Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/3/25: Trump Says Maduro Is Hamas, Trump Billionaire Party As SNAP Expires, Welfare Queen AI Slop Videos

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump says Maduro is Hamas, Trump billionaire party as SNAP expires, welfare queen AI slop videos.     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.

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And I'm Maitego Mejahuan, and this week on our podcast, Hungry for History, we talk oysters plus the Mianbi Chief stops by. If you're not an oyster lover, Don't even talk to me. Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way.

Bring back the OsterCon. Listen to Hungry for History on the IHeart Radio 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 the future. show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows,

unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have Crystal. Indeed, we do. Sager and Ryan with some new bombshell reporting about Venezuela. You definitely want to stay tuned for that one. A lot of moving pieces there and fantastic reporting on your

part and Ryan's part. We also have updates with regard to the shutdown. Trump partying away at a Great Gatsby-themed party while food stamp benefits run dry. A judge is intervening and saying that they do have to tap emergency funds to pay out those benefits so that remains in limbo as we speak this morning.

We got a bunch of stuff going on with Cash Patel over at the FBI. fire once again, this time for flying around in a taxpayer-funded private jet, in order to see his girlfriend, he is speaking out, responding in a relatively both humiliating and entertaining way. Yeah, humiliation first, entertaining for the rest of us. Indeed. We're also taking a look at Fox News and a bunch of conservative influencers fell for these

rage bait welfare queen AI videos, so we'll break that down for you. We are quite cooked when it comes to AI. These videos are getting very believable, apparently. Also, a wild story out of Israel. I'm not even sure how to characterize this one, but you guys remember the whole right-to-rape riots that unfolded in Israel. Well, now the society is an uproar furious at the person who leaked the video of the Palestinian being raped by the IDF. There's a lot going on here, so we'll bring you all of the details there. Also have a bunch of updates in the whole Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, Heritage Foundation, fallout.

conservative world is really experiencing quite a schism over the issue of anti-Semitism and over the issue of Israel. I have thoughts. I want to hear Saugger's thoughts as well. So that'll be an interesting one. We're also going to do our AMA live today. If you want to be part of those, make sure you sign up at breakingpoints.com, become a premium subscriber. And also, we have some amazing holiday merch guys. By popular demand, the holiday sweater and socks are back. That's right. Let's put them up on the screen. There they are. And if you're a premium member, you get 20% off. Check your, for those of you who are premium subscribers, check your email.

It should have the discount code there. That's right. The code will be in there. It is made in the USA and Union, okay? So not like everybody else out there, hawking new stuff from China. And I can personally attest to the quality of the socks, who, as I said, the shoe salesman tells me are, incredible. He would lie. Genuinely loves these.

He would not lie. He would not lie to me about how awesome these socks are. Definitely not trying to sell me. a pair of shoes. But nonetheless, I appreciate his compliment. It is great, by the way, to be back on standard time. The sun did rise again. And so it's beautiful. Beautiful this morning. It's a gorgeous morning here in Washington. All right, let's go ahead and start with Venezuela. President Trump sat yesterday with 60 minutes after the Buffalo Bills game. And here's what he said about Nicholas Maduro saying his days are numbered. Let's take a listen. That is the world's largest aircraft carrier

on the way to the Caribbean. Are we going to war? against Venezuela. I doubt it. I don't think so, but they've been treating us very badly, not only in drugs. They've dumped hundreds of thousands of people into our country that we didn't want. People from prisons, they emptied their prisons into our country. They also, if you take a look, they emptied their mental institutions and their insane asylum into the United States of America because Joe Biden was the worst president in the history

of our country. But I just want to talk about the scale of the military operation around Venezuela, because it has been described as 60 minutes as using a blow torch to cook an egg. Is this about stopping- Well, I don't think so, look. Is it about, let me ask you though, is it about stopping narcotics, or is this about getting rid of President Maduro? No, this is about many things. This is a country that allowed their prisons to be emptied into our country.

To me, that would be almost number one, because we have other countries. We don't need to blow up oaths in order to do it. Look, Mexico has been very bad to us in terms of drugs, okay? Very bad. We have a closed border right now. You probably notice that for five months in a row, they have zero, think of this, zero people coming into our country through our southern border.

On Venezuela in particular, are Maduro's days as president numbered? I would say, yeah. I think so, yeah. And this issue of potential land strikes in Venezuela, is that true? I don't tell you that. I mean, I'm not saying it's true or untrue, but I wouldn't be inclined to say that I would do that. Because I don't tell you that.

talk to a reporter. I would say, yeah, in terms of his days being numbered. We're not going to go to war with Venezuela, but Maduro's days are numbered. By the way, that's just from Donald Trump, who is probably the least belligerent member of his White House on Venezuela, if you can believe it. So we have compiled a number of comments and setting the ground for any potential invasion, regime change, strike, CIA operation, assassination, etc. The craziest one so far is you will be shocked to learn that Maduro is now Hamas. and in fact is pro-terrorist. This is from the White House Counterterrorism Advisor Seb Gorka

in an interview from the White House lawn. Let's take a listen. And it is primarily about the drugs, Rob, but it's not just about the drugs. I can't talk about the classified aspects of this, but in open source right now, your viewers can go online and they can search for the connections of that regime,

the Maduro regime, to other bad actors, other states, other nations, who, for example, have been plotting to target members of this administration, including the president. Iran's tentacles into this hemisphere go straight through Caracas. Iran's tentacles wrapped through Caracas. You can't even make this shit up, honestly. And by the way, that's not even the craziest part we'll get to in a little bit about how

they're pro-Iran, they're pro-Russia, they're pro-China, they're pro-Hamas, they're terrorists, but they're drug traffickers. Yeah, they're everything under the sun that you need to facilitate a violent regime change in Venezuela now currently. And I think what I'm just the most galled by is, again, the level of seriousness, which I do not think that the mainstream media is taking this. So the strikes, the land strikes, that remains a possibility. We'll get to that in a moment.

But the simple fact is, is, you know, you can look, the State Department on the record gave Ryan and I a statement saying Maduro is not. the legitimate leader of Venezuela. It's one of the craziest things I've ever read, you know, literally a total declaration from the United States government and on the record statement from the spokesperson to Marco Rubio declaring this person illegitimate, said we have a $50 million bounty, something that many sources and I have been speaking to is that 50 million, you know, the impetus behind that is basically to get every mercenary under the sun to mount some violent operation against Maduro. And so there are all kinds of sketchy blackwater

guys who are flooding the Caribbean, Guyana and Columbia, buying all sorts of weapons because they want their payday. And so that's the type of thing that we're endorsing. Who knows what will happen if this regime completely collapses and everybody's just acting like it's just pie in the sky and a democracy will prevail on day one? I think the opposite's going to happen. And all signs currently point in that direction. Yeah, well, to your point about the mainstream press, you know, what I saw written up in the New York Times this morning about that 60 Minutes clip we showed you from Trump is, oh, he says, we're not going to be at war with Venezuela. Like what? No, that's not what he said. The headline is he said Maduro's days are numbered. Exactly. Now, maybe he doesn't want to come on and be like, oh, yeah, we're going to war tomorrow. But we already know, from the New York Times reporting, by the way, backed up by Sager and Ryan, that he has greenlit these CIA operations.

We see what's happening with our own eyes with striking these random drug boats with the bounty that's put on him, with the massing military assets in the region. We know about the internal push. I can't even call it a tug of war. It's just an all-out push towards war and regime change operations in Venezuela. So, you know, when I hear the president of the United States say, yeah, his days are numbered. Well, how do you think that you think it's just going to be, oh, an organic uprising of the people in Venezuela? No, that is not remotely what we're talking about here.

