Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/11/24: GOP Debate Highlights, GA Trump Prosecutor Scandal, Hunter Storms Out Of Congress, DeSantis Affirmative Action For Jews, Media Bias On Israel Exposed

Episode Date: January 11, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss GOP debate highlights, wild affair scandal involving Georgia Trump prosecutor, Hunter Biden storms out of Congressional hearing, DeSantis invents affirmative action for Jews, and new report exposes rampant media bias on Israel.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/ Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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shaping the Black community. From breaking headlines to cultural milestones, the Black Information Network delivers the facts, I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Lots of breaking news to cover this morning. South Africa presented their case at the ICJ at the Hague. So we will break that down for you. This comes as the Houthis have stepped up their attacks, leading to a very dangerous situation

in the Middle East. We had a debate last night between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley. We also had a Trump town hall. We have all of the highlights. Lowlights, highlights, lights, whatever. Of those interactions. What does it mean? And of course, Sagar covered this yesterday. Chris Christie has now dropped out of the race. That could actually have some significant impacts in New Hampshire. So we'll talk about that as well. There are some significant developments in numerous Trump legal cases, some cutting in his direction, some cutting against him. We will break those down for you. Hunter Biden made a big surprise visit to Capitol Hill, and it led to some very interesting fireworks.

We'll tell you about that. Sager is taking a look at how Ron DeSantis invented affirmative action for Jewish people. Yeah. Oh, wow. Interesting. Plot twist there. And I'm taking a look at some new reports revealing just stunning bias in media coverage of Israel and Palestine. So a lot to get to this morning. Yeah, I'm really excited for all of that, especially to have two monologues back in the show. So that's very fun. That's a reminder, by the way, you can sign up breakingpoints.com to become a premium member. We're currently soliciting premium member questions for our RFK junior focus group. It will be taking place tomorrow on the ground in Detroit. Our entire team will be there. So we've got a great number of people. They'll be voting for RFK junior. We want to hear from them. What

do you guys want? Like, what are you looking for? Why do you support RFK? How strong is your support by to our knowledge, the first focus group really of its kind by a media organization, to be fair. So if you can help us out, support work like that and a lot of other big plans we have for the election season, you can sign up right now, breakingpoints.com. So whether you knew it or not, CNN hosted a debate last night between Republican presidential contenders Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. This came right after Chris Christie had actually dropped out of the race, which is very interesting. He did make the debate stage anyway, so it's not like he would have been there, but has obviously changed the dynamics of the race. I took a look at some of the

quote unquote highlights from the night. The big story here is, of course, Trump is not on the stage. He is overwhelmingly leading the Republican presidential nomination contest. And so at the beginning of the debate, both Ron and Nikki made some nod towards the fact that Trump was not there and attempted to attack him. But most of the time, they just spent going after each other in an aggressive manner. So let's take a listen to a little bit of their attacks on Trump and then how they were going at one another. I wish Donald Trump was up here on this stage. He's the one that I'm running against. He's the one that I wish would be here.

He needs to be defending his record right now. He's not defending the fact that he allowed us to have eight trillion dollars in debt over four years that our kids are never going to forgive us for. The fact that he didn't deal with China when it came to stealing intellectual property, the fact that they gave us COVID, the fact that they've gone and continued to put up Chinese police stations and continue to threaten our military. He didn't do enough to make sure that we were really standing with our friends and doing. He said he was going to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it. He did not deliver that. He said he was going to drain the swamp. He did not deliver that. He said he was going to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it. He did not deliver that. He said he was going to drain the swamp. He did not deliver that. He said he was going to hold

Hillary accountable. And he let her off the hook. He said he was going to eliminate the debt. And he added $7.8 trillion to the debt. So we need to deliver and get this stuff done. And I think the difference. And we need to go back to the basics in education so we get. Thank you. That word salad is the problem. Governor DeSantis. He says she's always supported school choice and she failed to deliver. She blames other people. Leadership is about getting things done. Stop making excuses. Make it happen. If leadership's about getting things done, how did you blow through $150 million in your campaign and you were down in the polls? You are not a manager. I think this is very instructive. Now I'm going to say. I think it's very instructive about what you were down in the polls. So here you are not a manager. Now I'm going to say it's very instructive about what he sees the world.

I think I have the floor. Political. Governor DeSantis. That's as important as the kids and their education. What is more important here? She's saying. Governor DeSantis. It's Governor Haley's.

It's Governor Haley's time. Go ahead. I think I hit a nerve. So, I mean, that was basically the dynamic all night. It was a lot of, like, they get into it with each other on these little, like, parts of their record that people aren't even particularly familiar with. And you're just asking yourself the whole time, like, what are we even doing here? You're going mercilessly at each other for the honor of being in second place? Like, what is going on? And I mean, I will say in terms of the blows that were landed, I think Nikki's attack on Ron of basically like, you're a loser. You spent $150 million and you've done nothing but tank in the

polls is probably the most effective attack at this point. And the only reason is because it's not about, look, you in 2010 spent $12 at a Chinese restaurant. It's like, it's not about, ew, in 2010, spent $12 at a Chinese restaurant. It's like, it's, you know what I mean? There was a lengthy discussion of a, like, 2009 bathroom bill. I don't know. Stop. All right, so what this is about is he's tainted and he seems like a loser. People don't want to be a part of a losing campaign.

That's it, period. A lot of this is about vibes. The problem, though, is that at the very same time, Crystal, that the debate was happening, Donald Trump was on Fox News giving the Trump show. And guess what? Sorry to say it, the Trump show is way more compelling. It's more fun to watch because he understands that at a very base level. And so we have some of the highlights there from Trump's town hall. And frankly, just given his political position, these are going to matter way more in the actual eventual general election. Here's what he had to say. Can you say tonight that political

violence is never acceptable? Well, of course, that's right. And of course, I'm the one that had very little of it. Take a look at wars again. I didn't start. I wasn't involved in wars. We beat the hell out of ISIS. We won 100 percent. We brought our troops back home. Look at look at the violence that we've had. Look at the violence we have recently. But when you say bedlam, what do you mean? I think bedlam. I think you look at Joe Biden. It's bedlam. You have a man who can't lead. You have a man who can't find his way off a stage after he makes a speech that lasts for about two minutes. Now, I think Bedlam is Joe Biden. I think that he's using this. This is just a political ploy. Trump is a dictator. He wants to be a dictator. You know, it's interesting. I did a show,

Sean Hannity. Did you ever hear of him? He's a very nice man. And he said, essentially, you're not going to be a dictator, are you? Tell me. I think he was trying to give me a nicer question than maybe you guys would. He meant it very well. I said, I'm going to be a dictator, are you? Tell me. I think he was trying to give me a nicer question that maybe you guys would. He meant it very well. I said, I'm going to be a dictator for one day. We're going to do two things. The border, we're going to make it so tight you can't get in unless you come in legally. And the other is energy. We're going to drill, baby, drill. Some of my friends that supported you in 2020 are not this time because they believe a Trump presidency will bring four years of chaos due to your haters. What is your response to them? Well, I think, first of all, I'm glad you're asking the question.

