Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/16/25: MAGA Revolt Over Trump Rob Reiner Attack, Kash Fumbles Brown Manhunt, Zionists Push For Muslim Expulsion

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss MAGA revolting over Trump's Rob Reiner attack, Kash Patel fumbling Brown investigation, Zionists call for Muslim expulsion.    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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My sister was y'all 22 times. A police officer, right? But what do you do when the monster is the man in blue? This dude is the devil. He'll hurt you. This is the story of a detective who thought he was above the law until we came together to take him down.

I said, you're going to see my face till the day that you die. I got you, I got you, I got you. Listen to the girlfriends, untouchable, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I got you. 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. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. In fact, we're a little late getting started here because a bombshell just dropped from Vanity Fair with this interview with Susie Wiles. She is saying all kinds of stuff. Donald Trump has the personality of an alcoholic. J.D. Vance, the conspiracy theorist. Elon Musk is on drugs. The cases against his enemies are political. They are retribution. So we had to spend some time digesting that

and inserting into the show. So we will get to that in the latter part of the show. A lot of other stuff to get to as well, though, were horrific details. The murder of Rob Reiner, his son has been arrested, possibly that he will be charged today. We also have Trump reacting to that in one of the ugliest ways you could possibly imagine and actually facing some mega backlash. We've got some, I guess you can't call it exclusive, but we've got some audio from Emily's radio show where Trump voters, three-time Trump voters, were calling in and saying they were disgusted by what he had to say about Rob Reiner. So kind of an interesting one that seems to have broken through to a lot of people, even his own voters. We also have some new details about the shooter, the killer at

Brown University, although he remains on the loose. We have some new photos coming out, and also some new questions about how the FBI is handling that. We got some new reaction from Republicans just going full Islamophobia in the wake of that Bondi Beach attack. We will tell you what they said and what they are up to there. Fox News is launching their own war on Christmas in defense of tech oligarchs. You got to see that one to believe it. We are supposed to have a Republican health care vote tomorrow, but that appears to be kind of falling apart and isn't a whole lot there to start with. And of course, premiums are going to spike for millions of people at the end of the year. Cash Mattel is doing an interview while there's a mass shooter on the loose talking

about his girlfriend. So that's an interesting choice. We're going to talk about that aforementioned Susie Wiles interview. And Juan David Rojas is going to join us to break down the presidential election in Chile. They just elected a far right leader and have a backlash against the left there a lot that's very interesting to begin to there. And no one better to do it than one. Yeah, that's right. Ryan really wanted to get into it yesterday, but I had to shut him down. I was like, dude, the show is already too long. All right. So this is our consolation prize. Crystal, we're very glad. That would be the sort of thing he'd be dying to get into. He was like, can I just fit it in here? I was like, brother, we got so much here going. I was like, the show's already going to go out late. So,

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But let's go ahead and start with Rob Reiner. Not only the case, but Trump's comments on it, which for some reason that remain very mysterious to me, has broken through the cultural zeitgeist in a way that I never would have expected and actually does seem to be a fracture point for a lot of people, even who are very pro-Maga, which is fascinating to me, considering all the things Trump has said in his career, Crystal. But this does seem to be much of a bigger event than I ever would have anticipated. Yeah, I agree.

And we can talk about why that might be. but just want to start by updating on the case. And I just want to say off the top, since I wasn't on the show yesterday, I did know Rob Reiner a little bit. I mean, I wouldn't call him like a close friend or anything, but, you know, especially back when I was at MSNBC, I would see him there, was friendly with him, had lunch with him one time. The thing I remember most from the lunch with him is, first of all, I mean, he's this huge deal, you know, and I'm in comparatively like nothing in terms of my sort of like public persona and awareness. And he was just so friendly and so familiar in like a really charming way. And I told you this story saga, kind of just a small thing that I remembered, you know, after I was clearly done, he was like, that looks really good.

Can I try it? And just started like, you know, like we were old friends, just really casual, really friendly. And that's what you hear from everybody who knew him is he was just, you know, however he felt about his politics, he was just a really genuinely nice person. And so, you know, it's quite a shock to the system to see someone. someone brutally murdered like this, him and his wife. And now that it appears very much like his own son, who has long struggled with drug addiction and mental illness, who had been living with them off and on was the one that took their lives. So let's go ahead and take a listen to the

Los Angeles Police Department chief talking about the latest in the investigation. Yesterday at 12 December 14th, about 3.40 in the afternoon, LAPD responded to a residence the residents of Rob and Michelle Reiner, located in West Los Angeles Division. At that location, they found two deceased adults, a male and a female. Through the night, working with the coroner's office, they were able to identify them definitively as Rob and Michelle Reiner. We have our Robbery Homicide Division handling the investigation. They worked throughout the night on this case,

and were able to take into custody Nick Rayner. Nick Reiner, a suspect in this case. He was subsequently booked for murder and is being held on $4 million bail. Pretty much that's what I can share at this point. But again, a very, very tragic incident. And we're getting some more details from the L.A. press and also from TMZ, which is also, I guess, L.A. press about what happened in the days and hours leading up to this murder. Let's go ahead and put A2 up on the screen.

So a number of sources, including NBC News, also has this at this point. So Rob and his wife, Michelle, and Nick had all attended Conan O'Brien's holiday party. Apparently, there are some people who are saying, you know, Nick was acting really strangely, that he was making people very uncomfortable. And then you've got a lot of people say that there was some sort of an ugly shouting fight between Rob and his son, Nick, at that party. And this was just a day before they would ultimately be found murdered at their homes. Um, let's put a three up on the screen as well. So Nick apparently went missing for hours after the,

the bodies of Rob and Michelle had been discovered. There's another report that when they went into his hotel room where he had been staying after, you know, he allegedly murdered, uh, Rob and Michelle that there was blood all over the hotel room. I'm sure, you know, obviously the police will be sweeping that for any sort of forensic evidence. There's also a lot that's being Written right now, Sagar, about just the tumultuous relationship and life of Nick. He apparently struggled with drug addiction from the time he was in his early teens. Like 14 years old was the first time that he was in rehab. He did some 18 different stints in rehab.

And it ultimately was Rob Reiner's daughter, Romy, who discovered their bodies and also apparently told the police, my brother needs to be a suspect. He is dangerous. So, I mean, it's just. Beyond horrifying, you cannot imagine, you know, your own child taking your life like that. And the other thing I've been thinking about, Sager, this is the third person, the third man that I've known, who has either been allegedly murdered or attempted to be murdered by their, you know, mentally ill, drug addicted child. Wow. And I'm sitting with that of like what just how is this, how is this something that me, myself personally in my life.