You know, with regard to the migration piece as well, it's complete insanity. First of all, his whole, like, they opened up the insane asylons. I continue to believe that he actually thinks the asylum process is the same as, like, opening up insane asylums. But, you know, you've had actually a bipartisan project in the U.S., which has pushed a lot of people out of Venezuela to migrate to other countries, including our own. I mean, Marco Rubio and those types, they have been the ones that have, like, welcomed Venezuelans into the country. Now, I support migration, but I also support people being able to live in their own country and have it not be wrecked by sanctions, ownerist sanctions, which are part of what has created the economic misery in that country as well. So in any case, if you have a failed state there and chaos, guess how many people are going to want to leave that country? You're very likely to have an increased migration crisis, which is going to be obviously first and foremost a problem for those individuals who have to flee the area. You're going to have fallout spillover effects for countries in the region and also, you know, for our own country as well. So the whole thing

is completely insane, but I was, my mind was blown by the framing from the mainstream press of like, oh, he says he's not going forward with invade. Everybody calm down. There's not going to be a war. It's going to be fine. What they mean by that is. that they're not going to be a full-scale invasion. And maybe there won't be a full-scale invasion. They don't think that they need to. They think they can militarily pressure him to step down or cause some sort of CIA internal coup inside of the country. By the way, that's way worse, right? Because if you're going to do it, then you need to do it. You need to do it properly. And you need to occupy the country for some 20-odd years. I don't support that just to be very clear. But that's

pretty much the only way that it would ever work. In the meantime, we've got our CIA-backed, you know, people like Maria Machado, who has recently been given the Nobel Peace Prize and is a 100% U.S.-backed, like, there's no other way to describe it. I'll get to my reporting in a bit about some of the details. I have the exact numbers on the number of dollars that flew into her coffers and the entire Venezuelan opposition over the last five years. But listen, this is a very sophisticated political actor. She's now giving interviews saying that Maduro is tied to Hamas, to the Palestinian resistance. He's a terrorist. She supports the land strikes. She has been behind the scenes. I can tell you all in a little bit about the level of support that she's given to the

Trende Aragua accusations to the drug trafficking accusation. She is that the number one force in Washington and around the Western world to push violent regime change so that she herself can assume the presidency and has hundreds of millions of dollars at her disposal. Here's the interview she gave. I mean, it's again, a parody, literally a parody. Let's take a listen. For years. We were, you know, asking the world to understand the degree of the threat and this devastation the Maduro regime was building in Venezuela. I mean, Venezuela has been turned into the safe heaven for the activities of all criminal international networks, from the drop cartels to the Colombian guerrilla, to those groups that smuggle gold and destroy. communities of our indigenous people and the ecology, to redworks that smuggle arms and even human trafficking and child prostitution. This is horrible what we're leaving.

Russian agents, Iranian agents, freely operating in Venezuela, Hezbollah and Hamas, being located in our country. And we have asked for years the international community to cut these sources that come from drug trafficking and other criminal activities. Finally, this is happening. So you think those killings are justified, then. That's what I really want to understand. Or are they, as the UN would say, extrajudicial killings? This is about saving lives.

And Maduro is absolutely conscious, and he has been warned what not to do. These deaths are the responsibility of Nicolas Maduro. What about the rights to due process of the people who were on those boats? I certainly defend the rights of everyone, not only Venezuelans. That's why my voice has been, you know, loud all along this process. But you need to understand, all the international community need to understand that this is a very cruel war. It was Maduro who turned this into an international conflict. Look, when you face, when you face it, when you face it.

Are those people who spend on the boats? It was Maduro who insisted on maintaining operation that have consequences. Maduro is not a conventional dictator. We are facing an anarcho-terrorist structure. So that's the lady. Pro-Hamas, Maduro's Hamas, Maduro's Iran, Maduro's, Russia, Maduro's. Anybody bad, you joked, the ghost of bin Laden is in Venezuela, too. And, you know, let's also just take this,

at a very basic level. Do you think that, let's say, I don't know if Maduro is popular or not, I have no idea. You know, there's a lot of propaganda and all that out there. I will say this. If you're another country and another, if you are Venezuela, and the United States sanctions you to death for the last five to ten years, you have a huge migration crisis, which I'll also get to in a little bit in terms of the U.S. role in some of that. And now the opposition leader, who you may have had some sort of democratic faith in, is on the record supporting strikes against your countrymen, in addition to being CIA and U.S. backed in some sort of a literal coup that has been acknowledged by the president, would you, even if you hate Maduro, would you accept that person as your new leader solely as a democratic polity with people, you know, tens of millions of people who live in that country, very oil rich and explicitly. stated goal of wanting to take advantage of your mineral resources. Would you allow that person to assume the mantle? What self-respecting person could do that? Imagine the United States,

you don't like Trump, okay? Well, if the Chinese or some other country, like, came in, deposed that person explicitly to try and steal our oil. Like, do you not think that even a lot of Democrats and other people who don't like Trump would be like, yeah, I don't know about this. You know, I don't know about all this. If something's right, KGB, style assassination explicitly stated out there. I think most Americans be like, listen, you know, I'm not so thrilled with my president and all that, but I'm not dealing with whatever this is. That's what do you think is more likely to take up arms against somebody like that? Who do you think is going to meet perhaps, let's say, violent resistance or anti-democratic

nature? She's openly supporting the strikes here, which is dramatically unpopular in Venezuela. She's openly supporting. Let's be clear about what this. She is openly supporting the murder of random Venezuelans with no evidence or due process. That's what she's and she's calling for direct U.S. action in Venezuela. Like, that's

insane. And this is the lady that, you know, Miss Nobel Peace Prize, this is the lady that you think is going to be able to unify the country and bring everybody together in this theoretical post-Modora world. Insane. And I'm so insulted by the, how, like, stupid

they think we are with their propaganda. You know, Maduro's Hamas, Maduro's Hezbollah, Maduro's Iran, it's Russia, it's the ghost of bin Laden, it's the ghost of Adolf Hitler. I mean, just like, you know, at least in the past, there was some effort for a full sale, like, propaganda effort to convince the American people of the goodness of our various wars. Here they just slap together. Okay, drug trafficking, terrorism, Hezbollah, Hamas. Okay, we got to do it, guys. Let's do, like, don't ask you many questions. We're just going to be off to the races here.

And look at this lady. Isn't she amazing? our new Ahmed Chalabi ready to go. It's so insane to me. The just how easy they think we are to manipulate. And unfortunately, for a lot of people, apparently it's true. They just buy it. We don't live in a democracy anymore. We live in a, look, I mean, maybe we never did. But the point is that we have always been ruled and governed by elites. The elites who are in power are Marco Rubio and in a cabal of South Floridians who have taken over the White House that Trump is somehow susceptible to and has been convinced of this violent takeover for his benefit. He has been convinced

that we can get more oil from Venezuela if we overthrow the regime as opposed to Maduro, who literally is telling us, take whatever you want. This is the thing people don't understand about Maduro. He does not actually care that much about Russia and China. I was not a Latin American expert, but I've now spent literally hours on the phone talking to people who have met him. Recently, I've spoken with 10 people who have met Nicholas Maduro in the last six months. All of them tell me exact same thing. Maduro does not care about this. He's absolutely willing to sell oil, minerals, gold. He just wants to survive atop his thing. He's even willing to, let's say, step aside in some sort of deal in 2030. Well, he'll go, you know, he'll step aside from the

government and, you know, you can have a win-win type situation, but the regime that he has will remain in power. That is literally what's on the table. We're saying, no, we're doing this violent drug trafficking narrative instead, which is totally fake. It's fake. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her. We know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got a story.