And I'm very glad that you started off by saying you're with me because I want you on my side. I figured maybe Fox would have written that question if it was just the second part of the question. But just so you understand. We didn't write any of the questions. You all wrote the questions, just to be clear. We'll figure that one out pretty soon. A little jab at Fox News there, suggesting that they scripted the audience. Come on.

Also, he asked it in the nicest way possible. And by prophecy, like, I'm with you. Yeah, he's like, look, sir, I'm with you. He is so thin-skinned. He is. It is unbelievable. But he's charming. Listen, you have to give it to him.

He's charming. He's funny. He's good at what he does. Listen, the content aside, because honestly, I feel like his content and Ron and Nikki's content to be horrifying, but we'll put that aside. I mean, he's another league in terms of the showmanship. Absolutely. In terms of the charisma. It's just not even comparable On the dictator question. It's interesting that he brought that up on his own. I think he thinks it's very amusing

I think he thinks it's amusing and I think he's right that there's an appetite in the Republican base of like Screw the rules and we want the strongman who's just going to do what we want him to do, who's going to be that bulwark against the libs who we see as this existential threat. And polling bears that out, that there are these tendencies throughout the American public, but disproportionately on the Republican side, that's like, actually, we're willing to bend the rules of democracy to have that strongman leader do what we want him to do. I think Trump intuits that. And so far from it being this like negative, at least in terms of a Republican primary contest, maybe it's different in a general election. I'm not really sure. But he intuits that no,

actually people want to hear that I'm going to be that guy. I think he both, there's two things. So A, there definitely is a desire, but B, what I, as far as I understand, what he knows is how to drive the media crazy. He knows how to get the headlines that he wants that both work to his political benefit and absolutely drive insane Washington Post columnists. This is the perfect way to do it. And so bringing that up, the problem, and this is what really gets to it, is that Trump also does not seem to yet have a sense that stop the steal was a massive problem for him. He did not intuit in that chaos question that while it is not true in a Republican primary, it is absolutely true for the overall general electorate. And this is, I have to be

honest, I totally underestimated this in 2022. I didn't think people would care. I was like, yeah, you know, it's a long time ago. We're talking about a new election. No, it's a huge problem for a lot of normal voters. And I think now that I've just come to understand it, it's just like people felt like, you know, tight in the chest at the idea of political problems. They also don't, they really hate Joe Biden, but some, a lot of people are willing to do lesser of two evils. I think he needs a lot better answer actually on that second question than he did. I don't think the dictator thing is a problem. I think it really is.

It gets down to just give us some calm. And that's just not what he's calibrated to do. So that was his big problem. On top of Roe versus Wade, which we're about to get to. Yeah, and Trump is a master at like creating, suspending reality and creating his own reality. Totally. You know, this is something that he has excelled at as a politician. He excelled at as a businessman as well.

But I think to deny that there was political violence during the Trump term, that's a difficult one for people to swallow because obviously they think immediately of January 6th. But also, I mean, the violence associated with the Black Lives Matter movement. That happened under his term as well. I would go all the way back. I mean, I remember, what, 2017, there was the whole Antifa thing, and then there was probably the thing. Charlottesville also happened during his tenure. That was all in one year. Yeah. If anything, I remember more political violence, really, than modern memory. I wouldn't even necessarily say it's like his fault, but it did exist.

Right. And that's something you gotta, you know, you have to acknowledge that. Right. I think a lot of it is his fault just because of the incredibly polarizing force that he is. But even if you don't think that, like to just deny the reality of what we all experienced for those four years is a lot. It's a lot to swell.

And like I said, of course, instantly what people think about is like, what about January 6th, dude? So as you mentioned, Sager, he got asked about Roe versus Wade. He's had to try to toe an interesting line on this because he knows that the abortion politics for Republicans at this point are a disaster. Like he knew that immediately when the Supreme Court decision came down. On the other hand, it continues to be a very animating issue for the base. So let's take a listen to part of how he responded to a question about abortion rights.

For 54 years, they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated and I did it and I'm proud to have done it. They wanted to get it back, right? You wouldn't be happy. There would be no question. Nobody else was going to get that done but me. And we did it. And that was immediately tweeted out by the Biden campaign.

That is a Biden campaign ad just right there. I guarantee you will hear those words again packaged into a campaign ad. This is the difficulty of this race, is that Biden is tremendously unpopular. And he's so old. I genuinely don't think he should not be qualified to run for president. And I still think that he's got a decent chance of winning. Now, I don't think he has a great chance of winning, but the fact that he has a chance in the first place to me is nuts. And the problem with that is abortion politics. We saw over and over and over again that there is an entire animated new

political base that is willing to come out and willing to vote on this. It's deeply personal, and it's one that is willing to override. The rarest of things to me, Crystal, is a social issue which can 100% override an economic issue. It's never happened in modern American history, except for this time in 2022. Now, there are a couple of reasons to be optimistic on the Trump side. The economic situation continues to fester. The global position is bad. The Israel position for Joe Biden within the Democratic Party is a problem.

We're getting farther and farther away to a post-Roe-ish consensus. The states that don't want it have generally carved out or done different things. So there's reason to believe also that you have these non-frequent voters that aren't as animated by Roe that would come out and would vote for him. So I'm not counting him out. I genuinely think it's 50-50 right now at this point. But I think it should be 75-25. I don't even think it should be a concern. That's the problem for Trump. I don't know. I mean, they're both, like, both Biden and Trump are so disliked by the American public. So many people just want to move on from both of these dudes that to say like who should be winning in the Senate. I don't know. They both are so extraordinarily weak that it is pretty pathetic. You know, I want to make the case. So going back

to the Republican primary, there has been some, you know, there have been some interesting developments. We covered Nikki Haley surging in the polls in New Hampshire, like genuinely. Multiple polls have her now within single digits of Donald Trump in New Hampshire, which I'm really surprised by. We also have her now in the RealClearPolitics average, in the national average, and in Iowa. She has overtaken Ron DeSantis in the second place position. So she has really claimed that second place Trump alternative spot. At the same point, you have to assume that even though Christie didn't endorse her and also got caught on a hot mic completely trashing her, hilarious, that his exit from the race is going

to benefit Nikki Haley in particular in New Hampshire. And I think it's very likely that many, if not most, of his voters go to her campaign. And since she was already only facing a single digit, at least according to the polls, single digit deficit with Trump, is it possible she wins New Hampshire? Then we've seen primaries in the past where somebody gets a surprise win and it completely flips the polls and shifts the dynamics overnight. Do I think that's likely? No. Is it possible?

