Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/19/25: "PROTECT HER!" New Trump Epstein Bombshell, Brown MIT Killer Found, AIPAC Tracker FIRED

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

The BP Team looks at the latest Trump Epstein bombshells from Drop Site News, the Brown/MIT Killer found dead, and Corey and Casey from TrackAIPAC join us again to talk about some upcoming races and how Casey was fired from his job. TrackAIPACCasey: https://x.com/trackcaseyk  Corey: https://x.com/CMArchibald TrackAIPAC: https://www.trackaipac.com/   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. I knew it was a bomb the second that it exploded. I felt it ripped through me. In season two of RipCurrent, we ask, who tried to kill Judy Berry and why? They were climbing trees, and they were sabotaging logging equipment in the woods.

She received death threats before the bombing. She received more threats after the bombing. I think that this is a deliberate attempt to sabotage our movement. Episodes of RipCurrent Season 2 are available. now listen on the iHeart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts what are the cycles fathers pass down that sons are left to heal what if being a man wasn't about holding it all together but learning how to let go this is a space where men speak truth and find the power to heal and transform i'm mike delarocha welcome to sacred lessons listen to sacred lessons on the

My Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Dr. Lari Santos from The Happiness Lab here. It's the season of giving, and this year, my podcast, The Happiness Lab, is partnering with Give Directly, a nonprofit that provides people in extreme poverty with the cash they need as part of the Pods Fight Poverty campaign. Our goal this year is to raise $1 million, which will bring over 700 families out of extreme poverty. Your donation will put cash. directly in the hands of these families in need, and they'll get to decide how to use it,

whether that's school transportation, purchasing livestock, or starting a business. Plus, if you're a first-time donor, your gift will be matched by giving multiplier, which means more money for those in need. Visit givedirectly.org slash happiness lab to learn more and to donate. That's give directly.org slash happiness lab. Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find

honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you at breaking points.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Friday. How you doing? I'm pretty good. I've debating whether to throw on the Santa hat or not. I may do it later. The topic is content is a little series at the top of the show, so I'm not sure I want

to be Santa Hatted out here to talk about this. I hadn't thought about that. That would be jarring, Crystal. I think you made the right call. That's always my hesitation, like, with the Halloween costumes and stuff, too. It's like, you know, last year we did it, and I did Raygun, which was fun and people really liked it. And I don't remember what we covered today, but that day, but I don't think there's anything

like too crazy serious. But, yeah, it just feels very off if you're wearing some, like, goofy costume and then you're covering, like, you know, a mass murder or whatever, war, Epstein, pedophiles, et cetera. So in any case, that means. Yeah, it feels wrong. It feels really wrong. Doesn't feel right. Yeah. So, anyway, but we do have major updates in terms of what we now know, apparently, according to the government, is the killer who shot the two students actually shot a number of.

more than that, but killed two students at Brown University and then traveled some 55 miles and murdered a professor at his home at MIT. It was apparently the same guy. He's now been found dead, killed himself inside of a storage unit. And let me go ahead and see if I can pull up this New York Times article that just gives us like a rundown of what happened here. Also, interestingly, just off the top, apparently the tip that really blew the case open came from Reddit and it was like a yeah it was not only Reddit I think it was um someone who was homeless and sleeps in the basement of one of the brown university buildings saw this guy acting bizarrely had an interaction with him in the bathroom was like this guy's dressed weird he's acting weird he's acting

weird around this car um followed him a little bit and asked him like dude what are you up to so um so anyway that appears to be the tip that blew the thing open so in any case let me read from you for you a little bit here, they say a man suspected of carrying out a pair of deadly attacks, one at Brown University that killed two students and wounded nine more, and another that killed an MIT professor's home, found dead in a storage unit in New Hampshire on Thursday. The suspect's death, which the police said was from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, ended a five-day search that began on Brown's campus in Providence, Rhode Island, casebook captivated and rattled New England as investigators pieced together grainy surveillance footage and feared another burst of violence. The search stretched

across state lines ultimately hinged on witness interviews and Providence, including a Reddit user, along with records from a car rental agency in Boston and search warrant in Salem, New Hampshire. Nothing can really fully bring closure to the lives that have been shattered of the past week. This may allow our community to move forward. So law enforcement officials identified the suspect as Claudio Manuel Neves Valenti, 48 years old, a former Brown student, who was briefly enrolled at the university more than two decades ago, last known address was in Miami. Investigators still not sure what the motive was behind the attacks.

This talks more about the anonymous tip. And then this gives us a little bit more on the suspect. So he had studied physics as a grad student at Brown in the early 2000s. He's from Portugal, became a permanent resident of the U.S. in 2017 through a diversity visa lottery. The Trump administration has now seized on that fact to say that they're shutting down the entire diversity visa lottery, which is something we could discuss more. They believe he studied at the same school as the professor that he murdered. So in Lisbon. So they studied at the school at the same time in Lisbon said the two might have known each other.

Details of the relationship remain unclear and still completely unclear what the motive was for the mass shooting at Brown University. And we should add, studied in Lisbon together, I believe it's studying in Lisbon together even before Brown. So years and years ago, which is, it's an extremely bizarre connection. Yeah, I mean, the whole thing is very strange. And, you know, I guess, you know, given that we, that the public rushes to view these things through whatever, like, partisan or political lens, on the one side you've got, he's an immigrant. On the other side, he's a white guy. So from Portugal. The diversity lottery aspect of this, you know, I was reading more about it.

There's kind of an irony here is actually put in place. The precursor program to it was specifically aimed at getting more Irish immigrants into the U.S. Because after the 1965 changes where there were no more like country quotas, there was a sense that European countries and Eastern European countries were being disadvantaged in terms of bringing in immigrants. And so it was actually some of the more kind of like white nativist types that introduced this program because they wanted more white immigrants. And then over the years, as you had more of a diaspora from some of those European countries, you know, Irish in particular, then they sort of phased down of being really eligible for this program. They could use the, you know, family reunification and the chain migration aspects inherent in our immigration.

policy. And so that visa lottery still has a significant portion of Europeans who come in through it, but it has skewed more towards African countries. And it's, it's meant to be for countries that don't historically have a lot of immigrants coming to the U.S. is basically the idea behind it. Yeah. The other irony of the 1965 law is that it was really geared toward, they're in 1965. They had this nostalgia for, you know, Ellis Island and all the Italians and Irish and Europeans who were coming in. And so in 65, they're like, all right, let's open it back up

and let more Europeans in. Because they're, you know, those are our white brothers over there. And they didn't want to come. Like, things were good in Europe. And American policymakers were just kind of stunned. Like, what do you mean? I thought, we thought everybody wanted to come

to the United States of America. It's like the greatest place on earth. And instead, like you said, other countries filled the, filled those quotas leading to then, some efforts to correct it, be like, hold on. We've got to get the hue a little bit lighter. Come on, what's going on here with this immigration policy?

Yes. So this one that was put in place originally to once again lighten the skin. Color of the people that came in overtime now has shifted in its proportions as well. I think another interesting aspect of the story is the frustration locally in Providence and on the Brown University campus. So I wanted to roll this clip of part of the press. conference last night. There were two press conferences. There was one in Boston, and then there was one in Providence. This is the Providence Press Conference, and you just hear the frustration bubbling

up. President Jackson, Dan J. from NBC10, I want to go back to the question I asked you Saturday night when I first arrived on the scene. There were no cameras in this building, and law enforcement, some that are standing up behind you, have said, if Brown had cameras in that part of the building, we would have gotten this guy. And I just want to pause there and mention that's not a small part of the story because allegedly the suspect then killed again. And it may have stopped this swirling action. Can you answer that question for me?

