Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/24/25: MTG Resigns, Zohran Trump Meeting, Zohran Endorses Hakeem Jeffries, Ukraine Peace Deal

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss MTG resigning, Saagar reacts to the Zohran Trump meeting, Zohran endorses Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker, and the Ukraine peace deal. Jeremy Scahill: https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/hamas-palestinian-gaza-plan-trump-netanyahu-israel-ceasefire To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc. And send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you.

Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. check out the second season of my podcast shell game on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts on this week's episode of next chapter i t dj sit down with denzel washington a two-time academy

award winning actor and cultural icon i don't take any credit for it i just didn't put me first i just put god first and he's carrying me listen to the next chapter podcast on the i heart radio app Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast, new episodes drop weekly. Hey there, Dr. Jesse Mills here. I'm the director of the men's clinic at UCLA, and I want to tell you about my new podcast called The Mail Room. And I'm Jordan, the show's producer. And like most guys, I haven't been to the doctor in way too long. I'll be asking the questions we probably should be asking, but aren't.

Every week, we're breaking down the world of men's health from testosterone and fitness to diets and fertility. We'll talk science without the jargon and get your real answers. to the stuff you actually wonder about. So check out the mailroom on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. Hey guys, Saga 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.

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Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do a lot of very interesting things happening. This week, Marjorie Taylor Green has announced she is resigning, so we will watch her announcement video and give our thoughts on what is going on there. I actually don't really have any theories. So I can talk about that. Fallout from the Zoran Trump meeting, excited to hear Saugers take on that

since we haven't heard from him yet. Negotiations on a Ukraine, potential Ukraine-Russia peace deal continue breaking developments there. Ceasefire has been broken by Israel in both Gaza and Lebanon. Jeremy Scahill is going to join us with the latest. Mike Huckabee met with a traitor who has threatened to nuke the United States

who thinks we should be nuked. if we don't do what Israel wants, you would think that I'm exaggerating. I'm literally quoting from what he himself had to say. So certainly we're taking a look at that. And a bunch of MAGA accounts actually accidentally revealed on Twitter as foreigners. That's a fun one right there. Can't wait for that. That's the Thanksgiving special that we needed.

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Also, everybody wished Crystal a very happy birthday. Happy birthday, Crystal. Well, thank you. All right, so let's get into it. Marjorie Taylor Green. She resigned from Congress in an absolutely shocking move. She released a near 10-minute-long video explaining it. We've cut some of the most important points.

Let's take a listen. And I do not want my sweet district to have to, endure a hurtful and hateful primary against me by the president that we all fought for, only to fight and win my election while Republicans will likely lose the midterms, and in turn be expected to defend the president against impeachment after he hatefully dumped tens of millions of dollars against me and tried to destroy me. It's all so absurd and completely unsurious. I refuse to be a battered wife, hoping it all goes away and gets better. If I am cast aside by the president and the MAGA political machine and replaced by

neocons, big pharma, big tech, military industrial war complex, foreign leaders, and the elite donor class that can never, ever relate to real Americans, then many common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well. There is no plan to save the world or a 4D chess game being played. When common American people realize and understand that the political industrial complex of both parties is ripping this country apart, that not one elected leader like me is able to stop Washington's machine from gradually destroying our country, and instead, the reality is that they, common Americans, the people, possess the real power over Washington, then I'll be here by their side to rebuild it. I'll be resigning from my.

office with my last day being January 5th, 2026. And I look forward to seeing many of you again sometime in the future. I'm totally shocking. Shocking move. Marjor Taylor Green there saying she doesn't want to endure her district have to endure a hateful primary challenge race. I guess it opens up a whole bunch of questions immediately. Is she running for president in 2024? Is she just fed up with the system? There was one theory that she wanted her pension. But immediately resigning means that they will immediately trim the very, very narrow margin for Republicans actually in the House of Representatives, something they could barely afford to lose a vote on. But I think more importantly, it's like a direction of the party conversation. There was some immediate talk of her possibly running for president.

She's emphatically denying A2, please. We can go and put this up here on the screen. Time magazine wrote a piece saying that she potentially could be running for president. She says, Time magazine claims sources told them I'm running. It means this is a complete lie, and they made it up because they can't even quote the name of the people. I am not running for president. I've never said I wanted to. I have only laughed about it when anyone would mention it.

If you felt for this headlines, you're being lulled every day into psychosis by the political industrial complex. She says, you know, why would I even want to run for president and sell out to big donors? I am personally thinking, you know, there's a lot of secondary motivation conversation. Maybe she's just fed up. I really think that, you know, Glenn Greenwald has described her as like a civilian, you know, the idea. from the founders' times of the idea of like a civilian who just interested in Congress wants to run for office to try and effect change. I think she saw the system from the inside.

And I think she also was a genuine believer in Trump. And so getting screwed here by Trump on the party line and also standing up for a lot of things she believed in Epstein and others. She just said, look, I'm very rich. She's filthy rich. She likes where she lives. She has, you know, family and all that. Why would I continue to embrace this charade?

But I do think it's a loss, I think, especially because of having some dissonant voices. I'm not so sure she would have lost her primary. Thomas Massey seems to be hanging on very simply. But, you know, who knows? She certainly could have. It's definitely going to be a little bit more competitive. And she certainly would have at least had a fight on her hands. So I don't know.

I mean, shocking. It's definitely shocking. She just decided up and out to resign one of the most prominent voices in all of MAGA for the last, what, six, seven years. Yeah. I think it's unfortunate because, like you said, I mean, there's so few voices in the Republican Party who are willing to go against the grain, who are willing to speak out against Trump, who are willing to buck him on literally anything.

And so it's a shame that right as she's getting very interesting and kind of at the peak of her power, in a sense, certainly in terms of the attention economy, but also in terms of just, you know, that they have an extremely narrow margin in the house. So anything she and Thomas Massey team up together to do, they only need to get a couple more Republican on board to thwart the majority.

So she has a lot of power there that she obviously won't have when she resigns from office. So I really think it's a shame, actually, that she's decided to make this move. Look, I have no idea whether she does have future ambitions, you know, to run for Senate, to run for president, whatever that may look like. I do think that it's worth contemplating this moment in the Republican Party where Trump is increasingly a lame duck. He's at one of the weakest points in his power. His approval ratings are terrible on the economy, which has always been his flagship issue. issue. He just was delivered a massive electoral rebuke. I think she's right that the midterms are going to be extremely ugly for the Republicans. So, you know, certainly she and others are

thinking about what's going to come after Trump. And perhaps there's some positioning of herself for that. Although, again, you would think that being in the House would set her up better for some future political ambitions than deciding to resign, which normally, you know, as it wears on, people don't really look kindly at that. They feel like, okay, well, at the moment when the district actually needed you and we needed your voice, you decided to step away. I will say, though, too, that the political landscape is very different now than it used to be, where she could be still incredibly prominent and powerful just by being, you know, on the podcast circuit and on the mainstream media circuit. And so perhaps she's thinking that, too, that she'll be a little bit more, a little bit more free to just say what she wants and not have to take difficult votes and just position herself however she wants.

she wants to for the future. And then Sagar, there's also the possibility that you mentioned, which is just she feels betrayed by a president that she supported extremely loyally, like went to the bat for in, you know, aggressive ways and says she spent millions of her own dollars to help support, brought her into politics. There's no way she'd be a member of Congress without Trump and the MAGA movement. And then he turns around and calls her a traitor. So I'm sure she feels disillusioned by that. She's also talked about threat. on her life, the type of death threats that she's been receiving. And so it may well just be that she's like, screw it, I don't really want to do this anymore. And I don't want to have to go through

what may have been a very tough primary if Trump, you know, really did back some candidate against her in a district that is a very red and Republican district. So she just may have said, you know what, life is too short. I don't feel like dealing with this grab. We will find out, I think, the answer to all of these questions in about six months to seven months. So if she's fully on the podcast circuit. I'm like, okay, then clearly, you know, she's angling for something. She's venting some of her frustration. We may just never hear from her again. I think it's very possible. She's just like, forget it. I'm done. I gave my, I gave it my shot. I really believed in this movement. I spent a lot of my own money. I saw the beast from the inside. And at the end of

the day, you know, this is not something that has any redemption value. I do think it's very, you know, it's sad for, for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, is you were at the peak of your powers, not just rhetorically, but as I mentioned, you had one of those stray votes. There's a reason that the House margin, it's so low that if you actually take very hard-lined positions, as you did on the Epstein discharge, as you saw, you only need four or five Republicans to sign on, and you can actually make some things happen. In terms of your own district, you're very much at the peak of your powers, you can make serious demands in terms of things that are coming to you, your ability to parlay this into

media appearances. I mean, being a member of the United States House of Representatives is always going afford you opportunities not. I guess the steel man case for it is now you no longer have to take stupid votes. Now you have no pressure from inside of the system. You have no Mike Johnson threatening, let's say, to defund your district or you don't have no Trump who has to, you don't have to dedicate probably hours, years of your life to a primary challenge to a campaign. Campaigning is difficult, even in the very best of circumstances. A contested campaign may have made that much more difficult. We really don't know. But as I said, if she could,

continues to keep her voice out there, then I think her calculus would have been being in the house was a loss. I already have my established name. Now, you know, potentially starting a super pack and organization remaining involved in politics. That's very much, I think, a live issue. It's also very possible that she just sails into the sunset. She says, you know, I'm a gazillionaire. I've literally worth tens of millions of dollars. And I own a lot of land down in Georgia. What's not to live a full and a good life? Well, if she's thinking to do in the podcast circuit, I do have one podcast to recommend. Oh, I mean, we've been wanting to get around for quite a while.

