Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/11/24: Bernie Shreds Pelosi On Worker Abandonment, Media Lies On Amsterdam Soccer Clash, Bibi Waiting For Hostages To Die, Cable News Implosion, Biden Coverup Of Electoral Wipeout

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Bernie shreds Pelosi on Dems abandoning workers, media lies about Amsterdam football clash, Bibi waiting for hostages to die, cable news dying, Biden covered up electoral wipeout.    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

High key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell,

and Evie Audley. We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct.

And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals.

Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Hey guys, ready or not, 2024 is here. And we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways

we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let coalitions, the groups of voters that are fleeing the Democratic Party the fastest are the exact groups of voters where Bernie Sanders was the strongest. And it's because of what I just laid out about how he has a coherent narrative vision of the world. He has a coherent divisive politics versus this like dumb neoliberal laundry list crap that Kamala and Biden and all these people run with. And so he wrote out a pretty scathing indictment of the Democratic Party, which we covered last week, where he said

they've abandoned working class people, which I think is, you know, undeniably the case. When you look at the way that the COVID era social safety net was rolled back under Joe Biden, yes, they did good stuff on antitrust, good stuff on labor. That is not helping people's material conditions today. So he put that out, and Nancy Pelosi shot back at him. Here is Bernie getting asked about Pelosi's comments and responding. Let's take a listen. Bernie Sanders has not won. Let me, with all due respect, and I have a great deal of respect for him, for what he stands for, but I don't respect him saying that the Democratic Party has abandoned the working class families. Senator, how do you say to Nancy, in the Senate in the last two years,

we have not even brought forth legislation to raise the minimum wage to a living wage, despite the fact that some 20 million people in this country are working for less than $15 an hour. In America today, we have not brought, in the Senate, we have not brought in the Senate. We have not brought to the floor the PRO Act to make it easier for. Bottom line, if you're an average working person out there, do you really think that the Democratic Party is going to the mats, taking on powerful special interests and fighting for you? I think the overwhelming answer is no. And that is what has got to change. Some real talk there from Bernie.

If you are your average voter, you really think the Democratic Party is going to the mat to help you? No, you don't. No, you don't. Because they are, you know, way too beholden to the donor class. And we'll probably cover this tomorrow, but even Senator Chris Murphy put out a long tweet thread where he was like, you know what? Bernie had a point. And the fact of the matter is the reason that we attacked him so vociferously is because what he says is uncomfortable for our donor base. Yeah. I mean, I was going to say in terms of the accountability stuff, this one is almost like too insane to believe. We'll put it up there on the screen. Jamie Harrison, the DNC saying that

Bernie is quote, straight up BS. Biden was the most pro worker president of my lifetime, et cetera, et cetera. He said there are are a lot of post-election takes and this one ain't a good one. Yeah. Which is really funny because, I mean, I don't know, you know, I have a weird thing where, you know, in some ways, Jamie Harrison is not necessarily wrong, like in terms of the individual like checklist politics. But that's kind of why I think culture and immigration did reign so supreme because clearly, you know, that type of checklist politics is totally rejected, you know, by a lot of these multiracial working class voters who decided to go and to swing for Trump. Whereas I think Harrison and them are in this world where they think that they can laundry

list, you know, box check things and that people will just come along with them when it's pretty clear there's a much bigger story that is at play. Right. And it's also the fact, I mean, Biden is literally incapable of articulating what he did and laying out. I mean, because I think that the antitrust stuff, the labor stuff, all of that has been very solid. The industrial policy, the Biden administration, all very, very good. Okay. Maybe if you had someone who was capable of selling that and of portraying it as like, you know, these are some of the ways that we're pushing back against these economic elites, perhaps it would have mattered more. But I think more to the point of the idea that you hear from liberals, like, oh, well, actually the economy is great under Biden. It's like, no, it wasn't. For most ordinary people, guess what? Inflation hit them really hard.

Prices still are quite high. Just because inflation slowed doesn't mean the prices went back down. And under Trump, there was a huge expansion of the social safety net to deal with COVID. Biden had his highest approval ratings, and the Democratic Party was the most popular at the beginning of his administration when he was passing the expansive American Rescue Plan. The story of his administration vis-a-vis most regular people is COVID era social safety net protections being rolled back. Child tax credit, gone. Rent forbearance, gone. Student loan debt forbearance, gone. All of these things that were incredibly important to people that really helped them, those are going away at the same time that inflation is spiking.

So that's how most ordinary people are experiencing this. You know, I hope Lena Kahn stays. I think that that direction, I'm very confident she won't. But anyway, I think that direction is really important. The labor stuff, super important. But again, I think that direction is really important. The labor stuff, super important. But again, this doesn't hit right now today. So to pretend like, oh, this is an indictment of deliveryism or whatever, I think is just foolish.