Well, I don't think we have said the locations of cameras at Brown. We have 12 cameras in that building because why would they take it from a rental car agency? We have 1,200 cameras at Brown. But not in that building. We have some in that building. It's a large complex, and I think what you would see is the video evidence in this case, from my perspective, I'm not a law enforcement agent, has been incredibly helpful. The moving of the person around the neighborhood, those video images, they help crack this case.

So I think video was important, and as the Attorney General explained at a recent press conference, this individual was not spending his time on the Brown campus. He came into a building on the edge of the campus. campus. He left. He was in the neighborhoods. The investigation focused on the neighborhoods. The video was there. And that was really, really instrumental in fact in the case. But you could ask them. And this is my follow-up to. Madam President said the podium. Yes, video played a big role in this case. The neighbor's video, the rental car video, but not the video in the building that he walked in

in freely before when he got in the confrontation. And when he came back in this, to kill people. You didn't have cameras in that building. Just say it so we could give us over it. And my next question is, will you put the cameras in the building? Yeah. You know, I think we need to look back. We'll look at everything that is done, but I do not think a lack of cameras in that

building had anything to do with what happened. We can stop it there. But yeah, you can see that's the president of Brown under intense scrutiny. also for coming out after this originally happened and saying basically we think everybody should feel safe. That has infuriated the community as well because now we know, again, allegedly the suspect did kind of go along with the theory saga had floated about a potential unabomber, something in that ballpark targeting campuses. And obviously it seems to have happened again at MIT. I mean that I understand the sentiment that's being expressed there.

I will also say that like that sentiment I feel like is how we've ended up with a mass surveillance state where there are cameras everywhere. We're all being tracked. Totally agree. You know, like, oh my God, we need even more camera. Like there's a square inch of this building that wasn't under surveillance. Doesn't have surveillance 24-7 and facial recognition. And listen, the public will agree with that person. You know, there will be an instinct of like, yes, we have to, you know, And, yes, install them metal detectors. And we got to make sure, you know, you're scanning their retinas as they're coming in or whatever. And so that is how you end up with the situation we are in where basically you cannot really live your life without being under mass surveillance from the government.

The other thing that I'll say is, you know, disconnecter from that is I'm very curious to see where the conspiratorial minds go with this because now you have very unclear motive what the hell was going. on here. This one guy that the professor that he murdered was doing extraordinarily important breakthrough work with regard to nuclear fusion technology. And so, and now this guy's dead, so we'll never know. He'll never be able to tell us what he was thinking or who we might have targeted next or whatever. So just brace yourself for, I'm sure there's going to be a lot of, and look, I understand because I myself am like, what the hell is going on here too. And of course, you should always be skeptical of government claims, et cetera, but I just, I'm, I am sure that we're going to be in for a lot of, a lot of speculation about what was really going on underneath the surface here and whether this is really the guy and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. And just a quick note to say, you know, cameras do not solve everything. Like almost every inch of New York City is surveilled. And Luigi Mangiani was able to get to what, Pennsylvania, New York City has this partnership with Microsoft. There's like a lawsuit over it right now where they're doing like, kind of.

constant biometrics from cameras that are all over the city. So it doesn't solve everything. I think it's interesting that the, or I do think that this subplot is interesting on the campus where there's mismanagement because I wonder then to what extent it's going to bleed over to MIT. Not that the MIT professor was not on campus, was at his own apartment in Brookline, but seriously scary situation in New England for several days. And now that the, the man was found, the suspect here was found dead. They're not being clear about potential motives so far. There's plenty of time for that, obviously, to come out.

But it also leaves wide open the possibility that motivation remains a mystery. Hopefully, that's not the case. Hopefully it's clear cut. And we have information that comes up that makes it really clear what was going on. But it is, I mean, when we were talking earlier about these connections that go back, literally to Lisbon in the late 90s and then Brown in the early 2000, You have in the case of the professor who was killed a, like, leading nuclear scientist. You have the vice president of the college Republicans at Brown.

It's all very, it's, it's, I genuinely hope that there's clear cut motive information out there because it's, it is like fodder for conspiracy theories, as you said, Crystal. And Ryan, did you see Israel jumped in to say, oh, we think Iran did it? Yes, they were. Yes, because. Yeah. A nuclear scientist is getting killed and they're like, oh. And it's like, no, you know what? Like you're the only country actually that is just freely killing scientists and bragging about it. Like you're projecting onto others that's this level of barbarity that that that that did certainly in this case did not exist. And when it comes to the celebration of mass surveillance, it's interesting to note that the three high profile shooters, uh, over. the last year have been caught by people, whether, you know, Luigi was caught by a person at the McDonald's. And like, hey, it looks like Luigi. Tyler Robinson, if you believe he's a shooter there, was turned in by his family who were like, oh, that looks like Tyler. And this guy

caught by the Reddit user who just saw him suspiciously walking through the Brown campus and followed him and then told police. Like, so that's, that's old school, you know, social policing the community rising to the occasion and saying this is this is who it was and then the police having that information and then tracking it down from there i mean it's kind of a mix right though because the reason that luigi and tyler in particular were caught is because we had those camera images whereas with this one it actually truly was just this like credit guy like this guy's acting really weird um without even seeing i think the photos or the or the videos but um yeah but i mean it's to a combo, yeah.

Yeah, our combo of the two. And also that I think that's an important point because with Tyler Robinson and potentially in this case, you have to ask whether law enforcement, including the FBI, would have been able to nab the suspect had someone not stepped up and seen something or done something. I think that's particularly true in the Tyler Robinson case when you have his family doing the enormously difficult thing of turning him in. does is he in custody if that doesn't happen or does law enforcement you know in a reasonable time frame track him down that it's it sort of saves the uh saves the bacon of law enforcement

to an extent to yeah politically cash once again wasn't wasn't looking great on this one and the other thing the last thing i want to say about this is you had people who were saying with confidence like oh we think this particular guy and named this one kid, Brown University student. And, you know, his name went everywhere, large accounts, sharing this guy's name and his photo and digging into everything about him. And he had nothing to do with this. They were also saying, uh, Lori Lumer and others were, oh, they shouted Alahu Akbar before

they, no, no, actually, they didn't. The killer did not do that. Apparently, he was made some weird barking noises before he opened fire. People make shit up and they docks people and like, ruin their life. lives based on, you know, a hunch based on like, oh, their social media profile looks like this. And my political valence makes me think that it must be a Muslim person who's like that. And then they'll just casually ruin somebody's life. And we've seen this happen multiple times when they were still searching for Tyler Robinson. We didn't have a killer

of Charlie Kirk. They were doing this same shit with a bunch of different people. And one of our own fans of our show wrote and said, please tell people to stop doing this. So please, I beg you, not that anyone's going to listen. Stop doing this because you destroy people's lives and private people like, this will be the only thing, you know, the biggest thing about them on the internet is that, you know, people thought they killed this high, they were involved in this high profile murder. So I just, I just find the whole, the whole thing really disgusting, the baseless accusations and always, again, designed to fit some person into whatever political narrative they want to push with regard to the killing. May 24th, 1990, a pipe bomb explodes in the front seat of environmental activist Judy Barry's car. I knew it was a bomb the second that it exploded. I felt it ripped through me with just a force more powerful and terrible than anything that I could describe. In season two of Rip Current, we ask, who tried to kill Judy Barry and why?