For months. Yeah, I mean, one of the most different, her and Thomas Massey, I don't know what's going on. If you're listening, I know there's a lot of people on Capitol Hill who are listening. Make it happen, guys. I don't get it. We'd love to speak with them. Love to ask these questions, put these questions right to her. I mean, one other possibility I'll hold out is, which I think has a good, you know, this does have some logic to it, is that she was actually afraid of,

primary challenge and thought with Trump putting his full force behind someone. I think you have to be. I mean, Trump, as much as he's in a weakened state, still has so much pull with his own base. And, you know, we could pull that element. I don't remember what number it is that lists all the Republicans who went against Trump and then had to resign. And the logic for all of them was basically the same, like, I'm going to lose. You know, I would rather go out on my own terms. Trump has turned against me. He has called me a traitor. He is, you know, calling me ugly names and saying I'm a rhino and all those sorts of things. And so if I stick around, I'm going to lose. I'd rather go out on my own terms. And, you know, if that's what she is thinking, it's smart politically.

If you want to continue to have a voice and potential future political, potential political future, it's smart to go out before that primary challenge even really emerges because then it looks less like, ah, my hand was forced because I was going to get my butt beat. It's more like, okay, well, this is, you know, this is my moment. I'm taking the initiative. I'm doing this in the way that I want to do it. And the primary challenge is just sort of like purely speculative at this point. But that does to me have a logic to it again, especially since you look at the history

of all of these individuals who broke with Trump on a variety of things. issues and end up either losing or resigning and having to, you know, leave the party effectively. Totally. I will say, if you look at that list, 10 out of the 11, they were just neocons. And that's what, that's why the Marjorie thing is so different. Is she, I mean, she really was a different type. I guess, but, like, Lindsay Graham is besties of trying. I mean, like, like, Trump, like, Trump, it doesn't, there's no ideological tenor to it. You're right that what's different about Marjorie Taylor Green is the fact, like, she was a true believer. She comes directly on at this movement. Most of those people, they were already members of Congress or senators, and then

they either, you know, tried in some ways to accommodate themselves to the rise of Trump's takeover of the party, or they, you know, resist it the entire time, whether across the board or in certain important ways. She is different in that way. But at the end of the day, you know, Trump still gets to say what MAG is. And he says, Lindsay Graham is great. And he's going to do his first fundraiser with him. And Marker Rubio is the secretary of state. And, you know, she stood with with the Epstein victims, and so she's on the ounce. Yeah, wow. You know, maybe it's just clarifying.

Here's what Trump had to say, A3 guys. Let's take a listen. Are you willing to forgive Congresswoman Taylor Green? Forgive for what? No, we just, I just disagreed with her philosophy. She started backing perhaps the worst Republican congressman in our history, just, you know, stupid person named Massey. And I said go your own way.

Once I left her, she resigned because she would never have survived a primary. But I think she's a nice person. She's a nice person, but she never would have survived a prime. Again, I mean, I just don't think so. If you look at, look at Thomas Massey. He's running way ahead of all of his opponents. He has brought in incredible amounts of small dollar donations from people who appreciate him standing up. He also has survived multiple primary challenges down there.

Look, Georgia is different. I'm not going to say that these are the same types of districts. but, you know, if you made it a district first type of campaign and really made it about the issues, maybe it would have worked. Again, I have no clue. Trump is historically unpopular. He also has a lot of Republicans who seem to be dissenting on the voter level, not necessarily at the high level. So, I don't know. I mean, look, it's very possible. At the same time, you know, with Trump, just to underscore what you were saying, with Donald Trump and kind of his definition of MAGA, let's put this up here on the screen. This was A4. We can go ahead and look. This was his

initial truth, much less nice than his stated comments. Marjorie Trader Brown, because of plummeting poll numbers. I don't know where the Brown comes from, but, and not wanting to face... He explained it, Sager. It's because grass when it rots turns brown. Oh, okay. That's why. He's lost his touch. It goes from green to brown. Not wanting to face a primary challenger with a strong Trump endorsement has decided to call it quits. Her relationship with the worst Republican congressman in decades, Tom Massey of Kentucky, also known as Rand Paul Jr., because he votes against the Republican party did not help her. For some reason, primarily that I refused to return her never-ending barrage of phone calls, Marjorie went bad. Nevertheless, I always appreat Marjorie and thank her

for service to our country, President D.J.T. I mean, this is where it just really, you know, disgusts me, is Marjorie Taylor Green is a traitor. And meanwhile, what we're going to cover in our show later, is your administration literally hosted an actual traitor at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, and you endorse and condoned that meeting. A real traitor, a guy who sold secrets to Israel, and you condone that meeting, okay? So, you know, let's look up the definition of traitor and of treason, by the way, while we're at. It just repulses me on this issue. And it's one of those where, look, we'll see, again, how things will come together for the Trump administration. They are all over the place. They're trying to pursue this peace deal in Ukraine, which we're going to

talk about. It has a decent enough shot. It's maybe. But also, you know, they're considering invading Venezuela, potentially this week, sometime next week. You've got the coalition, which seems, in my opinion, in shambles. Here's Alex Jones, who I would decide to say, perhaps part of more of the MAGA contingent, explaining why he may be breaking from Trump soon. Let's take a listen. And I'm just going to say it, point blank. I'm not a bandwagon person. I don't pile along and other people are doing something. But I know MTG well. She's a woman of incredible integrity. brought up poor, self-made, very successful destruction company, and it sounded to me like she was thrown in the towel

just because she can't be part of something that's, quote, a lesser of two evils. And she's very popular in her district. I'm not a person that is normally conflicted. I think I have a lot of knowledge, a lot of depth, a lot of sources, a lot of context. And when I do get conflicted on something, I just have to go to God with it

and pray about it a lot, I am seriously inches away from not supporting Trump anymore. Inches away from not supporting him anymore. So, I mean, I don't know. It's at the very least you could say this. Maybe Alex is just reading the tea leaves. You know, I don't know where his own, but, you know, he's been all over the place, especially on the Epstein issue. In my opinion, he's been missing in action from a lot of that.

