Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/16/25: Fox War On Christmas For Data Centers, Trump Aide Unleashes On Admin, Pinochet Defender Wins In Chile

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss Fox News war on Christmas for AI data centers, Trump aide unleashes on admin, Pinochet defender wins Chile election.   Juan David Rojas: https://x.com/rojasrjuand?s=20    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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Let's talk about Fox News and this war on Christmas. So this is a fascinating one. You've got a Fox News anchor who is saying, we all need to buy artificial Christmas trees to make room for the AI data centers because they're going to take over the real Christmas tree farms. Let's go ahead and take a listen to this. This farm is 150 acres. Yeah, they're going to be farms.

And there will be transmission lines that have to go through developments and farms. That's the very nature of a growing economy. Like, everybody needs to get on board. I just don't. It's a, you know what? a fake tree. Oh. Oh.

Oh, a digger right in my heart. What? I have a fake tree. Oh, I have a beautiful real tree. Coming up, no time for this. I know, I can't afford the tree. One can only imagine the executive orders and state mandated real Christmas trees that would

arrive if a lib said something equivalent over on MSNBC or CNN. You know what? I'll defend them. That would be a good executive order. It's a good thing. In fact, you know, I'm from Texas. I'm from Texas. We don't do real trees.

Okay, right? It's not really a thing. You know, pretty much everybody has an artificial. Some people pay the extra. My wife feels very passionately about real Christmas trees, which were some original fights in our marriage. I have come to become a real tree guy. Real trees are good. And, you know, it does get you a little bit more in the Christmas spirit.

But more importantly about this whole data center buying artificial trees, this is a perfect example of what we've talked about with the mindset around AI, which is you need to personally sacrifice so that the slop can continue so that you need to personally sacrifice, not just monetarily, but let's say the human experience putting up a tree in your house, you know, having fun with your children, decorating that so that we can have this impersonal technology, which the CEOs say is going to take their job and to rip even more of that away from us. I actually can't think of a better kind of clip to encaps, to that encapsulates that and what worshiping GDP really looks like because that's what it is.

That is the explicit kind of view of what that means and of what people hold dear and why being, you know, an anti-AI disposition is so increasingly popular in American politics today. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, that's what they're saying is like, we need to change our lives and our traditions to make way. We need to adjust for the AI revolution. that is here that is not really meant to benefit us at all. It's all to enrich and consolidate power in the hands of a very few number of people. I do have some good news on the AI front,

however, Kirsten Cinema, who is a former senator and cartoon villain, she has gone from being in the Senate to now being a lobbyist for AI data centers. She was pushing one in this one particular Arizona town, and they overwhelmingly, I think unanimously, the city council voted it down. But in any case, she was also welcomed onto Fox and Friends to make the case for AI data centers and how they are actually more eco-friendly than they were in the past saga. Or let's take a listen to that. As you know, there's this massive effort kind of on the left to kind of come into communities and give misinformation around water and energy and AI data centers. And that's a lot of misinformation. This administration is doing a good job of telling the

truth, creating more energy domestically. The National Energy Dominance Council, doing a whole of government approach to ensure that we're creating our own natural gas, our own nuclear, to power the future. We're actually using less water with AI data centers and in the past. So that communication is bringing people together who just want efficient, proactive, good lives where their kids have a better life than they had. So this is, I think, a really important issue that has nothing to do with partisanship. So keep in mind, again,

this lady is paid to utter this absolute garbled nonsense. The fact that she can go up there with a straight face and be like, oh, this is all good for American energy production. Like, we have looked at the way the grid is already being strained by the power usage of these AI data. centers. And I also find it very interesting saga that she is framing this as a partisan issue that, oh, it's all these left-wing people who are coming in and telling you bad things about

the AI data centers, while the president is telling you the truth that this is a good thing for the American economy, et cetera, because the reality is, as we've covered here extensively, you know, if you look at the Georgia elections, if you look at the Virginia elections, if you look at local opposition to AI data centers being located here, it is very crows. ideological and there is not a clear left-right divide here. So that's something that clearly she and whoever's paying her are trying to push. Yeah, I mean, it's the Kristen Cinema thing. It's just too much. And I think what everybody can appreciate now is how overtly corrupt so much of this is. You have not only the, I mean, this is an ex-Senator who took multiple votes on behalf of

big industry, which we covered here at the time, left. in order to personally enrich herself. I mean, and, you know, by the way, there was all this debate. They were like, does she really believe this? Is she a mod? It's like, no, she's just, she just wanted to get paid. I mean, it looks like she just wanted to get paid, right? In terms of her advocacy.

And now she's like pro-Trump now, hilariously, for big business reasons. I just want to put it all together just to show how corrupt so much of this is. I recently flagged this. I was reading through, you know, I took interest in this debanking conversation. I think the conversation on deep banking is important. We've talked about Lee Fong with this before. There were legitimate instances of political deep banking that happened, which are really concerning at a free speech level.