She received death threats before the bombing. She received more threats after the bombing. The man and woman who were heard had planned to lead a summer of militant protest against logging practices in Northern California. They were climbing trees and they were sabotaging logging equipment in the woods. The timber industry, I mean, it was the number one industry in the area, but more than it was the culture. It was the way of life. I think that this is a deliberate attempt to sabotage our movement. Episodes of Rip Current Season 2 are available now. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

For 25 years, I've explored what it means to heal, not just for myself, but alongside others. I'm Mike De La Rocha. This is Sacred Lessons, a space for reflection, growth, and collective healing. What do you tell men that are hurting right now? Everything's going to be okay on the other side, you know, just push through it. And, you know, ironically, the root of the word spirit is breath. Wow.

Which is why one of the most revolutionary acts that we can do as people just breathe. Next to the wound is their gifts. You can't even find your gifts unless you go through the wound. That's the hard thing. You think, well, I'm going to get my guess. I don't want to go through all that. You've got to go through the wounds you're laughing. Listening to other people's near-death experiences, and it's all they say.

In conclusion, love is the answer. Listen to sacred lessons as part of the Maikultura Podcast Network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, Dr. Lori Santos from the Happiness Lab here. It's the season of giving, which is why my podcast is partnering with Give Directly, a nonprofit that provides people in extreme poverty with the cash they need. This year, we're taking part in the Pods Fight Poverty campaign. And it's not just the Happiness Lab.

Some of my favorite podcasters are also taking part. Think Jay Shetty from On Purpose, Dan Harris. from 10% happier, and Dave Desteno from How God Works and more. Our goal this year is to raise $1 million, which will help over 700 families in Rwanda living in extreme poverty. Here's how it works. You donate to give directly, and they put that cash directly into the hands of families in need, because those families know best what they need, whether it's buying livestock to fertilize their farm, paying school fees, or starting a small business. With that support, families can invest in their future and build last

change. So join me and your favorite podcasters in the Pods Fight Poverty campaign. Head to give directly.org slash happiness lab to learn more and make a contribution. And if you're a first-time donor, giving multiplier will even match your gift. That's give directly.org slash happiness lab to donate. All right. So we've got, today is Epstein Files Release Day. Ryan's got a big news. And a happy Epstein Files Release Day to both of you? Indeed. This is what I should put on the Santa hat.

So Rokana and Thomas Massey partners together in Marjorie Taylor Green. You had a bit of a bipartisan push and enough Republicans coming on to the discharge petition to force a vote on this. President Trump sort of backed down, realizing he was in a corner with this, signed this law that says, you know, you have to now release these files or else there will you will actually be in violation of the law. the deadline is today. You also had a number of federal judges come in who were involved in the various like Elaine Maxwell and Epstein cases, both in Florida and then what was that in New York. Anyway, say, you know, we, we agree that these materials now that the law has been passed need to be released. So we know that material will be included. And every, and Congress conveniently decided they would leave town early. So they're not going to be totally out of Dodge and make sure they're

nowhere near whenever what comes out comes out. So. Ryan, what are you, you know, what do you think we should expect since you are, I mean, you're probably the foremost journalist on this at this point in the country, Julie K. Brown, a few other Jason Leopold Maas, of course. What do you think we should be looking for in this release? And I, that's kind of you. I wouldn't put myself there. So many journalists have been doing so much work on this, including Whitney Webb for, you know, for so long. you know we've we're relying on this the tranche of stuff that's out um and you know uh so i think that there could be interesting stuff out of the grand jury testimony like that could you know there could be some serious breadcrumbs there if people are wondering about the timing the Trump's capitulation was very cleverly timed like he because there's a 30-day timing and so either it was luck or he recognized like oh or his team recognized like if we do it right now

and sign it into law now the 30 days will land on the Friday before Christmas so let's just let's just we're going to lose this anyway better to lose it now because so much of history uh what we remember of history revolves around how big a deal a story was when it happened and if a story just kind of gets muzzled when it when it happens like it it's really difficult then to unearth it later as as a major kind of quote unquote historical moment it's like why um you know some scandals are iran contra and some scandals are just kind of nobody's ever heard of them i was thinking about this last night too because the shutdown is what prevented the bill from being the discharge petition from going through and so it does i mean i don't know if it would be strategically it would make

sense that it was intentional. But also, I wonder if it was just dumb luck because they came back from the shutdown and immediately the discharge petition, which they were worried about, went through. They knew that was going to happen. But if that's luck, that is some incredible luck because you're totally right, Ryan. It'll probably a combination of two. But yeah. Yeah. And yeah, maybe they'll wait till 5 p.m. I don't know if you can bury news, though, in the way that you used to be able to. It's not the same. It's not the same. The Friday news dump isn't what it used to be. And if anything, now that you have Christmas is on a Thursday this year, there are a lot of people who are going to have a slow couple of weeks.

Now you have, like, online sleuths who are going to make sure the story has legs because people have a little bit of extra time on their hands over the next couple of weeks. True. Yeah. And Democrats yesterday put out some new photos that, you know, they'd obtained. They got more with Chomsky, just very depressing stuff, showing how much he was paling around. with him and Ehud Barak even and Bannon. Also some weird ass, like, Lolita quotes on people's, like, feet and body parts.

Do you guys see that? Mm-mm. Yeah. See if I can pull these up. Creepy. Yeah, very creepy. And you've also had the New York Times now deciding to get in the game with a couple of significant pieces, but one in particular, yeah, there's the Lolita quotes on various body parts.

So that's just really normal stuff. But the New York Times dug into his financing. And I know, Ryan, you had some thoughts about that. But they also dug into specifically the relationship with Trump. And maybe I can pull up some of the quotes here. I know Jasper Nathaniel had pulled some of the key quotes from this. But, you know, I mean, this won't be a surprise to any of us because we know that Trump and Epstein have this very, you know, significant relationship. but there were some details here that were for sure new.

So one of the things is an Epstein employee from the era recalled Mr. Trump would occasionally send over modeling cards for Mr. Epstein to peruse like a menu. And the Trump modeling agency has long been one of the major red flags because these modeling agencies, including, you know, I mean, Epstein got close to Lex Wexner and he has Victoria's Secret and that's the whole thing. But, you know, Trump was very close to John Casablanca and sort of looked up to him as a role model. His modeling agency was maybe the most infamous and notorious for exploiting young girls. And he himself were exploiting young girls. And so the, you know, the modeling agencies have been used as a front for effectively human trafficking. And that's a documented phenomenon.

So that's obviously disturbing piece of information there. You've got this gross detail where Trump would love to, you know, They'd love to, like, publicly brag about their exploits, put themselves on speaker phones. So whoever was in the room had to uncomfortably listen to whatever their, like, sexual exploits. Apparently, they called each other all the time to share this sort of information. This one woman says she remembers one call in the mid-90s in which the two men discussed how much pubic hair a particular woman had and whether there was enough for Mr. Epstein to floss his teeth with on another of these calls. Mr. Trump told Mr. Epstein about having sex with another woman on a pool table. this one is very disturbing.

