Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/11/25: GOP Meltdown Over Healthcare, Sam Altman Says Raise Babies With ChatGPT, Epstein Directed Millions For Pro-Israel Groups, Dems Flip Miami

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss Republicans meltdown over healthcare spikes, Sam Altman says to raise babies with ChatGPT, Epstein directed millions for pro-Israel foundation, Dems flip Miami.    Juan David Rojas: https://www.compactmag.com/article/how-the-gop-lost-miami/   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. I know he has a reputation, but it's going to catch up to him. Gabe Ortiz is a cop. His brother Larry, a mystery Gabe didn't want to solve until it was too late. He was the head of this gang. You're going to push that line for the cause. Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it.

When Larry's killed, Gabe must untangle a dangerous past, one that could destroy everything he thought he knew. Listen to the brothers Ortiz. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers? Who catfishes a city? Is it even safe to snort human remains? Is that the plot of footloos? I'm comedian Rory Scoville, and I'm here to tell you, Josh Dean and I have a new podcast that celebrates the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals. It's called Crimeless, a true crime comedy podcast.

Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Stefan Curry, and this is Gentleman's Cut. I think what makes Gentleman's Cut different is me being a part of developing the profile of this beautiful finished product. With every sip, you get a little something different. Visit Gentleman'scut Bourbon.com or your nearest Total Wines or Bevmo. This message is intended for audiences 21 and older. Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, Boone County, Kentucky. For more on Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, please visit

gentlemen'scutturbin.com. Please enjoy responsibly. 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 breakingpoints.com. Okay, so we've got, Republicans realize they've got a problem with health care, and, you know, there's two things that happen. Number one, Democrats with their shutdown strategy did focus a lot of attention on health care, and I think that made things more politically difficult for Republicans. Number two is, again, just reality. Like, healthcare is really expensive. People are aware now they've gotten their notices if they're part of the, you know, in the Obamacare marketplace

that their premiums are going up. There was, you know, a national discourse about who's to blame, not to mention the party in the power. You're just going to automatically sort of like lay the blame at their feet, which is entirely appropriate. And so Republicans are now scrambling to try to figure out something that they can do. But they have zero consensus amongst them about what that may look like. They really are in the wilderness when it comes to health care. You guys may recall Trump a couple weeks back and, oh, I'm going to announce a plan. Then there was a freak out from the Republican caucus. They didn't like what he was going to propose. That got pulled. We haven't heard any more about that since then. So yesterday, they had a Republican

conference meeting where they laid out some of the potential options that they may put together and put to a vote next week in the House with regard to health care. Let's put C1 up on the screen. And I'm just going to read these to you. Some of them are just downright farcical and others are pathetic. Some of them, you know, are fine things that may have some modest impact, but it's certainly not going to be any sort of saving grace. We've got association health plans. That's basically where you can sort of like get a group together and create your own pool to buy health care plans, which is something that already happens, by the way, but I guess the idea here is to make that easier to happen. Choice accounts, health savings accounts, cost sharing reductions, I don't

don't really know what that means. Codify Trump administration rules to fix the unaffordable care act. PBM reform, that'd be a good thing to do. That's a good one. This one I really love. Innovation. Okay. Price transparency, which again is something that, you know, okay, fine, but that's not really going to solve the problem. Like, oh, I have transparency around the fact that I'm getting price couch. Site neutrality and provider-owned hospitals. So this is sort of a grab bag of ideas, none of which has been completely, you know, backed by the entire Republican conference. And one thing you'll notice here that is not on this slide is extending the Obamacare subsidies. So the immediate source of pain, which is these skyrocketing

Obamacare prices, marketplace prices, because the subsidies expire at the end of the year, that is actually not on the table. And even with these sort of like market-based reforms, which again could have like maybe a small modest impact, but it's not going to be any of them the saving grace. Even with these, there is no real consensus within the Republican caucus. So they really are sort of a drift on this one. Let me put the next one up on the screen. This is from Politico. They say the House GOP erupts over health care as leaders hunt for a plan. House Republican leaders presented no firm plan Tuesday for advancing health care legislation as anxiety rises. Instead, Speaker Mike Johnson presented attendees of a closed door conference meeting with this list of

10 possible policies that could get votes in the coming weeks or months. Some were specific, like an expansion of health savings accounts. Others were vague like innovation. The list did not include an extension of the expiring tax credits. The presentation was followed by a heated discussion over the path forward on health care for the party and vulnerable members, including Representative Jen Kiggins, stood up to warn against the political fallout of failing to extend the expiring subsidies. Some later expressed their dismay at how poorly they believe GOP leaders have handled the topic,

quote, there was a general uneasiness because nothing is coming together. Another one says, we wasted so much time that was a conservative Republican, also lamenting the lack of a unified GOP health plan. Representative Ralph Norbin was willing to go on the record to say there was no consensus. So that's sort of the state of play from the Republicans in the Senate. So that's the House. Okay. Mike Johnson is saying we're going to do some sort of a vote on something next week.

We'll find out what that something is, but apparently does not include extension of the Obamacare subsidies. In the Senate, John Thune is planning to bring forward two separate plans, one that is Republican-led, which includes some Obamacare extension but for a limited time and with some changes, et cetera, one that is Democratic led, and with the expectation that neither one of them is going to pass. So it's sort of a show vote to pretend like, oh, we're doing something, we're having votes on health care. Literally no one is going to care that you took a vote on something that is not going to pass and not going to help their lives. It is genuinely crazy. I mean, Do you remember when Obama, that was 09. It's 2025. Actually, it was December 09, right? That

famous Christmas vote or all that. I think that's right. So we're coming up on 16 years since this has been in the national conversation. And every time we're going to repeal and replace Obamacare. Okay, ObamaCare sucks. I use it. It's horrible. It's awful. Most people who are on it don't like it very much. And they think that it's very expensive. You're going to replace it, though, with what? And they still don't have the what answer. And in the interim six years, we have had multi-digit, or sorry, multi-three-digit inflation in health care costs, lowering of life expectancy, massive increase in obesity, huge increase in comorbidities for people who are dying in hospitals, not to mention the pandemic where the health care system and the scientific community collapsed

its entire trust. Like, you cannot say that this has been a victory over the last years. And yet, when they're in power every single time, we're going to repeal and replace and still replace with what? And even this Trump proposal, C3, put that on the screen. This is pathetic, honestly. He's backing this $1,500 checks for health care. Now, you know, let's put this all into perspective. So I'm on Obamacare, all right? My health care went up by 17%, which is a little, I think it's actually about more than the $1,500. So if this were to happen, this $1,500 check, it would cover the increase in my health care premium, which would mean I would get to pay exactly what I got to pay last. I mean, I guess it's a victory. But for anybody else out there, I have a $10,000 deductible.

