Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/21/23: Debate On Trump's Removal From Ballot, Yemen Threatens War, Israel Economy Tanks, Israeli's Say Quiet Part Out Loud, Dems Shut Down Primary For Biden, Harvard President Plagiarism Scandal, Best Moments And Plot Twists Of 2023

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump being banned from the Colorado ballot, shocking poll numbers on Trump's removal, Yemen threatens massive war, Israeli's say quiet part out loud, Democrats shut down primary for Joe Biden, Harvard president caught in plagiarism scandal, Krystal and Saagar's best moments and plot twists of 2023.    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/ Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Indeed we do. Lots of big stories this week. So Sagar and I will break down how SCOTUS is going to play a key role in 2024 after Colorado, of course, attempting to kick Trump off of the ballot. So we'll get into all of that. And we have some polling about how people are initially reacting to that move by Colorado. We also have some dramatic developments in the Middle East, you know, things escalating between the U.S. and the Houthis out of Yemen. So we'll tell you what's going on there. We also had to poll some of the most insane comments that are coming out of Israel. There were so many of them, it was hard to choose. It was tough. And we felt we needed to devote an entire segment just to showcasing a few of them for you. So we'll bring you that as well. Also, the Democratic Party, once again, trying to cancel democracy in order to, quote unquote, save democracy. We'll give you the latest developments there. Sagar's taking a look at the Ivy Leagues. We've got a little bit of like attempted holiday cheer for you here at the end. We've done some year-end

superlatives that we will And they'll all be good. Reveal. They're all positive. Yeah, the minute that you go negative on these this year, it will get immediately very dark.

So we're trying to look at silver linings. We're looking at the best moments of the year, what we're looking forward to, those sorts of things. All to kick things off. Before we do that,

this is the last chance, last big show of the year. So if you can, if you're able to take advantage, we've got the Breaking Points discount right now for the yearly membership. We already have the Colorado stuff going on. So we promised you a crazy election, and it's certainly going to be crazy. So if you can help us out for the entire election year, you can go ahead and take advantage of that, breakingpoints.com.

As I said, we've got some other Christmas merch, all those other things that are available on our website. And we appreciate and love you all so much. One last thing, Crystal, can I just say, is that we discovered, as we had pointed out before, the number one way that our show grew by basically double this year on podcast was you guys sharing it. So if you can't afford it or any of that, if you could just do us a favor and text the show to a friend of yours, send an episode or any of that that you think would be helpful to them. It really does help us out or talk us up at the dinner table. That's one thing you could do for us, maybe this holiday season. But let's go ahead and start with SCOTUS as we were talking about. There has been a lot of stuff going on in the last two days. Colorado's Supreme Court

ruling 4-3 to block Trump of availability on the Republican ballot. This setting up a major Supreme Court challenge. The basis of this being alleging that he has committed, quote, an insurrection and has violated the clause of the 14th Amendment Equal Protection Clause. So what does all of that mean? And does President Biden agree? He weighed in yesterday on the tarmac at Air Force One. Here's what he had to say. Trump an insurrectionist, sir? Well, I think certainly you're self-evident. You saw it all. Now, whether the 14th Amendment applies, I'll let the court make that decision. But he certainly supported an insurrection.

No question about it. None. Zero. And he seems to be doubling down on about everything. Anyway. President Biden saying there's no question he committed an insurrection. I guess also at the same time, leaving it up to the court. This has also thrown things into the GOP primary. Vivek Ramaswamy, honestly, a genius move, in my opinion, being like, you know what? I will drop out, Crystal. I will drop out and pull myself off the ballot if they are allowed to block Trump. Now setting and throwing the gauntlet to Nikki Haley and to Ron DeSantis. DeSantis was asked about this on Newsmax.

Here's what he had to say. And real quick, fellow GOP 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy saying he will remove himself from the Colorado ballot unless Trump's eligibility is restored. Would you do the same? No, I think that's just playing into the left. I think the case will get overturned by the Supreme Court, but I've qualified for all the ballots. I'm competing in all the states, and I'm going to accumulate the delegates necessary. That's the whole name of the game in this situation. So it would just be playing to the left, Crystal. This just does demonstrate all the difficulty of running against Trump. And I

thought that those two clips actually show some of the political conundrums and dynamics that we have right now. We've got the president and most of the Democrats. They agree, like, I guess, at a rhetorical level, a quote-unquote insurrection was committed. This all actually started. You were the first person who ever showed it to me, actually, of those Atlantic articles of those law professors who were laying out this legal theory. It only took a matter of three months to go all the way to the Supreme Court. And now we're going to have it effectively has to be challenged sometime just in the next two weeks before January 4th. That's

the deadline before Colorado is allowed to implement this. And presumably the high court is going to take up this challenge. But politically, this has set up some crazy dynamics. But legally too, what we've discovered is that the court's ruling on this will set the rule for all 50 states. This is not an election decision, because if they rule on the side of the Colorado Supreme Court, they would decide that for the entire country, Donald Trump is not allowed to remain on the ballot. It's probably the most significant electoral case, I think, since Bush versus Gore. And that's just the first of many cases that will be appearing before the court this year. No doubt about it. So this is not a state election law issue.

That's why it would be relevant for the entire country. This has to do directly with this provision in the Constitution, which was originally put in place following the Civil War. It was used most often during Reconstruction to bar people who had been traitorous against our own country from ever holding office again. And just to give people the text of what that says, this is Section 3 of the Civil War Era 14th Amendment. It says, quote, no person shall hold any office, civil or military, under the U.S. who have previous, having previously taken an oath as an officer of the United States to support the Constitution of the United States shall have

engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. So anybody who has to be barred from holding office if they engage in an insurrection. Left unsaid here is how you determine if someone engaged in an insurrection. And that has never been decided. And so in that way, I actually think it's very appropriate that this go to the Supreme Court for,

not that I have a lot of confidence in this court at this point. I think it's a very partisan entity. Three of the nine justices actually put on the court, of course, by Donald Trump. But I do think that is the appropriate place for them to adjudicate how should this provision in the Constitution actually be applied. And, you know, there's a lot of hot takes out there. Perhaps my take is the hottest of all, which is I actually think it's a very tricky legal question I don't think that it is clear-cut in either direction now a lot of the analysis that I've seen effectively people who are opposed to this decision it effectively seems like they just don't think that this should be in the

constitution at all that they think it should be left to the voters I think that's a perfectly legitimate point of view it's not one that I happen to agree with I think it should be left to the voters. I think that's a perfectly legitimate point of view. It's not one that I happen to agree with. I think it's appropriate for a state to have the means to bar people who have engaged in traitorous or rebellions or insurrections against the state to prohibit them from holding office. So I do think it's appropriate that something like this be in the constitution.

But then the question, this type of legal questions this raises is, you know, primarily, as I said, who are the office holders? That was actually what the lower Colorado court got hung up on as they said, well, technically, we don't think that the presidency qualifies as an office under this particular provision. That was the piece that the Colorado Supreme Court said, no, we think by the plain reading dictionary definition, the president of the United States will qualify. And then the key question is, okay, well the plain reading dictionary definition, the president of the United States will qualify. And then the key question is, OK, well, what's your definition of an insurrection?

And what's your definition of whether someone engaged in it? And who is it up to to determine? Does it have to be determined by an act of Congress? That's one possibility. That's what some other courts have ruled because there have been something like 18 cases so far on the same challenge in different states. All of them have been rejected except for this one. The other question then becomes, okay, well, does the state court have the ability in the jurisdiction to be able to rule on this question? So there are all kinds of very difficult and, frankly, unprecedented legal terrain here to navigate.

And so, like I said, I actually think it is entirely appropriate that this go to the Supreme Court for them to say, listen, this is the meaning of the text. This is how it's determined. This is the standard going forward. And also, let's be clear, it is almost unimaginable that this court is going to side with Colorado. Yeah, I very much doubt it. Actually, I don't think there's a chance it could go 9-0. I really do believe that, although maybe 7-2 or something like that from my court watchers. So I would split the difference. I don't think that people are saying that the clause itself is appropriate. It's just that the bar needs to be a lot higher.

So, for example, if we think about the Civil War, taking up arms and fighting for the Confederate States and literally fighting against your own country. One of the reasons why they have that provision in there was specifically about people who were officers of the United States military, or take Jefferson Davis. He was literally a sitting senator for the state of Mississippi. I mean, he genuinely committed treason. And yet this is where I think treason, the word itself, the eventual punishment for it, our public understanding of it, let's think about it.

I believe the Rosenbergs were the last people who were put to death for committing treason. Bob Hansen, the FBI spy from July 2001, I believe he also could have qualified for the death penalty because he was actively caught spying for Russia, but he eventually pleaded guilty and all that. Those are about as far as I go for what treason and that should look like. And I think the same should remain- But treason isn't in this provision. No, no, no. It doesn't say treason. In terms of how we publicly understand it, as in, for example, Hillary Clinton going on television and accusing Tulsi Gabbard of committing treason. She called her a Russian spy. That's outrageous to me because to me, the word treason, the idea,

the public understanding, the legal definition, it has to remain incredibly, incredibly high and used only in the rarest of circumstances when it truly qualifies. I think insurrection too is one there where we had a political, a civic, and a legal understanding of that time, of what it means to take up rebellion against the cause of the United States and the United States government. That is not even close to arriving at that bar for where I think we are right now, where I do think this comes into anti-democratic territory. Now, that being said, I agree. I'm glad that it's going to the Supreme Court, and I hope they set the bar as high as I just said, where unless you literally declare a civil war against the United States, actively use your office as a government holder at the federal level, and you violate your oath, and you work against those interests,

you aid and abet genuine enemies, foreign governments or others. That's one separate thing. But a political understanding here where we've already had the political means to deal with this, and that was called impeachment. And Trump didn't get impeached. I mean, this is something which I talked about previously. People can go roll it if they want. I think it was like January 7th, maybe January 8th. I did an entire monologue about this, about why I eventually thought that resolving this through small d democratic means to me remains the best possible avenue. I don't disagree that it's very, legally we should have something like this on the books, especially if we consider what the country and the environment and all of that were at the time. But there's also a reason it basically wasn't used for over

a hundred years. And I don't think we're even close to anything like that, nor should we be. So the definition of insurrection in the Merriam-Webster dictionary is an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government. I think January 6th meets that definition. But then so does BLM. Because very clearly what they were there to do and they were all saying 1776 and they certainly saw themselves as revolutionaries engaged in an act to try to. It was Keystone cops. Right. The fact that they had very little chance of succeeding doesn't really matter, though. The intent was to block the workings of our government and the peaceful transfer of power. So I don't think it's crazy to label this an insurrection. But again, I think it's tricky, right? The other question, there are First Amendment

issues here, too, in terms of whether Trump's speech that he gave that day, you know, is that protected political speech or because he was, you know, effectively inciting this insurrection? Does that then, you know, get excluded from the qualification of political speech? Again, I think these are difficult legal questions, but there's a reason why, and we'll get to the polling a little bit, there's a reason why I think a majority of the country is like, yeah, I support it. Because if you just look at the plain face reading of this text that no person shall hold any office if they shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof, the majority of the

country, I think, looks at that and goes, yeah, that rings kind of true. So that's why I think it's entirely appropriate for this to go to the Supreme Court. The reason, Sagar, why I said that, a lot of people, it seems to me like they're not arguing the legal merits of the case. They're just arguing that this really shouldn't be a clause in the Constitution is because if you're just appealing to like, you know what, it should be the voters that decide, period, end of story. I do think that's a legitimate position to hold. It's not the one that I happen to hold, but I do think it's a legitimate position. But that means you just don't think that this should apply in any instance. Part of the reason why this hasn't been used in 100 years is because we haven't seen this particular set of facts and circumstances ever unfold before us. I just think it's I don't think it comes even close. I mean, the reason I could say BLM is a burndown on a police station.