One of the 14-year-old models who was brought to Mar-a-Lago as one of these parties event-type things said she ran into Trump's then-wife, Marla Mabel's. According to her, she says during a trip to the bathroom, they ran into Mr. Trump's new wife and they had met earlier. Ms. Maples clasped her hands, Ms. Coleman recalled, looked her in the eye,

so this is the mother of the 14-year-old model, and says, let her around any of these men and especially my husband protect her. Now, Marla Maples denies that that she said that and that that quote occurred. But in any case, some new details there about the depth and nature of the Trump-Ebstein relationship. And I think give some insight into why Trump was very, very not excited about any of this information coming to light. And remember, Trump bought Miss Teen USA. in order he's this is from his own testimony in order for him to be able to creep into the locker room

um and look at the nude teens uh like young teens like that he he said this on he said this publicly publicly yeah so there's no question that and aside from the gross stuff he's said like about his own daughter like he's he's a he's a gross dude who he put into this modeling industry by the way which if you know, you know, know what he knew is a real interesting choice. Yeah, and there's that quote he gave to, I guess it was Vanity Fair or somebody where he said, yeah, Jeffrey Epstein likes him young. So, like, yeah, all of this is, but yeah, probably not surprising to people that he's this much for creep. I think it's surprising to some people, in a sense, with the young girls, apparently. And, I mean, you know, I mean, this was always the glaring, like glaring blind-spunk.

for MAGA when they were very focused on Epstein and revealing, you know, the connections with the elite circles. And it's like, you guys do know that this man was like besties with Donald Trump for a decade. You don't think there's going to be anything there? You don't think there's going to be anything there. So in any case, of course, you know, what Trump would say, oh, go ahead, M. Well, I was just going to say it goes back to the origins of MAGA, which is that Donald Trump was standing up on the stage and saying, I alone can fix it. because I know the system, the same thing with the Clintons. I bought teen USA. I can fix the problem.

But that goes into just this broader point is that he pitched himself to MAGA as somebody who was and created MAGA, as somebody who was the billionaire against the other billionaires. He was part of the billionaire system, but he was going to sort of disrupt it from the inside. and it is, it is, you know, important then every time he does anything but disrupt the billionaire system from the inside, anytime he protects the billionaire system, anytime he's sort of revealed to be part of that system, I think it does, you guys talked about earlier this week, you and Sager did a segment on Harry Enten looking at this poll results showing 2024 Trump supporters, strong support from Trump is down from 66% to 50%. Not super surprising, but at the same time, it does, I think, lead, you know, Erica Kirk endorsed J.D. Vance yesterday at Turning Point's big conference. That genuinely is surprising, not that she would endorse him, but that she would endorse him this early. And so it's setting a tone for what the Republican Party and what the kind of populace doing the Republican Party MAGA is

supposed to do going forward. If you're J.D. Vance, you should be looking at those numbers, 66% to 50% and thinking very hard about them because of things like this. And now if you want, not that JD, like obviously JD is connected to Teal and all of those people. So I'm just saying like the politics of it, I think are kind of interesting. Now when it comes, Emily and I talked about this a little bit on the show Wednesday when we talked about the New York Times story and I promised or I pledged that we would try to have our story out by Friday and we did get it out. The timing of the New York Times piece was helpful to us, I think, because we had been reporting around a lot of the same kind of period of time that they said that they uncovered the, and put to bed the questions about like where he made his money and whether or not he had intelligence connections, not making any sense throughout the entire piece.

Let me put this up. I would highly recommend reading this piece. It's also just fascinating as just a piece of kind of alternative, like, espionage history because it's fair to think of Epstein almost as like the Forrest Gump of the spy world. Like when it comes to Iran-Contra, he's just, he's just everywhere. And I highlighted this one paragraph from the New York Times piece here where they write, Jeffrey Epstein had been spending extravagantly, and despite his lofty compensation at Bear Stearns and his work for Douglas Lease, he found himself strapped, even occasionally bouncing rent checks.

Back in New York, he joined forces with John Stanley Pottinger, a lawyer who had recently left a senior post in the Justice Department. Epstein, Pottinger, and Pottinger's brother rented a penthouse office in the Hotel San Moritz on Central Park South. The broker, Joanna Cutler, told us that Epstein initially stiffed her on the the commission. And so this is an example of some of the really impressive kind of shoe leather reporting that the Times did for this piece to track down all these details, like they got Joanna Cutler on the phone and got her to tell them, you know, that he's stiffed around the commission and confirmed this, this arrangement within the pet house. But as we argue in the piece, if they had looked in the other direction, looked upwards, they would have, in this, in this

paragraph itself found two details worth exploring. One, that Douglas Lees is himself an arms trafficker. And we talk about his connection to the Iran-Contra scandal, which was, it's called Iran-Contra, but right in the middle of it is Israel. Because the United States was barred from shipping weapons to Iran. And so the arrangement that we created was that Israel would send weapons to Iran, which is comical, if you think about it, since they're, but so Israel would ship weapons to Iran. Iran would then pay, would put money to the slush fund that, uh, Shimon Peres, uh, Ehud Barak and Adan Khashoggi were organizing.

Um, and then, by the way, Khashoggi, Trump buys what the Khashoggi yacht. Yes. This is Khashoggi's, uh, this is Jamal Khashoggi's uncle, in fact. And then the U.S. would then backfill the weapons to Israel. So we weren't giving weapons to Iran. We're giving them to Israel. We would then use – and then Hezbollah then would release some hostages, American hostages that were being held.

And we would use the money to illegally finance the Contras, because Congress had said you can't finance this insurgency against the Nicaraguan leftist government. And so the Reagan administration used the proceeds to put them there. Now, Stanley Pottinger was a lawyer who was, like, heavily involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, helping to set up the flows of money. And so they have, so the Times found Epstein literally in business with an Iran-Contra lawyer at the time that the thing is unfolding. And Douglas Lees, who was also involved with it.

And he was. And he was associates with Khashoggi, but go ahead. Well, no, I was just going to say, so Trump's NSA, starting in 2019, was Matthew Pottinger, who is the son of John Stanley Pottinger, which is when Roe Conner now describes the Epstein class, here's an example of the Epstein class. It doesn't mean anyone's necessarily implicated in this massive blackmail. It just means that it's all being pulled from the same small pool of people who are part of this, like, tightly knit. network. But Pottinger in his defense, actually, he died recently, but he represented a bunch of Epstein victims. I think he, whatever his time. Epstein class traitor. Although some people may be very suspicious of that because it could look like controlled opposition. Might be. He's an interesting

guy. He was almost ousted from the Nixon administration as part of the Saturday Night Massacre. and he was like packing up his stuff and then at the last minute the massacre was kind of stopped so he kept his job he also in this New York Times obit it says that he figured out who Deep Throat was as part of this

grand jury process Oh that's right he kept that secret he then he then made a fortune in real estate in the 80s and real estate I'm not saying that he used Iran-Contra funds

but real estate was a major way that Iran-Contra funds were laundered. Then he became a novelist, best-selling novelist. And he's, according to his time's Obed, he has a five-thrill that hasn't been published yet. And then he represented the Epstein victims. So like, what a like an arc that that guy's life took. But then, so you have all of this, the Epstein, Epstein being close with all of these different Iran-Contra figures, after the lid gets bull. alone on Iran-Contra, the CIA's airline, Southern Air Transport, that was involved in this weapons shipments and drug running, has to lay low for a while. And what we report here,

Whitney Webb has written about this as well, but we have some new details from a journalist in Ohio who covered this at the time. Jeffrey Epstein brought Southern Air Transport, the CIA's front company airline, to Columbus, Ohio. They shipped, moved the headquarters from Miami to Columbus, Ohio, to start trafficking lingerie and fast fashion for less trafficking lingerie. So as one friend responded

last night, it's like, well, this is something decent that Epstein did for the world. So instead of trafficking drugs and like guns for the CIA, these planes for a couple years were moving, you know, you know, crappy.