And to pretend like the economy was so great for regular people under Joe Biden is just a complete fantasy world. So in any case, you know, Jamie Harrison right now is taking a lot of heat because his stewardship of the DNC is a disaster. And so he's trying to blame shift and, you know, pretend like Bernie doesn't have any kind of a point here. But there's a reason why Bernie Sanders continues to be, even though he's quote unquote the furthest left in the Democratic Party, he continues to be one of the most popular politicians on either side of the aisle in the entire country with independents. Because it's not about this left-right spectrum. It's

about top versus bottom. And that's something Bernie instinctively gets. And to your point, Sagar, almost no one else in the Democratic Party does. So, you know, we'll see where things go from here. You do have, bizarrely, a few people on MSNBC and CNN and Chris Murphy and David Brooks being like, hey, you know what? Maybe Bernie had a point. But honestly, can I imagine them going to war with their donor class? No, I can't imagine that. I think more likely what you're going to get is more of the Seth Moulton direction of like, let me just agree with the Republicans and their narrative framing of the world and capitulate on those issues, be a kinder, gentler version, hope that when Trump is gone, that the next Republican candidate is less charismatic and

we've got a shot against them. And, you know, that's what I think is the most likely direction for the future of the Democratic Party. It's certainly possible. Yeah, let's go ahead and play the next one here just to give some more color on that. Joe Rogan, very popular podcaster. He endorsed Donald Trump in the final days of the election. Four years ago, you went on his podcast. You got a lot of blowback for doing that and for touting that he endorsed you. So is this the kind of example of Democrats perhaps shunning or vilifying people who don't totally agree with them? Yeah, I think that's fair enough. Look, you can have an argument with Rogan, agree with him,

disagree with him, but what's the problem going on in those shows? It's hard for me to understand that. So I think we've got to get, and clearly you have an alternative media out there, a lot of podcasts that have millions and millions of viewers. Get on the show. Disagree with you here. I agree with you there. I don't see a problem in doing that. And you're right.

I got vilified by some of the Democratic establishment because I went on Rogan's show. Now a lot of other people are doing just that. Yeah. I mean, I thought that was, it's funny too because Dana Bash now, it's almost sheepishly being like, well, you got a little blowback for going on there. And he's like, yeah, there was a little wrong going on there. Yeah, I'm sure a lot of that blowback was on her network. Yes. She didn't have anything to say about it then.

Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's too late now. Right? I mean, you know, and Rogan is kind of like, kind of emblematic of the Bernie to Trump pipeline. Right? And that's what happens when you don't have a coherent worldview. You shrink from every fight. You're terrified of picking big fights.

You're terrified of divisive politics. Again, Donald Trump is like the most divisive figure. He is not afraid of picking fights. He's not afraid of being controversial. He's not afraid of saying things that don't focus group and poll test well. Like, take a lesson from that. Take a lesson from that

because that is actually the politics that are most successful. This was interesting. We wanted to show people this, put this up on the screen in terms of AOC's performance. So her district actually was one of the biggest swings in the country towards Donald Trump. Now it's in the Bronx, very overwhelmingly Democratic.

So it's not like he came close to winning, but there was a 24% swing, almost a quarter percent swing at the presidential level, and AOC basically stayed exactly where she was, which means you have this very, it's sort of confounding for a lot of the analyses that are out there, especially the Lego Democrats were too woke analyses, because AOC is probably one of the most woke members of Congress, right? Fair to say, right? Of all the Democrats that are out there, she probably is most comfortable talking about transgender issues and doing land acknowledge. She does all that stuff. I think her language lately has been a little bit better and more accessible, but she definitely fell prey to the very academic language, all of those things. And yet now there exists out there by the tens of thousands, people who voted for Donald Trump and then voted for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And I am bound and determined,

Sagar, to find some of those. Yeah, we are. We are on a mission here at BP. If you voted for AOC in the Bronx and you voted for Donald Trump, please contact us and we will have you on the show. You just, I mean, no troll. You have to. How would we have proof? What's the proof? You think people out there took pictures of their ballot? There's probably enough people out there who did. Somebody has to. Yeah, somebody. You got to have a proof about how you did it. We will vet you. It's not just anybody who will be allowed on this program. But I'm very curious to see who those people are. I really am. As you said, too, there's some acknowledgement here on MSNBC, also around this crystal. Jen Psaki, let's take a listen. There is sexism. There's racism. All of that is true.

But I also think there is a real question I hope people start looking at about who people are listening to. In my view, there was an over listening to and an over lifting up of people who left Trump, not people who left the Democratic Party. The people who left the Democratic Party are the people who are going to, you know, win in the future. The people who left Trump, the never Trumpers who have important voices and have that is not the winning coalition. It's funny for her to say that on Morning Joe in particular, because that is like, never Trump HQ right there. Right. I mean, that's who Joe Scarborough in particular, that's who he is. So she's saying that to his face, which is quite

extraordinary. And, you know, I was just recalling, remember back in 2020 soccer, when it looked like Bernie would actually win, he was like winning Nevada and there was no one who was there. It was like a short period. And CNN kind of freaked out because they realized like, oh, shit, this guy could be the Democratic nominee. And we don't have really anyone in our roster who is part of this coalition who can speak to it, who has any sort of access to it, whatever. And so they started booking myself and several other like Bernie type lefties. And then the second that, you know, Clyburn moves in and Joe wins South Carolina, Obama makes this move,