That's revolt against civil authority. But we're trying to overturn an election. That's my thing. It'd be ludicrous to prosecute them. They should be prosecuted for property damage, not for insurrection. I mean, this is one of those where even this whole, like you said, Keystone cops trying to get electors changed and all that, that has all been dealt with at a very basic legal matter. Rising to this, and this is the other thing about insurrection as we commonly understand it from the Civil War time period, this was legally defined by acts of Congress. Yes, by the Republican Congress. Also, I should note, much of that provision and of that time was when the Southern

states no longer had any political ability to exert their will in Congress because of the radical Republicans that were in charge at that time. I'm not even against that. I think it was probably a good thing. But the legal understanding and the questions around insurrection and who was a legitimate officer and whether they violated their court and what that all meant, that all changed around 1880 and such forth as we came to a reconciliation part and we moved on past Reconstruction. There's a lot of debates and things about that time at the country. But this is my point, is that the bar needs to be so incredibly high, as in like the Rosenbergs literally passing along nuclear secrets to the Russians or Benedict Arnold or quite literally Bob Hanson.

But treason, again, is a different question. Yeah, but so is insurrection and treason are very similar. In what way is January 6th not an act or instance of revolting against civil authority? I mean, it seems to me the textbook definition of that. But then any protest is as well. No, that's not true. But it could be applied that way.

We have not, have you ever seen an instance, maybe 2000, but have you ever seen an instance where you have people being incited by a president to go and march on the Capitol and try to overturn the legitimate election results? We have not seen that before. So to say this is just like any other protest, you know, and I know this is one of the arguments and you see this from, you know, some of my compatriots on the left of basically like, this is a slippery slope

and it's gonna be used against us. And I am sensitive to that. But I do think that this is different of character and kind than anything we have seen. I mean, it was shocking to us on that day when we saw this unfolding. If you read the messages of what these people thought they were doing,

they clearly thought they were doing an insurrection. They thought that they were revolutionaries. They believed that they were patriots in this moment, but they definitely had a revolutionary fervor and were trying to overturn legitimate election results. So are there tricky legal questions? Yes. Do I think it's difficult to say, okay, does this technically meet the definition? Does it technically meet the definition of he engaged in it or was aiding and abetting it?

I think that's difficult. I think the free speech questions are difficult, but I just can't see how people just dismiss it out of hand. And most of the people who I see doing that, they don't actually engage with any of the legal arguments whatsoever. So again, there is an appropriate place to adjudicate these difficult legal questions. That is the Supreme Court of the United States. And so I think it is good that this is going there now. I think it's good it's going there in an expedited fashion. I wish I had more confidence in the court, but it is what it is at this point in history. And the other, the last thing I'll say on this too, is, you know, some of the like, the freak out, I guess, on the right over this is like, we know it's going to be overturned. This is one challenge out of 18. It's good that he's getting his due process. This is going through the process right now. And you know what the end result is going to be. It's probably only going to inure to his benefit in the Republican primary.

And it's very, very, very like 99% likely that the Supreme Court is going to overturn it anyway. Very true. That said, it's one of those moments of like, oh, wow, they would do it if they could. And I think that's where, I mean, think about it too. It's like when people freak out about an abortion law in Texas, they're like, oh my God, if these people get power, this is what they want to do on a national level. Yeah, but those actually get enacted and have power. In Texas, but they got this in the Colorado Supreme Court. No, it's going to get a bit overridden. Okay, let's just put it then. A right-wing state wants to, I mean, this happens all the time. You have a Mississippi or Florida or whatever that passes some law. They know it's

unconstitutional. They pass it anyway. Then Democrats are like, look what they would do if they possibly could. And then it goes to the Supreme Court and it gets struck down. These are, of course, people have not even a right. I think they should freak out about it just from a small d democratic level. I just think, again, to come back to the bar and what it looks like. I agree with you. It absolutely should go to the Supreme Court. I'm glad it is.

I'm glad it actually will get resolved early rather than have all this stuff play out now years. I would say the same for January 6th. But Trump has never been convicted of insurrection. That's another thing is that there was, well, it's complicated, but back in the civil war time, there was a military tribunal and military understanding on the terms of Appomattox and the terms of, I forget where Sherman accepted the other surrender, but there was a commonly led understanding of the Union Army as blessed by the commander in chief of what it looked like and what the terms of parole. Now, these were all laid out at the time and such that you stayed within that. You would no longer, you know, you could be eventually rehabilitated and Congress itself could decide that you were no longer and

you were able to run for election. This is all long, you know, reconstruction era stuff. We haven't had a single one of those types of understandings with Trump, which is again, why I don't even think it comes close to the bar. So what, what to you in terms of like, if something, if a different set of facts had unfolded on January 6th, what to you would meet the bar? So if our Congress passed a law that said January 6th itself was considered to be insurrection. So you think this should be in the hands of Congress? I think it should be in the hands of the commander in chief and of the Congress. We should commonly come to an understanding of which, and then should then be challenged and

tested within the court where we can have a genuine understanding and have a total democratic buy-in. This act was itself an insurrection, as the union did. It's not necessarily that January 6th doesn't qualify. It's that you don't think that the Colorado Supreme Court is the appropriate venue to determine. Oh, absolutely. But if the Congress had passed an act that said, yes, January 6th was an insurrection, you'd say, okay. Absolutely. Absolutely, I would. Just as we did under Reconstruction, as we understood what rebellion was, as we understood what Confederates were. This is about both democracy, about law, and about the way that we,

I mean, let's go to the next one here, please, so we can put this up on the screen. This is why I do think it's complicated, and it gets to what you're talking about, which is that the Supreme Court, about being disqualified for insurrection, and they specifically point to people like Zebulon Vance in 1875, who was a genuinely unreconstructed Southerner and Confederate who is disqualified from holding office. And this gets to the question then of how it's interpreted in the modern era. And actually, Colorado is not the first time that this has happened to them. So let's go to the next part. You found this, where the presidential hopeful shows that a naturalized citizen who wanted to run for president,

despite not being American-born, lost his bid. Why? Because he contended under the Constitution's requirement that the U.S.-born provision violates equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment. This is something that Cenk has put forward previously. A magistrate judge actually ruled that it did not affect the validity of the Constitution's distinction between natural-born and naturalized citizens, he eventually appealed that decision and a panel of the 10th U.S. Court of Appeals backed the judge who found that the state has a legitimate interest in leaving him off of the ballot if he cannot assume the office. This gets to a little bit

of the interpretation of that 14th Amendment. Let me explain why this matters and is relevant to this particular case. It's because one of the legal questions here is whether the state courts are the appropriate venue to decide constitutional ballot issues. So even though this is a different constitutional ballot issue, in this instance, not only did the original, the Colorado, I believe, state Supreme Court decide that, yes, it is an appropriate venue for us to decide. We have an interest directly in deciding these constitutional ballot issues. But the other thing that's interesting is when it went up to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and they agreed with the Colorado State Court, guess who was on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals? Niels Gorsuch.

So that particular legal question, that's why that's relevant here. Now, there are a host of other legal questions as I've been discussing. The First Amendment issues, what is an insurrection? How do you determine? Is this provision of the Constitution

what they call self-executing? Meaning that you can just apply it based on its sort of plain face meaning, or does it require an act of Congress in order, as Sager is suggesting, that's what he thinks it should be at least, that it requires an act of Congress to set forth, okay, here's the definitions, here's how it, here's how it operates, here's how we determine, et cetera. Again, all of these things are sort of open-ended because we have had so little precedent in terms of using this provision after the Civil War. So, you know, it's, as I said, I do think it's a complicated legal question.

I don't think that it is, like, easy. I think these are tricky things. But when you look at the just basic definition, you look at the plain English language interpretation of what this provision says, it does seem like it applies. To me, it does seem like it applies. I think, to me, January 6th, I think it's very easy to classify it as an insurrection when you consider the intent and what the people involved were in understanding their business on that day, what they were up to on that day. Obviously Trump was, the whole reason they were there was because of Trump, right? So I don't think it's crazy to look at this and go, yeah, this is appropriate. And again, I come back to,

I think it is also appropriate to have a provision like this in the constitution. I think a state has an interest in protecting, you know, the protecting the country from people who have attempted to subvert it in the past. I think that's like a basic sort of tenet of statehood. I don't disagree that it should. I mean, at a certain point, whether we agree or not on the Constitution doesn't matter because it ain't going to change. So it's there. The 14th Amendment is a long time test of time. So it is what it is. As for the intent thing, though, this is where I just disagree. Because, for example, if I join a cult and I kill somebody in cold blood or I killed somebody because of my religious beliefs, am I going to get prosecuted for religious crime, especially if it doesn't fall within

their hate crime provision? No. Even though that would be defined as a religious act of war, whatever you want to call it rhetorically. I would be prosecuted under the state of Virginia or DC or wherever I happen to resign, and I would kill that person. They would prosecute me for murder. If it fell within a hate crime provision, then they could add on, you know, whatever. These are well, commonly understood within statute of which they can be applied and adjudicated through the legal system that have now stood the test of time forever. You know, a common understanding of something like a hate crime, for example, I mean, that stuff gets thrown around all the time. There's a reason that the judge gets to actually rule as to what it is and what it's not. We could sit here on a news show and call something a haze crime. That's fine.