It's possible. There's a theoretical case out there. So on the one hand, let me give the anti-Nikki case, and this was laid out pretty compellingly in Politico magazine by Jonathan Allen. Let's put this up on the screen. And basically what he argues here, he says, why Haley won't break through the two days U.S. split along class lines in her college, so educated supporters are not the majority. He just argues like the wine track, beer track case. The beer track folks who make a majority at this point of the Republican base are with Trump. The wine track folks are increasingly with Nikki. But even if they all consolidate behind Nikki,

it's still not enough. And that that's sort of like the fundamental issue that she's facing in this campaign is she has yet to demonstrate any ability to reach into Trump's working class base. It just remains so patently obvious to me, even in a one-to-one race. So Trump's internals he released on yesterday, they weren't great for Trump, but it did show in a one-to-one race. So Trump's internals, he released some yesterday. They weren't great for Trump, but it did show him beating one-on-one Nikki Haley. I think it was like 58 to four, or it was like 52 to 40, something like that. I have those. I'll share those in a minute. But the point being that there was an internal Trump poll that show him still beating her.

And the reason why is that the vast majority of people who will vote in a GOP primary are non college educated white people. And those people are dramatically pro Trump. Now there is a small portion, which are college educated, the remnants of the Mitt Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush type voter. By and large though, most of those people who are very political are Democrats. Now they voted for Joe Biden. There are very much like the CIA Democrats here in Northern Virginia. And that has been probably the great political realignment of our time. So if you're just winning college-educated, so-called wine-track voters, it's just not going to work.

This was the reason why the only two candidates in the Democratic primary of 2020 who had any shot were Bernie Sanders and were Joe Biden. They're the only two who had any chance with working class voters. Warren, Kamala, Corey, all these other people, they're MSNBC nobodies. It's like, you gotta be able to have a bartender, union worker, and these other people. Because while yes, a huge portion of the Democratic base is college educated, still the majority of people who vote Democrat in this country are not college educated. But they're totally erased from media, from everything. Yeah. So I agree with you on that. I do want to present the case for Nikki, right? The most hopeful, optimistic case of how she could find a path to winning the Republican

primary outright. So you referenced, this was really interesting and I think this was a real own goal from the Trump campaign. They released, after Chris Christie dropped out, they released this internal poll that they had taken that showed what would a head to head between Trump and Nikki Haley look like in the states of Iowa and New Hampshire. And they still had Trump winning. But again, this is your own internal poll. So it's going to very likely be more favorable towards you than reality actually is. And they had him beating Nikki 56-40

in Iowa and only 52-44 in New Hampshire. Those are not overwhelming numbers. That's a race, right? For the overwhelming majority of the Republican primary process, save for right after the midterms, there has not been a race. These numbers, you're in single digits, you know, you're within 10, 15 points. That's actually a real race. Those are the sort of numbers where you can imagine if Nikki is surging right now in the right moment, which she appears to be, that she could theoretically close the gap. The way that this could happen is, just to play this out, so Iowa caucuses, Ron has invested so much money in Iowa, and it's not looking good. You know, his polls have continued to trail off.

If he underperforms in Iowa, gets third, Trump sort of wins, but has a more lackluster performance than expected. So he does not meet or exceed expectations. Ron drops out, and then you are effectively facing this Nikki Haley versus Donald Trump race in New Hampshire. And if Vivek is still hanging in there, he's probably taking more from Trump than he is from Nikki. He's actually helping Nikki at that point if he hangs in there. And then if Nikki's able to pull off the upset victory, which polls show she's got a shot of at this point, then you could create a permission structure for people who have felt like I need to stay with Trump or I need to say I'm staying with Trump, even though I'm kind of sick of him. I kind of do feel like he's

old, like I'm, you know, this chaos. I'm not really down for it. But I have felt like I need to stay in line. And I felt like he's the guy and there isn't really room for an alternative. She creates a permission structure for this theoretical group of people that I don't know whether they exist or not to then switch loyalties and for the polls to flip in a dramatic way in the way that they did for Joe Biden last time around, in the way that they did for Barack Obama back in 2008 against Hillary Clinton. I think it's theoretically possible. Again, do I think it's the most likely outcome? No, I think the most likely outcome is Trump romps. He wins basically every state and this is over in a couple of weeks. But this is the first time where I can even really

visualize a path for anyone else to actually win outright. I totally agree. I would say that the odds of it are less than 20%. Honestly, that might even be generous, but let's give it to her just for the sake of it being fun. It just makes New Hampshire the all make or break. It's like she has to win the primary. So luckily, we'll be having a great show during New Hampshire, so we will all digest it. We will do so here together, but I'm excited to see it. Oh, I forgot to mention that I have to put this up on the screen. Trump is now pulling out the greatest hits against Nikki Haley. He is now says, Nikki Haley, this is from Gateway Pundit, one of the original birther

places. He says, Nikki Haley's situation reports indicate that her parents were not US citizens at the time of her birth in 1972. Based on the Constitution as interpreted by one of their in-house analysts, this disqualifies Haley from presidential or vice presidential candidacy under the 12th Amendment. We need to see the birth certificate, Mickey. Well, no, this is different because she was born here, but her parents weren't citizens whenever she was born. Unfortunately for Trump, that's pretty well-trodden territory in terms of U.S. citizenship law. So anyway, though, you've got to throw whatever you can. I actually don't think it'll be impactful at all. It's more so that it demonstrates

he sees her relatively serious. Yeah, he is concerned. He's got it. He needs a big win in Iowa. I mean, I think a big win in Iowa, 20 or so points, blowout win, that softens her up a little bit going into New Hampshire. But let's say she gets him within 10, she could spin that and maybe she could win. It would be extraordinary. So much of politics is, number one, about expectations. And the expectation for Trump is that it's a blowout in Iowa. And so if he doesn't meet those expectations, and you also know the media loves Nikki Haley. They love her. And the billionaire class on the Republican side, they have lined up behind her like she is their chosen candidate. Fox News loves her. Yes. So, you know, they will do everything they can to spin the Iowa

results in her favor, even if she doesn't win. I think it's very unlikely she wins the Iowa caucus. I mean, listen, anything can happen, especially it's supposed to be like minus freaking 30 in Iowa that day. And so maybe she's really super organized. Maybe her people are really dedicated and diehard. Trump's aren't. If anything, I would think it would cut in the other direction, but who the heck knows. But if he fails to meet those very high expectations,

the media is going to spin it in her favor. She goes into New Hampshire with a head of steam. Who knows what could happen? We will certainly see. 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. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her, until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh.