These were weaponized by the tech guys who started saying that deep banking happened in order to loosen restrictions around their industry. Famously, we had the Mark Andreessen moment on Joe Rogan. But there are many others. We had Mark Zuckerberg and others for pro-crypto interests. And again, I think there are a real concern. around industry-specific for politics. But I could not get over as I was reading this new debanking report, only weirdos like me. This is the Office of the Comptroller from the Treasury. So they did a

nine-month investigation. They're going to look into who's getting debanked. And you would be amazed to find that this new debanking report signals out not just crypto and other industries, but pornography. Let's go ahead and put this up here on the screen. The OCC's preliminary findings show that between 20 and 2023, nine banks made inappropriate distinctions among customers in the division of financial services on the basis of lawful business activities by maintaining policies restricting access to banking services or requiring escalating reviews and approvals. Sectors subjected to restricted access included oil and gas, coal mining, firearms, private prisons, tobacco e-cigarette manufacturers, adult entertainment, and digital assets.

Now, let's stick with porn and with crypto. You know, there's this idea that these banks are ideologically opposed to porn and to crypto. These are some of the greediest people in the world. You think they don't want to take their money? Do you know why they don't want to take their money? With crypto, they're worried about KYC, know your customer laws, and specifically money laundering, which they have a legal mandate not to help prevent and to help report to the FBI or to the U.S. authorities. On porn, it's the same thing. What the banks suddenly grew a conscience?

Do you think that that's, the banks are like, oh, my, only fans, we can't be taking their money, or the banks are looking at human trafficking laws and at revenge porn laws and at the internal enforcement of these gigantic conglomerates which are addicting all of these American men and which are flagrantly in violation of multiple trafficking laws on the books right now to help prevent women who are being exploited, posted online, international rings,

which are profiting to the tune of billions of dollars, and they're like, yeah, we can't take their money because to do so would actually be a violation specifically of trying to protect all of these girls of which these laws were passed on their behalf. Maybe it's the latter. And so the Trump administration here taking significant pressure from the porn industry and others, which again are salivating at the idea of access to the legitimate banking system and now effectively pressuring our largest financial institutions to basically take their money and look the other way. I can't think of anything worse. You know, look, you know, tobacco, fine, whatever. I get it. You know, that's one of those where, you know, I think tobacco is horrible smoking. Obviously, it kills a lot of people, the industry, et cetera. That's one which, again, I get not wanting, you know, especially with lawsuits and everything, you don't necessarily want to be connected to that.

But with pornography and with crypto, like we said, the banks don't care about conscience. They're doing it for a reason. It's not ideological. It's not even government. These banks were happy to do business with Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah, exactly. Like after his conviction because the money was green, they're like, yes, let's do the deals, it's fine. We don't care. Like, we're going to continue to hang out with him.

We've had more and more reporting about that. So, yeah, it's not like they're out here being some, like, good lefties, like, we're going to, you know, not work with the... And it is interesting to me, going back to the Mark Andreessen, Rogan appearance, and just to remind people, he used the conservative perception, and probably at times, like, legitimate, it was true, legitimate reality that there was ideological debanking to then launch a war on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had actually stood up, Rohit Chopra, who was the head of that agency, stood up against ideological debanking. But he found it to be a useful construct.

And then even some of the examples that he offered that he was like, oh, this person was debanked just because they're like a conservative and they like Trump. But then you dig one layer deeper. And it's like, or maybe they were committing like scams and fraud. I think people need to really remember especially crypto is rife with all kinds of scams and rug poles and fraud and money laundering. Like, none of it's being prosecuted anymore under the Trump administration. But that has been the reality of crypto.

So there have been very good reasons why banks would look askance and not want to get involved with some of these sorts of things. So it's a classic place. that they have used. David Sacks did this too in his defense of AI of them completely deregulating AI. They take a culture war issue

and they frame it in a way protect like a pro oligarch agenda. And so that's a lot of what's going on here as well. You remember David Sacks in his tweet, he was talking about like, oh, if you don't want a black George Washington, then we've got to make sure states can never regulate AI and we can just do whatever we want to do.

So, you know, similar kind of bait and switch going on here as well. Yeah, these culture war stuff, you know, in absence of big arguments around here. By the way, again, like I said, on AI, I've never had more pushback from the White House. It's kind of fascinating. I enjoy arguing with them about it. There is a legitimate view about the AI states thing. I don't agree with it necessarily. But I'm telling you right now, this porn thing, there's no defense.