Most people who are out there, or sorry, $14,500 deductible, most people are out there who are on employer health care. Their deductibles probably in the $1,600 range. So it wouldn't be horrible, I guess, to cover some of their deductible, but it would not cover their average increase in premium. This gets to costs. At the end of the day, we have to deal with costs. We can do that in a variety of ways. We do price controls. I'm hugely supportive of HSA's.

I have an HSA. I highly recommend people use it. But even with HSA, let's say you average on S&P 500 returns. If health care inflation is 17, 18%, you're still going to lose. And if we don't do something about the costs and the system, nothing can be done. But each individual part of the cost structure is highly influential here in one. Washington at a bipartisan level. So we talked about PBMs. We've been talking about PBMs for a decade. Yeah. Still doesn't happen. Yeah. And actually, that was the bill that remember Elon knew

had PBM reform in it and then Elon didn't like something about it. And so that got killed and then the PBM park got stripped down. So PBM reform we've been talking about for a decade. It's never happened. We have talked about, you know, Democrats have even talked about public option. Not even that ever happened. We talked about Medicare being able to negotiate drug prices. That didn't happen. We were allowed to negotiate the 10 biggest, and by the way, even that is dragging on, it's been kind of a nightmare. Trump is trying to do Trump RX with directo Zemphic. I'm fine with that. I support that, but that's one drug. That's not like the biggest problem. And the health care costs have gone astronomical. Doctors who watch breaking points always hate it when I say it. It's

empirically true. They make way too much money. The reason why they make so much money is because they have way too much debt. So I don't even hate on them. You have to make 300K to pay off 300k in debt. And the biggest growth in costs in the health care system over, I don't know how the past, you know, number of decades. Administrators. Administrators. And I mean, look, that is the problem with like a private for-profit health care system is if you have, right, all of this like complicated insurance, okay, is this covered, is that covered? Are we going to cover this? What's your deductible? Are you eligible? All of that. Then, yeah, your hospital is going to require all kinds of paper pushers to deal with the insurance companies, which are there on the other side with their

own mass army of paper pushers to try to figure out how they can deny as much coverage as possible. And so that's why you have these constantly ballooning administrative costs because it's required to navigate the absolute morass and disaster of our healthcare system. I did want to point out one thing about that President Trump plan, which is you would not actually get $1,500. You would get um 1,000 because only people over the age of 50 get the fuck out of here you're going to burst a blood vessel on my brain 18 to 48 to 49 year olds only get a thousand so I'm sorry saugger you will only be getting a thousand so it won't actually cover you're going to set me on five so so the boomers get the bailout and uh oh the gen x actually yeah so the gen x and the aging gen x

and boomers are the ones who get the $1,500 bailout. But those of us are just parents of young children. Yeah, fuck them, right? You're not doing anything for the, oh, man, I don't even have words. I agree that makes me. Yeah, that's America, okay? Total boomer luxury communism. Look it up.

One of my buddies just wrote a whole piece about it in the American mind. That's what we have now in this country. It's amazing. And look, just, I mean, the health care system, as it is, it cannot stand. And yet it does. It's 17, 20% of GDP. That's part of the reason why, you know, even replacing it and cutting costs, it would cause a recession. The number of administrators and costs and price that is all tied up into pharmaceutical, I mean, go take a drive, man.

You know, if you go into the outer boroughs of some bigger cities, I was in Philadelphia recently, you drive past drug company, hospital, drug company, hospital. You're like, oh, man, I mean, it's a titanic empire that rules this country right. Yeah, no, and I see a lot of candidates who are leaning more and more heavily into, you know, Medicare for all. And it's increasingly, once again, on the table as a litmus test, you see some people like Chris Van Hollen, who's now come on board. This is what voters are demanding in a lot of these primaries as well. So it's definitely like healthcare politics are back. And the pain is so undeniable. And I think everybody sees what you see this, that this is literally unsustainable.

Like, we are going to enter a place where people just, healthy people in particular, particular, and younger people in particular, just like, I, it does not make sense for me to pay this. Oh, I've said it. If I didn't have a kid, I didn't have a kid, no chance. And then once they exit, then guess what? The prices go up even more because they're helping to subsidize the, you know, typically older, sicker populations. And that's how you end up in this death spiral. So these little, you know, quote unquote innovation or choice accounts, whatever that is, is not going to fix the absolute disastrous mess. And there are things that, you know, especially, when Trump is less sort of like ideologically committed to we must have a free market solution,

there are things that Republicans could suggest that would be better. Like they should, in my opinion, they should get on board with a public option. I mean, that still is like market based if that's what you're hung up on. But I think since that has the taint of like Joe Biden talked about it, they will never get on board with that. But, you know, there are things you could do, in my opinion, that would be inferior to Medicare for all, but would be short of that. But they're just, they haven't thought about it. They are so ideologically and partisan driven that they're just hoping everybody forgets

about this conversation and moves on to something else is basically their plan. Yep, that's right. Being a parent is basically a juggling act. Dinner, hockey practice, homework, a last-minute science project, and someone's always, always shouting for you from another room. So yeah, I'll take any shortcuts that actually works. And that's why I'm all in on Hello Fresh. Fresh ingredients, super easy recipes and over 80 options every week so everyone eats.