I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in.

I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand

what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me.

Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important. And that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide. Listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, let's move on to Trump and his legal problems. This probably is the more important conversation for the overall election.

There's a couple of different instances that have happened. There was recently, there have been a lot of hearings with respect to Trump and in much of his challenges, specifically to the January 6th prosecution that has been mounted against him by Jack Smith that all centers around presidential immunity and the theory of how and when a president can be charged, even a former president, and be held liable legally for whether that person was currently occupying the executive office of the president. So one of the judges who is hearing this presidential immunity argument leveled a very interesting hypothetical. They got an even more interesting answer. Here's what they had to

say. Could a president order SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? That's an official act in order to SEAL Team 6? He would have to be and would speedily be, you know, impeached and convicted before the criminal prosecution. But if he weren't, there would be no criminal prosecution, no criminal liability for that. Chief Justice's opinion and my word against Madison and our Constitution and the plain language of the impeachment judgment clause all clearly presuppose that what the founders were concerned about was not. I asked you a yes or no question. Could a president who ordered SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival who was not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution? If he were impeached and convicted first. So your answer is no? My answer is qualified yes. Answer is a qualified yes. Interesting. I actually thought about it, and it doesn't

seem as nuts as it sounds, because if we think back to the only similar analogous case, Barack Obama, do you remember whenever he assassinated Anwar al-Awlaki? Yeah. Yeah, so this was 2011. I mean, this is actually a crazy legal precedent. Barack Obama, the President of the United States, executive office, held a due process style hearing inside the executive branch and assassinated an American citizen on foreign soil using the United States military. Now, obviously, it's substantively different in that we're talking about a political rival here. But technically, because all citizens are the same under the Constitution, it's one of those where we somewhat kind of had a test of this and nothing happened to them. Now, I do not believe that that was the right thing to do.

I don't think it was right that that was even allowed to happen, that there were some sort of crazy, but the problem is, is that because that did happen, what I have seen is that could be cited as an instance from which this has been held. But no one tried? That I know of. Did anyone try to bring charges and it's dismissed on the grounds of presidential immunity? So his family brought charges or tried to bring them in a U.S. court. They were dismissed.

It wasn't necessarily on the grounds of immunity. I believe it was under counter. I'd have to go back and read. It has been a while. But it was around counterterrorism grounds. But, I mean, if you do think about it substantively, that was an insane situation. Yeah, but that, of course, is an insane situation. But that couldn't be cited as precedent since there wasn't a ruling that this was barred because of presidential immunity.

Yeah. But your point is taken. That's interesting. That's one I hadn't thought of. But, I mean, what he's arguing for here is really wild. Yeah, I agree. Because if you think about just to lay on a separate scenario, under his legal theory here, Joe Biden could have Trump assassinated, resign before there are impeachment hearings. Good to go. Can't prosecute me. It's presidential immunity. This was an official act. I wasn't impeached.

Sorry, you can't get me. So I mean, it really is like an insane thing to argue that there is literally, as long as they're not impeached, they can do absolutely whatever they want. And I believe it was perhaps our friend Bradley Moss on Twitter who was pointing out like, there also may be a lot of politicians who are pretty reluctant to impeach in the Senate when they know this person is so crazy that they will just have you assassinated willy-nilly. So it is a wild thing to argue. This all traces back to the imperial presidency theory under Richard Nixon and then really popularized by Dick Cheney and the White House and the Bush administration, Bill Barr. A lot of these people who, this is a very, very actually recent interpretation of the US

presidency, but it combined at a time, unfortunately, when the executive office became more powerful than ever before. This is the most logical conclusion of that. I absolutely would hope that a court would strike something like this down because this is as king-like as it gets. Absolutely. I mean, this is literally how they treated monarchs and so-called monarchical constitutional systems. They're like, yeah, the Constitution applies to everybody except for the king. Except the king. Yeah.

It seems like these judges were very skeptical of the Trump lawyer case that was being made here. This was in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. This applies to some of the federal crimes that Trump has been charged with. But even though it appears they're going to side against Trump on this pretty wide-reaching claim he's making for immunity here, that doesn't mean that this was necessarily a loss for Trump in that his whole goal is to delay. The longer that he files these appeals and challenges and they have to be heard and it

takes a while to decide. The clock is ticking. And really his hope at this point is that he gets elected president and he's able to pardon himself and get out of all of this legal jeopardy. So even though, again, I think it seems like the court is going to side against him on this specific claim, there's still an important effect here in favor of Trump, which is just to delay the proceedings. Absolutely. So let's combine those because there's still an important effect here in favor of Trump, which is just to delay the proceedings. Absolutely. So let's combine those because there's a lot of other developments. So that one was probably, I would say, net bad for Trump. Well, this one is definitely a net good for Trump. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Some absolutely wild allegations that are coming out showing Fannie Willis, who's the district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia. Well, her name is now being brought up in divorce proceedings by a guy named Nathan Wade,

who Fannie Willis had been tapped as the prosecutor against Trump in the grand jury investigation in the subsequent case. Well, it seems now, quote, as they put it here, the relationship between Mrs. Willis and Mr. Wade has not taken center stage in the case against Trump because on Monday, a lawyer for one of the co-defendants charged in a court filing that Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade have been romantic partners who are now, quote, profiting significantly from the prosecution at the expense of the taxpayer. So in divorce proceedings effectively against Mr. Wade, the allegation is made that Mr. Wade and Ms. Willis were in a romantic relationship and that Mr. Wade, while being unqualified as the prosecutor, has now billed the special prosecutor office for a total of $653,881. Now, currently, none of this has been confirmed, Crystal, but much of it traces back to the ongoing divorce proceedings. I think we could probably trace it back to his wife, Mrs. Jocelyn Wade, who is trying to burn everything, but honestly, good for her.