100% it's being pushed by the industry. This is, it's just like weed. I talked about yesterday. You can defend weed rescheduling all you want. And if it was done through a real process, I would, look, I would fight it, but I would, I'd be like, okay, so be it. But this is literally because the White House chief of staff, we're about to talk about, was hired by a weed company whenever she was outside of office and then brought that

former client to the Oval Office who has billions of dollars at stake and whose stock massively profited. That's it. That's the only reason that this happened because a bunch of multimillion. millionaires hired pro-Trump ex-campaign officials donated or and or hired to the Trump campaign and then got their way to the Oval and then did a corrupt deal in order to get it done. Like that's it. It's the same thing here with porn. It's because, I mean, also, you know, you kind of have to understand if you're saying banks should disregard KYC regulations whenever

it comes to, you know, like crypto and others, then, you know, oh, okay, well, it is kind of difficult, let's say to apply it to the pornography industry. For them in general, they want to make it as easy as possible for all of these vice industries to do business. I think that's disgusting in an era where the very basics of life have never been more unaffordable or unattainable for a lot of younger people, and that these are the very things which are destroying them from the inside out. And, you know, this is a big talk from the administration, which cares about Christianity or moral purpose or any of that. I have never seen a more socially libertarian administration, not even the Biden administration did shit like this. Let's go to C4. Again, just to give

you an example, Trump is now considering wiping federal gambling winnings taxes. Let me explain something again. There's no such thing as gambling winnings. They did a study, hundreds of thousands of people who did sports betting. Four percent of people had a profit after five years. Four percent. 96% you're going to lose. You're a loser. 100%. Now, all this will do is give casinos and sports betting companies free advertising saying, by the way, when you have this parlay, which you're definitely going to hit, it will also be tax-free. It is a gigantic giveaway and brand benefit to these gambling. It's so repulsive, like loosening restrictions on weed, porn, Gambling. It's literally like they're personally attacking me. But look, this is not, this isn't about me, okay? At the end of the day, like, you can live your life the way that you want. But, but, and this is just my opinion, I think that the government should not make it easier, easier for multi-billion dollar industries to corrupt you, to corrupt the people around you,

to corrupt your community. The point of the government of our society is to promote human flourishing. There's nothing about this, which does any of that. All it does, is vastly enriched people who wake up every single day thinking about how to milk you for as much money as possible. Those people are my enemies. The gambling thing is crazy because it comes at a moment, too, when I think there's increasing recognition of like, oh, this is a problem. Right. This is a problem. You know, we've got a major issue with addiction. We've got a major issue with people who are, you know, giving all their life save and betting on, whether it's boarding events. Now we've got, you know, CNN making a deal with the betting companies. You bet on literally everything. All these scandals coming out

about insider trading and rigging the markets, all that sort of stuff. And, you know, in the past, when we've had things that society is considered to be like a vice or behavior they want to discourage, but they don't want to outright ban, oftentimes what you do is you actually tax it. You make it more expensive or you make it more difficult. Here you're going in the opposite direction. Like instead of doing a vice tax, you're doing like a vice tax credit. You're doing like a vice encouragement, actively trying to funnel people into something that we know is fundamental rigged, exploitative, predatory, and damaging. So, yeah, I mean, you know, come get your Christian nationalists.

This is, it is really pretty wild what's going on here. But it's the whole administration, the core foundation. There are no foundational principles outside of just like a money grab. I mean, that's what it is. It's just like a heist. They are taking everything that's not nailed down. Everybody's in it for their own bag. Like, you know, even the foreign policy is run for a bunch of oligarchs bag.

the domestic policy, the economy is run for them. That's the whole thing. And so, you know, the fact that the gambling and the porn industry and whatever are getting their seats at the table and getting their taste, no surprise. Absolutely. All right, guys, I think we all talked a little bit too much. So we're going to have to go to Susie Wiles before we welcome our friend, Juan David Rojas. Who would you call if the unthinkable happened?

I just fail and started screaming. If you lost someone you loved in the most horrific way. I sit through with y'all 22 times. The police, right? But what if the person you're supposed to go to for help is the one you're the most afraid of? This dude is the devil. He's a snake.

He'll hurt you. I got you. I got you. I got you. I'm Nikki Richardson, and this is The Girlfriends, Untouchable. Detective Roger Golubski spent decades intimidating and sexually abusing black women across Kansas City, using his police badge to scare them into silence. This is the story of a detective who seemed above the law until we came together to take him down.

I told Roger Galoopsky, I said, you're going to see my face till the day that you die. Listen to the girlfriends, untouchable, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro. host of the hit podcast Family Secrets. We were in the car, like a rolling stone came on,

and he said, there's a line in there about your mother. And I said, what? What I would do if I didn't feel like I was being accepted is shoes and identity that other people can't have. I knew something had happened to me in the middle of the night, but I couldn't hold on to what had happened. These are just a few of the moving and important stories I'll be holding space for on my upcoming 13th.

season of Family Secrets, whether you've been on this journey with me from season one or just joining the Family Secrets family, we're so happy to have you with us. I'll dive deep into the incredible power of secrets, the ones that shape our identities, test our relationships, and ultimately reveal who we truly are. Listen to Family Secrets on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's not just a city. I didn't really have an interest of being on air. I kind of was up there to just try and infiltrate the building.