The Citizen Investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said.

They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I pour gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or we're ever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season

ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Samihante, it's Anna Ortiz. And I'm Mark and Delicado. You might know us as Hilda. And Justin. From Ugly Betty. We played mother and son on the show,

but in real life, we're best friends. And I'm all grown up now. Welcome to our new. podcast. Viva Bethi! Yay! Woo-hoo! Can you believe it has been almost 20 years? That's not even possible. Well, you're the only one that looks that much different. I look

exactly the same. We're re-watching the series from start to finish and getting into all the fashions, the drama, and the behind-the-scenes moments that you've never heard before. You're going to hear from guests like America Ferreira, Vanessa Williams, Michael Yuri, Becky Newton,

Tony Plana, and so many more. icons, each and every one. All of a sudden, like, someone, like, comes running up to me, and it's Selma Hayek. And she's like, you are my ugly Betty. And I was like, what is she even talking about? Listen to Viva Betty as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Michael Lewis here.

My book, The Big Short, tells the story of the buildup and births of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. It follows a few unlikely, but lucky people who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception. It was like feeding the monster, said Isman. We fed the monster until it blew up. The monster was exploding. Yet on the streets of Manhattan, there was no sign anything important had just happened. Now, 15 years after the Big Shorts' original release,

and a decade after it became an Academy Award-winning movie, movie, I've recorded an audiobook edition for the very first time. The big short story, what it means when people start betting against the market, and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, it is as relevant today as it's ever been, offering invaluable insight into the current economy and also today's politics. Get the big short now at pushkin.fm. slash audiobooks, or wherever audiobooks are sold. Let's go and put a Ryan and I story please up on the screen just so I can kind of go through all of it. This is from Ryan.

He got the big scoop here, is that the U.S. expanded drug cartel target list to include Colombian sites amid the Rubio push for Venezuelan regime change. That was from Ryan, is that what they did is that they have expanded the strike list to include on the border with Venezuela and Colombia in addition to Mexico, and that Lindsay Graham is going all over Capitol Hill, urging people to support some sort of. of strikes not only on Venezuela for regime change, but all across Latin America. But here's a portion that I really want everyone to sit with. I got my hands on a bunch of these internal USAID documents, okay, from the last five years. And I just want to read to you all the colossal amounts of money that have flown into the, flowed into the Venezuelan opposition, $213 million over the last five years. This is per an internal USAID assessment that I was able to get my hands on just into the

Venezuelan opposition. For Machado, 18 million last year alone, including global travel of this recent Nobel Peace Prize tour. This was just 2024. So this is under the Biden administration. In the more recent times, by the way, after Trump disbanded USAID, they redirected $400 million just in September of 2025 to combat ideologically opposed governments in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. 400 million. So add all that up, we're talking about six thousand. $700 million. In addition, by the way, by the way, what did Ryan and I find in the middle of the

appropriations bill? Let me read it to you specifically. Of the funds appropriated by this act under the heading of economic support fund, 50 million shall be made available for democracy programs in Venezuela. That is an increase of 10 million from just the last year. So add all that, this is almost a billion dollars that I can verify of just over the last five years flowing into Venezuela. Maria Machado, this whole Nobel Peace Prize thing, is 100% orchestrated by the United States. And this is part of the bipartisan narrative. Yes, Rubio and Trump are the ones who are taking it a step further. Biden pumped hundreds of mills into the Venezuelan opposition. This whole Juan Guaido regime op that's been going on since 2000 and, what is it, 2019,

has been flowing now for years to the point where the entire bipartisan machine just seems to agree that we need to pump all this money into Venezuela and that regime changes. itself is an effort which will be successful. It will not be, we do, we learn nothing. And, you know, again, just to stick with this is Maduro himself, and I, look, I'm not pro Maduro, I think he's a bad guy, okay? I'm not saying, you know, I'm sure he's still an election. At the end of the day, I don't really care.

If he's willing to sell us oil, whatever, okay, there's a lot of bad people all around the world who sell us oil. Saudi Arabia, shocker. Well, you know, it's really funny. Maduro has been telling anybody who will listen. He'd go, by the way, he's like, I didn't invade you. You destroyed my country with sanctions. And what I uncovered was a USAID contract for September 2023 to July of 2024.

I literally got to read the contract to a large Colombian newspaper called El Pais. And this newspaper was being funded billions of Colombian pesos to run ads about a, quote, new narrative about the Venezuelan migrant population to document and make visible success of stories of migrant. accessing the formal market in Columbia using formats and media regularly consulted by business groups. The justification of that contract was to say that Venezuelans should stay in Colombia. Now, what do the critics of that campaign say? Is that we funded, this is just one of many contracts all across Latin America, which basically encouraged Venezuelans to leave Venezuela. And then, once they got to Colombia, they were like, oh, well, maybe we'll try and do this ad sci-op to make them stay there. No, what it did is it sucked even more people out of Venezuela

to Colombia, Gaon, all of these other neighbors throughout Latin America, and then they came here for DPS, using the border, under Biden. I mean, over a million people came here from Venezuela, just under Joe Biden. Just to point out, like he, and by the way, not just him, leftists and other people who are currently in power in Colombia have been screaming this from the rooftops, is they're like, look, we agree, you know, the border situation and all that is out of control, but you cannot absolve yourselves of literally funding a group,

funding huge ad campaigns across our countries, basically encouraging Venezuelans to leave. Well, sanctioning the shit on them. Exactly. And then making ads. So they cannot benefit from the vast mineral and oil wealth that they actually have. Engaging all these multi-million dollars of, you know, USAID democracy regime change funds, the whole Juan Guaido thing. And then the ad campaigns actively, effectively encouraging Venezuela migration. So, you know, I mean, and this is where, again, And the bipartisan aspect of it, you know, Rubio and the South Florida people, that was Biden, but all Rubio and all the South Florida people, like, they support all of that, right? And so, and that's the other thing about all of this. We talked about the mainstream press drop in the ball here. But like the supposed opposition party largely quiet. You got, you know, Mark Pocan, you got Roe Conner, you got a few lonely voices out there. But you asked yourself, where is the, where is the fury? Like, where is them taking them to task over there? Where is them explaining to the American public? what is going on here and how they're being lied to and how they're being snowed. And the reason they're so quiet is because a lot of them kind of sort of agree with it.

They're okay with it. Or they think, oh, this is not the political place to fight or whatever, which to me is insane. But there is a lot of support, a lot of bipartisan support for this insane leftover Cold War mentality and this fantasy belief that somehow this time the regime operation is going to be different. Why can't we just say that opposing regime change in Venezuela is not a endorsement of Nicholas Maduro. Why is that so difficult? It's not. Like, yes, he's a bad guy. There are bad people all over the world. We make deals with them on an everyday basis. He's willing to sell us a shit pot of oil and gold. Take the deal. Take the deal. I was going to say, if we can live with a guy

who literally slaughtered U.S. soldiers in Iraq, as in Syria, because he's pro-Israel, we can live with anything. Same. Like, oh, he's stolen election. They don't have elections in Saudi Arabia or in guitar. Guess what? We buy shit tons of LNG and oil. It's not my problem. Uh, what? And Turkey. Yes, Turkey, Erdogan, I'm sure he's stolen multiple elections or whatever at this point. Yeah, well, Inchronic Air Force Base is really important. We have nuclear weapons there. Deal with it. Okay, we've had military coups and military dictatorship there since the 1970s, whatever. Okay, this is the point. The inconsistency around all of this is so insane. And now it's about drugs. Like, no, This is 150% a bipartisan regime change, USAID, CIA.