It's within the First Amendment, but that's not how the law works. So I just think saying how it appears based on our individual understanding, that's not how interpreting the Constitution, the law, nor should it work, both from a civil code and a criminal code. It's well within an actual understanding through the legal system. So I guess the one thing- There is actually quite a lot of precedent of using the dictionary definitions of terms, and even looking back at what was the dictionary definition of the term during the time period when this amendment was instituted to try to determine what was the meaning, plain face meaning at the

time. So it's not like you have to be some secret decoder to figure things out. Different judges apply this differently. Some of them do take more of the like secret decoder approach. That was, I mean, for example, it feels preposterous, the lower court ruling that the presidency is not an office of the United States. You look at that and you're like, what? That's ridiculous. But, you know, if you look at this provision versus that provision and maybe at the time and they should have specified

it in particular. And, you know, there are other courts who have thought that as well. And that part is sort of in dispute. So there are different ways of analyzing this. But I just want to point out that it is not unusual or, you know, out of the realm of what's appropriate to just look at the dictionary definition of these terms and what the people writing, you know, out of the realm of what's appropriate, just look at the dictionary definition of these terms and what the people writing, you know, this text at the time, what they would have thought that these words mean. Yeah, well, you and I are opening up originalism and interpretation and living constitutions and all this other stuff.

Yes, there are many schools of thought on how to do this appropriately. I'm sure the lawyers here are tearing their hair out. And let's also be clear. Like, I've said this many times before. All of that sort of goes out the window because of the partisan nature of the courts where, you know, I have no doubt that when it gets to the Supreme Court, they're going to find whatever legal rationale that they want to do what they want to do. legal justification after the fact. So it's not like I think that these people are all like just calling balls and strikes and trying to faithfully apply some sort of an approach. Not at all. But there are plenty of instances where just looking at the dictionary definition is actually how people approach these rulings. And, you know, we really are in unprecedented territory. We haven't seen

something like what happened on January 6th before. We haven't seen a president like Donald Trump before. We haven't seen, you know, this set of facts and circumstances in quite a long time. So again, difficult decisions, and I think it's appropriate to be left to the Supreme Court. It'll be fun. Crystal, I'm looking forward to hearing and seeing what happens. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal.

It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room.

You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to Voice Over on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice

in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal,

to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left.

In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free

on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Let's go to the next part here, and this is a political question, which I think is easier to talk about. Let's go and put this part here, and this is the political question, which I think is easier to talk about. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Democrats actually supporting the Colorado ruling 84-8, independents 48-35, Republicans who oppose at 66-24.

So the overall support number stands at 54, oppose at 33. Keep in mind this was a relatively quick one, sample of 3,400 people from YouGov, but still significant. The very first poll that we've actually seen on this direct question of the support for the Colorado court ruling disqualifying Trump from the primary ballot. Let's go to the next part here, please. And this is important as well, is that this has now put forward a political campaign on Democratic states. Lieutenant Governor of the state of California is now writing to the Secretary of State, Shirley Weber, to explore every legal option to remove former President Donald Trump from California's 2024 presidential primary. I would expect in the coming days that almost every Democrat or at least hard blue state is going to try and pursue this in terms of their lieutenant governorships.

Of course, it will eventually get adjudicated at the Supreme Court level, but they will try to get it to be done. It does show you, though, that this is tremendously politically popular with a lot of the Democratic Party and frankly, not even particularly injurious whenever you look at the independent number and the Republicans. And I think that's where, Crystal, we can agree at least on this is, I mean, I think on a question like this, the public opinion actually doesn't matter because this is the legal question, but because people are probably looking at it in the way that you are is like, did he do it or not? And most people do think Trump, at the very least, most people think Trump acted badly on that day. And I think this is probably the lens of which they're looking at it.

They're like, yeah, I would agree with that, something like that. Maybe they don't necessarily understand the legal ramifications of everything we're talking about. But as an actual political question, I think this fits even the Republican number, the 24%. Yeah, I was surprised by that. Even the Republican number, the 24%, that exactly matches. But it exactly matches the number of Republicans in a recent New York Times Santa poll who said that Trump shouldn't be on the ballot if he's convicted. Yeah. So it's the same thing. It's just people who, you know, within the Republican Party, the Nikki Haley voter who's really consolidating right now and actually doing pretty well in New Hampshire, I think that's where it comes down. Yeah. There is a very normie reaction here of like, yeah, January 6th was bad. And maybe it is appropriate that, you know, we take these sort of extraordinary measures against him. And just looking at the text here, that seems like

it fits. So I was actually surprised, though, that the numbers were this strong in favor of it, just because it is, you know, it is an extraordinary move. There's no doubt about it. It is a dramatic move to take leading president, the leading presidential candidate off the ballot. I don't deny that whatsoever. So I was I was actually a little surprised to see a 20 point margin in favor of that court decision. And in particular, I mean, I wasn't surprised at all to see 84 percent of Democrats support it. I wasn't that surprised to see that a plurality, 48 percent of independents support it. I was surprised to see that basically a quarter of Republicans are like, yeah, I think

that's appropriate, given the fact that Trump is still such a dominant figure within the Republican Party. I wonder if that number will move as the news cycle really kicks in and the very, very clear and hard partisan lines on this question sort of kick in. And if there's more of a rally to, you know, a sort of like tribal instinct or partisan rallying around what this question means, I wonder if you don't see that support on the Republican side dip. But I was I was kind of surprised by this instant poll reaction myself. I thought that there would be more of a 50-50 split split on this question. I would have assumed so, too,, I mean, I don't know.

It also is one of those where on January 6th, you saw Republicans are like, yeah, he acted badly, but I also think he's the best candidate. So people have complicated feelings about all of this. Inconsistent, yes. People are deeply inconsistent, which is part of why it's fun to cover politics. Let's cover this next one up on the screen. 53% previously had support, for example, the prosecution. Crystal, that almost exactly matches the number who support the barring of the ballot, which is why I think it's all coming down to a question of like, do I think Trump acted badly? Yeah. I also will say, for all

the stories that we do here, which are totally legitimate and which I genuinely still believe, I think Trump does have, you know, I would give him the edge, even though I think it's near a coin toss, is this is still an albatross around his neck. Most people, the more the question of like, do you like Trump and do you support, you know, his personal conduct or January 6th, anything related to stop this deal? We've seen people like Doug Mastriano, all these other, Kerry Lake and many of these other places. They lost big in deep red country when a generic Republican was doing very well on the ballot. So I would not count this an abortion out that could still sink him at the end of the day.

And Trump is his own worst enemy. For example, remember Sean Hannity kept trying to get him to endorse mail-in balloting during his town hall, and he just wouldn't do it. When he has a religious belief in his head, as he does that he believes the election was stolen from him, he will never drop it, guys, ever. And so if somebody's going to challenge him on it,

poke him, Biden or somebody starts to get on that, he'll give his rant about Dominion voting systems. You know what was interesting to me? I don't know if you guys saw this poll floating around, but there was a Des Moines Register poll, this like a very high quality poll of Iowa caucus goers. And they asked them all these different, like very inflammatory comments that Trump has made. Like, does that make you more likely to support him, less likely, or it doesn't matter? And the headline from this was that his comments about poisoning the blood of

America make more Republicans more likely to vote for him than less likely. It was 42 to 28. But actually, there was the one that had the most negative impact on Iowa caucus goers was a little surprising to me. It was 2020 election fraud justifies terminating parts of the U.S. Constitution. That was overwhelmingly negative. There were only 14 percent that said it made them more likely to support Trump. And there were 47% who said this makes me less likely to support Trump, which I found that interesting. It was, like I said, it was surprising to me. It also made me feel like maybe Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley and co have been too nervous about talking about any of this. I mean, this appears to be the most damaging comment that he's made. And I haven't heard any of them bring it up really at all. So there's that. But it also does show you that even within a Republican base that overwhelmingly does think that the election

was stolen, there is a discomfort with the level of disorder and chaos and certainly a direct attack on the Constitution that Trump has floated in the past. Yeah, definitely. I think that, I mean, look, it's the reason why is that people who even, let's say, for at least most Republicans I know, with people who are like, yeah, the election was stolen, they don't mean it in the way that Trump actually means it. They're like, well, Mark Zuckerberg, you know, censored the Hunter Biden laptop story. And that's election interference. I'm like, yeah, I mean, conceptually, yes, but that's not what Trump is saying. And I think that having to often grapple when it's truly like in your face and sometimes with Trump makes people uncomfortable. That said, I still think a lot of people are going to vote for him. I'm not quite sure I agree, though, because with DeSantis, he's got to win over Trump voters, too.

Nikki Haley has always been just an anti-Trump candidate. She's a return to yesteryear. So of course she's going to get yesteryear type voters. But if you actually want to win an outright majority, that would require winning actual MAGA people. And MAGA people support Trump as a cult of personality. Let's not even put aside like anything that, you know, whether they support or believe anything. It's more about protecting him, the individual. Yeah. That's where they've always been in a tough spot. I always said, I always thought it was impossible. Like, I, from the beginning have said, like, I don't think that there is a strategy that they could deploy that would be successful,

and I still think that that is the case. However, polling does at this point show that this is actually more, not his election fraud claims, but the chaos and the lawlessness surrounding those election fraud claims, but the chaos and the lawlessness surrounding those election fraud claims are more of a liability for him with Republicans than I had really thought. That's, I guess that's what I would point to. And I also say like, listen, DeSantis tried the tiptoe around criticizing Trump thing and how's it working out for him? How's it working out for any of it? How's it working? I mean, the most sort of like shameless sycophant is Vivek Ramaswamy,

what's he at, 5% right now? So it's not like the strategy of just pretending like Trump doesn't exist or more or less praising him and occasionally throwing like a little sideways jab at him. It's not like that was successful either. So they may as well have actually, Ron DeSantis losing to Chris Christie in New Hampshire right now, which is pretty extraordinary in and of itself. Yeah, well, that's a whole other conversation, I think.

Anyway, we wanted to also give people a taste, too, of how this is might boomerang out on Joe Biden and on the Democrats. Let's take a listen to what the Texas lieutenant governor had to say. Seeing what happened in Colorado tonight, Laura, makes me think, except we believe in democracy in Texas, maybe we should take Joe Biden off the ballot in Texas for allowing 8 million people to cross the border since he's been president, disrupting our state. Yeah, so there you go. Don't threaten me there with a good time, sir, removing Joe Biden from the ballot. Honestly, it would be fun. Well, look, we'll see. I do think this is certainly going to open up a can of worms. Although at the same time, if SCOTUS just kills a can of worms, then we're probably going to be better off. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard,

a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family.

I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to Boy Sober on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves.

This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal,

to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets.

Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Why don't we talk about broader war?