all the candidates drop out, whatever, like obviously I've never been invited back. And it is noteworthy that almost without, you can point to a few Ninas on there a few times, Mehdi Hassan's on there now and then, but by and large, CNN and MSNBC have completely locked down the Bernie left perspective from their airwaves. You are much more likely as a Trump Republican to make

it on CNN than you are truly. And you are certainly much more likely as a never Trump Republican. And those people basically only exist in cable news green rooms. Yes, that's right. So if your whole worldview is being shaped by the ideology of Joe Scarborough and Cole Wallace, then yeah, you're going to come up with a very skewed understanding of what is actually making voters tick. And, you know, I don't think it's an accident that the one ideology that really is basically completely shut out of any of these networks and completely invisibilized of any of these networks and completely

invisibilized on any of these networks and smeared, dismissed, et cetera, et cetera, is the one that maybe would actually threaten capital's bottom line. But, you know, do I expect any of this to change even as you have a few people on there who are like, yeah, maybe Bernie kind of had a point. Not really, but I guess it's like, I'm glad to hear it better late than never, but, you know, it is where it is. Like, the world has moved on. People have evolved their political views. You know, certain things will be very difficult to, you know, shake people off of.

Like, the coalition that was there for Bernie is not a Bernie coalition anymore. Yeah, they've moved on. Like, the world has moved on. So, to just try to, like, now, in retrospect, recreate that from scratch, I'm just not even sure it's possible. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders.

I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother.

She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. High key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Oddly. We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about.

I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's the deal. We gotta set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback.

Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Let's talk about this chain of events that went down in Amsterdam. So there was a soccer game between, with one of the clubs being this sort of like, you know, hard right-wing Israeli football club. It's so weird to me. I was saying to you, like, I don't understand soccer hooligan culture because it's so weird to me that there's like politics associated with these different soccer teams.

Well, it goes back to the original like brawling days in Europe, right? So like, you know, remember, I mean, if you read a lot of the history about post-World War I Europe, there was like a real fuse of outside gangs, soccer hooligans, and others who would be explicitly affiliated like with the fascists or with the socialists or the communists or the others. So it's actually very, very interesting if anybody's, like Peaky Blinders goes into it a little bit if anybody watches that show. It's very distinct. It's a Euro thing. It does not exist here at all. So anyway, it was somewhat predictable because there is a large pro-Palestine population in the Netherlands and specifically among the Muslims in the Netherlands, of which there is a significant number, that this could be cause for trouble.

And in fact, there were some politicians who were like, guys, we got to take steps. Like, this could be a real issue because it's not like these Israeli football fans just show up and mind their business. As we will show you in some future videos, they were out chanting death to Arabs and bragging about how many Palestinians they murdered and vandalizing and burning Palestinian flags and attacking Muslim cab drivers and et cetera. And so there was a ugly and violent response to that. And I'm not justifying any of this violence all the way around. But by and large, the way the media covered this was as if the perfect little angel Israeli football fans, minding their own business, came to town, and then they were viciously hunted in the streets simply because of their religion. And obviously, that lacks a whole lot of context. And you can imagine, imagine if the shoe was on the other foot,

and it was a group of Muslims who went to a town and were marching around chanting death to all the Jews and we're going to murder your children. I don't think that same context would probably be missing from the events that ultimately unfolded. So emblematic of this whole situation that went down and turned extremely violent and led to, you know, hospitalizations and the Israeli fans having to be like airlifted out by the Israeli government. Sky News aired a video that was actually somewhat honest about what unfolded and what led to the events. And then after they posted it, they had to take it down because providing that context and telling the truth about all of the events and how they unfolded was apparently too much. Let's take a listen.

Violence in Amsterdam left at least five people injured and dozens have been arrested. But what happened? Supporters of Israeli football club Maccabi Tel Aviv arrived in Amsterdam ahead of their UEFA Europa League match against Amsterdam club Ajax. On Wednesday, social media videos verified by Sky News show Maccabee Tel Aviv fans tearing down Palestinian flags from outside of homes. Other social media videos appeared to show residents chasing Maccabee Tel Aviv fans. On Thursday, just before the game, crowds of Maccabee fans were filmed singing racist and anti-Arab songs. While a pro-Palestinian demonstration had been banned by the mayor

over fears there would be clashes. Later that evening during the match, Israeli supporters appeared to disrupt the minute's silence for Valencia flood victims with chants, whistles and fireworks. Maccabi fans were seen attacking locals as a police car can be seen driving by. People with Palestinian flags were seen marching on the streets. Maccabi supporters say they were beaten and attacked on the streets of the Dutch capital, with videos showing some of the streets. Maccabi supporters say they were beaten and attacked on the streets of the Dutch capital, with videos showing some of the violence. So in any case, ugly actions taken all around,

but because this piece from Sky News actually showed some of the provocations and some of the violence from the Israeli side, that had to be pulled. Predictably, the reaction has been insanely hyperbolic and dishonest from American politicians and influencers. We can put up a little sampling. We got some highlights here from Richie Torres, who says that Mehdi Hassan is justifying a pogrom against Jews in Amsterdam. Barry Weiss, there's a pogrom unfolding right now. They all got the pogrom message right away.

