Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/25/25: Google Passes OpenAI, Trump Healthcare Plan Collapse, GOP Pushes Venezuela War

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss Google surpassing OpenAI, Bannon says AI will destroy MAGA, Trump healthcare plan collapses, Republicans push blood for oil in Venezuela.   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. On the podcast Health Stuff, we are tackling all the health questions that keep you up at night. I'm Dr. Priyankawali, a double board certified physician. And I'm Hurricane Dibolu, a comedian and someone who once Googled, Do I Have Scurvy at 3 a.m? And on our show, we're talking about health in a different way, like our episode where we look at diabetes.

In the United States, I mean, 50% of Americans are pre-diabetic. How preventable is type 2? Extremely. Listen to health stuff on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member.

today and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breaking points.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. I have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. A lot of interesting things happening in the AI. Sam Altman is actually sounding the alarm internally over open AI standing after Google releases their latest So that is a fascinating one there. The Trump administration announced they had a health care proposal and then they pulled

that health care proposal after a revolt from congressional Republicans. So dig into that. Scott Besson says maybe the way to bring costs down is to invade Venezuela. It seems to be a full-blown propaganda push towards war and a full-on invasion of Venezuela. So we will see where that goes. Republicans in the House are furious, apparently, with the White House and more are threatening to resign, putting the majority in danger. Jim Comey and Letitia James have had their prosecutions thrown out by a federal judge.

Pete Hagseth is threatening Mark Kelly after he was part of that video saying, hey, if you are a service member, you should not follow unlawful commands. And we're going to take a look at what that Thanksgiving turkey is going to cost you. This is our most like morning show coded segment ever. We do it every year, though. We usually also do one about like how to talk to your relatives about Thanksgiving, but you know, whatever. You're just going to have to work that one out for yourself.

At this point, there's been enough discourse about relatives. You guys can figure it out, okay? I actually, you know what? Let me offer one tip, one unifying thing. I think you should talk about data centers and AI, and I think you should. There you go. That's smart. Because it's very, it's very cross-partisan.

I think there is something about the rise of AI for all of us to be concerned about. So perhaps it can be both an educational and a unifying moment at the Thanksgiving. I like that. That's the breaking points approved talking point that you can have politics at dinner. And everybody will say, Wow, that's crazy. We should do something about that. I like it.

Thank you to everybody who's been signing up Breaking Points at dot com to become a premium subscriber. You can, especially today, you're going to want to be a premium subscriber. You know why? Because during the AMA, Crystal is at home. So producer Mac is going to join me, and we are going to taste test live.

The Taco Bell, Baja Blast. Is it a cheesecake or is it a pie? It's one of those. It's a cheese cake. It's a cheesecake. It's an interesting question whether our cheesecake is also technically a pie. Yeah, that's right.

Anyway, yes. Emily decided that this was something that we should give a world. So she is giving. Emily is Uber eats it to the studio. And we are going to try it live on camera, only available for our premium subscribers, breakingpoints.com. You can also support our work, by the way. And if you're just watching this on YouTube, no worries, you can't afford a membership. Please just hit subscribe to our YouTube channel, listening to this podcast, rate us five stars, and send it to a friend. It really helps other people find the show. But let's go ahead and start with the economy. As we said, let's go ahead and put A1 up here on the screen. This new rollout is absolutely fascinating, simply because we can look at the exponential growth in a lot of these LLMs between Google, meta, OpenAI, Amazon, you know, what is it, Dropbox, all these other companies, Salesforce, people are all competing against one another. and Google's new Gemini rollout

has many of its competitors reeling and the implications for this are actually Titanic mostly for open AI but also for the entire chips industry. So let's read a little bit here from the Wall Street Journal with the release of the third version this week Google's Gemini LLM search past chat GPT has become the most capable AI chatbot

as determined by a consensus industry benchmark test. The reason why this is interesting is that Google has been able to do this by bypassing some of the other choke points that Open AI has had and because it is a monopolistic company. I mean, the truth is, the vast majority of people who are even watching this are doing so on a Google product. They're doing it on YouTube. Google has YouTube. It has AI search.

It has YouTube TV. It has all of these different things that roll up into this gigantic company, which prints all of this money. They don't have to have the shortfall that OpenAI has, some $78 billion in losses. They've been able to come in, have this technological breakthrough with Gemini. which has, quote, outperformed competing models on more than a dozen benchmark tests of scoring a range of intelligence categories. But I think what's also very interesting is the chip story, Crystal, behind all of this, the way that they're using their own, the way that they're not having to rely on some of

these more vendor finance-type deals. And so that puts at risk kind of the pyramid scheme, potentially, that we had begun to see with Open Eye and many of the other deals that they had out there. this has major ramifications for the future of open AI, its ability to fulfill its trillion dollar commitments if they can't maintain their technological edge. Yeah, this is a gigantic deal for a bunch of reasons and a tremendous threat to the other AI competitors. For the first time, Google has been seen to take the lead in terms of the AI race, as you

were saying, on these sort of benchmark tests, it outperformed all of the competitors on every single test save for one. So it's sort of widely being seen as the most advanced model at this point. The other reason, as you were saying, soccer, that this is considered so significant is that Google has their own proprietary chips that were used to train Gemini 3, and Gemini 3 is largely being run on those proprietary chips. So that is really, you know, a significant sort of shakeup in the industry and could potentially give them an edge as well. Not to mention, as you said, the fact, and this is something Matt Stoller has been all over, the fact that they have this gigantic monopoly already gives them a huge edge as well, both. in terms of customer positioning and also in terms of the data that they have available to train these models. And the training obviously very important in terms of LLMs because it's not like

normal tech where you code it. It's actually being trained. It's being grown. And so the more that you have to feed into this thing from everybody's searches and all of the content on the web, that's going to give you an advantage as well. To give you a sense of how significant the chips aspect of this is and how central invidia has become, let's put A2 up on the screen. I don't know if you guys followed all this drama last week about NVIDIA's earnings. They did actually exceed their earnings expectations. And their founder said, I think, quite accurately, the whole world would have fallen apart if NVIDIA missed earnings expectations because basically our entire economy is centered around that one now infamous chart of

NVIDIA and all the deals they have with all these different AI companies. So NVIDIA has been like the central player. This maybe breaks apart that notion. that NVIDA is absolutely everything within the economy. But, yeah, I mean, we're still in this situation where things are incredibly concentrated. And for these other companies that are taking gigantic trillion-dollar bets on their model winning, you know, this has got to be incredibly unsettling. Yeah, the chips angle to this, the open-AI angle, and also just the monopolistic one. And I think this is the one I want to spend more time on because it's not just search, it's Google Chrome, it's Gmail.