It's where Kronk was born in a club in the West End. Four World Star, it was 5'9. Where a tiny bar birthed a generation of rap stars, where preachers go viral, and students at the HBCU turned heartbreak into resurrection. How do you get people to believe in something that's dead? Where Dreamers brought Hollywood to the south, and hustlers bring their visions to create black wealth.

Nobody's rushing into relationships with you. Where are you from? They want to look in the eye. Where the future is nostalgia. I talked to the chat, GPT. She's like, you really the first lady to have a gayfrey girl's tape in Atlanta, Georgia. Like, that's what separates you from a lot of people. And I was like, oh, what, you're right.

Atlanta doesn't wait for permission. It builds its own spotlight. I'm big rude. Let us guide you through the stories behind Atlanta's most iconic moments. Listen to Atlanta is on the IHard Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. turning now to Susie Wiles. This just broke this morning. We had to add this in. This is one of the craziest interviews by a senior White House official I have ever seen in my life in any other White House,

any other time, normal time. She's getting fired today. Under this president, who knows? Let's put this up here on the screen. This is a New York Times write up of a multi-page interview that Susie Wiles has been sitting with Vanity Fair for over the last year, in which she gets candid about the entire Trump presidency, admits that many of the things that the White House set are lies, admits that Elon is using ketamine. She criticizes the president. She says that the vice president is a conspiracy theorist who his conversion to away from never Trumpism was political. She says Trump has an alcoholic personality. So let me read from the New York Times write up of this lengthy Vanity Fair profile. President Trump's chief of staff said she tried to get him to

end his score settling against political enemies after 90 days in office, but acknowledged the administration's still ongoing push for prosecutions has been fueled in part by the president's desire for retribution. So number one, the mortgage fraud case against Letitia James or against James Comey, all of that. It's not about the case. It's political retribution from the president. She just tweeted it out. That's an old meme from the 2010s, is just tweeting out what, you know, as journalists, we've been working on this story, trying to prove that this is the true reason why Trump is doing this, even though, yes, it's obvious. We need evidence. And now we have the White House chief of staff. He's like, oh, yeah, he's doing it for political retribution purposes.

That's what these prosecutions are about. Okay. Let's sit with that. Let's sit with that. As we continue, again, for over 11 interviews that she's given, the vice president, she said, quote, has been a conspiracy theorist for a decade. His conversion from Trump critic to ally was based not on principle, but was sort of political. Elon Musk is an avowed ketamine user, an odd, duck whose actions were not always rational and left her, quote, aghast. Rust's vote, the budget director, quote, is a right-wing absolute zealot, and the attorney general Pam Bondi, quote, completely whiffed in handling of the Epstein files. She continued, by the way, way to say about Venezuela. This is my personal favorite. She said here about the boats that the

policy of the United States is that, or for Donald Trump, is to quote, blow up as many boats as possible until Maduro decides to leave office. That's what she said. So admitting, none of this is about drugs. It's not about fentanyl, which is all bullshit, which again, I knew that. I've been saying that here. But to have the White House Chief of Staff just come out and be like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's all fake and it's about regime change. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Madam, Susie Wiles. You know, I mean, continuing here. Describing Trump as an alcoholic personality with respect to, quote, operates with a view that there's nothing he can't do. That's not usually something I would describe of an alcoholic, but okay. She said so much of her job revolves around the president's

personality and stream of consciousness, public comments. She said that during the whole tariffs thing, that the vice president, J.D. Vance, was sent in to convince Trump to pump the brakes on tariffs. And she said that there was a huge disagreement, that they were deciding people were predicting disaster on USAID. She thinks no rational person could think the USAID process was a good one. Nobody? I mean, the whole thing is crazy. And we're just scratching the surface. I haven't even been able to, I haven't been able to get even all of them just yet what these comments are. But trashing the cabinet, admitting the Epstein files is a huge problem, says she can't understand why Galane Maxwell was moved to a different prison, says that the Epstein files was mishandled,

says that Venezuela is really all about regime change, that USAID was a disaster. that she was aghastard? Keep in mind, you know, part of why this is so crazy is it's not just about telling the truth. This White House, her employee, Caroline Levitt, took to the podium to defend every single part of this bullshit at the time as the official part of the administration. And she's admitting that in private, oh my God, we were aghast by it. We were disgusted. We tried to move off of this policy. The prosecutions are political. I mean, how is that going to play in court? How is this going to play in court? If this is a true, James Comey, congratulations. You just got to quit it. All right, Letitia James, who they've tried to

indict what, three more times now from a grand jury and can't get it. Yeah, good luck, you know, to the prosecutors who are trying to do this. It's just so crazy. I have never seen anything like this in my entire time covering Washington ever. It is wild. Let me read. And she, by the way, undercut a number of other policies. She talked about how they mean to be more careful with deportations. She said she did not agree with pardoning the violent January 6ers that she pushed to just do the nonviolent ones and was overruled there. So all kinds of the like most like core and controversial Trump 2.0 policies. She's effectively undercutting here. Everything from, you know, the day one J6 rioters, pardoned up until Venezuela where she's just giving the game away that the blowing up of the boats isn't about drugs.