All right. So we've had a lot of big developments with regards to Israel and in particular with the Houthis' attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, which has had massive reverberations in terms of global economic activity, in terms specifically of Israeli economic activity. And the Houthis, they're leaning in hard. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. They just released this new, very highly produced propaganda video. You can see them, you know, in these boats. The water looks beautiful. They're, you know, have all their weapons. They're see them, you know, in these boats. The water looks beautiful. They're, you know, they have all their weapons. They're doing their military trot, whatever that is, the official name for that is. We can go ahead and take, I think you get the idea here. And I talked a little bit about this before. You know, this makes all the sense in the world for the

Houthis strategically, because one thing that unifies, you know, most everybody in Yemen is support for the Palestinian cause, opposition to Israel. It gets to show them, you know, taking on the biggest bad guys from their perspective in the world, that would be the United States of America, and frankly giving us a real bloody nose in the process. So the U.S., because of what an extraordinary impact this is having with, by the way, and we'll get to this in a minute, with very low cost weaponry that the Houthis are deploying here. Our Defense Department has now announced a new effort to try to curb these attacks. Let's put this up on the screen. So they have announced the creation of an enhanced naval protection force operating in the southern Red Sea in an attempt to ward off mounting attacks from Yemen's rebel Houthis on merchant shipping.

Lloyd Austin, U.S. Defense Secretary, said the new effort would be called Operation Prosperity Guardian. It was necessary to tackle the recent escalation in reckless Houthi attacks originating from Yemen. Other participants in the effort, and this is noteworthy, included Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles. Way to go, Seychelles. And Spain. New coalition of the willing here just dropped. Yes, I was like, wow, Seychelles, congrats. Why that is noteworthy is that there were a number of our other close Arab allies, in particular Egypt and Saudi Arabia, you notice are not part of that coalition.

So I think this shows a few things. Number one, this is in and of itself escalatory. The fact that we are getting more engaged, that we are contemplating direct attacks on the Houthis, that we have this broader military presence, this creates more possibilities of a bigger spark and a conflagration. So that's the most important thing to keep in mind. Number two is once again, it's humiliating that this is the coalition, that these are all the countries with all of the money and all of the things that we do to try to keep these people on our side. And when we come to them, we're like, we need to do this thing to protect global shipping. They're like, no, because we showed you on an earlier show this week that U.S. support, like U.S. approval rating in the region, has

fallen off a cliff. Joe Biden has like a 6% approval rating in the whole region. Every country that's associated with us because of our unconditional support for Israel, their approval ratings in the region have fallen off a cliff and it's put them in a precarious position with their own populations. So it shows you how weak we are too in terms of, you know, what we're actually able to put together and to respond to this. Yeah, it's very interesting. And as you were talking about the asymmetric piece, I want to spend some time on this because it's something that highlighted. It's actually even more stark than I had laid out previously. Let's put this up there. This gives people a taste.

There is a $2 million missile that we are currently using to shoot down $2,000 drones. They say that the shortest range options are the Evolved Sea Sparrow missile designed to fire at targets less than five nautical miles away. Costs $1.8 million per shot for targets inside one nautical mile for another weapon system. Let's go to the next part here, please. And they say, by contrast, experts are now estimating the Houthi one-way attack drone, primarily Iranian-made, costs just $2,000. The larger ones cost $20,000. So just let that sink in. Their most advanced attack drone, which has now disrupted tens of billions of dollars of cargo and added untold millions of dollars in gas for the amount of fuel that these companies have to pay to now go around the horn of Africa, we now are seeing that it costs $2

million for each one of these missiles. And it demonstrates why terrorism is very often a very good trade on behalf of people who just have the will to be able to subject yourself to a $2 million missile or possibly get wiped out by a U.S. carrier. Because if you keep it going for long enough, you can cause some massive and serious damage to the overall global economy. Right now, today, it is the most significant shipping crisis since Ukraine. And I know that's not a very long period, but, I mean, pre-Ukraine, that was, I mean, probably the biggest disruption to global shipping in modern American or modern global history. I think since the fall of the Soviet Union, we've never seen anything so crazy like that. We're having really a polycrisis in shipping. There is Ukraine. There is now the Red Sea.

And actually, there's a drought in Panama and the sea levels in Panama right now in terms of ability for the super tankers to go through is, I think it's lower than normal, which is causing all kinds of chaos inside the Panama Canal. This is causing huge problems right now for Egypt in terms of their revenue. They could go broke if they don't get the fees that they normally do for the Suez. So there's all kinds of crazy 40th order effects that are a result of this policy. And I do think this is the single most precarious choke point because one attack drone kills one wrong guy, one US sailor, one British sailor. That's it. Game over. We're in a situation. The more we involve ourselves here, the more targets there are. The more possibilities there are that one of our men and women gets

killed in this operation. So this is tremendously increasing the risk. And I'll get to in a second, the fact that now we've got a bunch of like hawkish national security, like former CIA Democrats who are like, this thing we're doing with Israel is not in our national security interest whatsoever. But the economic impact is already tremendous. It's tremendous globally, but for Israel in particular, it is pretty devastating. Put this up on the screen. This is a report from Haaretz on the economic war. Their headline here, Houthis open new and dangerous front in Israel's economic war. Attacks on Israel-linked ships threaten a key route for Israeli exports and imports. Fortunately for Israel, global trade is also

at risk in the Red Sea. And the reason they say that's fortunately is because it's dragging us into it. So that's why it's a good thing for them. The Houthis have said they're targeting Israeli-linked ships or ships that are heading to Israel. But the linkage has been a little loose thus far. That's why the imperative to have this global response to protect the shipping lanes. They write in this piece that the Houthi attacks are pinching Israel's maritime trade. Cargo traffic at Eilat port is down by 80%, 80%.

The cost of marine insurance, this is also really important for Israeli-owned and now presumably Israel-bound vessels, is soaring. Companies like Israel Zim are rerouting their ships away from the Red Sea, having them go around Africa instead, a change that adds two weeks to the voyage. All of this will add to the cost of imports, which will be passed on to the Israeli consumer. And they also said it's reasonable to assume that many foreign shipping companies are going to opt to avoid stopping in Israeli ports altogether to avoid

the risk of their vessels being targeted. So Israel, obviously, the war has imposed a tremendous economic cost on them from the number of reservists that they've called up. You know, it really has sort of stopped the regular economy. Any tourism, obviously, is basically stamped out. People are mostly not going about their normal lives. So spending is way down. I saw they're expecting the Israeli economy to shrink by a 15% annual rate in the fourth quarter. I mean, that is a huge number. They both face immense short-term costs. So think, we've talked about it before, the war costs something like $100 to $200 million a day, just in terms of paying all these reserves. Then they've got one of the largest internal displacements.

There we go. All right. My language is back. The largest internal displacement, I believe, in the history of the state of Israel because you have all of the people near the Lebanese border and near Gaza who have been resettled and they're paying for all their hotel bills. So you've got huge portions of the country of where people have been uprooted from their homes inside of Israel and who are staying in Tel Aviv or any of the more metropolitan areas. So that costs a ton of money. Then all these prime aged working males are in the military. They're in reserve. They're not working their jobs. Then you've got all these Palestinians and Arabs who were working and coming across the border in Israel who are now no longer coming across. So you have a major poly crisis, I think,

for the Israeli economy. That's on the short term. And then on the long term, look, they've already said, we're not going to let any of these Palestinians back in anymore. I mean, that was thousands of people who were working in day laborers, any kind of lower end work. They're like, well, maybe we can bring people in, bring people in from where? And Israel is a tiny little country. So then you'd have to worry about housing. I mean, there's structural problems, I think, right now, economically, and also in terms of their employment and workforce, especially too, it looks more and more likely to me, and I've seen a lot of speculation around this, that they are going

to have to militarily occupy Gaza for at least some time, right? That's going to take a tremendous, tremendous amount of people in the Israeli army. Those people can't return back to work, let alone, you know, continue to run their business. And that puts the country continued in a wartime footing for quite some time. So this could seriously cost them for a long time. And I would urge them to think about that, too. Here's the other thing that Adam Tooze was writing about, which is that, you know, listen, capital has no loyalty. Of course not. So they're looking at not only this war and, you know, the massive shipping catastrophe and the fact that everyone in the world is like opposed to

what's happening there except for us, apparently. They're thinking about also the, you know, the tumult in the country with Netanyahu in charge before the war and his corruption and his attempts to overhaul the judiciary and the fact that you had these mass disruptive protests for months and months on end. So there was already a pullback of capital and a foreign direct investment in particular. This is only going to accelerate that. I mean, you know, there's a grassroots boycott, divestment and sanction movement that seeks to sort of like take capital away from Israel. I'm sure it's had very minimal impact, frankly, on the Israeli economy. This is like a sort of a capital strike that they could be facing because

this cap, they just want to make money and they're not going to want to put up with risks and chaos and, you know, psycho like reactionary right-wing governments and the tumult that it's creating. So it really does create a long-term problem for them. And you might say, well, okay, we threw the entire like actual economic sanction playbook at Russia and they've been more or less okay. You know, they spun up a war economy and things haven't been amazing, but they've managed to hold on. They had spent years preparing for potential levying of sanctions and their economy is structured very differently. The Netanyahu government had intentionally relied aggressively on foreign direct investment in order to spur and build their economy. So they have much greater

exposure here in terms of the economic impact. They're not even remotely the same. Russia is a population of what, like 100 million, maybe more people. They have a vast expanse. They have a huge amount of resources. Israel is like a tiny sliver of the Middle East. They don't have the same level of access to ports that they control. They don't have a real navy. I mean, I could go on forever in terms of they don't have an industrial base. I mean, I could go on forever in terms of they don't have an industrial base. Their population already, they've mobilized the entire thing. They are relatively at the limits of that for the amount of more people that they could bring in. I mean, it's totally and completely, it's much more like Japan or Taiwan or any of

these other island nations, which rely dramatically on foreign capital and on foreign resources to be able to keep their basic like Western way of life going. So it's just, it's not even remotely the same. And it does demonstrate a lot of the precarity that they're in right now. Because remember, ultimately, you know, I mean, economic pressure was part of what led to the South Africa apartheid regime. And so the fact that you have this amount of potential economic pressure being applied possibly in the long term, I mean, that could be a pressure point for the Israeli government in terms of the decisions that they make in the future. I teased this before, put this up on the screen in terms of these. I was shocked to see this letter based on who has signed off on it. So this is Chrissy Houlihan tweeted, I'm calling on the Biden administration to use all of our nation's leverage to shift the Israeli military strategy and

defending itself against Hamas. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is unacceptable. And, and this is the key part, not in line with American interests. The signatories here, Jason Crow, Chrissy Houlihan, who I just mentioned, Abigail Spanberger, shocked at that one. Mikey Sherrill, Seth Moulton, and Alyssa Slotkin. So these are like former members of the military, former agents in the CIA who are saying something's got to change. This is a disaster. Now they claim they care about the humanitarian piece. I suspect much more that they are concerned about the devastating impact this is having on our national security and the fact that it is putting our people at greater risk, our unconditional support for Israel. Let me just read you a little bit of this letter. They say, Dear President Biden, we are deeply concerned by Prime Minister Netanyahu's current

military strategy in Gaza. The mounting civilian death toll and humanitarian crisis are unacceptable, not in line with American interests, nor do they advance the cause of security for our ally Israel. We also believe it jeopardizes efforts to destroy the terrorist organization Hamas and secure the release of all hostages. So take that in. They're saying that the approach is actually hindering the ability to eradicate Hamas. This is something we've been saying from the beginning. This actually creates more radicalization. And you can look at our very recent track record, or you can go back a lot further and look at that track record as well to see the way that these actions will almost inevitably create blowback and increase the radicalization that you are trying to root out.