It's YouTube. Google had already built, you know, the perfect search engine, the perfect YouTube recommendation. I mean, the truth is, is like, we owe our careers, right, to YouTube recommendation algorithm. A lot of other people do. You go on YouTube, and it's the best at being able to find something else that you want to watch. Now, YouTube TV is one of the major players in the cable replacement space. They've got all this stuff going on with culture. They own all these massive, like, troves of data. You have the Android operating system, which is global. know more about human behavior than anyone else already before LLMs. And then you roll that all up into Sundar Pichai, who apparently made this the single priority inside of Google very

recently. I was reading some background from my friend Alex Cantowitz. He's a tech reporter on how they revamped the Gemini product and they said this will be the preeminent one in the space. So it shows the monopolistic benefits to a Google. And it also shows you some of the dangers here with OpenAI specifically, and what that means for our overall economy. And that's probably what we want to spend the most time on here. Let's go to A3. I flagged this specifically because it goes back to our interview that we did last week, specifically about when will we know that we're going to start having issues with AI in terms of it starting to leapfrog.

Google is actually having Gemini build the user interface in its latest Gemini update. So the AI is already doing some of the tasks around the AI itself. This is what I say is super interesting, I think, about how they're not only having the monopoly to benefit its current product, but now having the AI, not just train the AI, but build some of the user interface of AI. So it demonstrates what they have long promised as the productivity benefits, again, for themselves, not necessarily for all of us. Now, with OpenAI, what Wall Street is beginning to notice, and you're going to start probably

seeing this in Stock Price soon. is how much this kind of screws over a lot of their growth plans. So let's put the next one up here on the screen. So this was from CNBC, and what they say is that Google's new AI model puts Open AI the great conundrum of this market on shakier ground. I do want to say this was written by Jim Kramer, so, you know, I mean, take it with a great assault. That said, every once in a while, you know, broken clock is right twice a day. And what he does say is that, if you look at this, in some of the promises of the market,

specifically around these vendor finance deals and open AI, while openly acknowledging that they're going to have some $78 billion or whatever in losses by 2028, everything is built on exponential growth and their ability to maintain the leading and bleeding edge for exponential growth, the best in consumer-facing AI. What this does makes it is so that it calls into question their competitive edge that they've long had by being one of the first movers with one of the best user-friendly chatbots. And it makes it so that that could be challenged,

which would decrease its growth, which would, of course, not have them be able to fulfill all of the trillion-dollar deals, which would mean that the market valuations of all these companies, save for Google, would start to go down, and NVIDIA in particular. Go to the next one, please. This is from the information, a tech-focused outlet,

and they got their hands on this new memo that forecast, quote, rough vibes during, due to a resurgent gould. I don't love using the word rough vibes in internal company memos. But what we say is that this November memo, it leaked a couple of days ago, says that the rough vibes and potential revenue growth toward 5%, which would be a collapse inside, and that was actually written before Gemini 3 actually launched on November 18. Altman praised Google's excellent work, where he declared a shift to a wartime footing inside of the company. Now, remember, they're valued at $500 billion. Their annual revenue needs to exceed

some $20 billion this year. Their cash burn surpasses already $8 billion in 2025. Cumulative losses of $115 billion, potentially up to $2029. Forward sales needs some 25 times. Now, currently, meanwhile, Google has $100 billion in cash. They have $4 billion users. They have an incredible competitive edge. And so you can see very quickly how this company, even if it maintains some good growth and it continues to have large user base, 20 billion and all that, it's going to be very, very hard to reach some 25 times expected growth and keep that exponential edge. And this is really what all these AI guys, people like Meta and Google, have been kind of telling everyone behind the scenes. They're like, yeah, look, open AI is great. But we actually make money. We make a

shitload of money. And we have this monopolization, let's say, in social media and or in Google search, and we can use that to prop up our trillions of dollars that are being spent here. Open AI is kind of the cornerstone of a lot of the stock growth for some of the other, you know, some of the other areas like data center, NVIDIA, and others. And I think that's where a lot of the concern comes from, from a potential collapse, at the very least, from Open AI. That wouldn't bring down the entire economy, but it would pump the brakes. And pumping the brakes, as we said, is potential enough to already see a major decline in a lot of stock indices and potentially also even a modest decrease in the amount of data center growth would mean that GDP itself

would begin to put us into recession territory. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Let's put A6 up on the screen. Actually, David Sachs was saying yesterday something to the effect, which I found very disturbing, frankly, that we have so many chips placed on the AI boom that we cannot go back. We cannot afford it to slip. And that's what this article really releases reveals. It says the S&P 493 reveals a very different U.S. economy. So we've seen the stock market go basically up and up and up and up and up, breaking new records, et cetera. And we've mentioned this before. But if you strip out those seven companies, the magnificent seven, that are all, you know, sky high valuations basically based on the promise of AI, if you take that out, the

stock market picture is the picture of growth is very actually weak. It looks like a completely different economy. And of course, for most people out there, you know, who are living in the real economy, they're already feeling a downturn. They're already feeling the pinch. They're not participating in this speculative fever, certainly not mostly benefiting from the speculative fever unless you're someone who's at the higher end of the income spectrum and benefiting from the rise in the stock market. But one possibility, Sagar, that we've been talking about for a while is, you know, the expectation is that the AI boom is going to be a sort of winner take all economy. And I mean that in the sense that whichever company is able to achieve super

intelligence first and get to this pivot point where their AI is not only training the new AI, but is also doing significant decision making where basically everything is sort of handed off and you just have humans who are overseeing the best they can managing this development. Whoever achieves that first is going to basically get all of the gains. So you can have a situation where the promise of AI is actually fulfilled. Now, I'm sort of terrified of what that world looks like. But, you know, if you're a techno-optimist, there could be a world where the promise of AI is fulfilled. But still, all of these other companies that are betting, making trillion-dollar bets on their AI future,

lose the race and you still have a massive crash and bubble pop once someone does actually achieve that level of super intelligence. And so to me, this development is a reminder that even, you know, with the structure of the way this AI race is playing out, that in and of itself creates massive risk in the economy because you are probably going to have basically a monopolistic winner take all situation where whether it's Google, and I do think Google, you know, it makes sense that they have a lot of advantages here, whether it's Google or some other player. When they achieve this breakthrough, they're going to leapfrog far beyond everyone else and, you know, cause a major cratering of the valuation and the bets of these other companies. Now, if you're a company like Microsoft,

you've got a lot of other revenue streams. If you're a company like OpenAI, you've placed all of your chips on, you know, trying to get to super intelligence as quickly as possible and spending as much money as it takes and becoming too big to fail. That's basically where you've placed all of your chips. Now, we should say at this point, they are the leaders in terms of, you know, the largest user base of their LLM. ChatGPT is the most used. I think they have like 800,000 users, something like that.