President Biden, the anti-Semitic attacks on Israeli soccer fans are despicable, echo dark moments in history when Jews were persecuted. No one asked Sager why the Jewish people who were living in Amsterdam, they don't seem to be having too much of a problem. It's kind of weird. If they're just like hunting Jews on the streets now in Amsterdam, you would think they might have some issues that preceded this particular event. The whole thing is wild and at first I was like, oh wow, I mean look, it's like semi-plausible that the Arab populations who live in Europe who have long-standing like Islamist beliefs would be anti-Israel.

So I'm like, I guess, you know, whatever. And then, you know, the more I looked and read into it, I was like, wait, hold on, I was like, none of this shit makes any sense at all. And this is part of the problem is in terms of the rhetoric also that people throw out for, you know, pogrom is, pogrom is a term that has a specific meaning, right? It's like state-sanctioned mob violence against Jews to expel them from land. Even a clash would have been a better way to describe it. Yeah, I actually think that would be somewhat fair. I think that's like accurate, right?

Yeah. We could say accurate. It's like there was a clash on the streets where a bunch of Israeli soccer hooligans basically brought a lot of attention to themselves. And then a bunch of people who were pro-Palestine were like, hey, screw that. And then they got into a fight.

Okay, whatever. I mean, by the way, that's quite the norm for like anything in terms of Liverpool versus Manchester or whatever. But to describe it as one way is just simply inaccurate. It's literally false. And that's part of the victim complex that pervades like so much of this within the media too. And we were talking to our producer Griffin, who was watching CNN, and he was like, guys, this Amsterdam story is as big as the election over on CNN. And it's like, and that's the only reason I even feel, that's another question. Why is the president of the United States tweeting out about whatever some bullshit clash in the streets of Amsterdam?

We have way bigger shit going on in this country. Okay, Israel, sure. That's your country. You deal with your problems. Well, like, why do we have to get involved? And then people are like, oh, we should cut off, like, we should cut off relations with the Netherlands. Like, what is going on here? Yeah, I saw somebody say that. I was like, what the fuck is happening here? Oh my God. I just, I just can't. Look, by the way, Amsterdam, it's a cool place. I don't, you know, I hate the weed, hate the drugs and all that, but other than the

fact they've ruined it for themselves with their drug policy, beautiful city. So, you actually had this young Dutch journalist. I saw that he was like 14 years old. Go ahead and start playing this. Who actually did some on the ground reporting that has been important for people to be able to push back and actually show some of the events that preceded the worst of the violence. And in the video, as this person writes, they can be seen carrying steel pipes, throwing stones at homes. So, you know, you can see these were not just like little innocent, you know, just coming to watch the game and have a good time. And then when they after they were airlifted, put the next one up on the screen. After they were flown out by the Israeli government back to Israel.

Here they are arriving at Tel Aviv airport. And guess what they're singing? IDF will F the Arabs. Why is school out in Gaza? There are no children left there. So again, like even after all of this, like this is who we're talking about. Okay, these are not some just like innocent

minding their own business people. This was part of the provocation along with actual violence, vandalism, et cetera. So just the thoroughly, thoroughly dishonest telling of events and reporting of events that has the impact of, you know, if you're just like a regular Jewish person taking in this narrative, regular person in general, you would feel much, you would feel like, oh my God, like people are just being hunted out there for no reason. And it doesn't help people make sense of the world and understand cause and effect and how this all ultimately unfolded. And again, I am not, like, I think violence all the way around abhorrent. I don't think it's the way to respond to even the ugliest of provocations such as these.

But you have to be honest about the events that actually unfolded. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her.

And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.

Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's the deal. We gotta set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We gotta make moves

and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council.

High Key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Oddly. We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know.

Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. At the same time, I wanted to update everyone on a UN report that has come out that has laid out in horrific detail exactly who is being killed by the IDF in Gaza Strip. We can put this up on the screen. So this is a graph that shows by age and also by gender who has been killed in residential buildings in Gaza since

October 7th. And as this person opines, the base of this pyramid of death are babies and toddlers. So those largest bars that you see at the bottom, the single largest age group that was killed were five to nine-year-olds. Five to nine-year-olds. If you add up all these numbers, you'll find that some 70% of those killed, are confirmed and still a lot of questions about exactly how many people have been killed, but 70% of them, females and children, women and children. So that's what we're talking about here in terms of the prosecution of this war. Also, let's put this next piece up on the screen because this is also significant and totally something we've predicted and has been obvious to anyone

who is following. But Ynet is now admitting that Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben-Gavir, and the type, they do not want the hostages back. They say that the problem of the hostages will be solved, quote, naturally and tragically because they will be killed. The deaths in captivity, they write in Ynet, of another 20 to 30 hostages will be swallowed up in the sea of mourning for the fallen soldiers. Then when public anger is channeled against Hamas, the Israeli leadership will not be in a hurry to withdraw from the Gaza territory that the IDF captured from the terrorist organization. Ministers and MKs on the right do not hide their ambitions to establish settlements there. And, you know, Bibi basically