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Try HelloFresh today and get 50% off the first box with free shipping. Go to hellofresh.combe, rescue 50. That's hellofresh.ca promo code Rescue 50. Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers? And what is this? How is that not a story we all know? What's this? Where is that? Why is it wet?

Boy, do we have a show for you? From Smartless Media, Campside Media, and Big Money Players, comes Crimeless. Join me, Josh Dean, investigative journalists. And me, Rory Scoval, comedian, as we celebrate the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals. We'll look into some of the silliest ways folks have broken the laws. Honestly, it feels more like a high-level prank than a crime. Who catfish is a city? and meet some memorable anti-heroes.

There are thousands of angry, horny monkeys. Clap if you think she's a witch. And it freaks you out. He has x-rayed vision. How could I not follow him? Honestly, I got to follow him. He can see right through me. Listen to Crimless on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcast. Dad had the strong belief that the devil was attacking us. Two brothers, one devout household. two radically different paths. Gabe Ortiz became one of the highest-ranking law enforcement officers in Texas. 32 years, total law enforcement experience. But his brother Larry, he stayed behind

and built an entirely different legacy. He was the head of this gang and nobody was going to tell him what to do. You're going to push that line for the cause. Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it. When Larry is murdered, Gabe is forced to confront the past he tried to leave behind and uncover secrets he never saw.

saw coming. My dad had a whole other life that we never knew about. Like, my mom started screaming my dad's name, and I just heard one gunshot. The Brothers Ortiz is a gripping true story about faith, family, and how two lives can drift so far apart and collide in the most devastating way. Listen to the Brothers Ortiz on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go on to AI. This man, this latest one, this is some dark, dark stuff. Sam Altman, in a recent interview, was asked about chat GPT and whether he uses it to raise his baby.

Let's take a listen. And do you use chat GPT when raising your baby? I do. I mean, I feel kind of bad about it because we have this, like, genius level at everything, intelligence. sitting there, like, waiting to unravel the mysteries of humanity. And I'm like, why does my kid stop dropping his piece on the floor and laughing? Yeah. You know? So I feel like I'm not asking a good enough question, but it is, I don't,

I cannot imagine having gone through that, like, figuring out how to raise a newborn without Chatsypathy. Clearly, people did it for a long time. No problem. Yes. But. Yeah, we did it for a long time. We don't need Chatsypte, actually. In fact, I'll tell you story, because I've done this. You will try to, Try to ask it some sort of developmental question routinely gets things wrong. Ask it to calculate medicinal dosage. The math is totally wrong. This literally happened to me, actually.

Definitely do not rely on Chad. That's what sort of medicine and amount you should give up. Here's my theory. They're good at math, right? I go X weight, all of this, put it in. Dead wrong. The only reason I know this is I go, this isn't right. And so then I went, I had to go to the charts or whatever, a little bit more research.

What if somebody had done that? Imagine if somebody had done that. This is my one time just thinking, hey, it's good at math. At the very least we could trust math. Now imagine trying to use it for developmental purposes or any other. This is dangerous. Now, beyond even just saying, like in my example, I'm just trying to use it for math. But imagine outsourcing like genuine advice and getting tips or something.

how to introduce solids. What if ChachyPT relies on, you can tell I'm drawing for my own life, right? How to introduce a lot. There's a lot of different schools of thought, right? There's a lot of different. What if it says you should do it this way? What if it's the wrong way? There is actually there is no right or wrong way. The point is it should be up to you and you should go and do some research, read some books. There's baby weeding. There's pure, I mean, there's all these different schools of thought, right? and it's there's no way it could ever capture the reality of what that is like and it's truly in my opinion it's so dystopian because it is outsourcing like the individuality and um i mean it's not even just like the cool part about getting to be a parent making these decisions but also

the human part of it of like asking your mother or your friends or your family and you're trying to crowdsource that all together and then your doctor anybody to make an informed decision with yourself instead of outsourcing, you know, your decision-making. And that's what's happening at scale. And that's why I really worry. If you're in college and you're 100% use to outsourcing everything to chat GPT, then in 10 years from now when you're having a baby, it will be the most natural thing in the world to outsource that to an AI. And that is like, again, I mean, these are amoral. If you ask chat GPT whether you should an abort and a Down syndrome baby, based on costs, they'd probably tell you yes, right? Thank you.

about that. There's nobody who, there's nothing programmed within these things to really give you any morals. They, you know, every, especially if you set the parameters. And then with psychosis, the most recent chat GPT is, you can decide its personality on how, right? So now it's like, I want a persnickity and a laughable chat GPT. I want the default chat GPT. Well, which one's going to give you different advice on a kid? I know I sound pedantic, but like this stuff is real. And when the CEO is out here recommending its usage, then that should come with liability. What do doctors and all of them tell you? Never believe everything that you read on the Internet.

And here this guy is like, oh, I use it to raise my own baby. I mean, these are wildly powerful. They want you to, by the way, so that they can sell you baby products inside of the chat. Go, here's our favorite baby formula based on what you've recommended. Go ahead and buy it here in the chat GPT app. I mean, can you imagine anything more dystopian, man? And Google already does this to a limited extent, but this is way worse. And yeah, the errors, that's one thing.

That's like an acute, like, you know, you could actually end up receiving advice that's genuinely dangerous. But to me, the most more dystopian part is just the assault on our humanity. You know, I mean, parenting is like such a just sort of essential, beautiful, like the essence of being human, right? The essence of the project of humanity. And when you say something like, I can't even imagine raising a newborn without. chat GPT. I don't know. I mean, this is what I worry about on a sort of like philosophical level with these products in general. How much of our humanity is being like sucked up and colonized? How much of our mind share is being sucked up and colonized by these products?