So they're ahead in that perspective. But, you know, I think this really shows a lot of rich. for their direction and their business model. Yeah, I mean, what you can see at the very least here is with questions and uncertainty, that enough is because of where the markets and how it's all worked would be enough to bring down some sort of downturn, which, again, we have to keep underscoring, is the only thing propping up the U.S. economy in terms of the big numbers that people in Washington care about, GDP and stock market. Now I know the vast majority of people watching this, that doesn't

affect you all that much. Although I would say it does affect you in the way that interest rates work in terms of if there is a crash, you can be sure you may not have benefited on the way up. You definitely will suffer the consequences on the way down. It can, you know, liquidity. There's all kinds of downstream things. But I think just to hammer this home, this Washington Post has a graphic A6, please. So the S&P 493, and what it shows is that 132% growth, excluding the Magnificent Seven since 2019, whereas from 2025, it's 1,057%, it's 1,057%, which includes the Magnificent 7. This just people don't appreciate just how powerful these companies have been to the illusion,

let's say, of growth. And if the 493 of the 500 companies are not actually doing all that well, although, you know, I'm not saying that they haven't done as well, but they're not, you know, compounding at a level which is so exponential. That alone just demonstrates some of the pushback, the draw that could happen with some of those valuation. 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 Edmund 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. What up y'all? It's your boy, Kevin Stage. I want to tell you about my new podcast called Not My Best Moment, where I talk to artists, athletes, entertainers, creators, friends, people I admire who had massive success about their massive failures. What did they mess up on? What is their heartbreak? And what did they learn from it? I got judged horribly.

The judges were like, you're trash. I don't know how you got on the show. Boo. Somebody had tomatoes. I'm kidding. But if they had tomatoes, they would have thrown the tomatoes. Let's be honest. We've all had those moments we'd rather forget.

We bumped our head. We made a mistake. The deal fell through. We're embarrassed. We failed. But this podcast is about that and how we made it through. So when they sat me down, And they were kind of like, we got into the small talk.

And they were just like, so what do you got? What? What ideas? And I was like, oh, no. What? Check out Not My Best Moment with me, Kevin on stage, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. You got to give credit to Steve Bannon. He actually definitely has his eyes open about this. Let's go to the next part here and put this on the screen.

Steve Bannon now tells ABC News. He is warning the Trump administration that their AI agenda could, quote, crush the working class fracture MAGA, cost GOP in 26 and 28, he is working to, quote, turbocharge the base to revolt against it inside MAGA's fight to stop the AI revolution. And this really fits with the launch of a new candidate down in the state of Florida. James Fishback, he is running against Byron Donald to succeed Ron DeSantis as the next governor of Florida. And he specifically calls out AI data centers in his new ad in his launch video. literally. Let's take a listen to that. Guys, that is A8.

My name is James Fishback, and I'm running to succeed Ron DeSantis as Florida's next Republican governor. I'm running for Florida governor so I can make life more affordable for you and your family. I'll stop the construction of any AI data center that threatens to raise our electricity bills or poison our water supply. If he goes out and supports the building of AI data centers that threaten our electric bills and our water supply, he can't be our next governor. He talks about banning large companies like hedge funds and others, private equity, from buying homes, and three is AI Data Center. So look, you may- I will say, Sager, in the longer list, he also says abolished property taxes.

I know that, yes. I was going to get before we get to the downside, we have to get to the upside. At the very least, I will say, this definitely demonstrates the thesis that AI data centers will be a cornerstone of a lot of the elections that are coming up in 2026, and there's already been all of these revolts on a local level. It was not difficult to see this coming, but this was, I think, a major flash in the pan for a lot of the big tech movement because this is the big fight in the White House right now. And they're not wrong. They're like, sir, when they go to Donald Trump and he hears about some of this pushback, he goes, sir, we're the only thing saving your economy. And he needs that, especially in the midst of tariffs. He's like, if you stop

this gravy train, we're dead. Like, you're going to be facing serious questions about tariffs, about the economy, you're already having problems with affordability, and not to mention many of us gave you, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars when you were running for a president. And on the other side, though, is if you look at the way that the political wins are shifting, it's obvious that for people who aren't in those established power centers, the best move is to run against them. That's why James Fishback carved that lane out for himself. I believe Byron Donald's had said something, which was pro-data center very recently, which demonstrates how, you know, he himself because, you know, he's more inside the system

type politician. He kind of thought it was a gimmy in terms of this race. And now that might really come back to Biden. I mean, it's the politics of it are fascinating because certainly at the grassroots level really doesn't matter whether you're Republican or a Democrat. There's a lot of concern. You know, a lot of these data centers are being built in rural red Trump areas. And, you know, whether it's Mingo County, West Virginia, or we played the some of the more perfect union reporting from a small town of Louisiana where this meta data center is going in is a major, major issue. There's problems with one of Elon's data centers outside of Memphis that we talked to Justin Pearson about. Abdul Siyadh has been sounding the alarm about issues in Michigan.

Graham Platner has been going very hard in the paint against these tech companies. And so it was interesting to see a Republican really, this is maybe the first time I've seen a Republican candidate really, this aggressively into the fray, because the reality is, and I think this is another sort of sign of Trump's, like, weakness at this moment, this is the major push of his administration. I mean, in terms of the sort of economic planning and what they've been building and who they've thrown in with in a massive way from the beginning of this administration, it is this gigantic bet on AI. The very first executive orders among them were, hey, any sort of regulation that existed in the Biden administration of AI

where previously companies were supposed to be sending in all of their safety tests to the federal government. There was at least some visibility of what they were up to. It's like, nope, we're taking all the brakes off this car.