It will end in the same way that it always does. You really think the Venezuelans are going to accept this CIA-funded woman who encourages and wants the murder of her own countrymen. How can you possibly think that that is going to go over well? You know, let me tell you a little story about Lula. Lula, not doing so well down in Brazil. actually, before Trump came in. Then what happened? Trump slapped the shit out of him with sanctions.

And what do you? Lula's more popular than ever, okay? He's more popular than ever. Look at Canada. A little story I heard about Columbia is that Petro is desperate for Trump to sanction him because he wants to get reelected. He's not actually doing so well down in Colombia. Part of the reason he's been mouthing off so much is he wants Trump to come in and to

sanction him because the populations around Latin America are sick of this. They can see it and they're watching what's happening. You know, and that's a final thing in terms of the whole Monroe Doctrine, I strongly believe in the Monroe Doctrine. But part of that is also that increasingly engaging in the same bipartisan regime change, throw ops over and over again, has dramatically undermined U.S. security in Latin America. It has mass encouraged violent, you know, migration and other to the United States would cause a demographic and political crisis here. Put that all together. It's like, how can you possibly say that that? successful. Can you talk Sagar a little bit about you and Ryan's reporting with regard to the

target bank, including targets in Colombia and targets in Mexico as well? Because effectively what you and Ryan reported is, you know, since they're using this whole pretext of drugs and there isn't a lot of actual drug trafficking in Venezuela at all, when they were, when, you know, people were tasked with coming with, okay, we'll find us some targets. They were like, well, there's not a lot of Venezuela. But we do have some in Mexico. We have some in Colombia. So can you talk about that aspect of what that means? Totally. Yeah. This is a hilarious little side story as well, is that Trump has recently found out there is no fentanyl in Venezuela. And so even though he's apparently okay with these strikes, what him, actually, let's put this next one, please, on the screen.

This was about the U.S. poised to strike military targets in Venezuela and escalation. This was a Miami Herald report. The administration denied it just to be clear. But clearly, Miami Herald, they've got some good sources down there in South Florida. The story, as I understand it, is that there was like a go-no-go situation. It did eventually calm down over the weekend. but in the next few days to a week, you can definitely watch. One of the reasons is that a lot of those warships do eventually need to return to port

or where they came from. So they're on actually a limited timeline for the amount of time they can stay out there absent some crazy circumstance if they want to keep them there. But to your point about what you were saying, the reason why Colombia and Mexico have now increasingly been extended in the target list is there is no fentanyl or cocaine that's really coming from Venezuela. It's just not a lot that comes from there. It's like 6, 7%.

This is from the DEA's own 2025 report. I tweeted it. You can go read it for yourself if you want to. It's publicly available. It's pretty hard to find. The point that you read from that document, though, and the reason why many of the more recent strikes from the U.S. have shifted to the Pacific Ocean is those actually are cocaine routes from Colombia to Mexico. Now, a lot of the cocaine will come from Colombia to Mexico. Mexico is where the fentanyl comes in. They use the precursors from China. And then the absolute vast majority of it crosses the U.S.-Mexico border, not by sea. It almost all comes by land. Now, in terms of the strike packages that have been prepared, a lot of them, the fact that, you know, any cocaine, which is moving from Colombia to Venezuela is happening on that border. A lot of it has nothing to do really with Maduro. This is like some guerrilla, you know, this is jungle stuff. Like that it's kind of hard to explain for a lot of people. But it's effectively like a lawless no man's land down there. And that is where, you know, to the extent you can find a Venezuelan connection, it's there on the border and it's a lot more with the Colombians. Now, internally, what I'm told is, that Mexico and Colombia, even though they're the most legitimate strike targets for the U.S., you would cause huge political problems. So, as I just explained, Trump does not want to sanction Petro. Why? He doesn't want him to get reelected.

He doesn't want the leftist to win. If we strike Colombia, it's game. It's going to be a socialist takeover down in Colombia. Shinebaum is massively popular. She's actually playing ball right now. If we strike Mexico, first of all, economic consequences could be a disaster because of the NAFTA and the amount of trade that we do down in Mexico, they could cripple our economy if they wanted to, but two, is that it would solidify the Scheinbaum regime even more

than it already is and make the leftist parties even more popular down in Mexico. So the administration is aware of this to a certain extent. Brazil massively backfired on them. They did not expect Bolsonaro to dip, the Bolsonaro is to drip in popularity and for Lula's popularity to go up as a result of the sanction. So I don't think it's going to happen personally. I do think if anything does happen, it will be in Venezuela. But the Venezuelan regime change thing, it's here.

I mean, Trump is now saying his days are numbered. He seems to believe all of this. We potentially maybe have one or two more off-ramps, but I'm not feeling very good about it. Like I think we have maybe 14 days right now is a very critical time. That's where we're spending a lot of time on this right now. Yeah. Let's take a look at A6. This was an important report from the Washington Post about the, you know, the legal

justification. So the headline here, Trump administration tells Congress, war law does not apply to cartel strikes. So effectively, they say the president needs lawmakers' approval for sustained military action under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which was passed in the week the Vietnam War, a 60-day clock started ticking after the administration informed Congress on September 4th that had conducted a strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean two days earlier. It's followed that with other strikes. It's killed dozens of people. That 60-day window closes today. And until now, it'd been unclear what the administration would do. And so basically, the administration is saying, we don't have to follow that law. We don't have to notify you.

We don't classify this as meeting the requirements under this war powers resolution. So they continue to claim the ability to, you know, do all of these, like, random extrajudicial assassinations with no due process, indefinitely, without having to go to Congress whatsoever. Congress is probably not all that aside about it because of the reasons that we just were mentioning that, you know, they don't like to have to make difficult decisions and have their fingerprints on this. There is a more or less bipartisan acceptance of the general thrust of, hey, let's get rid of Maduro.

So they're probably not going to protest too much. There are a couple other interesting notes in this piece. I mean, number one, what the administration is actually claiming here, which is something I've been saying for a while, is that they can assassinate any person that they claim to be tied to the drug trade. Okay. That's what they're claiming and not just at sea. Like, what they're asserting is that they can murder anyone they want domestically here in the U.S. with no due process as long as they say, oh, but they were related to drug trafficking.