I'm aware of this happening, like, know people personally that this happened to three times. We have major, major issues in this country with addiction, with mental health, with, you know, getting people to help that they need. And obviously, resources were not an issue in this instance. But I don't know what to say other than how shocking and how utterly horrifying the whole story is. Yeah, I don't know the situation, obviously, but from just what we read about the multiple stints in rehab. And I mean, the thing is about Rob, what you could also see is it's a pure love for his son and his attempts to, you know, make movies with him and to elevate his own story and how he was trying to push his son in a good direction. And ultimately, I mean, even, you know, in the reporting that's come out, he brought him to Conan O'Brien's holiday party where this argument, you know, apparently came out because, and he even reached out. He said, I need to bring my son. I'm worried about him. You know, I need to keep an eye on him whenever I'm going out in public. So at the very least, like, you know, to the end was always concerned about the well-being of his own son. But it is shocking. I mean, like what you're saying, patricide itself, I mean, there was some, somebody alerted me to this,

and I remember reading it once in a book. I mean, it's considered, you know, if you go back in time, one of the worst crimes that a person can commit. The Romans actually considered it like a special circumstance of crime, which carried its very own punishment. It was like violating the very natural laws of the world, of gods, and of the way that they looked at it. And I think that's why it just, it's not just shocking the conscience, but it also just begs the question, like, how does something like this happen? And what you're talking about there with drug addiction, you know, we can talk, I don't even want to make macro points here about rehab or anything like that mental illness, because I don't think it's a time. I think,

you know, even yesterday, I was still kind of in shock, but as you sit, you know, over the next 24 hours, and I was watching clips of Rob and talking about his wife and how he changed the ending when Harry met Sally, because he started to believe in love again. they're like, wow. And that's the thing, too, you're talking about Rob's politics. I mean, who cares about Rob's politics? The point is is that for people like that, they create art, which is so deeply meaningful to so many different people in the world. And I think that's what hurt a lot of people about Donald Trump's response is because, guys, his politics alone, yes, he was famously deeply political, Russiagate, all of that. South Park famously did that episode

about him and smoking. And that's fine. I mean, we could all laugh at that, in jest as part of like a more fulsome picture of who he was. But when you look, look at that run of directing of the art that he put out into the world, like how that touches you, and I feel this way about my favorite directors. I'm sure all of them disagree with me profoundly politically, but that doesn't make my appreciation for Paul Thomas Anderson or any of these other people who I hold in such high esteem any less, and I would be genuinely devastated if any of them died in the same way. So there's a human level. There's the way that he created something that so many millions, tens of hundreds of millions of people could connect to, became like

seminal moments and parts of their childhood, that ultimately, you know, when people were grieving or were remembering him from across the political spectrum, in general, most people, I would say, were like, oh, my gosh, just not only just the crime so horrific, but also just remembering their own connection as you had there personally. And then you had Trump's response, which again is quite in character for Trump. And it's basically how he's reacted many, many times over the years. for some reason, this one just, it seemed to break through the zeitgeist in a way that, again, I found very unexpected because Trump's been on the stage now for 10 years. It's not a surprise. If you'd ask me how he would have reacted, this is pretty much what I would have expected, maybe not as explicit, you know, immediate in terms of his reaction. But like, did you really think that, you know, he would be circumspect and respectful necessarily in this moment? And yet, even though he met his own expectations, of what many people found. This seemed to be a bridge too far,

at least for many of his own supporters, which, again, I find very interesting. It is, for sure. Let's go ahead and put Trump's truth up on the screen. We can read what he wrote, and then he doubled down on that yesterday, you know, on camera, I'll play that for you as well. But here's what he wrote initially.

He says, a very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood, Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once a very talented movie director and comedy stars passed away together with his, wife Michelle, reportedly, due to the anger, he caused others through his massive unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind-cripling disease known as Trump derangement syndrome, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people crazy by his raging obsession with President Donald J. Trump with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as

the Trump administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness. And with the golden age of America upon us, perhaps like never before, may Rob and Michelle rest in peace. So attributing his death, saying he died because he had Trump derangement syndrome, I mean, you want to talk about something that is deranged? Like, that is utterly deranged. He got asked about it yesterday. And, you know, all he had to say is basically like, yeah, I didn't like the guy. Let's go ahead and take a listen. A number of Republicans have denounced your statement on true social after the murder of Rob Reiner. Do you stand by that post? Well, I wasn't a fan of his at all.

He was a deranged person as far as Trump is concerned. He said he knew it was false. In fact, it's the exact opposite that I was a friend of Russia controlled by Russia. You know, the Russia hooks. He was one of the people behind it. I think he heard himself in career-wise. He became like a deranged person, Trump derangement syndrome. So I was not a fan of Rob Reiner at all in any way, shape, or form.

I thought he was very bad for our country. So, you know, not walking back at all saying, yeah, I, you know, I didn't like him. He had Trump derangement syndrome, not a fan. And I think soccer, a few things happened here in terms of the backlash to Trump's comments. Number one, you just had had a bunch of Republicans come out and say, like, look, when a liberal dies, we're not out here celebrating. Like Jack Basobic said that, for example. And then instantly, Trump comes out with this just utterly disgusting comment. And then second of all, I mean, this is somewhat.

that truly through the breadth of his catalog has just had a direct impact on so many people's lives. And so between the two of those things and also, since there is just zero really political valence to this, it's just a family tragedy. Yeah, people found it disgusting. You know, people have these, you know, they have parasocial relationships, not just with, you know, modern social media influencers, but with the actors and directors and artists that they've known throughout their lives. Some of these, I mean, think about like the Princess Bride. Like, this is, you know, American canon effectively. And so for Trump to come out with this utterly insane and really callous take, I don't know, it just, it apparently really disturbed people and really

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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 said 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'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 Galuski, 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. You and I follow politics day in and day out. I could probably think of 10 other things that Trump has said that are equally worse and or like more consequential. But what breaks through is always just what breaks through. And I guess it's just my job to try and kind of understand exactly why. And this just seemed to be one of them in one here. So Emily has been hosting her show over on Sirius XM with Megan Kelly's operation. And obviously she takes a bunch of calls. And many of these calls, as you said, are multiple-time Trump voters who are disgusted by this. This does not happen very often,

where people proactively, even people who are MAGA who cringe very often will just privately be like, oh, yeah, that was bad. But, you know, he did this, this, and me, this. And so I'm not going to express anything about it. To proactively, you know, go out of your way, to call into a station, to openly disagree, to say how terrible of a response. I mean, that just, just, you know, just, doesn't happen all that often. And she was kind enough to share some of the audio here with us. So let's take a lesson, guys. Jill in Indiana, you're on the Megan Kelly wrap-up show. What's on your mind this afternoon? Hi, just sort of glomming on here, but it matters to me what Donald Trump said. And I'm deeply disappointed. If we value human life as Christians and

Americans, then this stuff, there's just, it's indefensible to sort of gloat, like, right, after someone dies like that, you know, just for having a difference of opinion. I'm very disappointed in President Trump. I voted for him three times. I still love him as my president, but it was wrong what he did. He should have just kept his mouth shut after the first paragraph. I don't know why he had to bring that up. It was a tragedy, and I didn't like Rob Reiner as a person, politics. He was really, really, sometimes very virulent from what he was saying about the right

and particularly about Trump too, of course. However, I mean, it really hurts me to the core. What happened to him? And I think as a human being, anyone has to be just sad about what happened and not bring politics into it and Trump just doesn't know when to stop. I would just like to say that we have a God-fearing president. And he talks about the power of prayer and praying for victims and on and on. So let's act like that, President Trump. I voted for you. This is the most sacred season of the year. Turn the other cheek like Christ would.