So the fact that these very, like, I would describe them as not even normie, like sort of more right-leaning Democrats, more hawkish Democrats are now like, whoa, whoa, something's got to change here and change fast. That was very noteworthy to me. The only thing I would speak up on their behalf is that all of them were at least involved in some way in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I don't think anyone who served in that war can't help but look at some of the parallels and some of the differences. This is idiotic. What's going on here is a disaster. You know what I would urge people to do? People should go listen to Tim Dillon. He was recently on Joe Rogan and Tim was talking about, in his

hilarious way, he was a former Iraq war supporter actually in his old days and he gave some of his perspective about Israel and Gaza and all that and the reason I think so is that he'll both make you laugh and make very deeply profound points at the same time. And he made a lot of what we talk about here, but he did it a lot funnier than that. All right. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation.

To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family.

I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to Voice Over on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left.

In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long.

You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage

from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's move on.

As I mentioned before, there have been so many just utterly insane and gaslighting and wild comments coming out of Israel that we felt the need to devote an entire segment to them to go through some of the highlights. This will not be a comprehensive survey of the list of wild comments that have been made. But just to give you a sense of the discourse that is coming from not just like random Israelis, but from political leaders with power, from journalists and analysts who are on TV all the time. I want to start with this one because this one was in many ways like the wildest, although it's a pretty good competition here. So

this is the deputy mayor of Jerusalem. She's responding to the reports that we covered here, that the IDF had targeted and killed two Christian women at a Catholic church in Gaza. And so she's being asked about this. Just take a listen to what her response is. Take a listen. Why is it necessary, it is reported, to start shooting, having snipers outside a church? I don't, I saw the report this morning. The church, there are no churches in Gaza, so I'm not quite sure where the report is talking about. There's a Catholic church in there, isn't there?

Yeah, unfortunately there are no Christians because they were driven out by some... Well, there are, respectfully, there are Christians because I spoke to an MP yesterday who has family members in the church who are Christians. Well, I don't know who has family members in the church who are Christians. Well, I don't know what happened. I don't know who was attacked. I didn't see the report. Amazing. There are no churches in Gaza. Yes, she just is denying reality to try to avoid the implications of what the IDF did here, which is what the Pope described as terrorism.

There are no churches in Gaza. Yeah, actually, there are. Well, there are no Christians in Gaza. Yeah, actually there are. Well, there are no Christians in Gaza. Well, actually there are. Oh, well, the report that I previously claimed that I had seen, I actually didn't see that report. So I have no idea. Yeah. Amazing. This is, look, I mean, one of the reasons I think I also want to highlight this too is because I am so deeply annoyed by this idea that, you know, Israel and Netanyahu, or even Israel and the far right are one in the same, and that we are not allowed to criticize or to look at this country, which has much more robust debate about itself than we are allowed to have over here. And people rightfully, I think, can demonstrate and understand that, you know, criticizing a political party or a particular

strategy does not mean that you are against the entire country's right to exist or any of that. And I think a lot of people also want to deny about a pretty decent segment of Israeli politics, which agrees with some of these statements, which are, I think, antithetical to our ends and their ends, but their ends are their business. They can decide. At the very least, though, we need to have a full visibility into what they want and what they are saying. And I think it's pretty unfortunate because if we paid better attention, especially to in the age of translation, of Google Translate and all that, it's not difficult to suss out. This is a Western country. They have sex just like this in Tel Aviv. They're sitting on them and talking about it.

In Hebrew, you can go and look if you want. And if that's too hard for you, you can read the English Israeli press, which often translates that all for you. And yet, we try to get all of our, a lot of people, especially if you watch cable, so much of it is filtered down through so many levels. You just have a totally hijacked and different view of what it all looks like. You think everyone, I honestly think you would think that everybody is eminently reasonable in Israel. And then everyone in Palestine is like some – or everyone in Hamas in Gaza is like some sort of Hamas flag-waving terrorist. It just couldn't be more further from it. All the nuance in it is completely lost.

The other thing is – I want to play you the next one. But if you heard any Palestinian or Palestinian supporter saying some of these things, like everyone in this country would know about it. Every politician would be getting asked about it. It would be played on a loop. And yet these things are like said in the open commonly in Israel. And our politicians just pretend like they don't hear it, they don't see it. And that it's some just like purely targeted ethical mission and war that's being engaged in in the Gaza Strip. It's just, if you listen to their own comments and then look at what they're doing on the ground, it becomes undeniable what is happening in front of your eyes.

So here's our next example. This is an Israeli journalist, Shimon Ricklin. He says, I am for the war crimes. I don't care if I am criticized. And I honestly don't care. He goes on. I am unable to sleep if I don't see houses being destroyed in Gaza. What can I say? More, more, more, more houses, more buildings.

I want to see more of them destroyed. I want there to be nothing for them to return to. In the Torah, it says they must return to the salt of the earth and they must complain. This is why we cannot reach a solution. And that is what war crimes mean to me. So I'm for the war crimes. You know, I appreciate the honesty, actually. And this is something we've talked about, something Daryl Cooper talks about. The far right in Israel has always been much more upfront about the project they're engaged in, about what their goals are, about what they actually want. And I think this man is being very honest about his perspective here.

By the way, someone pointed out, and I confirmed, he's wearing a pin there in that segment. It's a Stern Gang pin. So to give people a little bit of a sense of the history here, in the early days of the sort of like colonial period of the founding of the state of Israel, there were a number of militias. The large ones were Haganah, which was the more like labor affiliated one, the Irgun, which then becomes Likud. And Irgun was already like, you know, they committed all kinds of terrorist acts. They were already very far right. The Stern gang was the ones that were to the right of them. They called themselves terrorists. They referred to themselves as terrorists. They actually sought to come to some sort of an allyship with Nazi Germany because they thought the Nazis were less of a threat to Jews than Britain. So they sought

multiple times to come to some sort of a deal, an accommodation with Hitler and the Nazis. They advocated for mass expulsion of all Arabs from Palestine and from Jordan. Their publications openly talked about a Jewish master race, contrasting the Jews with Arabs who were seen as a nation of slaves. So that's the pin that he's wearing as he says that he's for the war crimes. Yeah. I mean, look, it's kind of like Ukraine where the honesty around these countries and their, what is it? The honesty around their countries and their political constituencies and who matters and who has power with the neo-Nazis. I mean, a lot of people here

just simply don't want to acknowledge it. And that's the issue, is that you can separate this easily from the state, from its people, and from what actually has support. But you're right in this, that if Palestinians or Arabs and all those were, I mean, look, also, you can go find those videos too, if you want, about Arabs and Hamas leaders and all those saying that about Jews. But you're right in that there is a lot of disparate coverage in the way that it ends up showing up in our discourse, especially amongst our elected officials. Oh, for sure. That's very true. So let's go next to, we met this woman before. Her name is Daniela Weiss. She is the head of a Zionist settler movement. And she was interviewed by Isaac Chotner previously. She's the one that said effectively like, yeah, we're building

settlements because the US and others want there to a Palestinian state. We don't want there to be a Palestinian state. And then she said it is a very simple thing to understand. Again, honest, appreciate that. Let's go and put her up on the screen about what she wants to happen in Gaza. So she says Gaza must be erased so that the settlers can see the sea. She goes on, the situation needs to end. What we did in northern Gaza, we must do it south of Gaza, evacuating Gaza of Arabs and building Jewish settlements in all of Gaza. So making it pretty clear here. She says the settlers, they want to see the sea. And in order to see the sea, all homes in Gaza must be destroyed. There are no homes or Arabs left in Gaza. This, she says, is a logical and romantic demand. And you wonder why Netanyahu is so reluctant to come forward with what his plan is. It's because

people like her are an important part of his electoral coalition, of his governing coalition. Incredibly important. As Glenn points out, Israelis, when speaking in Hebrew, are often more candid and truthful about the real goals in Gaza than their American supporters in both parties are. And this is the settler issue is one that has been long condemned by bipartisan administrations here in Washington. It's against our official posture from the State Department. It's so much so that President Biden even proposed sanctions or entry delay on people who espouse this or have been involved in violence from entering the United States. But, you know, the political circumstances right now of the time are basically like,

are you with them or are you not with them? And I just don't know why it's so difficult to even parse through this and just be like, well, you know, I definitely think it's horrible what happened on October 7th. I definitely think Hamas needs to go. I think your military strategy is bad. I think some elements of your society are totally out of control, and you should probably, you know, do something about that at the very least just for international cooperation perspective. I also think this is why Netanyahu's position is just so terrible, both for Israel and really for the long-term prospects of the nation,

is because by fusing himself with the state, he has made it here in this country too, such that criticism of him is being called anti-Semitic. Well, a lot of people are just going to be like, okay, I'll take that trade because I disagree entirely. That erodes long-term support. And then same here, where if he's so politically held by these people

in his political constituency, then how exactly are we supposed to ever see this come to an end? Yeah. That's my problem. And Danielle is not alone. Put the last, the tear sheet that we have at the end, then how exactly are we supposed to ever see this come to an end? Yeah. That's my problem. And Daniela's not alone. Put the last, the tear sheet that we have at the end,

put this up in the screen. She's not alone in wanting to, you know, destroy all of Gaza and destroy all of the homes. This was an Israeli politician on the radio. He is David Azouli, the head of the town of Metula in northern Israel. He called on Israel to forcibly eject Palestinians in Gaza to Lebanon, flatten the besieged enclave, and turn it into a museum, just like in Auschwitz, the, of course, concentration camp in Poland. Quote, after October 7th, instead of urging people to go south, we should direct them to the beaches.

The Navy can transport them to the shores of Lebanon, where there are already sufficient refugee camps. Then a security strip should be established from the seat of the Gaza border fence, completely empty as a reminder of what was once there. It should resemble the Auschwitz concentration camp, of course. 1.1 million people, 1 million of which were Jews, were killed by Nazi Germany in that concentration camp. And that's what he is saying he wants to see in Gaza. What was interesting, actually, is Auschwitz came out with a statement. They say,

Memory of victims of Auschwitz has at times been violated and instrumentalized in various statements. David appears to wish to use a symbol of the largest cemetery in the world as some sort of sick, hateful, pseudo-artistic, symbolic expression. Calling for acts that seem to transgress any civil, wartime, moral, or human laws

that may sound as a call for murder of the scale akin to Auschwitz puts the whole honest world face-to- face with a madness that must be confronted and firmly rejected. We do hope Israeli authorities will react to such a shameful abuse as terrorism can never be a response to terrorism. I thought that was pretty significant to come from the Auschwitz memorial itself, who they do not let, I also want to make it clear, they basically just protect the legacy of Auschwitz. They are not political in any way. They only come out when people either mistakenly refer to Auschwitz or use it in this context.