Yeah, I hope she gets the bag. But the issue that comes through this is that it would obviously taint the investigation for the Georgia Fulton County case. And in a lot of cases, I actually thought this is the single strongest one against Trump because it's about state law. State law is the most iron clawed place where we know election law is completely, the jurisdiction and all of that applies here. We had Trump on the phone. We had the grand jury investigation that was against him. They have total authority. There's no actual major constitutional questions about whether Georgia state court, and that's part of the reason too, Crystal, why so many of the people that they were charged as co-conspirators have all

flipped against him, including Sidney Powell and others, because they don't have the same level of constitutional defense. But I mean, this is the thing about Trump. I don't know what he has been blessed by or whatever. How is it that his opponents always seem to hand him something? Because this would be genuine grounds for at least trying for dismissal and others, if you can argue, a personal charge by the person who's investigating you. It's just crazy. It is wild. If this is true, there are allegations at this point, but she has been brought up in these divorce filings. That part I think has been confirmed. But if it is true, it's the level of sloth. What are you doing here? It's wild.

This person who was allegedly in the relationship with Fannie Willis and who was appointed as by her as the prosecutor, apparently is just some basically like kind of random suburban lawyer with no real relevant. Like in the Georgia legal community, when he got picked, there was a lot of head scratching of like, really, this guy, he doesn't really have the right experience. OK, whatever, I guess. And she was made to defend his choice a number of times. She said this is someone she trusts that, you know, she whatever he is, he is experienced that she knows that she can go at him and he'll come right back at her. She had to defend it a number of times. So that's part of why it looks a little bit fishier. I will say the legal analysts that they quoted in The New York Times for whatever it's worth seem to think that it probably wouldn't be grounds to completely dismiss the case. Yes. But for Trump, as we were just saying, so much of this is not about the legal arguments. It's about the politics. And this is a very potent political argument to make that, you know, if it's true that this is her lover, that she picked him

and she's been, you know, funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to him as part of this prosecution. There's also allegations that were going on vacations together using some of the money that came from this, you know, that he's benefiting from, from the prosecution. Again, this is allegations, but you can see how this will be very politically salient for Trump. And I just cannot imagine if you're Fannie Willis and you know the level of scrutiny you're going to get, you know what's coming at you, that you would be this sloppy. So we'll see how this one plays out. We will certainly see. But that is the best news for Trump that I've seen in a long time.

Let's go to the next one, please. This just gets to a little bit we can't forget because there's so many freaking legal proceedings around Trump. So don't forget that he's also currently involved in a civil fraud trial. He was supposed to be able to give his own closing argument where he was basically going to say that this entire thing is a crazy witch hunt. But the judge has now ruled that he is not going to be allowed to give a closing argument and instead that his attorneys will be required to do so.

He said, quote, mean and nasty of the decision so far. The issue here is that if this trial finds him guilty, he will be liable for, quote, hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties, strips him of his business license in the state of New York. Currently, he is fighting the allegation that he inflated his net worth about, you know, you've done a lot of work on this, people can go and read, in the past around whether he's guilty or not. Honestly, at this point, given the situation and all that, and also some of the prejudgments that were made before they even went to trial, it's almost certain that he's going to

be convicted. So on a personal level, this actually is a huge threat to his overall quality of life. So they've already found that he inflated the net worth. The question now is what is the penalty? Exactly. And again, this is a civil case. So he's not going to end up in prison. It's just a matter of how much is he going to have to pay? What is the impact to his businesses? And basically the rub here and why they didn't end up letting Trump give his own closing statement is because the judge was like, you have to just stick to the merits of the case. You can't just go out and give some campaign speech. And Trump was like, no, basically, I want to give the campaign speech. And they were like, you can't do that. So that is why that fell

apart. But it's a reminder that all of these things are unpredictable, chaotic. The timelines are incredibly unsettled. The revelations that continue to emerge are, you know, interesting and potentially relevant in a political situation. And it also underscores Trump is – he is in the fight of his life. Like if he does not end up in the White House, it is very likely he's going to prison. You said you thought the Georgia case was the strongest. I do think the Georgia case is strong. I think the documents case is probably stronger. Oh, right.

I honestly hadn't even— You're right. Absolutely. In terms of the cases centering around January 6th and stolen electors and whatever, I think the Georgia case is the strongest. I think overall the documents case is strongest. And, yes, they have some constitutional questions that they're going to assert, but it seems pretty open and shut that one just in terms of the facts, in terms of the coverup, in terms of the level of classification of the documents, etc. So if he's not in the White House, again, very likely he is headed to prison. So he's going to

do whatever it takes to try to avoid getting nailed on these charges, to try to make sure that he does end up back in the White House and the stakes for him personally could not possibly be higher. Absolutely. Well said. Let's go to the next part here about trial stakes, how they could not be higher. So Hunter Biden made a shocking and unannounced visit yesterday to Capitol Hill, despite actually not even being invited. So we have to remember he showed up to the opening of the House Oversight Committee. The reason why is that currently the House Oversight Committee and Republicans have subpoenaed Hunter Biden, of which he's been refusing to cooperate with. He says, I will not testify behind closed doors

and in a longer form setting. I will, however, testify in public. So yesterday, mounted a publicity stunt, showed up to the opening of that oversight hearing. He was not recognized actually to speak, but it didn't stop stuff from absolutely going crazy. Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Greene, blasting him to his face, saying with some choice words, let's take a listen. First of all, my first question is who bribed Hunter Biden to be here today? That's my first question. Second question, you are the epitome of white privilege coming into the oversight committee, spitting in our face, ignoring a congressional subpoena to be deposed. What are you afraid of? You have no balls to come up here and mr. Chairman point of inquiry. Mr. Chairman

The gentle if the gentle lady wants to hear from hunter Biden we can hear from him right now, mr. Chairman Let's take a vote and hear from hunter Biden. What are you? No, I'm women allowed to speak order you keep interrupting me I'll allowed to speak in here or no? Order. You keep interrupting me. I'll interrupt the chairman. You keep interrupting me. I don't know that he's a lady. I think that Hunter Biden should be arrested right here, right now, and go straight to jail. Our nation is founded on the rule of law. Come on, come on.