I will tell you that I've been a Republican my entire life. I voted for Trump twice. I don't consider myself a MAGA Republican, but I do consider myself a conservative. And I think this comment that he made, this post reminds me a little bit of when Walter Cronkite made an announcement, talking about the Vietnam War to the American people saying, if we, you know, and Lyndon Johnson said, if I've lost Walter, I've lost the country. I really think that Trump's comment has just officially put that nail in the coffin. I just got to say, I mean, we're not conducting a scientific poll here on the Megyn Kelly wrap-up show.

But the callers today, our phone lines have genuinely not lit up like this before. Yeah, I'm amazed by that. I mean, you have multiple-time Trump voter. I mean, of course, there's always the like I still like him as president. But again, I mean, to call in is kind of shocking. I saw an interesting take from Sean Trendy over at Real Clear Pol. curious for yours is, one is that, you know, it's potentially just that this, because of the love and circumstance around Reiner. Two, though, is Trump is a lame duck now. And so because

of that, you know, because he can't run for re-election and now increasingly is, you know, just bumbling around in the White House and concerned more about the architectural projects or I don't know if you heard the latest one building in Arc de Triumph here in Washington near the Arlington cemetery. Like, this is what consumes the vast majority of his mind share while occasionally dipping in and out to tweet about Rob Reiner. That has given, not a

permission structure, but people can just be a little bit more honest about what they think, maybe, and it's that dynamic. I don't really know what it is. The Biden element as well, kind of aging and, you know, in front of all of our eyes, the unpopularity.

But something has changed, at least in my opinion, around this. I have never seen anything like this. I really have not. From a public way where Fox News personalities and others are like, wow, like this is so horrific and disgusting to the normal, I mean, more importantly, the callers there, that's what matters, is that this came through in a way.

And I do think it has a very political valence to it, even though I don't want to make Reiner's death in any way political. I'm talking here specifically about the way that Donald Trump reacted to it. Oh, completely. And, yeah, I mean, I listen to all those calls in that particular, you know, section of Emily's shows. There was one who said, look, I don't say anything wrong with it. All of the other ones were, this is disgusting. I'm really disappointed.

I'm a three-time Trump voter. I mean, that's what it was. And Emily told us, she flagged for us. She's like, guys, I have not had our phone lines this lit up over anything ever. Like, it really seems to have touched a nerve. And, of course, she said, and this is true, not a scientific survey. But you do see on the right in addition to, you know, that backlash from the base, yeah, I noted Jesse Waters, who is very incendiary person, very loyal to the president,

etc. He had actor James Woods on his show yesterday, conservative, who said, I loved Rob. Rob rescued my career. Like, people would ask me, how can you be friends with this person who's so different from you? He was like, listen, those are just political differences. Like, I'm thinking about what this man meant to me in my life. Laura Ingram posted an interview that she had done with Rob Reiner where she said, you know, I ran into him and we had a very amicable, you know, friendly exchange where we, you know, we don't agree on things, but it was a fine conversation. And he immediately agreed to come in studio and sit down with me and do an interview. So I found that noteworthy, too, that those Fox News personalities were approaching things in that manner. And, you know, I think there's something to what you're saying here. So I'm going to put A10 up on the screen. this is some polling that came out from NBC News where Trump's strong approval with his base has fallen. Oh, sorry, this is a sod.

I'll throw to it in just a second. And even though there's still overwhelming support for him among Republicans, you have a little bit of erosion. And then you specifically have erosion between, you know, the story of Trump and his superpower has always been. He may not have majority support, but man, his people are right or die. And they freaking love the guy. that has really eroded. So when you couple together all these factors, you've got number one,

you just have the Charlie Kirk assassination and Republicans who hated the way, you know, people on the left who were critical of Charlie right after he was dead. They found that horrible. I mean, hundreds of people got fired for comments they made about Charlie Kirk,

even comments that weren't like celebrating his death, but we're just saying, hey, here's what he said in life and I don't like the legacy that he stood for. And so you just had that whole moment on the right. You had a number of people in Campa, this is Jack Posobic up on the screen. A number of right-wing influencers

who before Trump comes down is saying, see how much morally superior we are. You won't see people on the right celebrating the horrific murder of Rob Reiner and his wife. Compare that to the left's reaction of Charlie Kirk's murder. And of course, after that, Trump comes in

and says this thing. Jack is still coping over this, but whatever. So you have that dynamic. You have Rob Reiner being this just well-known figure that had all of this sort of cultural, cultural relevance to people in their own lives and really meant something to them. And then you have Trump, lame duck, people already dissatisfied with a lot of things in

his administration. One of the callers on Emily's show said, you know, it's not like things are going that well. And then for him to say this, you know, it's just like horrible. So let's go ahead and take a listen to A10. This is Harry Enten breaking down some of that polling. Strongly approve of Donald Trump. Okay, this is 2024 Trump voters. In March, it was 66%.

Look at where we are now. It's just 50% of 2024 Trump voters strongly approve of them. Look, Trump voters still like Donald Trump, but they don't love him as much. And that means there's a permission structure to actually go against them. And that is exactly what you saw in Indiana. And, Sagar, the other thing that poll showed is that, you know, they ask people, Republicans, do you identify more as a mega-Republican or more as a traditional? Republican. Throughout the Trump era, the consistent trend has been you have vastly more Republicans

who identify as MAGA Republicans. Those numbers also shifted dramatically where I'm not sure if it was quite a majority yet, but it was basically 50-50 between people in the Republican Party who said I'm a MAGA Republican and who said I'm a traditional Republican. And that in and of itself is a huge political shift in people's political identities. Yeah, I think, I mean, I've I've hammered that home, haven't I, talking just about, I'm like, yeah, you may lose MAGA, but that's not who voted for you in the election. That's not how you win a popular vote. I do think to that stray comment about things not going so well, it kind of says everything. You know, people are very understated in the way. Nobody necessarily has a totally coherent political ideology. It's very rare

for people to think deeply about politics. They generally just observe external conditions, either through media, their own life, kind of fuse those together, and that's how they just feel in the moment, right? And that's how people can have so many contradictory beliefs. But I have to believe that the material way that things are going in combination with Reiner. I mean, let's also think back to a core case

that MAGA made in 2024. A core belief was, I could sure use some mean tweets right now. And the thesis behind that was that these Reiner-esque comments are fine as long as other things in the country and my own life are going fine. Now, when you have it, when things are not fine, that's when you start to notice a whole lot of different things, right? And I think that's what it ultimately comes down to.