It's about regime change. on the political retribution piece, let me read a little bit of this. So she said, quote, we have a loose agreement that the score settling will end before the first 90 days are over, she said at the time. When that did not happen by August, she told Mr. Whipple that I don't think he's on a retribution tour, but said that Trump was aiming at people who did bad things and coming after him. In some cases, it may look like retribution.

And there may be an element of that from time to time. Who would blame him, not me? And so in terms of just actual real world impact, yeah, any of those court cases, Tisha James, James Comey, Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff, there's been all sorts of talk about people they're going to go after on this mortgage fraud bullshit. Those cases will all be undercut to the extent that they had any legs to begin with by this overt admission from the chief of staff that, yes, these are political. this is about retribution. That's what he's doing. So that in and of itself is wild. To undercut J.D. Vance, Trump may not really care that much about that, but to say, you know, oh, yeah, of course he converted to Trumpism because it was political, which is obvious. But, you know, here you've got the chief of staff acknowledging what everybody could see the reality in front of their eyes, calling him

a conspiracy theorist, talking about Elon Musk's drug use. All of it, I mean, yeah, it's pretty wild. And the other thing about this saga is the White House participated with all of this. Like, this was authorized. I mean, there's a big, like, glossy photo shoot involved with a bunch of different administration officials. Other officials spoke to this reporter as well. So this was all, this whole project, this whole write-up was greenlit by the administration, even though, you know, I would be very surprised if they knew the extent of what Susie Wiles was saying here. No, they didn't know.

I can already, my phone's, it's pinging a little bit here right now. Yeah. I'll just leave it at that in terms of what people around Washington, including people who are, I mean, here's the thing. It's an unspoken rule here in D.C. When you work for somebody, you never make yourself the story. Never. So the White House chief of staff, many chiefs of staff, you know, to presidents and others, they don't sit for interviews. Why? Because your job is to execute the agenda of the president. You're never supposed to be the main character, ever. That's the job of the principal. I know this sounds like kind of servile, but like in a certain way, like, that's a certain way. That's the job, right? That's what you do as a staffer. And so for sitting for 11 interviews

here, 11 interviews, and just letting loose about your thoughts about how Pam Bondi's an idiot, she said completely whiffed on Epstein. I mean, if the White House chief of staff thinks this, how can we as citizens have any confidence in our government? If the White House chief of staff is openly saying that what the president is saying is a lie, is that many cabinet members are idiots or incompetent is that Doge, which was held up as a central pillar of the administration there at the time, what she was, quote, aghast by it? First of all, what are you doing in that job, lady? What are you even doing? If you think this, you should leave, right? What does it say about you that you think all of this and that you're sticking around to, quote, do something about it?

Because you're obviously, you're not doing a very good job. You actually don't have that much influence if that's what you think that you're doing. And then second, yeah, I just, I cannot get over how you can just openly admit so many things, which again, we all know are true. But there is a difference, legally, first of all, in a court of law, to say that you have a political prosecution. But on regime change, that's got to be one of the most consequential policies of the entire Trump administration. And to just come out and be like, our flimsy bullshit pretext is in fact bullshit is amazing. I mean, it's shocking to the character. Well, and that's, you know, something in a future administration, if you've got Democrats in control, like, people need to think about the, you know, potential prosecutions.

They clearly are worried about, like, with the double tap strike, whether that was legal or not. Obviously, like, I think the whole thing is illegal, but they clearly got nervous about that as well, judging by the reaction. So when you have her coming out and publicly undercutting the bullshit legal pretext that they've been using, yeah, that's, that's. That's a big problem for Pete Heggsett. That's a big problem for that Admiral, what was the Admiral Bradley, who was kind of thrown under the bus. That's a big problem for all of the seals that were involved in this policy. That's a big issue.

Let me read the part of the Epstein portion because this is pretty wild, too. So this is about Pam Bondi. She also gets into Trump a little bit with regard to Epstein. So as you mentioned before, soccer, she says, I think Bondi completely whiffed on appreciating that that was a very targeted group that cared about this. She gave them binders full of nothingness. Then she said the witness list or the client list was on her desk. There is no client list and it sure as hell wasn't on her desk.