He's been, he has called the Trump administration in Israel out. all of that. So I'll give them credit, I guess, where it is due. But, you know, if you look at the audience, that kind of contingent, I don't think it's a secret that they have been extremely dissatisfied with the Trump administration. You've got voices like Tim Dillon and others speaking again. I saw Joe Rogan talking about the Thomas Massey thing. So it's clear that, you know, there's enough of a demographic kind of swinging against a lot of what was promised on the campaign trail. It's been a year now. What have you done for me lately is always the prevailing segment in politics. And it doesn't look like there are any major developments outside of Ukraine

that could potentially fulfill some of those, especially in the midst of Epstein. And look, I mean, we have 30 days. So sometime before Christmas, we're all going to have a new cycle about those files release. The amount of redactions expected are going to be ones, you know, which just don't really reveal quite a lot. I'm happy to be wrong. I would love to be wrong if they actually did fully release it, but there's not a general expectation that that's going to happen. And so, yeah, I mean, if you put some Venezuela war on top of all that, it's not looking good. I don't think it's looking good. I think the, I think the 2025 elections were a big wake-up call for people, because when you were seeing these special elections that were going, shifting

like 15 points towards Democrats, even 20 points towards Democrats, it's like, all right, but those are special elections, it's weird time. They've got this very high turnout voter base. When you saw the shalacking that Republicans took in state after state, including like at the local level, like these, you know, right-wing school board members got swept down of office and just a real reckoning kind of across the board. Then you have to grapple with, okay, the poll numbers aren't fake. There is a major backlash brewing here. Trump is old and not at the top of his game and seems more focused on his ballroom than really anything else. American people are pissed about the state of the economy. I think that that was a real wake-up call for a lot of

Republicans and, you know, people like Alex Jones and because you could have lived up to that moment in the, you know, oh, we just won this major election. We won this major mandate. The American people are with us. The polls are wrong, et cetera. And you just can't really deny that reality anymore. So I think that's part of the, you know, the backdrop of what's going on here, both with Marjorie, with Alex Jones, and, you know, why we're seeing more and more dissatisfaction sort of vocally expressed from the coalition. Yeah, that's right. I mean, look, the permission structure is obvious from the 2025 election. It's also, I think, obvious in terms of just the true, like the actual deliverables from the administration so far. And we've got even the signature

achievement, the ceasefire, right? Probably their single best foreign policy achievement. It's kind of falling apart right now, guys, which we're going to cover. pretty soon in Israel. Like I wouldn't be shocked if two, three months from now, we're back to the full-on war in Gaza, not to mention what's happening with Lebanon. I mean, you know, with Beebe and his own political coalition problems, they have no ability to tamp any of this stuff down. So I don't know. I think that, I think at the end of the day, her loss, it tells us something I'm just not entirely, or her resigning. It tells us something. I just don't know yet what it is. I hope she runs. I really do. I think we need more people like her. Just stood up once. I think it'd be interesting.

I do. I do think it's a shame that she resigned, though. You know, she was an important voice in there. And I think even I saw Trump as planning on making some announcement about health care and trying to do something about health care premiums. We'll see what that amounts to. But I think part of the reason he felt pressured to do that is because of her consistent advocacy in that direction. I mean, I don't think it was the sole factor. But having someone within the party who'd been a MAGA loyalist and a Trump loyalist specifically speaking out about the cost of health care, I think, you know, I do think that that, mattered and the fact of the matter is as much as we would love to self-aggrandize about how important it is to be a podcaster. There's nothing like having actual power within the system, you know, in order to effectuate change. 100%. You talked about health care. Epstein is dead without her. I really believe it's not just nasty. She needed, she led the charge, her and she wrangled a few of the other votes, her ability to stand up to the White House and say absolutely not. She did a lot of the media stuff, not just on health care. She's remained steadfast on Israel. I actually think, you know, that type of pressure was one of the reasons why they did

ultimately go with the ceasefire deal, because they could see that some people like Marjorie and others were beginning to really crack in the foundation. If you think, even Ukraine, I mean, a lot of the signature foreign policy stuff that's been, you know, fights that's been happening behind the scenes, Marjorie Tillagreen has been, in my opinion, you know, on the good side of the issues and kind of leveraging her power and her voice. So there. So losing it is, it's going to be a tough, tough loss. at this point, it's just Thomas Massey. Massey, you know, he's, he's his own person, and he's always, he's, he's not MAGA, right?

He's really his own guy. He's a libertarian. He's an ideological libertarian, relatively consistent in his viewpoint, but that, yes, is different than Mackey. There's no hate towards a guy. He is, he's always, he's been exactly the same. I've been many times on the other side of the issue for him. But Marjorie, I mean, for her, she had a real, I think, credibility and a voice.

And so her loss is, it's a, it's a tough one, I think, for the country. and for the Republican Party, especially if you wanted to see a different direction. But it is what it is. I guess it's Donald Trump's party always has. People need to reconcile themselves to that. Let's get to Zoran. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan?

Just one page as a Google Doc. And send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault.

I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person, a billion-dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your

podcasts. A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers, but it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting, Long Island serial killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York since the son of Sam, available now. Listen for free on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, Dr. Jesse Mills here. I'm the director of the men's clinic at UCLA Health, and I want to tell you about my new podcast called The Mailroom. And I'm Jordan, the show's producer. And like a lot of guys, I haven't been to the doctor in many years. I'll be asking the questions

we probably should be asking, but aren't. Because guys usually don't go to the doctor unless a piece of their face is hanging off or they've broken a bone. Depends which bone. Well, that's true. Every week, we're breaking down the unique world of men's health, from testosterone and fitness to diets and fertility

and things that happen in the bedroom. You mean sleep? Yeah, something like that, Jordan. We'll talk science without the jargon and get you real answers to the stuff you actually wonder about. It's going to be fun, whether you're 27, 97, or somewhere in between. Men's health is about more than six packs and supplements. It's about energy, confidence, and connection. We don't just want you to live longer. We want you to live

better. So check out the mailroom on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. So as you guys almost certainly know, Trump and Zoran Mamdani had a big meeting at the White House last week. A lot has developed since then. A lot of fallout. Zoran went on meet the press. But Casey missed some of the highlights. Let's take a look at a little bit of how that went. Look, I think that there are many things in our city where we have to own the responsibility of it, things that existed long before the president was the president. And those are also part of the message of our campaign was to take on a broken politics of the past. And I ran against a number of candidates who represented different versions of that past.

And what we found time and again is that working people were left behind in the politics of our city. And what we're looking to do is put those people right back at the heart of our politics so that we don't have a situation where we're in the wealthiest city in the history of the world, and yet one in five can't even afford $2.90 for a metro card. Mr. President, you know, we had some interesting conversation, and some of his ideas really have the same ideas that I have. But a big thing on cost, you know, the new word is affordability. Another word is just groceries. It's sort of an old-fashioned word, but it's is very accurate. We had discussions on something. I'm not going to discuss what they were,

but that I feel very confident that he can do a very good job. I think he's going to be, I think he is going to surprise some conservative people, actually, and some very liberal people. He won't surprise him because they already like him. I call him the president a fascist. And your answer was, both President Trump and I have been clear about our positions and our views. Are you affirming that you think President Trump is a fascist? I've spoken about... That's okay, you can just say, yeah. Okay, it's easier.

It's easier than explaining it. I can not get over. Like, every time I watch back this meeting, I just can't get over at soccer. It's wild. Yeah, I mean, we thought that he would be charmed by Zoran, but I could not have anticipated him being like, it's fine. You can call me fast. This is all good.

Like, we're best buds now. It's cool. I think Trump is charmed by him. I also think it shows Trump doesn't care about the Republican Party. And I think because going into the midterms, the plan was to try to use. Zoran was going to be like the new Pelosi. They were going to put him in ads all across the deep south. They're like, this is why you've got to come out and vote for a Republican.

You've got to stop communism. They want him to be the ultimate boogeyman. And Trump is like, yeah, no, I'm actually good. You know, for the Trump administration, I actually thought it was smart. You take the rising politician, you know, this new young voice on affordability. He's got this mandate. at the end of the day, like you take somebody who, you know, really understood the same forces that got Donald Trump elected, not just I'm talking about the issues, but also the way that you get elected, being an insurgent, taking over party, beating establishment, coming in, actually reinventing campaign machinery, creating an incredible amount of buzz. It's a brand. Trump always respects that the most. And that's why I invited him, I think. And he wanted this image to try and conflate the two of them as kind of up against some sort of party establishment. I also think it reveals a couple of things also, is that the establishment

Democrats clearly have much less respect from Donald Trump than somebody like Azuron Mamdani. Because Trump respects winners, and he also respects people who can reinvent something that is inside of an established system. This is New York City. This is one of the most machine political places in the entire world. So the fact that he prevailed is something that they had nothing but a choice. It also shows you for Trump is he's not wedded to party orthodoxy, and he doesn't believe a lot of this BS. I actually thought that the fascist line was, it kind of revealed the veil of Kabuki from a lot of things. Like in terms of, oh, yes, we call each other fascists. Yes, we call each other communists, whatever. It's all in good fun. And it's all, it's kind of like

the Dick Cheney funeral in reverse, where it's like, yeah, we all called him a war criminal, but whatever. It's just about a big club. And I guess he's reinventing kind of what that club means. For Zoron, I did, I mean, I don't know, I'm of two minds. I could, I have all always thought that him taking a fight with Trump would be good to his political benefit. What I thought that that meeting showed me, and this is actually heartening because I think this is a good thing, I think Zorn actually cares about doing some of the stuff that he ran on, which is awesome, okay? Because at the end of the day, if you get defunded by the feds and you just end up in all this brawl with Tom Homan, ICE, and all that, it's not going to be, you know,

you're not building 200,000 affordable housing units. It's just not going to happen. You're going to be focused on trash, your city services, your subway, you would have huge problems, New York State. And he said, you know what? I got to swallow my pride. I got to schlep to the Oval. He didn't give too much. He didn't pull a Gritchin Whitmer, right? Like he stood his ground. And, you know, if you're a New York City voter, you know, I was very cynical about Zoron's ability to deliver. Just because, you know, I kind of thought he was like a politician. You know, at the end of the day, these guys just mostly care about what they like getting elected. But I was like, oh, man, no, he actually, like, he wants to do this stuff he ran on. And this is reality.