So, for example, part of the reasons that Biden's gaffs or his age or any of that hit home so hard for people was that things were not going well under his administration. Like we've had ailing and old presidents potentially even going senile, right, in the past. But as long as you feel like things are going fine, you're like, yeah, whatever, right? You know, a lot of people, people can overlook anything. People can overlook Bill Clinton. He made a 60% approval rating whenever he left office, despite all the Lewinsky bullshit.

Yeah, the S&P 500 was high. So the rich people were happy. And most people, their average income and all of that had been going up for over eight years. And they say, yeah, whatever. Okay, yeah, he lied about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. So be it. That doesn't actually affect my life all that time. But, but, but, and this is the reverse, is that when you have that dominating your life, politics, and you feel as if it's not just a distraction, but it's one that, I mean, look, no one has ever made the case that Donald Trump

is a man of a true moral character or in any way not a narcissist. But there's something where at the end of the day, one of the core things about politics people have always pointed to is that metric about cares about people like me. And it's pretty obvious. Like Trump has never really cared about people like you, but a lot of people can think about that or rationalize that if they want to. In this moment, it becomes so obvious

where 99.9% of the human population is like, oh my God, like what a horrific. Just what a tragedy, right? I mean, that's what most people would think. That's how most people would react. Then you combine that with the effect that this person's art has had on your life, inspirational or, you know, I mean, look, it's sappy and all that, but like, when Harry Metzell,

like, these are iconic movies. These are like, you know, you walk around New York or whatever, and you're like, that's what you think. Maybe that's cringe, but that's what I did. That was my only connection to the city prior to being, you know, prior to being there. And so that was important. And so you have all those like little moments and then you see something like this who were just like, who would do this? Who would do this on top of Venezuela, Venezuela, Israel, Epstein, and then the economy, the single and the most important one. So, yeah, I don't know. It broke the- And the ballroom. I mean, that's how the thing that, like, we were- We were surprised really broke through to people because it was such a symbol of like,

this is the shit you're focused on. You're building out your multi-hundred and hundred-million dollar ballroom. And that's what you're paying attention to. While I can't afford groceries and we're headed into Christmas, like what is happening with this? But, you know, I mean, I think with Ryan or two, like, Americans love their celebrities. That's a good big part of the reason why Trump is in the White House is because we do. We love our celebrities. And it's something, I am, in a sense, I'm a little bit, I could have seen Trump going in another direction because Trump does understand that relationship that Americans have to their celebrities. And so I could have seen him taking a different approach, but ultimately, you know, his instincts for if you're an enemy,

you know, doesn't matter alive, dead, whatever, like, I'm never going to be nice. I will never forgive. I will never forget. I will never be cordial. That is just not something that he will ever overcome. And actually, Susie Wells, we'll get to this later, had a little bit of something to say about that in this crazy interview that she gave to Vanity Fair. Yeah, you're right. You know, I also think the Charlie Kirk thing can't be understated, right?

Yeah. Because we did live through kind of a moment where people are like, hey, like we need to have a set amount of discourse when somebody dies, even a controversial figure, somebody overtly political, like Charlie Kirk. And there was literal state power. There was an entire ecosystem dedicated to enforcing this type of norm. And then immediately... Over 600 people got fired for Charlie Kirk commentary. I think some of them deserve to be fired. I think that's fine. And it's one of those, though, where you can't hold that opinion and then also look at Trump's comment and not say anything. So there's also, I mean, I mean, that's only, what, 90 days?

It hasn't been that long since he passed. It's only been a couple of months, so this is still fresh in a lot of people's memory. And, you know, you got to remember, for people who aren't overtly, again, political, let's just say, like, kind of right-leaning-ish, they found the Charlie Kirk thing horrifying for the murder. And I think some of them took it seriously what people were saying. We're like, yeah, it's horrible. We shouldn't celebrate anybody's murder, anybody's death. And so then to explicitly then turn around and do it, you know, from the press,

of the United States himself is shocking, I think, for anybody who took those types of ideas seriously. But I think finally, really what it is to me is Trump, the magic sauce, whatever it is, that has held him together for 10 years, that old Donnie always wriggled his way out. And I think he will, you know, legally. I'm not saying that, you know, the walls are closing in or any of that. I just think his specter of untouchability is starting to fall apart. It's been that way for a couple months. But this one, you know, it's stuff like this watch. I always assumed, I go, look, people just don't care. I don't get it.

Never will. Not my cup of tea. Never has been for how somebody who can operate, you know, there at the highest level. I was like, but, you know, that's me being out of touch. But maybe not. Maybe people are starting to, you know, kind of surface back to reality. Maybe it was just 10 years of madness. I don't know.

But this very clearly has broken the paradigm. Well, you and Ryan played a thought from him yesterday where he was talking about bringing the troops home from Syria, how that work out. anyway. And it was from, what, like 2018? And 2017, 2018, somewhere in there. I have the cat behind me now. And I was like, wow, he looked so much more alive. He, his color was different. Like, he, it really brought home for me just how much he has aged over the past number of years. And so, you know, I don't think that can be discounted here either when you're talking about whatever his magic sauce is. He's kind of losing it um yeah he is he is i mean the the vigor is not there the sense of where the american people are isn't there you know even maybe the like whether or not he cares what people think he's not he's he's old he's you know not going to be around forever and uh you know as you become older you kind of you lose your patience you lose your self restraint all of those things happen as people age and so i think that's part of it too is just like you know he's an

man, and he's really starting to show it. You might be right. You know, what did we always say under Biden? You revert to the mean, you know, you kind of revert to the mean of exactly who you are. And it's a stressful job, no matter what, you know, ornery. Even if you don't even work that hard, it's still hard. It's a difficult

job. It's the hardest job in the world. And, yeah, I don't know. Again, I fully don't know. I think this is one of the most interesting political moments, just sociologically, that I've seen in quite some time, because I never see you know, normal Trump voting women

be like, I'm so disgusted by this. I never see that. It's always, I mean, come on, you've met these people too in real life. It's always like what aboutism or the laughter and whatever, fine. Or like, I don't like it, but. There was no but with this.

I mean, by and large, it was like, I don't like it, period. Period. End of story. This is a major disappointment and he needs to do better. I agree. I agree. So interesting in its own right.

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Go to HelloFresh.com and use promo code Rescue 50. That's Hellofresh.ca promo code Rescue 50. Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back. I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting. Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians. Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leveh, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name. And this season, I've sat down with Black Pumas, Alessia Kara, Sarah McLaughlin, and more. Check out my new episode with John Legend.

I feel like, in a lot of ways, our careers are paralleled in some ways, but they just never intersected for some reason. I know. Listen to Nora Jones is playing along on the other people. iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Goloopsky, 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. Turning now to you, the Brown University shooting and the hunt for the suspect after two students were tragically killed in circumstances that we still do not yet understand. Ryan and I covered the FBI's failures yesterday with the release of a so-called person of interest. the name was leaked to the news media, and it was a huge screw-up by the FBI. Trump are now under fire by Cash Patel's handling of the case,

defending Cash Patel and actually casting blame on the local police department. Let's take a listen. Has Cash Patel told you why it's been so difficult for the FBI to identify who the shooter is? Well, it's always difficult. So far, we've done a very good job of doing it with Charlie, with, you know, the various times this has happened. They've done it in pretty much record time. But you'd really have to ask the school a little bit more about that because, you know, this was a school problem. They had their own guards, they had their own police, they had their own everything.

