is surrender? Fuck, honestly, screw you. Like, you have no business telling people who have been through two years of bombing

and all that, how to conduct their affairs. The question for the actual negotiators themselves is can you take that guarantee? That's why I was so upset about the Iran situation, because you could see, how are our talks going right now with Russia? Anyone want to tell me? You know, they just bomb the shit out of Ukraine because they don't trust U.S. negotiators. Same here with Hamas. Part of the problem with that ruse is that you set the tone for all time in the future. You cannot trust these people. And they have all taken it at their word. All the serious, all the serious adversaries, India, they didn't buckle. You have China. They haven't buckled on trade. Russia. Same thing. If you're Hamas, obviously, you're in a 10 times weaker situation, but you're still, you know, you have powerful Middle Eastern people and also at your back. I don't know. It seems very difficult for me to see this thing come to a close soon. Yeah, I think that that is probably correct. Although, I mean, you have to say on the other side, what other choice do they have? You know, you're always going to be dealing with the U.S. who are untrustworthy, Israel,

who are obviously untrustworthy, Netanyahu, who just wants to continue in his coalition and just want to continue the horror indefinitely. So, you know, these are the parties you have to deal with. And one thing that Jeremy always talks about is, you know, they really feel like, okay, it comes down to Trump. We need a guarantee from Trump that he's going to actually enforce the deal. There is zero track record of that ultimately happening. But the fact that he put himself as like chair of this coalitional, you know, provisional government was his attempt to be like, oh, I'm going to be the one overseeing it. Don't worry, you can trust me and I'm going to see this thing through.

But the fact that you have Israel continuing to bomb even after Trump told them not to is one more indication out of, I don't know how many at this point, that you cannot rely on the U.S. And of course, we can all think back to the original ceasefire that Trump negotiated, which was supposed to move forward. I mean, this was a phased ceasefire agreement. Netanyahu said from the very beginning, we're not going to move forward to the other phases. We're just going to use this to regroup and then we're going to go right back to the genocide. And that's exactly what he did.

And Trump did not care about his own achievement in that ceasefire deal to actually enforce it and require the Israelis to abide by the terms of the deal. So, you know, if you're Hamas, if you're the political leadership, certainly if you're the battlefield commanders, and, you know, there may be, I think there are very different views from those two separate groups. And you're looking at the situation, yeah, there's no reason why you should expect that Israel is going to be required to actually abide by the terms of a deal that is also a terrible deal. Like, it is not a good deal for the Palestinians in any respect, but it may also be the best that they can get. And there is such horror and desperation that, yes, of course, people are just exhausted. and, like, please just make it stop. Like, my kids need to eat.

I need to live. I don't want to be displaced anymore. I want to be able to live some sort of life. And if this is the best we can get, we got to do what we got to do. Yeah, I think absolutely right. I mean, one of the key things to Jeremy, who is going to, I think, expound on is the bitterness for a lot of the people, potentially on the ground, because the deal does effectively say an end to all armed resistance. And, I mean, if you think about it, how. how baked in that is to the identity and the political conception of Palestinian, not just statehood,

but like conception as a people, you know, that's going to be very, very difficult to swallow. Now, it's potential that it may be the most popular thing right now for a lot of people just because of the suffering that they've all had, they've all had to endure. But who knows, you know, a year, two years, three years effectively from now. So I guess with all of that, we have Jeremy scale standing by. Why don't we get to it? What's up, everybody? This is Snacks from the Tram Nurse Podcast, and we're bringing you the horror every week all October long.

Kicking up 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 first. The Umberal Reliquary invites any and all fool it. brave enough to peruse its many curiosities. But take heed, all sales are final.

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In early 1988, federal agents raced to track down the gang they suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin into New York from Asia. We had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles and you name it. But what they find is not what they expected. Basically, your stay-at-home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin. They go, is this your daughter? I said yes. They go, oh, you may not see her for like 25 years. Caught between a federal investigation and the violent gang who recruited them,

the women must decide who they're willing to protect and who they dare to betray. Once I saw the gun, I tried to take his hand and I saw the flash of light. Listen to the Chinatown Stang on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, and in session 421 of therapy for black girls, I sit down with Dr. Afea and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right, in terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, you're a spiritual belief.

But I think with social media, there's like a hyperfixation and observation of our hair. Right, that this is sometimes the first thing someone sees when we make a post or a reel is how our hair is styled. You talk about the important role hairstylist play in our community, the pressure to always look put together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying, don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela Neil Barnett, where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to therapy for black girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcast. Joining us now at Jeremy Scales, co-founder of Dropside News,

great friend of the show. Good to see you, Jeremy. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me back. So, Jeremy, there's a lot of developments here. We talked last week about the potential Gaza peace deal. Let's go ahead and put your tweet up on the screen, which is the full response from Hamas leadership.

Can you break some of this response down? It was sold in the Western Prince as a total agreement. That's not exactly the case, although it is. very conciliatory. What are your thoughts here on the statement and what it means for the potential of a ceasefire? You know, I spent much of the last week talking to sources within the Hamas leadership and representatives of Palestinian Islamic jihad and others who were involved with deliberating exactly how to respond to Donald Trump. And, you know, the initial response from Palestinians in all of these factions was that Trump's Gaza plan would be a catastrophic deal for the Palestinians on

both the short-term level and a long-term level. On the short-term level, while it did provide for the release of a large number of Palestinian captives in exchange for releasing all of the Israeli captives within a 72-hour period, it did not have robust guarantees that the war was actually going to end. Yes, Donald Trump said that within 72 hours, if they're released, there will be an immediate ceasefire, but it didn't have any details that previous agreements had. So the Palestinians looked at that. And then they looked at these sweeping other things about a foreign force being deployed. Donald Trump and Tony Blair essentially dictating the affairs of Gaza, major questions that cut to the heart of Palestinian self-determination or Palestinian statehood. And so these Palestinian

negotiators had to figure out how to thread a needle. And they know that Donald Trump is campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize. They know that Donald Trump responds well to people saying positive things about him. And so what they tried to do was to give the impression that they were embracing Trump's vision for an end to the war and to affirm that they want to go into an agreement to release all Israeli captives in the context of achieving a ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces and aid coming back in. But they disagreed with large portions of Trump's plan. So what they ended up on is a document that actually, just on a independent strategic level, is quite brilliant because what they do is they center what they know Trump most wanted

was to hear Hamas saying two things. We will release all of the Israeli captives and we will relinquish power in Gaza. Now, we've talked on this show repeatedly about the fact that those are not new positions on the part of Hamas. They've tried to make an all for all deal. They've said that they would step down. But they really, they led with that and they thanked Trump for his efforts, along with Arab and Muslim nations. And they said that they're ready to make a deal. But the second part of what they did. And this is why, you know, I think a lot of Palestinians felt that they threaded the needle well is they didn't reject anything that Trump said, but they said Hamas is not Palestine. Hamas is one actor. We can negotiate issues related to the war because we're holding the captives

and we're fighting the war. But if you want to talk about all these other issues, let's do it. But it has to be in the context of a broader Palestinian dialogue. So that's where things stand right now. there are indirect negotiations that are supposed to kick off this week in Egypt. The U.S. and Israel, though, said today that they're not going to start doing the negotiations until Hamas first meets with the Egyptians, the Qataris, and the Turks. And what I'm told is that the Americans and Israelis are basically pushing this idea that the Palestinians first need to agree to release all of those captives and that it cannot be linked to a permanent Israeli withdrawal. That's going to be a major sticking point. We have to see, again, what Trump says, because at the end of the day,

he's the decisive factor. He's the only one that can get Israel to back off of its maximalist agenda. Guys, let's go ahead and put A6 up on the screen. This is Jeremy's analysis and add some additional reporting here. And one of the things, the headline is Hamas's strategic gamble. You say, well, President Trump enthusiastically welcomed Hamas' response to his Gaza plan, the White House and Israel deal in deception. And one of the things that you report on exclusively here is that that those Arab countries, which were portrayed as being completely on board with this quote unquote deal, they actually, the version of the deal that they saw went through some Israeli revisions before it was actually announced. So can you break down some of how all of that went

and how those Arab coalition partners are thinking about this? Yeah, I mean, this is sort of an astonishing story, Crystal. So what happened is over the past several weeks leading up to Trump and Netanyahu taking the podium and announcing this 20-point plan, and his administration had a series of meetings with Egypt, with Qatar, with Turkey, with Pakistan, with Indonesia, with Saudi Arabia, with the United Arab Emirates, and they were going over drafts of what was originally going to be a 21-point plan from Donald Trump. And just to give an example, one of the things that was in an original draft shown to Arab countries was that there was going to be no Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

That was removed then from the plan that was distributed by the White House last Monday, when Trump and Netanyahu took the podium. But what I understand is that in the 48 hours leading up to Trump and Netanyahu coming out, Steve Whitkoff, Trump's special envoy, Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, and Ron Dermer, Netanyahu's top political advisor and the minister for strategic affairs,

sat down and they started just plucking out various terms or changing the wording that the Arab and Muslim nations had signed off on. And then they also created a whole new map for Israeli withdrawal that would leave Israeli forces deep within Gaza, even after all of the captives were released. Trump did not inform any of those Arab countries ahead of time that these changes had been made. And so foreign ministers of all of those countries, you know, watched Trump and Netanyahu, and they said, wait a minute, this is not the text that we had been

shown. But they didn't denounce Trump. They didn't say, oh, this was a lie. What they did is they sort of sat there and ate it, and they put out statements giving general statements of support for Trump's initiative. But privately, I'm told, Crystal, they told Hamas negotiators, this was not what we signed on for, but we can't do anything about it right now. So they encouraged Hamas, and I think more than encouraged, I think they were saying to them, this is really the last chance to make a deal. You cannot reject Trump's deal, no matter how disgusted you may be with some of the terms. And so I think what we see is Trump kind of saying he accepts the offer that Hamas didn't exactly make and Hamas saying we accept your offer that you didn't exactly make. And so now it really does boil down to it.