Trump is the president. So you got to charm the president. You need money. Or at the very least, you got to keep the spiggin on. If you really want the subway, if you want free subway, free buses, or 200,000 housing units, HUD, right? You're going to have to work massively with housing and urban development, you know, and that agency. So I think that's what he wanted. And so, look, I don't know. Perhaps it's a vision, a new vision of leadership. It's the shine bond model from a lot of the left. And I respect the hell out of him for the way that he did it. I really do. Well, your point is an important one, which is, you know, Trump was very obsequious. I mean, going out of his way in that clip we played, we have a lot of the same ideas.

You know, I think he's going to, I think he could make New York great again. I thought the question he got about would you feel safe living in New York City? He's like, absolutely no problem. Emily's question, too, about are you standing next to a jihadist? I mean, that was the one that was really the most devastating to the Republican Party, and especially Elise DeFonick, trying to run for governor in New York. Now, I think she was going to get blown out anyway. But this certainly doesn't help her case because they were very much trying to make him into this national boogeyman that they could use in districts across the country. Trump totally took the air out of those tires.

Now, we got to say, like, I think the confrontation may still be brewing, right? This is today they had this chummy meeting next week. Trump could be pissed off at Zoron. and be sending in the ICE agents and the CBP and threatening their funding again, like I think we probably will see that eventually come to pass. But you're right about Zoran.

You know, he, I believe, feels the weight of this office and the weight of the movement that he represents. He thinks very much about, like, the sewer socialist and the need to actually deliver. And he believes, I think, that his political project

will live or die by whether or not he's actually able to govern. effectively. So just through this meeting already, he's at least pushed off into the future the, you know, the mass invasion of federal agents into the city, which even just that, even if the federal funding isn't threatened, then you're having to deal with that. And that's what the news is about. And it's a major problem, a major distraction from you trying to get your agenda passed. So I think he feels that very heavily. And while Trump was being, you know, was praising him and

sort of contorting himself to be on Zoran's side. Zoran didn't give an inch in terms of what he viewed. He was not. He was very cordial to the president. You know, he talked about how much he appreciated the meeting, how he appreciated the opportunity for a partnership. But he didn't bend on his principles. And I think that mattered a lot in terms of how this was received.

After the meeting, I thought there would be some left or some liberal, like, upset. There was a little tiny bit of that. But mostly people were just impressed with how he was. was able to handle himself and, you know, this sense of him coming into the meeting, taking control and really sort of, you know, getting out of Trump what he wanted to get out of Trump. Zoran went on with Kristen Walker, meet the press yesterday. And there's some interesting exchanges there in particular about this, that moment we played where Trump's like, yeah, go ahead and call me a fascist. It's fine. Let's go ahead and take a listen to how Zoran handled that interview.

Mr. Mayor-elect, just to be very clear, do you think that press, President Trump is a fascist. And after President Trump said that, I said yes. So you do. And that's something that I've said in the past. I say today. And I think what I appreciated about the conversation that I had with the president was that we were not shy about the places of disagreement about the politics that has brought

us to this moment. And we also wanted to focus on what it could look like to deliver on a shared analysis of an affordability crisis for New Yorkers. Yeah, I don't know. You just can't stagger throw this man off his game. I don't know. I will say internally it makes no sense, right? because it's one of those things

was like, well, if you think he's fascist authoritarian, then why would you meet with him? And it's like, well, why would you try to work together on some shared agreement, right? You know, that's literally the opposite of the theory of any resistance. So, in my opinion, it's kind of fake. But look, he would be fake

and it would also be weak if he backed down in terms of what he said. I will just say, again, I mean, what I am so impressed by is every Democrat in the country knows how to win right now. It's easy. You don't have to do shit.

At this people, at this time, people are mad at Trump. They will never blame you. So you just stand up and you say, screw you, Trump, and you want Trump. Look at what happened to Brandon Johnson. This guy was a bum in the city of Chicago. Dead. Trump saved his ass. Same with Pritzker.

It's not like Pritzker was popular. This is not just an American story, by the way. You know, I've shared some of my reporting here. The president of Columbia, he's afraid that they're going to lose the election. He is desperate to get sanctioned by Trump. Trump bailed out Lula down in Brazil with those tariffs. He screwed the Bolsonaro Estos. Anywhere that Trump is seen as attacking you, it boosts your popularity.

You literally didn't have to do anything. It would be to Zoran's benefit to have mass ice raids like throughout the city. It would be to his benefit to get cut off because then you don't have to do anything. You could just go on MSNBC all day long and be like, oh, it's fascist, the return. Not do nothing. Every single one of your voters will back you. because they're blamed Trump for not delivering on the promises. This time, I was like, man, wow, he actually cares.

It's a rare thing in politics, okay? You know, I've very rarely seen it. I think the Claudia Shinebaum model is actually the model. Yeah. Because she, you know, already had high popularity, and she has one of the highest approval ratings of any world leader around the world. And the way she has handled Trump has not been to have this extremely confrontational approach. It is very reminiscent of what's the Iran just pulled off in the Oval Office.

of I'm going to stand firm. I'm not going to get pushed around, but I'm also going to do a bit of a charm offensive, right? I'm going to, you know, play to his ego. Like, this is very easy to manipulate man. And so she, I think like Zoran, really wants not just to have high, you know, a decent political standing. She wants to actually deliver for the people of Mexico. And so far, she's been effective in, you know, being able to do that. And Trump came in and there was all sort of bluster about we're going to bomb Mexico. We're going to. We're going to. going to invade Mexico and all that stuff, that has not happened. They have been able to have a collaborative relationship. And, you know, that has been effective for her, both in terms of

her political standing, but more importantly, in terms of the goals that she has as the president of Mexico. And so I actually think that that is probably the closest model you could look at for the way that Zoran is approaching this relationship with the Trump White House. Because, like you said, you have to deal in reality. He is the president. He has to. has tremendous power. He can make your life incredibly difficult and incredibly miserable and make it impossible for you to be able to actually accomplish your governing goals. Just in a sign, we could put B3 up on the screen of how seemingly smitten Trump was after this meeting. He posted, he did a photo dump on Truth Social of their photos in front of the FDR portrait. He even posted

the one of Zoran just solo there in front of the FDR portrait, this one of them sharing a moment there, you know, outside. So, you know, I think, I think Trump was suitably impressed. And Trump, like, he's just can't resist the star power of Zoron. And I think you're right, Sager, that for Trump, this actually is a good look for him, like, you know, makes it seem he's, makes him seem like he's also pragmatic, like he's not an ideologue, you know, he's sort of glomming on to the new hot thing who's put affordability at the center. He also wants to associate himself with that message of affordability. He wants to associate himself with the star outsider who's, you know, coming at the establishment, et cetera. I think he probably likes the idea

that this kind of needles Schumer and Jeffries and the Democratic leadership as well. And he doesn't really give a shit about the fact that it's actually terrible for the Republican Party because at the end of the day, Trump is interested in what serves Trump. Yeah, of course. Look, in all cases, everyone there benefited, which is what I thought it was kind of fascinating and potentially a new model for politics. I'm like, hey, you know, I would love to see more stuff like this. Let's go put B4 up on the screen, just to give everybody an example. This is a very noteworthy tweet, only for, you know, kind of insiders. But this is James Blair. Okay, James Blair is a very high-level White House official. He's the White House deputy chief of staff, and he's a 24-24 political

director for the Trump campaign. This guy has an office in the West Wing. And here, he's quote-tweeting a piece that says, Mom Dani says he and Trump share a commitment to the affordability agenda. He says yes. You know why? Because they're not stupid. At the end of the day, they can look at polls, they can see exactly where the wind is blowing, and they see the problem that they continue to face on the economy. That's why Trump is going to come out with some newfangled health care plan, which it's funny, for all the GOP talk of price controls, the Trump plan, as currently floated, is basically telling health care companies, you're not allowed to raise premiums. It basically is a price control, which I think is fine.