Or say they want something else to be turned into Auschwitz. Protect the memory of the people who all died there. And if you ever get the chance, I highly recommend that people go and visit. Or any of the concentration campsites in Poland in order to get a view, to see it for yourself. And also to understand where they are coming from too. And view, to see it for yourself, and also to understand where they are coming from too. And I really do respect them for coming out and seeing something like that. The last one, Sagar, I thought you would enjoy in particular because this is the girl boss Israeli minister. This is the woman who is the Israeli minister for the

advancement of the status of women. So a little bit of identity politics being played here by the Netanyahu government. Let's see what this enlightened liberal feminist has to say about what she wants to see in Gaza. I don't care about Gaza. I literally don't care. For all I care, they can go out and swim in the sea. I want to see dead bodies of terrorists. Oh, there you go. There you go. The last thing I'll say on this saga of why I think these things are important, too, is because there is a long, like, multi-decade attempt to Accords, have been opposed to it, have sought to undermine it. But when you hear these comments and when you read the Likud party charter, which talks about from the river to the sea, when you see Netanyahu out bragging about thwarting a Palestinian state and saying, hey, you got to stick with me if you want to block a Palestinian state forever. This provides some context of the type of viewpoints and analysis that are not just present, but quite

dominant in his political coalition, which is governing the state of Israel right now. And if you're not dealing with that, if you're not reckoning with that, then you're just living in a complete fantasy land. And the results you're going to get are going to match the like, you know, total disconnect from reality that you're working with. Yeah, this is another issue I have too with a lot of older politicians and even people who don't understand the country is they use, Biden in particular, lives in like a Golda Meir Israel. It's like, bro, that's been less 50 years away. And look, America's changed a lot in 50 years, but not even close to as much as the amount of demographic change that they have had versus what we've had actually makes our immigration problems

look very different just in terms of their makeup, their politics, where things have gone. And I think that's actually one of the bigger problems that we face in this is that people who may have gone in the 90s or in the 80s, I'll tell you what, I see this a lot with India. For example, a lot of people who immigrated to the United States from India in the 80s have this idea of India as like this, led by the Nehru's and the Congress Party. Yeah. And then they go back and they're like, what the hell is going on here? I'm like, yeah, the country changed a lot ever since you left.

It turns out that when there's a new party in town, the entire civic understanding of the country changed in a single generation. That doesn't really happen here, but it does happen in the rest of the world all the time. And so you have to update your understanding of that. And that's something that a lot of politicians refuse to do, even though we're living in 2023 and you can go watch it all for yourself on YouTube. If you care to. Yeah. And that's the other thing is this whole freak out about like, oh my God, the kids on TikTok, like their views are so different. It's like, yeah, because these videos are getting views on TikTok. And they have no individual understanding of the time period I'm talking about.

Because I'm even just on the cusp of like, I remember the Aoud Baraks and all those other people who were in charge. But the vast majority of my life has been spent under this type. And I can vaguely remember some of it. I mean, if you're 10 years younger than me, you can't remember any of that. It doesn't even exist. That's very true. That's a very good point. All right. All right. Let's move on to other threats to democracy. We discussed the concern about Trump's name being

taken off the ballot in Colorado. Well, the DNC, man, they're just, they're just the same thing. Yeah. I mean, they're just not even hiding that they want to cancel democracy in terms of the Democratic primary. We've got more states that have just decided, even though we've got Dean Phillips, we've got Marianne Williamson, we also have Cenk Uygur, even though there's constitutional questions around his bid, he does have opponents and they're just canceling primaries in states with no real reason. Put this up on the screen. This is from Marianne. She says, the DNC is at it again. We discovered the Massachusetts Democratic Party intends to include only Joe Biden as their primary candidate on the Massachusetts ballot. She goes on to say that

the Dem chair there's misplaced attempt at protecting Joe Biden robs Massachusetts Democrats of their voice and choice in the upcoming election. This action is a flagrant violation of DNC rules and process. She goes on to explain, I want to read this because this is specific to the Massachusetts process. She says, I've actively campaigned in Massachusetts. The Secretary of State has the discretion to include FEC-filed candidates who have received national media coverage, which I have. She definitely has. We hope Secretary of the Commonwealth will protect Massachusetts voters from that state's attempt at circumventing democracy. Massachusetts not alone. Let's put this up on the screen.

These are the states now that have just said, yeah, we're just going to anoint Joe Biden. Don't want to hear from the voters. Don't want to even give him a chance to, you know, cast a ballot. Don't even want to pretend like we're doing anything other than just giving Joe Biden our full support. Tennessee, North Carolina, Massachusetts, and as we had covered before, Florida. So this is pretty wild. Like Democrats claim to be wanting to protect democracy and they're running to protect democracy, et cetera. I mean, this is without any sort of recourse, no court process whatsoever, just we're not going to have a contest. We're not going to have an election. It's also stupid because Biden is winning by 70-some percent in the primary.

So why don't you just let that go? Why don't you just let the vote happen? He can get 75%. He can be coronated after he's won the election. There's no reason to even do it. It's just to set the precedent of, like, nobody is allowed to dissent at all. The last national poll I saw only had Marianne at 13% and Dean Phillips at 5%. So it's like, why do you even care?

Yeah. Why do you care? I don't understand. Yeah. I mean, it seems preposterous that they would be worried, but I do think that they feel more fragility than they probably should just because, you know, they see the polls of people overwhelmingly like, we want another choice. Is there another choice? And so I think they're fearful that if there's a recognition that, oh, you actually do have other options and there is an actual weighing of like, all right, well, who are the

candidates and what do I think? And do I want to go in another direction? I think they're very fearful of that dynamic playing out. And so that's where these incredibly heavy handed tactics come in. And let's not forget also, I mean, there have been heavy handed tactics from the beginning, just in terms of rearranging the primary states to front load the ones that Joe Biden feels most secure in South Carolina, first and foremost. Now that's created some problems for him actually in New Hampshire, which has in there, I think, I don't know if it's a law or constitution that they have to be the first in the nation primary. They're going forward with it. Joe Biden is not going to be on the ballot. There's like a write-in campaign for him,

but that actually created more of a risk for him than there would have been. So in a certain way, their heavy-handed tactics have kind of like backfired. It's manifesting the thing that they're terrified of. Dean Phillips weighed in on this as well. Man, there have been some hatchet jobs on Dean Phillips lately too.

We're going to get into that in a minute. His caucus, his fellow caucus members are furious with him at stepping out of line. He says Democrats cannot be the party of democracy while shamelessly suppressing it. President Biden and party leaders must be on the record about whether they support the suppression of Democrats. No wonder Americans under 30 plan to vote for Trump over Biden by six points. Yeah, I mean, look, good for him. And he is kind of laying it all out on the line.

We should highlight. I think this probably gets to what you're talking about, is that they don't want any outlet, especially now for some of the anger over Biden. You found this particular clip, NBC News interviewed some young voters who said that they won't vote for Biden. Let's take a listen. Do you plan on voting for him this time, Laura? No, no, not anymore. The 23-year- old was part of the surge in young voters in the liberal Dane County that helped Biden flip the battleground state three years ago. He's now angry at the president over his support for Israel's invasion of Gaza. He is allowing this war to happen and and is funding this war. I don't know what will happen if I don't vote for him, but I know it won't be me supporting that. On climate, on COVID responses, you could tell his and his administration were doing

really great work. But I think after October 7th, the question became a matter of human rights. Interesting. Yeah, so on Israel, but you know, there's a lot of other reasons. You're already seeing some discontent, I think, on student loans or, for example, that was just on the left. So these people who, what do you think? I think they'll probably vote for Cornel West or something, or maybe just not vote, period, which is a totally fine choice. I think not voting is probably the most likely scenario. But I mean, that is the reality is outside of the Democratic primary, they are likely to have other choices on the ballot. I just saw a Quinnipiac poll come out and the numbers with 18 to 34 year olds are pretty stunning. So Biden is at 33% with 18 to 34 year

olds in this Quinnipiac poll. Trump is at 20. RFK Jr. is at 24. But Cornel West is at six. Jill Stein's at 10. Wow. So yeah. And you know what? It was also interesting to me, black voters in this poll. So you have 61 percent. Think about that with this supposedly rock solid constituency, only, quote unquote, 61 percent backing Biden, 4 percent backing Trump, 15 percent with RFK Jr., 10 percent with Cornel West, 9 percent with Jill Stein. So people do have other outlets if they just cannot stomach what they are watching unfold before their eyes in Gaza with our full support and backing. Our bomb stamp made in America being dropped on these babies and these children. They have other options. And so, you know, I mean, you have people in the Biden campaign who presumably know how to read a poll and see the way that, I'm sure it's not 100% because of Israel, but the time period in which support

among young people has fallen off a cliff corresponds very closely with October 7th and what has unfolded since then. You know, they have to realize this is a gigantic issue with them for them. And you know what they're hoping is, and I was thinking about this after we had our conversation about Trump's like poison in the blood comments or whatever, what they're hoping is that he says more stuff like that. And people go, you know what? I got it. Like this guy is just too terrible. And that's a good bet. I got to vote for, I got to suck it up and vote for Joe. That's what they're hoping for. But remember, they have to basically like run the table on that. They have to get everybody to make that calculation and not bail out and vote for, you know, Cornel West or Jill Stein or someone else

that's on the ballot. And I just don't know if that works this time around. Now, to make the counter case in that New York Times Siena poll that we covered, it was interesting because among registered voters, Trump had a lead. Among likely voters, so they apply their likely voter screen, they actually had Biden with an edge of two. And among people who voted in 2020, who actually voted in 2020, and especially among people who voted in 2022, Biden had a huge lead. So among people who are the more reliable voters, his calculation is basically working out. So in any case, we'll see. But, you know, I think it does expose part of why they're engaging in these very heavy-handed tactics, even though you would think that he would look at these polls where he's up tremendously

and be like, oh, I've got this. There's nothing to worry about. Yeah, I think it more is about denying an escape valve of some kind for any of the discontent that's been brewing now. That's right. For some time. And fundamentallyent that's been brewing now for some time. And fundamentally, that's very undemocratic. The last thing I wanted to show you, I mentioned this like absolute hatchet job on Dean Phillips, who, you know, I think for people in D.C., Democrats in D.C., like it's one thing for a Marianne Williamson. It's one thing for a Cenk Uygur. They're outside the system. They already see them as basically like traitors to the cause. Right. So when they jump in the race, that's that's one thing. got from his fellow party members in Congress. Representative Robert Garcia called Phillips' campaign a total joke, very disrespectful of the president and the party, saying he's torched his reputation. Steny Hoyer. Dean Phillips is not going to win any primary. I think he's not helpful to the country.