We're going all the way in. He just signed yet another executive order seeking to speed the proliferation of AI throughout the government and throughout society. So the Financial Times headline that the U.S. economy is all just one giant bet on AI

is absolutely true. Whether it's the data center buildouts, whether it's the stock. market just across the board. And so now, even if Trump wanted to go in a different direction, he can't. And he doesn't really care. I mean, he basically, when he took in all this money from the tech guys, he basically sold this part of the administration of them. They've made him fabulously wealthy through his crypto shit coins and all of the deals that he's been striking as well. So I don't think he has any interest in backing away from it. Meanwhile, at the grassroots level,

you have this burgeoning revolt. And Steve Bannon has been, you know, talking about this from the beginning even during the early days with Elon Musk. He had some concerns about that. He's saying they're going to go all in, you know, really sort of on a war footing against this buildout and this no-holds-barred AI development. But, you know, it's his guy who's in the White House who was really enabled this gigantic push. And you not only have the dynamic of so much of the economy is built on at this point. You also have the, you know, oh, and we're in a race with China dynamic of it as well, which makes it very difficult for politicians to sort of step back from hurtling towards whatever we're hurtling towards. Yeah, definitely. And Chris, can you break down this power story? I know that you were interested. This is A7 about Con Edison.

Yeah. So it's not just about Con Edison. This is just about overall. You know, we've been tracking, of course, the way that electricity bills have been going up and up. Huge increases and, you know, certain states more than others. But as a consequence of that, as a very predicament of that's a very predicament. consequence of that, you have more customers who are having their electricity shut off because they can't pay their bills. Overall, they say Americans are paying 11% more for electricity than they were in January, but that number varies really widely. So, for example, they find in Missouri costs have risen by 37%. There are a couple of states, maybe three different states that have seen some declines, but overall the picture is one of utility prices rising rapidly. They say utility prices have risen roughly three times faster than overall inflation this year

at a precarious time for the economy. Nearly one in 20 households are about 14 million Americans were so behind on utility debt. It was reported to collections agencies or in arrears as of June. the average overdue balance of $789 has risen 32%. And they talked about, you know, Con Edison in particular, the number of shutoffs in New York that they've already done this year is 111,000. That's as compared to last year, 30,000 for the whole year. So you've more than tripled the number of shutoffs and we're not even obviously through with the year of 2025.

So you can see how this is just, you know, I mean, one more thing that is absolutely squeezing consumers and they cannot keep up. You know, people cannot keep up with these bills, which just continue to go up and up and up. And we've seen legislative efforts in states like North Carolina to pass on more of the data center electricity usage costs to consumers. So, you know, this is an incredibly powerful industry, whether you're talking about these tech giants or whether you're talking. about the utility companies. And, you know, they are putting the squeeze to people in a way that's absolutely extraordinary. Sager, when we talked to that AI expert last week, you know, he was sounding, he was saying that by 2030 we could be facing massive issues with the grid. And, you know, we don't seem to be building out power at nearly rapid enough rate to deal with the increase

that this demands. Right. 32% increase in overdue balance. And you got one in about 5% of all American households behind on utility debt. State of Pennsylvania, which is a swing state, you've got a 21% increase there in power bills. And then you said there was a five-fold increase in New York City. So you can see how this is all just, look, it hits the poorest first, but the middle class and others, just because they can't pay the bill, doesn't mean it doesn't mean they're struggling. And it also means if you combine grocery store bills and others that you increasingly feel

as if the fixed cost of living is slipping away. from you. And that leads to precarity, and that's what leads to a lot of the politics that we see today. So I thought it was smart for James Fishback to put that in his ad. And I hope and expect to see many other politicians, aspiring politicians of all stripes, across the spectrum that are going to start running on this issue. Because if you're an upstart and you're living in an anti-institutional moment like we are today, there's no reason that you shouldn't be attacking this head on. It'd be interesting to see where Zoron falls on it, actually, considering how many people in New York City are being affected. This would be a very smart thing

to try and attack. You're a governor of one of the largest cities in the entire country, probably the largest city in the entire country, the mayor of the entire city. You have all these, you know, millions of people there. I mean, it's New York. It's cold. So it's like a place that you actually need it, especially that would be exactly the type of issue that he would want to pick up on. Well, he mentioned in that meeting with Trump, they mentioned that they talked about Con Edison. And I think it was Trump that said something about, you know, the rates are going up too high and we need to do something about that. So he realizes is starting to realize the potency of this as well. But yeah, I mean, the politics of it are fascinating. I think they're incredibly

important. You know, a grassroots pushback is really our only hope to sort of stabilize things and take some small D Democratic control back over what's going on here. And so, you know, I'm sure I have lots of issues with this fishback character or whatever. You do too on the property Taxes issue. But I'm just happy to see, you know, I really am genuinely glad to see some on the right really seizing on this as an issue as well because right now it doesn't code as like a, you know, left wing or right wing issue. It's there's something in it for everybody to be concerned about, whether it's the character of their community, whether it's environmental degradation, whether it's the, you know, just their electricity prices going up or whether it's the jobs concerns.

And the goal here, obviously, is to take everybody's jobs. They don't really have. a plan for what we're all going to do after that happens or even the, you know, most apocalyptic, potentially existential nature of this technology. Steve Bannon calls it the most, most dangerous technology ever developed. I agree with that assessment. I genuinely do. And the reason why I would say that is because, you know, when you're building nukes, everybody knows what we're dealing with, right?

It's not a mystery. Like, I don't know what will happen if we, you know, nuke the world. Like, everybody understands that this is extremely dangerous. I think what makes AI development like completely unleashed AI development so dangerous is that it has that level of potential cataclysmic harm without the same level of understanding or awareness that that harm exists. And the amount of hubris that you see from these guys is just, you know, really something to marvel at. Totally great. 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 countries. 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. What up, y'all? It's your boy. Kevin. on stage, I want to tell you about my new podcast called Not My Best Moment, where I talk to artists, athletes, entertainers, creators, friends, people I admire who had massive success about their massive failures. What did they mess up on? What is their heartbreak? And what did they learn from it?

I got judged horribly. The judges were like, you're trash. I don't know how you got on the show. Boo, somebody had tomatoes. I'm kidding. But if they had tomatoes, they would have thrown the tomatoes. Let's be honest. We've all had those moments.

we'd rather forget. We bumped our head. We made a mistake. The deal failed through. We're embarrassed. We failed. But this podcast is about that and how we made it through. So when they sat me down, they were kind of like, we got into the small talk.

And they were just like, so what do you got? What? What ideas? And I was like, oh, no. What? Check out Not My Best Moment with me, Kevin on stage, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. All right. Let's get to health care.