But you'd have to ask that question, really, to the school, not to the FBI. We came in after the fact, and the FBI will do a good job, but they came in after the fact. Came through after the fact, talking casting blame there on, the local officials. I mean, remember, look, I mean, I do think that the local officials haven't necessarily handled themselves the best here. But let's be very clear. The FBI is the one who screened that so-called person of interest. They're the ones who touted it on social media as if it was some sort of victory. Now, speculation remains about who leaked the name of that individual who, again, we are not going to say his name.

This is a, you know, decorated U.S. Army veteran member of the Honor Guard whose name was besmirched in the public, life-dissexuals. disgusted disgustingly, I would add, as a result of their handling. And by the way, just in case I know we'll get to there in a bit, but the current director of the FBI has an interview airing today with his girlfriend about their love story and how they met on Katie Miller's podcast. Yes, I know it was probably filmed earlier, but I'm sorry, just not really what I think that the director of the FBI should ever be doing out there in public. I mean, it's disgusting. It's shocking. And I think that this does highlight just the sheer amount of incompetence within this Bureau and its law enforcement and how, you know, they continue to tell us how these

are the best and the brightest. And we are watching a shooter who has now escaped justice for more than 48 hours, Brown University, a campus which has now reportedly have been papered in 800 cameras, Crystal. Very few clear photographs of the person of suspect that have have been released yet to the public. Here is that specific question being posed to local officials last night at a news conference. Let's take a listen. Brown University is the most camera-ridden most conscious piece of real estate for Rhode Island. And yet there seems to be little or no video evidence outside of that clip. You know, respecting the investigation, is there a lot more video that we're just not able to see yet because of the ongoing investigation?

Or is there a ship we know video? So we share with you the other day is what we have that we could share. And then we'll continue to, again, we're continuing to collect evidence. As we speak, we have detectives out there trying to continue to find. So I don't want to tell you that there's no more video because we might find something within the next few minutes. So, yes, it's possible. But what we gave you the other days, what we have. We're giving me what we have is not very much right now.

Let's go and put the VO up here, guys, please on the screen just to show you some of the video that's been released. I mean, this is, I'm sorry, like, I can't really see anything here about what's going on of this suspect who is leaving campus. It appears we do have, I think, a little bit more that has been released there from the FBI and some images, which we can put up here on the screen. Just a couple other images that were released here, mass individual, wearing a sweatshirt with a beanie, kind of difficult to see any of the facial features. But, you know, honestly, the, video, the images that were releasing the aftermath of Tyler Robinson of the Charlie Kirk assassination were much more clear and obviously led to his apprehension very quickly in the immediate aftermath. So there are some crazy questions here that are being asked here about the ability of what is the purpose of all of these 800 cameras and a ring and of AI crime detection and all of that when we're days now after this shooting and there's still nothing yet been released. Allegedly, remember, they have the most sophisticated technology for cell phones and

for all of that, and ultimately, they've got nothing. I mean, we've got video coming out from the scene, Crystal, of them, you know, like canvassing of different buildings that are nearby, but it does not look in any way like they are close to apprehending a subject. We hope that they are. If you do see something, if you recognize that person, call the FBI, call local police. We hope that you do and this person is brought to justice. But you can't help but just spotlight the failure of the FBI here. Two back-to-back high-profile cases, total failure. And to your point, I mean, if we're going to live in the Palantir mass surveillance state, the least we could get out of it is some, like, you know, effective crime fighting here, right? I think that's the bare minimum we could ask for.

And look, they're probably going to find this guy. Probably there's someone out there who will see these images. And, you know, like he's a kind of a girthy guy. They'll recognize the body type. They'll say, I've seen that guy, you know, with that particular fleece. Like, this may trigger something for someone. That's what happened with Luigi Mangione. That's what happened with Tyler Robinson. So I think we will probably end up capturing this guy. But yeah, to be this many hours later and still have so little to go on. And then to go back to what Trump was saying there, first of all, it sounded like he was blaming like not even the local PD, like the campus security. like they're the ones who were supposed to be doing some like national or international manhunt preposterous. Second of all, the FBI was perfectly happy to wrap their arms around this and claim that this was all their victories when they thought that they had the killer in custody.

And now that the whole thing is a shambles, suddenly, oh, it's the local PD's fault. Like just, I mean, it's just, it's just total incompetence, completely shambolic. How many times have we had these situations unfold or with the shooting of the national? Um, guardsmen in D.C., remember Cash came and said, oh, we have a suspect. No, we're looking for the suspect. We're looking for the suspect. No, you actually have that one. That one you actually have. It's embarrassing. And then you couple on top of that. Apparently what he's spending his time doing is sitting down for this interview with Stephen Miller's wife to talk about his love life. Like, what is going on? And, uh, you know, of course, Cash's image already has been completely destroyed by his handling and being the public face of the Epstein Files cover up. So just, you know, really covering himself in glory here. Yeah, look, again, the girlfriend interview. Can you imagine Jay Edgar Hoover sitting down in the middle of, I don't know,

the Kennedy sat or the hunt for, who's the bank robber, John Dillinger? And he's like, let me tell you about my, well, I mean, secretly. Well, I was going to say, there were a lot of, there was a lot of interest in his love. Oh, yeah, I mean, maybe it was true. But just imagine him sitting down. or Robert Mueller, right? Robert Mueller sitting down for an interview about his Catholic relationship or something.

Christopher Ray. I mean, they ended up hating him, right? Can you imagine the way Maga would have melted down if he was out there talking about her? I mean, he married, like, about his love life and how he met his wife or whatever. Like, it's not about Madda. It's like, we should melt down.

This is crazy. This is craziness. Ridiculous. I can't live like this. And he's, of course, using all these public resources to fly around to her, like, singing at the wrestling event. and whatever, and it's just unreal. And I do wonder, you know,

I feel like every time Cash gets liberal press criticism, it helps to keep him in the job longer. I think you're right. But I have to think Trump is, to the extent Trump cares about anything at this point, I have to think he's looking at this guy and going like, I don't know. I don't know.

And you were saying, oh, I think we have this. I should put B5 up on the screen. I guess Bonjino was back to angsting over whether or not he's going to stay in his job. This is from Fox News, Deputy FBI Director Dan Bonchino will decide about his future at the bureau in the next few weeks. He's already been sort of sidelined because I don't know if you guys remember he already had one of these like I'm going to just leave for the weekend and decide what my future is going to be. So he's already been kind of like sidelined and sort of replaced by someone else in his position. Of course, he still technically has the job.