Bombshell push-up bras. Right. Abercrombian Fitch and Victoria's Secret. So it's like, okay, maybe there's no intel connections here at all, but. How on earth did this guy end up bringing the CIA's airplanes to Les Wexner?

Like, Times is going to have to do a little bit better than just hand-waving it away with these kinds of details out there. That's kind of like kind of suspicious activity to be involved in. I was very interesting to me how much the New York Times wanted to say like, oh, case closed. We figured it out. No intel cut ties. no blackmail, no nothing, nothing to see here, and then did a bunch of reporting that does not at all rule out those possibilities. And in fact, raises even more questions about them as your reporting points out.

And we also make the point in the preamble of the piece that in order to acquit him of all of these, like, links to intel and to say that there was nothing interesting going on here, what they had to do was craft this anti-Semitic caricature of the guy. Hmm. to, like, in a genuinely offensive way. Because all they're left with is, like, oh, he's just a giant con artist. And you go through it and you're like, this is actually like, what are you doing here? But it's almost like, what's the Barry Gold?

It's like a version of the Barry Goldwater quote. You would say, anti-Semitism in defense of the liberty of Israel is no violence. A lot of people apparently view it that way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, read the piece out. Yeah, read the piece because it just completely, if this is all just a coincidence,

it's the greatest coincidence of all time. Yeah. Well, and to, I don't know, also to make the claims that the Times did of like, oh, there's no intel connection. And to not even, you know, not even reference the reporting that you and others have done, I think is also just very, you know, very lazy.

Also very condescending, you know, like you don't even exist, right? We even got a, we have a Times quote for the piece because I put all this to them. They said, quote, we report on facts that we are able to confirm, not supposition. What a bunch of punks. These are facts. Like, these are facts. You're welcome to report on them. If you can't confirm them, I don't know what to tell you.

May 24th, 1990, a pipe bomb, explodes in the front seat of environmental activist Judy Berry's car. I knew it was a bomb the second that it exploded. I felt it ripped through me with just a force more powerful and terrible than anything that I could describe. In season two of Rip Current, we ask, who tried to kill Judy Barry and why? She received death threats before the bombing. She received more threats after the bombing. The man and woman who were heard had planned to lead a summer of militant protest against logging practices.

is in Northern California. They were climbing trees and they were sabotaging logging equipment in the woods. The timber industry, I mean, it was the number one industry in the area, but more than it was the culture, it was the way of life. I think that this is a deliberate attempt to sabotage our movement.

Episodes of Rip Current Season 2 are available now. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For 25 years, I've explored what it means to heal, not just for myself, but alongside others. I'm Mike Delarocha.

This is Sacred Lessons, a space for reflection, growth, and collective healing. What do you tell men that are hurting right now? Everything's going to be okay on the other side, you know, just push through it. And, you know, ironically, the root of the word spirit is breath. Wow. Which is why one of the most revolutionary acts that we can do as people just breathe. Next to the wound is their gifts. You can't even find your gifts unless you go through the wound.

That's the hard thing. You think, well, I'm going to get my guests. I don't want to go through all that. You've got to go through the wounds you're laughing. Listening to other people's near-death experiences, and that's all they say. In conclusion, love is the answer. Listen to sacred lessons as part of the My Kutura Podcast Network, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Hi, Dr. Lori Santos from the Happiness Lab here. It's the season of giving, which is why my podcast is partnering with Give Directly, a nonprofit that provides people in extreme poverty with the cash they need. This year, we're taking part in the Pods Fight Poverty campaign. And it's not just the Happiness Lab. Some of my favorite podcasters are also taking part. Think Jay Shetty from On Purpose, Dan Harris from 10% Happier, and Dave Desteno from How God Works, and more.

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match your gift. That's give directly.org slash happiness lab to donate. All right, guys, super excited to you have this morning with us, Corey Archibald and Casey Kennedy, who are the co-founders of Track APEC, who recently went public, stopped being anonymous on our show, which we were very privileged to have you guys there. Great to see you both. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for having us. Yeah. So I wanted to talk to you, guys again because I feel like the question of APAC funding and overall position on Israel has just become such a central issue in particular in Democratic primaries, although showing up in some Republican primaries as well. So I wanted to touch base with you guys about some of the races that you see as being

really significant just in terms of that funding question being a dividing line. But before I jumped into that, I wanted to just ask you guys. So how have things been going? How is it now, you know, coming out and being public faces. I know you guys have gotten a lot of scrutiny online. Casey, I know you have been punished in terms of your career. You lost your job for the work that you're doing. So Casey, maybe start with you on how things are going. Yeah, it's definitely been a tumultuous month, to say the least.

Shortly after we did our initial interview with you folks, I did lose my job. That followed a doxing and harassment campaign from accounts like stop anti-Semitism and that whole network of pro-Israel troll accounts. Basically, my employer just didn't want to deal with that, so I'm no longer with them. But on the bright side, the silver lining is that's really just unleashed me and given me all the time in the world to focus now on this, what's up until now been a volunteer time passion project for me.

Now I can really focus on it full time and work on a lot of things that I've been pushing to the back burner. and I'm excited for the opportunity to work on it even more. Did you expect, when you came forward, did you expect it would be a problem for your employer or did that kind of come out of the blue for you? I was definitely unsure. I was operating the account anonymously

for that exact reason. I just didn't want to risk it. I obviously wasn't informing them of what I was doing during my free time. And I thought that I might be able to explain where I was coming from and maybe, you know, work out a way to keep my job. But it all just up pretty quickly.

That's crazy to me. I mean, all you do is put forward publicly available information, compile publicly available information. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty awful that people can just make smears and just really baseless claims and have that up in somebody's livelihood. So I know I'm not the only one.

I'll be okay. I have other means to make my living. A lot of other people don't. And I think that's a really important point. point that we have to keep pushing in this narrative. You're seeing a lot of shift right now happening in the political spectrum, but it's not only in the political spectrum that we need to have this attention focused. It's regular people who are speaking up who are also being skewed and targeted. Yeah. Corey, how about you? Oh, sorry. No, as Casey said,

it has definitely been a very tumultuous month. I have not had the same kind of impact in scrutiny that he has, although I've certainly had people picking through my very online life that I have lived for decades. And, you know, oh, congratulations. You uncovered things that I post about constantly. Well done you, I guess. But I guess people are supposed to, they want me to be ashamed of who I am and I'm not. I'm proud of the work that I've done and what we've been able to achieve through this project. And if anything, those kinds of attacks and scrutiny just make us more determined to keep doing what we're doing. All right.

So let's turn to the topic at hand. There's a ton of races that we could have picked to focus on. But, Corey, why don't you go ahead and give us a little bit of a rundown of a few of the Democratic primaries that you're really watching where the question of APAC funding has taken a sort of central spotlight? Yeah, of course. Well, we are, as many people are, we are closely following and engaging. with both races for Corey Bush and her rematch against Wesley Bell and Abdul-El-Aid.