So we may or may not be approaching a new concept of a health care plan from the Trump administration. So yesterday, actually during yesterday's show, we were starting to get some indications that the Trump White House had come up with some sort of a health care plan. Various news outlets started to report on it. And then this happened. Let's take a look. We're learning President Trump is planning to unveil a new health care proposal. And at this point, we're still waiting to know exactly what's in it. But we're told it could include a temporary.

extension of the Enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which are due to expire at the end of the year. They were at the center of the government shutdown. However, the subsidies could come with some fresh guardrails that could include new income limits and a requirement that everyone pay some form of a premium. Now, we should note that if the subsidies do expire, millions of Americans are expected to see their premiums more than double next year. Zach Cooper is joining us now. He's a professor of health policy at Yale University. Zach, thanks for being here. As I noted, we are very much still waiting for specifics here. But I'm sorry, this has actually been, sorry, Zach, we're getting breaking news while I'm talking

to you. I have learned that the White House has postponed. It's inspected unveiling of this new health care proposal. It was expected to be unveiled today. We'll learn more, hopefully, about that in the coming moments. So, whoops. Breaking news, actually, they're not going to move forward with this at all. And the outlines of the deal are basically what she had said as far as we know, which is effectively like a two-year extension of the ACA subsidies and then some tinkering around the edges of the eligibility and, you know, how much income you can earn in this provision with regard to premiums. But effectively, it's like, all right, fine, we'll extend the Obamacare subsidies for two years. You could put the next piece up on the screen, which

indicates why they decided to pull this proposal at the last minute. Apparently, they hadn't really gone to any members of Congress, Republican members of Congress, to see how they felt about the proposal. So it says new White House to delay a health care proposal after significant congressional backlash, coordinated to two White House officials. The announcement has been delayed with one of those officials citing strong congressional backlash to Trump's proposed plan. Trump planned to make an announcement as early as Monday proposing a framework to address health care costs, which included an extension of Obamacare subsidies. So there you go, Sagar. That's where we are. Yes. I think it's deeply hilarious. I do, although,

I want to sit in terms of how – we talked a lot about this during the whole shutdown thing. This still just shows you how we are so screwed in the health care convo because the Democratic response was we have to extend these subsidies to these health care companies. And now the Republican cave is to also potentially give some subsidies, but with income caps or whatever, to the same health care company. Nobody wants to address or do anything about cost. And I think the hilarious part about it, too. I'll give you an example, is Bill Cassidy.

Put B4 up here on the screen. So Bill Cassidy, he's the doctor and his alternative plan, is swapping ACA tax credits with HSA. By the way, I'm a fan of HSA accounts. If done well, they can do, they actually are very effective in a lot of other different countries. But this is basically the same thing. So instead of giving the dollars to the healthcare company, we'll give you HSA dollars, which

you can spend on the health care company. All of it comes back to propping up this ridiculous system where nobody wants to do anything about cost. Like, it's just so crazy to me. I mean, honestly, the only good thing that I've seen Trump do recently on health care is when he's been talking about striking deals on OZempic in his Trump care government pharmaceutical deal, we'll be at a flat price for what Americans could pay for if they have a prescription. That's what we need more of. And nobody actually seems to want to do anything about that.

Even the Biden administration, if we think back to their whole negotiating drug prices thing, they were like, oh, well, we'll negotiate like the 10 largest drugs that we do. Then, of course, Trump just basically rolled quite a bit of that back. There hasn't been a lot of development actually in terms of lowering the overall cost. And meanwhile, what's happening is that the drug, hospital prices all continue to outpace inflation massively, and then on top of this health care subsidy conversation, the average premium for people on Obamacare ups a minimum of some 16, 17%. As I said, mine was 17%. I have shared my in-laws that got up by like 200, 300%, or whatever, which is the same problem that a lot of people on these things have. And let's even leave us Obamacare customers

out, the average increase, even for employer subsidized health care, is up some 25, 26%. Like, that is the whole ballgame, is the cost of the deductibles and all of that are continue to balloon out of control. And I think that's what kind of disgust me and makes me upset about this entire thing. I mean, look, the truth of the matter is the only political group that has had serious answers that would deal with the costs in the system are the left, the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic That's true. I'll get it to them. They've always focused on it and they are right to do so. Yeah. And here's the thing is actually this is one of the issues that's playing out in the Democratic primaries right now. I mean, you see someone like Abdul Al-Said, who is a doctor himself running aggressively on Medicare for all. Grand Platner also running on Medicare for all. You know, this is becoming a real central sticking point in terms of the Democratic Party and their future and their direction. You know, there was kind of a mutual agreement, I feel like, between Kamala and Trump, not.

not to really talk about health care in the 2024 campaign because Biden and run on, hey, let's do a public option. But then as soon as he got through the primary, just sort of tossed that to the side and never even attempted to move in that direction whatsoever. He just did like a little bit of, you know, price negotiations on a handful of drugs. Okay, fine. It's an improvement, but it's not exactly revolutionary. Kamala just decided not to really talk about this whatsoever.

Trump famously, when he was asked about it, said he had concepts of a plan. And the thing that really happened going back to Republicans is that they did have a health care solution. It was Mitt Romney Care. It was crafted originally by the Heritage Foundation. He implemented it in Massachusetts. And then Obama stole that, effectively, that plan, almost identical plan, and made it Obamacare. And since then, they've never really had an answer because Obamacare is the like market-driven health care solution. And guess what?

It fucking sucks. Like, yes, it's modestly better than what was before in terms of, you know, people can't be kicked off for preexisting conditions, et cetera. But it is not dealt with the core issues at the center of this. Maybe if they had implemented a public option at the time, maybe that would have improved things because then you have, you know, competition that is setting the prices coming from the government that everybody else is going to have to deal with and work with. And frankly, I think at this point, that's the position that Republicans should adopt. that's still a sort of like, you know, technically free market solution. The Democrats in the left should push Medicare for all and we should have a big debate about which direction makes sense because this, you're right about, you know, I think we should

apply the Band-Aid right now. I think we should extend the subsidy so people don't just get completely screwed in the interim. But this is not a sustainable direction. It's not good for any of our pocketbooks. It's not good for our health. This is the reason why we have such poor health outcomes as compared to the entire rest of the developing world. It's part of the picture of why our life expectancy is literally declining. And the cost of this, you know, we pay more than anyone else and we get worse

results. So, um, so yeah, I mean, you know, Trump's solution here is kind of laughable of like, hey, how about we go ahead and extend the subsidies for two years instead of one and like tinker on the edges. But the health saving account direction is also sort of, you know, absurd and pathetic and not really substantively different. So they've been lost at sea ever since Obama stole their plan originally, effectively. Yeah, and the thing is, and this kind of gets to my point. And the reason I agreed with you about the left always talking about the issue is at the very least they're trying to address costs. And, you know, this is my issue right now is everything is about subsidizing the healthcare industry.