So anyway, we're back to angsting about Dan Bonino and what his future path is going to look like. Look, I'm making fun of some of this, but this is not. not a joke, right? You know, two people lost their lives. Let's go to put before up here on the screen. You have two students. I mean, these kids were in the prime of their lives, 19, 20 years old. You have Ella Cook and I hope I say this correctly. Muhammad Aziz Umorazakov identified as the two killed in Brown University. Apparently, you know, at least one of them, they weren't in a class. They weren't even necessarily supposed to be in. Just, you know, two students. They had big dreams. I think Ella, you know, she was involved in Republican politics, Muhammad Aziz. He, you know,

wanted to be a doctor. You know, look, this is Brown universities, one of the toughest universities in the United States to get into. They really, you know, they were going places. At least that's what the people around them said. And that is why we're supposed to not have FBI directors who go on podcasts to talk about their love life. This is serious business. This is something that you've been entrusted by the public to take seriously and to do. We've given you extraordinary powers. You're supposed to work on our behalf. You're supposed to keep us safe. And when people perpetuate, you know, horrific crimes like this, you're supposed to catch them. You're supposed to catch them immediately. And it's not about tweeting out pictures about how great

of a person I'm interested. It's about doing the job, bringing a prosecution, and bringing justice. Because there's a couple families out there who are broken. And so that's what I think makes me really sick about this entire thing, is that, you know, this has consequences. And it's funny to laugh at the girlfriend podcast and all of that and the clear obsession over public image and the damage that the Epstein files handling and all of that has had. But it's just like the Epstein case. It's not just a case that we're talking about. These are little, you know, little girls who were victimized, right? You know, by wealthy, powerful people. And it was used potentially on behalf of state actors. But ultimately, though, they're the real victims,

right? So, yeah, I feel repulsed, honestly, about this, because you've got these two families probably desperately checking the news, just want to know what happens. happened, the worst possible thing just happened to them. And how many more who were injured, who are in the hospital right now, how many more psychologically traumatized? And meanwhile, you have, you know, an entire school community, an entire town that's like, am I safe here? There's a mass shooter who is still on the loose and they have no idea where this person is. And meanwhile, you know, the president of the United States is saying, that's not really our problem. And Cash Rital is doing sit downs about his

girlfriend and his love life. You just, I mean, you just can't make it up. You cannot have influencers in like these positions of power. It's utterly, utterly insane. It's 5.23 p.m. One of your kids is asking for a snack. Another is building a fort out of your clean laundry. And you're staring at a half-empty fridge and thinking,

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That's Hellofresh.com promo code Mom 50. Hellofresh.com. Hellofresh. Canada's number one meal kit delivery service. Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back. I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.

Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians. Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests. like Dave Grohl, Leveh, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolfe, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name. And this season, I've sat down with Black Pumas, Alessia Kara, Sarah McLaughlin, and more.

Check out my new episode with John Legend. I feel like in a lot of ways our careers are paralleled in some ways, but they just never intersected for some reason. I know. We should take it slow with just ordinary people. We don't know which way you go. Listen to Nora Jones is playing along on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 you shot 22 times. The police, right? But what if the person you're supposed to go to for help is the one you're. 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 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 Galooski, 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. We also wanted to talk a little bit about

some Republican response to the attack Bondi Beach in Australia, another just horrifying, absolute tragedy unfolding there, the number of victims, you know, people there to celebrate Hanukkah, just absolutely horrific. And the response to that from some on the right has been just, I mean, I don't even know what to say. I can put this up on the screen. Tommy Tuberville, Senator from Alabama, gave a whole floor speech about how, you know, Muslims are

terrible and evil, just en masse, not, you know, individual people with radical ideology. Not all Muslims. He says, Islam is not a religion. It's a cult. Islamists are not here to assimilate. They're here to conquer. Stop worrying about offending the pearl clutches. We've got to send them home now, or it'll become the United Caliphate of America. We also have Vicki Palladino, who is a councilwoman. She represents Staten Island in New York. And she says, and keep in mind, New York, a city with millions of Muslims, including now the mayor-elect of the city, she says, we're in the midst of a global jihad, the likes of which the world has never seen and we cannot ignore it, we need to take very seriously the need to begin the expulsion of Muslims from Western nations

or at the very least the severe sanction of them within Western borders. The administration needs to begin developing a formal legal framework for the denationalization process and get it over with before we end up with another 9-11 or worse enough is enough. Now, I do think that she ended up deleting that tweet. But then, of course, we've got Randy Fine, who, you know, always. covering himself in in glory so more just disgusting commentary from him saying that you know all muslims must go diversity is not our strength um and 9-11 wasn't enough october 7th wasn't enough muslim immigrants are attacking and killing non-Muslims in america wasn't enough so remember saga

how uh reshita talib was censured for just saying you know in the context of like Palestinian liberation from the river to the sea, Palestine must be free. And she was censured by Congress. Now you have people who are out and out calling for the expulsion of all Muslims, whether they're immigrant or non, who are completely demonizing an entire religion. And there's very, very little pushback here. But the most important thing that I wanted to highlight so that people understand what's going on outside of just being thoroughly disgusted by this open bigotry and how much this is just accepted now in the Republican Party and in the mainstream is Ryan and DropSight covered how the Israelis had done a bunch of testing about like, okay, what do we do to get people back

on our side? And the thing that they found was the most powerful was to stoke anti-Muslim hate, to stoke Islamophobia. And so this is a sort of desperate, I see it as a desperate and concerted strategy to try to get Republicans in particular back on board. with Israel being our great ally and, you know, oh, we've all got to like link arms and fight the bad, the bad Muslims together. That's what this is really at its core about, I mean, at its core, it's about hatred and bigotry and all of those things. But this is also sort of a desperate strategy to get people to stay in line with Israel being

on our side and, you know, and us sharing the same enemies. So we've got to support them no matter what and give them whatever they want. no matter what. Right. I mean, by the way, you don't even just need drop. Shout out to drops out. They didn't do anything wrong. But, you know, read the Charlie Kirk letter that he sent to Benjamin Netanyahu. It was released for everyone to see. He's like, you guys are losing support. The way to combat that is to demonize Islam. Charlie was doing a lot of that right before he died. I took notice of it. And because I, you know, know what's going on, you could see very clearly in what direction. And, you know, I've talked about this. It's interesting to me. They

genuinely seem to believe that you are allowed to group in the actions of a few individuals and decide that that is representative of the entire ethnic religious faith and that thus that will never backfire on you even though that is literally the heart and soul of their cause that they've decided to fight with everything they have anti-semitism. I have no idea how you cannot think that openly normalizing this type of rhetoric and framework of looking at the world is not going to come back and bite you in the ass. We talked about this during the whole Nick Fuentes, Pierce Morgan thing, right? Nick is very honest, actually, about that worldview and how he can then apply it to Jewish Americans or to Jews more broadly. But they seem to think that you can have it both ways. You actually cannot if you're going to let this out in terms of Pandora's Box. And that's honestly why I find so disgusting. about it. Because, you know, you say it's about hatred and bigot. It's like, you know, I don't even, I think they're so cynical that they're just willing to say anything, you know, to defend their pro-Israel cause. I'm not even sure if they really believe this stuff. It's really just all about.