Hey, I'm cool with it. But he basically is like, we're not going to subsidize you anymore and you're just not allowed to raise premiums at all. That's kind of where, you know, he has pushed the Republican Party. Not just Storm, by the way. We talked about MTG, others that are working inside of the system. Now currently to try and at least address some of the anger or mitigate some of the pushback that will come next November

in the upcoming midterm elections. They see this as a problem for them. So, you know, it is one where I really think it's just, Big picture, Trump is smart. At the end of the day, he understands brand and understands the power of people who can beat the establishment and people who have something different and interesting. And he says, you know what?

I want to connect myself to that. That's what he's been a political entrepreneur from the very beginning. Zoran, the smartest and easiest thing for him to do would have been to not go and to pick a fight with the Trump administration. This was a gamble. And so you do have to give it to him.

He didn't pull a Whitmer, holding the folder in front of his face in the oval off, right? That was disastrous. It looked horrible for her. It didn't pull a Whitmer. And, you know, again, maybe I'm just the only person who's shocked to see a guy who actually wants to do the stuff that he ran on. It's been a long time.

I don't really see it all that often in politics. And so that's the only takeaway. You're like, clearly, he actually cares. He wants to get some stuff done. So New Yorkers, you know, I rescind my take. Maybe you actually will get what you voted for. I'm hoping for you, all right? I want 200,000 more affordable units in there.

It'd be awesome to see. It really would. Just because it's, I mean, how many times have we seen this show, right? And, you know, we all know, Spanberger, she's not going to do a goddamn thing. Mikey, Cheryl, all these other people. They're just going to stand there. They're going to grandstand. They'll do some things on the margins.

But anything transformate, it's not going to happen. A lot of these Democrats. So for Zoron, props to the guy. Seriously. It took skill to navigate that. I think one other thing that I'll say, and then we can just, briefly touch on a little bit of the Republican reaction. But it also shows you the power of actually having an ideology that you're committed to because, you know, Zoron knows what he's about, right?

Zoran knows what his goals are. He knows what he's about. And so when he goes, his message of affordability and here's and just relentless focus on that and here's how I'm going to make life livable for average people. I mean, that has completely reshaped the entire national conversation. You talk about Mikey Cheryl and Abigail Spanberg. I mean, Cheryl in particular, really picked up on what Zoran was successful with in New York and incorporated a lot of that language into her campaign, including some specific promises about freezing the utility rates in the state of New Jersey. Trump clearly also, now he's, he never talked really about, he never used the word affordability. Now, he is using that and wanting to associate himself with that

message. And that's why, you know, so much of the conversation, the entire conversation in that Oval Office Presser is around Zoron's priorities, around his ideology, around what he wants to accomplish. And so I think it does show you the power of when you actually believe in something. And when that something happens to dovetail with the interests of American people, I mean, it is just an extraordinarily powerful force. It is obviously such a powerful force that you can go from 1% in the polls to beating a political dynasty in just a matter of months. People were pointing out that that meeting with Trump happened almost a year to the day from that video that Zoran released where he was just standing on the street and nobody knew

who he was talking to people who had voted for Trump about why they voted for Trump. So truly a sort of astronomical rise that, again, I think Trump can't help but respect in that has been so dynamic and so magnetic that it has completely, reshaped the national conversation to the point of now you've got, you know, the Trump White House bending to some of those realities and having to feel like they got to put out a health care plan when on the campaign trail, he always said was he's got a concept of a plan. So, you know, I'll just, we don't have to play these thoughts because we've gone on now long enough, but you know, lots of Republicans who have postured about how much they hate him and how he's an

Islamist and he's a jihadist and he's doing Sharia law and he's a terrorist and all of these things. And they had to invent some fake reality where he was like trembling at the feet of Trump, Jack Posobik, who was there in the White House, who asked some question to Zoran as well was talking about. Zoran was quivering there. It's like, dude, come on. I mean, we all saw the meeting like, let's be real about what this looked like. Rune Giuliani said that he was sick to his stomach seeing Zoran in the White House. And Laura Lumer, of course, is just like having a full-blown crash out because she just, I mean, she's an open Islamophones. like just like the most bigoted person against Muslims that you could possibly be.

So to see her guy, Trump, in there incredibly friendly with Zoran, who again has been made out to be this like radical Islamist jihadist boogeyman by the Republicans. There was there were a lot of different directions of cope going on from the right. Yeah, definitely because look for them, it was easy. Like this is some stuff that boomers in Alabama get very upset about, right? like, oh, my God, New York City, and all of this. And so for them, like, taking away that. But look, I actually think that's a good thing

because running on, like, low IQ Islamophobia is just boring and, you know, it's a tried and true playbook, I guess, down in the South. But it also just, you know, it goes past issues, affordability. It's like if you can't critique anything else, and if you don't have a solution, which they're currently being caught with their pants down, both on the economy and on health care,

yeah, you're going to get your ass beat. And, you know, if anything, it's kind of healing. American politics. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from

OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman. There's this betting pool for the first. first year that there's a one-person billion-dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan.

Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the IHeart Radio app. wherever you get your podcasts. A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers, but it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there, hidden in plain sight.

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Yeah. So I'll give my reaction on the other side of this. But as you guys have probably been tracking, Hakeem Jeffries, who is, of course, the leader of the Democrats in the House, has a primary challenger, a guy named Chiosay, who is a DSA member. He's a leftist on the Democratic City Council. He and Zoran were close. He was a supporter of Zoran, although he did actually jump into the primary game pretty late with, I think, a joint endorsement of a couple different candidates. In any case, Zoran had discouraged him for running against Jeffries. The suspicion is that he made some kind of a deal with Jeffries to get the endorsement prior to the primary. And part of that deal was

like, I won't back a primary challenger. But not only did he not back. back Chiosay, but he actually went to the DSA endorsement meeting to speak out against endorsement of him. So he really is like using his political capital to undercut a challenger to Hakeem Jeffries. Hakeem Jeffries has come up through politics as an adversary to the left. He has sucked in his position just like on the merits. He has not done a good job, et cetera. So Zoran got asked in this meet the press interview, okay, so we know that you're back Hakeem Jeffries in this primary, but do you want to see him as Speaker of the House? Let's go ahead and take a listen to how Zoran played this.

Democrats, with the midterms, do you want to see Leader Jeffries become the Speaker of the House? Yes. Okay. That was a firm quick answer. Yes. I mean, no equivocating, no word salad, no nothing. And I mean, I guess I'll start with the positives. I'm curious to get your reaction.

You can put V8 up on the screen. Zoran's intervention and that DSA endorsement probably made difference here because you had them voting not to recommend endorsing GSA's congressional run. This was the DSA electoral working group. A total of 1,205 DSA members voted. 555 voted to recommend 626 voted again. So it was pretty close vote. Very likely, again, that Zoran's intervention made the difference here. And so on the positive side, listen, if you're going to do it, I appreciate him not doing the word salad and just saying, yes, I'm behind him. That's it. let's move on. I understand why. I understand the logic. I think it is a similar logic as the one that

leads him to, you know, go to the White House and strike up a friendly relationship with Trump, which is that he feels that at the end of the day, he wants to do whatever he can and be as pragmatic as possible in achieving his agenda. On this decision, though, I don't think that the calculation really works out because Jeffries is not the president of the United States. he does not have that level of power in New York City. He cannot thwart your ambitions to that degree. And I truly believe that whether it's Jeffries or Pelosi or Schumer or any of these Democratic establishment types, first of all, they're going to try to fuck you anyway, because they always do. AOC has tried playing this inside game. It has gotten her effectively nothing, really,

in terms of actual concrete policy deliverables. And the only thing they really respect is when you have power and they have to kowtow to it. That's what's been going on more with Kathy Hockel, where she saw the strength of Zoron's movement, and she has had to bend to his policy priorities. So in this instance, with, you know, go throwing in behind Jeffries and being unequivocal about it and trying to undercut Chiosay,

I think it is, I understand the calculation he's doing it, doing, I disagree that this is the right approach in this case because I think that Jeffries will respond much more to power and you will get much more of your way if he is truly having to look over his shoulder at a primary challenger and having to accommodate himself to your goals and your power.