They were related to a drug cartel. They had, were giving material support to drug cartels. That's their view of their legal. abilities, which is insane. Also, just a little nugget in here, there was supposed to be a briefing where the military lawyers come in and sort of like brief Congress on the legal rationale. That didn't happen. And originally Congress felt like, oh, they're just stonewalling us. But the reality was that the legal experts were not comfortable with the legality of it and didn't want to have to go and do this briefing. So to give you a sense of how much tumult there is in

terms of the like career officials and lawyers who've been involved in this process. And of course, we saw one high up, you know, military commander who was pushed down over his objection to some of these things as well. So, I mean, what they're claiming here is absolutely insane, even putting the Venezuela piece aside and focusing here domestically. Absolutely. You're absolutely right. Ryan had some stuff on that as well, by the way, in the report. So look, that's where things are. As of right now, we really don't know yet where things could go. It's still possible. We could reopen some talks with Maduro. I think it's going to be very difficult. You can see it as a massive pressure campaign, but every single day that this goes on, it just

gets more dangerous. Who knows what kind of crazy black ops mercenary thing is going to be happening inside Venezuela? Right now. I have no clue. Yeah, exactly. I mean, on the Venezuelan side, too, for ostensibly anybody who cares about the opposition, as I've explained, you know what Maduro says? Maduro is doing backflips when we do the CIA announcement, because then any opposes him as who? CIA. This is what the Iranians did after the Mossad targeted assassinations. Any person in Iran who spoke out against the regime, now they're Mossad and they literally just kill him. That's what Maduro is doing, is throwing them all in jail. He's going to kill him. This is the best gift you've ever given for the regime. He's also coup proofing himself increasingly. Most of

the people around him at this point have been so tested. And, you know, I mean, there's a recent story where we tried to buy off his pilot to try and fly him to the United States from the CIA and the pilot was basically playing them off trying to get some cash, but he eventually told Maduro. He saved him. So he has a pretty good cocoon around him to protect himself at this point. And I don't think he's going anywhere personally. So we'll see.

All right, let's get to the shutdown. Trump disagrees with you. So we'll see how that goes. Well, I don't think he's going anywhere voluntarily. Yeah. Indeed. Is he going to die? Very possible. All I know is what I've been told. And that's a half-truth is a whole lie.

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Once I saw the gun, I try to take his hand, and I saw the flash of light. Listen to the Chinatown Sting on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts. Samihante, it's Anna Ortiz. And I'm Mark and Delicado. You might know us as Hilda and Justin from Ugly Betty. We played mother and son on the show, but in real life, we're best friends. And I'm all grown up now. Welcome to our new podcast, Viva Betty!

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Available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Meanwhile, the government remains shut down. You'll recall Republicans were trying to. deny everyone's snap benefits. As of now, the November 1st EBT refill has not happened. I'll get to more on that in a moment. But while all of that is going on, Trump was partying down at Mar-a-Lago. We can put these images up on the screen. Throwing a Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party. The title was A Little Party Never Killed Nobody. You can see here's a lady scantily clad dancing in a rotating champagne glass.

Bann it. Lots of scantily clad, sequin-clad women and opulence at this party. You know, you can only imagine if any other president through a party like this at any point, let alone at a time when the economy is cratering and people are being denied basic food benefits and the government remains shut down. So very, very gilded age, I would say, literally, very gilded age feeling. You can recall that the images of people having these opulent parties. and people's noses pressed down on the glass. That is kind of the vibe that it's giving right here. At the same time, Marjorie Taylor Green continues to be outspoken

against her own party and their failures with regard to health care specifically. Here she was on Bill Maher's program. Here's why I'm angry. The Democrats passed Obamacare, but yet the Republicans have never done anything to correct the problems that exist with it. And I blame my own party. That's absolutely wrong.

And I don't think it's an easy thing to fix However, it's something that we should have a plan for, and Mike Johnson for a month now cannot give me a single policy idea. And I'm angry about that. Is this your understanding of Obama care of it? So she says, Mike Johnson cannot give me a single policy idea. Right now, the shutdown appears to continue to be at a full impasse. There are no ongoing negotiations that we are aware of. I think Democrats feel very secure in their political position. And Trump is feeling no real pressure to cave here, he thinks that he can continue to sort of like exact pain on Democrats via the American public. And as we get into, you know, holiday season and Thanksgiving travel and all of that, it's the level of pain is only going to increase. The theory I have heard is both parties want to keep it shut down until Thanksgiving so that people have horrible travel experiences and then they blame either side. That's basically

the gamble. That's not currently happening. It's been basically a month. now since the government has been shut down. A lot of people, I mean, put the furloughed employees and all of that aside. The point is, is that at a certain point for the TSA, you know, they're not getting paid. A lot of them are showing up voluntarily. And so how many of them are just going to start calling out sick and they don't have to come to work? And especially for Thanksgiving. They have to go get another job so they can survive. Exactly. I mean, look, I don't particularly blame anybody if you pay for a month, you know, not why would you necessarily have to work? But the point is, if you were one of those people, you would also maybe strategically want to call out sick,

especially if you're air traffic controllers and others whenever it comes to the shutdown because you have air traffic control, TSA, a lot of other employees, but you're being required to work. And there's a lot of contingency funds. For example, you know, the paying the troops thing, you had that donor, the billionaire mega donor, who paid the, which, by the way, still insane. Completely insane. That's like some literally gilded age thing from J.P. Morgan back in the early 1900s. Not joking. You can look at that incident if you're interested. But the point actually just remains around the shutdown itself is, look, I think it's crazy because it's such an impactful story, especially maybe more of a Washington biased because I know so many people who have been furloughed, but it still doesn't feel like the number one story yet in the country. And I really wonder if so many people now have given up at all in the government and just don't care.

They just kind of move on with their life, like a number one story in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, everywhere else. None of it is about the shutdown. I literally just checked this morning a month into the last government shutdown, which lasted only 35 days. The amount of pressure on the Trump administration was unbelievable, which is part of why Trump caved so quickly initially in that one. And so I really have no idea where this will go. Both feel pretty comfortable in where they are right now. So let me give an update on the SNAP benefits because we covered this extensively last week. Republicans decided they were going to cut off SNAP funds, which would run out at the end of the month. previously they had indicated there was an emergency fund to allow those things, those benefits to continue. Forty-two million Americans are, you know, beneficiaries of SNAP funds, disproportionately families with children. So obviously really critical program for people. So there was a lawsuit. And you had two federal judges on Friday say that the Trump administration must tap into contingency funds. I'm reading from a CBS News report to make payments for SNAP during the government

shutdown ruling against the government and a pair of suits over the imminent benefits lapse. And they mentioned as well, roughly 42 million Americans rely on SNAP to help buy food. In a case that was brought by a coalition of states in federal court in Massachusetts, Judge Indira Talwani ruled that the government is required by law to tap into the emergency money to make at least partial payments and gave the administration until Monday to tell the court whether it planned to do so. In a separate decision in Rhode Island, Judge John McConnell, Junior, grant a request for a temporary restraining order from a group of municipalities and nonprofits that sued to block the imminent funding freeze. The ruling was made from the bench and

entry on the case docket said the court orders the USDA to distribute contingency funds and report back to the court again by noon today. So two courts that are saying, no, you have to tap these emergency funds. You have to continue paying out benefits. So far, those funds have not come through. They're still frozen. Big question mark over what is exactly going to happen. Whether there's going to be an appeal, et cetera, whether it's going to be a full or a partial payment, how long it will take to effectuate those payments. All of that is incredibly unclear. And so in the meantime, you know, snap benefits, especially with how costly groceries are at this point, they don't usually make it, it's not usually nearly sufficient to actually make it to the end

of the month. So people are really waiting for that first of the month to be able to replenish their grocery supplies. And everyday delay is, you know, really painful for a lot of people. I'm sure we're going to be seeing images of the food banks as we already have with, you know, lines around the block, both from food stamp beneficiaries who have now been cut off, also from furloughed workers who have no idea when they're going to be able to be getting their next paycheck. And there are some indications that this is starting to hit Trump's approval rating. We can put B4 up on the screen. This again speaks to the political dynamics and why Democrats feel they're on somewhat solid ground here. So his approval rating is 43% disapproved, 55. But even more significant in this NBC News poll, they tested the generic ballot for the midterm elections, you know, okay, are you going to vote for Republican for Congress or a Democrat for Congress? And they found the Democrats leading on the generic ballot by eight points. Now, that is the largest generic ballot advantage that NBC News has found for Democrats in years. It comes at a time also, interestingly, where the Democratic Party approval

rating is still complete in total garbage. It's actually lower than the Republican Party approval rating. Part of that is because you have so many Democrats who are disgusted with the Democratic Party but are still going to vote for them over the Republicans. So it's not like Democrats are like making the most of the situation and really providing, you know, a glowing, optimistic path forward for the country. But you do start to see some real fallout from Republican, you know, single control leadership in the House, in the Senate, in the presidency. I think the awareness of the shutdown, the way the shutdown is starting to hit a lot of families across the country and a variety of other issues that people have with this administration as well as well is beginning to take its toll. And just for perspective, look, caveats, polls, other polls show different, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