I think Randy Fine probably does. Randy probably does. Tommy Tuberville, many of the other so-called influencers and others are just looking at the memo of this. Yeah, I don't think so. And I mean, look, I'll happily talk culture with anybody any time of the week, but I can't sit here and then pretend, you know, because I can't sit here when I know that this is in the service of a support of a country which has a right to rape protests. I can't, right? Because I'm like, you guys literally had protests about the right to rape. You have openly a government which wants to celebrate the murder of women and of children and of max expulsion of population. There is no moral equivalence or there is no, sorry, there is no like moral superiority that if anything right now, right, things are trending a little bit in the other direction in terms of who has power and who actualizes it, let's say, on the world stage. So I don't know. I mean, that's my personal view of this. And I do just think it's really gross, how cynical and how open, it is out there. And ultimately, you know, for, for Jewish Americans, I think this is just

the worst thing that you can do. I really do. It's like, if you guys want to engage in this, you are not going to win. People are going to start thinking explicitly in ethno-religious terms. And, you know, they talk noticing is something that's like a meme, right, out there. They apply that to Muslims. I'm like, okay, fine then, you know. It's like, do you guys really want to, quote, notice about support for Israel and about lobbying and about pushing, you know, certain agendas when you're in power. Like, it's just not going to work out for you. I choose to look at the world in terms of individuals. I think you should too. And it's just, and allegedly that's a promise of America. But they don't want that. And yeah, I think this will, I think this is a

catastrophic mistake for the Jewish community and for Jewish Americans. But, you know, that's what they've decided to push at the very least, the pro-Israel part contingent, let's say. And yeah, I think they're going to rue the day that they wanted to normalize this type of rhetoric. I keep thinking back to Laura Lumer, who, you know, describes herself as proud Islamophobic and certainly backs that up in all sorts of ways, going back and forth with someone on Twitter. And she says to them, you're a Muslim, and they come back with, you're a Jew. And basically the, you know, and so basically what the Zionists, like the right-wing pro-Israel supporters and, you know, Israeli officials themselves are hoping is that they can win that debate, that they can come out on top

and convince people that it is worse to be a Muslim than it is to be a Jew. But buying into, because I mean, Israel is, it is an ethnos nationalist, Jewish supremacist state. That is the best. dead rock political ideology undergirding the entire project. That's why you have apartheid. That's why you have ethnic cleansing. That's why you have all this concerns about, you know, the demographics and that as some existential threat. So that is their view.

They have a fundamentally, they have a fundamentally ethno-nationalist and ethnocentric racialist view. And so their bet is we can convince at least the American right, I think they've given up on the left, but we can at least convince the American right that the Muslims are worse than the Jews, and therefore, you got to stick with us. That's the bet they're making. Good luck. Good luck with that.

Good luck with embracing an overtly racialist identitarian worldview and not thinking that that is ultimately going to come for Jewish people. I think it's a horror. And, I mean, we've seen throughout history, like what the, you know, what people reach for, like the old horrors that people reach for with regard to Jewish people when you have these overtly racialist identitarian project. So in any case, that's what's going on with the Republicans. And I do want to say, too, you know, for all these media figures, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash and whoever else,

who had absolute multi-day meltdowns over Rashida Talib, embracing equal rights from everyone and, you know, doing rally chants. And now have very little to say about Randy Fine and Tommy Tuberville and Vicki Palladino. Like, we see you. We see you. We see what's going on here. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, what's, look, this is, there was a core project about rejecting identity politics, right, throughout the entire last decade. And I think a lot of people, good faith, believe that.

I certainly did. I was like, yeah. I was like, wow, this is really horrible. Like, this is bad. It's leading, I don't, you might not have seen this. We may want to cover it on, on Thursday. There's a viral essay in a magazine Compact, which Juan writes for. And it's about this explicit regime, a lot of elite companies over the last decade or so, 15 years, where they decided to explicitly say, let's not hire millennial young white men. The essay has gone very viral. It's actually very selective and interesting because, like, boomer white men got to keep their jobs, but it was much more directed. But, like, you look at how much rage that can, you know, inspire, I think not only the people who were discriminated, let's say, against themselves,

but to what mindset and what ends that that can bring. And these people seem to just think that they're going to win this like immediate term war where they're just going to convince people that only Muslims, let's say, are dangerous, look out for their own agenda and have, you know, dual loyalties or anything. Again, okay.

I mean, you cannot put that cat back in the back, period, whenever it becomes an outright view of explicitly looking at things like in terms, I mean, I saw it recently, I don't forget exactly who it was, was like, what's wrong with a whites-only immigration policy? I was like, okay, I mean, it's one of those where then you cannot complain. It was Matt Walsh. Oh, was it, okay. Complaining about Australia had a whites-only immigration policy and that it's a shame

that they got, and they got rid of it because they didn't want to appear, racist. No, that is actually racist and that they should go back to it. So let's then, let's do to the logic. So if you lose then, and you're an opponent and you lose, and a opposing government decides to make an overtly racial view of immigration, how can you complain? How can you possibly complain? And say, yeah, we are going to, right? What are you going to do about it? We beat you. We've decided to go in a different direction. You can't bitch and complain about that. You can't. By the way, Australia had, you know, I'm not a great fan of Australia. I think the way to handle COVID was a disaster, etc. I have my disagreements with the

government, all of that. I think they're one of the best immigration systems in the world. They have one of the high merit-based immigration for a long period of time, significant amounts of a similar, if our country looked more like Australia, I'd be a hell of a lot happy. But of course, there's like this, they're like, well, it's just not why. I'm like, well, okay, if that's the world that you guys all want to live in, well, then don't be surprised when that also just be not just used against you. They talk about white genocide or anything like that. It's like, yeah, but people might just end up embracing that fully. And you can't complain because the entire theory, let's say, around merit-based immigration or any of that was we evaluate people as

individuals. And Australia explicitly said we evaluate people as individuals and their ability to contribute to our nation, to our culture, and to make us better. And that's actually why they've had more of a successful immigration story than any Western country in the world. And that's why when I saw that, I was shocked by it. Because, you know, first of all, extrapolating a single incident is always a little bit ridiculous. You're supposed to look at things in the aggregate and more broadly. And listen, it's up to Australians to make their own decisions. It's not my country. You guys do as you would like. Purely as an outside observer, though. Anytime you start to make overtly racial arguments, I just think, you know, first of all, don't be surprised when it's

used against you. And second, you need to consider the 30th, 40th, 50th order consequences of what all of that is going to look like. And I don't think that they are. I think that they just have no idea what they're playing with. It's also just like a larp and a fucking fantasy. Like we live in a multi-ethnic country. And that just is, and it is a bedrock part of what America is. That it's not this like blood and soil project. It is a created thing. Like we came here, we colonized it. We created it based on these, you know, certain ideals, which we've never fully lived up to. But that is what it is. And I was thinking about this, I were like, you're from Texas.