And the premise that the law applies equally to everyone, no matter what your last name is. Point of order, Mr. Chairman. Point of order. It doesn't matter who you are. Point of order, Mr. Chairman. Point of order. It doesn't matter who you are. Point of order, Mr. Chairman. Biggs over here. Donald Trump Jr. Biggs over here.

All right, so no balls. Wow. White privilege, soccer. White privilege. Says white privilege. I can't stand Nancy Mace. She's like, as Kevin, what did McCarthy say? I thought because I'm gone so woke, it's hilarious.

McCarthy was like, she's a whole other story. I could not agree with that. The way she conducts herself, opens her mouth, everything she's said in the past. I also, though, we have to show Marjorie Taylor Greene shouting out Hunter Biden as he stormed out of the committee meeting hearing after he was not called actually to testify publicly. Here, let's see what happened. Gentlemen, time's expired. Chair recognizes Ms. Greene from Georgia for five minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Excuse me, Hunter. Apparently you're afraid of my words. Whoa! Oh! I like to reclaim my time, Mr. Chairman. Wow, that's too bad.

So he stormed out there of the committee room hearing. We were saying, I have to give Hunter this. This was a Trumpian move. He showed up and he's like, all right, call on me, call on me. Even though he knew it wasn't going to happen and it showed. And he both is able to defy a subpoena and then draw attention to the fact that he is literally defying a congressional subpoena. So look, that's the overall quote unquote investigation update and all of that. I do wonder though how the White House feels because there's been a lot of talk that Joe Biden and the White House would really prefer that Hunter hide in a rock in Malibu and live off of his millions with his latest wife and just not be in the headlines. But it seems here

that he has hired his own counsel and he's determined to fight back, which politically, I mean, I'm not going to say it matters all that much. Yeah, I can't imagine that he's not doing this without dad's approval. Maybe you're right. I don't know. I can't imagine that. So just to give people the backstory. So they subpoenaed him. He said, I'll testify in public, but I'm not doing it in private.

Partly because of what happened with Devin Archer where he testified in private. And then they like cherry-picked and sort of misrepresented some of the things that he said so hunters like listen I'll answer questions, but I'm gonna do it in public So that's the context in which this stunt plays out so he comes in and it's like listen I'm here you got questions for me. I'll answer your questions I do think it was kind of a clever like Trump Ian's done But then I I don't think that necessarily storming out is the right move. You just stay there and you look like you're the adult in the room as they accuse you of having no balls in white privilege. There was also a bunch

of conservative girl boss moments of like, he just doesn't want to hear a strong conservative woman and are women even allowed to speak in this hearing, blah, blah, blah. So I don't know, the wokeness on the Republican side has really gotten out of control lately, which I know you're covering in your monologue, which I'm very excited about as well. Does genuinely make me want to kill myself. I just, I don't know what to say about this Hunter thing. Everything's so fake in American politics. Like the investigation is fake. The concern is fake. The stunt is fake. The like. The defense is fake. It's all just theater. It's all just theater. And it's sort of disgusting

to watch it unfold. Certainly. And to that point, I mean, Hunter's corruption is just so blatant and obvious. Now, listen, you can say whether it should be voted on or not, but just the latest example of this, the brazenness of this man, let's put this up there on the screen. I love this. So new revelations show us, if you guys will remember, about Hunter Biden and his art. So it turns out from what we can see here is that, quote, Hunter Biden actually knew most of his art buyers despite the, quote, unquote, ethics plan contradicting the White House. If you guys will recall when Hunter out of nowhere just decided to start selling art and doing it for a very high dollar. Well, Crystal, it turns out that the major buyer of Hunter's art is the very same person who paid

off his IRS $2 million tax bill, which is the end as a major Democratic donor, and is the only reason he was never criminally prosecuted. This is the most obvious form of money laundering I have ever seen. Crystal, he bought $875,000 worth of this man's art. And he previously had paid off his tax bill and is a huge Democratic donor. Now, unless this is the most important story in the world, no. But it's just like, come on. It's almost an accounting gimmick at this point as to who's being propped up, who's not.

Recall also that the White House said that they had a whole ethics plan in place for Hunter's art sales. He's not going to know who bought it and all this. It's complete BS. It's like, what, he's not going to go to his friend's house and see his art on the wall and know that he received almost a million bucks, even though he'd never painted anything in the past? Look, I know it's

clownish. Whether Biden himself got any of the dollars, I don't know. I think he certainly benefited from it in the past. We'll see. But the art thing is just like, while Biden is the president, you've got the donor who's getting paid off. It's just as blatant as when Trump was president and all those foreign dignitaries would just go stay at his hotels. It's like, you cannot deny that you're getting paid, that him and his family are not benefiting from this. And this is why Republicans have no leg to stand on when they're in, you know, faux concern suddenly about corruption. Because, yeah, we just got this report about the many millions of dollars that were spent by foreign governments like China and Saudi Arabia at his properties. And he got asked about it, by the way, at the Fox News.

He basically bragged about it. I mean, he did. He totally admitted to it. So, you know, when you're looking at his foreign policy actions, you're like, OK, well, is this on behalf of the country or is this because you got millions into your personal bank account through via your businesses from China, from Saudi Arabia, et cetera? So, yeah, I mean, this is why there's no accountability. This is why these things are not prosecuted. This is why the Supreme Court has made it basically impossible to prove corruption because they're all so complicit. And they're so selective in which types of corruption they're going to care about depending on whether it's a D or whether it's an R. Yeah, absolutely.

It shows you why. It's like you said, a lot of it is just theater and most of it is almost entirely fake, but at least we did get a hilarious clip of Nancy Mace out of this. So thank you, Hunter. At least thank you for that. Yes.

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. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough. Someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't.

I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying? This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts i think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop it's black music month and we need to talk is tapping in i'm nyla simone breaking

down lyrics amplifying voices and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind

a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy.

Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Alright, so how are we looking at? It's become cliche and it's trite, but in discussions

about free speech or any other principle the maxim Is this unless you support free speech or you apply your principles for those who you hate most in society those even who you find the Most reprehensible then you don't really believe in it at all for a while there many Republican politicians were singing a tune that I could Get on board with pro free speech anti-affirmative action in in essence, an embrace of equality of outcome and equal application of law. That is, a heterogeneous society of 330 million should be governed under this equal application. By and large, this is mostly the case in the last seven years, since the mainstream establishment decidedly became liberal with a capital L.