placed a bet that Trump would be victorious. He was correct. He fired now Youav Galant, who is not a good guy. He's, you know, was the one who was talking about Palestinians are human animals. We need to treat them as such. But he was within the government interested in pursuing some sort of a ceasefire deal and hostage negotiation deal. He has now been axed. The quote-unquote general's plan is in full effect where they're sealing off northern Gaza. Anyone left there, no aid, is just going to be murdered and massacred. Strikes continue within the Gaza Strip that are devastating. And Bibi definitely feels now like he has a completely free hand, not that he didn't before,

but now he has a completely free hand, including to do things like just reestablish settlements in the Gaza Strip, which is something that's very important to his coalition partners. Where he may have had a fear that Biden-Harris administration might have drawn some sort of a red line there. We can be damn sure that now there will be no red line and he'll have his friend Elise Stefanik in the U.N. On the whole red line thing, though, like Biden didn't have a red line and he'll have his friend Elise Stefanik in the UN. It is on the whole red line thing though. Like Biden didn't have a red line. He let him invade Lebanon. He let him take over the West Bank and he let him level Gaza. So like, you know, substantively, will there really be any difference? I think it will just be rhetoric. It's hard to say. To be honest. I mean, I think certain things I do think are different. For example, like Miriam Adelson, who was one of

Trump's top donors. One of the things she wants is to allow them to annex the West Bank as well. So I think, you know, it's clear actually in that McAbee soccer video that we played, one of the soccer hooligans was running around with a Trump sign, like Israelis overwhelmingly wanted Trump because they're not even going to get any tut-tutting, any pressure, no, nothing whatsoever. So I do think it's somewhat different, but you know, it's impossible to argue at this point think it's somewhat different, but it's impossible to argue at this point that it's not like Biden and Harris drew any hard red lines that they ever enforced. That's kind of what I mean. Look, in practice, this is also where the farce, it's like,

oh, well, Israel has officially going to annex the West. It's like, okay, well, they literally occupy it, they run it. It's in terms of militarily occupying, arresting, and have total impunity right now. Is there any difference between, and have total impunity right now. Is there any difference between that and official annexation? Like, not really, I mean, I guess, in terms of internal administration. But, you know, I mean, I'm not seeing that much different. You know, the one thing people should hope for is, don't forget this, so the reporting is that Trump has talked to Netanyahu three times already.

He was elected six days ago. No, actually, really five days ago in terms of the number of calendar days. Three times they've been on the phone. Remember that reporting and behind the scenes where he was like, look, you do what you got to do, but you need to wrap this up by that time that you're over. The one thing that is a thing against Netanyahu is that because Netanyahu was one of the first leaders to congratulate Biden on Biden's election, Trump never forgave him for that and still is very upset. So there is possibility of some like, look, I'm not going to paint some pro-Palestine picture,

any of that. All the policy stuff is going to go in Israel's direction. I could see him saying something along the lines of, listen, you've had your fun, but now it's over. Like, we cannot deal with all of these bombings and this anti-aircraft defense, just from a sheer, like, aesthetic perspective that he doesn't want to deal with it. That is, and the other thing is, Bibi and them, if they do give them, you know, the West Bank and all this other, maybe they say, you know, with the firing of Yoav Gantz and all this, maybe we don't expand the war. We've gotten, I mean, look, they've gotten everything they've ever wanted. They have total control of Gaza. They have total control of the West Bank. And they literally are militarily occupying the sovereign nation,

half the sovereign nation of Lebanon. What else could you want? Like, other than regime change in Iran. That's not going to happen, at least we can hope so. Well, I don't know why you're so confident about that one. I mean, he put in charge of filling out some of his foreign policy positions. This Brian Hooks guy is very pro. Hook is on the fence right now. He's not in charge per se. He's up for NSA and he's part of the transition. But there is still a fight going on.

I mean, almost uniformly throughout the Republican coalition, there's a good divide on Ukraine. On Iran, there's really not a divide. No, I don't think that's fair. I actually don't. Like, Trump himself was out saying, hey, they should strike Iranian nuclear facilities. And the track record of his first administration was extremely hawkish vis-a-vis Iran. So I think it's very likely that you're going to see a hawkish foreign policy vis-a-vis Iran specifically. I think you will see heavy sanctions.

Look, sanctions piece, no question, all right, in terms of choking the Iranian economy. That's going to happen. There's no doubt about it. The actual war, though, I wouldn't be so sure. So, Bridge Colby, who's up for National Security Advisor, he was just on Tucker Carlson's show yesterday making the case against war with Iran, why it would be a disaster. There are several, and that was one of the first sections, actually, that Tucker talked about with him. It's a big priority for Tucker. It's also a big Don Jr. thing. Also, in terms of the coalition for how it all looks like, you're not wrong in terms of them being more hawkish on the nuclear deal and all that. But for actual regime change, it's more figures like Hook and others