Mr. Vance, by contrast, she said, understood the sensitivity because he himself was a conspiracy theorist, she said. So again, saying directly, when Pam Bondi told you that this was on her desk, she was lying. There is no client list. It sure as hell was not on her desk. That is what she had to say about that. then she says that she has read the Epstein documents and acknowledged Trump's name is in them, quote, we know he's in the file and he's not in the file doing anything awful. Nothing awful, So rest easy there.

But neither apparently, this is one more part on this, neither apparently is Bill Clinton asked about Trump's claims going back years that Clinton had visited Epstein Island, Ms. Wales said there is no evidence. Asked if there's incriminating evidence about Clinton in the files, as Trump has suggested. And she says, the president was wrong about that. So she's saying Trump is lying. Trump is in the files, but not doing anything awful. And that he is lying about what the files contain with regard to Bill Clinton. It's so crazy, man. I truly have never seen anything like this.

The last interview that was anything remotely comparable, in my opinion, was maybe Steve Bannon in the first hundred days where he openly trashed Jared Kushner and other members of the administration. Who was it? To the American prospect? Is that right? It was some, like, kind of lefty. I thought it was, like, New York Magazine? No, it was a lefty magazine. I remember. I mean, New York Magazine was kind of lefty, but anyway, I don't remember exactly, but yeah. There was that, but honestly, like Stan McChrystal, he was the general in charge of Afghanistan at the time, and Michael Hastings, the Rolling Stone journalist, ended up being delayed, and McChrystal, what did he say about Obama? He said he was an idiot, something like that. He said some comment

about Obama where he was like he's dumb. Publish it, and he was immediately fired. But that was in the old rules. I don't know if that's going to happen now. I have no idea. I mean, how could you ever enter a cabinet meeting again when, I mean, Susie Wiles, who I guess is technically kind of your boss,

is out there just trashing you. In the public, it's amazing. But the world we live in is Cash Patel sitting for interviews about his love life with Stephen Miller's wife who's dressed casually for some reason this entire thing.

I don't know. I don't know what is happening to this government. But yeah, we're being Confederacy of dumps. I don't even have worked. I'm literally speechless for how retarded this is.

It's crazy. It's fucking crazy. So you have the chief of staff. So this is not liberalism Trump's derangement syndrome. Trump's chief of staff saying he's lying about that. Epstein files. Pam Bondi was lying about the Epstein files that she disagrees with the deportation

approach, the USAID approach, that Elon Musk, who was handed the keys to the whole freaking government is a drug addict that Russ Vote, who still has the keys to the whole government is a right-wing ideologue, that the vice president is a conspiracy theorist. What, I mean, what more could you possibly get into this series of interviews? It's pretty wild. I don't know. I mean, I have to think that there would be some, like, there has to be some blowback for this. I mean, especially the parts where she says things about Trump in particular, that he's lying, and that she disagreed with him on the J6 pardons and, you know, the undercutting of the Venezuela policy. That's a live, active, very significant serious issue.

And here she is just, like, giving the game away on that one. I don't know. It's very different from my impression of her. I didn't know anything about her, but it seemed like she was just, just this very, we haven't heard from her that she is very, like, disciplined and buttoned up. This is the total opposite of that. Well, you know, maybe everything trumped,

everyone turns into a narcissist around Trump, I guess. You know, that's possible. I ask. I also wonder how he'll, you know, he's very against alcohol at all. Right. Being described as an alcoholic. I also wonder how he'll react to being characterized

as having the personality of an alcoholic. His brother died of alcohols. I wonder how that will land with him. Yeah, I know. That's going to go over well? No. Yeah. Whatever.

All right, more consequential news. We got Juan David Rojas standing by to talk about Chile. Let's get to it. Who would you call if the unthinkable happened? I just fell and started screaming. If you lost someone you loved in the most horrific way. I said through your two times. The police, right?

But what if the person you're supposed to go to for help is the one you're the most afraid of? This dude is the devil. He's a snake. He'll hurt you. I got you, I got you. I'm Nikki Richardson, and this is The Girlfriends, Untouchable. Detective Roger Goloopsky spent decades intimidating and sexually abusing black women across Kansas City,

using his police badge to scare them into silence. This is the story of a detective who seemed above the law until we came together to take him down. I told Roger Golooski, I said, you're going to see my face till the day that you die. Listen to the Girlfriends Untouchable on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies. in the history of business.

Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want. First episode, How Southwest Airlines Use Cheap Seats and Free Whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The Most Texas Story Ever. There's a lot of Mavericks in that story. We're going to have Mavericks on the show.

We're going to have plenty of robber barons. So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of things. famous business geniuses, along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked. Like Thomas Edison and the electric chair. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro, host of the hit podcast Family Secrets. We were in the car, like a Rolling Stone came on, and he said, there's a line in there about your mother. And I said, what? What I would do if I didn't feel like I was being accepted is shoes. an identity that other people can't have. I knew something had happened to me in the middle of the night, but I couldn't hold on to what had happened.