I totally agree. And let's lay the flip side of everything I just talked about with Trump. Trump is capricious and three runs from now he could do it all over. And so now you're actually going to have the visual of you in the Oval and you have to deal with all the problems.

Now here with Jeffries. And this is the theory behind the Trump meeting and the Jeffries endorsement is one and the same. I need to work with the political system in order to get my things done. Now, we talked about this before he won, and I'll go revert to my cynicism. Kathy Hokel, three days after the election, what does she say? Yeah, this whole free bus thing, it ain't happening.

She literally said that. She's like, it doesn't have the support in Albany, so it's not going to happen. It's like, okay, well, that was one of your signature, actual possible deliverables. The next one, the most difficult thing he wants to do is build 200,000 units of affordable housing. You're going to need federal dollars for that. You're going to need some HUD. You're going to need zoning problems. In New York City, you're going to need the political establishment in New York to be defeated,

and you are also going to have to bulldoze this through with multiple different political systems. They don't have much of an incentive right now to work with you. So if Kathy Hokel at the peak of Zoran, right after he gets elected, with all the buzz, is willing to come out and say, free buses, not happening. That's a problem, right? Because you're not having a lot of leverage

in the political establishment. She may face a primary challenge. She still doesn't care. She's still not willing to go along with it. Yeah, she does have a primary challenge from the lieutenant governor Antonio Delgado. But that's my point. So even with the primary challenge,

She's still not afraid in order to come out and say that. So you've got to be afraid. I will say, though, I don't know if you saw this. She does want to, she has changed her position on raising taxes in order to fund affordable child care, which is another one of his major priorities and maybe actually the most difficult one to accomplish. So expanding, you know, Bill de Blasio is able to expand to free pre-K. That was one that is, you know, that's a huge, that would be a huge major new program that requires

a new revenue. And she has signals she's willing to work. work with him on that. But again, I think that is because of the, you know, the power of his movement and her really reading the Tileys about where the Democratic Party is. But, you know, so like I get it. He doesn't want to have the relationship Bill de Blasio had with Andrew Cuomo, where they just absolutely hated each other's guts. That made it very difficult for de Blasio to govern. It really ends up, you know, putting a sort of rock around the neck of his mayoralty, even though he is able to accomplish the universal pre-K. So like,

Kathy Hokel has some genuine power and cards in the state. Obviously, President Trump does as the process of the United States. I don't really understand what you need Hakeem Jeffries for. Yeah, I agree. It may be there are things under this. I think it must be the case that there's some part of his power struck that I'm not seeing above the surface, but I don't really get what you need Hakeem Jeffries for to be totally honest with you. And even putting that aside, again, I think playing some more hardball and showing some more strength, especially when this guy, like, he barely, passive aggressively endorsed you two days before the primary. And now we owe him this big debt. Like I just, I don't really understand the calculation that is going on here. Like I said, there may be things beneath the surface that I'm just not aware of that changes the calculation somehow. But I think in general, what we've seen from

the left is that the approach to power has to be more muscular, you know, showing more of the strength of the movement, showing, hey, you are going to pay yourself in your own district and have to worry about this primary challenge if you don't come more in our direction. To me, that seems like the, you know, much more effective approach to take. So I don't know. Maybe there are things going on here, dynamics I don't understand, but I don't really understand what it is that you need so badly from Hakeem Jeffries that you're willing to just unequivocally back him, kneecap his primary opponent, et cetera. I think it's probably a backroom deal with power centers, right?

Hakeem, he may not have no political popularity. He's still the freaking Democratic leader. And he's got access to every billionaire in New York City who, if you want to build housing, who owns all the housing, who owns all the buildings? Like, you know, I really think that's the only possible explanation. If we think back to the Oval meeting, that was brokered by one of these like Trump-friendly real estate moguls, right? So you can see how, look, this is the problem, as I've always said, with governing New York. This is a city run by the filthy rich. Like, at the end of the day, you will

have to confront that in some ways. You can go against it. You could try. I mean, they're probably going to defeat you. Or you could try to work with them, which in this case you probably is doing, in the case of Hakeem. I'll say what I think is the craziest is the DSA stuff. Because it's one thing to stay out of the race, which I think he should have done. I think the smartest thing, would have been stay out. Don't endorse, but don't unendorse. But actively, listen, that's up to the voters. Bingo. Right? That's a classic thing. People do it all the time. I trust the people in New York. They're going to get to evaluate it. Do what you want. Right. Bingo. Nobody asked you to come out affirmatively to endorse him and then go to the DSA meeting and say, don't endorse him.

I also, by the way, I think this is a critical moment for the DSA because it's basically like the Republican Party in Maga. It's like do you work for Zoron? Or just you? Do you, you know, stick to your own guns? Like, this is the most counter-D-SA thing I've ever seen is not endorsing Hakeem-Jeffrey's primary opponent. Like, what are we doing here? I don't know. I don't understand it at all on their part.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is a real show of strength for Zoran with the organization, for sure. You know, I mean, the things that I've seen are she just joined DSA relatively recently, so they feel like, oh, he's a little bit of an opportunist. He had said that he voted for Bernie in 2016.

He wasn't actually registered to vote in 2016. So apparently there are a few things like that that make them a little skeptical of him. But I don't know. My view at this point is there's all this like, oh, well, and then the other pieces, I think it's a very difficult district to win. Like Hakeem Jeffries, Zoran won that district. He did. But Jeffries is well liked.

And apparently it's going to be difficult to win. So that's the other piece. So what I've heard from their perspective is, number one, I guess she has not been a DSA member for long. So like, okay, is this opportunism? You see the Zoran wave. You're jumping on it. Number two, he said he voted for Bernie in 2016. Apparently he wasn't registered to vote.

Number three, the district, I think, is genuinely a very difficult one to win. Hakeem Jeffries is popular. Yes, Zoron did win it. But apparently, Jeffries has a lot of standing in the district. you're going to have to win over some of those older working class black voters that have been very difficult for leftists to be able to win. Now, Zoran won them actually in the general election, but in the primary, they were largely with Andrew Cuomo.

So that's kind of the electoral calculus. I just, I don't, I think it's an old way of thinking to do too much of like, oh my God, can we win, let me crunch the numbers, et cetera. There are so many left insurgent candidates. coming out of the woodwork, I think it really, to me, the way to go is to back a whole slew of them. And then some of them are going to lose. And some of them are going to get through. And some of them are going to get through that you would not necessarily expect. Because what we have going for us now on the left is that the liberal democratic base largely agrees with us now

in a way that they really didn't previously. They sort of bought into the project. They believe they're the strongest fighters against Trump. You know, they buy in certainly to the policy project, although that's never really been the problem. The Democratic leadership is really defenestrated and deeply unpopular with the liberal base. My view is just like, get behind as many of these candidates as you possibly can. And even if Chi Osay cannot win in that primary, Hakeem Jeffrey's having to worry about him. Right. That's going to change the way he operates. That's going to change his political calculus. You can already see it with Richie Torres, who is drawn a primary challenger and is having to change some of the way he talks about Israel and tried it.

You know, he came out right away and said, we can't have these Islamophobic attacks on Zoran. Like, you can see the way he's having to accommodate him and change himself in real time to make sure that he can defeat a potential primary challenge from his left. So in my view, if you have all of these Democrats having to look over their shoulder to the left and worry about what is coming, even. though many, you know, or if not most of those challenges won't succeed just because of the power of incumbency, that's still going to change your political landscape. And we see that happen on the right. I mean, that's what the Tea Party wave did, right? You had people who lost in the

primaries, but more than that, you had the whole Republican Party having to worry, like, what is coming for me from the right? And that changed in the overall approach to politics. So that's my view of the approach here, rather than being like, oh, my God, I don't know if he can win. Just get behind as many of these candidates as possible who are strong on your issues. And Chiosay is strong on DSA's issues and has been a left voice on the city council now. So has a proven track record. That's my view of how, you know, how to play this moment for, you know, for DSA and for the left more broadly. Anyone out there, you're an idiot.

If you're this whole like, oh, well, he did your vote? Shut up. All right. This is politics. It's about opportunists. Who do you think you're dealing with? You think you're dealing with, like, normal, well-adjusted people? No.

The way that you win is to make your side politically convenient. It's like when all those neo-con Republicans started calling themselves MAGA. That was a victory for MAGA. Now, you know, it should have come with something, like in terms of, well, then you're going to have to change it. So that's a critique. But why do they call themselves MAGA? That's what the voters want to hear. That's what you do.