Texas is a majority minority state. Does it feel like it's not American? Does it feel like it's been, you know, destroyed? In fact, it still votes very conservatively. And the, you know, populations that are there are, you know, very integrated into American society, et cetera. I just, you know, it's disgusting and it's cruel and it leads to horrific things so I don't want to downplay it. But I also want to say, like, you're not getting your, you know, white's only country. It's not happening. You're not getting your repeal the 19th Amendment

because we don't like the way the women are voting. It's not happening. It's childish to pretend that this is like a real outcome that you're going to be able to effectuate. So in any case, a long way of saying. I'm looking now at Texas. I didn't realize, actually, that it has fully flipped. So it's 40% Latino, 40% non-Hispanic white. Such a funny term. 12% black and five to six percent Asian, one percent Native American, and then three percent. It was like 60 percent minority. I remember, you know, I was growing up there. It's fine, guys. Yeah, I knew a lot of guys who were, but see, that's kind of my point is that looking at things overtly racially is gross. Like, that's not the point, actually, about it

at all. And that's fine. People want to do that. Again, I don't think it's going to work out for you, and I don't think it's necessarily correct. It's also just the way that you try to back engineer like greatness and, let's say, officially tied, let's say to racialism, is not one, which first of all, like you just said, you're going to get the outcomes that you want, explicitly because a lot of it is just like larping. But two, also really ignores, I mean, this, you know, we were talking about this. Remember of the Fuentes Pierce thing? I'm like, yeah, it would be insane to go back and to tell real heritage Americans that some of the vanguard of their cause would be Italian Catholics.

That would be unthinkable, literally unthinkable. They would be like, first of all, that person's not white, and they're godless. That's how they used to think about. In fact, I would remind everyone, when real heritage Americans got the chance to enforce immigration policy and to vote an election, they explicitly rejected a guy named Al Smith because he was a Catholic, and there were cartoons about Romanism across the entire country. And they shut down immigration for like 45 years because they were sick of a bunch of, in their words, non-white Irish and Italians and Slovenians coming into the country and dirtying it up. That's what they thought about it.

So I'm like, I mean, it's just ridiculous to see people who are the descendants of those people then claim, you know, it's fine. Look, you can say your ancestors have been here long. That's fine. You could say that, you know, longer than me. I don't necessarily think cast and bloodlines should be one that we should determine our tier in society. In fact, I'm sorry I'm going long, but I feel strongly about this because my family is from a culture of India, right? An Indian culture is heavily, they don't want

to admit it, but it's true, is heavily caste based, which is not something that you can control. The most old world bullshit in the world is the idea that because of who your grandfather was or what you were born into should determine the fate of your entire life.

That's almost an explicitly Western and American thing which we say, you leave that behind, You come here and you embrace a certain set of ideals. I think that's great, you know, I really do. If anything, a lot of my criticism of some of the Indians here now currently is that they're not leaving a lot of that bullshit behind. And I think that they should. But yeah, I just, you know, to see it renormalized more recently in an American context, which I have, you know, is like, oh, my family's been here for four generations.

I think that's phenomenal. I have a great veneration for all of our history. And, you know, venerating that is fine. but, you know, to tear in terms of what that means explicitly for, like, who counts or not, you're like, hmm, well, and especially when we're talking about only citizens here, not even just people who are, if we're talking, not when we're talking about non-citizens, we're talking about people who are explicit citizens of the United States of America. Yeah, I mean, that just seems to me, you know, people, these are the biggest critics of third worldism. That's the most third world bullshit that you can never do. It really is. And I tell you this is someone whose parents are from the third world. When I go over there and you see the cast, oh my God, it drives me nuts, nuts when people talk about caste and who's marrying who and, oh, that's violate. Oh, my God.

It repulses me, repulses me. And so that's the last thing that we need over here. It's very antiquated old world ideology, which, but again, doesn't breed. White nationalists love to talk about India's failed problems. I blame that. That's a big part of the reason why, is the explicit class culture. Same in the UK. They have huge class problems about ascendancy and the ability to do it. Let's leave it all behind, people, but that's just one man's vision of the world. Yeah, I was thinking, I responded. I was kind of

trolling, but I mean, I meant what I said, but I was also kind of being intention provocative on Twitter. Someone shared this like, oh, whites were 80% did 1920 and or this percent now and blah, blah, blah. And I was thinking about that. I was like, what does that even mean? Because the definition of white is not even the same over those years. Absolutely, very true. Like, in my own household, in 1920, I am literally the only person in my household that would be considered white. So, like, so much of this is just meaningless garbage anyway. But in any case, obviously it has, yeah, like Stephen Miller, who's leading a bunch of

this bullshit. Like, when his family came over here, they were not considered white as they were, you know, Jewish refugees from what is now Belarus. And yet you think that, you know, this should be some blood and soil white ethno-nationalist. you're leading this whites-only refugee policy anyway. I find it, I find it disgusting, I find it counterproductive, I find it fundamentally anti-American. And I also think that it is a project doomed to fail and these people have convinced

themselves that the American people agree with them. And I think that that is wrong. In fact, I think to your point, Sager, what we saw in the backlash to Woke and the identitarian excesses of the left is proof that the American people really do believe in like aspiring to that colorblind vision at core. They like that idea and that concept of America. I think so, too. Yeah.

I mean, if anything, overtly kind of embracing any of this is the worst possible argument you could ever make about at least, again, just one man's opinion. But I've taken a look at a lot of the polling and I've thought a lot about what went wrong with the immigration agenda here of the Trump administration. And I do genuinely think that so many people thought about. a universalist language of control about their border and about a very idea of we need to know who's in our country. It does seem unfair. Again, in my opinion, you can disagree that people get to come here illegally and just work and just decide that they get to stay here. I think

that's wrong. I think a lot of people agreed with that. However, however, and this is what people don't seem to understand, when you enact it in a way, which has been described as performative cruelty, which, you know, it probably hits it a little bit on the nose. But when you also pair it, let's say, with racial language, which is now increasingly popular, not just from the government necessarily, but from a lot of the commentary. And it becomes to be viewed as that way. That is not the same as the universalist kind of idea of control, which led many Latino Americans, Asian Americans. You know, this is one of the most non-white Republican coalitions in American history. which I think Lib should sit with, right, about what that means also, about who we can

and comment with that. But it can also be something that falls apart whenever it's enacted or at least viewed necessarily in this way. So I know we went very off track, and I'm sorry, but I do think it's important. I do think it's important for people to kind of understand the broader motivations about all this topic of Islam. And I'm not a big defender of Islamic culture. I don't want it. I don't like it, had lived underneath it, hated it. But I'm also not a dupe to see what this exactly this is being used for right now. And that's why I would say everybody's eyes should be a little bit open right now. 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 gentlemen'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 Gentleman's Cut Bourbon, please visit gentlemen's cut bourbon.com. Please enjoy responsibly. 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 the dangerous past, one that could destroy everything he thought he knew. Listen to the brothers Ortiz on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

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