who may push that. But they're, as far as I can tell right now, a little bit more in the minority. I don't want to overstate the case. For know, for example, heavy sanctions on Iran could still lead to a conflagration because of the nuclear program. You know, who knows? The Iranians also get a vote. I don't know what they're going to do. You know, they could decide to say, fuck this. I'm going nuclear after the way that we've been treated over the last, you know, five years. Honestly, it's the logical thing for them to do. Well, this is controversial to say, but that, I mean, that's the, the sum total of our foreign policy makes that the logical direction for Iranians. I mean, nobody wants to hear it, but you know, look at Kim Jong-un. The best thing that they ever did was get a nuclear weapon. It was correct. Every time we tell the Kim regime, we're like, hey,

you guys should give up your nukes. They're like, are you kidding me? Look at Gaddafi. They shoved a rod up his ass. It's never happening. With regard to Russia, like the reason that there's been any reluctance to just go in there and like Russia is because they have a nuke. Exactly right. So that's the foreign policy. I'm not saying it's good. I think there's, you know, I'm in favor of like, you know, getting rid of the nukes all together. But that's the logic that we've laid out in terms of our foreign policy.

So, yeah, if I was Iranian, I'd be like, we should have nukes. All of them. Look at India, Pakistan, right? You know, Saudi Arabia, Israel. Israel. Everybody knows Israel has a nuclear weapon. These people will do it for a reason. So it is highly rational for them to pursue. I don't disagree with you. The only question is whether they can withstand the economic pressure. I'm not sure. I mean, their economy, it's a problem. And, you know, obviously they've got they've already come off of years of issues. So it's really up to them and to their own regime on how they want to decide.

Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband. It's a cold case.

I've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother.

She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position pregame to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at this is pre-tirement.org brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly

podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Oddly. We got a lot of things to get into. We're gonna gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is

that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so how are we looking at? Well, election night 2024 was historic for many reasons that we have covered and we will continue to cover on this show. But one of the great shocks of them all,

even to someone like me who has observed and participated in those trends for the better part of a decade, is how many of you spent election night? It used to be really not that long ago. Election night was synonymous with cable news. It was one of the few monopolies that they had left. They had the data, they have the analysts, they have the pull to project and to call races. I'd say even a decade ago, they had a near total monopoly on all of it, despite the rise of social media. But within the last decade, it has almost flipped completely. And even I was shocked at the statistics that came out showing how precipitous the drop in ratings for cable news networks on election 2024 was. Nielsen data released after the election shows that some 42 million Americans

tuned in to watch election night coverage last Tuesday. That is a full 25% drop from four years prior. Internalize that. 25% drop in just four years for literally the most important night in cable news history. An election where more than 100 million people voted and where more than half of them were not watching cable television. Juxtapose that with the sheer numbers that we were talking about in terms of people who are consuming new media. A new Wall Street Journal analysis finds that nearly 47% of U.S. adults have now listened to a podcast in the last month of 2024, with hockey stick growth growing every single year since 2010. What's even more astonishing are the numbers with Americans below the age of 54. That same analysis finds that more than 50% of Americans below the age of 54. That same analysis finds that more than 50% of Americans

below the age of 54 regularly consume podcasts with a slightly higher share of men than women. Compare that with the lightning growth, that lightning growth with the median age of cable TV. On MSNBC, the median age is 70. On Fox, it's 69. On CNN, it's 68. So remember that, the median age, that's the median,

which means there is a group of 80 and 90-year-olds who are also watching their fair share of cable TV. All of this data even tracks what we are doing here. Election night was our biggest ever, live stream, viewers, downloads. And we are just a small slice of a pie that includes dozens of independent shows out there, all of whom, at least that I've spoken to, they all had major record ratings and nights after the election. This is incredibly important for a number of reasons. One is it validates a central bet that the Trump campaign made about three months ago to go on as many podcasts as possible to reach as many people as possible, especially for young men

and hope that they drive out to vote. There was a lot of discussion around this, but on the other side of this election, we can say confidently it worked. Trump won more voters under the age of 30 than any Republican candidate since 2008. But the headline is not just that. He blew Kamala Harris out with young men under the age of 30. It's also that he improved his vote margin significantly with young women. Here, too, there are some very interesting explanations. It's not just podcasts that young people are consuming, but also TikTok, Instagram, and short-form content. Trump racked up an astonishing 14.3 million followers on TikTok versus Kamala Harris who only had 9.3 million. And the same journal

analysis finds that some 40% of Americans under the age of 30 use TikTok as a regular source of news, especially young women. In basically every way across all platforms, Trump dominated new media. It's not an accident that it's also the same election where he won the popular vote for the first time. It is not an accident that it's the same election where he won a majority of Latino men and dramatically improved his margins with young black men. There are almost no demographic groups in the United States

that did not shift towards Donald Trump. So I will end with a recommendation then to the Trump White House. The biggest mistake that you can make is to fall into the traditions of Washington. As I described in detail here in a post on Twitter, the entire White House Correspondents Association is a cartel. It is designed to keep out new entrants, not just conservatives, but people like our very own Ryan Grimm. They run the credentialing process, the seating chart, and they have in place a million rules to stop new media from coming in. The Trump White House actually owes its win to new media

in a way that nobody has before. And to the internet, unlike any candidate since Barack Obama. So it is vital they shake things up. Do away with the current White House press briefing as we know it. Seats in the room should not, they should be rotated. Preference should be given actually to those with audience rather than the aging television networks who