Where yeah, instead of going to your like, let me call mom and see what she said, you know, when I was a baby, like how did this go for her? Instead, you're asking this robot. And that's, you know, it's one small example, but it takes you that much further away from like the human connections that we already are losing, thanks again to these, like, tech oligarchs and their social media experiments. The other thing about it that it made me think of is a lot of these guys that developed, Sam Altman didn't develop a social media product, but like a Mark Zuckerberg or whatever, a lot of these guys, if you ask them about their kids and their social media use, they don't use it. They are very careful about screen time for their own kids, even as they are

developing products that are designed with, you know, millions of millions of dollars to make them as addictive as possible for your kids. And so it's interesting to me that with this, because they are such almost like religious believers, I mean, truly I think religious is the right word to use around what these guys think about AI and its promise and what it's going to be. They think they're inventing God in a machine. That's what they think. They have this religious devotion to it, where it has, they do incorporate it all the way into their lives, including in, you know, something as essential and something so important as raising your baby from, you know, a young age. So I thought that was an interesting sort of revelation,

too, about how he is thinking about his own product. A hundred percent. And I just think, you know, he's like, oh, we have the grand super intelligence elements. You know, anybody who, if you're trying to do this. Intelligence is not really, you know, there's no intelligent way, like I said, necessarily. The only intelligence that you can use is to think about it, be intentional, and then actually look at your specific set of circumstances. Just my opinion. But this also translates now to the Pentagon, where Pete Hegesath has now rolled out Google's Gemini AI into the hands of every American service member and encouraging them to use it. Let's take a listen. The future of American warfare is here, and it's spelled AI.

As technologies advance, so do our adversaries. But here at the War Department, we are not sitting idly by. Under the leadership of President Trump, America will lead the charge on this technological transformation by revolutionizing the way we win. And that's why today we are unleashing genaI.mill. This platform puts the world. world's most powerful frontier AI models, starting with Google Gemini, directly into the hands

of every American warrior. At the click of a button, AI models on Gen AI can be utilized to conduct deep research, format documents, and even analyze video or imagery at unprecedented speed. Building on the great work of Undersecretary Emil Michael and his team, we will continue to aggressively field the world's best technology to make our fighting force more lethal than ever before. And all of it is American made. The possibilities with AI are endless. So you can see from there.

I mean, what is mystifying to me is why they're going so hard at promoting said Gen AI. They have posters all over the Pentagon, encouraging individual soldiers and others to use it at their routine tasks. I mean, I just gave an example about how it chat GPT or AI failed at math room, which, by the way, is its most a basic function, no?

That's what you should rely. If you rely on computers for anything, you know, asking any advice for any of that is absolutely stupid, even at the current form. But you should maybe rely on it for math. Now, they're relying on it for math and potential errors and reasoning fallacies or logical problems in the most high-stakes environment.

Like, what about weapons planning, manufacturing, ammunition? I can't even get chat GPT, like I said, to calculate basic dosage instructions properly, how are they going to use multi-complex processes by rolling it into the critical supply chain and others to calculate, let's say, how many weapons that they need here or there without double checking? And that, look, maybe that's even a, quote, good use. Do we really have confidence that they have put in, you know, guardrails, even security, cybersecurity, to make sure that nobody is hacking into it? And then, to what end is this like AI military thing even happening? I mean, look, the Terminator and all of that is science fiction. But there is an element to this when we're becoming obsessed with autonomous drones and AI and putting it together. Like the vast amount of power, considering how, I mean, look, Israel used it all the time. We covered a couple of segments on this, those like autonomous drones and AI training ground. Like how are we going, you know, the future of warfare, they're obsessed with marrying these two types of things.

will that be used against us? Is that part of the plan? How do you, what, you know, what do you have programmed inside of that to make sure it's never going to happen? I just don't think any of these questions were asked at all. Yeah. At all. They're just like, yep, everybody use it. And let's just see what happens. Completely. It's not, it's dangerous. Completely. And that's this whole administration's approach to AI is like, let's just push as hard as we possibly can. Let's just roll it off out, off to the races. What are the consequences? We don't really know. But we're like hoping and praying it's going to be great and it's going to be amazing. And then, you know, to see that applied specifically at the Department of War, where you have all these,

like, ethical and accuracy questions. And again, like, the more removed the human being and their natural revulsion to killing other human beings, the more removed they are from that process, you know, the easier it becomes to commit atrocities and barbarism. I mean, you can even, you know, if you think about the initial boat strike, right, where they had to do the double tap strike. Okay. So you have the initial strike. They see that there's the two survivors, and then over 40 minutes they watch them, like, struggling for their lives and they decide to kill them with the second strike. You know, if you had had to be, like, that guy boarding the ship and actually shooting them in the head with a pistol or whatever, I don't think they would have made the same decision. Like, if you had to be that up close and personal with the killing, it would have been much clearer to them, like, of course this is wrong.

These are shipwrecked individuals. Like, this is the textbook definition of what you don't, what is utterly dishonorable and atrocious to do. do in wartime. So the more you get removed from that basic humanity, the more dystopian it becomes. I mean, there's a reason why sci-fi writers reach for these utterly dystopian scenarios. And now we are really at the precipice of them being easily realizable. Not to mention, you know, we already have all these issues with AI and deceptive behavior and all these sorts of things that are unaccounted for. They think they patch it up, but they're not really sure. I don't know. We've seen, we've also gotten a glimpse of what AI unleashed on the battlefield

looks like in Gaza, which has been a test case for a lot of these things where they generated all of these targets, did not do any check whether these were, you know, legitimate targets, didn't really care and just went out and mass murdered people or were able to track people down to their homes so that they would be able to inflict more casualties among low-level soldiers and their families. So I think we've already got examples of the dystopian direction that this is all heading. And Sagar, maybe you can explain this next one, Meta's a pivot from their original idea was sort of like framed in this very like altruistic way. Like we're going to create an LLM.