Sidney Camlinger Dove. I don't know. I brutalized that. Sorry, Sidney. He seems to be taking a page out of the Trump playbook. It makes me wonder if he's a real Democrat. One senior House Democrat described the feeling toward Phillips within the Democratic caucus as pure hatred, saying many members are pissed about his attacks on Biden.

And you know where this energy comes from, Sagar? It's embarrassing to them. Yes, it is. Because he's right. He's right that Joe Biden is a terrible candidate, that they are risking the party and the country's future by staying lockstep behind him. His criticisms of Joe Biden are by and large accurate and they feel humiliated that he actually has the guts to say it and to actually do something about it

while they just sit there, you know, sniveling and privately like being worried about how the election is going to go, but totally unwilling to step out on the line. I think it will be, I think it's, yeah, I mean, bad, bad. It also shows you how much of a risk it was for him. I still don't quite understand it, given the fact that he's not even going to run for Congress anymore.

Maybe he was just done, and he wants to plant a flag, and he genuinely believes it. So more power to him, but it shows you, too, like when you're in the system and you violate the tenets of it by speaking out the basic truth, even though it knows everybody's true, they will come out and they will absolutely destroy your life. He won't even be able to get a lobbyist job after this. I hope he's rich.

I don't know what his personal network is. He is rich. Okay, good, good. He is rich, so he does have a safety net there. But listen, I want to give him credit. And I don't even really care. I don't know him. You know, I thought he was, we had a feisty exchange,

but I thought he was like perfectly, you know, nice and seemed like a genuine human being when I met him. But I don't even really care about his intentions. Good for him. It takes courage to do this. And we've seen how hard it is to go against the people that you're working with day in and day out. And he actually did it. So kudos to him. We can have a disagreement about policies and back and forth, although I will say he just signed on to Medicare for all, which I was happy. That was interesting. Interesting and

happy to know. But, you know, we need to see more of that willingness to step out of line from these just like archaic, sclerotic, broken party systems that have completely done a disservice to the American public. Yeah, agreed. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be.

These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room.

You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the man who went down that day. showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it.

I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself. And I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice.

Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye.

Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. All right, so how are we looking at? Well, there's been a massive debate in this country in the last few weeks over the Ivy League, especially after the university presidents refused to say calling for the genocide against Jews did not per se violate student code of conduct.

The debate has a couple of elements. First is the free speech implication as to whether such a statement should constitute harassment. The second is about hypocrisy of these institutions. Unquestionably, they would, of course, answer in the affirmative if the group was, say, black people or trans people. Now, those who have watched this show already know what I think. I think their answers were actually correct. I don't think any statement should be barred within a First Amendment framework unless it does go in the direction of actually targeting an individual student. That point should be that the entire diversity, equity, and inclusion regime, though, is illegitimate and dumb,

that no group of people, period, should be, quote-unquote, protected. A new front has now emerged in this war to get these presidents fired, and that is going after the academic credentials themselves of Harvard president Claudine Gay. Now, almost immediately after the hearing controversy, the Washington Free Beacon's Erin Sabarian reported that significant portions of Claudine Gay's entire thesis appeared to have been copied and entire paragraphs from other academic work claimed as her own. Now, despite the frankly pretty good evidence that she did in fact commit plagiarism in her thesis, the exact act which many Harvard students have now been expelled for over the years, Harvard has stood by her. They don't want to bow to the cancellation mob. This has only since heightened the effort to review her academic record. More recent examples actually

show further the extent of the alleged plagiarism within her thesis. The Free Beacon again reports, an official academic report has now been filed against Claudine Gay with the Harvard Research Integrity Office detailing over 40 cases of alleged plagiarism. The funniest case, actually, is that Gay appears to have lifted entirely a section of acknowledgments in her thesis from someone else's dedication. But this is where I actually want to stop for a moment and make a point to try and connect it back to the free speech debate. The entire so-called plagiarism scandal is itself a smokescreen.

The problem with her is not that she is an imperfect academic, it's that her entire brand of academia is a farce and a fiction. As I jokingly remarked on Twitter, or X as they have called it, when this scandal hit, it's impossible to plagiarize when your entire discipline is fake. Gay herself is an original of the anti-racist school of thought. Her entire thesis is racial gobbledygook that I had to go through, talking about taking charge, black electoral successes and the redefinition of American politics. It's written in 1997, and the entire document is basically dedicated to making the case of quotas and legislatures and judges who are black in some sort of older school justification for DEI and affirmative action decisions made in the post-1965 era. Really, the point I want to make is this. The problem isn't

the integrity of the academic work. Just the work itself is bad. Gay herself is the poster child of everything that has actually gone wrong with Harvard. She is not a real academic. Instead, she previously was the dean of Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences program, where they promoted her to president. This is how they bragged about her accomplishments. Quote, she created an expansive initiative on inequality in America, oversaw hires intended to bolster Harvard's offering in the areas of climate change and ethnic studies, and sanctioned several well-known professors accused of sexual harassment. Without due process, by the way. In other words, she was a BLM hall monitor, as proven by her statements August of 2020, when she was the DEI dean at Harvard. She said, Our engagement in anti-racist action and the infusion of inclusive practices into all aspects

of our teaching and research mission reflect a new sense of institutional responsibility and require sustained effort over time. So again, I have a message to those who are involved in this fight. The problem is not Claudine Gay. The problem is the whole system. If you want further proof of destructive ideology and how it goes through these institutions, consider, as my friend has pointed out, all seven of the Colorado justices who ruled on the Trump ballot

were appointed by Democrats. The only thing that distinguishes the four who ruled to remove Trump is that they all attended the Ivy League for law school. The three who dissented are Denver law graduates. We have two ways that we can go in this moment. You understand the destructive effect of elite systems themselves that produces and promotes Claudine gaze. Or you try to get a scalp in the name of guarding against fake accusations of anti-Semitism. Bill Ackman and his people want the latter.

And I want the former. And I think it's time to very much reframe the entire message around this. I'm curious what you make of this, Crystal. I've been very annoyed because I feel like people are becoming fake hall monitors and they're like, well, she didn't improperly say. I'm like, I don't care about that. That's not the problem. It's like with the genocide comment. It's like, oh, so now we're supposed to put Jews in the marginalization category. This is

all, this is an invented scandal in my opinion. So it's like, if you want to criticize DEI and go after the system and all that, I'm all on board. But unfortunately, I don't really see a lot of that. That's why I'm so furious with this. It's just very clear that the people like Chris Ruffo who are most associated with opposition to quote-unquote DEI or identity politics, like now that it's a different group, they don't actually have like consistent principles. And Ruffo was very open and upfront about the way that he wanted to plant this plagiarism story in mainstream media. He actually tweeted, we launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the right. The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the left,

legitimizing the narrative to center left actors who have the power to topple her, then squeeze. So just so you know. You do have to give it to them. No, like, listen, maybe, okay, but, you know, the plagiarism stuff is legitimate. And so I guess, you know, even though it came from a bad place, we should still look at it. But just be aware. It's not like this is like a good faith attempt

to ensure academic integrity. They're pissed off that she said, no, actually, if you are pro-Palestinian and you, you know, are at a march or you're doing a chant or whatever and you're not harassing or bullying or hurting anyone, you have a right to do that. She stood up for free speech in the way that conservatives have been asking these presidents to stand up for free speech. And the minute that it was a group that they had a different feeling about, they turn on a dime. So that's where this whole conversation comes from. And I think it's very important for people to understand the context

with which these charges are being leveled. This is my thing too, just for we understand. It's about principles and systems. If you want to talk and critique about them, that's fine. But trying to work in this individual way, especially, look, I respect some of Chris Ruffo's work, but part of the problem I have is that he's willing to sign on to somebody like Ackman, where I don't think Ackman is

even working towards the same end at all. I mean, Ruffo, look, to be transparent, has always been after DEI. He's just a lot more, I guess, like politically savvy. I can't believe you're saying that. Yeah, but not on this one. Well, I mean. I mean, he wants Jewish people to have a special car amount where the rules are different. I mean, that's why he's going after boring gay. I actually don't think he does. He wants Jewish people to have a special car amount where the rules are different.

I mean, that's why he's going after boring gay. I actually don't think he does. I think he thinks Ackman and this latest crusade is a useful idiot. And this is a tactical defeat. And this is kind of what I was doing. But that's ridiculous because now what you're pressuring is for someone to come in who is more censorious. I agree. Who is more committed to the things that you supposedly oppose. So it's preposterous.

I'm with you 100%. They disagree with me. They're like, any scalp is good. It just shows the system that they have to, you know, it's like, fuck around and find, I guess we're behind the paywall. Fuck around and find out that you can do that. I don't think that's going to happen at all. I think the net result will be worse.

Their tactical thing is like, if you can get a scalp and you can show that the right has power, then they'll try and, you know, come to us. What has that power gotten them? What it's gotten them is more like pro-censorship wins than the left was ever able to accomplish. I mean, they did more to enshrine and guarantee there will be more censorship on college campuses. And, you know, the next time that a college student feels unsafe or whatever, that they'll have more avenues to pursue that. That's what they're winning here. I don't think it's fair to say than the left has ever accomplished. Absolutely. Absolutely.

You think that anti-Semitism, witch hunt is as bad as the BLM one? Just look at what happened here. Just look at what happened here. These presidents, they instantly caved the minute that there was a backlash to them saying, well, actually, the context of the speech matters. And no, if it's not bullying or harassment, like that was the right answer. And so even after BLM and the left and whatever, whatever, these presidents actually had the right answer on free speech and that's gone now.