An eight point popular vote win in the House, that's a landslide. That's like bigger than the margin in, you know, 2010, 2008. the years we think of, like, huge way of elections, eight points would be, you know, among the largest popular vote victories for either party in, you know, in recent years. So all of the, like, Republican gerrymandering stuff that they would do is kind of moot if you have that large of a victory for the Democrats. Well, that's one of the warnings I've given is that, you know, a lot of these gerrymandering in Texas are like 52-48 seats.

And I'm like, yeah, well, considering how Democrats- You don't roll in the dice of that one. For me, I'm like, look, Texas, the Texas I know, which is dramatically changed demographically with all of these Californians, urbanization, and the education gap, in addition to some of the price increase who are drawing in some more educated liberals, I wouldn't be so comfortable of 5248 if I were you, Texans, especially from what I've seen in terms of the voter data, but you do you, I guess, you know, you can try and go for it. Again, I don't know where things will go, because at the same time, frustration may be building,

how much of it is shutdown based? You know, it's one of those where it seems to me a lot more people who are upset with Trump have reasons to do so. They have a lot more to do outside of the shutdown. Part of the reasons why the Republicans themselves, they feel pretty comfortable right now. Like, I'm not seeing a lot of discomfort

in the overall GOP ranks. To the extent that there is, it's from Marjorie and others, but that's not really about the shutdown. That's about health care, right? That's not about SNAP or anything. It's really about health care premiums. By the way, I can report.

I did check my Obamacare premium. It'll be up 17% this year. So it'll be about $12,000, $15,000 deductible. So thank you, President Obama. Thank you, President Trump, and all of the interim political leaders for that. Everyone has been involved in creating this disaster. If I didn't have a kid, I'm rolling the dice. All right, I'm going to pay cash and just hope I don't get hit by a bus.

There's only one reason that I'll ever literally sign up for usury. You're 25 grand in the hole before you even get to anything. I haven't checked my price increase yet. I'm not looking for it. Open enrollments here. What a great time. What a great season. We're on, like, the lowest level, the bronze play.

Oh, me too. Trust me. All right. This is literally, I'm doing the same thing. That's why my deductible is so high. That's, I'd be even more if I had a, if I had a high premium. I don't know, man. I just have no idea how this is possible.

Did we do the show together where we put up that guy who was a solopreneur. Yeah, that's right. For $42,000 with a $10,000 deductible, $50,000, if you ever, you know, get into a serious crisis. What's the point at that point? Seriously. Well, and this is where, you know, I mean, Democrats have, there was not really a health care conversation that was going on at all. It was completely absent effectively from the 2024 election. And so they did with the shutdown. I mean, the reason Marjorie is talking about health care is because of the shutdown. Yeah, that's true. Because of the conversation that they forced on it. So, I mean, I, you know,

I got my issues with their strategy, whatever. But they did accomplish kind of shifting the conversation in that direction. Now, that may have happened organically because of the way people are getting hit with these premium price hikes. But they certainly help to sort of focus the national media on that. Let's go ahead and put the next numbers up on the screen. I think you're right, Sager, that, you know, I also am not sure that a lot of the deterioration in the Republican position is really related to the shutdown. In a lot of ways, that's a bigger problem for them, though, because if it's just about the shutdown, then they open the government back up and everybody kind of forgets about the shutdown. I think the problems do actually go deeper than that. But here you can

see they ask this question, has the Trump administration lived up to your expectations or has it fallen short on these issues. The place where they're doing the best is still border security and immigration, 51%, so a majority say that Trump has lived up to his promises there, 44% say fallen short. On foreign policy, you've got him underwater 44-53. Changing business as usual in Washington, this is kind of actually a low-key devastating number for Trump, because that's kind of his whole brand is like doing things different, upending the status quo, et cetera. And you have only 40% saying that he lived up to the expectation of change business as usual, a strong majority, 56% saying that he's fallen short. But his numbers on the economy are the worst. Only 34% feel

he's lived up to his expectations on the economy, only 33% on looking out for the middle class, and only 30% on inflation and the cost of living, which was a central and issue in this last election as absolutely anything. So taking on more and more water, with regards to the economy. Of course, we've been covering here the AI, in part, spurred layoffs, which are accelerating, you know, very little job creation. Yes, the stock market continues to soar, basically on the back of AI and data center buildouts, and that's effectively it.

So not something that a lot of Americans are benefiting from in a real and tangible way in their day-to-day. Prices are still very high. Healthcare prices are accelerating and just becoming wildly, wildly unaffordable. and people really feeling the pinch at this point as, you know, Trump is there doing his whole great Gatsby thing. Not a great image.

That's another thing, too. That in the ballroom, not great images for him. I don't just agree. I just wonder how much of the stuff even penetrates at this point, you know? Trump is, he's like in a different universe. I think if anything penetrates, it's the economic stuff. I don't disagree, but I mean, the Gatsby thing

or the ballroom. I mean, I know the ballroom was like a meme. I actually, it's, of course, you know, some dumb-ass segment about the ballroom gets like 200,000 views and becomes the thing that people asked me about in public. It's like, what do you think about the ball? That did kind of go off. I don't know why. It's the stupid shit is the stuff that penetrates. But, you know, I'm always like, yeah, but how much of this is just like a funny meme? Is this something that actually is going

to head home? Like what, I don't know. You know, I do this for a living and I still have never been able to figure out, like, what actually gets people to vote. Yeah. Well, here's what I would say is, you know, his brand was a few things, right? The appealing part of his brand was like, he's a businessman. He's going to make the economy good. And he's, and he's, he's a businessman. And he's He's going to be, you know, and he's pro-working class, right? He's going to be fighting for the working class, and he's going to upend businesses usually. He's going to be this renegade, outsider, overturn the system, et cetera. And I think Epstein was a devastating blow on the, like, upending the status quo thing.