Both of those races are important to us not only because of who the candidates are, especially because of who the candidates are and because of what they represent and they are objectively the best choice in those primaries, but also I got a little personal connection to both races in the sense that I worked very closely with Corey Bush and her first two for Congress. And I took it very personally the way that she was attacked and smeared by A-PAC. It was part of the reason for the inspiration for founding this PAC and for joining up with Casey and working on this project. And then, of course, Abdul L. Seid, he's running against Haley Stevens, who is another villain. A-Pag dumped truckloads of cash into the race against Andy Levin

to get her into office. And so that's another one that I take a bit personally. And so for that reason, you know, those are, those are two races that are, I think, have the opportunity once those two are in, once Corey is restored to Congress and once Abdul is in the Senate, I think they will have a significant impact on the direction of democratic policy. And so those are very important races to us. But, you know, there are also a number of other races that we have, we've supported. Sorry, just really quickly on Abdul Al Sayo, because there's another significant contender in that race, Mallory McMorrow and I actually haven't followed closely. What is she, what is she said or has she said anything with regard to APAC funding?

What's your sense there? Casey, I'll let you take this one if you want. Mallory McMorro's been an interesting kind of case study for how the needle has been moving on this topic within the Democratic Party. I'll pull up my story while you're talking. Yeah, exactly. You had a great piece on that. Um, she actually, some supporters had, um, kind of leaked to the press that they had read a position paper that she had submitted to a pro-Israel organization, which we're pretty sure based on, um, reporting out, they didn't just leak it to the press. And they gave it to, was it Ryan Grimm dug it up. Is that how it originally came to a, okay, okay. Ryan is, is synonymous with the press.

That's right. That's right. All right. It's on Michigan. Rob site's own, Ryan Grimm broke that Mallory McMorrow had submitted a position paper to a pro-Israel group, which was an A-PAC confirmed at that time right out the gate. It wasn't a-P-so that her supporter said it was A-PAC. I suspect that it was actually DMFI, Democratic majority for Israel, and that the supporter was using A-PAC as a shorthand because DMFI is a shorthand. Which is what we do, frankly. I mean, we use APAC as kind of a shorthand to refer to the whole lobby. But anyway, go ahead.

I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. So they call an APAC position paper, but I think it was DMFI. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. A PAC ally, DMFI.

She had submitted a position paper. And obviously that what that position paper hasn't been made public, but we can infer what was included in there based on the comments of those supporters. Outstanding. Yeah. Yeah, they really gave her a lot of praise for her strong pro-resterial position. And we also found out that she had taken a trip to Israel, which we believe was with the American Israel Education Foundation, is Apex Nonprofit Arm. So that's definitely concerning. She has said that she agrees it could meet the definition of genocide, but it's not the forthright conviction that we're looking for in a candidate in this moment who we're really looking down the moral clarity to take a bold stand and not be kind of hedging their bets of where special.

might come after them for speaking the truth. Yeah, that kind of feels like her vibe on a range of issues on health care as well. She's tried to kind of, you know, signal. Yeah, I'd love to have universal health care, but here's why we can't do it. It feels like she's kind of threading a needle. You can see she's sort of pinned between the progressive lane that Abdul Al-Said is filling and the establishment lane that Haley Stevens is filling with the backing of APEC. So that's another one where the split is going to be interesting to see, I'm not

sure right now how that's going to play out. The polls have them pretty evenly matched up. All three of them. Yeah, pretty close. Yeah. There would be some interesting plays for sure in that race. Ryan, maybe you should set up for us the Nita Alam race because I know that's versus Valerie Fushi, which is another one that I know you've done a lot of reporting on and then we can get Corey and Casey to weigh in on that one as well. Yeah, this race, this is a rematch of a race from 2022, when Nita Alam announced her candidacy, she was a county commissioner from Durham. And she was close, if you remember, she was close friends with a group of Muslim men who were a victim of a hate crime.

If, like, it was this, like, horrific, like, national story, um, where several men were killed in Durham. And it became, like, huge news, definitely in North Carolina. but even around the country and around the world. And that inspired her to get into local office. So she ran, became a county commissioner. Then she ran for the house seat. And then Valerie Foucher came in with enormous amounts of backing,

not just from APEC, but also from crypto. And she ended up only losing by four points or something. You guys might remember betterly, 4,000 votes or a very, very, very close race. even though she was outspent absolutely massively. Now, North Carolina has redrawn the district, and it's actually more favorable now to an alum, if this would have been the old district, she actually probably would have won,

even given the massive amount of crypto and APEC money being spent. As we covered on breaking points, Foucher, throughout the last couple years, or has kind of turned against it. Israel. She's made some critical comments in an interesting way. And in the back of her mind, and I was assumed, but definitely in the back of my mind,

as she was doing, I was like, oh, I bet she assumes that Nita's going to launch another challenge to her and sees this as a massive political vulnerability because there's just so much money on the table. And either you guys can respond, but while you do, I'll just put up this, DMFI, put out yesterday its list of dozens of endorsements of Democrats

across the country and Foucher was not on there which is quite interesting because it either means they're so frustrated that she distanced herself from them

anticipating this challenge or they recognize that even rebranded as DMFI this pro Israel money is just too damaging in a Democratic primary to be public about. Yeah, I mean, I think Valor Fushi is someone who it's another one of this. I have no idea.

I actually just learned this recently. I think it is Fushi. I used to say Fouchet also. But I, well, one of us is correct. Yeah, when Crystal said Fushie, I was like, that might actually be right. I just have only ever read it. Same. Yeah, I was actually corrected on it by someone from North Carolina recently.

I'll take that as gospel. But I, you know, this is, this is another interesting case because, you know, what we see happening with her, I think, is, is representative of the work that we're trying to achieve here. We want politicians to change their positions. We want them to recognize that they are creating a political liability for themselves by working with APAC and DMFI. And so I, in one sense, it's hard to know because I'm not inside somebody's head. So I don't know exactly how genuine her. shift is. But I would say that paired with her somewhat critical comments of the genocide in Gaza, I think it does seem to be something of a genuine change in her position. And to that, I'll say, I've spent a lot of 2025 feeling on one hand very, like immensely relieved to see such a shift in a lot of politicians and public figures and how they view what's happening in Gaza and our role and our complicity in it. But on the other hand, it's so frustrating because a lot of people had to die for you to learn that lesson. And it just feels like she's a little late to the game. Like I welcome the change. I hope it's genuine. I feel that it's genuine. You know,

time will tell. But, you know, if I have to choose between someone. who was late to the game in that way on such a life or death matter, I'll take the person who was on the right side the whole time. And what are some of the other, there were a couple other races that you guys had sent me that were ones that I was less familiar with. One is the congressional race that now Colin Allred has jumped into in Texas after he withdrew from the Senate race. Talk about a few of the races that are a little bit more under the radar for people.

Yeah. So now down in Texas in the newly redistricted 33rd district, there's a candidate that we're supporting named Zishon Hafiz. He is going to be running against in the primary, Colin Allred, who just dropped out of the Texas Senate race to go run for a seat in Congress in the House. And also Representative Julie Johnson, who's currently representing the 32nd District, is going to be campaigning in the 33rd District for 20th. 2026. Julie Johnson is an active APAC-backed rep. She's only taken a little over $40,000 from the Israel lobby, but she votes in lockstep with them. Colin Allred has accepted over $646,000 from pro-Israel groups, including APAC and DMFI in the past, although it seems he did stop taking APAC and DMFI money after the 2022 cycle. but again, looking at his voting record, he was a pretty reliable pro-Israel vote in the House.