But much of it was then thrown out, seemingly overnight, after October 7th. It seems, as we'll discuss with Glenn Greenwald later this week, that much of the was then thrown out seemingly overnight after October 7th. It seems, as we'll discuss with Glenn Greenwald later this week, that much of the American right now has a pro-Israel exception. And there is perhaps no better example of this than Governor Ron DeSantis' Israel turn. One of the ways that Ron DeSantis built a national name for himself was specifically signing into legislation anti-critical race theory measures, a key tenet of which is attacking the foundation of affirmative action, the notion that specific groups in American society deserve special treatment and separate admissions categories because they have been so-called oppressed throughout history. The day after that ruling actually came out on affirmative action

from the Supreme Court, DeSantis said that his state would go even further. They would not only abolish affirmative action in Florida, but also eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion, otherwise known as DEI. As those who watch know, I'm very anti-DEI. I think it is un-American and has imported the affirmative action rules into the workplace, elevating people based on the color of their skin or their sexual orientation instead of whether they're good at their jobs or not. In fact, the day after the ruling, a new Florida law went into place specifically prohibiting colleges or universities from spending state or federal money, quote, to promote, support, or maintain programs, campus activities that advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Again, that is law and policy that I 100% support, which is why it was so shocking to see someone who has said this, acted on it, and touted it flip on a dime. In the last three months of moral panic about so-called anti-Semitism on college campuses, Republicans have turned themselves into the same snowflakes that they castigated for the last eight years. Now, all of a sudden, a student crying on campus or, quote, not feeling safe because of words is cause for action. So much cause for action that in the state of Florida, DeSantis is now funneling state resources specifically for Jewish students. He announced yesterday,

quote, today I am directing Florida's colleges and universities to make it easier for Jewish students to transfer to a Florida higher education institution. While leaders of elite universities enable anti-Semitism, we will protect Jewish students and welcome them to Florida. So in other words, DeSantis invented affirmative action for Jews. It is beyond parody because affirmative action itself has roots that go back to the early 20th century, specifically to keep Jews out of universities without explicitly saying so. The new DeSantis policy will allow the state university system of Florida to waive credit hour requirements and application date windows for Jewish students who are, quote, facing anti-Semitism on their campuses to transfer into a Florida-based university. The policy will also grant in-state tuition on a case-by-case basis.

So, quite literally literally directing state resources for special treatment of American Jews. Even more clownish is the defense that I have seen from the pro-DeSantis crowd. They say, Sagar, can't you read? In the executive order, it says it applies to any religious group who is facing discrimination. It doesn't technically say anything about Jews. As usual, they should read the words of the governor, who on Twitter and in his official release from his state office said that the policy is specifically intended for Jewish students. Imagine a counterfactual. Governor Gavin Newsom, he said, I'm going to direct state resources for black kids, but that technically the policy will apply to all races. Would we say, yeah, I mean, he said it would direct to all races, right? Or would we believe him when he said he's going to

preference blacks over everyone else? The same defense is so patently absurd and pathetic here. They would have been better off just staying silent and hope that their blatant hypocrisy is unnoticed. The DeSantis policy already has come after he banned the Students for Justice for Palestine organization on Florida campuses, an executive order that the free speech notice. The DeSantis policy already has come after he banned the Students for Justice for Palestine organization on Florida campuses. An executive order that the free speech organization FIRE said, quote, believes higher education can only fulfill its important mission when students can speak their minds. We will defend the rights of all Florida students and all Americans to speak freely. That's exactly correct. Being for free speech, being against racial or religious

quotas is only a principle when you hold it both against people who you don't like and you don't make special exceptions for those that may be politically convenient for you in the moment. Otherwise, you're a hypocritical hack. That's what DeSantis is now. And that's what it seems that a lot of the American right is too. So honestly, pathetic. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar'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 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.

She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right?

And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives.

My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it.

What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. That's what's really important and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us.

To hear this and more on how music and culture collide. Listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? A violent incident unfolded recently in the occupied West Bank, which has seen an onslaught of violence and land grabs by extremist settlers enabled by the IDF, as well as IDF raids. Two Palestinians rammed into Israeli border police. Those police then fired on the assailants, and in the chaos, a stray bullet fired by the Israelis killed a three-year-old Bedouin Palestinian child. Take a listen, though, to how Sky News described these events.

This happened at the border checkpoint. You can see a car going through and ramming some of the police that were actually manning that checkpoint. The video, we're going to freeze shortly. But the two people, a man and a woman in the car, in the subsequent day, they were killed by the police. But it looks like accidentally a stray bullet found its way into the van ahead and that killed a three or four year old young lady. So tragic events in the West Bank. That's right. A three-year-old was described as a, quote, young lady. The bullet, of course, just magically found its way into the vehicle. Now, contrast this language to a recent report in the Daily Mail

decrying the continued captivity of four Israeli women still being held by Hamas. Their headline reads, the faces of the girls still being held by Hamas as their headline reads, the faces of the girls still being held by Hamas as their families make a desperate plea for their release three months after they were captured. The article features deeply emotional interviews with the families of these women who I am sure are absolutely tormented. But these are not, in fact, girls. They are adult women, old enough to serve in the IDF, which all four of them do. A fact that was conveniently left out of that entire Daily Mail piece.

So you're left with a specter of a literal toddler being called a young lady, while adult women soldiers are called girls. And while these soldiers, combatants in an ongoing war, are portrayed in the fullness of their humanity, with their hopes, their wishes, the terror of their families all showcased. We will never know anything more than the most basic of details about the three-year-old. What was her favorite toy? Does she have a big brother? Who misses her? Will her parents ever be able to get over the loss of their darling girl? Now, you might think I'm cherry-picking here, one-off incidents of shoddy and one-sided journalism, but a growing mountain of evidence shows that the dehumanization of Palestinians and egregiously lopsided coverage is systematic and it is widespread. In fact, according to a new analysis, the unprecedented toll that Israel's assault on Gaza has taken on children has been rendered nearly invisible, featured in just two headlines out of 1,100 that were examined by The Intercept.

But that is far from all. Wild imbalances are happening at CNN, where we now know they willingly operate under the IDF censorship regime, but also at prestige papers like The Washington Post, which positions itself as a beacon of journalistic courage and integrity. At right-wing outlets like Fox News and also at liberal ones like MSNBC. Right here in the US, that imbalance is manifest, but also in Britain at the BBC. Even for someone as jaded and skeptical of mainstream coverage as I certainly am, the insanely imbalanced nature of these numbers is still shocking.