This whole market-based thing is fake because it doesn't actually address the monopolized and cartel-controlled costs within there. You don't have to have a universal health care system. Singapore has universal coverage. It's like a called managed competition. That's what I was talking about with HSAs. You have a very easy, you know, so-called universal coverage system, which you can implement, which takes care of lower-income households, which price controls with HSAs to make it extremely affordable and efficient.

If you want to, but it requires intense government intervention to make sure that there are caps. Remember we talked about Japan here on the show before? There's private health insurance in Japan. That's fine. Nobody cares about the private. aspect, what they care about is the cost and the government comes in and is like, here's a sheet for exactly how much different services costs. End of story. There's no internal negotiation or anything. Now, let's be honest, though, for the doctors, for so many of the doctors listening,

they always get upset. When I say this, some of you aren't going to be getting paid nearly as much more. Sorry, you know, that's just how it's got to be. Now, that said, we also reform the education system so you don't need to make $350,000, $400,000 to pay off $350,000 or $400,000 in debt. If you net it out, it should be more equal. That's how it is in the most of the rest of the world. So, I mean, I don't know, from top to bottom, we have so many problems here. Every single idea I just want to underscore, well, yes, you know, it probably would be better in the interim to extend this for a year just to bring down the overall cost.

It's still just so, you know, repulsive to hand billions, I mean, tens of billions of dollars to these disgusting insurance companies. B3, let's go and put that up here on the screen. Republicans pushing the Obamacare tax credit alternative potentially as enrollment deadline looms. This, by the way, is just like classic GOP policy. They're like, well, what we'll do is we'll create a tax credit, which you eventually have to claim in some way, and that should offset the cost of enrollment. And it's like, guy, that's not how people make decisions, right? This is what they always try to come back to with these complicated kind of schemes. This is the way that they did Social Security is by manipulating deductions and such that you still have to technically pay tax on Social Security, but you'll get it back or somehow

in the way that you pay it. And all it does is when people can't understand, it's complicated, it's too much like engineering with the tax system. And it makes it, again, so that, yes, the cost will continue to go up, or the price will continue to go up on your overall premium. However, it nets out on taxes, I'm not exactly 100% sure. But that, the end result is still the same is subsidizing the health care system. And the current health care system, I just feel disgusted by it. I really do. Just because I know so many people, my own experience, certainly, but it's really not about me. It's just like everybody else who I know. Nobody has a good story. Everybody has some insane tale. You know, I'm friends with a lot of new

parents, just about how they're, you know, if your kid had to be in the NICU, like mine did. Oh, it didn't transfer properly. I got a horrible bill in this hospital out of network. network, the healthcare, they deny the pediatrician visit. It's just nuts, right? And you're sitting in there in the hospital worrying about whether your kid can breathe. And then two weeks later, you know, have a sigh of relief and somebody's sending you a bill for $15,000. I can't deal with that. It's ridiculous. And you talk to anyone who moves to this country and is used to a different health care system and they're just like, what the, like this is incomprehensible. It's impenetrable. I have a close friend who had to go through a series of surgery.

She's going through physical therapy now before every appointment. She calls the health insurance company and is like, this is covered, right? And they're like, yes. And then she goes to the appointment and gets a giant bill with denied stamped on it after the fact. Like it's just, I mean, it's just unacceptable what we what we do to people and the rising cost of it all has just made it completely unsustainable. But B5 up on the screen, this was, I think, some polling that was done during the show. down about, you know, where people, how people felt about the ACA tax credits, whether they wanted them extended. And even a majority of Republicans said, you know, yes, we should extend

these ACA tax credits because the consequence of not, of failing to do it is so incredibly dire. So I'm sure this is part of what the Trump White House is looking at and they're realizing, like, we've got a big problem with affordability. We just got our ass is handed to us in these off-year elections. The midterms are looking extremely dire. But then instead of consulting with anyone, you know, who actually is responsible for passing legislation in the House of the Senate, they're like, we're just going to announce some stuff. And this is a good preview for a segment we're going to do later about the number of Republicans who may be thinking of resigning because they're just sort of disgusted with the way they're treated like potted plants. Now, I would say that they've allowed themselves to be treated like potted plants in a lot of examples. So, in my opinion, that road goes in both directions.

But, you know, this is another example where the White House just like came up with something on. their own, didn't talk to anyone about it, was ready to do some big announcement after they came up with this idea, I don't know, like on Saturday, and Republicans who just spent all of, how long was the shutdown fight? It was like, you know, it was the longest in history. It was long, yeah. Yeah, it was like six weeks long. They just spent the whole time invaying against these subsidies. And now you're going to just pull the rug out from under and be like, actually, we're going to do it for two years now. So what were we fighting about in the shutdown then? Why couldn't we have just done this at that point?

and saved everybody a lot of pain and heartache and suffering that, you know, that was caused by the length of that shutdown. Yeah, it's all just so silly and stupid. But it also, though, you know, the only thing is what the only reason I would have said don't consult Congress is because I know most of the Republican Congress doesn't care at all. So it actually would have been good for Trump to just come out and be like, this is my plan and all of you have to vote. And all of you are going to vote for it.

But one of the good times that he actually. And they probably would have. They probably would have. Yeah, exactly. exactly why they get treated like potter plants because they act like them. Yeah. I like 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. 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 what up y'all it's your boy kev on stage i want to tell you about my new podcast called not my best moment where i talk to artists athletes entertainers creators friends people i admire who had massive success about their massive failures what did they mess up on what is their heartbreak and what did they learn from it i got judged horribly the judge were like, you're trash.

I don't know how you got on the show. Boo, somebody had tomatoes. I'm kidding. But if they had tomatoes, they would have thrown the tomatoes. Let's be honest. We've all had those moments we'd rather forget. We bumped our head. We made a mistake.

The deal fell through. We're embarrassed. We failed. But this podcast is about that and how we made it through. So when they sat me down, they were kind of like, we got into the small talk. And they were just like, so what do you got? What ideas? And I was like, oh, no.