So in this race, we are supporting Zishan Hafiz. He's committed to rejecting APEC and the Israel lobby outright, and he's calling for overturning Citizens United to get big money out of our politics. He's never taken any corporate money. This is something that he's made really foundational in a central plank of his campaign. And these are the kind of candidates that we're looking to get involved with, who really have the backbone to stand up, call a genocide a genocide, and do what they can in their capacity as a federal representative to stop our complicity in this genocide. And that sounds like one where there's a very clear divide there.

And if I could just jump in really quickly on both of these two races that we just talked about, you know, the North Carolina four race and the Texas 33 race, these are two primaries that are coming up very soon. March 3rd is the primary for both of these races. We are less than 90 days away. And we're also, I know, I had to sound like fundraiser, but I am one. We are coming up on the end of quarter. So, you know, if you're sitting at home and you're looking for candidates to support, like, this is the moment to pay attention.

This is the moment to think about these races because these are the, this is the point at which we decide what the future the Democratic Party is going to look like no matter what Ken Martin decides to bury. And Corey, tell me a little bit or Casey, whoever's, you know, wants to jump on it. about California 7 and May Vang. Go for that one, Casey. Yeah, so my Vang is challenging APEC-backed rep Doris Matsui. Doris Metsui is 81 years old and she's running for re-election. She actually filled the seat of her late husband, Bob Metsui, who died in Congress back in 2005. Doris Metsui is another reliable pro-Israel vote.

She consistently ranks among the most pro-Israel votes in the Democratic caucus. and she's since married a billionaire. So she is, you know, just really out of touch with what we need in these times. She's not bringing the fight to all of the corruption and the madness that we see going on in Washington. And Ma Vang has stepped up. She's a, I believe she's a city council member currently. And she is outright rejecting APEC in the Israel lobby, corporate money. And she calls a genocide a genocide.

She's really bringing the pressure to Doris and Batsui, who, has previously not spent a lot of time in the district. You'll see her making her campaign stops now. You can tell she's feeling the pressure. And this kind of young, exciting candidate is another one that we're thrilled to see stepping up into the ring. And then the last one you guys had sent me, and then we have some sort of broader, more general questions, but was Cameron Kasky who, yeah, Kyle and I actually just interviewed him last week. He's running in the seat in New York that's opened up by Jerry Nadler's retirement, very crowded primary. A bunch of people jumped into that one.

What makes Cameron stand out to you guys? Yeah. So Cameron is, I mean, for one, I've followed his activism since the days of Parkland. And I've just been so impressed with him as an activist and the way that he consistently speak so clearly on issues. He's not afraid to take a stand. And he has certainly demonstrated that in the short time that he's been running this campaign. There is no other candidate in this race currently. that, as you said, it's a very crowded primary, and yet not a single one of them in a district

that, you know, heavily favored Zoran in the recent mayor election. Not a single one of them has come out very clearly and made a stand about Israel committing a genocide or calling for an arms embargo or rejecting support from APAC and the Israel lobby just generally. So he is the most clear on this issue. And he, I think he just represents such an important voice that I think would be a real game changer in Congress. Yeah. And for people who don't know, he was there. He survived the Parkland shooting. You know, he's 17 years old. He became an activist. He talks about, you know, starting that organization sitting in his bedroom. And also has really been through the ringer, you know, Alex Jones and these people saying he's a crisis actor and all that. You know, I don't know if it was Alex Jones specific. I shouldn't say that. But there were right wing activists saying that he was a crisis actor. And so he has really been through the fire in terms of political activism. And, you know, I was really impressed with. him when I spoke with him last week as well. How much do you, so one of the questions I had for you guys that I think we touched on before

and you've kind of touched on here as well is politicians are starting to get the memo of like, oh, I should say I'm not going to take APAC money. You saw Gavin Newsom after initially just being like, that's interesting. That's an interesting question saying, no, I'm not going to take any APAC money. Although Ryan feels like he left himself a little wiggle room there. But in any case, he clearly wanted to give the impression that that was his answer. Seth Moulton came out, oh, no, even after he had asked APEC to support him, he's like, oh, I don't want anything to do with these people. So what are the follow-up questions that people should be asking as it increasingly becomes clear that this is a politically toxic position, but you know you're going to have politicians who want to have their cake and eat it too.

Who want to signal to the base like, oh, yeah, totally. I'm with you guys. I'm against, I'm not going to say it's a genocide, but I'm against bad things. But at the same time, they still want to be able to get that money and that support from the Israel lobby. So what are the follow-up questions that people should be asking? And can I just tack on to that quickly to ask, are there new other than like Newsom doing, I don't know if anyone could pull off what Newsom did quite like Newsom did, but are there new lines that we're seeing be rolled out, kind of to either mask or hedge? Is there anything people should be paying attention to specifically? Yeah, great question. Yeah, I think Casey, do you want to go first or I can use it?

I'll jump on to Emily's point real quick there just while I have it in my mind. I would say standing against sending offensive weapons to Israel is a big one for us. We're, that's, that is what we see as hedging. A weapon is a weapon. A bomb is a bomb. The more bombs that you send to Israel,

the more for self-defense, the more bombs they have to use for offense. So that's definitely a line that we see as kind of a red flag when we're assessing candidates and we will probe to find out more. Corey, did you want to jump on that other? Yeah, I think just to add on to that point, I mean, like Rashida Talib has talked about this. You know, she has said the words, a weapon as a weapon. And others have made the point that even if we take it face value, even if we just accept as truth, what is stated, that the weapons that we provide for what are supposed to be defensive purposes, are only used in that capacity. Well, certainly it frees up military resources for them to be able

to focus on not only committing genocide in Gaza, but also attacking, you know, their neighbors and creating, you know, hostilities in all parts of the region. So I think the only thing that sends a message because so much of our, of so much of the support that goes into the, the Israeli military comes from U.S. aid, the only way to send a message that, like, we are no longer on board with what you're doing is to say you're cut off. And that's the line that needs to be drawn. So we're not going to hedge and split hairs on what's an offensive and what's a defensive weapon. Either when there is, there are very clear U.S. laws that state that if someone is receiving U.S. military aid and they are committing war crimes, which Israel very clearly

has in multiple ways, then we are supposed to cut off the supply of aid. That is, that's our own laws that we're violating when we, you know, try to split hairs and say what's defensive and what's offensive. How do you guys count the money that shows up when it says like $40,000 from pro-Israel groups? Like, is that A-PAC? So it's going to be A-PAC and DMFI Or is it also people who have previously given to A-PAC? Like what's the- So up until now it has been money from pro-Israel, any pro-Israel PACs.

So there's like a whole slate beyond A-PAC and DMFI of these smaller groups that within the Israel lobby ecosystem, we've got a full spreadsheet of them on our website. But basically we take those PAC IDs and then just we run an FEC report. So we pull it from the Federal Election Commission and it just aggregates the date of how much has gone through the PAC to the candidate. That can also include a conduit contribution. So like APAC will bundle all the donor money through their website or through their portal to the candidate. So that's where those numbers. We also track the independent expenditures.

So if APAC or any of their allies are spending independently to run ads or any other. campaign activity on behalf of the candidate or to attack their opponent, we'll also add that into the candidate's lobby total. Yeah, that has a lot to do with why Wesley Bells and George Latimer's totals are so high because a lot of that was the independent expenditures. Oh, my gosh. They had so much money come in for them. But we are expanding on that.