It's going to be completely open source. This is sort of like, you know, idealistic anarchist type approach to development. So the theory, but it wasn't altruistic. They sold it that way. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's how they sold it. Right. So the reason they did that is because they wanted other people to use their models so that people

would stack and that they would own the tech while they continued. Now what they've decided to do, let's put the next. next one, please, on the screen, D3, is there explicitly pivoting away from open source, specifically into a money-making AI model? Zuckerberg, quote, months into building the priciest teams in technology history is getting personally involved and pivoting the company's focus to an AI model it can make money off of. One new model, codenamed avocado, is expected to debut next spring, will be launched as a closed model, one that will be tightly controlled and that meta will sell access to. The move, which aligns,

with rivals of Google and Open AI do with their models would mark the biggest departure from the open source strategy that Meta has now touted for years, dramatically shifted earlier this year after the company released Lama for an open source model that disappointed Silicon Valley and Zuckerberg. Now Zuckerberg now spends much of his time and energy working closely with new hires in a group called TBD Labs and it is using, quote, several third-party models to train the process for avocado, distilling all of its rival models down and then training off of that. So what that means is that he's basically going in the same direction as everybody else, as Google as OpenAI, and abandoning even the pretense of open source. We just want to

highlight this because the industry is still moving all in a completely profit-driven direction and one that abandons any like, you know, original claims about how they're going to cure cancer. Now it's just all about making money. It's all about enterprise making money. That's it. And it comes at a cost. Let's put the next one up on the screen. It's a bit. about data centers from the lever. They show, quote, data center boom risk blackouts, according to a new watchdog report. Data center construction should be put on hold

until grid operators can ensure reliability. A regional energy monitor has argued, and that fits with what I had showed everybody in our last show about the expected amount of data center power compared to the amount of market, the amount of power coming online by 2030. Well, and they focus in particular in what they described, they say the independent watchdog for the country's largest power grid operator has issued a regulatory

grenade asking the federal government to intervene amid PJM interconnections plans to power data centers. It knows it does not have the capacity for despite acknowledging the heightened risk of blackouts. This comes as PJM has seen windfall profits from shouldering energy draining data centers at a multi-billion dollar cost to consumers. So if you guys recall the charts that we put up before that showed the different grid regions across the country, the one that was under the most strain is actually the one right here, and it's called PJMs, what that regional grid is called. It services some roughly, I think, 13 different states or parts of 13 different states. It's like Virginia and the Midlantic out to the Midwest, I think Michigan, parts of Kentucky, et cetera. So that's kind of the region. And no surprise that this is the area

that is under the most strain right now because Virginia is the epicenter of this mass data center, boom. I mean, if you drive out towards Dulles, if you even go out towards where I live in the rural areas, these things are popping up everywhere. And they have not built out the capacity to ensure that, number one, I mean, the prices are going on. Number two, that there are not going to be active blackouts. Like, we are very close to that sort of a possibility. And of course, like, if there's going to be a choice about whether it's ordinary consumers who are getting the power, whether it's these giant data centers with their, you know, corporate titans who have millions of dollars into the local politicians campaign coffers, guess who's going to be chosen there?

So we are, you know, this warning is really quite dire and extraordinary, given that we are early in this data center buildout, and already we are straining the grid capacity that we have existing. And of course, there's nothing, anything remotely approaching, like a buildout that would be sufficient to deal with all of this. Exactly. And, all right, yeah, I mean, you just put it all together. Oh, final thing.

I had to put this one, defy five up on the screen. an interesting one. So this is new for the Washington Post. Their new consumer audio offering, your personalized podcast, AI podcast only available in the podcast app. App users will be able to shape their own briefing, select their topics, select their links, pick their hosts, and then soon even ask questions using our Ask the Post AI technology. So don't need the, don't need anybody doing it. Don't need anybody doing the research. It'll just AI all of it for you. And soon, you won't even have to listen to a show like ours. You can just build your own.

So, I mean, personally, kind of hoping it fails, right, out of selfish reasons. I think it misunderstands why people listen to a podcast in the first place. I don't think people want to do a lot of their own work. That's kind of what you pay editorial for, right? It's to curate what other people. That's kind of our offering, if you will. But who knows? You know, maybe I'm wrong.

I don't know. Look, you know, it's not just about us because it's about humanity itself. Yeah. You know, without the, without any of that, are you really getting what you need, you know, from the news? Yeah, that's my question is like, I'm hoping that people are biased towards people. I think so. You know, I mean, so much of, and this is like up, you know, it's like a double-edged sword, but so much of the like podcast, YouTube space is like these pariscial relationships. We're not just about the specific stories and content that are chosen, but it's also about like the way I feel about this person, whether I trust them, whether I like them, whether I like them.

I find them, like, entertaining to spend some of my time with. And so I am still hopeful that there is a bias, that people have a bias towards other people, that they want other people to be behind the art that they consume. They want to feel like there is humanity embedded in the, like, experiences that they're having and, you know, the content that they are consuming. But I don't know if that's true or not. I guess we're going to find out. It's 5.23 p.m.

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From Smartless Media, Campside Media, and Big Money Players comes Crimeless. Join me, Josh Dean, investigative journalists. And me, Roy Scoval, comedian, as we celebrate the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals. We'll look into some of the silliest ways folks have broken the laws. Honestly, it feels more like a high-level prank than a crime. Who catfishes a city? And meets some memorable anti-heroes. There are thousands of angry, horny monkeys. Clap if you think, she's a witch. And it freaks you out. He has X-ray vision. How could I not follow him?

Honestly, I got to follow him. He can see right through me. Listen to Crimless on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Dad had the strong belief that the devil was attacking us. Two brothers, one devout household, two radically different paths. Gabe Ortiz became one of the highest ranking law enforcement officers in Texas. 32 years, total law enforcement experience. But his brother Larry, he stayed behind and built an entirely different legacy.

