Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/14/23: Israel Claims Total Gaza Control, Biden And Xi Meet, Newsom Cleans Up SF For China Visit, LA Highway Up In Flames, Tucker Joins Spanish Protests, And SCOTUS Creates Fake Ethics Code

Episode Date: November 14, 2023

Saagar and Ryan discuss Israel cracking down on internal dissent and claiming total control of Gaza, Biden and Xi hold key meeting, Newsom admits to cleaning up SF for China visit, traffic nightmare after LA highway fire, backlash in Oregon over drug decriminalization, SCOTUS unveils fake ethics code, Biden aides admit no capacity to be President, and Tucker joins rightwing protests in Spain. Buy Ryan's New Book The Squad: https://www.amazon.com/Squad-AOC-Hope-Political-Revolution/dp/1250869072 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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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. 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. It's a great show for everyone today. It's Tuesday.

It's especially great because you have Ryan Grimm in the house. Good to see you, my friend. It's going to be an amazing show. Always amazing. Yeah, he stole my line. It's a bro show, so it's okay. I will allow it. We've got a great bunch of great topics

today. We're going to go over- I came up with amazing on my own. Have you said that before? Yeah, that's my catchphrase, man. You've said that? Yeah. All right. Let's see. We got Israel. We are going to talk a little bit about what's going on in terms of the latest with Netanyahu, what the IDF claims of their control over Gaza. They say they have total control of the Gaza Strip. Ryan is going to break down for us some of the things that are going on inside of Israel, some of the domestic consternation, and some crackdown on terms of civil disobedience inside of the country. We are also going to preview for everybody probably the single most important meeting in the world happening tomorrow. President Biden sitting down with Xi Jinping. There's a lot to discuss. There also is an

interesting moment, though, because President Biden will be meeting Xi in the city of San Francisco, which overnight has become clean. And there's a lot to say about that, I think. Next, we're going to talk about two very important stories. I know many of the people who watch the show are in California and actually a lot in the city of Los Angeles. We're going to talk about the closure of the I-10, part of some of the reasons possibly behind a fire that has shut down this major highway. And in addition to that, a story very near and dear to Ryan's heart, Oregon having a little bit of second thoughts about total decriminalization of all drugs. We are going to talk about the Supreme Court, which has released a new ethics code and format. Ryan actually read through the entire thing, so I'll be asking him a

lot about that. President Biden as well, lots of concerns. Media is waking up. At this point, they're like, oh my God, this man is so old. How the hell do we drag him across the finish line? And then, Ryan, for now, you're going to be our resident Spanish expert. You got it. What the hell is going on in Spain? Tucker's on the ground. What's going on there? Ryan will explain all of it to us. So before we get into that, Ryan, you want to plug the book? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. It's The Squad. The Squad. All right. And it is AOC and the Hope of the Political Revolution. You guys are going to be hearing a lot about it. It's an excellent book. And we will also have a link down in the description. It helps him with the pre-order links and all of that. But don't worry, you have a month to hear

about it. And a week and a half or so, right after Thanksgiving, if you're in D.C., I'll be at Politics and Prose with Crystal. That's right. So Crystal will be interviewing in Politics and Prose. As I said last time, that's how you truly have made it to Washington. There you go. You get the Politics and Prose thing. The big one, the flagship. You're guaranteed on the New York Times bestseller list.

Right next to the child sex traffic in Pizza Place. Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. I've actually been there. I looked around in the basement. There was nothing. It turns out there is no basement. There's actually not a basement. All right. Anyway, all right. We could have too much fun here. Let's start with Israel.

Let's go ahead and get to our first element here in terms of what is actually happening on the ground and also in terms of who controls what. President Biden weighing in about the current attacks on the hospital where Israel claims that this is a Hamas center. The people in the hospital, the doctors disputing that. Here's what President Biden had to say. Have you expressed any specific concerns to Israel on that, sir? Well, you know, I have not been reluctant in expressing my concerns what's going on. And it's my hope and expectation that there will be less intrusive action relative to the hospital. We're in contact with the Israelis. Also, there is an effort to take this pause to deal with the release of prisoners, And that's being negotiated as well with the Qataris engaged. And so I remain somewhat hopeful. But the hospital must be protected.

So this is a big question around what he's saying, Ryan. Part of the reason is that we need to protect the hospital. There was some reporting last night, very, very late last night. I wanted to get your take on also update the audience. David Ignatius, who's basically like an employee of the CIA who has to work over at the Washington Post, he claims that a forthcoming five-day ceasefire is going to happen imminently and that there will also be a release of the majority of the hostages from Hamas and then also the release of Palestinians being held in Israeli prison. But it's one of those where we don't know the exact details. As I said, this is Ignatius who was saying it. It's possible that it

may not materialize. I did want to flag it for the audience and also possibly get any of your reaction. Yeah, yeah. So he was sourcing that to an Israeli official. But because, as you said, because this is David Ignatius, he's not running anything without running it by his, he's very well sourced in the deep state. So he's running, this is what I heard. This follows a scoop from Reuters, which actually I think was just based on Hamas's telegraph channel, which if you're an Israeli, you are not allowed to read. And we'll talk about that later. That said that Hamas was ready to release 70 women and children in exchange for women and children being released from administrative detention in Israel. And so this builds on that. You saw Biden sort of mentioned a pause that he's

been pushing and they've been pushing back on. Israel can only push back on the US for so long. It's not really up to them. They can drag it out, but we really are doing all of this. It looks like it's happening. This is an important point. It actually kind of ties into the security situation. So let's go and put this up there on the screen. This was a pretty important release from the defense minister. This is from the Times of Israel correspondent. He says that according to their defense minister, quote, Hamas has now lost control of the Gaza Strip as the IDF moves to capture Gaza City. There is no force of Hamas capable of now stopping the IDF. The IDF is advancing to every point. Hamas organization has lost control of Gaza. Terrorists are fleeing

south. Civilians are looting Hamas bases. They have no confidence in the government. As of Israeli forces, he says, according to plans and carry out the tasks exactly and legally for advancing and that they have now intensified activity against the tunnels in the recent days. So I'm kind of reading this in a couple of different ways, Ryan. There was a very fascinating comment from the Israeli foreign minister yesterday, and he said, Israel has enough international legitimacy for maybe two to three weeks. So I've been thinking about this entire military operation really in the context of the Iraq war. So during Iraq, there were multiple phases of the US occupation and of the war. Phase one, the easiest phase in retrospect, was just destroying the Iraqi army and taking Baghdad.

That was a conventional military basically had no trouble doing it. It took three weeks. President Bush marks the occasion, mission accomplished, and all of that. It turns out that the war really began the day after mission accomplished, and that's where we had to deal with counterinsurgency. Who the hell is going to govern this mess? Who do we decide is legitimate? That's when the attacks on US forces start to trickle up and then eventually explode. And next thing you know, we have a full-blown civil war. America is in charge. We have these fake elections and all this stuff going on. It's total chaos, and it descends into what we think of the conflict today. So I really believe that they are in the phase one sort of the conflict. They've got the US support at this point. Militarily, I mean, I just checked this morning, their official number

of IDF who've been killed in action is 47. It's not nothing, but it's not particularly high death toll. However, they are getting to the phase now where they claim Hamas has lost control of the Gaza Strip, which leads to the now what question. We spent a lot of time yesterday talking about the Palestinian Authority, Bibi Netanyahu rejecting it, around what the prospect of who the hell is going to govern this space post-Hamas and all that, even if they can't accomplish their objective. I'm curious what you think of all of that. I would add even a phase 1A to I think what is a good analogy. And phase 1A would be the shock and awe campaign. And Israel, the IDF has done and continues its own

shock and awe campaign. The difference here is that, okay, you have reduced northern Gaza and almost all of Gaza City to rubble. And Hamas has gone out through its tunnels down into southern Gaza Strip, I guess congratulations, mission accomplished. But I think anybody could predict that if you drop more bombs, as we know that they now have, on Gaza in the last month than the US dropped on Afghanistan the entire time, then yes, you're going to get the 20,000 to 30,000 people who are under arms under Hamas to flee south. Like, yes. But then it goes to your point. Now what? And Netanyahu has said, well, we'll figure that out afterwards. We're not going to

worry about that now. He has also said, well, we're going to occupy it indefinitely. U.S. is like, no, you're not. You're not doing that. He's like, okay, well, we're not going to let the Palestinian authority back in. And US and Arab countries are like, what do you mean you're not going to let? So who? Who's going to run this? It's not you, and it's not them, which leads then a lot of people to say, wait a minute, do you plan on there not being people there? Well, the big question too is who the hell is going to run the election? You say you're going to have an election. I mean, America ran into this problem where we were like, we had to decide basically who was allowed to run and who's not. Oh, it turns out that didn't have a lot of democratic legitimacy with the Iraqi people. And it took decades in order for that to actually

materialize, if it even does materialize today. And in 2006, when George W. Bush oversaw that election, Hillary Clinton famously publicly, semi-publicly was like, wouldn't you an idiot? You would hold an election and not be able to rig the outcome. Right. Which when you step back a second and think about who's saying that, it's kind of an amusing thing to have expressed publicly about elections, that they're really just theater to put in place who we want to run. She was livid. She's like, how as a custodian of the American empire could you hold an election which allows an adversary of- In a certain point, she's not wrong in that if you're going to militarily occupy a country, and then of course,

you're going to try and rig the election in the direction that you want. And in fact, the irony of all of this is this is why we have to spend so much time on Iraq is that the 2005 Israeli deoccupation or whatever of Gaza, removal of settlers, and then the subsequent election was entirely done at the behest of President Bush because it was all part of his second inaugural address, the 2005 democracy promotion nonsense, which eventually led to the collection of Hamas. And that's really where we are right now. Exactly. And then we had a coup and a civil war and it completely failed because it turns out we can't do 98,000. We can't even do three things at once, let alone like 12. We can't even do coups

anymore. What we were trying to do at that time. So the point though is that much of this also roots back to that time period. It's why it's very instructive and why we spend a lot of time talking and thinking about it. It also is in the context of what the blowback on America is going to look like. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. This was actually a map that was compiled over by Fox News. I actually thought they did a pretty good job. What you can see here are now the 52 attacks on US military forces since October 17th. Note the date, October 17th, because there were still many more before that. It's only this is the number that we have. They span and run the gamut all across of Syria and all across Iraq as well, from the Baghdad Diplomatic Center, where the Green Zone, infamous Green Zone, all the way to Erbil

in the north, and as well, the Al-Assad Air Base, where we have so many Iraqi and US forces that are stationed there. Then we have the Al-Tanf garrison in Syria and the number of US special operations bases, forward operating bases that are all across Syria that are ostensibly there for an anti-ISIS mission. But these guys really are just sitting ducks at a certain point because they don't have a huge amount of force protection on the base because these are smaller locations. So they're just sitting there. I mean, they have a limited amount of protection and it's just we're in a tit for tat game with these Iranian proxy forces. Yesterday, we brought everyone the news, Ryan, in terms of what it looks like right now

for the prospect of a Lebanon-Israel war and with Hezbollah. Now, for now, and hopefully, you know, things are not escalating, but the escalation ladder is being climbed. So we don't know if total war is going to emerge. I don't think anybody actually wants that. The U.S. doesn't want it. You know, the Secretary of Defense called the Israeli Defense Minister and was like, hey, you better be cutting this out. Be like, we are not getting embroiled in this. You need to cool it. Why are you having these long range strikes all the way deep in their territory? At the same time, the Israelis are like, well, Hezbollah has been firing anti-tank missiles at us. They've killed a number of IDF soldiers. I believe an Israeli citizen

at an electrical plant was actually killed by one of these missiles just two days ago. So everybody is a tit for tat motions that we are right now. And the US is actually telegraphing part of the reason why it doesn't want this to happen in a very subtle way. Let's put this up there, please, on the screen. The US Central Command, which is the area of operations for the Middle East, tweeted out, quote, for the third time in eight days, B-1 Lancers have conducted missions in the U.S. CENTCOM area of responsibility, demonstrating the ability to rapidly project combat power. Now, why, oh why, Ryan, would you be tweeting out pictures of a heavy strategic bomber, which was built to drop nuclear weapons

on the Soviet Union. I'm pretty sure that has nothing to do with Gaza and honestly, even Lebanon and Hezbollah. There's only one target that that message was telegraphed to. I mean, when you've got a sexy B-1 mean, let's just want to share those selfies, right? Yeah, you can't you just can't help it right there was a Kind of there was a statement from a Hamas spokesperson out of Lebanon yesterday That sounded a little bit like cope that that goes to this question of Hezbollah where they said Hezbollah's red line is if Hamas is completely eliminated From Gaza and Gaza is flattened. Yeah, so it was Hamas trying to explain to the broader Middle East why Hezbollah hasn't gotten more aggressively into the war against

Israel because Hamas very early on was sending signals that they were hoping that this would create more of a regional conflagration. But those four attacks that we saw since the U.S. strikes on Iranian proxies suggest that this kind of counterintuitive strategy that U.S. has of de-escalation through escalation. They're like, if we keep attacking, that will prevent them from further attacks. Shows that's not working. It doesn't make any sense to begin with. And it's also not working. The more we attack, then the more they fire back. And the big fear is, as you were pointing out, these bases are not terribly well guarded, that you could have some Benghazi situation.

Of course. I mean, that's always the nightmare scenario. It's like you just never know. And it just takes a single instance of one person who didn't plan exactly the right way, and things are popping off. At the same time, Ryan, you flagged something you wanted to discuss. Let's put this up there, please, on the screen, this internal State Department memo, which was actually blasting Biden and U.S. policy. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

So the State Department has what's called a dissent channel. And the State Department officials at the top brag about how proud they are of this, that it allows people to air their grievances. And that's the way that you get to kind of the right decision at the end. You hear, you hear from all sides. In reality, they're not so pleased that this dissent channel exists. They're super not pleased when this dissent channel leaks into the public. This one, the ones that have been coming out recently have been just extraordinarily aggressive. This one from State Department officials hits Biden for what they say accurately, spreading misinformation about the Gaza death toll. And they use the phrase misinformation, which is pretty ironic given the way that the Department of Homeland Security was talking about criminalizing it at some point. Yeah, that's at some point.

And so in their worldview, they're accusing him of an impeachable offense. But this goes back to his claim that he made to Laura Barron-Lopez and that presser that you can't trust the Gaza Health Ministry's death tolls. Since then and before then, everybody understood from Israel to human rights organizations that these numbers are accurate. Like if you go back and look, the IDF estimates about around civilian casualties or around casualties, I should say, are the same as roughly the same as the Ministry of Health was always coming up with.

And the State Department knew that. And the administration knew that because the administration and the State Department were that and the administration knew that because the administration was all in the State Department were always relying on these numbers and so to have Biden say that we don't know whether the Palestinians are telling the truth about these right sent a signal that there would be no consequences for civilian casualties because you could just deny them and the so the State Department pushed back on that. There's now a letter coming out from, I think, in the New York Times from like 400 Biden staffers. Part of this trend of staffers and lower-level officials pushing back. At the Intercept today, we have a letter from about 150 Obama staffers, two Obama, saying, come on, get tougher on Biden kind of reaction to another letter that's going out. So there is a lot of dissent going on because you can only deny this for so long.

And then actually all of that kind of flies in the face though of how the official Democratic Party is operating. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is important. Can you tell us about what you have here? It says that the House of Representatives has organized bipartisan member transportation to the rally tomorrow to support Israel. It's being run by the Democratic minority leader, Hakeem Jeffrey. So there is a protest or whatever, a march. Gigantic march today. A march today in support of Israel. And you're saying House Democrats, the leader actually, is organizing transportation for members to go into this march for support of Israel? Organizers are expecting two to three hundred thousand people. Wow, that'll be just as big as the ceasefire. It'll be just as big as that one.

I think you're going to have buses from all over the country coming to D.C. There is a small peace block that is part of it that wanted to say, I stand against anti-Semitism. I also stand against war. But most of it is just generally supportive of Israel's war effort. And so to have the House of Representatives making bipartisan travel arrangements, first of all, just walk. I mean, it's from- Yes. Yeah. Thank you. We're talking like 10 blocks. Yeah. Oh, less. Less actually. Less than 10 blocks.

That's ridiculous. But so the letter that I obtained says, if you're a member of Congress that wants to go to this rally, we have arranged transportation and RSVP to Hakeem Jeffries, basically. This is later today, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I also reported this yesterday, will be streaming that Hamas atrocity video that the IDF has been screening around to journalists throughout Israel. And also they did it in New York. And then you hear from people who've come out of it. And so if you are a Palestinian watching this as the death tolls, who knows, maybe it's pushing 30,000.

The ministry official who was uh in charge of the count was at al-shifa hospital right so how how is that you know how we can now agree with biden that we might not be able to rely on these numbers as much anymore but in the wrong direction there might be actually much worse than we understand so if you're somebody in gaza watching this you're you're not seeing the United States as a kind of interlocutor who's trying to bring people together to end this. You're seeing them just 100 percent squarely. That's what I think has to be squared here. And it's just obvious.

Like the Democratic – entire Democratic leadership from the president on down, like there's – yes, there's maybe 20, 30 or whatever congressmen. 18 to 20, yeah. That's it. And that's why I just think people also need to be very real about where the U.S. political system is right now. Whether it is reflective of actual small D democratic concern, I don't think so. Although I do still think people underrate just how pro-Israel a lot of the American population is. We'll see. And a reflection of that is going to be we had a big ceasefire protest. It was here in the U.S. We had a massive protest here as well. Austin

yesterday had, they said 10,000, but you look at the drone footage, it's like the whole city was out in the streets. Also, London, actually. We'll probably cover it on Thursday, just some of the outbreaks. One of the biggest in British history. I was going to say, I think since 2003, it might be one of the largest protests to actually take place there. So big stuff is happening.

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 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. proud when they hear my old tapes yeah 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. Let's move on now to Israel and what's happening on the ground. So Bibi Netanyahu took to the U.S. airwaves as he did, all in English, of course, in order to telegraph directly to you. He was actually asked, though, he's like, hey, are you ever going to take responsibility for what happened on October 7th? Let's take a listen.

I know you say the time for that will come after the war. Why won't you take responsibility now? I've already addressed that many times. And I said this whole question will be addressed after the war. Just as people would ask, well, did people ask Franklin Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor that question? Did people ask George Bush after the surprise attack of November 11th? Look, it's a question that needs to be asked. I think those questions were asked.

And I've said that one thing that is important, and I've said we're going to answer all these questions, including me. I'm going to be asked tough questions. Right now, I think what we have to do is unite the country for one purpose, one purpose alone, and that is to achieve victory. That's what I did. We formed a unity government where the country is united as never before. And I think that's what we have to pursue. And what the people expect me to do right now is two things. One, achieve this victory and bring the hostages back. And second, assure that Gaza never becomes a free state. And to Israelis who are disappointed

that you still won't take responsibility, you say? Well, I said that I'm going to answer all the questions that are required, including the questions of responsibility. There'll be enough time for that after the war. Let's focus on victory. That's my responsibility. So this is an especially ironic comment, the 9-11 one.

Would we have been better off if we did not immediately rally around the flag and instead asked George W. We're like, hey, man, how exactly did this happen on your watch? You had a briefing on what was it, August 9th or something like that? Bin Laden determined to attack the United States. So what happened there? Wait, the FBI and the CIA were like screwing with each other and they just happened to miss, you know, these Saudi agents that were all across America. He even had the 20th hijacker in custody.

And you had another guy who was involved in the World Trade Center bomb or no, in the 2000 Millennium bombing. And he actually recognized Zacharias Massawi, but you didn't show him a photo until after 9-11. You could have prevented it. Or actually, the CIA had scans of their U.S. visas and knew they were coming here, and nobody was able to put that together. Now, let me ask whether we would have been better off

asking all those questions. We didn't find out any of the facts I just laid out. We probably didn't find out until, what, 2005, 2006? Well, by that time, we're in the middle of a damn insurgency in Iraq. And even the FDR example, there is a lot of stuff that happened inside the State Department where America would have been very much better off. We had asked a lot of questions about, hey, who the hell was running the East Asia desk and decided to just cut Japan off on an oil embargo

and not think about what the consequences of that were going to be? So yeah, actually, you are better off in the immediate aftermath being like, yes, how exactly did this happen? Not only prevent it never happen again, but prevent us from using the war to, you know, different political purposes as Bibi is doing to actually address the core problem that the majority of Israelis feel, you know, want the hostages back and they want Hamas to pay a price. Those are totally legitimate. But Bibi's direct like long-term interests do not align with what they want. And at least for them, the Israelis, I'll give them this, they're smart enough where they understand that. They're much smarter than we were after 9-11 where we were just like rah-rah. Oh my God, George W. Bush

threw out a pitch at Yankee Stadium. And to the Israeli public's great credit on this particular question, they have not let him sweep these questions under the rug because the answers are all obvious and none of them are useful for Bibi. And we've talked about this before. One of the answers, or two of them, one is his attempt to take over the judiciary to stay out of jail. Like that kind of, the Israeli public sees that as part of the kind of distraction that kind of weakened the country ahead of this. And secondly, empowering these settlers in the West Bank to just run roughshod over Palestinians over the last year to kill 200 plus of them, clearing out entire neighborhoods, required the moving of a lot of military assets from the Negev Desert up to the West Bank. So that was a choice that was made.

Netanyahu was also very hostile to the south of Israel because that's, as we talked about right afterwards, a lot of lefties live down there. And so all of these different moves he made, along with allegedly having the most sophisticated intelligence apparatus in world history and missing it, all of those things combined to create an opening for Hamas that appears to have shocked Hamas as well, you know, as well as the Israeli defenses. They did not expect that they would be kind of rampaging for days. I think this was, as we understand what they're thinking, this was a hit these military outposts,

grab as many hostages as possible, and then go back to Gaza and then do a hostage exchange for Palestinian prisoners. But they overran the defenses so thoroughly that they just then just called an audible and kept going. Well, congratulations to them. They're certainly very smart people who, of course, you know, would never have anticipated that taking hostages of children and all that wouldn't invite a massive military response. Ryan, you did flag, however, there's some stuff going on inside of Israel that I want you to be able to put down for us.

We can go and put this up there on the screen, guys, about Israeli civilian and human rights inside of the country right now and some acts of protest and others. Can you just tell us about some examples about what you're seeing? Yeah, so the Knesset has passed legislation since October 7th that criminalizes, effectively criticizing the war effort, criminalizes any support of anything that could be remotely understood to be support of Palestinians broadly, and even criminalizes particular news consumption, not just the Hamas kind of telegraph channel. Yeah, you mentioned the telegram channel. That is definitely going to get you arrested. Interesting. But you can't be on different WhatsApp groups that are sharing news from reporters in Gaza. There have been people

that have been arrested for just sharing the kind of handles of, oh, here's some good people to follow on Instagram. Like that has gotten you arrested. This weekend, there were two Israeli leaders here in Washington, D.C. One is an Israeli Jewish labor leader. The other is the only female Palestinian member of the Knesset. They founded an organization called Standing Together, and they're kind of doing an American tour. I saw them over the weekend. They said one of the things their organization did right after October 7th is they set up a hotline for people who were either arrested or fired for making public comments that ran afoul of these new laws. And they are in the high thousands. This is not like a couple of cases here of a teacher, like, cause you've seen some high profile cases of a teacher, uh, who got arrested for posting, uh, the names of Palestinian children

who were killed in Gaza. Like that's it. Not saying, you know, maybe they even supported it. They're like just posting the names. Wow. They said they're in the high thousands. Huh? Um, there's a, uh, viral video that's gone around of a Palestinian woman who's an Israeli citizen. Yes, I watched that. You saw that. The cops show up and they're like, you are supporting terrorism. And you can tell in her eyes that she did not, like she knew she didn't even post anything. And they said on her WhatsApp status had said, basically, may God grant them

courage and victory or something like that. And she's like, I was referring to Israel. I'm an Israeli citizen. I'm rooting for, like, she's probably already taking a lot of flack. Yeah, right. Owned community. And you can just tell from her body language she's telling the truth. But you can also see in her eyes that she feels like she's on the precipice of getting sucked into the abyss of this system of which she may never emerge. My question to you was going to be, so WhatsApp, for example, they brag about antenna encryption and all that. So how do the Israelis even have visibility into this? Is it like cooperation with Meta, the owner of Facebook?

How does that work? Well, if it's your WhatsApp status, it's public. Right. Yeah. So a lot of this is public. And a lot of these WhatsApp groups, they're public. You'd have like a public Facebook page. Sure, sure. Yeah. So I think as far as we understand, if you're doing encrypted messages back and forth, you might be okay. But Pegasus might be able to get into your WhatsApp messages as well. As far as we understand, Signal is stronger than Facebook owns WhatsApp because of some of the backdoors that are available to WhatsApp.

But in general, we're talking about just public stuff. Like putting on, there was a case of somebody who said something like, there is no God but God, was arrested and interrogated, and said, my aunt just died. That had nothing to do with the war. Right. And they made the person produce. There is no God, but yeah.

They made the person produce the death certificate. Wow. And when they produce Ant's death certificate, they're like, okay, fine. But make sure you better not be grieving about anybody in Gaza. If we find out that you're grieving about anybody in Gaza, we're coming back that you're grieving about anybody in Gaza,

we're coming back. That's pretty crazy. All right. So there's a lot of stuff going on inside of that. And you also, you guys wrote this up over at The Intercept. You can break this down. I know a lot of our viewers actually will be interested in this. The Anti- Defamation League, the ADL, has now mapped Jewish peace rallies with, quote, anti-Semitic attacks. So this is almost too much of a parody, but give us the details, Ryan. This is the kind of the logical kind of end point of what you were seeing over the last several weeks of all of these different commentators posting images of, you know, 100, 200,000 people marching in London or New York City and saying, you know, look at all of these

anti-Semites. I fear for myself. But the actual marches are saying we want to ceasefire in the war. Like it's not an anti-Semitic march. It is an anti-Israel war march. And so it would make sense that then the Anti-Defamation League, which has been pushing for a long time to say that criticism of Israel is the same thing as anti-Semitism, for them to say, all right, if you attend one of these marches, that's a hate march and you're anti-Semitic and you're going on the list. So even if you're Jewish, it's not anti-Semitic. Especially. Right. Yeah. Okay.

Oh, okay. All right. Especially. Especially then because that's more of a threat. So they say, while the ADL told The Intercept it does not consider ceasefire protests anti-Semitic, just anti-Israel, its CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, has now said otherwise. After thousands of Jews called for a ceasefire, ADL-DC released a statement equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

Greenblatt piled on, calling the groups that organized the protest Jewish Voice for Peace hate groups. Roughly 500 Jews, including 25 rabbis, were then arrested at that capital protest. It is important to note these are radical fringe Jewish organization, and being Jewish does not exempt an organization or a person from being anti-Semitic. So basically imagine that that ideology is in power in Israel. Yes. Because here we can be like John Greenblatt going, you know, doing his thing where he's calling every criticism. Yeah, we can say whatever we want here. It could be annoying because you could subtweet it or something like that, lead to a boycott or something.

But at the end of the day, like we're not going to like, you know, go to jail for it. But if in Israel you and I, you know, might, and I might be facing cops on the other side of the door, and you'd be like, no, it was him. He's a guy. I wouldn't throw you under the bus. Don't worry. Yeah, yeah. They would review it.

They'd be like, how did you respond when he said that thing? Interesting. Well, they can roll the tape. They can go ahead and they can see how it is. So that was an important thing that we wanted to highlight for everybody. Just a couple of different fragments, I think, to tie a bow on this for inside of Israeli society. Like number one is that Netanyahu himself has a direct interest in drawing this thing out as long as possible. Two, that his coalition, the people who are in charge, actively are kind of pushing him to a

position where he has to defend some of the most indefensible actions. And at the same time, it's like a, you know, like a detente between the two of them because they're like, hey, baby, you get to stay in power, but you have to defend everything that we do. And otherwise, we won't be asking questions about October 7th. And the cover of all of that is the crackdown inside of Israeli society. And underlying all this for the people who have been following along is he's been facing all of these corruption charges that he can get out of as long as he's in office. So the entire world is held hostage. I've wondered if they could just come up with a deal and be like, it's fine. We won't prosecute you and your wife for these corruption charges. I have said this before. I genuinely think he's a villainous figure,

no matter what. Actually, especially if you support the state of Israel. I think the most patriotic thing you can do is if you're a controversial person, and we should look to British history for things like this. Chamberlain, whenever he knew he was going to lose a vote of no confidence, he didn't want to leave. He was like, okay, I'm out. The public won't support me. Form a coalition government. I'm done. And a lot of people have had to make that choice in the past. It's brutal. It's not like history treated him all that well. He died of cancer very shortly afterwards, and he's probably still considered – He's Chamberlain.

Yeah, he's like one of the worst PMs in British history. And yet he did the honorable thing at the time. There was a – I forget. I think it was H.H. Asquith. Same thing in the middle of World War I. He lost power, and he said, okay, I'm done. And he had to turn over power to somebody who he genuinely hated. That's how it goes sometimes whenever you're actually a patriot.

Herbert Hoover, he certainly didn't want to turn things over to FDR, but he did. It's just one of those where people, if you really support the country, you should be able to put yourself past it. You should put the country above you and your own personal interests. And unfortunately, Netanyahu has chosen not to make that decision. I genuinely think it may be one of the worst things that's happened to Israel as a result of this and has guided so many of their worst decisions, which will remain perilous, I think, in the many years to come that'll fall out. Okay. 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. 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 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. Let's move on to the next part. We're going to talk about Xi Jinping and President Biden, arguably, as I said, the most important meeting in the entire world. So let's go and put this up there on the screen just to preview everyone for what exactly is happening. Well, there's actually a lot going on behind the scenes, Ryan, where the APEC meeting, which is obviously

the Asian Pacific cooperation organization. They're all coming together. There's 18 different nations, but the two figures that everybody wants to see are Biden and Xi. And the biggest thing that is actually dividing the Biden administration and the Chinese right now is the lack of military to military communication. These were really important channels that happen for deconfliction purposes with all the US forces, not only in the South China Sea, but all across the Asia Pacific. And it really basically amounts to, they're like, hey, we're going to do an exercise over here, so don't shoot at us. That sounds stupid, but this is very basic but important military to military stuff that's supposed to go

beyond the diplomacy and just make sure no accidents. They had cut off that channel after the shooting down of the Chinese spy balloon back in February. So they have resumed some of that. The other thing that's going to happen is that at the APEC conference, and it actually stands for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. I apologize for missing it earlier. The point, though, is that the economic piece of this is actually really key. There was a presumption that some trade agreements and other things may be announced that doesn't yet appear to have materialized into anything formal. Of course, there's going to be a lot of discussion

around Taiwan. But the big thing that overlays all of this is that China is probably coming into this position both in the weakest economic picture that they've ever had and also the strongest military. So they have the strongest military that they've ever had, and they've got all these ambitions. They have all these things that they want. And then at the same time, the Chinese dream and all that people had been talking about for over 20 years now that kind of belies the ever-U.S.-China meeting, that's not the same. China's economic slump right now is probably one of the biggest news. They have a huge real estate bubble. Their overall consumption and economy is really hurting. Zero COVID really hurt them badly.

They've had problems restarting manufacturing. They have real energy problems as well with coal, and even they have rolling blackouts for time across the country. Kind of shook the foundation of the CCP's control over it. And then at the same time, you've got Xi, who is probably the most dictatorial Chinese premier since Mao Zedong. And combining all of that, you have this meeting between these two great superpowers and their leaders and how long it's going to be. What exactly are they going to, can they accomplish anything? There's a little bit a lot of pre work and all of that behind the scenes But I'm curious if you want to flag anything that's in particular they're gonna get well

It feels to me like they're going through a period similar to ours You know, we had the mid post World War two era up through up through the 70s every generation Felt like the next generation was going to do better. Like that was the, and you can even run it back before with the blip and the depression. That kind of produced the American dream, to go back to your point about the Chinese dream. Yes. Like that was the thing that allowed so many people to accept a lot of the indignities that come with contemporary life. That, okay, this sucks, but things are better for me than they were for my parents,

and I'm gonna make them better for my kids than they were for yours. And what we learned between the 1980s and the financial crisis of 2008 is that when you pull that rug out from under people, the indignities that they're suffering start to sting a lot more, and they start to get pretty frustrated.

And you saw this populist anger that was channeled to the right as a result of all that and I think you just have to be seeing some of that in China at the same time because you're finally seeing every generation felt like their children were going to do better because they, you know, the CCP to its great credit has overseen the greatest, you know, collapse in poverty, right? Well, I think America's trade are going to, I think America's trade policies had a lot more to do with that than the CCP. But I mean, I guess you can't, you can't blame them for taking advantage of stupid people. I mean, we did trade, we did trade policies in South and Central America. We did trade

policies in Africa. We did trade policies in Vietnam and it's China that's like, you know, kicking everybody's butt. Yes. They were the, they were the best equipped to take advantage of US stupidity. The thing that I would really say is the economic piece to this is pretty much baked in at this point. This is one where you can't deny with Trump. I mean, the trade war is probably the single most bipartisan accomplishment that he had. He destroyed at least the public trade consensus. Behind the scenes, there's many Republicans and Democrats who want to return. But there's no announcement coming in this meeting of, oh, we're going to get rid of

the 301 tariffs, the national security tariffs. There's no way that even Biden could try and do something like that. At best, they could only try and bring back TPP through another name. But even from what we've seen so far, that's not really what's going to happen. I think Taiwan and military is going to dominate probably the entire conversation, which is why it's interesting because the other thing that's been really rankling the Chinese is that our relations with China have basically had nothing to do with China recently. Everything has been about, oh, China's supporting Russia in Ukraine.

Oh, China refuses to condemn what's going on in Gaza. And it's like, well, okay, but maybe we should just talk about, like, you know, U.S. and China, which has to do with Asia and our largest trading partner outside of Canada and Mexico. And how are we going to figure this out? And what are our actual red lines in the region? And is cooperation even possible? What can all these things look like? It's by my biggest critique of the Biden administration's foreign policy is that they refuse to conduct foreign policy on its face for US interests and in whichever country that we're dealing with. Our relations with India really took a massive beating over Ukraine

because they continue to buy Russian oil. And it's like, what the hell does it have to do with US and India relations? This is the largest now population on planet Earth. Maybe we should just talk about what the two of us have in common. And so with China, I think very much so. It's been to their benefit, actually.

The more that US relations and everything is distracted on Gaza and on Ukraine, the less time you're spending on Taiwan, which, by the way, is a country that actually matters to the US economy, I believe is number six in terms of our global trading partner. And arguably, in terms of high tech and all that, the single most important trading partner that the United States has. So that's going to be interesting. Also, behind the scenes, I just wanted to preview for everybody what Xi actually says in Chinese whenever he thinks that we're not listening. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. They point out, you know, behind public assurances, Xi Jinping has spread, quote, grim views of the U.S. Speeches by the Chinese leader show how he

was bracing for intensifying rivalry with the United States from very early on in his rule. And who wants to guess, Ryan, who the chief cheerleader for relations with Xi will be fine, and actually he's a cool guy and we can get along? Joe Biden. Biden, I remember this. I remember the very last speech he gave as vice president, the last policy speech, and he still uses it to this day, although it's less cogent. And he's like, you know, nobody has spent more time with Xi Jinping than me. I've sat across the table from him. You know, I've looked him in the eye and all this stuff. This is a man you can work with. And that was the line for so many years from Biden. Obviously, that is ludicrous on its face. But

I still think he does cling to that vision of a before times, a pre-Trump times that the Chinese desperately want to return to. So as we said, there's a lot headed into this meeting. Of course, there's going to be ramifications on Ukraine. There's going to be ramifications on Gaza and all of that. But the single question is, how are we going to conduct relations between our two states? What is our military red lines and others? What is going to be communicated by President Biden directly to Xi's face? And how the hell can we even continue to trade and coexist in this world as we move forward? And what Xi has said, you know, semi-privately, and it's funny what counts. We're so out of the loop when it comes to China that it's funny what counts as private because it's

like this speech is given to hundreds of people. Millions of people. Hundreds of people, yes. Sometimes even millions, but it gives them in Chinese so they're secret. One of his themes is that he does not trust the United States because he thinks the United States is trying to undermine other powers throughout the world. That he believes, as the Times puts it, he agrees with Putin on that the U.S. likes to orchestrate, quote-unquote, color revolutions around the world. And one reason that he believes that is because we do

like to do that. And it also puts into context the kind of Uyghur genocide, the cultural genocide that he carried out in the western part of China. You know, he suspected, and not completely unfairly, that the U.S. is constantly playing games in that region, that is constantly fueling, like one thing that we do is we like to fuel little tiny insurgencies to destabilize our rivals just to destabilize them. And that's been one of our tricks that we, that's been one of the cards that we've played for decades. And so he sees that and he's like, you know what? Just going to – no such thing as Uyghurs anymore. This is my thing with China is I just think that the best thing that they've got against us is they're like, oh, you guys talk about –

and I've had – one of my old professors in graduate school, this guy spent a lot of time in Taiwan. He was even – I won't go into too much of his background because I'm not sure exactly whether it's classified or not. But the point is that he spent a lot of time across the table from very, very senior people in China. And we would ask him about it. And he was like, you know, it really hit home to me how big of a mistake Iraq was. Because we would say, hey, you guys should let up on free speech. And he said, how much free speech do they have in Iraq? And then we would say, you know, oh, you guys should let up on free speech. And he said, how much free speech do they have in Iraq? And then we would say, oh, you guys should do this. And they're like, well, we don't want to hear about democracy promotion from the people who took over Iraq.

And then we would be like, hey, can you get Kim Jong-un to relax? And they would say, well, you guys, he's not going to listen to you because you killed Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi. And it was the regurgitation from their point. The Gaddafi thing was a massive thing. Because he gave up his weapons of mass destruction like a year or two later. He's like, why would we trust you?

You literally bombed him, and he had a rod shoved up his ass because he gave up his nukes. He's like, you think we're gonna give up our nukes? You think we're even gonna take you seriously after you've done something like that? Never. And they literally laugh at America's face.

And part of the thing is, and I've always advocated for on this show, everybody knows I'm basically like a realist. And that is a pejorative term in many cases, but I mean it in terms of like the international relations case of, look, it's like China, you're our biggest trading partner. Taiwan is the single most probably important country outside of Canada and Mexico to the US economy. That's why we care about it. Nobody cares about democracy. We have a lot of non-democratic allies all across the world. What are we doing here? And you, you're threatening our allies, South Korea and Japan, two vital countries to the US economy under the US nuclear umbrella with tens of thousands of American troops that are there and deep cultural and economic ties between us. They deeply matter to us. They can't stand you.

You want to take them over. You have all hated each other for the last 2,000 years, and we're finding ourselves in the middle of this. When you talk like this, I think we can all be honest. Then we can really just, we can actually say, here's why we care, here's what we want, and all that. But for decades, American foreign policy has been all about – like even trade liberalization with China. It was never honest that it would just make big business and corporations rich. They're like, oh, we're going to make sure that we're going to have a thriving middle class in China that believes in democracy. And then the opposite happened. It's just been ridiculous.

The net effect has actually been importing Chinese autocracy to America where big business business cares about what the CCP thinks, as opposed to a more democratic China. It's just been a ridiculous policy, I think. And that's before you even get to our number one buddy, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Exactly. And that's what they think. They know. That's why they laugh at us. And honestly, they should laugh whenever people are so naive to talk this way. 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 app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast belying all of this the apec conference it being held in the city of san francisco uh is a sudden and miraculous cleanup that has happened across the city where many people people have asked, hey, this has been, you know,

let's all be honest. By the way, I love San Francisco. Nobody loves California more than I do, even just as a visitor. I think it's the most beautiful state in the country, bar none. That said, let's be real about San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the level of just like street crime and just like public disarray, drug use, fentanyl, homelessness, et cetera, public defecation, et cetera. It's not a fun place to live. I am curious for people in the comment section, can they clean up the smell? Like I know they can clean everything up. All right, well, San Francisco stinks. All right, Californians, let us know. Let us know. Does it still smell like pee? Somebody asked Gavin Newsom, like, hey, are you only cleaning this up because the president or the premier of China is coming?

And he was like, yeah, actually. I'm really not making this up. Take a listen to what he said. Anytime you put on an event, by definition, you know, you have people over your house. You're going to clean up the house. You have 21 world leaders. You've got tens of thousands of people coming from all around the globe. What an opportunity to showcase the world's

most extraordinary place, San Francisco. Folks say, oh, they're just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town. That's true because it's true. But it's also true for months and months and months prior to APEC, we've been having different conversations. That's true. Because it's true. It's true. You can't make this up. And I actually thought Peter Doocy over at Fox asked the White House a great question.

And he was like, hey, why does the president care more about what Xi Jinping thinks of San Francisco than people who live in San Francisco? And they're like, oh, we just totally reject the premise of your question and all of that. And to a certain extent, you know, with the whole Gavin Newsom thing, it's not that they don't have a point, Ryan, that cities, you know, you shouldn't spruce something up nicer whenever somebody is visiting. But I think that the drastic comparison from where things were to how things are today is why a lot of people who live in these cities are pissed off about it because they're like, wait, so you could have done this the entire time. It's just that we lost what net 300,000 people from our state that we've had mass property crime that, you know, so many people I know in San Francisco, they had to leave, including people in my own family,

just because they straight up didn't feel safe, just like doing the very basics of their day-to-day life. And that actually really comes through in a local news report from San Francisco with some residents and interviews. Let's take a listen to that. While San Francisco is in the spotlight for the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference, city leaders are making sure the city shines. Tourism is our business here in San Francisco, and we need to focus on making sure that the tourist dollars still come back. Caltrans repaving major roadways like the Harrison Street off-ramp from the I-80. BART doubling down by deep cleaning their stations overnight more often.

The city had gotten a little bit dingy over time. Scrubbing and power washing is happening all over the city. Yeah, the bottom of my shoes look clean. It's noticeable how clear the streets look and how few homeless encampments there are on major thoroughfares. Having been a longtime resident in the Bay Area, you just naturally start to wonder of like houseless folks being displaced. Public Works is installing decorative crosswalks in North Beach and Chinatown. And the Webster Street pedestrian bridge in Japantown was recently repainted. The Yerba Buena gardens at the Moscone Center are decked out with new colorful

landscaping and murals paid for by the Clean California grant, just in time for the 20,000 high-profile CEOs and heads of state coming into town next week. Must be nice. Looks like a beautiful city, doesn't it? Not the one I remember, though, from the last couple of years. See, it looks clean. But once the company leaves, you look under the bed, you open the closet, all the crap pours out. You didn't really clean it. You just shoveled everything away. Yeah, but then my question was like, well, what the hell happened? And then also, my big one is the city and Gavin Newsom. This is what I really want to talk to you about. The city and Gavin Newsom, and this really extends to what we're going to talk about next, about the I-10 in California or in Los Angeles, have claimed now for years.

They're like, we can't do anything about this. The Ninth Circuit has tied our hands. We're not allowed to clean up homeless encampments because of the specific judicial – well, how – that's not congruent with the fact that they just did it. So they either just violated federal law or they were lying the entire time. I'm going to come down on lying because I don't see any lawsuits or any of that going on or injunctions being passed down by federal judges. So then it's a question of, well, what was the democratic impulse to do this when it's very clear that the vast majority of people in these cities, from business leaders to all the way down to residents, have been screaming and crying about this now for probably a decade, at least in the case of San Francisco,

but especially in the last three years. And it takes freaking Xi Jinping and leaders from Japan to come here before we actually do anything about it. That's outrageous to me. Also, they'll still find it to be filthy. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, you're right. Especially if you're coming from Japan. What the hell is this? A single piece of litter on the road? What are you doing here? You call this, you didn't clean this up for us? They're like, what are you talking about? We spent the last month. That's good. But it's possible they had some type of informal budget for lawsuits. So it's, you know, it may be that, you know, once in a while, you're like, you know what, we're just going to break the law and we're going to let these people

sue us and we'll, and we'll figure it out after company leaves. I just think it's one of those where the local people in San Francisco should really be demanding answers on that. Cause like I said, I mean, and I actually, I'll be honest, I believed some of the leaders. I'm not saying that they weren't doing enough, but they were like, there truly is nothing we can do about the homeless encampments. And I was like, wow. And so I was reading about it and seeing this Ninth Circuit ruling, and it all relates back to the idea that it's a violation in order to clean up homeless encampments and all that about displacement. It has to do with shelter rights and the California state law as well. And it genuinely did seem like a Gordon knot that was completely unable to be untied, but then they actually did it. And you're like, well, wait a second here.

I don't really understand how that's even possible because that completely flies in the face. Not only that, but the city of public, the public works aspect to all of that with the pedestrian walkways and all these other things, it's the same question of like, well, why was this not done previously as part of a post-COVID vitalization? Like, don't you want to make money? Do you want people to stop leaving? There's a lot of viral posts about San Francisco, but what some of the saddest ones are like, here's a condo that somebody bought in 2019 for 1.5 million and they're selling it for 726,000. I mean, yeah, it's funny at a certain point, but it's also like, hey, that's somebody out there who's out 700 grand and is probably

upside down on their mortgage and near bankruptcy. That's actually not funny at all. And there's a lot of people who are like that, probably middle-class folks who are on the outskirts or dependent on that for jobs. So it's not always just the big tech folks who are on the outskirts or dependent on that for jobs. So it's not always just the big tech people who are paying the price. And look, I mean, I'm only saying this because out of love, truly. I'm not just one of those people from Kansas who's like, screw San Francisco, who's never even been. I love that city. I think it's awesome. And all of these places. So it's a tragedy, in my opinion, that it took so long. The real question is like, how long is it going to stay? And will they return back to their old ways or not? This relates very much to our next block here

about public safety. This is one I'm really excited to talk about with Ryan. We're going to start with the actual news first though, which is that the I-10, a major part of the highway in the city of Los Angeles, specifically downtown, was actually caught fire and has now been shut down for an indefinite period of time as they resume construction and they have to rebuild critical parts of it. Let's take a listen to some of the news from there. Fire started early yesterday morning in an industrial area near 14th Street in Alameda. So intense, it melted fences and guardrails along the 10 freeway

and caused chunks of concrete on the freeway's columns to break away. Two fire trucks were damaged and cars, pallets, shipping containers and more in the storage yards burned. It took more than 160 firefighters hours to douse the flames. Crews were monitoring hot spots into yesterday evening. There was a homeless encampment underneath the freeway that sent people running for safety when the fire broke out. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and the city is helping those that lost their belongings and who need shelter. As for the cause of the fire, that is still under investigation. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen.

This is really no joke about what's happened. Part of the reason we wanted to cover it is that California news is very often criminally ignored here in Washington. And the thing is, Ryan, is that 300,000 people take this road or this section of the road every single day. And now it's going to be shut down for an indefinite period of time. And not only that, it is going to snarl traffic in a place that is famously, how shall we say, some of the worst traffic in the entire country. So I can't even imagine what that is going to look like. They are talking about how various different parts of Los Angeles, the 101, and by the way, I don't live in Los Angeles, so if I'm saying anything incorrectly, please forgive me. I'm doing you people a favor. State Route 60, 200,000 vehicles a day will be added. 101 will have 109,000 vehicles per day added. And the

closed section currently averages 292,000. So an additional, you know, between Interstate 5, State Route 60, and US 101 is going to have to pick up a significant chunk of the number of cars that usually move through this heavily clogged highway. The reason why I think it kind of fit with this is that there's a ton, a ton of speculation, Ryan, that some of the fire, which they claim is arson, however, I'm not exactly sure what the technicalities behind that are, might have been sparked because of this homeless encampment that was beneath it. Homeless encampment fires have been a huge problem all across Oregon and Los Angeles, in particular where homeless

encampments are. I know, Doug, I think it's more than a dozen fires in California just in the last two years that have occurred largely as a result of like propane tanks and other unsafe use of grills and other things in the area. So I'm curious what you think about this, you know, in the context of now that there's a major fire that's broken out, it's declared a state of emergency. This combined with the whole San Francisco thing could actually, I think, kind of change California politics in the way they think about these issues.

It could be. Part of it depends on how quickly they get this fixed. Like if we're talking about weeks or months, this is gonna bring, it's so politically toxic that it's hard to even kind of find the words for it. Philadelphia had half of 95. We call it just 95 over here on the East Coast, not the 95. Right. So we had half of the 95 that was incapacitating, was hit by a truck or something.

That's right. And they whipped that thing together in like a week or two. That was a big deal for Governor Josh Shapiro. He was like, this is the only thing I care about until this is done. Right. Because it's not just Philadelphia traffic, it's also the artery connecting DC and New York. And so they moved quickly and it was up so fast. I don't know how long it's going to take them in Los Angeles, but I can imagine that a political animal like Newsom is going to make sure that it moves as quickly as possible. But this, you know, the California Democratic Party is a complete mess. Yes, exactly. Are they going to be able to actually do it? Yeah. And I think this is a huge test for

Karen Bass, for Governor Newsom, and others. So the details of this, some further more that we have, is that of the 100 columns along the swath of the freeway that were damaged, 9 or 10 were actually damaged severely, which means that they will have to do some infrastructure tests. And if not, if they do have to be redone, the entire overpass may have to be torn down and refitted or retrofitted, which is, I mean, that's a months-long construction project. And it really, again, just highlights that you have a were stored underneath the overpass, which obviously these things are like pure alcohol, and helped fuel the flames. Part of the reason apparently that it was burning so hot. So the current state fire marshal is asking for people to come forward for anonymous tips, and they're going through all of that. But the big question for all of that right now is how are we going to figure this out? They say this is probably the single biggest challenge that California and LA commuters have faced in years and that the follow-on effects

from lost time of productivity and traffic for the follow-on effects of lost logistical support and others that everyone relied on this for is going to scramble the city. And it's also even going to change the way that some people do business. So there could be a pretty significant impact actually on downtown Los Angeles as a result of this, even though they didn't do anything wrong, just from some people saying it's not worth it. I'm not even going to go in there. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. You don't want to sit in that. Hand sanitizer, pallets, come on. What are you guys doing? Well, you got to store it somewhere. I don't know. I mean, also, does that stuff even work against COVID? That's the other thing. Yeah. It's, yeah, it's, and it's, anyway, we don't need to go into all that. Yes, we certainly don't.

Only to say for Californians and LA people who watch the show, we feel for you, and we think it's a tragedy about what's happened there. More time to listen to breaking points in your car. That's right, you have more time to listen to BP in your car. So let's look on the bright side. Okay, moving on to the next part here, something I really wanted to talk about with Ryan. Let's put this up there, please, on the screen.

New report from the Wall Street Journal with a lot of interesting little tidbits. Headline, Oregon decriminalized hard drugs. It isn't working. Majority of voters now want to undo a pioneering change as public drug use has become rampant. So they say, nearly three years ago into the experiment, the proponents hoped would spark nationwide relaxation of drug laws. Many in Oregon have now turned against decriminalization, known as Measure 110, which passed at that time with 58% support. People are sprawled out on sidewalks using fentanyl with no fear of consequence, have become a common sight in cities such as Eugene and in Portland.

Business owners and local leaders are upset. Liberal voters who hoped decriminalization would help lead to more people getting help. In reality, few drug users have taken advantage of a new state-funded rehabilitation program. Quote, change appears likely. A coalition of city leaders, police chiefs, district attorneys have called on the state legislature to recriminalize hard drugs, a measure to do so in works on the next year's ballot, and a new poll finds the majority of Oregonians support the idea. So Ryan, you literally wrote the book on drugs, on drug legalization. You've been kind of a leader in the decriminalized movement and all that for a long period of time. So what do you make then of what's happened in Oregon? Did they

just not do it the right way? What do you think of the results of what's happened? And so, yeah, my book came out in 2009. Yeah. And it made, I think, several points that are quite relevant to this debate. One is that drug policy does not exist in a vacuum. That drug policy is kind of the last thing that matters for drug policy. What matters more for it is economic policy for the most part. But also, broadly speaking, the things that are shaping the world and shaping the culture shape what drugs become

kind of popular in a moment. In other words, Oregon's decriminalization law has probably less to do with fentanyl than the fact that China is pumping fentanyl into the United States. Oregon's law is going to move the numbers. Underneath it all is- Yeah, it's a macro issue. Are the bigger macro issues. The other point that I made in the book, and so as I was publishing the book, the movement was kind of nascent, but the pendulum was swinging toward more liberal drug policies. And I warned that the history of drug policy in the United States is not a Martin Luther King type thing where it bends towards justice. It doesn't all move in one direction. It swings

back and forth. You had moments in the 19th century, moments in the 20th century where you had quite liberal drug policies either nationally or in particular cities. And then things would get wildly out of control. And you can try to kind of stitch just a racist drug war frame onto everything, but that doesn't answer the entire question. What you also get is just normal people who are like, this is a mess. And whether that's kind of cocaine or Aladdin in the 19th century, leading to then criminalization, or what you're seeing now, I warned that if it's not done both kind of responsibly and seriously, then you're going to get a lot of victories, but they're going to get reversed.

And I think we're now at that place. And so decrim is kind of the worst of all worlds because it does nothing kind of for the economic problems that people are facing. It doesn't give people access to kind of clean drugs. You're still getting it from the street. The only difference is that if a cop says something to you, you get a little ticket and you don't go to jail. That's the only difference. But it still allows all of this public consumption, which the public hates. Alcohol is legal, but we don't allow people to just be passed out drunk all over the sidewalk.

That's right. Public intoxication is not really acceptable, or at least it shouldn't be acceptable. Because we have an actually regulated system around this very addictive and dangerous drug, alcohol. And even smoking, if you think about it. I mean, you can't just smoke anywhere in most of this country, at least at this point. But if we just said, look, alcohol's illegal, but it's not criminal, so bootleggers can make it,

people can drink it wherever they want and just get a little ticket. And the treatment won't work. That's the third point. Our treatment system is this ancient alcoholics anonymous system that only really works for certain people, insists on pure abstinence, pure sobriety, does not allow any medication-assisted treatment. Like methadone. Yeah. It's certainly not methadone, but then suboxone and some other more recent, less addictive medications that can help with opioids. We treat opioids just the same as we treat alcohol, and it's absurd, and it's not working.

See, this is interesting, though, because it kind of belies something that I've always insisted on. I read Michael Schellenberger's book, and it's the only book that's ever, I was not for drug legalization. I'm still think I'm complicated on it. That said, I was like, if I was ever for it, this is the way it would work, which is, yeah, you can do drugs. But if you're getting high on a public bench, you're going to jail or you're going to rehab. Like you have no choice. This middle ground where we're at right now, not as much in Washington, DC. We still have some of a problem, but not even close to the zombies of San Francisco, to Los Angeles and to Skid Row. Skid Row is honestly burned into my memory from 2022. I had never seen, I still have never seen anything like

it. I've been to some of the, I've seen some of the worst slums in Mumbai. And I still think Skid Row was 10 times worse because it was just a complete, like it was a war zone. It felt like for the people who were there. And it was just very clear for so many of them that they had absolutely no hope. I've checked out, you know, if you want to interviews on the Soft White Underbelly channel, and then it only even more convinced me. So that I'm like, to me, and this is actually a big disagreement with Crystal. I'm like, I don't think housing has to do with any of this. I'm like, none of this seems to me as a housing problem. This all just seems like these people are straight up full blown drug addicts. And the only way that you can really even begin to solve that problem is forcible rehabilitation or jail.

And any of this public camping is deeply unsafe for them. They're just going to kill themselves. Already right now, the New York Times and others are reporting about the rise of so-called super meth, about how people are injecting all kinds of things. They're not only mixed with fentanyl, but fleshy, you know, flesh rotting substances and others. It just lead to, you know, it's just a one-way road to death. Like, let's be real. And it's not safe for them. It's not safe for a lot of the women.

You know, one report I read was just so horrible. There's a lot of these women. One of the reasons why, when they're addicted to fentanyl, is they're taking meth. It's so they can stay up all night so that they don't get robbed or raped in the middle of the night in some of these encamps. This is not safe for anybody. Sexual assault in these camps is rampant. Absolutely rampant. Right. And so you don't want to condemn people to that. Of course not. It's worse than prison almost in some cases.

And so anyway, so what I've looked at here with the enforcement mechanism is they say, quote, some 6,000 tickets have now been issued for drug possessions as decriminalization went into effect in 2021. But just 92 people have called and completed their assessments, needed to connect them to services. So voluntary services, it's clearly now, we've had real world experimentation here, it's not going to happen. Because I think a lot of people know that there's nothing on the other end for them too, that those 92 people, they'll sign up for what's called kind of a 28-day wonder, where you go to this treatment center for 28 days, you read the big book,

you sit around in your folding chair, you color, you write, and then 28 days later, you're kicked back out, and you probably have a long criminal record from the different nuisance stuff you know related to your addiction and there there's there's no moment where somebody can say and this is what a lot of people who are you know are homeless living with addiction will say that there's no moment i can't say you know what i would like an apartment and a job right now okay i'm ready for that. I have the will. I have the commitment. I'm going to put this behind me.

Even if you go through treatment, that just doesn't exist. Now, obviously some people can get there. But overwhelmingly, people just don't see a way to get from here to there. Opioid recidivism rates are so high. I mean, it depends on the drug, like heroin versus fentanyl and others. But even just based upon the people I've seen, you know, interviews and anecdotes and all this, for people who even who want to get clean and who have gone to multiple, you know, long treatment centers, as you're saying, I mean, one of the dangers that I have actually

had read a lot about was that in some cases, these three-week or four-week centers, it almost leads sometimes to worse overdoses. Yes, because now your tolerance is down. Their tolerance is down, and they end up taking a similar amount or chasing a certain high, and it leads to an overdose, which puts you obviously in a really perilous situation. You literally could die. One thing, though, and this kind of, I don't even know what to make of this. I wanted you to break it down for me. Let's put this please up on the screen. This is from the organized, from OPB, and they actually show that drug decriminalization in Oregon did not cause more overdose deaths. So what are we to make of this? Because as you said,

yeah, they're still getting street drugs, but it didn't lead to more overdoses. Is this indicative that drug use just stayed the same, that it didn't actually impact it, that it didn't – that the only real impact it appears to have death actually mean for drug policy? Like how are we supposed to look? Because people were pointing it to me as a victory. But the more I was reading about it, and this is from the NYU public health study of what's going on in Oregon, I was like, well, you can can take the criminal justice system out of drug policy, then the more you're bringing the public health system in. And while you're unlikely, like I said, to kind of eradicate the addiction crisis, because that's a much steeper hill to climb. And like we were just talking about, so many of these treatment centers are actually just kind of Medicaid scams

that aren't serious about getting people sober. You can, however, keep people safer because more people are going to be comfortable going to the hospital. More people are going to be comfortable calling an ambulance. More, you may, you probably have more access to Narcan as a result, which is the kind of overdose antidote. So I think you could explain it that way. And also forcing people into treatment who don't want treatment, keeping them sober for 28 days and then throwing them back out on the street, like we just talked about, can increase overdoses and deaths.

Well, I mean, I think they should get a choice. It's like, listen, you can go to jail too. Like, you know, you have an option. I believe that's how Portugal does it. So Portugal has legal drugs. They even have, what is it, safe injection sites and all that. That said, if you are publicly intoxicated, strung out, committing street crime, and all of that as a result of your addiction,

you only have two choices, which is rehabilitation and or jail. But they're not going to tolerate some of the stuff that we see on the streets of California. That stick does give people an incentive that's also not ideal. If you can couple that with real training and education, and also then economic opportunities on the other side, then people can say, then people have an actual choice. Like, oh, here is a good life I could have that's an alternative. Right now, for most people, that's not, they don't realistically see that possibility.

What non-AA rehabs have you seen be successful? And for anybody out there struggling with addiction. They call it buprenorphine. You could go back to read this piece I edited by Jason Cherkus at the Huffington Post called Dying to be Free. Just Google that and it explains a lot of what we're talking about here. But suboxone and buprenorphine are what they call medication-assisted treatment. Bup is the kind of generic name for it. And people say it gives you kind of like a coffee buzz, whereas methadone is

more of a synthetic opioid that can create real dependence. But also dependence is not that bad. If you have diabetes, you're dependent on treatment. You're dependent on coffee. The question is, is it ruining your quality of life, and is it damaging your relationships, and is it making it impossible for you to do things safely? And Suboxone does not do that. And so it's mostly a tab form. You get it prescribed, and it both, if you relapse, it counteracts an overdose, and it also kind of undermines the kind of craving that people have. But this is up against fentanyl, which is kind of a new fearsome kind of level of potency that's out there. So this was designed for heroin

and other opioids. So we're in a difficult spot, but that's what I would say. If you have people who are in those circumstances, you know, check out medication-assisted treatment. Well, there you go. All right, so anybody struggling, go ahead and look into that. 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. 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. 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 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. 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. All right, let's move on to the next part. Ryan, I'm going to lean on you for this one because you read and did the investigation for the audience. So we've obviously talked a lot here about the Supreme Court, around all these crazy stories coming out about these justices going to speak

at lavish conferences and flying for free and going on crazy vacations and getting gifted things and going places and getting their houses bought by billionaires and all this other nonsense. So the Supreme Court- We keep saying they, but there's kind of one guy that's- Well, Clarence Thomas is the worst, but I will say, I mean, the rest, like, what was it? Sotomayor also spoke at some of these conferences. There was a book problem that was going on there. So, yes, it's definitely Congress Thomas is on the bleeding edge.

But a lot of these people, I think, need a little reminder, a slap on the wrist just to say, hey, hey, what's going on here? The Senate Democrats and a lot of others had been pushing a congressionally imposed code of ethics. The Supreme Court yesterday voluntarily adopted a code. We actually have it. We can put it up there. Ryan, you read through the whole thing. Give us, is it real? Is it not? Is it actually enforceable? What are the consequences to all of this? Give us some of the details. I mean, it's not really real. And people, if you're watching, you pause and read the preamble there, which tells you everything you need to know about it in one sense. And I can read from one part.

Basically, they say that they were embarrassed that they didn't have a code. And they say, look, we do have a code. We call it a common law code. We do the right thing. There's laws. There's general ethics rules around here that we've all cobbled together to make sure that we're operating as ethically as possible. But we're super embarrassed that people keep saying the Supreme Court doesn't have an ethics code whereas Congress does, the White House does, and the judiciary underneath the Supreme Court does, and that's embarrassing.

So they write, the absence of a code, however, has led in recent years to the misunderstanding that the justices of this court, unlike all other jurists in this country, regard themselves as unrestricted by any ethics rules. To dispel this misunderstanding, we are issuing this code, which largely represents a codification of principles that we have long regarded as governing our conduct. So they're straight up saying, you guys have been complaining for a long time that we don't have a code, so we wrote a code. But they are also saying the code doesn't do anything tighter than what we've already been doing. And so people are like, well, look,

Clarence Thomas got a free RV from a guy who brings a bunch of business before the court. That RV costs like 300 grand. That sounds unethical. You're not addressing that in this. Now, so they sort of, so they actually mention books in here. And they say that a justice should not speak at a fundraiser or an event that kind of raises money for an organization, but they can appear at a fundraiser. They can be there,

eat the rubber chicken and get introduced. Thank you, Justice, for being here. And then mingle with people afterwards, which gets people to the fundraiser. And it also says they're allowed to be at events where their books are sold. That's the big grift that politicians and justices are. One of the few things that they specifically codified into their little code here that, don't worry, books are fine. Otherwise, the code, it's like 14 pages long, but it basically boils down to,

don't do things that appear to be unethical. But then you're like, okay, well, a lot of this stuff appears unethical, so why are you doing it? Yeah, so I was gonna ask in terms of the specifics, like what about the private jet travel, some of the stuff that had not been disclosed, any of that.

So none of that is in there. No, and it says you should endeavor to be transparent. Okay. But it doesn't say like every six months you're going to submit to this authority. Like the way that the Senate and the House have disclosure, White House has offices that have paperwork where you submit your paperwork and you say here's my holdings. Like that's how we know Joe Manchin owns a coal company.

Interesting. Because he had to disclose that. So they suggest you ought to do that, but they don't really necessarily, you know, they don't set any deadlines or any specifics about like how you're going to do that. Let's put the AP article on there because they also have some of this. They just say that the Supreme Court says it's adopting the code of ethics but has no means of enforcement. So then my question is kind of around Democrats and should they retain control of the Senate or should they ever have a unified government again under Biden. Would a code of ethics pass, do you think? Or is it more of a rhetorical device now since the court is Republican or conservative controlled? I think it could still pass because you saw people like Roe Conner are the ones that have made a big

stink about this. And he responded to this by saying, well, this is ridiculous. There's nothing really in here. We should still cod know codify this and the point of There being no way to enforce it is both true But also kind of beside the point in the sense that it's the Supreme Court like who's gonna enforce it the super Supreme Court Right our system is checks and balances. So other branches are the ones that have to check Other branches, you know who's gonna the same with with with Congress like that you can have a house ethics committee But ultimately if the house votes to overrule that that's what the house does Like that's the supreme authority in the house is the house the Supreme Court

Orders the Supreme Court That's just so the house or the White House or the executive have to come in and check them if they want to and so yeah, I think that they executive have to come in and check them if they want to. And so, yeah, I think that they would have to pass a code of conduct, an ethics code, have the White House sign it into law and say, no, every six months, this is what we want. You can't take private jet flights with people who have, you know, business before the court or whatever, like however they want to spell it out. Otherwise, what you're going to get is the Supreme Court codifying or writing down in words that, you know, you must be ethical so that they don't have the embarrassment of not having this code. Now they say, look, we've got a code. What's your problem? Yeah, that's a good point. So the

Democratic ethics bill, quote, would require that justices provide more information about potential conflicts of interest and written explanations about their decisions not to recuse. It would also seek to improve transparency around gifts received by justices. Currently has no prospect of becoming the law. But yeah, I mean, I think it's true. And I think a lot of the Republican defense of this has really annoyed me because they'll say, well, this is just retribution for Roe v. Wade. And I'm like, yeah, that's probably true.

Like, let's be real. That's true. That said, it's still not chill to be having your house be bought by a billionaire and be going on crazy vacations. And something I have personally observed with a lot of these people is that they're locked into jobs where they make $300,000 a year, but they're constantly socially in the room with people who are multimillionaires and or billionaires. And they get really envious. They're like, hey, I'm a Supreme Court justice of the United States.

I deserve to fly on a private jet and go on a yacht. And my response is, yeah, you can quit. You can probably go make millions of dollars. Absolutely. But they want to have both the power and the prestige. And that seems to irk them at their core. And members of Congress face this too, senators especially, where they're like, I have more power than this person. Why does this person get to fly to Saint-Tropez or whatever? Well, they're not a senator. It's like, you can do it too if you want. I read an article actually about five senators in their 80s.

All of them are multimillionaires. One of them is like sailing around the world. The other one is hanging – Barbara Boxer is hanging out at a multimillion-dollar mansion. The Tom Harkin? Yeah, Tom Harkin. Did the sailing. And I was like, hey, you know, this – and a lot of people were dunking on it. But I said, no, this is a good thing.

You should tell – yeah, there's life after. Leave. You should get out. Go, go. after. Leave. You should get out. Go. Please. If that's what it takes. Yeah, being rich and old is fun. That's something I've learned from a lot of old people.

So they should try it instead of just hanging out here for too long. I guess Tarkin, because when he retired, Democrats were so mad because they knew they were going to lose this 2014. They knew they were going to lose that seat. And when we asked him in the hallway, why are you retiring? He's like, I want to sail around the world with my wife. He actually did it. Yeah. He's like, I don't want to do this anymore.

Right. Well, he made the right call. Good for you, man. You know, now he's 80 years old and he's living a good life. And who replaced him? I'm curious. Joni Ernst. Okay.

Well, it didn't work out that well, but it worked out fine. No, Democrats were right. They were going to lose that seat. They were. Okay. Let's go to Biden. Speaking of Democrats, some cope that's going on over there. There's the new panic in Washington. Biden is too old. He's too old. He's too old. What are we going

to do about it? He's just so old. Let's go and put this up there. Nate Silver kind of really, I think, has become a leading voice amongst the, like the what, center left commentariat, if you can even call them that. Just to be like, no, guys, Biden actually is way too old and he really should step aside. His headline is just, quote, if Biden cannot run a normal campaign, he should step aside. Democrats are taking a huge risk either way, but they should not have to get away with a Rose Garden campaign. He says it is inherently crazy. The American presidential campaigns take more than a year to run, but they do. Late entrants don't have a good track record. He goes into all of the reasons for why it is dangerous to replace Biden. But he says, quote, as Biden's polling gets worse, his approval ratings near their lowest ever number.

I'm increasingly hedging on that. Democrats would be taking a huge risk, but they're also taking a huge risk by nominating Biden. There is no getting out of this. And what he highlights specifically is a new report from Politico's Jonathan Martin. We can put this, please, up on the screen, where some of the quotes in here are genuinely stunning. Quote, it's in part for, they talk about the paragraph where this World Source reporter talks about Biden says, refuses to accept his capacity to do the job. The oldest president in history, when he first took the oath, Biden will not be able to govern and campaign in the manner of previous incumbents. He simply does not have the capacity to do so. His staff doesn't trust him to even try as they make clear by blocking him from the press, Biden's bid will

give new meaning to a Rose Garden campaign, and it requires accommodation to that unavoidable fact of life. And Silber says it is not entirely obvious how to regard this claim. Martin is a fairly straight reporter. This is an opinion piece, but it is worth listening to because he's a well informed observer. And if that is a consensus view within the White House, quote, it would be extremely foolish to nominate an 80-year-old man who is not up to the rigors of a modern presidential campaign. So, I mean, on a certain point, it is crazy because you can see how the gambit could work. It certainly could work, but it's a lot like Hillary, where. But what if it doesn't work?

Hillary could have won. There's a pretty good chance it may not work. I actually think Biden has a far higher chance of losing than Hillary ever did in 2016. And obviously Trump still won that election. I think it's absolutely coin toss. If anything, I'm giving the edge to Trump right now for where things stand. And Biden's age really does appear to be the single biggest problem for him going into this election. And it's like Democrats just don't want to talk about it at all. up with, and not his answers, not blaming him for them, but he's collecting the quote-unquote wisdom of the kind of conventional forces that make up whatever counts as the Democratic Party

today. And they basically say, you got to have Rahm Emanuel come in and chair your campaign, because he curses a lot and he's got a lot of energy. And you should have Bill and Hillary Clinton go do Middle East peace. Those are kind of the two big, and then the other stuff is just boilerplate that people say, well, you need to talk more about your accomplishments and stop doing the Bidenomics thing because people are, you know, not glomming onto that. So, but that's it. Like, that's it. Like, so let's say he actually implemented every scheme and he said, bring Ron Klain to do some things because Ron Klain's good. Ron Klain's good. Fine. Bring him in. Let's say you do all of those things. Like that's it. Like that's your whole thing. And that fundamentally shows you how brittle the whole operation is because

you still have Biden and then Harris as your ticket going forward. There's been this huge kind of loud exclamation from Democrats in D.C. to say that you're not an adult if you think that you can replace the incumbent president with a different president. It's just not something that can be remotely in the conversation. And throughout the year, they effectively did kind of marginalize that conversation. But I think it's just flatly untrue because all you have to do to imagine a different world is say, what happens if Dick Durbin and Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries signed a joint statement that said, we think Biden should step aside. Those are three people who have free will, they have agency, there's a thing that is within their power to do. If they did that, what is the response from Washington? What's the response from me? And it's pretty easy to

imagine that world. CNN, MSNBC, New York Times go absolutely bananas. They start talking about who else is going to challenge Biden. Biden's team freaks out and says, how dare you? We're not doing this. Serious people don't talk about replacing the president. Guess what? Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Hakeem Jeffries, these are pretty serious people. So now you're over that hump. And now you're into a primary.

So that's what it would take, basically. Yeah. So there's this insistence that there are no adults that can do that, that there is no – that the party is hollow, that a party can't decide anymore. There are individuals within the party who could. They chose not to. And if this goes in a direction that looks like it's going in, they're going to make Ruth Bader Ginsburg's decision not to step off the Supreme Court look modest. Yeah, it looks interesting because it's one of those where, again, he really could win. And that's the same thing. And that's why they're doing it is because it's just convenient.

It's a gamble. But they don't want to take the downside of the bet. And really what bothers me about them is their sheer arrogance. So for example, Ron Klain was attacking David Axelrod for pointing out that Biden is too old. Biden called him a prick privately. Yeah, he called him a prick behind the scenes. It appears that the entire presidential team is laughing in the face of any pundit that says otherwise. But they seem to forget that Biden actually is really freaking old. And that, you know, even yesterday, I saw a White House aide who responded to these allegations that

Biden does have the capacity to do so. And it was something like, I would love to see a member of the press grapple with President Biden in a policy briefing who has so many sharp questions and knows these issues inside and out. And I just wanted to be like, hey man, you don't let the press in there. So we can't see that for ourselves. You would really love to see that? I would love to see it too.

Yeah, all of us would love to see it. If only somebody could make that happen. You can tell the press team, let us in there. Let him sit down. You know, what Silber even points out is that Biden has now the fewest presidential press conferences per year except for Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, which not really good company that you want to be keeping there.

One guy with dementia and the other like an alcoholic. One of the reasons why that's even more important is that with these press conferences is that at least Reagan and Nixon would take questions in different formats. They would do sit down actual interview. Biden doesn't even do any of that. So the press conference or actually what we opened our show with, it's very rare actually for Biden to respond to shouted questions from the press. Usually his team will just hound you out of there immediately after taking a photo and he won't reply to shouted questions. Trump used to do stuff like that all the time, which is why to

a certain extent, his press conferences and all that didn't even matter just because he was on a day-to-day basis when we were there. We had almost a guarantee that if we were going to see Trump, we're going to hear from the president. We could ask him at least something about what's going on. It's extraordinarily rare that he didn't want to say anything to the press. Biden is really just so inaccessible. And it's not even me. I mean, he hasn't had no sit down even with traditional majors. Every once in a while, he'll do an interview.

You know, what was it? When he went to Arizona, he sat down with the Weather Channel. He'll pick these complete softballs. He was on a podcast. I think he went on a wellness podcast as well. But that's just giving people a taste of, they try to cultivate this air of accessibility. But everyone in Washington knows he's probably the most inaccessible president in modern memory. I mean, even George W. Bush was more accessible. And this is his first term. Can you imagine a

second term? I know, yeah. He's going to be 83 or something. When you do watch him field a couple questions like we had at the top of the show, as a human, you're kind of like holding your breath and rooting for him to be able to finish the sentence. Yes. And that's just like to deny that reality doesn't serve you as a pundit, even if you're just going to get made fun of by the White House for saying that. But it's true. On the one hand, you're like, did his meek and stumbling response to that question suggest some weakness around how he's responding to Israel's refusal to kind of listen to him? Because the question was about what are you going to do about the civilian casualties and this attack on the hospital? Or is it he's just weak and old, and this is how he's answered? So you have to sort through these different questions to try to figure out what you're getting from the president. And he still has a year to go, and then four more years after that.

And if that's his biggest problem, it's not the one that you can do anything about. Rahm Emanuel can't make him younger. Yes. No, you're absolutely right. And it's one of those where a lot of the advice in there was basically just keep a low profile, keep doing what you're doing. And the thing is, I actually agree with all of that. If I was him, that's all I would do. He once made fun of Rudy Giuliani for saying all that came out of his mouth was a noun, a verb, and 9-11. If I was Biden, it would be a noun, a verb, and abortion. That's all I would talk about all day long until election day for the limited times that I'm actually able to speak

properly. However, that's a very risky gambit when you're going up against such a talented politician like Trump, and they're not even really having an open democratic process. So we'll see. We'll 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.

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 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. Speaking of democracy, Ryan, you're going to have to break this down for me because I don't know what the hell is going on.

You've had your eye on it. The only reason I'm even acquainted is because Tucker Carlson apparently went from the UFC with Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden, and the next day he's on the ground in Madrid, immense, significant protests. He spoke to some of the Spanish press while he was there, and I'm going to get your reaction on the other side. Anybody who would violate your constitution, potentially use physical violence to end democracy is a tyrant, is a dictator. And this is happening in the middle of Europe,

so we thought it deserved more coverage than it's getting. Open with this motherfucker! Oh, we're here. If your government is allowing foreigners to come in and hurt you, they're committing war against you. You know, our news media doesn't report a lot of things, and in our time here it's very obvious that the socialists in an alliance with the separatists are trying to end the rule of law in Spain. If you don't have freedom of speech, you don't have the freedom to defend yourself,

and you can't vote your way out of it, the system is rigged, you're in real trouble, real trouble. So I'm really rooting for your success. Is the world actually seeing how important is what is happening here? No, the world is not seeing how important it is. But we hope to change that. Yeah, I'm sure you will. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Okay, what's he talking about? There's a socialist revolution in Spain. That doesn't sound good. There have been civil wars. Sounds great to me. That have finished that. Yeah, well, it didn't work out so well with Franco, did it?

No, it didn't. So tell us about what he's talking about. Round two, baby. Tell us what's happening. Socialists will rise again. So I was there this summer as this was kicking off. And when I came back, I actually solved the Catalonian independence crisis here on CounterPoints. People can go watch that.

So we saw this coming. Basically what happened is that there was an election. The far right was the plurality leader. Then came the socialists. But the right could not come up with enough to get over 50% to form a government. They tried. Socialists have a caretaker in power waiting for the right to figure out if they could actually get their act together. Here's the funniest part. In 2017, there were a bunch of illegal referenda held by the Catalonian independence movement, basically in Barcelona and around there, where they were going to vote on whether or not they would be independent. And the government said, you cannot vote on whether you're going to be independent. You can't be independent.

They insisted they're going to have the vote anyway. People might remember from the time there was this violent crackdown on the referendum. They were chasing these wild scenes where they're chasing voters basically through middle schools and through stairwells. And they arrested a whole bunch of the separatist movement leaders, the top leader was able to go from safe house to safe house and get out of the country. And so he has been in exile, I think in Sweden or Switzerland, somewhere, not in maybe France, somewhere not in Spain. He's out of there. But they still have a party. And so after the election results came in, it became clear that whoever could win the separatist vote in parliament would then be able to form a government. Okay.

And so they had to negotiate with this guy who was in exile. And so both the right and the left are then kind of trying to win this guy over to their side. They're in an interesting position because they are kind of right-wing, social conservative Catholic leaders. But the base of the party is very progressive. But the number one thing they care about is independence. So they will vote for independence before they vote for their version of Medicare for all or whatever. But there's this split between the party leaders, right-wing party leaders, left-wing

base with independence being the kind of little thread that kind of ties them together. So they don't actually ever want independence because the second they get independence, they are then, they're useless. Like this leadership and the party becomes you know moves in a leftward direction so anyway they what do they really want do they want independence no they want amnesty for themselves they don't they don't want to be exiles anymore yeah and so the socialists offered that so you know they agreed and they said they agreed and so then the separatists said all right good we vote with the socialists

We get our amnesty for our leadership we can come back to Spain and now the socialists can form a government and an act and the part the separatist party is cool with that because they fundamentally are kind of center-left left-wing and They're all they also want amnesty for their their their leaders And so the right is like, we got a plurality of the vote. This is unfair. This is a takeover. This is a coup. And it's like, it's not a coup. They have more than 50% in the parliament. They're forming a government. So what would they say in response to that?

They would say it's illegal to basically pardon criminals. Because you are. That's what they're doing. So there's some truth to it okay yeah but the right would have done it too so they say conservative and judges don't say that the socialist leader pact damages the rule of law it does because it violates the amnesty deal violates a 2017 law that was passed inside of sp. Catalonia, for the breakaway and the referendum, says the previous leader had agreed not to defuse the conflict. And now the socialists will, quote unquote, take over the government. Now, what are some of the other aims? I mean, is that the only thing that they're protesting? Like, what percentage of the vote did the socialists get

in the vote? A lot. I mean, it was, there's still. Number two. Yes, and they were, the right was expected to win an outright majority and they came in, they underperformed and the socialists overperformed. So they were already frustrated there and so now they're like, oh God, we need a couple more percentage points. Where are we gonna get it?

And it's like all these damn separatists. And I think they felt like the right feels like the leaders betray them because they like are right wingers also. So like, why aren't you with us? And so what they say is that, quote, fears that this is from the Financial Times, fears that the amnesty law is opening a way for Parliament to interfere in court decisions has prompted a statement from the Supreme Court of Spain, which says, a government chamber emphasized the need to guarantee judicial independence from all institutions and underscored the court's duty

to safeguard equality in the application of law. The proposed amnesty is now drawing condemnation from prosecutors, judges, lawyers, police officers, and Spain's main business lobby, and tens of thousands of people are taking to the streets. The text of the amnesty law says that it will cover not only people who organized the referendum in 2017, but also those who committed crimes with a profound connection to the independence bid. So this actually is pretty crazy. They're not just saying it's like, you helped organize a referendum. They're like, straight up like criminal terror. I mean, terrorist is a, you know, I'm not going to say the word.

Whatever. In Spain, they probably would. But I'm not, I don't know enough in order to use the term and apply it to them. But it seems to me like that is why it's such an emotional issue. It is. Inside Spain. It'd be like if in order to form a government in Israel, one of the coalitions said we're going to pardon, we're going to pass a law that says Netanyahu is not guilty of any crimes. Wow, that's pretty wild. It's that. So they're

not wrong to be upset but the socialists are like stay mad. You would have done the same thing if you could have gotten them to agree. You could have gotten them to agree. Alright, well we'll continue to track it. Spain always does pop off in terms of protests. Socialists and right wingers fighting in Spain?

What could go wrong? It's not like it's ever happened before. Anyways, Ryan, it was a pleasure hosting with you. Hold the book up again. Give people a taste. The Squad, available now. If you order it now, it'll be there in a week or so. People might think it's some hagiography of The Squad. If they do think that, they should probably think again. Yeah, check it out. You're gonna

like it. You may actually end up liking it, if that's what your criticism of it is. Anyways, thank you all for signing up, for continuing to support the show. It really does help us out. You guys are going to have a great CounterPoint show for everybody tomorrow. And otherwise, I will see you all on Thursday. I'm Michael Kassin, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on good company, the podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi.

We dive into the competitive world of streaming. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. There are so many stories out there. And if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

High Key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key. 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.

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