I think certainly, you know, people are disgusted with his handling of the economy from the tariffs and just, you know, there's been no addressing of their inflation issues, feels very chaotic, layoffs accelerating, et cetera. So you have, you know, the businessman thing not working out. And then, like, the Gatsby stuff and the constant surrounding yourself with these oligarchs and catering to them and, you know, the East Wing and the parties and all of that, you know, visual grammar of luxury and opulence, I think that gets to this, you know, oh, is he going to fight for the working class? And now at this point, you just look like a fool if you really, you know, continue to believe that that's where his heart and soul is. I don't know. I still wonder how much of it was economic. I really just don't know. It was a very strange election, so much of it was economic. But then remember, we had the culture war midterm election of 2022. Democrats sweep in despite crippling inflation in the mid. Not sweep in, but they did dramatically better based on the issue of abortion. I kind of think immigration might actually have been more number one than anything else. Obviously, it's not a vacuum outside of the economy. I also think Biden's age was the huge superseding thing. on top of Kamala's trust. Kamala's inability to speak, right? No, it's literally, like you put all that stuff

together, that's why there's no grand kind of thing that comes out of it and there are disparate coalitions for various reasons that support. Have you seen his numbers with young people? Yeah, and that's what I mean. And look, if anything, that's probably the people I care about the most, just not about the Republicans,

I don't care about that. That's just in terms of who literally the future of the country is. And for them, like, it's pretty obvious that nihilism, I'll save one of this for our last block, but a huge reason why politics are the way they are right now is because of a pervading sense of crippling nihilism because of the basic fact that you will not do better than your parents today

unless you are extremely lucky or if your parents give you some of their money. That is a gerontocracy. That is a system of aristocracy, of the bourgeoisie, of the early, you know, gilded age period in the United States and of the House of Lords period in the UK, literally the opposite of what we were all supposed to be. And that's basically who we've become, again. So, of course, you're going to have violent politics basically rise up and you shouldn't be so surprised.

The people, you can all, you can do two things in moments like this. You can blame the voters for being bad, for being naughty, or you can blame the leaders who architected that system. I'm always going to choose the latter. Can we do both? Huh? No, we can't. I think we can. We can blame the voters? I think we can.

What are your personal agency? Come on. People have responsibility for their own, like, views. How about this? I hold the voters often in a form of, like, it's not hatred, but I'm just like, what are you people doing? Like, it's like a scorn. This is a very elitist mentality. I don't put that on this.

Or sometimes it's like, bro, what are you doing? It's almost like the What's the Matter with Kansas book, you know, you see people. Somebody recently who, frankly, like, doesn't make that much money. He was complaining to me about the estate tax. And I was like, do you even know what the estate tax? is, it's like $28 million. I'm like, you're never going to get there. Shut the fuck up.

See, it's like, but that's, I'm like, I don't know where that comes from. I guess I have evolved on this issue. I would have previously said 100%, you can't blame the voters, you got to look at the elites, but you know what? You got to, first of the most important thing is to blame the elites, figure out what went wrong trying to fix the system. But you know what? At this point, I've lost some paid.

I'm done coddling some of these people. Like, you know, you like figure out what's going on. You're getting lied to multiple times. You're just accepting it. I mean, going back to the Venezuela drug boats, like, you're just accepting these stupid low Maduro's Hamas. I'm sorry. I'm done coddling these people. At a certain point, I'm feeling more like you.

You got to take some personal responsibility for yourself. I feel, look, I agree personal responsibility. I guess I'm more talking about political. So you and I are commentators and we have the luxury. Like, I can just openly be like, boomers, I think you should be kicked out of your houses for the property tax. I'm going to say it. All right, nobody will ever get elected. I think property taxes should go higher on you.

And yes, if you live in a four-bedroom house, sorry, you got it. go and somebody younger should be able to live there. You'll never get elected based on that message. So when I say stuff like this, it's more of like how I think politically it should be. But yeah, no, you're right. Personally, you know, you look at some of the choices that individual voting blocks bake in America and you're just like, what are we doing? It's like, is this an IQ problem? Probably. Yeah, education problem. Whatever. Well, I just wanted to say, because I mentioned the young people numbers with Trump. And I think this is the place that where you can say most clearly the economy is the problem.

I agree. And he now has an approval rating of 20% among voters under 30. According to you gov, 20% disapproval is 75%. That is an increase in disapproval of 38 points since February and a decline in approval rating of 22 points, again, since February. So used to be, you know, it was relatively even between. approve and disapprove. Now you only have 20% of young voters and who say they approve of Donald Trump. And so, you know, there was a lot of talk. And understandably so, we did some of it here as

well about the way young voters were shifting right and whatever. Like that, I think there's a called for a total reassessment of how voters, young voters are thinking about the political landscape at this point. That's fair. All I know is what I've been told. And that's a half to have to. truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizen investigator on national TV.

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up.

Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. In early 1988, federal agents raced to track down the gang they suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin into New York from Asia.

We had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles But what they find is not what they expected. Basically, your stay-at-home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin. They go, is this your daughter? I said yes. They go, oh, you may not see her for like 25 years. Caught between a federal investigation and the violent gang who recruited them, the women must decide who they're willing to protect and who they dare to betray. Once I saw the gun, I try to take his hand, and I saw the flash of light.

Listen to the Chinatown Sting on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts. Samihante, it's Anna Ortiz. And I'm Mark and Delicado. You might know us as Hilda and Justin from Ugly Betty. We played mother and son on the show, but in real life, we're best friends. And I'm all grown up now. Welcome to our new podcast, Viva Betty! Yay!

Woo-hoo! Can you believe it has been almost 20 years? That's not even possible. Well, you're the only one that looks that much different. I look exactly the same. We're re-watching the series from start to finish and getting into all the fashions, the drama, and the behind-the-scenes moments that you've never heard before.

You're going to hear from guests like America Ferreira, Vanessa Williams, Michael Yuri, Becky Newton, Tony Plana, and so many more. icons each and every one. All of a sudden, like, someone, like, comes running up to me, and it's Selma Hayek. And she's like, you are my ugly bitchy. And I was like, what is she even talking about? Listen to Viva Betty as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. All right, let's get to this very dystopian segment.

frankly, so there were a bunch of videos that went viral that purported to show black women who are moms doing the whole like the most caricature-ish welfare queen schick you can possibly imagine. All of them turn out to be AI. AI generated, total bullshit, made up, invented out of whole cloth. The number of conservative influencers and outlets that fell for this crap should make you despair for society, period. So here is Brett Cooper, who is very, you know, has a large channel, very popular, et cetera. Here is Brett Cooper falling for one of these AI videos. There are bad actors who have abused the system time and time again. And now that benefits might be cut off next month, they are lashing out, to say the least. Just watch. It's been day five and I have not

received no fool stamps. My disability checks is on hold. My cash benefits is not coming no more. they're still pending. It is the taxpayer's job to pay for my kids to eat and for my kids to be taken care of. I have over 2,000 followers on TikTok and I can't get that one person to send me 50 cents. If you're watching a fucking video and you can't send me nothing, I'm blocking you.

Now, let me say, in fairness to Brad, if you guys are just listening to this, looking at the video. Look, I think it was, like, to me, it looked 100%. Hard to tell. It looked absolutely. Maybe I'm, you know, reaching boomer levels of my inability to parse AI, but like that's pretty much, what's it, what's it called like the realistic standard? I forget. The Uncanny Valley. That's outside the Uncounty Valley to me. I mean, it looks, it looks 100% like from what I could tell.