What? Check out Not My Best Moment with me, Kevin on stage, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, let's go to Venezuela, all right? Turning now to Venezuela, before Thanksgiving, wanted to make sure that this is on everybody's radar. The likelihood of things popping off with Venezuela are very high over the next week or two weeks because of some decisions that have to be made in the military, because of some deadlines that are being imposed by Secretary Rubio, and there are high stakes negotiations. that are all happening behind the scenes. There is a full-on propaganda campaign happening at the Fox News level

and from the government about why invading Venezuela would be good, actually, for all of you. Here you get a little bit of a preview from the Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Besson, why invading Venezuela will bring costs down. Here's what he had to say. The peace deals, we are seeing a peace dividend from that, and I think there's a very good chance that if something happens with Russia, Ukraine, if something happens down in Venezuela, that we could really see oil prices go down even more. And oil and gasoline prices are down substantially under President Trump.

And that is really the key to affordability is lower energy. Right. So it'll bring down fuel prices. We'll avoid the country. Hopefully it will all go well, then we'll take the oil. Now, here's the thing. That would all make sense. If Maduro didn't also say, you can have all the oil. He said, you can have any oil. that you guys want. And it's amazing how they're really relying on everybody to ignore the fact that from the beginning of these negotiations, Maduro has been willing and able to sell whatever oil to the United States that he has. He said, you can have all of it if you want to. Just don't, you know, don't bug me too much. Let me resign-ish. You know, I'll leave in a few years,

but with dignity. Why is that not enough? Oh, because it's not about the oil. It's a completely ideological war pushed by the contingent of South Florida, from which, unfortunately, our Secretary of State happens to come from. And just to give you a little taste of what that looks like, here's one of their congresswomen on Fox News talking all about this and setting again the groundwork for a potential invasion. Take a listen. I mean, I would love to see a change in government. My wife's from Nicaragua. We know how terribly the dictators there rely on Venezuelan oil. But But at the same time, a lot of Americans don't want actual U.S. participation in regime change in Venezuela. They would much prefer the Venezuelans to do it on their own.

Do you think the pressure that Maduro has received will force him to leave on his own? Oh, I think Maduro is not Fidel Castro. Maduro is not a brave boy. So now that he has understood that he's on that very nefarious list of the terrorist organization, that the airspace above Venezuela has been closed off and the commercial airlines from the United States are not flying. He's understanding that we're about to go in. He understands that he has been our enemy for the last 25 years.

Venezuela, for those Americans who do not understand why we need to go in, basically for three reasons. You're in Fox business. Venezuela, for the American oil companies, will be a field day because it will be more than a trillion dollars in economic activity. American companies can go in and fix all the oil pipe, the whole oil rigs, and everything that has to do with the Venezuelan petroleum companies or everything that has to do with oil and the derivatives.

So everything that has to do, it will be a field day for American companies. I mean, has anyone, you know, the one thing I appreciate is opposed to Iraq is at least this time they just say it. They're like, yeah, it's about the oil. It'll be good for it. But the crazy thing is, like, it's not even really true. Yeah, no, it's not true at all. Like, I mean, it's like, it's almost like the aspirational thing is for it to be about the oil.

But it really is this like cold war, holdover mentality. They've tried every argument they could think of to get Americans somewhat on board with this in a very sloppy, sloppy and haphazard and frankly insulting way. You know, we're not going to buy into like we're spreading democracy. And so we have to do it. People are like, yeah, sorry, they can, you know, no, we're not doing this again. We've learned those lessons. So then they're like, oh, but the fentanyl and the gangs and the, you know, it's, it's, it's, they're terrorizing us and that's why we have to do it.

And then even seemingly the president realized that this was such total incomplete bullshit that that was not landing either. So now they're like, oh, okay, affordability was big in 2025. We saw Zoron, Mikey share all these people. got elected talking about affordability. That's what it is. It's the oil. It's going to bring down our energy prices.

That's what we're going for here. But to your point, like, I mean, first of all, that's a disgusting reason to invade a country, number one, disgusting, immoral. Any other era of politics, they would have denied tooth and nail that that was what was behind their motivations and wrap themselves in some sort of like, you know, freedom and human rights or whatever. But now they're like just nakedly claiming it's about the oil. And that's not even true because you could have a deal with Maduro. And if you do go in and invade and overturn this regime, whether through kinetic action or some sort of CIA covert ops, which are probably already ongoing as we speak, if you do that, you're much more likely to end up with a failed state and an even larger, like more difficulties in striking any sort of a deal that's going to be beneficial for the world, let alone the American public. So the whole thing is like layers of insanity, honestly. Right.

And so then let me give her, again, I'll give you two sides of it. And this is a live issue. This is all playing out in the public. Okay, so let's put this up here on the screen. The ground is set for a potential invasion. Southcom, which is the area, the military command, which would be in charge of carrying out an invasion or decapitation, is restricting and limiting leave for its soldiers over the Thanksgiving

and Christmas holidays in preparation for possible land strikes in the next 10 days to two weeks. This was reported by Kelly Myers, who's the White House correspondent for News Nation. Now, at the same time, just yesterday, huge flights show of strengths that have continued. Let's put this up there on the screen. Two U.S. flights of B-52 stratospheres departed from their Air Force base to the Caribbean Sea, basically a power and a force projection near Venezuela. They just fly along the coast and make it very clear.

Yeah, we can bomb you. You know, if we want to, this is right here. It's all coming. C3, let's go to the next part, please, and it'll just show you, is that there were actually members of Southcom and others who resigned because they did not believe that the strikes on the drugboats were legal, and behind that there was multiple general counsels and others that had to be fired and removed. And these are not, just so you got, this is one thing to explain here. These people who resigned or were removed, these are not liberals. These are not resistance

James Comey or whatever types. These are, they're actually, like, I very rarely say this, but these are actual pros, and in many ways, they want to make it work. I mean, think about it. If you got firing removal, people are working for CIA, NSA, and others, they've greenlit some sketchy shit. Some of these are the people who,

like these are the organizations was greenlit the killing of American citizens, including, you know, so-called terrorists and others in order to kill them with no due, process. That's what they have done and have signed off on. Not exactly the squishiest folks that are out there. Dron strikes in Pakistan. So if they're coming out and being like, this is real dicey, you know, right here, that is kind of the biggest red flag is instead of looking at it as like some deep state liberal of looking at it as like, man, the people who have

greenlit like drone strike murder on weddings and the killing of Anwar Alwiki with no due process, if even they come out and say, this is, you know, this is on the edge there. That actually is probably the one that made me, uh, or pick, like actually wake up and be like, oh man, they must be taking things to a whole new level. If even these deep state guys, they don't care one iota about killing anybody. So for them to say something, that made me actually be like, oh, God, this is not good. This is bad. Yeah, no, I mean, the shit is insane.