That's how you win. You think that everyone just Pollyanna voted for the Civil Rights Act or everyone just Pollyanna just comes around. Oh, actually, I've had a total change of art here. No, all right, they do it for political opportunistic purposes. That's how you win shit. Read a book. These people are just so pie in the sky.

Honestly, that's a loser mentality. I mean, I agree. The fact that it is now the cynical political move is to be a DSA member. Like, guys, take the win. Get the win. That's great. You know, that has never been the case before. And now you're like, I, you know, you are adopting their issues that you're positioning yourself in their lane.

Like, I don't really care what's in his heart, you know. I care about what political actions are being compelled. And, you know, after the fact, if he doesn't stick to his principles, if he gets elected and doesn't stick to his principles, then you can unendorse. You can back a primary challenge or whatever or do what you need to do to discipline your, you know, people who run with your backing. But yeah, for now, just if they're with you, be with them. Make these Democrats have to fear you and worry about whether you're going to back a challenge or against them. Think about this. They're like, he's a political opportunist because he lied about voting for Bernie.

You should be happy about that. You should want people to lie about that, all right? Come on. It's like all these Republicans who all voted for, like, Jeb Bush and then they lied that they've been as Trump supporter. That's a victory for Trump. Morons? I don't know. Yeah.

I'm not even really sure. I mean, and I also am not really even. sure that it's fair with regard to Chiosay, because like, I mean, nobody says he's always certainly been a progressive, whether he's like a brand newish DSA member or not. Like, he's definitely broadly on the left. So this isn't like someone who just showed up and suddenly flipped all of their positions, you know. I don't know. Learn how to win. That's what winning looks like. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one.

one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO, Sam Aldman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person billion dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before. for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game,

I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game

on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers, but it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island serial killer, the investigation

into the most notorious killer in New York, since the son of Sam, available now. Listen for free on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey there, Dr. Jesse Mills here. I'm the director of the men's clinic at UCLA Health, and I want to tell you about my new podcast called The Mailroom. And I'm Jordan, the show's producer. And like a lot of guys, I haven't been to the doctor in many years. I'll be asking the questions we probably should be asking, but aren't. Because guys usually don't go to the doctor unless a piece of their face is hanging off or they've broken a bone. Depends which bone. Well, that's true. Every week, we're breaking down the unique world of men's health, from testosterone and fitness to diets and fertility and

things that happen in the bedroom. You mean sleep? Yeah, something like that, Jordan. We'll talk science without the jargon and get you real answers to the stuff you actually wonder about. It's going to be fun, whether you're 27, 97, or somewhere in between. Men's Health is about more than six packs and supplements. It's about energy, confidence, and connection. We don't just want you to live longer. We want you to live better.

So check out the mailroom on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. All right, let's get to you, Ukraine. Turning now to Ukraine, some major developments over the last couple of days on a potential Ukraine peace deal. There's been a lot of back and forth between the United States on whether a peace plan is even real or not. There is officially some progress, at least for right now. The United States, the Europeans, and the Ukrainians met in Geneva over the weekend. This is what the Ukrainian lead negotiator had to say. Let's take a listen.

We have a very productive first session with distinguished American delegation. We have very good progress and we are moving forward to the just and lasting peace. Ukrainian people deserve and want this peace more than anyone in this planet. We thank our big friends, United States and personal President Trump and his team to their commitment to bring this. peace. And we will continue to work today, as Secretary said. We will be working and in coming days to join proposals. And we also will engage our European friends. And of course, the final words will be of our leaders of the President of United States and Ukraine. And I hope that we can achieve the good progress today.

Okay, so that was the words from the negotiator there for the Ukrainian side. There has been so much back and forth on a peace plan. There's a European counterproposal. Let's go ahead and put the next element up on the screen. I'm going to go ahead and read from some of the most key parts of what eventually was accepted by the United States as its outline for a peace plan. Here are the key points. Number one, the size of the Ukrainian armed forces would be limited to 600,000 personnel. Now, this is a sticking point around the size of the Ukrainian military. The Ukrainians and the Europeans pushing it very, very hard against this. Ukraine currently has some 2 million people in the military, 900,000 active duty personnel. This was specifically a part which is being requested and being pushed by the Russian side because, of course, they don't necessarily want to sign a peace deal, some end to the war, which would also keep a massive, you know, major Ukrainian military there at some sort of demilitarized zone. and then, of course, keep the war continuing and make it so that some future, some sort of conflict

may break out. Obviously, that's up to them. They didn't necessarily have to invade in the first place, not justifying it, just explaining from their side, but this is a huge sticking point for the Ukrainians and the Europeans, but one that was accepted by the U.S. and was apparently requested, or at least negotiated with the Russians. Number two, this is the big sticking point, too. Ukraine agrees to enshrine in its constitution. It will not join NATO, and NATO agrees to include in its statutes of provision that Ukraine will not be admitted in the future. I would say this is the biggest sticking point out of all of them, Crystal, and this is the one which is directly countered in the European peace proposal that has put forward. Let's go back and rewind

the clock all the way to the very beginning. What was the number one reason that Russia said that they invaded Ukraine? NATO. They said, we want an assurance that Ukraine will never be in NATO. And then if you want to rewind the clock even further, it's NATO that actually invited Ukraine and Georgia to be in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the first place, which was a huge sticking point between the U.S. and Ukraine, or the U.S. and Russia, specifically NATO and Russia, about encroachment, all that. We've gone a million times through the justifications, and for the U.S. side as to why it was a good plan, we've explained some of the Russian security objections to increase NATO encroachment in their traditional territory. Nobody said

that they should have invaded, not justifying it in that way at all. But it is a political reality whenever you're a nuclear-armed state with some 9,000 warheads. At the end of the day, they did invade Ukraine. And of course, it's not like their military did all that well in the first couple of years. It's only recently, with brute force and manpower, they've been able to achieve any military success at all. But the truth is, is we are where we are. There are probably a million or so people dead, hundreds of thousands who have been wounded, millions who have been displaced from Ukraine. The Russian military and the Russian people, more importantly, do not seem to care whatsoever that

hundreds of thousands of their countrymen are being led to slaughter in Ukraine. They just don't care. It's kind of remarkable, honestly. It's not really something that I would have predicted. I thought it might have gone the way of Afghanistan. But they're in a much stronger position than they were in, let's say, a year or so into the war, when the ability of the Ukrainians to actually mount a real counteroffensive could have happened. Putin's point from the beginning at least in these negotiations has been, I'm really not going to give up much. Some of this territory

which I'm asking for, I'll either take it through blood or you can give it to me right now and we can stop the killing and then we can sign some sort of overarching peace agreement. But in my opinion, the European and Ukrainian position remains delusional. You are not going to be in NATO, period.

It would actually be insane to give you NATO membership at this point because parts of your country, which you claim is yours, is literally under military occupation by a nuclear-armed state of a foreign power. You can invoke Article 5 at any time. And, you know, there's a case, I think at least somewhat, given Putin's reaction, the Russian people's reaction and more, that NATO membership actually is just a non-starter for a lot of the Russian population, their political establishment and Vladimir Putin, and their

ability to continue and to fight this war. So what are we all going to do here? I'll just say what strikes me the most is that even this peace deal, which guarantees, gives security guarantees for the remainder of Ukraine, that that's still not enough for the European. This is the best thing you could possibly get. You're basically getting some sort of NATO Article 5 style guarantee without being inside of NATO. Yes, you have to give a part of territory which are currently under Ukrainian occupation. That's a bitter pill to swallow. I understand. I just read a testimony from a Ukrainian soldier on the front line who, look, I I am cherry-picking, but he was like, guys, there's nobody here. It's all destroyed anyways, and we're probably going to lose it in the first place. To be fair, 50% of some Ukrainian soldiers also say that they don't want to accept the peace deal. But I don't know. I mean, this entire thing, it's a boondoggle, it's a money laundering operation of upper proportions on the Ukrainian side.

Insane corruption scandals that have been happening there day after day. Their own military, the average age, somewhere between 40 and 50 years old. Yes, they've stood firm, and you've got to, of course, give them credit for it. don't have a chance of holding any of this territory in the long run. You're going to lose it no matter what. I mean, it's just going to happen. The only question is how much money, how many lives, and how much longer this thing has to continue. So I really don't know. I mean, I don't really think there's a weapon system in the world absent a nuke that we could give the Ukrainians that could help them accomplish their military objectives at this point. So it's pretty delusional.