He was the head of this gang, and nobody was going to tell him what to do. You're going to push that line for the cause. Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it. When Larry is murdered, Gabe is forced to confront the past he tried to leave behind and uncover secrets he never saw coming. My dad had a whole other life that we never knew about. Like my mom started screaming my dad's name and I just heard one gunshot. The Brothers Ortiz is a gripping true story about faith, family,

and how two lives can drift so far apart and collide in the most devastating way. Listen to the Brothers Ortiz on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's get to Epstein, some great new reporting over from DropSite. Let's go ahead and put this up here on the screen. This is one of the longtime major questions of Jeffrey Epstein is how did he get all of this money? All roads seem to trace back to Les Wexner, the Victoria's Secret, seclusive. billionaire, who is very pro-Israel. Now, we have learned from DropSite and from many of the emails, which I was able to read also some of myself, the primary source documents, is

specifically about how he ran Leslie Wexner's pro-Israel philanthropy machine much more than Les Wexner and the philanthropy later on claims. So let me explain a little bit of that. Basically, what they're able to report is that after his death and what we learn is that the Wexner Foundation, which is a longtime supporter of Zionist politics, and including paying Ayud Barak millions of dollars, the former Prime Minister of Israel, to author two reports, one of which he never even finished, was directed largely by Epstein in such a way that they were asking Epstein directly, or Wexner and the Foundation were saying directly, quote, ask Jeffrey about how to spend the money. Remember, there's all these questions from Epstein himself and his relationship.

with Wexner. Wexner signed power of attorney over him to manage his money. He gifted the famous mansion to him. Why would somebody who is ultra wealthy give such power over their own estate and billions of dollars over to their acquaintance? This is one of the ultimate mysteries. You can have your own theories. I certainly do. But nothing has ever really been confirmed on the story. I think the central part of it, though, is that the emails reveal how central he was to disperse money from Leslie Wexner's charity, many on behalf of Zionists and the pro-Israel causes, and to the point where you can actually see that Wexner's claims later on about how what Les Wexner had claimed he was just a whiz with money, that he had nothing on me, and that it was a very

normal relationship, and he severed his ties. And he also claimed that his control over the foundation wasn't nearly as total as what we now know. And so I encourage everybody to go and read this report because it shows you very, very clearly how much control he actually had over the foundation, dispersing these millions to a former Israeli prime minister and the level of trust that Wexner still had with Epstein for many, many years after the relationship started in the 1990s. Yeah, I mean, what you gather from these emails is that Wexner truly did just hand over his entire financial life to Epstein. And both in terms of his personal money, how much was going to go to the foundation from his personal money and then how much what was going to be dispersed and to whom.

And so it's everything from, you know, the investments to, you know, the various pro-Israel charities that were going to receive significant donations. This foundation was one of the largest and most prolific donors to Zionist causes in the entire United States. So they were heavyweights in this space. And it was all, Jeffrey, I shouldn't say all, but it was largely, it appears from these emails, largely Jeffrey Epstein, who is directing that funding and picking the charities to which that, to where that money was going to go. This is completely contrary to how, of course, Wexner portrayed their relationship and completely contrary to how the foundation portrayed their relationship where they said, oh, this guy, we barely had anything to do with him.

And, you know, after his conviction, he was out. We were done. We had absolutely no, you know, absolutely no influence from him whatsoever. That was all just dramatically untrue based on the emails. So this is one incredibly important piece of the puzzle because the amount of money that Epstein was getting just from this one relationship was incredibly sizable and funded a significant part of his lifestyle. But we also got this very important reporting again from Bloomberg, which we've been talking about Jason Leapold. He's been doing great work with these emails as well about how his involvement with Wall Street didn't really skip a beat after his conviction. You know, they took a look at emails of all these, you know,

banker types, hedge fund types messaging him, oh, I'm sorry about your conviction. You'll be fine. You know, hey, how about you want to invest in this? You want to invest in that. And what you get from this one, Sager, is really a sense that, you know, as long as he had money, they didn't really give a shit. You know, as long as he had money to invest that they could, that they could play with and be involved in making money, then they were happy to have his involvement. And the other thing that really comes out of this piece is just what a son of a bitch that he was. Like in these different transactions

playing both sides, lying to both sides, pretending like I'm going to vote on your side in this particular dispute with the other one pretending he's going to vote on that side. Then he picks his side. Then afterwards he sues everyone involved. I mean, just absolutely like ruthlessly

nefarious, but in a way that obviously, you know, worked for him in terms of netting him lots of cash. Absolutely. You know, I'm glad So we had access to those emails, but Bloomberg was with a better, you know, outlet to do it because they could get to all of the Wall Street connections. And, you know, it's hard to decipher. I'm not a financier. Like, I don't fully understand all of it. But they just show you and piece together the network of how it existed at that time, how even as he's under investigation, they don't care, they're still willing to do business with you. And remember, all of this continued even after he pled guilty and was a registered sex offender. They continued to take his businesses, hundreds of millions. and you have very, very high-level Wall Street financiers who are all embroiled in this. You have Leon Black, you have all of these others, paying him personally, $150 million. You got a billion dollars in suspicious activity reports that continue to flow through all of the banks

and the Treasury Department that are filed after his death over a billion. Again, wired to whom, wired for what, wired where, for what purpose, to which country. You know, I mean, all of this points to a vast array of, and, you know, I've, I've, I've discussed with Ryan. At this point, to say he was not, at the very least, an international financier with connections to multiple intelligence agencies, it's just not factual. It's not factual. That was his core. His job was to move money around. That's what he was the ultimate expert at. This proves it. Yeah, as you said, he was also extremely, like, bitchy in his emails, being like, I'll threaten you, I'll blackmail you, you know, basically kind of hinting at various problems

for people. If they didn't continue to do business with him, that was very useful. to the Cote d'Avoire or Mongolia, the Israeli government, potentially the U.S., Russia. I mean, who knows? He was everybody. He literally was a hatchet man. And yes, he also had his peccadilloes, I guess, which were enabled, look past,

and part of the entire story. And that's why when all of this keeps coming together, you see that Leslie Wexner, he didn't cut ties with Jeffrey Epstein. He kind of knew what was going on as the emails that they report what was happening. He said, always be careful. Oh, yeah, let's put each other. up on the screen because we do have that image because I think this, I mean, this tells you everything

right here. So this is, Les Wexner, you start at the bottom, writes to Epstein. Abigail told me the result and we're referring here to that quote unquote sweetheart deal. No, definitely sweetheart deal. All I can say is I feel sorry. You violated your own number one rule. Always be careful. And then Epstein replies, no excuse. So, I mean, does that tell you that he knew what was going on? And he, you know. You can infer some things. And certainly there was no like, this is disgusting. I can't believe.