So as I think we mentioned the last time we saw you guys that, you know, APAC is starting to change tactics. They've always kind of done this. They've always created these, these like secret donating. portals where, you know, donors can just go straight, they get a, you know, a link straight to a person's donation page where they can donate without having to, like, have the label A-PAC attached to it. But we see, you know, there's been reporting recently about how they are increasing use of that

tactic, and we expect that they will. And so one of the things that we're doing with, as we ramp up and we're working to expand our team is we're going to be expanding our data capabilities so that we can more carefully track these large donors that are, you know, very closely affiliated with APAC. They're consistent APAC donors and they're also funneling, like, you'll see like big money drops that happen, you know, in a coordinated fashion. And so we want to be able to track and report on that more accurately so that we can reflect the genuine total that's coming into these reports. Yeah, you would think it would be something that that LLMs could even help

with. You know, in other words, if you've got, let's say you've got a donor who has given, you know, more than $5,000 over the last several cycles to APAC or to DMFI. So you know that that's like, that's like an APAC donor. And then you see them maxing out to a candidate. And then on that same day, you see 10 other people max out to that candidate. Like, you couldn't, you couldn't say that's 100% APAC money, but you could be like, this is. Yeah, exactly. It's very likely this was a coordinated.

This was either a fundraiser or an email that went out to this group. Yeah. Because that's how to put the hallmarks of, yes. Yes, bears the hallmarks. Yeah. Of a pro-Israel information campaign. This is actually a good segue to ask you guys, how can people support your work? Because you are continuing to expand.

And as you said, this is really, you know, crunch time in terms of these democratic primaries. But also, as I said, it's a relevant issue in increasingly. the Republican side as well. Yeah. So for example, if you are interested in supporting any of the races that we just talked about and supporting our work in amplifying those races, a great place to go is to track apac.com slash endorsements. That will take you to a page that has all of our endorsed candidates on it that we just discussed. And each one of them links to a tandem donate page where you can split a contribution between our organization and that campaign directly. Those tandem forms really are something like they can raise a lot. I think we

raised what was it over $20,000 for Afton Bain on our tandem form just in the last few weeks lead up to to that special election. So, you know, this has a really powerful tool to amplify the grassroots effect and it not only puts money directly into those campaigns that could really use those boosts, but it also amplifies what we're able to do in support of them on the IE side. And as you guys, as you guys grow, there's going to be more scrutiny on you. And because you guys are talking specifically about, you know, campaign finance and spending, it's going to be increasingly important probably to be way, way more transparent than a normal organization is with the spending. So would you guys commit to some sort of, I know, independent audit or something that tracks, track, track, APEC so that people who are,

like giving money no like because you're going to have people in this world who are like no no these are just grifters who are like cashing in because fec reports are very confusing and you see money moving in and moving out and it's very easy for people to just screenshot and be like hmm what's going on here and then it discredits everything that's going on um so have you thought about how you're going to use some level of transparency to counteract what is like like i can guarantee that's coming if it has it already. We're already seeing some of that. I mean, there's been some critics from the left that just say, oh, you're just grifting.

I mean, as you said, the FEC reports are out there. It's publicly available data. It can be hard to parse, absolutely. We've always been very conservative in our spending. So, like, we've been building up our war chest to be able to put as much as we can. In fact, until very, very recently, Casey and I weren't even taking a salary from the pack. So, you know, we've been very conservative in that way that. We just really wanted to build up our resources.

I mean, in terms of transparency, people can always ask us any question that they have about the FEC report. That's, you know, I don't think that we've had a discussion about any specific transparency project internally. All right. Something to think about. Sure, of course. All right, guys. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. I know it is hectic and crazy and you have a lot going on.

So really appreciate your work and really appreciate your time with us this morning. Thank you so much. yeah it's our pleasure happy holidays you guys too that was great thank you thank you all right guys well let's go ahead and wrap up the the free show here got a bunch of interesting stuff we're going to get to in the premium half in particular this TPUSA conference ben Shapiro coming at meg and kelly and Tucker Carlson and Tucker responds and Tucker's calling out the Islamophobes So that's a spicy one. And Emily, you mentioned Erica Kirk endorsed J.D. Vance at this.

That part I missed, actually. Last night. Yeah, it was late last night. So she's not on board for Trump, 2028? Not on board like Dershowitz. But also. I was going to say, Mary Madelson, again, to the anti-Semitic caricature. You guys are doing yourselves, no favors.

And then so the Erica Kirk endorsement wasn't just her. It was she said Turning Point USA is going to work on behalf of. of J.D. So already a lot of infrastructure behind him. Rubio, Marker Rubio, Hardest hit. When Rubio obviously was quoted in the Vanity Fair piece this week saying he's not going to run if JD runs. So Erica Kirk in that endorsement said that she said, we'll support my husband's friend, J.D. Vance. And so it's quite an interesting, quite an interesting development. Yeah, especially after that photo that people paid a lot of attention to with the hands and the hair

and the hands on the hips and whatever also makes it noteworthy, but there's a lot of, yeah. I mean, put it, I don't know, whatever. Oh, we don't have to get into Erica Kirk discourse, not in the free half anyway. If you want more Erica Kirk discourse, you got to pay for it, people. We also have the vague wrote an interesting op-ed about, you know, what really makes you an American, really pushing back against, like, the anti-Indian hate in particular, but also the sort of like, you know, Nick Fuentesification of the Republican Party. Curious about you guys' thoughts on that. There was a big compact magazine piece about the quote-unquote lost generation of millennial men focusing on the media industry during the woke era that I would think Ryan would have some particular insights into.

So bunch of stuff. Katie Vance also posted it. So there's politics behind it too. Yes, for sure. So a bunch of stuff to get to in the premium portion. If you guys want to join us over there, join us at breaking point. Points.com become a premium subscriber. We will probably end up doing a breaking news segment tomorrow about whatever comes out from the Epstein files. We have some great content that all of us

put together over the past week or two to be posting over the holiday break. We'll also, you know, if there's big breaking news, one or the other of us will get it together and get to a camera and break down what's going on to the best of our ability. But outside of that, guys, happy holidays to all of you. I hope everybody has a restful. a nice time with family, with loved ones, and appreciates the, you know, the beauties of the season. And certainly I appreciate Ryan and Emily. Appreciate you guys.

Appreciate what we're able to do here as well. Yeah, love all you guys. Love all of the viewers. Appreciate it so much. All right, y'all. See you in the premium half. I knew it was a bomb the second that it exploded. I felt it ripped through me.

In season two of Rip Current, we ask, who tried to kill Judy Berry and why? They were climbing trees, and they were sabotaging logging equipment in the woods. She received death threats before the bombing. She received more threats after the bombing. I think that this is a deliberate attempt to sabotage our movement. Episodes of Rip Current Season 2 are available now. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What are the cycles fathers pass down that sons are left to heal? What if being a man wasn't about holding? it all together, but learning how to let go. This is a space where men speak truth and find the power to heal and transform. I'm Mike Della Rocha. Welcome to Sacred Lessons. Listen to Sacred Lessons on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Dr. Lari Santos from the Happiness Lab here. It's the season of giving, and this year, my podcast, The Happiness Lab, is partnering with Give Directly. a nonprofit that provides people in extreme poverty with the cash they need

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