Like the reporting about the memo that's been used as legal justification makes it clear that they're just using the claims of Trump rather than any actual analysis or reality. And their claim is that effectively drug cartels their real business is violence and terrorism. And the drug money is to finance the violence and terrorism rather than like the common and accurate understanding, which is that their core business is selling drugs and making money and the violence is the result of this lawless and criminal behavior. And then there's the whole, you know, inventing this cartel that Maduro is supposedly the head of. I mean, it's just all utterly preposterous.

And what they're claiming the power to do is literally murder anyone, anywhere, that they say has some connection to the drug trade. I mean, they're literally using, you know, this legal nonsense to try to justify whatever extrajudicial assassinations they want to commit. So even for these CIA ghoul lawyer types, they're like, yo, this is really far. This connects to, we'll talk later about the Mark Kelly stuff. And, you know, this is the subtext of the video the Democrats put out like, hey, you shouldn't be obeying unlawful commands. This is the area. I mean, they're doing all kinds of illegal ship. But this is the one that is like the most brazen and the most glaring.

And you can tell that from the fact they've had to fire a bunch of people just in order to co-examine. some sort of a memo with some sort of a justification for this insanity. Yeah, I mean, I just look, beyond the whole legal thing, it's just a bad idea. It's a horrible idea. Let's go and put C4 up here on the screen just to underscore all of this. The leaks are galore. These are all coming out of the State Department from the Rubio Camp. U.S. to launch new phase of Venezuela operations.

And they say the United States is poised to launch this new phase in the coming days. Reuters did not establish exact timing, but it would include CIA and potential military operations on Venezuelan soils, including demands that Maduro leave power. I do want to say, and this is important, is that at the same time, there is kind of a dual track that's happening. So a lot of what we're showing you right now is coming from the military and from the Secretary of Rubio. But there's a recent report, and this confirms a little bit of what I've been hearing behind the scenes as well. Trump wants to talk directly to Venezuela, to Maduro. You know why? He doesn't trust that he's getting all the information from Marco Rubio and from the national security establishment. In a way, he can feel that he is himself getting played. And so before anything kicks off, he does want to speak directly with him, potentially

on the phone or, you know, some sort of summit. It's not exactly clear. But what he did say is that with this talk and all this, backed up by the whole, quote, gunboat diplomacy that's happening down there, that there is, at the time, the very least, some potential here of an off-ramp. Who knows? Maduro himself, he's been quite a salesman recently. He's been trying actually to relay all of these things to Trump. He's like, I'll sell you the oil, give you what you want. You know, this isn't really about socialism or whatever. You're being played by your, you know, by your neocon secretary of state. So the fact

that Trump is willing to speak to him is actually one of the most positive developments. I'm not going to say it's going to solve everything, but there's been an ocean of propaganda that's been sent to Donald Trump's desk. Trump actually speaking to Maduro could potentially solve at least something. I'm going to hope. That's my last holdout for hope. That's all I'll say. Sagra, it's interesting that you say the leaks to Reuters and other places about, hey, we're kicking off a new phase of operations in Venezuela, that you think that's coming from the Rubio camp. Because the other possibility would be it's coming from people who don't want to see this going forward and trying to raise red flags. What's, I mean, what's your sense of that?

Yeah, you're not wrong, but part of the reason, look, they, they, they, they, they, they, they believe in the political upside and the benefit of this. In some ways, they're not 100% wrong in that is Venezuela really a huge story? Outside of this show and a few, I mean, is anyone on cable news even talking about Venezuela other than Fox News? Not really, right?

So they pretty much think they can take care of this in the clear. They're telling them it'll be a cakewalk. No boots on the ground. Just a couple strikes. No failed state. You know, he's getting a wash in propaganda. Look at Iran, sir. Midnight Hammer. You took him out and we came out.

I mean, you know, we can talk about all the downstream implications and all of that if we want to. But, like, the nuts and bolts of it are, they think that the American public are paying attention and they don't care. Even though the vast majority of people, when they are polled, say that they oppose it, they're like, yeah, they'll get over it. We'll do something. It won't require a huge force. Now, you may have heard that story before in a little place called Libya. But, you know, they're like, well, this is different. We have our Maria Machado, who's ready to go.

So in a lot of ways, you know, they're bragging about this. And also, a lot of the things. This is pressure. Their ideal scenario is that Trump is that Maduro just steps down out of nowhere and, you know, basically hands power over to Maria Machado. I mean, they just don't. That's a total misunderstanding of even if he did, let's say, step down. There's a whole apparatus, military and others that depend on him and his regime, staying in power. You think he's just going to give up power? Let's say if you really believe their own propaganda, that he's the head of this global car or this Venezuelan large cartel. Do cartels just stop operating when else? Chapo and these people go away? No. Okay? So even by their own logic, it doesn't make any damn sense. Yeah. Yeah. So it's all. Maduro will tell you, we, we have plenty of mineral and oil wealth. We don't need to sell drugs. Why would we do that? That's the irony of it. He's always like, you know, I've heard this from multiple people who've met him. He's like, guys, I don't sell drugs. I don't need to. You know, it's one of those things where we call him corrupt, like, okay, you know,

it's like, yeah, but you're corrupt too. We say, you stole the election. It's like, oh, well, you know. It's like the drug thing, he's like, where does this shit come from? He's, like, mystified at the idea that he's a drug dealer. It's like there are rules. It really does feel like, and it feels like this new messaging from Besson and Salazar and who knows who else, it's really aimed at Trump to try to convince him. Like, oh, they can see now Trump's fixation is like, oh, affordability. I got to focus on affordability. So whereas before he was fixated on, like, fentanyl and the drug dealers and Trenda Aragua, now they're like, oh,

oh, okay, now he's moved on and he's focused on affordability. So we're going to make that pitch to him now and see if we can get him to. And, you know, and if this effort fails, they're not going to stop, right? Whatever his next interest is, they'll be like, hey, if you take out Maduro, it's going to help you build the ballroom or whatever it is that he's interested in. They're going to keep cycling through whatever rationales they possibly can is what it feels like to me. Yeah, that's a good point. 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, TDJ, sit down. 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 carried 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. On the podcast Health Stuff, we are tackling

all the health questions that keep you up at night. Priyanka Wally, a double board certified physician. And I'm Hurricane Dibolu, a comedian and someone who once Googled, Do I Have Scurvy at 3 a.m? And on our show, we're talking about health in a different way, like our episode where we look at diabetes. In the United States, I mean, 50% of Americans are pre-diabetic. How preventable is type 2?

Extremely. Listen to health stuff on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.