You know, there was this other thing that happened, which is that I think Netanyahu and Israel were stunned at how enthusiastic Trump was when he, you know, the white is something crazy that happened. I don't know if you guys caught this. But Trump puts out his statement saying, great, you know, Hamas is just. given us a really good response. And then the White House posted a translation of Hamas's entire statement in full, including its characterization of what Israel is doing in Gaza as a genocide, referring to Israeli forces as occupation troops. So the White House posts this thing and they said an important statement from Donald Trump. So they put that out. And then there's all these accusations. Well, now Trump is Hamas, because of course the Israelis accused everyone

of being Hamas. The White House then, you know, it was up for quite a while. they then deleted it. But what was happening is that the Israelis are spinning this saying there were no surprises here. Everything has been fully coordinated. Axios, though, Barack Ravid, reported that when Netanyahu did speak to Trump, he said to Trump, you know, this is a terrible deal and it's meaningless what Hamas has said. And then Trump says to him, why are you always so effing negative? That was the quote that was in Axios talking to Netanyahu. So I think what we have here is it's something a little bit more than these fake stories about, oh, there's trouble between Netanyahu and Trump. I think Trump, for his own reasons, we've discussed on this

before, actually does want this done. He sees profit, you know, motivations in Gaza. He wants development there, and he wants the Nobel Peace Prize. So, you know, typically what happens is that the U.S. has something resembling a kerfuffle between, you know, whether it was Biden or Trump and Netanyahu, and then they get in line and then the genocide resumes. This This time, there are other dynamics at play, including Trump's relationship with these Arab countries. Yes, this could be an elaborate setup. It's certainly possible that they're going to try to trick Hamas into giving all of the Israeli

captives and then resume the genocide. But that would cause an earthquake in Trump's relationships with these Arab countries. And I think Trump genuinely does want he and his cronies to make a lot of money off of what he believes will come next in Gaza. The wild card, though, is the Palestinians are saying, we're not going to give up our weapons. not going to agree to disarmament. That's not for Hamas to decide. That's for the Palestinian people. So that's, that I think, is going to be the real serious sticking point this week to look for is the Israelis don't want any conditions given up to retrieve their 48 captives, 20 living, 28

deceased. And Hamas is saying, we're not going to link demilitarization of the Palestinian people to any of this. We need to negotiate an end of this war alone. Yeah. And see, that is the sticking point where I just can't seem to see resolution, but you seem a lot more optimistic than me, Jeremy, because when I look at it, it's very possible a hostage deal, swap, some sort of temporary ceasefire seems totally within the realm of possibility. Can you talk about how you said Hamas wants a Trump guarantee? From my eyes, though, why would you want necessarily a Trump guarantee when we were about to meet with the Iranians and then we bombed them the next day? I mean, that just seem, sure, I mean, they have no position necessarily to negotiate, but they have all those other

Middle Eastern countries around them. They have all of these disparate forces, some which are acting on them saying, hey, as you just said, you can't just surrender armed liberation or armed resistance as a cause. How does that dynamic come into play here past the hostages? I mean, this has been true from the beginning where the, you know, the Palestinian negotiators understand that Trump doesn't keep his word, that he's an erratic guy. So they're not, you know, going into this blind. They understand what it is. But at the end of the day, they'll say, and I talk to them about this, what other choice do we have? We have to get as many countries as possible to encourage Trump to stay the course on this. We need Trump's guarantees. And they understand. And this is part of why

they are not going to agree to any sort of disarmament that at an instant Trump could shift gears. And next thing you know, Netanyahu is massively bombing Gaza again. You know, I am not optimistic. I'm just pointing out that there are some different dynamics at play because of Trump's unique posture as the president in the United States and the fact that his family has massive business investments in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates. They have a lot to gain from getting Netanyahu to end this war. From the Palestinian perspective, though, the way that they approached this was to say, there are only a handful of issues that Hamas has a mandate to negotiate. Anything else must be negotiated among all Palestinian factions. And I think that there's going to be a lot of

behind the scenes maneuvering. The Palestinian authority under Mahmoud Abbas is highly unpopular. Trump recently denied a visa to Mahmoud Abbas to come into the United States to speak at the United Nations. Palestinians don't trust the Palestinian authority. European countries are trying to bolster it. So the question is like, what Palestinians are going to be in charge of running Gaza? And are they actually going to be in charge? Or is it going to be the former prime minister and unindicted war criminal Tony Blair that's presiding all over this? This is going to be a huge boondoggle if somehow Trump is able to move forward with these so-called development plans and a lot of his cronies are going to make a lot of money and

those Gulf states are going to make a lot of money. So I'm saying that in real political terms, it's not about the politics of this or the history of it. The motivation from Trump, I think, is to try to get the Nobel Prize and to try to set up a situation where a lot of Westerners and Arab Gulf states make a lot of money off of Gaza. money grab. And Jeremy, what's your sense of, is there any schism between the political leadership of Hamas and the battlefield commanders on the ground in Gaza?

What's interesting is that part of what they had to do to deliver this response to Trump is to distribute drafts of this statement. And they did that among Palestinian factions. And then they had to get it to the commanders of the Qasan brigades and Soraya Al-Quds, the armed forces that are holding the Israeli captives and the political leadership of Hamas on the ground. And my understanding was that it went very quickly, that there was, there were minor discussions about language and questions that were asked, but that they came to an agreement very swiftly. You know, the New York Times, BBC, other news outlets in recent days had reported, oh, you know, the ground commanders are going to reject this thing.

They're hardliners. My sources, I think, would tell me if there were such divisions and the speed with which they did this. Trump gave them an ultimatum on Friday saying they had, until Sunday at 6 p.m., they delivered their response within hours of Trump making that three-day window for them. So, no, I think there was debate of a different nature within Hamas and Islamic jihad, which was, do we reject this deal? Or do we try to thread the needle? That was the real debate, because a lot of Palestinians read this document and say, there's nothing good in here for us. And, you know, a lot of suspicion it was a trap. The camp of people that prevailed were the ones that said, we have to try to think strategically, to go into it with an open mind, to make

ourselves appear to be the flexible party and Netanyahu, the obstructionist, and to appeal to Trump's ego and to embrace the idea that we recognize, and it's legitimate, he's the only one that can end this war. And that's what they did. I think they feel that they gave the best response they could have. And now their negotiators have arrived in Egypt, Khalil Al-Haya, the political leader of Hamas. He made his first public appearance since Israel tried to assassinate him in Doha Khatar on September 9th. He gave a brief interview to an Arab TV network. He didn't talk about the ceasefire processor of the agreement. He talked about the fact that Israel assassinated his son in that bombing. And he said, you know, we're not made of iron and

stone. We agree, we grieve like everyone else. But I see their lives as worth no more than the lives of the other Palestinians who have died during this genocide. So that that's the tone that Khalil Al-Hia is going into this with, having just lost his son, having his wife injured in the bombing, his daughter-in-law injured in the bombing, his grandchildren injured in the bombing. That's the guy who's leading the indirect negotiations now and is going to be sitting effectively in a room next to the Israeli negotiators who were going to do their best to try to make sure the Palestinians get nothing in return except their own prisoners freed from Israeli prisons in return for all of their leverage, which is 48

Israeli captives, 20 living 28 deceased. In early 1988, federal agents raced to track down the gang they suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin into New York from Asia. We had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles and you name it. But what they find is not what they expected. Basically, your stay-at-home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin. They go, is this your daughter? I said yes. They go, oh, you may not see her for like 25 years. Caught between a federal investigation and the violent gang who recruited them,

the women must decide who they're willing to protect and who they dare to betray. Once I saw the gun, I tried to take his hand, and I saw the flash of light. Listen to the Chinatown Stang on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts. What's up everybody? This is Snacks from the TrapNur's 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 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 first. 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 trap nurse podcast from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

broadcast. Think back to the early 2000s. You're flipping through TV channels, and then you hear this. I was rooting for you. We were all rooting for you. How dare you! Learn something from this! But looking back 20 years later, that iconic show so many of us loved, is horrified.