Yeah, I mean, I think we should acknowledge the deal is that as proposed is disgusting and unjust based on the fact that the Russians were the aggressors. You know, it includes giving up parts of, so all of Crimea, Lujansk and Dienetsk, even parts that the Russians have not been able to take militarily at this point. Kersan and Zabarisia will be frozen along the current contact lines, but those other regions you're just handing over to Russia. You have the limits on Ukrainian military size and they're looking at this going, okay, but they just invaded us. And now you're limiting our ability to be able to fight back. And there's other pieces of this.

I mean, the economic part of it is effectively, I mean, it's like colonial exploitation. You know, it's certainly another effort to make billions of dollars for Trump and his family and Whitkoff or whoever else is going to get their money grabbing hands on this. It is a disgusting and unjust plan. Okay. Now we have to deal with reality. What are the alternatives? And, you know, it may be that through the negotiations, you can make this slightly

more, you know, more just towards the Ukrainian inside. It's not going to be fully just. There's no doubt about that. But you can, you know, maybe you can change some of the territorial requirements. Maybe you can lift a bit of the size of the military that will be allowed. Maybe you can change some of the different terms, et cetera. This is far from a done deal. But the reality is if you're going to end the war at this point, it's going to be a hideous deal. It's going to be hideous. You know, it's going to be hideous. It's going to be unfair. It's going to be unjust. It's going to be, you know, all of those things. The question is, is the continuation of the war more hideous and more unjust? Is it going to lead to an even worse outcome? And unfortunately, I think that is where we are.

Unless we're willing to go all the way in and be boots on the ground with them and go to a full-blown war against, you know, this nuclear armed superpower, which I don't think is in the best interest of our country or the world, unless you're willing to do that, you're talking about continued horror, continued war, continued blood and death. And very likely, Russia ends up taking these parts of the territory that are being offered in this deal to begin with. So it's ugly. You know, it's an ugly, if we're going to end it now, it is going to be an extremely ugly end. But what's even uglier is to continue the war in this manner and just continue to bleed down an entire generation of Ukrainian men. Yeah, it's, look, I get it. It's tough. And it's very easy for me

to say. I live in the most powerful military, in a country with the most powerful military in the world. It's not up for negotiation. But that's not the case for the vast majority. And by the way, if you look at your own history, you are lucky to be alive. I mean, that's the truth. You are lucky that you get to remain as a polity in the first place. You have accomplished actually something quite great. You held off the Russians from taking over your entire country. It's the Europeans and the U.S.'s fault for selling you a dream that you were going to survive completely intact and they were going to take back Crimea in the first place. We got way too high on their own supply and then the military reality of what it's like to fight Russia started to set in. That is

the case. No one said, I mean, look, the invasion of Russia was a disaster actually for Russia in the initial beginning. But major countries with huge industrial bases, with oil and with nuclear weapons, they can absorb some blows. This has been the history basically of the Russian nation now for over 100 years. And all of the promised hopes of destroying the Russian economy didn't happen. Creating a coup against Putin, nope, didn't happen. The only coup that they tried against him completely failed. And the guy, what did his plane crash or something like that? The Wagner Group, dude. Yeah, he died. So there's no organized political opposition. Putin threw everybody in jail that he wanted to.

If anything, he solidified his control over the oligarchs who he thought were getting too friendly with the European powers. And the people are mostly with him. People still continue to join the military. They're paying out high pensions. Their economy is a war machine and it's humming. It's doing okay. None of these promises of how they were going to end the war ended up happening. And that was basically going to be the case from day one. Also, looking at this, even from what the Ukrainians are trying to demand, look how much better off they would have been back in April if they had just taken the peace deal in the first place. The U.S. and the Europeans sold them a false bill of goods. By the way, the Europeans, you know, I don't want to let them off the hook here. All they want,

all they want right now is to keep this war going because they need the spigot and to basically keep their domestic political crises off to the side. They want the U.S. security umbrella. The longer the conflict goes on for them, it's good because it keeps them relevant in the eyes of the United States. It keeps it a live issue. And one of the worst things that could ever happen to the Europeans is if it ends. And right now, there's all of these fights between the EU and the U.S. about withdrawing the U.S. from, you know, the eastern flank of NATO. Like, they need that to keep going. So there's a lot of self-interest that's happening here at the same time. I just want to skip ahead to C4. Just don't want to let the U.S. off the hook. And this is where probably my most

sympathetic take from the Ukrainians comes is, can we really trust these people? I don't know, man. Because here's really what happened with the plan. The original plan that we just showed you leaked. The U.S. confirmed that that plan was real. Some U.S. senators condemned that plan. Then some U.S. senators said that Rubio called them and denied it was the real plan. The White House then denied that denial, and Rubio came full circle and said, yes, it was our real plan. So there is a lot of chaos that's actually currently happening behind the scenes. And we at the very least have to acknowledge that for the Ukrainians, because they're dealing with such a capricious and get chaotic administration, this is the fate of their country. And, you know, it is a bitter pill to swallow.

So I understand it. And they need to get their shit together if they actually want anything to happen because I'm personally tired of all this back. Zelensky comes. Then they berate him. Zelensky comes. Now we're friends. Zelensky comes along with all of these. ministers and we have the whole Putin summit and shit doesn't happen. And then we're, oh, we're going

to sanction Russia, actually. So everything is all over the place. And for all the Ukrainians who are crying right now, you guys have all been here before with Trump. He could change his mind literally at any moment. So don't be, don't be too assured that any of this is all that serious. So there you Yeah. No, that's true. I mean, the other part is like the, you know, I mean, the cash grab disaster capitalism aspect of it is obviously also disgusting. You know, and that's, that is one one of the areas where they're at odds with the Europeans, too, in terms of how they would use these Russian frozen assets, you know, what they propose in the Trump deal is basically like, you know, some portion of it will be used for reconstruction and the other portion is going to go into a joint investment vehicle with Russia. And even the portion of the Russian assets that are being used for Ukrainian reconstruction are going to be done so led by, directed by the U.S. So, I mean, listen, we know how this administration operates. It's going to be, you know, a massive enrichment scheme for whether it's Kushner or Trump's, you know, other Trump family members, Wittkoff, his family members, other allies, whatever. Like, we can all see how this

is going to go, which is utterly disgusting, right? So let's not, let's not put that to the side. One other aspect of this saga that you alluded to, it's just important to understand the political dynamics here, too, is obviously Zelensky has pushed off any sort of elections while the war was going on saying, hey, we're in a state of emergency, state of war. We can. can't have elections. We've just got to, you know, continue in the direction that we are. He is embroiled. Ukraine has long been a corrupt state. Zelensky won initially on a promise to root out corruption. So this has been a deep concern for the Ukrainian people. There is a massive scandal with regard to basically their like atomic energy agency, you know, goes right into

Zelensky's innermost circle, does not directly implicate him, but raises a whole lot of questions about what is going on here. So the other piece is, if the war ends, then you you're going to have elections and you're going to have somewhat of a reckoning around, you know, the corruption scandals that have come out increasingly during this war. So that is another piece of the backdrop here of, you know, the calculus from Zelensky himself. You're exactly right. There's been huge political scandals. In fact, Tucker Carlson just tweeted out this morning, the Wall Street Journal is sitting on a major corruption story for one of Ukraine's closest political negotiators and that they won't run it because they don't want to sabotage the deal.

I don't know if he's right. You know, we'll see what the journal says, but just wouldn't surprise me, as I'll all say it. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link.

But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by Facebook. fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the IHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. On this week's episode of Next Chapter, I, TDJ, sit down with Denzel Washington, a two-time Academy

award-winning actor and cultural icon. I don't take any credit for it. I just didn't put me first. I just put God first, and he's carrying me. Listen to the next chapter podcast on the I Heart Radio. app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. New episodes drop weekly. Hey there, Dr. Jesse Mills here. I'm the director of the men's clinic at UCLA, and I want to tell you about my new podcast called The Mail Room. And I'm Jordan, the show's producer. And like most guys, I haven't been to the doctor in way too long. I'll be asking the questions we probably should be asking, but aren't. Every week, we're breaking down the world of men's

health from testosterone and fitness to diets and fertility. We'll talk science without the jargon and get your real answers to the stuff you actually wonder about. So check out the mailroom on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.