I will never be associated with you again. No, none of that. Just like, I'm sorry. I feel bad for you. I guess you weren't careful enough, you know, in the things that you were doing. Yep, exactly right. All right. We got Juan David Rojas standing by to talk Miami.

Let's get to it. So I have some pretty interesting election results down in Miami where Democrats were able to flip the mayoral race, which has a lot of interesting potential political. dynamic. So I have the perfect person to break all of this down for us. Wanda Vee Rojas is a columnist for Compaq Magazine. It's got a new piece up there about exactly this. You can put that up on the screen. The headline is how the GOP lost Miami. And he is also the author of the fantastic substack, social democracy with populist characteristics, exactly our kind of guy. Great to see you on.

Good to see you, dude. Thanks for having me back on guys. Okay. So how did the GOP lose Miami? Well, there's, you know, like any election, there's both local and national dynamics on the one hand. Oh, wow, I was actually really impressed just to see Miami voters rebuke, like the city establishment, which is extraordinarily corrupt, reaching new heights under the current administration of Francis Suarez, primer for those who aren't familiar. Actually, I think you guys covered this back when in 2021. He, like, during the 2021 July protest in Cuba, like, got on top of a car or like a van and called for airstrikes on Cuba. Oh, God.

You know, he's this, like, oligarch bro tech guy. I once saw him at, like, an event in Miami, and he said, oh, even my dad doesn't understand crypto. And he's a genius. He went to Harvard. So, anyway. But he really strongly embraced crypto. Yeah. And embraced Miami as this.

like, you know, I mean, a Miami part of why I think this is interesting nationally is because Miami's become the symbol of like the Republican realignment with Latinos and also you had all of these like Republican elites and tech guys who were setting up shop there as well. So, so, you know, this is part of what makes this really noteworthy from a national perspective. Totally, totally. Yeah. I mean, the city had been growing exponentially. But in recent years, you know, all the people that have come to Florida and especially South Florida, a lot of people are leaving now because the cost of living has gotten so hard. out of control. I mean, by some metrics, the Miami metro area is the most

affordable in the country. Wow. Like average rent has like skyrocketed like 80% since the pandemic. So it's it's a it's really grim. And and yeah, with Suarez is like just cartoonish levels of corruption. I mean, really you can barely even say that he's mayor. He's spent most of his time abroad lobbying on behalf of Saudi Arabia. And he's been an offensive since 2017. So after the Khashoggi killing, he's done a lot of PR for the kingdom to kind of rehabilitate them. And actually, he's currently under consideration, reportedly, as next ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Oh, my God.

Great. Perfect. And so there's that. And then the national aspect, which is that, you know, Miami is a city, which is, like, more than 70% Latino, mostly Cuban-American. But, you know, there's also South Americans and Latinos of Caribbean descent, et cetera, Central America, even Mexicans as well. And, well, yeah, Latinos are, like the rest of the country, are really unhappy about the economy, if anything, things have gotten worse under Trump. But also Latinos are, you know, obviously more disproportionately affected by the administration's

immigration policies, which a lot of people down here, especially, it's kind of new to them, the Cuban Americans, especially because they kind of got a pass by authorities and especially state authorities for decades for lots of reasons. Yeah, wet foot, dry foot and all that. They had all of their special little carve-outs there just for themselves. Can you break down some of the map results on F1? I'm just curious if there was any regional stuff that you can point out to us specifically in the mayoral runoff election and where some bigger swings happen that we should take note of, maybe in terms of demographics. Yeah, that's a great question. So that western part of the city is more Latino, especially Cuba. American. That's like Little Havana. The northern part of the city is more Haitian, so that makes perfect sense. Miami's incredibly segregated, including the county. So a lot of these enclaves are disproportionately one kind of immigrant community. But even still, yeah, like I said,

like 70% of the city is Latino. There were these huge swings, like 20-point swings of Latinos towards the Democrats. And another thing, the cope from Republicans is that oh, turnout was really low. It was like 21%. Which, yeah, sure, is really low. But for a mayor election, and especially a mayor election in Miami,

this is pretty good. Like, it's about 30% more than, like, the previous three or four elections. To give an idea, yes, Suarez, who won two times. He got like 70% of the vote, and turnout was like 15%. So it's still pretty significant. And again,

Higgins, yeah, she's the first Democrat to win in, like, at least two decades. And the first non-Cuban to win. It's funny. You know, she's a Democrat, and, like, the Cubans would call her La Gringa. You know, talk about the Republicans, but talk about, you know, all the talking points for Republicans. We're losing our country. Well, look at that. It's the Democrat.

That's the American in Miami. It's a shame to see a white lady be elected by Cubans, you know. So you write in your piece, you say the White House is ongoing. regime change efforts in Venezuela can be right in part as an attempt to retain the loyalty of these disaffected supporters. You call on to say, it's likely to work to an extent. Republicans should be able to keep a critical mass of Florida Latinos and especially Cuban Americans in the fold in the 2026 midterms. Just expand on that, especially since we just had the news about this, which we covered earlier in the show, but I'm interested in your thoughts

on as well, that we seized this massive oil tanker. Yeah, I don't think that's a coincidence. I mean, it came the day after the election. So, just for context, Venezuela for decades since Chavez came into power in 1999, has sent billions in oil to Cuba. And that's really largely how the regime has stayed afloat for a long time. And they're still sending a lot of oil, even though oil production in Venezuela has cratered. So that's it. Big talking point down here among the Cuban Americans. they'll say, ah, the oil that they're sending, and also Mexico in recent years, has been sending them some oil, so they've wanted to crack down on that.