Robin, first of all, is too old to be starting model. She's huge. I talked to cast, crew, and producers who were there for some of the show's most shocking moments. If you were so rooting for her, what did you help her? With never-before-heard interviews, the curse of America's Next Top Model examines why this show was so popular and where it all went wrong. We basically sold our souls and they got rich. Listen to the curse of America's Next Top Model on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Jeremy, while we have you, we did want to get an update on the Sumud Flotilla. We do have here a video of an Italian journalist who was on board who talked about the treatment that many of the captives, including Greta Thunberg, suffered after they were taken captive by the Israelis. Let's take a listen to that. We'll get your reaction. Greta Thunberg, a brave woman who was only 22 years old. She was humiliated and wrapped in an Israeli flag and exhibited like a trophy.

I had the feeling of being in a really barbaric place, and I really hope that this barbarism might be oversue. So that was an update there from the Italian journalist. I know, Jeremy, as well, that one of your own journalists actually remains or was missing. I believe you don't have any update or status on that. So can just give us your reaction as, you know, literally somebody with a direct connection here to the flotilla? Yeah, I mean, one of our editors, Alex Colston, was on one of the ships, and he was snatched. along with the others by Israeli forces days ago, we got an initial update confirming that he had been taken to the port of Ashdad in Israel.

And then we were told he was moved to this prison where they're also holding figures from the Hamas resistance that have been taken by Israel. But the Israeli government has given us no updates whatsoever on Alex's status. And there are also no updates on the status of a lot of others. Yes, many of them have been released. They're coming out and they're describing bedbug-infested cells, forms of abuse and mistreatment. They were also subjected to a visit by Itamar Ben-Gavir, the Interior Security Minister of Israel who ran around saying that they're all going to be treated like terrorists. The way that Israel treats Palestinians, who it puts in its prisons,

is to beat them, degrade them, torture them, subject them to other forms of abuse. We've heard some very disturbing reports about how these flotilla activists were treated, but we remain deeply concerned about the fate of one of our editors, Alex Colston. And I just want to say at the end of the day that while all of us should be paying attention to how they're treating these international activists, the fact is that there are as many as 15,000 Palestinians, including women and children, that remain in these Israeli facilities. And Israel is an entity that subjects children to military tribunals. systems and denies them access to lawyers. We've seen prisoners being killed extrajudicially

inside of Israeli prisons. So while we should focus on the fact that our colleague Alex is his status is unknown and many of these people seem to be subjected to abuse, what Palestinians have endured in these Israeli facilities is unconscionable. And the world really should be focusing on that as an issue as well. And I know many of the flotilla activists have made that point themselves. Yeah, of course. And, you know, to your point there, the peace deal from Trump actually contains a number of admissions, including, you know, in the hostage exchange deal, they talk about and all of the women and children are going to be released, which is, you know, an admission that Israel is, in fact, holding children hostage in their prison system. And then also allowing

the free flow of aid, which is another admission that Israel is not allowing the free flow of aid, which is something that they have denied vociferously. Yeah, I mean, those are very important. important points, Crystal. And another thing in there is the formula is for each body of a deceased Israeli, they're going to hand over 15 bodies of Palestinians. Remember how Trump's been focusing on who holds dead bodies? Why do they have dead bodies there? Israel, for decades, has had a practice of holding the corpses of dead Palestinians in freezers or in graves marked only by numbers. They have hundreds of bodies of Palestinians, some that have been there for decades without returning them to their families.

This is a matter of national policy in Israel. So, you know, what we see happening is that every allegation that is made by Israel against Palestinians, Israel is doing that on an industrial scale. And there are some rather interesting assertions in Trump's plan that if you just peel the layer back a little bit, you recognize that even Trump realizes that what Israel is doing very much can be categorized as genocide and, and, you know, in some cases, extrajudicial torture. You're talking about children being in prison, and it references that in this, it's an admission, even though it's just a technical detail. The fact that they put it in there, it means

they have to be accountable for having that knowledge. And, Jeremy, we also had some reporting here, and people are calling it the Barry Weiss buzzer-beater from CBS News about those initial attacks on the flotel. Not that this will come as any sort of a surprise, but this is A-10, guys. We can put this up on the screen. They did learn that Netanyahu himself directly approved those military operations against two of the flotilla vessels early last month. Two American intelligence officials briefed on the matter told CBS News, Israeli forces on September 8th and 9th launch drones from a submarine dropped incendiary devices onto those

boats that were moored outside a Tunisian port. You know, I know with Israel, we just like, these things happen and it's just like, yeah, it's just what they do, sort of like, you know, all sorts of insanity that Trump does that just, you know, no other president could get away with. But just speak a little bit to how extraordinary this is, how wild it is, what rogue kind of lawless behavior this is from our great ally Israel. Yeah, and remember that Israel also has a history of killing people on these flotillas. And this isn't new. I mean, this goes back in 2010. you had the Mavi Marmara, where Israeli special forces raided and they killed a number of international activists on a flotilla. And it's important to remember the context of this.

Who are the people on the flotilla and what are they doing? It includes, you know, lawmakers from countries around the world, you know, former ministers and governments, journalists, medical workers, activists. And they're trying to break an illegal blockade to bring infant formula, to bring food, to bring other humanitarian goods. And Israel, uses high-tech submarines to penetrate the waters of Tunisia, to launch a drone, to try to set the ships on fire, to try to prevent these people from going and breaking their illegal blockade so that their forced starvation campaign can continue on. This is the kind of entity that the world is dealing with. Most people's eyes are open right now, and they see clearly what Israel is,

especially under Benjamin Netanyahu. And the question is whether Trump's interests are going to align with this massive shift in public perception of what Israel is. The real question is if Donald Trump's business and ego interests are going to align with what clearly is a world that wants Israel to stop committing genocide and stop acting as a pariah state on the world stage. Very possible. We do have a bit of information here. Maybe we can add this in post-production.

The Israeli foreign ministry has just released this 171 additional provocateurs from the Hamas-Samud flotilla, including Greta Thunberg. were deported today from Israel to Greece and Slovakia, deportees are citizens, and they list the various countries. They say, quote, all the legal rights of the participants in this PR stunt were and will continue to be fully upheld. The lies they are spreading are part of their pre-planned fake news campaign. So that fits largely what we've seen, Jeremy. I did note that they call it the Hamas Sumud Flotilla, but that's kind of what they've been saying from the beginning. Yeah, and again, remember that this is accusation number one that Israel always makes

against anyone that dares to be a doctor or a medical worker or an activist or a journalist. It's their Hamas. So, you know, Israel has used that so much that it just is void of any meaning. But the fact is that Israel violently took custody of activists who were trying to break their illegal siege and is trying to cover it up by just bombarding the space with its own lies. It's a pattern we've seen for the past two years, in fact, for many decades. All right. Well, we will continue to monitor the drop site reporter, Alex, and we hope for a safe return.

So thank you very much for joining us, Jeremy. We appreciate your analysis. Thank you. What's up, everybody? This is Snacks from the Trapner's 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 Sival to Hill. Me and Tony bringing back fire 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. We're talking about our favorite horror and Halloween movies and figuring 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 80 thing with the little tongue muster. October, we're doing it Halloween style. Listen to the Travener's podcast from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. In early 1988, federal agents raced to track down the gang they suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin into New York from Asia. We had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles and you name it.

But what they find is not what they expected. Basically, your stay-at-home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin. They go, is this your daughter? I said yes. They go, oh, you may not see her for like 25 years. Caught between a federal investigation and the violent gang who recruited them,

the women must decide who they're willing to protect and who they dare to betray. Once I saw it on, I try to try to. take his hand and I saw the flash of light. Listen to the Chinatown Sting on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts. Think back to the early 2000s. You're flipping through TV channels, and then you hear this. I was rooting for you.

We were all rooting for you. How dare you! Learn something from this! But looking back 20 years later, that iconic show, Solution. many of us loved. It's horrified. Robin, first of all, is too old to be starting a model. She's huge. I talked to cast, crew, and producers who were there for some of the show's most shocking

moments. If you were so rooting for her, what did you help her? With never-before-heard interviews, the curse of America's next top model examines why this show was so popular and where it all went wrong. We basically sold our souls and they got rich. Listen to the curse of America's Next Top Model on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. So we got a bunch of legal updates for you. These were late breaking last night with regard to Trump's attempt to send the National Guard into Portland, Oregon, in particular. He is also trying to federalize National Guard to send into Chicago, Illinois. We'll get to that in a moment. So the TLDR here is that you had, a Trump-appointed judge who said, no, you can't federalize Oregon's National Guard over

their objections and send them in. I'm issuing a temporary restraining order. Then Trump said, okay, well, since we can't send in the Oregon National Guard, we've already federalized the California National Guard. We'll just send some of them in. So this judge had an emergency hearing last night and said, no, you cannot send any National Guard, whether it's from Oregon, California, Texas has also been floated. You cannot send the National Guard into this state I'm issuing a temporary restraining order while the process plays out and the case is decided on the merits. California's Attorney General weighed in and sort of explained the legal process yesterday evening. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.