So let's start with the new report that was published in The Intercept compiled by Adam Johnson and Othman Ali. They took a look at coverage in three ostensibly liberal outlets, The Times, The Washington Post, and The LA Times over a six-week period from October 7th through November 24th. And they compiled a number of metrics seeking to show the consistent way that Israeli lives are valued to a dramatically greater degree than Palestinian lives. Just take a look at this chart. So they calculated that the word slaughter was used to describe the killing of Israelis on October 7th 60 times. Yet when it came to Palestinians, many thousands more of whom have been killed, only a single time was their mass killing described as it should be as a slaughter. It's a similar story with the word

horrific. Hamas's actions were described as horrific 38 times. That's appropriate. Israeli assaults on innocent civilians were only described as horrific four times in six weeks. October 7th was labeled a massacre a full 120 times during the relevant period. But as Palestinians were being killed by the tens of thousands, these deaths were only described as a massacre four times. Now, keep in mind, according to Euromed Monitor, 28,201 Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israel since October 7th. An estimated 695 civilians were killed in the Hamas attack on October 7th. In other words, 40 times more Palestinians have been killed than Israelis. But if you were to judge the relative loss of life by the number of mentions in media outlets, you would have to presume far more dead Israelis than Palestinians by a long stretch.

According to Adam and Ali's analysis, for every two Palestinian deaths, Palestinians are mentioned once. For every Israeli death, Israelis are mentioned eight times, or a rate 16 times more per death than that of Palestinians. And you can see this from this chart. As more Palestinians were killed, they were actually mentioned less and less. We witnessed this in real time, how invented university anti-Semitism scandals and whatever the hell is going on with Bill Ackman, how that took the place of coverage of the increasingly undeniable horrors that Palestinians are being subjected to. This chart tracks how as the horror increased, the coverage actually decreased. Also revealed in this report, real and invented anti-Semitism

was covered far more vigorously than Islamophobia. This in spite of the fact that multiple violent incidents during this time appeared spurred by anti-Muslim or anti-Arab hate. 87% of mentions of discrimination concerned anti-Semitism, only 13% concerned Islamophobia. The cable news landscape is unsurprisingly at least equally as grim. This chart from Adam Substack, the column, tracks how many times Israelis were described as having been massacred versus Palestinians over the first month of the conflict. Out of 1,733 massacre mentions, 1,655 came of them when describing Israelis killed on October 7th. This evocative language was only applied to Palestinian deaths 78 times.

They further document in this piece that usually when massacre was actually used with regard to Palestinians, it didn't come directly from network anchors or commentators, but as comments attributed to Palestinians. So, for example, Richard Engel of NBC News, he said that, quote, Palestinians call it a massacre, passive language that is debatable rather than unequivocal. Ali and Adam also reveal in this report that although children and journalists, sympathetic and protected groups, have been slaughtered at rates far higher than any other modern conflict, they have received scant media coverage. This contrasts dramatically with the coverage of the Ukraine war, where the impact on children and on the press was a frequent subject of commentary and of reporting. Now, to be clear, six journalists were killed in the early days of the Ukraine war, and that is a terrible toll.

48 were killed in the first weeks of Israel's assault on Gaza. That number has now skyrocketed to over 110. These people have the nerve to posture as defenders of the free press. What utter and complete garbage. Finally, to show you, I guess, we're not alone in insufferable and completely dishonest coverage, British commentator Owen Jones recently featured analysis on BBC coverage conducted by Mona Chalabi with a lot of very similar results. Just take a listen to a portion of Owen's report. As for emotive words, murder or murdered is used 101 times in reference to Israelis, compared to one time in reference to Palestinians. So here you might go, well, look, come on,

an airstrike killing lots of people is extremely horrific, but it's different to someone just going up to someone and shooting them. Well, look, if you take that approach, we'll have to beg to differ. There's ample evidence that Israel is deliberately killing civilians. I make no apology for saying that. The so-called Daher Doctrine, first developed in the 2006 Lebanon War to deliberately kill civilians, to put pressure on civilian populations to achieve political goals is clearly in action in Gaza. And indeed, 972 magazine, using leaked information from Israeli military intelligence sources, makes it abundantly clear that Palestinian civilians are clearly being deliberately killed. In any case, what are the fact that several Palestinians have

been objectively murdered in the West Bank alone in this time period, in ways extremely comparable, actually, to the way that many Israeli civilians were killed on the 7th of October? The West Bank, as you will know, is, of course, not run by Hamas. Now, as for other emotive words, well, massacre or massacred is used 23 times in reference to Israelis. It's used just once in relation to Gaza. That, for me, actually just sums up the whole problem with Western media coverage. Because if it actually reflected reality,

we would be referring to what's happening to Gaza as one of the great massacres of our time. But in any case, clearly the BBC does not believe that, for example, wiping out entire bloodlines of Palestinians constitutes a massacre. As for slaughter, or slaughtered, those words, that's used 20 times. 20 times in reference to Israelis. In reference to Palestinians, zero times, not once. So here's a visualization of what Owen was just discussing there that you can take a look at.

And the bottom line is this. Israelis are murdered. Palestinians simply inexplicably die. Something that I've grappled with over these past several months that has really shaken me. How? How is the unrelenting assault allowed to persist? How is there not uniform condemnation of the killing of civilians, of their starvation, of their permanent destruction of their homes, schools, mosques, neighborhoods, and so much more? The massacre of children, journalists, aid workers, doctors. As fellow at the Institute for Global Affairs, Asal Rao, put it, I feel stupid for thinking that we believed as a society that killing thousands of children, burying them under rubble, and amputating their limbs without anesthesia is wrong no matter what. I naively thought that was one thing we could all agree on.

And when the history is written of how the West looked on with approval and rushed to supply the bombs that were dropped on the babies of Palestine, when that history is written, these charts will need to be shown. They must be shown. Because a vital part of that story is how the Western press did their absolute damnedest to hide from citizens the horrors that their own taxpayer dollars are paying for. For the real story, you will do a hell of a lot better joining the Zoomers over on TikTok.

And Sagar. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal'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.

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around

what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying.

Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was,

my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family?

It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that i'm really happy or my family in general let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the iheartartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we had a great show for you guys.

Really appreciate you. You can sign up at BreakingPoints.com. Otherwise, we will see you all on Monday. 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 black community. From breaking headlines to cultural milestones, the Black Information Network delivers the facts, the voices, and the perspectives that matter 24-7 because our stories deserve to be heard. Listen to the BIN News This Hour podcast on the iHeartRadio app,

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