So, yeah, I mean, more broadly, like the strikes in the Caribbean and the regime change efforts in Venezuela, like, people down here are extremely, we talked about this before, neo-conservative, especially, yeah, the Cuban Americans, Nick Rogwins in Venezuela. Cuban Americans, yeah, voted by, like, around 70% for Trump. And Venezuela is actually, I was surprised around, like, 50-something percent. Democrats said better than I expected. Couldn't find anything on Nicaraguans. But so, you know, they believe in, like, this global cabal of communism, and on a regional level, globally, it's, like, you know, Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba. Regionally, it's the Troika of Terror, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua.

And so their view is that, like, if one of these, especially, like, the biggest one, Venezuela or Cuba go down, then like a kind of reverse domino theory, the rest will go down with them. So in his first term, a lot of Latino South Floridians were really happy with Trump, the Guido stuff in 2019, et cetera. And you talk to Venezuelans and Cubans now, and they might say, like, yeah, I mean, honestly, this deportation stuff and immigration stuff has gone too far. but they're really happy with the foreign policy, especially Rubio and Secretary of State. Right, of course, yeah, former senator. They're great representative. And so, you know, like you said, there's national characteristics, there's local stuff that is all going on. Nobody's expecting Florida to become a blue state anytime soon.

But in general, what should we look for? Like we've got the Florida GOP primary going on right now, fishback, Byron Donald's. You've still got DeSantis there at the top. Anything that you've got your eye on for all. our audience. Yeah, so yeah, I said this in the piece. It's hard to know. And this is the given idea about how contradictory things are down here. So on like the one, on one level, there was a lot of consternation about the build the, the, uh, what the attempts to build a Trump's presidential library in Miami. And the thing is the land is owned by Miami-Dade College. So the city,

there's been a lot of shady dealings about them, like, trying to, like, give the land away for free. And there's fears that it would be one thing if it was just the library, but there's fears that, you know, they'll want to build, like, a library slash hotel and casino, which would be really grotesque. There's been a lot of local opposition towards that. At the same time, in going back to what we were just talking about, if you guys are familiar with the Miami suburb of Hia Leo, which is, like, 90% Cuban-American. They just, like, inaugurated a 12-foot statue, bronze statue, of Trump, Trump, the fighter, it's called. So it's, there's a funny mix of things down here. Yeah, there is, on the one hand, like, consternation over, like, the immigration policies.

On the other hand, they love the regime change stuff. I think, given these results from Higgins, it's possible. I mean, I think there's no chance in hell that Democrats really will be the, that successful in Florida. I mean, like Val Deming's in 2022 was about as good a candidate, I think, as Democrats could have a few years ago, and they still got killed. Now, the environment has changed a lot. So it could be that maybe Democrats managed to make some moderate gains because of the fact

that maybe some neo-conservative Latinos are like, you know what, we love Trump, but maybe we don't want to support Republicans on, like, domestic issues. We'll stay home. Hard to know. We'll have to see. And how extractable do you think any of this is because the South Florida Latino community is fairly unique in terms of the American context. But, you know, look at these mayoral results.

It's roughly a 20-point shift in the direction of Democrats. Kamala did win Miami, but it was by like less than a point. It was basically time. Very, very close. So, and then Higgins is able to win by, what, 19? So huge shift, huge overperformance for Democrats in Miami, you know, how much can we extrapolate that to other Latino communities and other communities in general across the country? Yeah, I would say that outside of Florida and especially South Florida, because for instance, there are differences within the state. Orlando is much more disproportionately Puerto Rican, which tend to swing more towards Democrats, though Trump did perform pretty well with them in 2024.

for. I would say that elsewhere in the country, Republicans are going to get, are going to get killed with Latinos. I mean, we already saw that in New Jersey and in Virginia. Like, I mean, unless the economy improves or they decide to start doing things differently with immigration, and that's extremely unlikely. A lot of Latinos here, but also especially in border states, and I guess you could call Florida a border state as well. Like, they were not happy with the situation under Biden. A lot of people would think, oh, you know, like there's millions of people now jumping the line defrauding the asylum system. But that's one thing. Another thing is that like, uh-oh, this has gone too far. They're deporting people without process. They're reporting people

to maximum security prisons in Africa from countries they don't belong to. There has to be a more sensible middle ground. And I think that doesn't even just apply to Latinos, but just Americans as a whole. Very interesting, man. Thank you, as always, Juan. We appreciate it. Appreciate your analysis. Good to see, bro. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate you. Friday show tomorrow. See you all then. I know he has a reputation, but it's going to catch up to him. Gabe Ortiz is a cop. His brother Larry, a mystery Gabe didn't want to solve until it was too late. He was the head of this gang. You're going to push that line for the cause?

Took us under his wing and showed us the game, as they call it. When Larry's killed, Gabe must untangle a dangerous past, one that could destroy everything he thought he knew. Listen to the Brothers Ortiz on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers? Who catfishes a city? Is it even safe to snort human remains? Is that the plot of footloos? I'm comedian Rory Scoville, and I'm here to tell you, Josh Dean and I have a new podcast that celebrates the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals. It's called Crimeless, a true crime comedy podcast. Listen on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Stefan Curry, and this is Gentleman's Cut. I think what makes Gentleman's Cut different is me being a part of developing the profile of this beautiful finished product. With every sip, you get a little something different. Visit Gentleman's Cut Bourbon.com or your nearest Total Wines or Bevmo. This message is intended for audiences 21 and older. Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, Boone County, Kentucky. For more on gentlemen's cut bourbon, please visit gentlemen's cuthuburn.com. Please enjoy responsibly.

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