A judge had already said yesterday that the conditions on the ground absolutely do not justify the federalization of National Guard. They don't justify the federalization of Oregon National Guard. And so the federal government in its ingenious thinking said, well, her order, though it said there were no conditions to bring the National Guard, federalized National Guard to Oregon, applied to the Oregon National Guard. How about we bring in California National Guard? Maybe that would work. And she was completely miffed. I just listened in on the entire hearing. First of all, thank you to my incredible team.

The incredible teams in Oregon and Portland, there's a team effort. Folks working overtime, obviously today is a Sunday, and democracy needs to be protected every day, and the rule of law does it as well. And she was really miffed her first set of questions of the federal government where, how does this not violate my order from yesterday? And I think she's right, you know, that this sort of super technical approach to try to bring National Guard in that's from another state. And just minutes before the hearing commenced, we got word through a memorandum from Secretary

Heggseth that the Texas National Guard has been federalized, 2,000 of them, with 400 of them being deployed to both Portland and Chicago. So it is clear that it's a sort of whack-a-mole approach from the federal government. You've stopped the Oregon National Guard from being federalized. We'll bring it the California National Guard. You stop the California National Guard for being brought up north. We'll bring in the Texas National Guard. You stop them, we got, you know, who's got next?

You know, we got a bunch of others we can bring in. And so we asked her, the judge, to issue a broad order that says, that applies to every national guard in every state and the District of Columbia. And that none of them can be deployed, can be federalized and deployed to Oregon. And she issued that order from the bench. She's going to back it up with a written order as well. But she was concerned based on the behavior of the federal government about what the scope of her order should be and believed. And I agree that a broad order that is broad in scope is appropriate.

So that's the nuts and bolts of what happened here. I did go and look at the judge's original order, sorry, because there's a lot of talk about, Portland, this, and an insurrection, blah, blah, blah. And so, okay, what's the reality of what's been going on here? And this is all focused around this one ice facility in the city of Portland. And even what the government claimed in order to justify federalizing the National Guard, which is an extraordinary action which requires something on the level of like a rebellion or an insurrection, the most they could point to were a few incidents from like June and July

where you had protesters shining lights in people's eyes, those sorts of things. And in recent weeks leading up to the federalization of the National Guard, they said that the typical nightlife in downtown Portland required more law enforcement resources than what was happening outside of this ice facility. You were talking about, you know, eight to 20 protesters who would be there just sort of like sitting around in lawn chairs. And so that's why she said that this, you know, even with granting a lot of latitude to the federal government, that they were, they were likely, Oregon was likely to succeed in their case because there was nothing approaching insurrection or rebellion that even the government could point to that

was happening here on the ground. There was an interesting line. One of my friends combed through the decision, he's a legal analyst, and he flagged this line from the judge's ruling, quote, on the night, September 20, 2025, national guard or mobilization was announced. The size of protests increased substantially, ballooning to around 200 with the second protest at a different location, including a quote, few hundred. Moreover, this court notes that in Los Angeles, the National Guard mobilizations, quote, in flame protests, spawned unrest at new locations, required additional resources from California highway per toll. I thought it was actually kind of an interesting flag from the judge's ruling about the practicality, about what they're claiming to

quash. And yes, I also have been honestly mystified at where Portland came from because, I mean, Chicago made sense in the Trump narrative, right, about crime. I mean, look, no one's going to deny that Chicago is a huge crime problem. Or even in respect to Washington, D.C., they'd also talked about Memphis. But Portland honestly came out of nowhere. And so I had to do some digging. It seems to me that quite a lot of this is retcon revenge for 2017, 2020, which, I mean, to be fair, Portland was genuinely out of control under the first Trump administration. There were huge eyes protests. You'll remember there was, there was like some conflict or my memory is escaping me. And I forget exactly who the mayor was. This was like a big thing with Antifa. And there were nightly.

protests and then their BLM with Portland was insane. And so anyway, from what I have been able to tell, most of this is revenge on Portland for 2017 to 2000 years ago. Yeah. And so I think that's kind of the context through which I have been able to see this because it's like you said, I looked at the protests. I was like, okay, I mean, it is protests. The administration's argument is that the Portland police are refusing to do any backup of ICE, which I mean, I guess it's technically within their rights, right? I mean, if you have a city and a police department, I don't know. I don't really know how it all works in terms of whether you have like an obligation to back up federal law enforcement, if that's what the police chief and the mayor are telling you

not to do, whatever. There's civilian control. But that seems to be the justification for some 300 national guardsmen. All of it is really centered, like you said, around this ICE facility. But from what I could see, there was not a big protest around this. And if you look at it in the context of 2017 to 2020, it starts to make a lot more sense. Yeah, I mean, I just looked at it as Portland is kind of, Portland and Seattle were both strongly associated with quote-unquote

Antifa. And since they're doing this big, like, it was. I mean, it was. Like, it was crazy. Remember, Seattle had chop or whatever it was called? But that's what I'm saying. Like, in terms of where this came from, none of it has to make sense, right? They'll just use any excuse. And so since they're making this big

Antifa push and there's this association with Portland and Antifa, I think that's where it came from. But I actually have the piece from the judge's decision, which, again, this is a temporary restraining order. What they had to find is that Oregon is likely to succeed on the merits, but this will, you know, continue through the court system. There will be a final decision here.

Again, worth noting this is a Trump judge. This isn't some lib. And in California, what happened is the initial federal district judge ruled on Newsom's side. And then when it went to the appeals court, they ruled against Newsom. This judge went out of her way to separate this case from what was happening in California. And I think that is fair. Listen, I disagree with the appeals court decision there. But there were genuine, like, there was stuff happening.

We saw the cars on fire. Like, there were protests. There were arrests being made. There were violent incidents, et cetera. Do I think any of that came in close to justifying federalizing the national car? No. But that was a different beast entirely than these like eight to 20 people who are sitting in lawn chairs outside of an ice facility.

Well, within their rights, by the way, you're allowed to protest the federal government. And so within this ruling from the judge, she cites what the government was even using to claim the power to federalize the National Guard. And two of the things were just like, well, things happen in other parts of the country and they could happen here. Or, you know, we have, yes, it's small now. But maybe in the future, something that could happen. So we've got to be there just a case.

And she's like, you can't do this just based on like your idea of something that might happen in the future. The specific incidents they point to, she says, defendant's declarants describe only four incidents of protesters clashing with federal officers in the month of September preceding the federalization order on September 1st, 9th, 12th, and without further specification, the second week of September. First involved protesters setting up a makeshift guillotine to intimidate federal officials. That seems legal to me anyway. The second involved four people shining overpowered flashlights in the eyes of drivers. Third involves someone posting a photograph of an unmarked ice vehicle online, and the

last involved additional drivers having flashlights shown in their eyes. So that's the month of, that's the only thing they could even point to happening in the month of September. I think any reasonable person would look at that and be like, you probably don't need the National Guard to deal with that. But all of that being said, let's go ahead and take a listen to how Trump is characterizing what is going on in Portland, which apparently bears no relation to what reality was prior to, you know, to their extraordinary sort of uptick in federal presence there. This is the first element in this block, guys. Let's go ahead and play it.

We're going to look at that. It was amazing. Portland is burning to the ground. It's insurrectionists all over the place. It's Antifa. And yet the politicians who are petrified. Look, the politicians are afraid for their lives. That's the only reason that they say like there's nothing happening.

and you've seen it, the place is burning down and they pretend like there's nothing happening. So we'll take a look at the order. We haven't seen the order yet. So I don't know what he saw in Fox News or whatever or just invented or was told by Stephen Miller, but in his view, the place is burning to the ground. He called it war ravaged Portland, completely absurd. And so anyway, that's where we are in terms of the legal system. We can also go ahead and play that in Chicago separately, there has been a major escalation

in terms of federal agents. On Friday, we showed you that. Absolutely horrific. Apartment raid. Kids, adults pull down of their beds, middle of the night. American citizen, non-American citizen, freaking Black Hawk helicopters,

people repelling onto the roof. Little kids zip tied naked, thrown into U-Haul van. So that's all happening in Chicago. And according to Governor Pritzker and also according to independent reporting, Trump is now planning to try to federalize the Illinois National Guard

to send into Chicago as well. Let's go ahead and play B2. This is Governor J.B. Pritzker, responding to the Trump administration escalation there. Let me just say that the secretary does know what she's talking about. She frankly says that people are clapping. They're not. They're booing her on the street. And they're booing ICE and CBP. They're marching, CBP marching on a beautiful Sunday in Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago. They're raiding neighborhood. where instead of going after the bad guys, they're just picking up people who are brown and black

and then checking their credentials. Are you a U.S. citizen? I don't know about you, but I don't carry around papers that say I'm a U.S. citizen. So you can imagine people are getting detained, they're getting arrested, U.S. citizens. And they did this, of course, when they raided a building in the middle of the night

in South Shore, 130 people that were emptied out of this building. They were going after a few gang members. And instead, they broke wind. They broke down doors. They ransacked the place. And there were people that were held, I mean, elderly people and children zip tied. Elderly people held for three hours at a time. They are the ones that are making it a war zone. They need to get out of Chicago. If they're not going to focus on the worst of the worst, which is what the president said they were going to do, they need to get the heck out. And so that's all before the National Guard is brought in in Chicago. And, you know, Pritz Grum is planning a lawsuit also to prevent the federal government from federalizing the National Guard in his state. So we'll see what happens there. Stephen Miller can put B5 up on the screen posting just some absolutely wild stuff, especially in the wake of the initial decision from the, again, Trump appointed judge who said you cannot federalize the National Guard and send them into Portland at this time. So he says in these separate. Post. Number one, our system is under attack from within. A Democrat federal judge is showing extreme leniency to the monster who tried to assassinate justice in the highest court in our land. Consider the message this sends to left-wing terrorists, understand what is happening here.

So that is about the person who death threats attempted to, I think, kill Brett Kavanaugh. And then in this other one, he says, legal insurrection. The president is the commander in chief of the armed force is not an Oregon judge. Portland and Oregon law enforcement, the direction of local leaders have refused to aid ICE officers facing relentless terrorist assault. threats to life. There are more local law enforcement officers in Oregon than there are guns and badges in the FBI nationwide. This is an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers, and the deployment of troops is an absolute necessity to defend our personnel, our laws, our government, public order, and the Republic itself. And, you know,

there have been a number of other posts from Stephen Miller, just painting, you know, the country as already in a civil war, as Democrats being this well-organized terrorist network, as Portland being, you know, war-ravaged in the words of the president, of this Trump-appointed judge as this, you know, this temporary restraining order, constituting legal insurrection. So, and Stephen Miller, you know, with regard to these deployments, seems to be running the show. So this isn't just some random Trump official. This is a very powerful guy who is wielding a lot of power in the administration right now. And a lot of this plan seems to come directly from him.

It does seem to come directly from him. And I've been actually thinking quite about it. I've been talking about with some friends. I'm like, what is the strategy here? I'll give you the cope. The cope is basically that there are not that many people who are actually in federal protective service whose job it is to, quote, unquote, protect people

who are federal employees, if that makes sense. As in most DHS, quote, cops are not cops in the traditional sense. That's why he notes. The Portland thing, they're like, that's why we need 300 people to from the National Guard because we don't actually have that. many people to protect our personnel and if they're you know our personnel are not going to have any assistance from law enforcement then that so that's the official explanation i do talking about the

personnel at the ice building the ice building exactly well out on a raid if they're saying like for example there was videos of people like ice who are in a raid or whatever and they're getting run off by people around them and it's like well if the cops aren't going to do anything about that that you need somebody to do something if it's going to be a federal person so that's their justification for why they're doing it i also think a lot of it is to actually invite some of these fights with the blue states over federal authority and to force a lot of this to the Supreme Court. This term of the Supreme Court is one of the most extraordinary for executive power. The Supreme Court actually returned specifically to rule on a lot of these shadow docket

decisions to official real rulings as, for example, the Federal Trade Commission, Lisa Cook. There are so many executive power decisions that are coming up there, and that's part of the decision there. I also think broadly, they seem to think this is a winning political position. So you can disagree legal, trust me. I'm Black Hawk helicopters in downtown Chicago. I don't know. I think it's crazy. However, what they seem to believe is that some sort of like shock and awe approach on immigration seems to be like their winning message.

And this is one where I think they're really off the mark because what they don't seem to understand is that why did, to the extent I think I would say immigration was the number two issue in the 2024 election. Number one was Biden's age. So, okay, that's most important. But number two, I think it was the border. I think it was the 10 to 15 million people who came here illegally. What were people outraged about in that situation? They were outraged at lawlessness and at chaos. And so the problem, I think for them, is that it seems to me as if they are leaning instead in the opposite direction where, look, they shut the border down, which I think is great. I think it's amazing. However, as the more they appear as the chaos

agent, then they're the ones who are going to get to blame for all of the media stories. Right. So Biden owned the chaos of the border and the attendant surge, let's say crime, chaos, whatever, right? All of that, rightfully, I think was put on Biden and on comma because they said, hey, look, some of these people will not be here raping and murdering people if you'd never let them in. You had a chaotic system. The Democrats don't have an answer other than legalizing them. And so we have to shut the border now. We need to do something about it. Most people actually were broadly on top of that message. When you start to see the Black Hawk and you see the federalization of troops, I think rightfully people start to go, hey, you know, this is a little weird here. And so if you start to see it all over the place and they see, start to get very squeamish at that idea as it extends. So I don't know. I mean, it's a very, it's bad. I have no other word for it. It's crazy. I don't think that in a reality that most people who voted for Trump specifically on the issue of immigration thought that this is what they were getting. I really don't. I mean, and people can go back and look, it's fine. I mean, we talked about the Alien Enemies Act. We knew something like that was coming on MS-13. We knew that deportation itself, ICE, et cetera. But I don't quite think people on

understood, or, I mean, it was never floated ever. I read a lot of the documents, even Project 22, or anything, like straight up Black Hawk helicopters. And also, there's just this weird, there's almost a 2025 aization you sent this about all these cameras. Like, why are all of these filmed and put out like a Michael Bay video, right? So to me, I mean, it just is weird. Like you have the Theo Vaughn video, right? Where we're like playing around with Theo Vaughn videos and tweeting them out from the official

DHS account is like, hey, bro, like, this is not a meme, man. You know, it's like it's not funny per se. You can support law and order, which I do. You can submit to be portation, which I do. Should to revel in the memeification of it seems to me like you're stepping things and overreeding a mandate in very different ways. However, look, I hit this with them and they hit it back to me. Trump's got still got a high approval on immigration. It's the number one issue. If we look, but it's like dramatically underwater. Okay, but he's higher. But it's higher there than everybody else. issues, I guess. His disapprove rating, Crystal, is exactly the same as it was three months ago. Hasn't budged a single issue, right? So, like, most people, if you talk to the Republican faithful, by the way,

if we're talking about base, you're saying the base hates ice, like, yeah, let me tell you something. This is like pornography for boomers for a lot of these ice, you know, these ice videos and stuff. So I don't know. I mean, if I look at it, generally, it seems more irreconcilable than ever, just purely on terms of the politics and where things are going. A lot of it also is shock and awe because there want self-deportation, which, I mean, you do have to say it did work. You have some 1.2 million people left the country in the last, I think in the last eight months. So that's part of the strategy. My fear is that they don't actually care about the politics, that it's all just about power.

And that this is about a war, truly a war. I mean, you have to call it that when you're talking about sending Texas National Guard into Oregon or into California or into Chicago or whatever. or truly a war on blue states, blue cities, Democrats in general. And not just like Antifa in the left, but they consider like Gavin Newsom to be some wild radical terrorist insider, et cetera. And so when you put together this crackdown, I think these, some of the things they have done could genuinely be characterized as like terrorist attacks, like what they did to that apartment building, absolutely insane. Terrorizing these cities, you know, crushing dissent on the media front, crushing dissent with the law, with the universities, with any sort of pro-Palestine speech, across the board, it is a consolidation of power.

Even the tariffs are that, you know, firing Lisa Cook, all of these things. The indictment of Comey, I don't like Comey, but, you know, clearly weaponization of the DOJ. There was reporting that came out. They wanted a whole perp walk with like Burley FBI, just a poll amount, et cetera. This is all a theater and a show and a reality of a consolidation of power so that people are afraid, they're afraid to speak out, they're afraid to fight back, they're afraid that, you know, if they're the governor or the mayor who says something bad about Trump, that next is going to be troops invading their town, et cetera, that's what I really

think that this is ultimately about. On the immigration front, you know, I think you're right about the sense that people get of like, first of all, this is just, you're just like delighting in cruelty, which is horrible. Second of all, the blowback to American citizens is so apparent at this point. Again, that apartment building, like that was, you know, there were some undocumented immigrants there, according to the government. I'm sure there were. Apparently, there were some Venezuelan migrants there. It was mostly, you know, black Americans who were in that apartment building, who were pulled, who did nothing wrong, who were pulled out in the middle of the night. Their kids traumatize all of these things. You can go through, you can watch that,

you know, there's a video of an American business owner in California, 79 years old, who was trying to show the ICE agents his papers for his workers. They throw him the the ground. They jump on him. They break his ribs. He had trauma. There was the woman, you know, who bereft woman whose husband was being taken by ICE for deportation at the courthouse in New York. She's grabbed by the hair thrown to the ground. Again, head trauma. Initially, they come out, oh, this was unacceptable. A week later, the agent who did that is right back on the job. There was a U.S. Army veteran. New York Times wrote up a story of a number of American citizens who have been brought in by ice and detained by ice in these really aggressive ways.

U.S. Army veteran in California was trying to get to his job at a farm where he served as security. And there was some sort of protest. The ice age he told them, I'm just trying to get to work here. They broke in the windshield of his car, shot pepper spray in his face, and detained him with no lawyer, no call, no rights, no due process, no nothing for three days. So those are the sorts of things that people are increasingly seeing where, you know, for me, I don't think you should be comfortable with these things happening in immigrants either. But there is a large segment of society that's like, well, they came here illegal.

What are you going to do? Now it is undeniable the way that American citizens are having their lives turned upside down by this federal government. And like you said, I don't think they have like a plausible case that they're coming in to correct the chaos. When they come in, it is stoking chaos. And then with the presence of the cameras in this, it's also. so very clear the way that it is all for, it is a reality, but it's also for a show that they

want to put on to intimidate people. For me, it's just about being you're totally out of control. Like in many of these cases, you're like, dude, what are you guys doing? I don't know about everybody else. I grew up in a small town. A lot of these guys remind me of small town cops, right? Who, when they just stop somebody for weed, they're like, oh man, this is the biggest day in my life. Although, you know, stopping someone for weed may be a good thing. I actually have that experience with my small town. Oh, really? Were they good? Yeah. Well, they They rescued my daughter when she was lost in the woods. Oh, okay.

All right. Well, listen, some of them personally. Here's my thing. We're not saying they're all bad. We're just saying like there is a specific archetype of the small town cop who wants to be a hero and wants to, not even just to be a hero. He's on a power trip. He's on a power trip. He's on a power trip.

Works out at Planet Fitness. And he has been waiting for the day of his life to practice a YouTube jiu-jitsu video. And we all know it. And that seems to be some of the energy. You know, again, I struggle with this because, look, I know. This is part of like, how did we all get here? Again, chaos, lawlessness at the border. There was no legitimate solution, democratic solution that was accepted by the American people for the democratic view of illegal immigration under the Biden administration. People agreed

with deportation. I still think people agree with deportation. The question has to be about law and order. And this is also where, I mean, I don't know, I'm curious where you think things are going. Because let's be honest, abolish ICE in 2018 was a political. disaster. It was a disaster. I think it's actually very interesting. I have not seen that sort of rhetoric reemerge even in the midst of where we, to be honest, you're probably more legitimate saying it today than before. I have seen it and I support it. Okay, but let's all sit with that. That all seemed like the hot, you know, thing to do in 2018. And so what happened? Oh, ISIS, fascist, deportation, et cetera. So now let's flood the country with 10 to 15 million illegals and you're going to lose the

election. So that's my question here is about like what are legitimate law and order solutions to this? Because at the same time, let's be honest here, a huge amount of the left supports like actual violence against ICE. That doesn't mean that they should be wearing mass or acting totally out of control. You don't become the enemy and my enemy. You know, you don't become the mere image of what we should criticize. Yeah. But this kind of leads everybody to dig in and say, hey, let's be real, 2017 and 2020, was fucking crazy. BLM is burning shit down. You have ICE and Antifa, literally throwing rocks and shit at ICE agents, which, again,

let's be real, people actually, I would say by and large, it's like a leftist coalition that supports that. How do we get ourselves out of this? I mean, because what's the inverse? Abolish ICE? Like, okay, good luck. I mean, I don't see it. You know, kids and crazy, kids and cages, crocodile tears, whenever Obama was doing the same thing,

Like, it all reeks me of the same kind of pushback narrative, and then we're just going to come right back here. In early 1988, federal agents race to track down the gang they suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin into New York from Asia. We had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles and you name it. But what they find is not what they expected. Basically, your stay-at-home moms were picking up these.

large amounts of heroin. They go, is this your daughter? I said yes. They go, oh, you may not see her for like 25 years. Caught between a federal investigation and the violent gang who recruited them, the women must decide who they're willing to protect and who they dare to betray. Once I saw the gun, I tried to take his hand and I saw the flash of light. Listen to the Chinatown Sting on the IHeart Radio app.

Apple Podcasts, or anywhere 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 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 figuring out why black people always got to die first. 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 80 thing with the little tongue muster. October, we're doing it Halloween style. Listen to the trap nurse podcast from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Joy Hardin-Bradford, and in session 421 of Therapy for Black Girls, I sit down with Dr. Athea and Billy Shaka to explore how our hair connects to our identity, mental health, and the ways we heal. Because I think hair is a complex language system, right?

In terms of it can tell how old you are, your marital status, where you're from, you're a spiritual belief. But I think with social media, there's like a hyper fixation and observation of our hair, right? That this is sometimes the first thing someone sees

when we make a post or a reel is how our hair is styled. You talk about the important role hairstylists play in our community, the pressure to always look put together, and how breaking up with perfection can actually free us. Plus, if you're someone who gets anxious about flying,

don't miss session 418 with Dr. Angela Neil Barnett. where we dive into managing flight anxiety. Listen to therapy for black girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Because that's what I would say. I would say we're here today

because of the failures of the center, largely the center left, and of the far left's overreach on immigration. They are largely to blame for American public opinion shifting this far. Now, of course, there's agency in the Trump administration, et cetera. But as you just said,

you need to grapple with the fact that a huge portion of the public is like, no, we're fucking done. this empathy and all that got what mass illegals here in the country. We can't have that. Most people agree with that, I would say, broadly in saying, like, it was a totally out of control situation. Like, how do we dig ourselves out of this? Is wildly up for grabs on immigration. But to what extent? Like to under Biden? The swings that we've seen just since Trump was elected are truly wild. I mean, he is dramatically underwater

on immigration now. And you're right. It was one of his strongest issues coming in. You know, my perspective is different in terms of how we got here. I mean, I see it zooming out. I see it more broadly as a failure of the center left to offer an alternative view of the world that is not about your problems are because of immigrants. I hear this stuff all the time. That is the truth.

It is the reality. It's cold, man. The whole reason that this narrative has purchased is because you have people who feel like they are struggling in their lives. They feel like the world is past and they feel like they're not able to get ahead. They feel like, you know, inflation is struggling and pay their bills, the grocery bills, their health care is expensive. Like, I don't know that

my kids are going to be able to even have the life that I have. What is coming to? And they're looking for what went wrong. And Trump has a very clear, and the right, broadly, but specifically Trump has this very clear narrative. It's, and immigrants are central to it. They're not the only scapegoat, but that's central to it. And if you don't offer an alternative explanation that people are going to gravitate towards that solution. But, you know, when you say mass deportation, right? When I heard that, I'm not sure that I saw Black Hawk helicopters repelling onto apartment buildings in Chicago, but I knew it would entail mass, yes, chaos.

I knew it would entail infringement not just on immigrants' rights, but on American citizens' rights, because it has to, because if you're going to sort the immigrant from the non-immigrant, it is going to require surveillance and, you know, it's going to require a heavy hand from the federal government, I think you would acknowledge that. So, like I said, I didn't envision kids naked zip tied together in U-Haul vans, but I knew it would be brutal. But I think for a lot of people, when they saw mass deportation, they thought like the criminals, right?

And Trump consistently in this campaign, more than previously, portrayed undocumented immigrants as crime. He talked about, oh, they're emptying out the insane asylums. And so there was this image of the undocumented immigrant in general as being this criminal character and we got to find them, we got to lock them up, we got them get them out of the country. And yes, people are on board with that. I'm on board with that. If you've got, you know, someone who's violent criminal, I don't want them in the country, you know, even in my most expansive immigration view. But as the rubber has met the road and people see what it actually

means, and you see, actually, Stephen Miller doesn't prioritize criminals. He prioritizes random dudes at Home Depot. He prioritizes random, you know, migrants in an apartment building that, like, some slum lord is trying to get evicted. He has overtly told his law enforcement, you know, whether it's ICE or others, that they need to stop wasting their time doing these complicated gang cases because that takes time to develop and that's more difficult casework and just go for the numbers. So you have many fewer of the much smaller percentage of the immigrants who are in federal custody actually have any sort of criminal indictment than under prior administration. So in any case, it's a long way of saying that, you know, I think you're right, that when people actually see these images and grapple with what is being done in their cities and they put it together with the other, you know, crackdowns that are coming on on speech and weaponization of the government and war on elected officials, Democratic elected officials in states and cities across the country, that they are broadly repulsed.

Now, you're right, his approval rating basically where it's been. Exactly the same. Because people are so, it's not good. It's like 40, 42 percent, something like that. People are very locked in with their views of Trump. But I do want to get to, we have some of those images just so people can see for themselves, you know, some of the things that are unfolding. These are all from Chicago and Portland. So this is a sniper in an armored vehicle. So I think that's a pepperball. That was the one thing. Oh, okay. That was in Broadview outside of Illinois. This is also, this is actually Portland. And this is really important.

I want you to notice not only this like, you know, mass show of forever is all kit it up and look like stormtroopers. And then you got these camera guys. Bunch of camera guys. There's a little too many cameras. You know, you got the iPhone dude. You got a couple of camera guys. This is Chicago PD that was actually tear gassed by ICE. So the local law enforcement, Chicago PD here struggling after they were tear gas by ice.