have preference for traditions that go back to the 1980s. Left and right wing journalists of all stripes and audience should be invited. And the briefing itself should have the pace of a longer YouTube video rather than the current cable TV style food fight debate that those people turn it into. This will require a lot of work and it will piss off the traditional press royally. But all the data I have presented here makes the case that to not do so would actually be against the interests of the Trump White House, but it will also be against the disservice to the American people. As traditional media is losing its relevance and its viewership, it is imperative for the people's house to actually meet Americans

where they are at. And we can say confidently they're definitely not on mainstream media, at least not anymore. I think it's crazy, Crystal. And if you want to hear my reaction to Cyber's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband

at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

High key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Oddly. We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going

to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's the deal.

We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispreetirement.org.

Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. In the wake of Donald Trump's sweeping battleground state victory, the Pod Save America bros made a pretty stunning revelation. For Democrats, actually, it could have been so much worse. Here is Jon Favreau. Joe Biden's decision to run for president again was a catastrophic mistake. It just was. And he and his inner circle, they refused to believe the polls. They refused to believe he was unpopular.

They refused to acknowledge until very late that anyone could be upset about inflation. And they just kept telling us that his presidency was historic and it was the greatest economy ever. We just heard him again say that it's the greatest economy ever. Clearly, 70, 80 percent of voters don't believe that. They don't believe that about their own personal financial situation, but they just keep telling us that. And then after the debate, the Biden people told us that the polls were fine and Biden was still the strongest candidate. They were privately telling reporters at the time that Kamala Harris couldn't win. So they were shiving Kamala Harris to reporters while they told everyone else not a time for an open process and his vice president can't

win. So he's the strongest candidate. Then we find out when the Biden campaign becomes the Harris campaign, that the Biden campaign's own internal polling at the time when they were telling us he was the strongest candidate showed that Donald Trump was going to win 400 electoral votes. That's what their own internal polling said. 400 electoral college votes. Do you understand what that looks like? With the actual results, Dems took a real shellacking, losing the Senate, almost certainly failing to win back the House, but they kept it

close enough that they probably lived to fight another day. A Joe Biden 400 electoral college vote defeat means Republicans at or close to a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate. A gigantic march in the House, it means the Democratic Party completely burned to ashes with nothing but a post-apocalyptic landscape remaining. The mandate and the power of Trump's Republican Party would be unmatched, not even close in modern politics. After all, Reagan still had to contend with the Democratic House, even as he notched landslide Electoral College victories. The 400 400 electoral college vote revelation is important though for a number of reasons. First of all, obviously an indictment of Joe Biden himself, whose legacy is now genocide plus ushering an unrestrained Trump back into the White House.

The arrogance and delusion of this man is truly stunning. It's also clearly an absolute indictment of every single party official and elite who circled the wagons to keep Joe Biden in the race and to prohibit any sort of real Democratic primary. You people claimed you thought Trump was an existential threat. You sure as shit didn't act like it, did you? Instead, you marched delusionally forward, claiming the president in a clear state of advanced decline was really a secret political genius. But this alternative timeline, 400 electoral college vote defeat, is also a potential forecast of what could come should the Democratic Party not make a dramatic turn now. Because as bad as this election was, Democrats haven't even come close to hitting rock bottom. Dems saw dramatic shifts against them among Latino men and Gen Z young men in particular.

The class divide was quite stark. Harris won voters earning over 100K and Trump won those earning under 100K. Kamala lost ground among voters of color of all education levels. And what's more, there is absolutely no reason to think that any of these shifts and realignments are complete or that Democrats have found their actual floor. It is entirely possible that the 400 electoral college defeat is where the presently constituted Democrats are headed and fast. Just think about it pretty simply. Roughly speaking, only about a third of the adult population has college degrees. Massachusetts actually has the highest percent of college grads in the country, and even there, college graduates do not comprise a majority of the adult population. This leads to a pretty simple conclusion. If

non-college educated voters continue fleeing the Democratic Party, that party is cooked, relegated to a powerless, permanent minority party status. There is nothing written in law or nature that requires the country to be an evenly divided, roughly 50-50 split. In our own country's history, we can see periods of disproportionate one-party dominance. And no one should fool themselves either about the measures fully empowered Republicans with a stacked Supreme Court would take to ensure that the Democratic Party could never meaningfully fully compete again. Trump just won on a genuinely anti-democratic message, after all. He literally called for abolishing the Constitution, acting as a dictator on day one.

Supreme Court has granted him immunity for all official actions. And Republicans have a clear roadmap to follow in the program of Hungary's Viktor Orban, where he has used the veneer of democracy to successfully permanently entrench his own regime. Before a stunning landslide victory, Orban described how to effectively gain permanent control of a so-called democracy, saying, quote, it was enough to win just once, but decisively. That was the way. Now, Republicans may be one more cycle with this level of realignment away from winning just such a crushing victory. Now, as the initial shock of Kamala's loss wears off, don't be surprised if the Democratic consultant establishment and donor classes begin to quickly reassert themselves and claim there's no real need for a course correction, let alone a dramatic overhaul. It's already happening, in fact.