These are just a few of the moving and important stories I'll be holding space for on my upcoming 13th season of Family Secrets. Whether you've been on this journey with me from season one, or just joining the Family Secrets family, we're so happy to have you with us. I'll dive deep into the

incredible power of The ones that shape our identities, test our relationships, and ultimately reveal who we truly are. Listen to Family Secrets on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Turning now to our friend Juan David Rojas, who joins us live to discuss the most recent elections in Chile, who have elected a new right-wing president, Jose Antonio, cast by nearly 20. margin. One, our excellent analyst of all things Latin America, joins us to break it down. Good to see you, man. Thanks for having me back on, guys. Absolutely. So let's put this up here on the screen. Why the Chilean left failed, you discussed some of the policies over the last five years, some of the rise here of Jose Antonio Kass, about how exactly this all came to be. Why don't you

break some of it down for us and maybe what it means for the region and, if anything, for the United States? So, Cass, he's been called far-right, like, ultra-conservative. He's very conservative. He is an apologist for the Pinochet dictatorship, which for decades after the dictatorship, people on the right

tried to, like, distance themselves from the former dictator. And actually the first, like, few presidents after the dictatorship were all, like, center left. It was only until Sebastian Pineda, I think, in, like, 2010, who was, like, the first conservative

one. He was, like, tried to distance himself. from the dictatorship caste is like he says that like you know he condemns the human rights abuses but that you know his legacy and especially uh pinocet's economic legacy were great his brother actually uh was one of the chicago boys that advised pinace and like installing this neoliberal model the country known as like the cradle of neoliberalism uh and so his brother miguerkas actually served as the president of um chile's central bank during the dictatorship and so So, you know, there's a lot of polarization around this. People on the left will say that, you know, will condemn the human rights abuses and a lot

of the legacy of the economic policies and people on the right will say, oh, look, but we had this great economic growth afterwards. And there's kind of flaws in some of these arguments. So that's a bit of the rundown for the moment. For the United States, cost almost all right-wingers in Latin America, you could describe them as neo-conservatives. They worship the United States. they hate Russia, China, Iran, blah, blah, blah, blah.

This guy, like, is going to be really good for the current administration. He loves Miele. A lot of, like, posting after the election was showing how, like, geographically, the continent of South America is, like, divided along the middle between right and left governments. And Miley, what he did is that he posted, like, the, like, Western half that are, like, conservative governments, this, like, tech bro, like, futurism stuff with, like, skyscrapers. And then the leftist governments are a bunch of, like, Brazilian favelas. So that's to give you an idea. Got it. Gotcha. So they're excited about like

the Prospera type of, uh,ification of those countries. So yeah, that's a good way of putting it. So his, uh, his brother was a Chicago school neoliberal economic adjustment, uh, austerity guy. Dad was a Nazi. He's a penis a apologist. This is a lot. It's a lot to take it. So what was it that, you know, people were responding to to reject the, the, you know, more left-leaning government and go with this guy who, you know, I mean, his politics are pretty radical from those familial connections and his embracer justification of Pinochet, but also the embrace of Malay also says he wants to consult with Bekele with regards to crime. So, I mean, this is a pretty dramatic turn. What led to it?

Yeah. So I will say that, Cass, despite his past, and like he, this is the third time he ran for president. And in previous other times, he was like really hardline on abortion. He kind of toned that down this time around. He is honestly, as far as like anyone can really say, a committed Democrat. He's not, he said he's not interested in like trying to take over all the institutions, persecute his opponents and like govern for life, like Pinochet. And in general, you can even also say that like the candidate that he defeated was the Communist Party candidate. She was nominated by the communist party. But for a communist, honestly, she was pretty moderate. She was really critical of like human rights abuses by like Maduro and Ortega and Latin America, which is, I said like

in some other time that it's rare for like leftists to openly like celebrate Maduro. It's also rare for them to like be stridently critical of them too. So that's something interesting in Chilean politics. And I think that explains a lot why so many people were willing to gravitate towards them. As for the failings of the current government, current. President Gabriel Boric, he won in 2021. He was seen as like the shining star on the international left. The country was like trying to rewrite his constitution. And he said he was going to bury neoliberalism. That didn't really work out. And we can talk some more about that. But in a nutshell, I like to say that he was basically like the Chilean Mamdani. And to be clear, I like him and Mamdani.