There was another incident where ice tear gassed, you're an ice. elementary school. The elementary school had to, you know, cancel recess, keep everybody inside because of the random, like, ice tear gassing in their neighborhood. So it was incredibly heavy-handed tactics, even impacting elementary schools and police officials as well. And we have more images here. This is still more Chicago Police Department recovering from being tear gas, which is just an insane situation. Actually, the Broadview, Illinois, police chief says that they're getting fake 911 calls from ICE agents as well, and it's incredibly taxing to their resources. Here you have, you know, a confrontation from ICE and protesters. I believe this is in Chicago.

I had to double check, but I believe this is in Chicago, these scenes that are occurring. Again, this is before the National Guard comes in. This is for sure Portland. Those are snipers stationed on the rooftop, you know, overlooking this area outside the ice building where these protests were occurring. So this is some of what's being done on city streets. My thing is, I don't think this was inherent to mass deportation. I think this is genuinely a Trump thing. Like, I don't think that this is necessarily how it would have to be. It's like a Stephen Miller thing. It is genuinely a vision for them about division, which let's, again, let's be very real here. It has worked to their political benefit. We can read a poll all we want. Who knows? I mean, New Jersey's looking

kind of close to me. If you've been looking at that, the New Jersey race, Republican could win in the state of New Jersey. Again, listen, roll the tape and make fun of me if he, if he loses. It could be Gavin Newsom recall cope that I'm huffing right now, but it's possible. It's possible. So like, let's be honest, you know, also about the political dynamics. But to return to kind of something you were saying earlier. And this is, I see it, Graham Platner going viral for people are being lied to. Guys, we live in a country with finite amounts of resources. To say it's a lie that massive amounts of illegals are not going to tax the system is ridiculous. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous to say you can allow 10 to 15 million people into a country over a four-year period

and it's not going to have some crazy effect, especially when the absolute vast majority of them are non-skilled, don't speak any English, and are not going to integrate into our society on a very easy basis. If we just grant them all citizenship, every single one of them is going to be on welfare. And so the point is, it's like, you can't just live in a world. Crystal, if 23% of the people, if 23% of the people enter the country illegally don't speak English and don't have a high school diploma, what's going to happen? They're going to end up on welfare. Look at the statistics of our own population in that group who end up on welfare. It's huge. Listen, not saying they're bad people, we've got to take care of our own first. It is actually

a world of finite resources. I mean, I know there was this whole discussion about ERs. Yeah, it's crazy that you allow all these people here illegally and they get hit by a car, by the way, with no insurance, and then who's all footing the bill in these ER rooms? It's all of us. They don't deserve my health care dollars. But Tagger, that's the reason why you need an actual system that works where you have a half citizenship. And I say no, that's my point. Exactly. I mean, we have gone around us a million times. But that, but exactly, this is the fundamental question. This is the strength of our country. They, they are a net benefit of society. This is just Statue of Liberty quote,

cope. Like these people. I do believe in the Statue of Liberty quote, by the way. So again, I mean. Overwhelmingly, by the way, the American people agree with me. Ask them, Even at the peak of anti-immigrant hysteria, people still said that immigrants are a net benefit to society. Yes, because grouping all these people in together is preposterous. Is there a limit? Yes, to the, you know, the numbers. Exactly. So what's the limit?

Of course. Do I know? I don't know what the limit is, but I can tell you that we have the capacity to absorb a large number of people into this country. And if you have people out of the shadows, they're not having their labor rights abused and violated. they're not being undercut in terms of their wages. They're able to pay, and by the way, most undocumented immigrants, at least until now, we're paying taxes. Now they're afraid that they're going to be, like, swept up in a deportation raid for, you know, interaction with federal or whatever. Yes, it is.

No, no chance. Again, go look at the studies. Don't just make stuff up. I'm not. I mean, listen. It's true. They contribute much more than they take out of society. There's no doubt about it.

Forward. U.S. studies to support many of these. There are also endless numbers. Of studies that show that you just dismiss out of it. I mean, same with you, no. I mean, but this is the frustration. This is, again, how we got here. If the only option is mass citizenship, a lot of people are going to say, fuck it then.

Let's go with the Black Hawk helicopter. Because if we're just going to have 10 to 15 million coming in here and they get to vote, absolutely not. In the absence of an alternative vision where you're saying, you know what, the problem isn't the immigrant, it's the billionaire. It's the people who are robbing you blind and rigging the system and stealing your electricity and hiking up your electricity. Both of those can be true, you know. If you don't have that alternative vision, then yes, you're right. But then you do have a large number of people who say the problem is, you know, the Venezuelan migrant who came in and they're, you know, they're stealing the housing or whatever,

or they're eating the cats and the dogs. Yes, they will be open to that message. But it is not a correct message. And so if you actually have a vision on the other side that is compelling to people, that is the only way that you fight back against this. That's why I say that it is a center-left failure, yes, that led to this by offering no other explanation and broadly caving to the worldview of the Trumps. So that's how you end up with Stephen Miller and Trump and this truly fascist assault on cities and states and in communities

and lawless chaos that is vastly more dangerous and more violent than anything that I've seen from any undocumented ever. I just think that it very much absolves much of the far left who's forced every candidate to raise their hand and say we should have health care for all illegals that was a health care for for everyone i mean that's the other thing is like so you think elite the other thing is sorry that no that's the other thing is that when you have a neoliberal system where yes not everybody has health care that is also going to make people much more receptive to like see that person who's showing up in the emergency room they're getting health care and you're not which is why i yeah but that's why i support universal health care that's why i

support higher wages. That's why I support union rights. That's why I support universal pre-K. That's why I support affordable daycare so that people don't feel the sense of we're all, you know, it's every man for himself and we're all scrapping against each other where people are doing fine and have the right to those resources themselves, then they are much more, much less likely to find the message of immigrant scapegoating to be appealing. Again, there is not a single social welfare state in the world that exists with a massive open border and illegalized population. All of the welfare systems that you're describing have very tight borders. Norway, Scandinavia, Denmark, they have massive

assimilative programs. For example, in Denmark, I mean, if that's the type of society you want, fine. Like, in Denmark, they literally ban you, I believe, as children from wearing a hijab because they're like, hey, that's not who you are. If you're going to come here and you're going to get our services and you're going to be a citizen, then that's going to come with a huge number of responsibilities. I don't think most people will want to sign up for that. And so we live in a world of finite resources. You can't just have a system where everybody gets health care, including vast numbers of illegals. Like this is, again, I think that this message is deeply damaging. I see the grand platiners of the world going for it. Maybe it'll work in Maine. I have no idea.

But at the end of the day, the rubber will meet the road with the actual proposal. And if you're just going to mass legalize and grant mass numbers of social services to people, I mean, first of all, I mean, in an unironic way, somebody does have to pay for it, like for real. it can't just be, quote, tax billionaires or whatever, because, I mean, with the way that our taxation structure works, it will have to ultimately come from some upper middle class and others. Like, it quite literally could not exactly tax the rich. It's not going to happen. Yes, I mean, but that's, under 60 people in the United States Senate, what's the practicality of what it looks like.

Listen, you're in terms of the politics, is it difficult, of course, of course. But is it wildly pop, of course, yes. If you ask people, should we cut the defense budget? Yes. If you ask people, no, that's not free money. That's cutting the Defense Department budget. And then, yes, we just had a massive tax cut for the rich. Just give that back as a starter.

You can't tell me that every other development nation around the world can afford universal health care. And we can't for some reason. Oh, we absolutely can. I'm with you. Of course we can. But I say my vision for that society. The way that things are distributed is so wildly unequal. Even if we just did a little bit, we would be in such a better.

place. So in any case, to get back to the core of this thing, I mean, I think there is, listen, do I know what the political fallout will be? I don't. But the thing that scares me the most is you think that they believe this is political win. I think they don't care because I think they feel like they are really going, they are going for it right now. Like, they are going for labeling Democrats as domestic terrorists, crushing dissent, surveilling social media, There's a story about how they're putting together a social media surveillance team using Palantir, you know, scaring any sort of like comedians installing Barry Weiss's editor-in-chief at CBS. I mean, they are going for it.

And so in a sense, like obviously what's happening with ICE in these cities and with federal agents in these cities, obviously that is about immigration. But I also don't think it is mostly about, it is about more than immigration as well. I don't disagree. Because it's, it really is a sort of all out assault on. our rights on our First Amendment rights on our ability to protest, freedom of association, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, like all of those things are under attack right now, and it's by design.

I know the producers are going, we're going to be mad because I'm dragging this on, but I think this is the fundamental question of our day. If you were the left, how are you going to handle, if the Democrats come in power, wouldn't you do the same thing at this point? What do you mean? So, I mean, look. Would I send in the National Guard to Texas? No, I mean, well, not that, but I mean, isn't Stephen Miller going to be prosecuted?