And this is not to excuse Brett Kuh, because we, let me tell you guys. And we do it here all the time. We really try because we realize at this point we can be fooled. In fact, there was an element we didn't throw to in the segment before because we weren't 100% sure that it was real. So, you know, you have a response. to check these things out. And what I will say, too, just as like a user guide, especially if something is just tailor-made to fit one political, your particular political perspective, and it feels a little too much on the nose, those are the ones you need to be the most suspicious of. In any case, it wasn't just that one video. Apparently, this one account created a bunch of these just, like, racist AI welfare queen slop videos. Here's a TikTok breaking down this one created. and what they're up to. This is AI. Here's how we know and why it matters. It's made by Impossible underscore ASMR1, who, after eight failed slot posts

in a three-month break, decided to bet SORA could finally make their dream content. Videos of black women trying to use EBT in places it's not accepted. True creativity unleashed by AI. The shutdown created an opportunity to have them yell at the camera, but it's not till the whole family's back there that the full racist stereotype is fulfilled. This is rage bait, and we'll get angry commenters who, when they learn its AI, will say,

oh, but it's true anyway, which of course it's not, and that's cope for being played. They were so played, they didn't notice the kid missing half an arm while the other kids are frozen in place for no reason, and these down here are warping together. They were too focused on this fake AI person cramming in a script that they used three other times for their other fake AI people. I will gladly knock down AI rage bait of all kinds, and from anywhere I'm at my own. spectrum because it's part of the same problem, casually letting our feed slip into fake parallel AI universes that exist only to divide up. All right. So it's not just random online influencers, however, who were tricked by this stuff. It was also Fox News. A go of a B8 guys up on the screen

that shows you the new and the old headline. And this is so, this is so sleazy too. So the first headline is Snap beneficiaries threatened to ransack stores over. over government shutdown. One mother claims taxpayers must feed her children as SNAP benefits face cuts. That's the video that Brett Cooper played. They wrote this up as a genuine story like, look at these women and what they're saying. Oh my God. I mean, total classic throwback Ronald Reagan era politics, right? Let's use a few bad examples to like, you know, smear everyone who benefits from this whole program and effort to cut the program. That's what they were going for here. Then they find out, oops, all those videos were AI.

And so they totally rewrite the article, same lady here, same byline, and reframed it as, oh, AI videos of SNAP beneficiaries complaining about cuts go viral. And put B7 now up on the screen. So this is the new way that they rewrote it. They rewrote the whole article to be like, oh, we totally knew that it was AI. Don't worry, you know, we totally get it. It's just this phenomenon of AI videos. The only disclosure they gave was this tiny editor's note at the bottom that said this article

previously reported on some videos that appear to have been generated by AI without noting that. This has been corrected. Like, that is so incredibly sleazy that they got tricked by the AI videos were a whole like welfare queen scary article

and then had to rewrite it once they got caught and realize it was AI and they only put that little editor's note at the bottom. Like, absolutely disturbing. And, you know, this is the landscape we existed now. This isn't coming. Like, this is here. And I think SORA has been probably a jump forward in the level of accessibility of high, like, pretty convincing AI creation that can now just be fed into your political feed.

You've already got campaigns like Andrew Cuomo's campaign put together AI attack videos against Zoron and Curtis Llewa in the final days of the campaign. Trump, of course, is using all sorts of AI stuff. And the other thing that I've noticed, Zagher too, is like some of the videos, even the ones that are completely obviously. AI, people will still be fooled by it. Oh, yeah. I'm looking at it right now. I just opened SORA just to see, I haven't actually checked beforehand. I mean, if you look at some of the stuff, I mean, it looks real, right?

Like, it does look real. Yeah. We can put some of these in here. I think that might literally be some, but this is the genre of like what. That one does not look right. That one I try to tell. I mean, you can make me real, right? You know, Mac was saying that I'm sure you guys probably, we all get served all these, like,

adorable animal videos and I get lots of cat videos and whatever. And he was saying that in these TIEC, TikTok compilations that he'll get served. Some of them will be real and some of them will be AI. And so it's all mixed in together and it becomes impossible to tell reality from complete fiction. And so now we're at a point where, you know, I mean, not the Fox News has the highest of standards here, but they have a massive audience. They're incredibly influential, continue to be in the conservative space. And they're just getting wholesale taken in by some garbage AI videos that probably took like 10 minutes to create. You can see this happen.

a million times, right? Look at anybody. And this is part of the problem with confirmation bias and probably why it's so important, you know, to hear from here, like, if you're left, right, whatever, if it's too good to be true, it almost certainly is now at this point. This is a problem on Twitter, by the way, with their verification policy where anybody can just buy a blue check. There is literal fake news BS that pervades all of Twitter. And apparently a huge number of these accounts are from abroad because the payouts, I guess, are like, mean. meaningful enough for them. Let me just a side note.

Anybody who spends their life trolling for Twitter payouts, you are stone cold loser. The amount of money that I have made off Twitter in the last year would not be enough to turn the lights on in the studio for like three days. Like just so you're all aware of like with the amount of money. And you've got a big account, you know?

It's like fine. It's like a couple hundred thousand followers. That's a lot of people. Sure, yeah. But it's not like, you know, I'm not only millions of followers or whatever. But the point is I literally went to go look. It's like less in a month.

month than what you would make in YouTube from a day. So anybody out there, you're wasting your time. You should just spend your time on YouTube, like wherever a podcast. That's a much higher ROI platform. But the point is around this is with AI, if it's limitless in terms of the friction to create these types of videos and to get the amount of views, whatever, then that money starts to add up in the aggregate. And if you have an entire farm, let's say in Bangladesh or China or wherever, where these types of dollars can go a much farther way, then yeah, it might actually be worth it for them. But just please, like for real, everybody out there, if it seems too good to be true, you have got to make sure. And this happens with everything. I mean, on the

Israel conflict, right? You know, remember the Israelis, we're always like, oh, that's a Pallywood fake video, right? I mean, it's hard, right? We're here. We're thousands of miles away. We're trying to suss out what's real and what's not. You have no idea. I mean, you know, me chasing this whole Venezuela thing, you have, I mean, the amount of bullshit, which is out there and trying to get to the stores. It is not easy right now. And people will lie. and they'll use AI, like you said. They're currently, there's a lot of that in Latin America, right? Because there's a huge amount of like shorts usage down there.

There's tons of slop in terms for propaganda purposes. So everyone just be careful. Everybody knows we are not ready for this. Everybody knows that. You can't find a single person who's like, oh, yeah, we'll be able to handle this well. Like, look at how fucked up the political landscape already is. We can't handle this. This is insane.

I've got one more piece for you. This is B9. that this AI, this clanker are quote-unquote artists. We got to come up with another word because if you're AI, you cannot be an artist. But in any case, we have the first AI song making an appearance on Billboard's radio chart. Zania Monet debuts on the adult R&B airplay chart with, how was I supposed to know? We listened to it this morning. It's fine.

It's fine. It's not my personal favorite, but it's pretty good. If you told me who's AI, there's no way I would know. I just, you know, I'm like I actually am pretty attached to humanity. You know, I like the idea of art having human sentiment and emotion behind it and, you know, connecting to some real experience, not some amalgamation of like, you know, farmed experiences from the internet that no robot could ever truly understand or relate to. So I find it disturbing. I think most people do. I've been on a big post-AI apocalyptic movie kick.

Oh, really? Tell me. Elysium hits. It was not that well received at the time, but I increasingly think it's one of the most accurate films made. It's a Matt Damon film from back in the day. Again, not very well critically reviewed, but I just watched it the other day. I think that's where things are trending.

Johnny Knoxville here. Check out Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, my new true crime podcast from Smartless Media, campside media, and big money players. It's the true story of the almost perfect crime and the Nimrods who almost pulled it off. It was kind of like the perfect storm in a sewer. That was dumb.

Do not follow my example. Listen to Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years, until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small Towns. Listen to Graves County on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season, add free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm I'm Yvesa and I'm Maite Gomez-Guan. And this week on our podcast, Hungry for History, we talk oysters plus the Mianbi Chief stops by. If you're not an oyster lover, don't even talk to me. Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells to vote politicians

into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way. Bring back the OsterCon. Listen to Hungry for History on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.