I think both of them like on a personal level, they seem kind of like nice guys and charismatic, et cetera. And Borich actually did some really good things, in my opinion. He, like, raised the minimum wage, like 20%. The 40 poorest Chileans, the bottom 40% of Chileans now have access to free health care. Pensions are a little bit less miserably, which historically were terrible in Chile. And the best thing, actually, is that there's a gradual reduction in the work week from 45 to 40 hours. something that unions had been demanding for decades. Really, really good stuff. The problem is that

the broader political environment after the pandemic shifted to issues that really benefited the right. There was a crime wave. Some of that had to do with the fact that there were these like mass protests in 2019 that led to the constitutional convention similar to 2020 here with BLM. Like there was backlash against the police and that led to officers like not wanting to like police high crime areas. There's also been a broader reconfiguration of the drug trade in South America, favoring Asian and European markets. So that's led a lot of organized crime to move into countries like Chile. There was inflation.

And even though the government raged the minimum wage, the truth is that the increase was roughly in line with previous governments. So in relative terms, like people's buying power went down. And finally, this is always the kryptonite for progressive governments. there was this huge migration surge, especially in illegal immigration. The country's immigrant population has doubled to 1.6 million and is around 300,000 undocumented, mostly Venezuelans now in Chile. And that doesn't sound like much here, but that's enormous in Chile, considering that the country's

whole population is around 20 million. And so how did a borage handle that? Similar to with Biden, his government had like the low. lowest amount of deportations in history around half of the previous government. And like, for example, with Biden, like you can say, for instance, that Biden deported a lot of people at the border within the country, not so much. And so there was this every single time, including in Latin American countries, you see this divide between people who are more college educated and more working class.

And every single time, the more college educated people have a reluctance, understandably so for like, you know, humanitarian reasons to not really want to like do think things like deportations, whereas working class people feel, you know, they have concerns over crime, strains of social services, competition with illegal labor. So it, it forged to his credit, he did like militarize the northern border to try to stem new arrivals, but people really resented the fact that the government was not really keeping up enforcement. And so Koss has this Trump-est program. He wants to build a border shield of walls, ditches, and...

It's going to be a long shield, man. That's a skinny country. Yeah. We all know the shape. That's a tough. That's going to be a tough wall to build. Love Chile, by the way. Very cool country that I've been to before.

So finally, a question for you. Juan, you talked there about America. What about Venezuela? Like you just said, what's the opinion on the current... government on regime change, would they be supportive of something like that? Traditionally, you know, with Pinochet in our past relations, it was viewed as this like power center, a bulwark against Latin American leftism. Is that something that we're going to see again?

What do you think? Oh, yeah. I'd say that the president-elect, his administration, will be, will go along basically with whatever the Trump administration wants, including Venezuela. The current government, like I said, they were very critical of Maduro. they have said that they would not, you know, support any kind of regime change, like, by force in Venezuela. But, yeah, it's, this is a really sensitive topic. I mean, who knows, maybe Kass could be apprehensive about this stuff, because the thing is, you know, the precedent you set for this.

It's like, okay, you know, maybe you like it if it's against Maduro, but it's like, you know what, if they can do it to Maduro, they can do it to anybody. So it's a, yeah. Yeah, and just because they like you today, it doesn't mean in the future they won't turn, right? So that very, very interesting stuff on. Yeah. Oh, well, you know, one interesting thing, actually, in Chile, permanent residents, this is hilarious, are allowed to vote if they lived in the country for five years. And so Venezuelans were actually a really covered electorate during this past campaign. And guess who they voted for?

They voted for cast, who was promising to deport them because Venezuelans are super neo-conservative. So there's been a lot of discussion around that. The leading conservative candidate now in Peru for 2026 said that Peru should just give citizenship to Venezuelans so that they can vote for him. It's a talk about importing voters.

Wow, wow. It's a funny stuff. Well, dude, this is why we like talking to you. Yeah, a lot of other. this stuff going on in the world. Chile, always a fascinating country, beautiful country, wish them the best. Thank you for joining us, sir. Thank you. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. We have a great counterpoint show for you all tomorrow. And we will see you all on Thursday for our last show before Christmas. Crystal will be back

in the studio. Don't worry. So we'll see you all then. Hi, I'm Radhid Dvluca, and I am the host of a really good cry podcast. This week, I am joined by Anna Runkle, also known as the crappy childhood fairy, a creator, teacher, and guide helping people heal from the lasting emotional wounds of unsafe or chaotic childhoods. Talking about trauma isn't always great for people. It's not always the best thing. About a third of people who are traumatized as kids feel worse when they talk

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On our podcast, welcome to the family with Telma and Kelly. We're re-watching every episode of Family Matters. We'll share behind-the-scenes stories about making the show. Yeah, we'll even bring in some special guests to spill some tea. Listen to Welcome to the Family with Telma and Kelly on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Dr. Priyanko Wally. And I'm Hurricane DeBolu. On our new podcast Health Stuff, we demystify your burning health questions.

You'll hear us being completely honest about her own health. My residency colon was like a cry for help, honestly. And you'll hear candid advice and personal stories from experts who want to make health care more human. I feel like I never felt like I truly belonged in medicine. We want to make health less confusing and maybe even a little fun. Find health stuff on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.