Well, he should be. But see, this is my point. No, but he's a criminal. For them, but yeah, but now we're feeding into the same culture of this is now a same, it's going to be the same lawfare full out of assault. If you are violating people's rights and you are breaking the law, do I think you should go to prison? Yeah, but that's how they saw it under Trump, right? Is he a January 6 prisoners or all, listen, I'm not, I'm representing a worldview where you have liberal institutions which are assaulting us. You're trying to plug our children full of hormones.

You are, have an all-out takeover of our institutions. You've flooded our country with 10 to 15 million illegals. So fuck it. Let's go for it. I mean, isn't that what the next Democratic administration, aren't you going to do the exact same thing? That's my view. Trump, J.D., and all of them, all of their staff, good luck.

You're going to be buried in illegal paperwork and probably much more because the libs are actually good at it. You know, you're going to, if you're a red state, you're probably going to have your shit cut, right? This new popularization of, I don't say so. I think so. I mean, if Gavin gets elected, for sure. I wish that I had the faith that you, that you,

do that Democrats are going to have the backbone to actually lock up the criminals that exist in this administration. I mean, these people who are pulling naked children out of their beds and being zip-tied, yes, I think they should be in prison. Come on. This works on the Republican side. You let rape this into the country. You should be illegal.

Come on. Like, this is the same mirror image. The Biden administration procedure, you may not have liked it, but it was done by these were legal provisions that allowed, no. document immigrants, that most, many of the immigrants who came in were through temporary protection status. And by the way, impeach my orcas over it. By the way, by the way, people have a right to apply for asylum. That is consistent with the law. You do not have a right to violate Americans, let alone immigrants, but Americans do process rights. You do not have a right

to pull children with no warrant out of their beds in the middle of the night and zip tied them together and throw them a new hall ban. You do not have a right to hold American citizens three days, no lawyer, no warrant, no phone call, no nothing. You do not have a, I mean, many of the, like, you know, some of the things that happened under Doge continue to have been deemed illegal. So, yes, where criminal acts occurred, there should absolutely be accountability. There should absolutely be accountability. And I'm not going to buy this, like, what about is I'm, oh, well, the, you know, Democrats did thing Republicans. And like, yes, if they were criminal, yes, prosecute, fine, prosecute that. Well, you could come up with, look, I mean,

isn't that one of the lessons this admin? Is it the government can come to where the fucking But let me ask you this. Do you really think there was anything under the Biden administration that was equivalent to Black Hawk helicopters raiding an apartment building in the middle of the night and pulling out people? And I mean, just the like lawlessness of these ice agents and these mass chaos. I think that the border was actually just as lawless. They impeached my orcas over it. It was a genuine criminal act at a political level.

I mean, look, I could hit it back. Kavanaugh stops are legal now under the Supreme Court. I don't agree with it, but it is. Kavanaugh's dot means that you can briefly detain a U.S. citizen for whatever period of time. Yeah, but it's legal. It's under the U.S. Supreme Court. So is it illegal? Well, it was on the shadow docket.

You can say it's bad, but I mean, it was on the shadow docket. It hasn't officially been ruled on the merits. But yes, it allowed them to proceed with overt racial profiling, which is insane and outrageous. Right, but that's my point. And so they can on come up with a justification for anything, right? O's all asylum. It's like, well, you know, I don't say not really. I'm only pointing out, though, that if that is going to be the posture of the Democratic

base and probably the next Democratic administration, then it is kind of a mere image of each other. And so for them, I mean, they're not dumb. They can see all of this. In their mind, it was go time anyways. But if you're a Democrat, why wouldn't you now believe the same thing? So it seems to me like an endless race to the bottom. Like if Gavin Newsom gets elected, wouldn't you deny funding to Texas and a hurricane? You'd be like, fuck you. You came after me. See, I think you would. See, I totally disagree with this. As much as I despise the Trump regime, as much as I despise the Trump regime, as much as I despise Stephen Miller, as much as I disagree with people, individual people who voted for Trump this time around.

I want them to have health care. I want them to have preschool. I want them to have, you know, and this is the view of the left, broadly, right? I don't, now do I see like, you know, it being an issue? Yes, Stephen Miller should be locked, that sort of stuff? Yes, we're going to go to war with Texas and deny people health care? No, I don't see that at all. I thoroughly reject that.

I think that is anathema to any sort of politics that I would believe in whatsoever. And that is genuinely a race to the bottom. Now, you know, is... No, I don't question your sincerity at all. I mean, listen, I don't disagree with half of this stuff. But the level of vindictiveness I'm watching bubble about truth and reconciliation post-Trump, it almost makes me understand the Trump behavior more. Because for them, they're like, if this, if we were already here, they have to go.

Because to them, it's like... I think it's like... I think, I genuinely think that is projection of like the way that this administration operates on, you know, the, the Democratic base and Democratic lawmakers. And, I mean, so you think about Biden, like, think about under Biden. They didn't even get their act together to charge Trump with, with a coup in time for the thing to go to court, right? That's who we're talking about here. Yeah, but aren't you mad about that? Yes, I'm not about that.

But that's what I said. Yeah, so they wanted him to be prosecuted. Yes, and he should have been. Well, this is where I'm the back. But that's a different thing, the thing that Texas shouldn't get, that Texas shouldn't get hurricane funding or they should, you know, the people of Oklahoma or wherever should be, like, screwed and, you know, and there should be retribution against them and their funding pulled, which is things that this administration has done because, for example, Janet Mills and Maine said something he didn't like about transgender kids in sports. No, I don't, I see, I do, I can't say I see zero appetite for that, but that is not a widely held view whatsoever. And like I said, it's anathema to any sort of an actual left kind of a policy. I agree, but you're talking about the left and not the Democrats, because, see, I don't know. I think people are mad. And I see with the base, with Gavin, the way that people are, quote, fighting back, I think a lot of vindictiveness is coming back.

I mean, look, Trump, for all of his fault, he broke the glass on a lot of longstanding norms in politics. I still think this is the central question because it informs so much of the way that our current government is behaving. To them, they thought that the glass was broken under Biden, where, yes, they incompetently indicted Trump or whatever, but they still indicted Trump to them that's like banana republic shit so they're like if we're going to open the door then let's let's be banana republic right and so yeah that is all starting to that's all starting to become the feedback i'm sure they feel that way but i'm not even just talking about actual reality like trump tried to coup the the government she should have been imprisoned they should have been banned from running for election again and so to equate that

with like i didn't like Biden's asylum policy i you're minimizing it because you don't disagree with the policy right but i could flip it around i mean look at the end of the day like I opposed the impeachment or whatever of Donald Trump. I said you should leave it up to the democratic process. And I mean, it's more of an indictment of the Democrats for being unable to beat him in the election. It's just a question to me about where once things are here, how can it possibly ever go back to normal? Because that's kind of what you're saying. I don't know if it can.

That's part of the reason I feel so despondent. Once we're here, we are not going back to the days of Biden. Like red state, blue state. I'm not saying we're going to have a civil war, but we're definitely going to have a lot more, like, authoritarian power in the federal government. I mean, we're already at, when you're talking about Trump trying to send Texas National Guard into California, Oregon, Chicago, I mean, the only reason is that's not a civil war is because the other side doesn't fight back. Yeah. That's how close the edge we are. That's where we are.

Right. So why wouldn't that? That's what I mean. Isn't the logical conclusion? It's like, oh, people are going to start fighting back. I'm like, that scares the shit out of me. That's part of what I'm afraid of with all of this because everything is just getting odd. all the way up, and I don't possibly see an escape.

Like, if Stephen Miller thinks he's going to get indicted under a future administration, I mean, do you even want there to be a future administration? No, but that's already what they're going. I mean, I think that's already what they're going for. And that's why I look at the, you know, I mean, I hope there's something approaching free and fair elections, et cetera, but I have no confidence that these people have any intention of giving up power. Like, there's no reason why we should think that.

We already have Trump losing and trying to not give up power. so we have a track record. I could see how you would get there. I don't, I'm not there just because, I mean, at the end of the day, he did leave, right? And most of it was a LARP. Like, 98, that's another thing that people vastly underestimate. 98% of this is, quote, larping, despite the fact that, look, it has serious ramifications, obviously for norms and all of that, et cetera.

But I do think we should stick with this kind of debate and story because it's all I've been thinking about. I go, once we're here, can you possibly come back? I actually don't know. Can we come back from a world of like blue-on-red warfare, like literally in terms of states and state power and indicting your other political opponents? Everyone can debate endlessly about who started it or whatever. Every side is going to see theirs as entirely legitimate even if you disagree. And it's honestly what scares me the most about where we are.

We did literally have a civil war and managed to put the pieces back together. Oh, it took a long time, a lot of time. Okay, so it's not, it was a, the more you read about that, the more you should be afraid of ever possibly. getting there in the first place. Okay, should we get to the economy? Are we done? Yes. All right.

Well, to be continued. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of, like, butterflies. I'm Danielle Robeye, and this is bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and IHeart Podcasts, where we dive into the stories that shape us, on the page, and off. Each week, I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars,

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