That's what the Bernie versus Pelosi fight we covered earlier is all about. Just listen to Jim Clyburn, the man most responsible for propping up Biden and putting Kamala on the ticket, saying there's no point in playing the blame game, right, guys? I just think that as we take an assessment of all of this, we ought to just chill out for a while, get in touch with each other. Don't worry about blaming anybody. You know what they say, success has a thousand parents. Failure is an offering. And so when you're really successful, everybody claims credit. When you come up short, everybody seems to scatter and assign blame. I think that all of us will be taking stock of exactly where we are as a party, what happened in this election, and then go from there.

I don't want this election to define how we go about treating candidates of color or candidates who may be women, I think we all just take the stop of who and what we are and not get caught up in pointing fingers and assigning blame. Yes, I'm quite sure that Jim Clyburn does not want finger pointing because a good number of those fingers would be pointed right at him. Absolutely incredible. You're going to hear a lot of it, though. You're going to hear, it wasn't really so bad. Look at the three battleground states. Trump only won by a narrow margin and almost all of the swing state Democrats kept their seats. These types will point to the losses suffered by incumbent parties globally and they'll say, see we just were facing really tough headwinds guys. Wasn't

really our fault. They'll offer some limited critiques of some small ball tactics. Hey Kamala should have gone on with Joe Rogan. They'll invent things completely, like claiming Kamala was too woke when she spent the entire campaign studiously avoiding wokeness. Or they'll blame a singular individual like Biden or Pelosi or Kamala herself, not depending on merit, but depending on their own intra-party tribal affiliations. Now, in a sense, these critiques have merit. It was close in the industrial Midwest, after all. I think it is plausible to imagine maybe a Gavin Newsom, maybe Mayor Pete or even Big Gretch could have pulled off the election victory. The exact place where Dems find themselves today is still in the ballgame enough that

it is conceivable some small adjustment could have been sufficient to win this particular election. The current status of the Democratic Party isn't a complete catastrophe. But make no mistake, the long-term trajectory is death. If the trends that the party saw between 2016 and now continue unmitigated, it will be utterly catastrophic in a way that is probably unrecoverable. Now, after Hillary lost in 2016, Democrats had a chance to actually learn some real lessons about their abandonment of working people, to see the writing on the wall about their future electoral prospects. Instead, they chose denial.

It was sexism. It was Comey. It was Russia. Hillary herself, self-interested in blame-shifting, of course, led the charge. Biden's extremely narrow victory was taken as vindication. But once again, the alarm bells were ringing. The continued shift of Latinos towards Trump, the widening of the education divide, the fact that Biden was barely able to win while Trump was literally getting people killed

in the middle of a pandemic. It wasn't exactly a ringing endorsement for the Democratic Party. Do not underestimate that party's desire and self-interest in once again learning nothing and changing nothing. Just think about it. Conlist's campaign was a multi-billion dollar industry. Consultants received multi-million dollar contracts. The checks cash whether those ads worked or not.

The DNC, it's a cartel, protects its chosen consultants and allied politicians. CNN and MSNBC exist to carry the establishment party line. It's a racket. And it won't be disrupted by a few establishment types meekly whispering, you know what, guys? Maybe Bernie was right. So for anyone who is left of MAGA, for my libs and my lefties alike, we got to be crystal clear about a few critical things. Number one, third parties are a waste of freaking time and energy. I'm sorry. I wish it wasn't that way, but it is. Ranked choice voting just got beaten even more badly than the Democratic Party in state referendums.

I wish it wasn't true. The most credible third party candidate, Dr. Jill Stein, she got less than 1% of the vote. It wasn't even enough votes for Dems to try to blame her and call her a spoiler. The only electoral vehicle for opposing Trumpism is the Democratic Party. Number two, the Democratic Party itself is in danger of extinction as meaningful opposition. Everyone who's been steering the ship over the past eight years, they should all be fired. Every brain-dead consultant contract terminated. And crucially, crucially, the working class must be put ahead of the party's donors. Senator Chris

Murphy, to my surprise, actually got a lot right in a recent tweet thread where he wrote, in part, when progressives like Bernie aggressively go after the elites that hold people down, they are shunned as dangerous populists. Why? Maybe because true economic populism is bad for our high-income base. Yeah, you think? Now look, Trump is done in four years' time. His successors don't have nearly the juice that he does as evidenced by the fact that he outperformed nearly every Republican in the country. Democrats may have kept the margins close enough in the House and the Senate to stay in the game for now, but it is time for a dramatic turnaround or that 400

electoral college wipeout that Joe Biden was heading for could be just around the next four year corner. So yeah, it's pretty dire for them. And I'm not sure that- And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints.com. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate you. Obviously, it's going to be a lot of big policy show today. Loved it. It was a lot of fun to talk about and we'll continue to have that going. So breakingpoints.com. Otherwise, we'll see you all tomorrow.

Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's the deal. We gotta set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We gotta make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack

up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position, pregame to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org, brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. next obsession. Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Oddly. We got a lot of things to get into.

We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know. Girl, the way she about

to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast.