Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/20/24: Trump Taps Dr. OZ, MTG Threatens Blackmail To Protect Gaetz, Morning Joe Collapse, Laken Riley Trial

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

Ryan and Emily discuss Trump taps Dr Oz and Linda McMahon for admin jobs, MTG threatens blackmail war with GOP to protect Gaetz, Morning Joe ratings collapse, Laken Riley trial ramps up.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn

to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the perspectives that matter 24-7 because our stories deserve to be heard. Listen to the BIN News This Hour podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows,

unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. All right, good morning and welcome to CounterPoints. How you doing, Emily? I'm doing great. This is our last show together before Thanksgiving, so just know, Ryan, that I'm thankful for you and thankful for everybody who's watching. Thankful for you, too. Thankful for all of you. And don't burn your porch down deep frying your turkey. We were just talking about this. Ryan and producer Griffin are obsessed with deep frying turkeys, apparently.

But we also have— Do it outside and not on wood. Yes. Now, BreakingPoints.com is where you go for a premium subscription. But if you can't cover the premium subscription, not the best use of your money right now, you're spending all of it on turkey deep fryers. Ryan, what can you do? Look, if you share our stuff, that is almost more valuable than a Breaking Points premium subscription.

Like it, subscribe, and also, importantly, share it. Make sure that we're spreading this because right now is the most important time to kind of get this in front of people because the iron is hot. People are like, wait a minute, we've been lied to for so long. And wait, what's going on with this Mika and Joe thing? What? I thought these were the resistance leaders.

Yes. And now they're like angling for cabinet positions. The time is ripe. So the time is ripe. The mainstream media has discredited itself. I think if you've been watching this program over the last several years, you have been much better informed than any of your peers. So you can either keep that by keeping it a secret, and then you can be the smart one in your social group. Which is one way to do it. Which is one way to do it, or you can share this more generally. And also, in the comments section,

it's always nice if people say when the news actually starts in the A Block. Because often Ryan will monologue. Ryan does have a great monologue prepped for the end of the show that's going to be about why Democrats lost. I'm really excited for that. We're going to start with new Trump appointments. Also, late last night, naming an education secretary. We're going to walk through all of that. And actually, on the point, Ryan was—

They're even getting funnier almost. There's a WWE connection. We'll get into that in just a moment. We'll be talking about Matt Gaetz and to the point you were just making, Ryan. I mean, I think this has been covered very poorly by media. There's just a lot more context that makes the story, whether you love or hate Matt Gaetz, actually more interesting. So we'll be talking about Matt Gaetz today. We'll be talking about the second day of mourning Joe outrage. Why is it worth talking about? Because it's fascinating to see how the inner circle of the Joe and Mika world is reacting to them. We'll be talking about the ongoing trial of Lake and Riley and the murder of Lake and Riley. And we have a guest, Ryan, talking about Israel. Yeah, Haviv Retiger is a very high-profile journalist in Israel. I would describe him

as kind of a bit to the right of Netanyahu. So we'll let him just, you know, plan himself on the spectrum. But I don't think he would even consider that to be an insult. We're going to talk to him at the back end of the show. A couple things. Maybe we'll get to talk to him about the joint resolution of disapproval. That's the technical name for a measure that is coming up in the Senate later today that would basically restrict some arms to Israel. It's a historic vote in the sense that the Senate never allows kind of floor votes on blocking weapons to Israel. There's a particular provision of law that allows any senator to get such a measure onto the floor. Bernie Sanders has gone through that very complicated process to make that happen. So

that's going to happen later today. The advocates of it are hoping for maybe 20 votes max. Like they're not expecting it to pass, but they think if they can get above 20, push closer to even 30, that at least it sends a shot. One other thing we won't get a chance to talk about, but since we won't be doing a show before then, November 24th, it's going to be a revolution in Pakistan. So it's going to get wild. You heard it here first. Imran Khan has called for massive nationwide protests, particularly focused on Islamabad. I'm hearing that in Pakistan, the government now, military government, is basically barring buses from bringing people to Islamabad, shutting down gas stations, doing everything they can to try to prevent millions of people from descending on the Capitol. They believe that Trump is more

sympathetic, much more sympathetic than Biden to their democracy movement, which is interesting and probably also true. Although then you have to talk about people like Tulsi Gabbard and others that'll be around Trump who might deal with these questions before they even get to Trump. Well, yeah, but who knows? Who knows where she comes down on that question? It's going to be extremely interesting. Rick Grinnell, who's a very close advisor to Trump, has played footsie with the Imran Khan kind of movement. Very interesting.

Like right before the election, he was like retweeting photos of himself with like Imran Khan or whatever. Really? He wouldn't quite say anything positive, but he was sending very subtle signals that were picked up loud and clear. So Imran Khan is thinking like this is my shot, that we're going to kick it off now and we're going to stay in Islamabad until Trump is inaugurated and see what happens. Well, if you care about this issue, you want to stay tuned to Ryan's coverage here on Breaking Points because it is truly incredible. It's coming to a climax, it looks like. Fascinating. All right. Well, let's start with the A block and Trump's decision to nominate Howard Letnick, who was, we can put this up, A1, who was under consideration, very seriously under consideration for treasurer, treasury secretary. He's now being nominated for commerce secretaries, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald. He had been pushed by Elon Musk as a disruptor for the treasury

secretary job. Trump is apparently very nervous about the markets. This is some of the reporting is that if you nominate a disruptor for treasury, it could affect the markets in ways that Donald Trump is very sensitive to how that reflects on the president. So he doesn't want to, reportedly, this is the theory, I think it's actually probably a pretty good one, Ryan. He doesn't necessarily want to spook the markets too much by putting a disruptor like people think Lutnick could be. I'm not sure how true it is that Lutnick would be a disruptor, to be honest, but he's at commerce now. It's sort of a loss for him. Yeah, I think Trump was spooked when some of his Gates-like and Gates appointments kind of spooked

the market and started creating a lot of volatility. There's this famous anecdote from when James Carville and Bill Clinton first took power in 1992. They came in with these, I'm not going to call them ambitious plans, but they came in with plans. And they were immediately confronted by their economic advisors saying, if you do X, Y, and Z, the bond market is going to respond this way. And when the bond market responds this way, that changes all your calculations over here in this way. You're actually already seeing 10-year treasuries falling and mortgage interest rates increasing because the market believes that Trump's policies of mass deportation and tariffs are going to be inflationary. And so the bond market is already kicking Trump's rear end.

So the famous anecdote is that Carville said when he died, he wanted to come back as the bond market because it's the most powerful institution in the world. It's still true. And so I think Trump intuitively understands interest rates because his entire real estate game play for decades was just an interest rate and cash flow play. So he really has a feel for interest rates in a way that most politicians don't. And that's why I think he berated the Federal Reserve so effectively throughout his first term, the first president to really kind of break that wall

between the supposed independence of the Fed, which is not independent. It's a political institution and the elected leadership of the Fed, which is not independent. It's a political institution and the elected leadership in the country. So, yes, I think you're right that he's being dragged around by his tail by the bond market here. Well, and Lutnick was the co-chair of the Trump transition,

and he's been sort of stumping for Trump on CNBC and has for a while, which Trump is also reportedly not very impressed with CNBC. He's been watching the morning show over on CNBC. And Lutnick had some really viral moments, like giving this defense of Trump or this, it was even like, you could call it offense, going on offense for the Trump position. And, you know, on tariffs and actually taking the full Trump economic agenda and trying to sort of put his Wall Street spin on it. One question I have for you, Ryan, is what does he bring from Cantor Fitzgerald in terms of like either baggage or advantages going into the commerce job? Well, it's the ped schools and worked at the right banks to signal to the markets that this person's not a crank.

But he doesn't want the guy from like Birch Gold as his treasury secretary. Mike Lindell for treasury. Mike Lindell as commerce secretary. Like that's just, that's not going to fly. And so it's not going to fly. And so it's not about baggage. I think he's looking for some type of credibility. And I think you can tell how upset he is about the fact that he had to name him Commerce Secretary by the fact that when he announced the pick, he said he will also oversee USTR, which is the trade representative. So he's like, okay,

fine. I'm not getting my treasury pick. Bond market, you win. But my commerce secretary is going to run trade policy. And USTR, this is the trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, who will probably get that job. It's a cabinetlevel pick, and it doesn't really report to any agency, but what he's suggesting is Lutnik is going to be the direction of trade, not whatever neoliberal banker I'm forced to appoint. This goes with your... I think this goes with your theory, though. Everyone expects this to be Robert Lighthizer.

It seems like the most obvious appointment that Trump could make, and I wonder if he is slow-walking it because he's trying to dish it out to the markets in a different clip to avoid any massive... Although I think the markets wouldn't freak out about Lighthizer because he's the devil they know. True. And the devil they don't know. Because they know that Lighthizer is not actually going to do 20% tariffs on everything. How dare you? That he's going to do much more targeted ones. 200% tariffs. Yeah, and the way you do it, you do tariffs on everything,

and then you waive it for Europe and Africa and Southeast Asia and India and South America. And by the end, you're like, oh, wait, this is just tariffs. It's just Antarctica. This is just China and Antarctica that are getting hit with this. There's also some talk that maybe Lighthizer gets a trade czar position, which kind of almost is over top of USTR. But I think the basic point is, yes, he did. This and Marco Rubio were one of the times he blinked. Now, maybe he comes in with some radical Treasury Secretary nominee, but I wouldn't think so because he was looking for somebody who had credentials and bought into a lot of Trump's economic policy. The Venn diagram of that is

like one guy. If there are any more, I don't know them. Well, speaking of whether Trump is blinking on some of these, let's put A2 up on the screen. He made another nomination later last night. After passing her over for commerce, Tara Palmieri wrote, I'm hearing that Linda McMahon is the lead contender for secretary of education. She's co-chair of the transition with Lutnick, actually, and former head of the small business admin during the first term. I'm hearing that by Friday, all of the major cabinet postings will be announced. Now, Trump made that official hours after Palmieri reported it. It was like 8 p.m., something like that.

So Linda McMahon is not somebody who has been involved in the education world at all. People who work on conservative education policy, and it's a fairly big ecosystem, is not—they don't have any familiarity with Linda McMahon as an education reformer. Yeah, she won—and I remember this, because she ran for Senate in 2009. Yeah, yeah. It's hilarious. She spent $50 million of her and Vince's money. Founders of WWE. Yeah, to run for Senate. And it was just an utterly insane campaign.

And it was winnable because it was in the backlash period against Obama winning. A year later, Republicans with Scott Brown won a Senate race in Massachusetts. So it wasn't an unwinnable race in Connecticut. She at the time, she had just been elected to the Board of Education in Connecticut. But that was like a make work kind of credential gig to put it on your resume so that you're not just Vince McMahon's wife running for Senate. You have something that you can point to. So basically that's her experience.

I think she's been on the board of some schools. Most rich people have been on the board of schools. If you give money to the school and they put you on the board, that's how it works. How could you show up at the animal ball without, yeah. It's hard to not be on the board if you're giving the amount of money that they're giving to these schools. Yeah. Right. So, but anyway, all that is to say she was in the running for commerce. So Trump gives commerce to her co-chair in the transition, Lutnick, and then slots Linda McMahon into the education role. Betsy DeVos

obviously was his education secretary last time around. And DeVos, who had a rocky confirmation actually, spent decades and decades deeply enmeshed in education policy in a way that frankly was terrifying to people who oppose school choice and voucher systems and all of that. We published a book about her called Schoolhouse Wreck. I remember this. Yes, that's right. So if you're on the left, Betsy DeVos's decades of experience in education policy is actually like a huge threat. Linda McMahon incoming, Donald Trump says we're going to send education back to the states. That was part of his statement nominating Linda McMahon last night. That should be much less terrifying to anybody who is opposed

to like conservative reforms to the Department of Education because I don't understand how she'll have the appetite for pretty radical change, to be honest. The appetite and the know-how for that doesn't seem like it's a deep, unabiding passion of hers. And it doesn't seem like... I mean, there'll be people in the Department of Education that are more from the DeVos camp, but... Yeah, I'd say less terrifying from the left perspective than DeVos. But it seems like the play here is that this is a win

for kind of the MAGA world because, you know, she's a close ally of Trump. She's going to do what Trump asks. She's definitely not going to buck him with her own education ideas, which means that. Does she have education ideas? Exactly. Seriously. That's the point, yeah. And then the MAGA world, it does have education ideas, let's say. And Chris Ruffo, is he welcomed back into MAGA world after his support of DeSantis? Yeah. He's back in?

Yeah, everyone's welcomed back in, honestly. That's unfortunate. Except as long as you weren't like a Jeb person. Okay. But even then, even then. Yes. It's a big rainbow coalition come back together. So for people like Rufo, I feel like this is a victory because it's a kind of weak secretary who's going to then be able to be pressured to do particular things. Or will be because she doesn't have the conviction to go along with a RUFO, will block it because it seems unpopular. I mean, I think that could

definitely cut both ways. And I would imagine if you are a RUFO, and that's why I think this is an example of Trump blinking, because the one area of policy other than taxes that the conservative movement has a very robust ecosystem in is education policy. And there are a lot of very radical people in that space who have a lot of ideas, especially just germinating over the last half decade, have a lot of ideas about reform for the Department of Education. And want to go like run wild, as Trump says he's going to let Bobby do at HHS, and would love to do that at education, and he went with Linda McMahon. So in a sense, yeah, maybe she's really malleable, and maybe she can be pushed around a little bit, but also if you lack the stomach for when you have those activists

showing up outside the Department of Education saying you're starving children in the inner cities, or you are making kids worse off and you succumb to the pressure rather than sort of digging your heels in and fighting as some of these education people on the right would want you to do, and Betsy DeVos probably would have. She stuck to her guns on Title IX. She was a little delicate about it. But all that is to say, I don't know what Linda Mc... I genuinely just don't know. It's not the culture warrior that

the culture warriors would have wanted. And there are a lot of culture warriors on education. Right. Yeah. So actually maybe, just a bullet. We'll see. Nobody knows how any of this is going to go. True. Even Randy Weingarten put out a fairly anodyne statement about Linda McMahon and said, we look forward to learning more about Linda McMahon, instead of saying, like, this is just another example of Donald Trump. They'll probably rush to confirm her. We'll see. Let's hurry up and,

because who knows what could be coming elsewhere. 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, cause 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. So Trump has yet to name Baltimore real estate developer Stringer Bell as HUD secretary. He did name Dr. Oz to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. I stole that from somebody online.

It would be a hilarious pick. So yeah, Dr. Mehmet Oz to run Medicare. This is reporting from the 2022 race against John Fetterman in which Dr. Oz is pushing for Medicare Advantage for all. And so this is actually a pretty layered and interesting debate here. As the lever points out, because Dr. Oz is so, you know, stinking filthy rich, he owns a bunch of United Health Group and CVS stock, and they make a lot of money from Medicare Advantage. Medicare Advantage is a privatized form of Medicare, which, you know, if you're watching this and you're over 65 or you have parents who are over 65, there's a 50 percent plus chance

that you're on Medicare Advantage. I think it's something about 52 percent of people on Medicare Advantage. I think it's something about 52% of people on Medicare are actually getting Medicare Advantage now. And the left posture on Medicare Advantage for many years was that it is just straight up bad. And one of my first investigative stories 15, 20 years ago was a dig into the way that insurance companies were using Medicare Advantage to rip off both Medicare and patients and doctors and everybody else just to make profits for themselves. Under the Biden administration, there has been a crew of people running CMS that have really cracked down on a lot of that. And so it's not, I don't think it's as principled an argument as it was framed as before, because there are ways, and Florida has shown the way, of ripping off regular Medicare in incredible ways. You know, setting up fake wheelchair companies and billing the federal

government for $100 million and then shutting your post office box down, moving to the Caymans or whatever. The problem comes in with what the rules are, who's in charge, who has the power in that political economy. And if you actually are regulating it in a serious way, having private brokers involved isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world. And for Dr. Oz to say he wants Medicare Advantage for all, that's fascinating. That's basically like a publicly funded private health insurance option, which compared to our current system would be a vast improvement.

That's interesting you say that. He's going to get it through. And it was his response to Fetterman being for single payer when that was more popular back in 2022. So Medicare Advantage in practice is something that's criticized. Like, you criticize Medicare Advantage in practice. But if we expand it to Medicare Advantage for all, because it creates a private-public option type dynamic, that would be better than the current system thus. It would give more coverage to more people.

Not that he'll really have control over this. So Medicare Advantage is bad when it's run by scammers who go around to old people and say – so basically the way Medicare Advantage runs is you say, all right, Medicare will pay you X amount, pay this company X amount, which is equal to, supposed to be equal to what Medicare is paying for per individual plus a little bit. And then you are gonna do a better job for less money because that's what the private sector says it can do.

And so it's at its worst when people go around and say, we're going to give you vision, we're going to give you dental, we're going to give you hearing. And then when you sign up for it, you find that the actual coverage when it comes to those areas is skeletal at best. And it's just designed to trick you into signing up for it. Now you're stuck. And it actually has narrow networks. And you're getting ripped off and you're getting worse care. The best version of Medicare Advantage is when a in our financial interest, because we're getting, let's say, you know, $20,000 to take care of this person's health care for the year.

If we can get their health problems at the front end, under control, and then they go to the hospital less, they go to the doctor, they get sick less, they need fewer medications, then we save money. So therefore, we are going to invest in exercise, nutrition, preventive medicine, like making sure that it's easy to go to the doctor to get a checkup, like those things that then they argue save money in the long run. If that's the version of Medicare advantage that prevails, who would argue against that? Because it's not that people want lots of medical care. People would rather be healthy. Nobody wants to go to the doctor.

Yeah. You don't want your bills to be high. Yeah. And if you can align those incentives, that's interesting. So maybe when Dr. Oz sits down with the people who are at CMS now and they show him what they're doing, he might be like, you guys are doing good work here. Now, at the same time, he's going to push Medicare Advantage hard. That means by the end of Trump's term, I've seen estimates that have said 75% of people could be on Medicare Advantage, which is like a, you're basically fully privatized Medicare at that point, which is scary. He doesn't, this rule, obviously you would need

Congress to do anything really dramatic. So he can essentially like go, so he's. He can do a lot without Congress. To overhaul the American healthcare system, he would need. Oh yes, he couldn't do Medicare Advantage for all. But he could sort of tinker with the regulatory policies significantly in order to incentivize Medicare Advantage plans. Yeah, there are small tweaks he can make that could juice signups, like just making it the default, putting it on the website, pushing it a little harder to seniors. Subsidies probably to different directions. Tweak the benefit of it. Interesting. Very interesting. So it's ripe for corruption, but also could make things better. We shouldn't pretend that regular Medicare is perfect. Don't kill me for that. But it's not. Okay, Bernie. Yeah.

Bernie would agree. Bernie absolutely agrees with, not necessarily that Medicare Advantage is the answer, but that Medicare as it is needs serious supplementation. That's why he's always arguing it needs to have dental because Medicare doesn't currently

cover dental, vision, and hearing. Yeah, it's a serious... And that's the way that Medicare Advantage creeps in. Yeah. I mean, honest leftists like you and Bernie are pretty clear-eyed about the problems there. And that's the way that Medicare Advantage creeps in. Yeah. No, I mean, honest leftists like you and Bernie, you're pretty clear-eyed about the problems there.

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 problems, should we move on to America's sweetheart, Matt Gaetz. So the ongoing saga of Matt Gaetz's nomination to head up the Department of Justice keeps taking turns by the hour, it seems, because every reporter in Washington is now on the Matt Gaetz beat and is now working hard to get to the bottom of the ethics investigation in particular. So we can actually put B1 up on the screen. This is a report from

the New York Times yesterday. This is Robert Draper who said, an unidentified hacker has gained access to a computer file shared in a secure link among lawyers whose clients have given damaging testimony related to Matt Gaetz. So that, I had to read that sentence a few times just to be like, okay, who did what and how? Because I found it to be somewhat confusing. But basically, someone seems to have hacked a link that lawyers representing women who have accusations against Matt Gaetz, someone hacked that secure link with all of the testimony from the witnesses. And the file of 24 exhibits, Draper continues, is said to include sworn testimony by a woman who said that she had sex with Mr. Gates in 2017 when she was 17, as well as corroborating

testimony by a second woman who said that she witnessed the encounter. The information was downloaded by a person using the name Alton Beasley at 1 23 p.m., according to the person who was not authorized to speak publicly with the New York Times. So, now Marjorie Taylor Greene weighs in with a tweet yesterday saying, for my Republican colleagues in the House and Senate, if we're going to release ethics reports and rip apart our own that Trump has appointed, then put it all out there for the American people to see. Yes, all the ethics reports and claims, including the one I filed, all your sexual harassment and assault claims that were

secretly settled paying off victims with taxpayer money, the entire Jeffrey Epstein files, tapes, recordings, witness interviews, but not just those. There's more. Epstein wasn't slash isn't the only asset. If we're going to dance, let's all dance in the sunlight. I will make sure we do. When she's right, she's right. So sort of openly threatening blackmail. And in a way that I think whatever Donald Trump and his allies are doing to senators, they are having some success so far because we have a mashup here of Senator Mark Wayne Mullen of Oklahoma, who was the source of the claim. He publicly came out. He was like on the steps of the Capitol giving an interview to, I think it was CNN, saying that Matt Gaetz, and this was before Gaetz was nominated, was showing pictures

of his nude exploits on the floor of the House of Representatives. Let's just roll this clip. I think the president wants a hammer at the DOJ and he sees Matt Gaetz as a hammer and all these other appointments. He's very confident and where they're at and can deliver the administration that he's wanting. His picks have been maybe unconventional, but we hired an unconventional president and the American people wanted that. They don't want politics as usual. They want someone that's gonna shake up Washington DC. You gotta think about this guy.

This is a guy that the media didn't give a time of day to after he was accused of sleeping with an underage girl. There's a reason why no one in the conference came and defended him. Because we had all seen the videos he was showing on the house floor that all of us had walked away of the girls that he had slept with. He'd brag about how he would crush ED medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night. This is obviously before he got married. And so when that accusation came out, no one defended him and then no one on the media

would give him a time of the day. So there you had Mark Wayne Mullen after the Trump pressure campaign and then no one on the media would give him a time of the day. So there you had Mark Wayne Mullen after the Trump pressure campaign and then before the Trump pressure campaign when Matt Gaetz hadn't been nominated to head up the Department of Justice just openly talking about what everyone who has worked with Matt Gaetz will tell you was common among Matt Gaetz, among the circles that Matt Gaetz was clearly running in, which were unsavory, to say the very least. This is sort of what's amusing about some of my friends who are

supportive of Gaetz's nomination. They see him as a disruptor saying, you know, Joel Greenberg is an unsavory character. He's in prison. He's lying. It's like, well, he was Matt Gaetz's, arguably Matt Gaetz's best friend. It doesn like, well, he was Matt Gaetz's, arguably Matt Gaetz's best friend. It doesn't speak well of Gaetz that Joel Greenberg is a bad person necessarily. Let's check in on Representative Anna Paulina Luna. We have a mashup to roll here. Let's roll this. The Republicans asking for this House ethics report to be released. It's people like Senator John Cornyn of Texas. It'd be hard to describe him as anything but aligned with MAGA. Are you suggesting that there's something in his stock portfolio that's

questionable? I'm suggesting that John Cornyn, to my knowledge, made statements that was actually anti-MAGA about President Trump and same with the new elected Senate leader. But I will say that Thune has since changed his tune and it seems like he's more aligned with MAGA and President Trump and same with the new elected Senate leader. But I will say that Thune has since changed his tune and it seems like he's more aligned with MAGA and President Trump. So I will say that, you know, it's interesting that people don't want to have a light shine on Do you think that there's something corrupt about that? When they're asking for testimony, when they're asking for this report, again, a bipartisan report, do you think there's something unethical about that? I think that what's unethical about it is that this has been shut down, that

they're not requesting reports on other people who are knowingly under investigation currently and that those... I find it interesting that these actual allegations come out at peculiarly peculiar timing while he's being nominated to be the Attorney General. To be clear, I do think Matt Gaetz is going to be an incredible Attorney General. I think this baseless smear campaign, is abhorrent that it's happening to someone like Matt Gaetz, who's done so much to fight the government corruption. And there's a reason why President Trump won not just the popular vote, but also the electorate vote. Frankly, people trust President Trump's judgment more than any news outlet out there.

Congressman, I just want to clarify something. You said you got direct firsthand accounts from DOJ and the FBI when they declined to prosecute him criminally. Were you able to review the testimony yourself? What I can tell you is they came out in a public statement and actually had dropped charges against Representative Mack Gates. That's what I mean by that. And frankly, what I'm finding is these baseless allegations, when people go out there and smear reputations, this happened to Justice Brett Kavanaugh. So not true, of course, that the ethics report was just brought out, was just like sort of made public when Matt Gaetz was nominated. This was the Department of Justice investigation goes back years. And the ethics report obviously was set to be released a couple of days before Gates was actually named the nominee. It seems pretty clear he resigned. There's no reason to resign

the end of your term other than to prevent the release of this. So it's actually kind of the reverse. It's not that these allegations are surfacing because he was nominated. His nomination and his subsequent resignation buried, potentially buried them. Well, if he doesn't get confirmed, he's resigned. So he's not in Congress. It's hilarious. He's resigned from this term. He could get sworn back in. He could get sworn back in. In January. Because he was reelected. Yeah. So it's the funniest resignation ever.

That is pretty funny. It's like a two-month resignation. But if he gets sworn back in, then the ethics- That's why it was so pointless and so obvious why he did it. But then the ethics probe is back in play. Assuming he doesn't get confirmed, then the ethics probe of a sitting member of Congress sworn back in, then the ethics— That's why it was so pointless and so obvious why he did it. But then the ethics probe is back in play. Assuming he doesn't get confirmed, then the ethics probe of a sitting member of Congress is back in play. Do they have to start it all over again? It'd be hilarious. I don't think so.

But I wonder—they've probably never had that specific dilemma before. Yeah. Ryan, though, there's a lot of other context to this, lest we fall into the sort of camp that most of the mainstream media is in, which is just reflexively treating this as though it's a cut and dry sexual misconduct situation. There is a lot more going on beneath the surface, especially with the Department of Justice. You're the one who suggested, actually, we take a look at this piece by my friend Molly Hemingway, my old boss at the Federalist. This is B5. And let me explain why. I think the people watching this show are adults with their own kind of complex moral worldviews. And are able to hold together multiple thoughts in their head.

Yes. We'll find out. The headline. So let's talk about this because this is, buckle up, this is wild. And if you're listening, the headline is, House probe into Matt Ga this is, buckle up, this is wild. And if you're listening, the headline is House probe into Matt Gaetz relies on witnesses DOJ found lacked credibility. Right. All right. So go read the Molly Hemingway piece. Like this is, it's a good piece. Very viral. It's gone viral for good reason. And it is sourced to public documents.

Like this is, it's not the kind of thing where you have to take Molly Hemingway's word on anything here. The point that she's making here, and you correct me if I'm wrong here, is that the two women that were just referenced in that New York Times article are publicly, according to a jailhouse snitch, by the way, you got it? Yeah.

Always be skeptical of jailhouse snitches who are telling you something, usually, so that they can get themselves out of whatever trouble they're in that got them in the jailhouse to begin with. However, it doesn't appear... The reason I find this particular jailhouse niche credible is because of the the details that he had that the that he has he was in a cell with joel greenberg and according to him greenberg told him that he had two young women who were willing to lie uh to back up joel greenberg. To support his claims against Gates. Right.

So where would, now that, like I said, you can be skeptical of a jailhouse snitch if you want. This is what the guy, this is what the snitch has said. And therefore, we need to know more about these two sources that the New York Times is talking about. Are they the same ones that Greenberg allegedly said were willing to lie in order to back up Greenberg and harm Gates? Greenberg is serving 11 years for sex trafficking and all sorts of other scammy, scummy stuff. He was like the tax collector of Seminole County. Yeah. Yeah. And to your point.

He pleaded guilty to underage sex trafficking, wire fraud, stalking, identity theft, producing a fake ID card, and conspiring to defraud the U.S. government. Pleaded guilty. Yeah. Just a despicable human being. And has previously concocted claims against political opponents for sleeping with minors. There was a, I believe it was a teacher who was running against him for tax collector. Just smeared him. I guess as a Democrat. Yeah. And he created this elaborate scheme where he created a fake email and emailed the school and made these fake claims about this teacher to try to destroy the person, not just the person's electoral chances against him, but the person's entire life.

Because you get an allegation like that, the school, the community, everyone is going to take that immensely seriously because it's just being made up. What are the chances of that? Well, the chances are remote, but it turns out sometimes that happens. And Greenberg actually apologized for this. So it's not like...

This is not in dispute. We know for a fact that this is a card that this guy plays. Now, why I say we are treating our audience like adults here, able to hold complicated and contradictory thoughts in their mind, is that this guy was like Gates' best bud. And they were at parties with high schoolers and college girls. Yes. Which is gross. Yes. In their mid-30s.

In their mid-30s. Get a grip but that's not it's not a crime and and That's not what they're being accused of so you can think that they're gross dudes But the question here is did they do? Did he did Gates do this crime exactly Justice Department? According to people that familiar with this matter, found the witnesses not to be credible and dropped the charges.

So they apparently found the jailhouse snitch to be credible. This is the Biden Justice Department. Right. And this is part of a plea deal with Greenberg, by the way. They wanted to get Gates so badly that they struck this plea deal with Greenberg. So that could reflect on the credibility of everything that he's admitted to, of course. But he's still got a long prison sentence. And this is the Biden Justice Department that has been targeted by Matt Gaetz over and over. Matt Gaetz is one of the harshest, most vehement critics of the Biden Justice Department, of the Justice Department in general. So if there's anybody that they would want to get and do it quickly, it would have been Matt Gaetz. They tried, and they were leaking salacious stuff about this investigation all

along the way, and ultimately couldn't get him. They couldn't get him. And there's a lot of where there's smoke, there's fire in this case. There are tons of Venmo transactions between Matt Gaetz and his two female accusers. Right. There's a new one that's like 700 some dollars. It's up to 10,000. The memo says like tuition reimbursement. Yes. I have them right in front of me.

This is gross stuff. Yeah. Gaetz has said that people are mistaking his generosity to his ex-girlfriends for paying for prostitution. Yeah. No, I mean you can literally look at the Venmo transactions. It's right there. Very generous. You can see it. And again, this is a guy, at best, he's in his mid-30s and he's hanging around flying these girls around the country and paying them on Venmo. One of them reportedly lied and said she was over 18 when she was 17. Either way,

they're very young women. And, you know, that's a different question. Yeah. And as Mark Caputo reported in Politico in this article in 2021 or three, whenever it was, they went on this trip to the Bahamas, all these creeps. And the Customs and Border Patrol stopped the plane, the private plane when it landed, because there were such young looking women on the plane. And they were like, this is creepy. That's a bunch of old dudes and some very young women. They turned out to be 18.

So it does show how low you have to stoop to make the case for Matt Gaetz, which is, your honor, they were 18. Like, that's pretty pitiful. On the other hand, the charges that they were 17. And so far, the charges don't look like they're sticking. Yeah. And you wind up with these situations like Sunny Hostin got herself into yesterday at The View.

I don't think we have that clip handy, but I don't know if you saw this. She was forced to do like a legal read because if you say with certainty that these things happened, you're not on very firm legal ground. So she was forced to do on The View a legal read where she looked at the camera and said Matt Gaetz denies, blah, blah, blah, and the Justice Department dropped the claims. And kind of embarrassing to have to do. Yeah I mean so this is also a really impossible story to follow because the details are just it's layers and layers and layers yeah and one of the women handle thing possible very panhandle uh one of the women the one who I referenced lying about

her age that was reportedly to Greenberg just to. But all of this gets back to whether or not Matt Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old when he was in his mid-30s. And this 17-year-old, this is something that Greenberg was like trafficking to his friends and stuff. And that's what it gets to, right. So there's that question. There's also just ample, ample evidence that Matt Gaetz, if you are hardcore MAGA, is not the person that is going to successfully uproot the Department of Justice compared to what somebody like Jim Jordan could do or somebody who comes in without the sleazy baggage. In this case, I don't think it's necessary to pluck the sleaziest person out of Congress because he's one of the most ardent opponents of a department that desperately needs ardent opponents. He's not the only person. He wasn't the only option. I think he was an option, though, to make a point that we are going to, as Trump says, we are going to go wild. We are going to dismantle this department. We are absolutely

deadly serious about it. And that's why Trump is doubling down. He said he was asked yesterday if he would reconsider Gates, and he said no. Lee Fong makes an interesting point on X. He said before he was appointed AG in 2009, Eric Holder helped Purdue Pharma negotiate a sweetheart West Virginia settlement as the firm was flooding Appalachia with dangerous opioids, made a career of helping large corporations dodge accountability for fraud. Yet that was never a major scandal. And so there's this meta conversation as well about how all of our politicians are extremely sleazy and the media and political establishment has a double standard. To your point, Ryan, all of that stuff can be true. Matt Gaetz can be excellent on Lena Kahn and antitrust and be excellent on surveillance and all of those seriously very important topics that nobody in the political establishment, they might pay lip service to it once in a while or they might not, but they are not serious about actually creating change.

Matt Gaetz seems to be. He's one of the boldest proponents of antitrust reform. On the right, he has actually put his money where his mouth is. He has stuck with it and been consistent, not waffled like the people we had Ted Cruz on. He has, you know, break up big tech in his book. He cannot stand Lena Kahn. You know, this is like, this is rare. And there's something about Matt Gaetz being at the Department of Justice that would be somewhat satisfying from a policy perspective. but it's easy to get caught, I think, in the meta conversation and not just sort of the simple, if we're draining the swamp, what's Matt Gaetz doing?

And maybe you're right to the point that the left's best hope might be that he's just not equipped experientially to run an organization of this size in the way that he wants. Right. Yeah. I mean, and when I mean the left, I mean people concerned about what he's going to do when it comes to weaponizing the Justice Department in defense of Trump's worst instincts. The left would be happy if he actually succeeded in pushing forward surveillance reform, antitrust stuff, that kind of thing. Yeah. So, no, I mean, there's obviously, he was, I think he was targeted for political reasons. I think he's continuing to be targeted for political reasons. I think the media has a

total double standard when it comes to Matt Gaetz. I think we do have a whole lot of awful politicians. I'm not sure that from a conservative perspective that practically or morally justifies Matt Gaetz. I just disagree with that argument, but hey. Yeah. And just because it seems like the claim that he slept with a 17 year old is not well-founded doesn't mean you have to like the guy and think that he's a morally upstanding figure. It also, to me, seems like he's so ripe for blackmail. When you're leading a department like this, part of the reason- How do you blackmail guys where everything's already out? That's true, but I don't know that everything is already out.

That's true. Good lord. He brought Chuck Johnson to the State of the Union, known Fed. Chuck Johnson to the State of the Union one year. There's a lawsuit against him for not being a Fed from some AI Silicon Valley antagonist of his. Huh? That he's falsely claiming to be a Fed That he's falsely claiming to be a Fed. He's falsely claiming to be a Fed? That's according to this lawsuit.

Incredible stuff. Yeah. But he did out Peter Thiel as a Fed, and Peter Thiel then acknowledged that he had been doing that. Matt Gaze is entangled in a very interesting web of personalities. And anyway, that's, I think, I hope that people leave this segment more well-informed than anyone leaving the segments done by our next subject here,

which would be Morning Joe. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there.

Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for.

If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough. Someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her,

is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and we need to talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices,

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

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

Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's pivot to Morning Joe, hard pivot to Morning Joe. We have to roll this clip of them every day now. It's sort of like reality television, which is always what Morning Joe actually, I think,

has some of the best production quality in television. Like, it's so casual. They understand why people watch TV, even if the content is terrible. The production is generally kind of compelling at Morning Joe because it's like reality television. And that's what we are seeing play out on the show this week as they are just absolutely playing up the attention they've received for kissing the ring at Mar-a-Lago. Or the attention they're not getting, too. Yes. From their viewers.

It's a little bit of both. So let's roll this clip from yesterday's edition of Morning Joe. Yesterday, I saw for the first time what a massive disconnect there was between social media and the real world. Because we were flooded with phone calls from people all day, literally around the world. Very positive, very supportive, going, understand what you did, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But once in a while I would get a text or a call from someone and go, oh, man, I hope you're doing okay. And I'd call them back, and I'd go, well, Eddie Gladry's one of them.

They'd go, Eddie, are you on Twitter? And he goes, I am. I go, okay, well, I'm not. So we've had a good day. Mika just had a wonderful event, and it's fantastic. They're just, like, leaning into each other like a teepee. Our desk is too far apart. And we don't have any Starbucks.

They always have Starbucks. Well, yeah, they're sponsored there. leaning into each other like a teepee. Our desk is too far apart. And we don't have any Starbucks like that. They always have Starbucks. Well, yeah, they're sponsored there. We have Sager's weird African coffee. Yeah, but we also got our own faces on these mugs. We have our own faces. Which you should go buy in the mug store that we got over there. Buy the mugs. That was the point of this segment, was to sell mugs.

And so, yeah, obviously this comes after they went down to Mar-a-Lago, kissed the ring. Their audience recoiled because their audience has been told for the last eight years that this is Hitler reincarnated. By them. Yeah, by them. Told by them. And so now they're saying, well, we better go ahead and kind of kiss and make up. And hey, he won, so we should all be friends. And that just doesn't clash.

Like if those two things just do not work together. And so their audience is absolutely livid. Their friends who have their cell phone numbers think it's cool. And so from Mika and Joe's perspective, that shows that Twitter is not real life. Which, by the way, it's the year of our Lord, 2024. They're just coming to this realization. They cover politics every single day. In this case, I think they're wrong.

I think the people in their cell phones are not real life. Yes. Twitter is actually much closer to real life in this sense than the fact that all of their friends around the country are like, yeah, sure, this is working for you. Let's roll, well, not roll, but put up C2 here. This is an interesting kind of way that they're responding to this. Our friend of the show, Aaron Rupar, who has some irrational hatred of me that I've never quite figured out. Oh, of you? I didn't know that. It's quite bizarre.

Many such cases. Many such cases. So he writes, Morning Joe has turned off replies to tweets and hasn't been posting clips of the show, The Trip to Mar-a-Lago, not going well. This is Pete Ruppar. He noticed before anyone that Morning Joe wasn't posting clips. I agree with Ruppar here. This is a fair observation. If you're a show that is afraid to be seen, that doesn't bode well because your job as a show is to be seen. Yeah. So let's put the next element up on the screen, just continuing on with this theme. This is also resistance. Ron Fipulkowski, if Trump has them that intimidated that they need to retire,

MSNBC hosts piled on CNN earlier this year, but their code of silence on this is gross. Have some courage and integrity. Is that too much to ask, or are you just too comfortable? He was responding to this George Conway tweet you see on your screen, where Brian Stelter reported that according to two sources with direct knowledge, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were credibly concerned that they could face governmental and legal harassment from the incoming Trump administration. George Conway quote tweets that. This Twitter drama is positively middle school-esque and says, sadly, Brian's reporting is correct. Over the past week, I heard from two entirely separate, very reliable sources with some vivid detail that they are absolutely terrified of Trump,

entirely separate, very reliable sources. I wonder if those sources were Joe and Mika, or if they were people like Joe and Mika who are absolutely terrified of Trump. But George Conway, who goes on MSNBC, would be in a position to know what the mindset is of people in that orbit, saying basically Joe and Mika went down to Mar-a-Lago because they don't want to face backlash, legal backlash potentially from a Trump administration. Now, Ron Filipakowski and Jen Rubin, another person who goes on MSNBC, have been apoplectic about this, about Joe and Mika going to kiss the ring. And indeed, it appears that the audience, to the point you made, is as well. So let's put C4 up on the screen. This is a report

from the Daily Beast. The ratings are falling. So the headline is, Morning Joe ratings fall after Trump meeting announcement. Nielsen data showed a drop in viewers after the 6 a.m. hour. And what's fascinating about that is that the show goes from 6 to 10, God bless them. And obviously, because most of the country still sleep at 6 a.m., the audience for the program builds throughout the day and then falls kind of toward the, you know, after people have, you know, things to do. But what the media records that they obtained show is that they go on and they say, hey, everybody, guess what? Cool news. We went down to Mar-a-Lago. Trump's okay. Their audience collapsed. 30% of those in the 25 to 54 demographic had stopped watching by the next

hour. That's significant. Yeah, because normally you're growing up. And now you're losing 38%. And 38% is a lot. I'm not a math major, but that's a lot. And so clearly what happened was people were like, are you effing kidding me? Right. Click.

Right. Not dealing with this. Right. If you want your resistance content from the people who've been giving it to you for eight years and now all of a sudden they're telling you that actually, which, you know, we're not going to beat up their audience, but throughout the 2016 campaign, it was quite obvious that Mika and Joe were like longtime friends of Donald Trump and loved the fact that he was running because it was

incredible for the ratings. He was running because it was incredible for the ratings. He was constantly calling in and flirting with them. Literally, yes. Literally flirting with them. And then he actually shocked them by winning and then their relationship soured. And so here we are. Right. And they say they did all of this because in their sanctimonious way, it was absolutely worth it, quote, absolutely worth it to get Donald Trump to come out and make a statement saying he supports a free and fair press. That is essential. This is their argument is that it was worth their time to go kiss the ring because they got him to say nice things about the press. And that's just absolutely essential, the work that they've done to support the media here. And maybe you agree with everything that they're saying, but what is clear is that they're only saying it out of fear. Right. And because things have not gone their way.

And to me, they should just then step down. Like if you are acting out of fear rather than out of your true, genuine impulses that you want to share with the audience, let somebody else do the gig. Well, interestingly, Comcast officially announced that it plans to spin off NBC Universal cable channels into a separate publicly traded company. That's official now? Yeah, that broke Crystal Texas this morning. Oh, boy. Yeah. So, I mean, that's an interesting... Yeah, talk about what that means. It means an interesting future ahead of MSNBC because the NBC News and MSNBC tension seems to be higher than it ever really has been in their history. By the way, the MS and NBC,

do you remember what it stands for? Microsoft. Microsoft NBC. Yeah. Microsoft NBC. It's sad that Microsoft didn't just buy MSNBC back because we would be in for the same Joe and Mika bullshit. Because that's what, I mean, that's the real problem with MSNBC is that they have spent years, like you said, they wanted it to be known they were very close to Donald Trump. They had access to power. They always thrived on that access to power. They broadcast from the middle of Manhattan in 30 Rock, and they want you to know that. They want it to be clear that they are talking to the movers and the shakers and that they're friends with them. And that's what you see when they're in their quarter zips drinking their Starbucks is this is just friends chatting.

And you never really get much disruptive content, even when they frame sort of things like, oh, maybe this wokeness stuff has gone a little bit too far as disruptive. So now it's fascinating to see what will happen with MSNBC. Does it become just the network of people like who tune in for George Conway and Jen Rubin and the niche partisan content, Nicole Wallace, whatever else, Jen Psaki? Is it going to become that network or is it still going to try to be a news network? I mean, I think it's a pretty interesting question if you're the executives looking at the future. Yeah. And basically you're just going for people over 45 and 50 at this point. Like the idea that you're going to get any new people under that age to start watching cable news. I think at this point, most smart people recognize is a fantasy. So then

it's like, well, okay, well, how many of those people are Democrats and independent-leaning Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents? And can you, and can you, can you, can basically, can you convince cable companies to continue carrying you and paying you? Because that's, for people that don't understand, the way that cable companies make money is not mostly through the advertising. It's from your cable bill that you pay to the cable company. A piece of that goes to Fox or MSNBC or CNN. And the way that they maintain that is by maintaining their relevance. That people say, if I'm getting cable, I want these cable news channels. And you'll have fights where people will say, I don't want to have to pay for Fox, make Fox a la carte, or I don't want to have to pay for CNN

or whatever. But other people are like, I'm paying for basic cable. I want the news. What else am I doing? What else do I want here? I can get the rest of it anywhere else. So as long as there's a minimum threshold number of people who want MSNBC as part of their cable package and that that is understood through surveys of their users and angry phone calls, then the cable companies will keep paying them these very lucrative amounts of money. Because think about how much money you pay every month for cable if you still get cable. It's a lot. Yeah. And a huge chunk of that then goes back to these networks. Well, and it's why there's this incentive to be nichified. And so that's what Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski are really trying.

They're popping right now in a very uncomfortable way, this niche audience that they've cultivated in a bubble, which is, listen, I don't think niche audiences are necessarily a bad thing. I think they're really dangerous in politics, but they're cool in like music and they're cool in all kinds of like different cultural spheres. I think it's great that we have a media environment where, you know, Shane Smith can come back and do his show for Vice and like there's some type of audience for it. But, you know, this is also really dangerous if it's creating political bubbles that people,

for example, Tom Cotton publishes an op-ed in the New York Times because the New York Times builds this not monoculture audience over the course of the Trump administration, but niche audience of resistance people. Because they published this Tom Cotton op-ed, people cancel their subscriptions. Or Washington Post, same thing. People are canceling their subscriptions because the Post made a decision to go back to the pre-1976 standard of not endorsing a presidential candidate because they saw their business failing. It's actually a really fascinating and interesting decision that these executives have to make is whether they want to reach the broadest audience possible

or corner a niche. And you can do really well. Like Stephen Colbert, least funny, most partisan guy in late night over the course of Trump administration. He was the top rated for most of the Trump administration because people tune in over and over again when a lot of people, people who don't work in politics, like they just want the comfort food. And if MSNBC was giving people comfort food, it wasn't really doing news unless, you know, it was maybe some connection to NBC News, some of their reporters coming on, whatever. So as soon as you start dishing out vegetables, you're going to lose your audience because that's not why they patronize your product anymore. And so that's a huge, huge conflict for them going forward.

And they're at a fork in the road. They can decide to do news or do comfort food. So best of luck to them. Yeah. All right, let's move on to our next block. This is the ongoing trial of the murder of Lake and Riley, which is taking place down in Georgia. We can put the first element up on the screen. This is the write-up from the New York Post. You can see a picture of

Lake and Riley on the screen there. If you're watching it, Lake and Riley was 22. And I'm just going to read a little bit from an ABC News report about the trial yesterday. The last moments before Lakin Riley was killed while out on a run on the University of Georgia's campus were shown in court on Tuesday on the third day of the trial involving the murder of the 22-year-old nursing student. The Augusta University student was found dead in a wooded area on the Athens campus on February 22nd. Jose Ibarra, 26, is accused of murdering Riley after prosecutors said she, quote, refused to be his rape victim. Ibarra, 26, is accused of murdering Riley after prosecutors said she, quote, refused to be his rape victim. Ibarra, an undocumented migrant who was charged with malice murder and felony murder in connection with her death, which became a rallying cry for immigration reform for many conservatives, including President Donald Trump. harrowing. And I've seen it actually covered by a lot of the sort of women-centric publications like People that cover true crime a lot because American women are very interested in true crime.

I'm not saying that in any sort of misogynistic way. That's literally statistically true, like there's polling on it. And that means it's sort of undermining the point that ABC just made in its article, that it became a rallying cry throughout the presidential election, the case study of Lake and Riley. And I think, Ryan, it was actually one of the most important moments in the 2024 election in terms of like deciding people's minds changing on the Biden immigration policy, sort of put a face on it for a lot of people who were thinking about the Biden administration and Kamala Harris and deciding, you know, what they wanted to say. I think it makes people more comfortable with Donald Trump, for example, when there's a picture of a 22-year-old nursing student and the sort of horrible situation that she endured. And that's not trying to

politicize. That's just trying to explain why I think it was powerful in the election. I guess, you know, it's a horrific tragedy. Yeah. It always makes me uncomfortable when people, when a particular tragedy gets its attention because of who the assailant is rather than, and because it fits a political agenda. Like people who were born here in this country commit horrific murders actually every day. Yeah. And there's a lot of victims are no more, no less worthy of, of our attention. And so that part of it makes me uncomfortable, but of course it's, it's, it's horrifying. And I think the, the thing that has helped to catapult it into the public's imagination is also the way that it happened. Yeah. Just going for a jog and getting—it's the worst nightmare of people who are running early in the morning just as the sun is coming up.

Right. That some murderer is going to jump out of the bushes. And it's out of that kind of storybook fear that fortunately is rare, but when it happens, it's going to get elevated. And then when it turns out that the person was here illegally, then it's going to be weaponized. And so, yeah, we'll get a verdict in the next couple days probably.

Yeah, and that's the thing with this trial is that it's really playing out like a pretty traditional true crime trial does these days where you're hearing, I mean you're seeing the mother's last text messages to Lake and Riley and just all of the sort of heart-wrenching details that come out in trials. His brother is supposed to testify. He's been called. And he's not testifying. Jose Barra is not testifying. So it's a, yeah, his brother's supposed to testify. And according to one of the witnesses who was, and it was complicated,

that he said that he basically acknowledged that his brother did it and that if the woman said anything about it, he'd kill her too. And he's supposed to – so part of this is that the prosecution – or I'm sorry, the defense seems to be pointing its finger subtly, as some people have said, at the brother. That's part of the defense is suggesting that it was a Nibara. So it's – yeah, it's very – it's a very complicated trial. It's no surprise that it's getting as much attention as it is.

Now, in the New York Post— Right, because the quote from the brother was, I'll kill you too, or something like that. Yeah. Which suggests that he's saying that he was the actual killer, not the brother. Yeah. And he was getting some federal benefits, Ibarra was. That's why—I mean, we probably disagree on the implications of this because I agree with you that there is a lot of evidence that people who come more heavily into the direction that it's a lower rate of crime committed. But there's partisans on both sides doing this research, so it's hard to actually get to the bottom of that. What I would say, though, is I think most Americans would look

at, I have the CBP numbers up in front of me right now, the fiscal year 24, 1,000 cases of people who were in the country illegally committing assault, battery, domestic violence, 2,800 cases of driving under the influence, 30 cases of homicide and manslaughter. You know, this is compared to the rest of the country. Obviously, these are small numbers, but when it's... And you need to know the denominator. How many people are here illegally? Is it 12 million? Is it 20 million? Right, which we literally don't know. We genuinely don't have a clear number on that question. But if you are the family of Lake and Riley and you're looking at an alleged Trendy Aragua member who was getting taxpayer-funded flights from Kennedy to Atlanta, JFK to Atlanta, and he's already in the country. It's not legally in the country, this is already a question, it probably will reflect on the immigration policy from your perspective. It's, you know, we have plenty of, to your point, we have plenty of murder

in the country as it is. We have plenty of, you know, our own domestic problems to deal with as it is. And so that's the extent to deal with as it is and so that's the extent to which i think it reflects on that is like that question of of fairness so we probably disagree on that but that's i think why the trial resonated with so many people in the election yeah for sure um we have this clip of chad wolf who was a trump administration he was he was dhs under trump wasn't he i think he was like acting or was he? Yeah. Yeah. He was acting secretary of DHS. I don't think he was ever formally confirmed. Here's how he reacted on Fox News for a taste of how we can see the Trump administration handle this down the road. Well, it's beyond awful because any criminal act,

particularly this one committed by an illegal alien, is one that's preventable. They shouldn't be here to begin with. And they were facilitated. This individual appears to be facilitated by the Biden administration's border security policies, right? He's from Venezuela. He gets in on a parole. He gets flown and transported to New York City. He's not happy there, right?

So New York then moves him to Georgia. All of this could have been avoided if you actually have policies in place that deter this illegal immigration and folks that do claim asylum, do claim some type of protections under law. We don't simply release them into the country, right? You use Remain in Mexico or use other things that were put in place to hold these individuals and then allow them their time in court if they get to do that. So, you know, it'll be obviously a powerful talking point for the Trump administration in the months ahead as they decide, you know, the question of mass deportations, which is, we continue to hear from Trump administration officials or incoming Trump administration officials themselves is very much on the table. Now, mass deportation is not a

technical, clinical term. We don't know what mass deportation would actually be. We were told that it would start with the quote-unquote worst of the worst, the people who are here and already have rap sheets or have been, you know, coming in and out and trafficking, whatever it is. Now, that's a very difficult thing to do in and of itself. So we don't know. Yeah. What's going to happen if Trump empties out the jails and prisons, deports people who are here illegally, but were serving sentences? They then come back into the country, get around his magical wall, commit a crime. Are we going to get wall-to-wall coverage of that, you think? I mean, it's a pretty, and will that then be held against the Trump administration?

Yeah. I mean. Because it wouldn't happen if the person had been left in prison. Yeah. Republicans have held the Republican administration's feet to the fire over immigration. I mean, this was actually part of the problem with the Cornyn versus Thune versus Rick Scott conflict we talked about last week, as people were absolutely furious about how Cornyn and Thune had handled the immigration bill under Langford and McConnell last year. So maybe, but obviously it's always different when it comes to Donald Trump. Over the years of making my true crime podcast,

Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up

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