They all capitulated. I would put it this way, is that I still do believe that it absolutely is the case if you said that about black or trans people that you would be gone at Harvard tomorrow. And also the fact is that they did cave to the- But said what about black or trans people? Because that's the other piece, is it's not like anyone was calling for genocide. I agree. So it's preposterous. Yeah, but under

their definition, if I say that little kids shouldn't be plugged full of hormones, they'd be like, you're anti-trans and you're calling for a transgenic. If I think you should ban 18-year-olds or anyone under 18- But give me an example of that actually happening, where someone said something that was uncomfortable. I mean, there may be example of that actually happening, where someone said something that was uncomfortable. I mean, there may be examples of that, but in this instance, they gave the right answer. That can be used then in other instances. Well, you said that this was the context here,

so over here, now that someone is saying their... Like, then you make them commit to the words that they've already put out there, but to then demand censorship in the interest of, well, you would have censored here, so I want you to censor across the board. That's stupid. I'm not even disagreeing. I agree with you completely. That's why I did this entire monologue, because I'm like, guys, it's not about

that. It's about the whole Ivy League. It's about this whole corrupt system. And I don't think, unfortunately, they care much about that. I would like to see things change completely. We would move much more in the direction of, instead of having hearings about, for example, what is your code of conduct policy on anti-Semitism? I'd be like, yeah, how much money are you guys making? How much head fund dollars are moving around here? Maybe we should pay some taxes on that. That's what they actually fear, just so everybody knows, in terms of going after profits. And hey, how come you guys have more administrators than you do students? That's pretty interesting. You're making these people completely bankrupt and you have no share in any of their futures. And yet you're all

building, I should send you this from the Wall Street Journal. Do you know where all these new student dollars are going? To granite countertops in dorm rooms. Now I had a hundred year old dorm. It was such a piece of shit. And I'm not saying necessarily that's a good thing, but I mean, the idea that everyone should go into deeper debt so they could have slept in a nicer bedroom and had access to a lazy river and all these other student services is preposterous. So look, this is again a question about systems, what's upholding this entire thing, what real fights, questions, and all of them are about, and differences in tactics. So I do think we agree at least on that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is like, we may not agree on this part, but this is basically like capitalism applied to the

university system. The students become the customer. Why do they put into place these perks? To try to attract the student body that already has money. Why? Because they're the ones and their parents who are more likely to give them more money for the university. That's the system that you're talking about. But, you know, on the core level with all of this, I honestly, I just want to say, I don't know if she's a plagiarist. I didn't look at it. I literally haven't read the stories because, to me, I can't get past the fact that there was this fake outrage over things that students didn't even say with regard to genocide. And then, you know, moments later, they're backing dollars for bombs to be dropped on kids in what many scholars are saying is actually a genocide.

To me, I just can't get past that and what it says about the insane priorities and like decrepit, ridiculous, absurd system of distraction that we have instead of any form of like democracy or actual interest in what would be good for the people. So I can't get past that part of the story to even engage with like Chris Ruffo's plagiarism thing. That's fair. I will say CNN covered it and they even said that she- That was his goal. He said, let me get this into mainstream media and then we'll squeeze. So I guess it's working. Congratulations, Chris. You gotta give it to him. He is good at what he does. Your quest for more

censorship is working out. I hope you're happy. Let's move on. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver,

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It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first Black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us

about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned

Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today.

All right, so since this is the last show of the year, it's been a tough show already, right? We've had debates, we've had discussions, we've had disagreements. We had to find a way to wrap things up in a good direction. So last time we did the superlative section. We had included some worse things and all that. But this time we decided, you know what?

If you devolve into anything negative, it's just going to get a downer. And why end the year on such a note? So everything from this moment forward is going to be a positive superlative about something that happened this year. So first we're doing best moment. Crystal, what do you got? Yeah. So for me, best moment of the year was when the UAW, after their historic stand-up strike, was able to obtain extraordinary gains from all of the big three automakers. It's now set off a wave of organizing among automakers that are not currently unionized, including Tesla.

And perhaps the cherry on top, the sweetest moment of them all, was when Jim Cramer, who had been trashing them, trashing the president, Sean Fain, as a Marxist, telling the car companies they should just ship all their jobs to Mexico when even he was forced to admit that the auto workers had won. Take a listen. I think that the UAW was underestimated the whole way because Fain just beat them everywhere. It was very much guerrilla action. It was very smart. They were completely, uh, they were out gained at every turn. I mean, it was almost like there were, they were,

and that fame was a great NFL coach who really figured out all the weaknesses of the other team and just came in and blew them away. Um, they were blitzing, they were doing everything right. I mean, they had like linebacker and quarter blitzes and safety blitzes. And, you know, they like the other guys like the like I love I love Farley and I love Barr, you know, you know, and I think that they were. Wow. What happened? They were in the wow. What happened, Camp? And when the game was over, it was just a real beatdown, real beatdown. I love at the beginning Sagar when he's like they were underestimated. It's like, by who? By you. More than anyone else.

That goes unacknowledged, though, but still beautiful to see that moment. Mine is a good old-fashioned, clean fun, United America in hilarity and horror and schadenfreude, and that was Congresswoman Lauren Boebert at Beetlejuice. I mean, who cannot help but laugh at this woman just making an utter and total fool of herself in public, vaping, getting kicked out for groping her mate, then saying and denying, actually, that she acted this way, forcing the employees at this theater to then leak the condemning video of this to local news. And this one went everywhere. It was everyone's feed. It hit the normies. I even dress up as Beetlejuice for Halloween

as a tribute to Mrs. Bobert for reminding me. Rewatched the movie, so thank you. I've only said Beetlejuice twice now in this vlog so far. So there were a lot of great jokes. There were too many good ones that happened as a result of this. So for me, it was just good old fashioned clean fun. Feels like a throwback to more innocent time. I agree, I agree completely.

When we could cover things like that and not have to be like, you know, are we watching an ethnic cleansing? Are we watching a genocide? It feels good to nostalgically relive Lauren Boebert's night out there at Beetlejuice. And you're so right that this really did land with a normal audience. Oh, it landed with everybody,ice. And you're so right that this really did land with an audience.

Now, I still maintain that I actually am in support of more representation for trashy hoes everywhere. I would like to see more of this among leftists, among my political ideology. So let's go for more trashy. She's actually a grandma, too. More trashy grandmas.

Oh my goodness. Kyle and I covered the Pornhub map that came out. Apparently, there's been a huge surge in interest in grandma porn and G-I-L-Fs, which people can probably interpret them. Maybe Lauren Boebert sparked that. She's 37 years old. I'm just connecting the dots now that perhaps she was the spark and the interest for the rise in grandma porn. She's only six years older than I am. Oh my God. Okay. All right. That's a whole other conversation. All right. Next question.

We won't judge people's personal decisions. What do we have? Okay. Next we have, what are we most excited for about 2024? And mine, I just said pure chaos. Yes. At this point, I mean, listen, Biden or Trump or both could die. Someone could get thrown in jail. Someone could be impeached. Someone could get kicked off the bat. I mean, we just don't even know. And not that I'm saying any of these are good things. I'm not saying that whatsoever. But at this point, I'm just sort of like in the, I guess we're going to have to embrace the suck, let it burn, whatever, because I think it's going to be an insane year, and it's very hard for me to come up with something

that I'm genuinely, like, affirmatively, positively excited about. One of the most frequent questions we get is, how do you deal with this? How do you deal with a job? And to be honest, a detached curiosity has been the way that I've eventually landed on. That's the only way I think you can actually stay sane and do the job. And yeah, that's why for pure chaos, you can't help but have a little bit of excitement about it.

I love history. It's very rare for people to actually be able to know in the moment that you are, quote, unquote, living through history. I think most people through the 90s, they probably thought they were. But unless it was the fall of the Berlin Wall or, well, I guess that was 89. So even the fall of the Soviet Union, something like that, most likely things are going to pass you by. But with Ukraine, just in the years that you and I have been doing a show together, I mean, think about the things we've covered. COVID, a pandemic in the 100 years, January 6th, the latest, the Ukraine war, Israel and Hamas. I mean, so many of these things. And then now to just know, to be on the precipice of this, I can't help but feel some excitement.

At least I get to live through something crazy and help make sense of it, of the world with all of you people. So for me, that's an exciting thing. All right, so what about you? What do you got? Once again, I mean, can't help, had to put a UFO thing in here. Let's put this up there. True to form. Let's put this up there. One thing I'm excited about is that repeatedly from people in the UFO community, they said, this UFO transparency is going to be forced in there or not, whether the

legislation passes or it doesn't. So just even though they did a cover up, they blocked all of the transparency initiatives inside of the Senate NDAA. I think a lot more people like David Grush are going to come forward and tell us a little bit about what they know. And I think we will be just a tiny little bit step closer to understanding the reality and the truth of what is happening. So the reality of it, though, I don't think we'll find out per se or whatever in 2024. But I think we'll have more interesting stuff to cover in 2024 as a result of Dave Grush coming forward. And I'm hopeful for that. Or maybe we'll get disproven the other way. Either way, I'll take it. Indeed. I think that's

good for people. So obviously, 2023 was a year with a lot of clouds, a lot of very dark clouds. But that's why we said, all right, well, let's try to look for a silver lining in some of this. And for me, it was the way that we've seen in the wake of Roe versus Wade being overturned, that people have really shown up to try to reclaim or protect their rights at the ballot. The abortion rights have won in every single ballot test where they have been on, you know, where voters have had a chance to go and weigh in. They have won in seven different states since it was originally overturned in June of 2022. And we just saw one of these in Ohio in this past off-year election. So to me, that's, you know, obviously I didn't support Roe versus Wade being overturned, but it is at least encouraging the backlash to that and how many people have flooded the polls

to try to reclaim the rights that they have lost. Yeah, it was interesting. I mean, nobody expected it. I certainly didn't. So it was stunning to the whole chaos thing. I'll put mine here up on the screen. We can put this up there, which is about Ukraine. And that's the reality setting in on the ground and Ukraine. And that might sound callous, but I really believed since the day of the invasion that this was the most precarious situation in the world just because of nuclear weapons. I think our policy has just been a total disaster. Thousands of Ukraine, tens of thousands of Ukrainian men have now been killed.

You've got hundreds of thousands who are injured. Just yesterday I read a story about a freaking 47-year-old guy who was kidnapped off the street, too poor to bribe his way out of the draft, and now is on the front line serving in an infantry division. And he's upset about it. He says, physically, I cannot handle this. I wish I was 20 years younger. So look, we need to put an end to this situation for the Ukrainian people, for the good of peace. I still believe, even with Israel Hamas and all that, this is one of those situations where you are just one bad moment away from going hot. And it has been a long priority of mine from the day that happened in order to keep and try and stop the ongoing insanity.

And I think that the vibe shifted completely because of the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. And I hope in the next year that we will see peace come to that region, or at least, you know, an attempt and an acknowledgement of that for the future. Yeah, I certainly hope so. All right, our last category is what was the biggest plot twist? What have you got for this one? Well, this is what I've been meaning to do for a long time. Israel Hamas happened, so obviously I wasn't just going to put it in the show.

But it is about Hasan Minhaj. And I got to be honest, you know, I did a monologue about Hasan Minhaj, about how the New Yorker exposed him. I still think he plays into identity politics tropes and others that I vehemently disagree with. But one of the stories in that New Yorker article accused Hasan Minhaj of lying about how he was rejected from the prom because his prom or his like possible prom dates parents were racist. And I got to say, I listened to Hassan's rebuttal whenever it came out, I guess a month and a half or so ago. And he convinced me, at least on this one point, he absolutely convinced me. I'll play some of it for you right now if you didn't hear it. First, I want to talk about how and why I was rejected from prom. Now, let me first

say this. I am 38 years old with a wife and two kids. I do not give a shit about prom, but it's a big story from my first standup special. And the New Yorker implied that I made it all up and that my race wasn't a factor in my rejection, but it was, and I have the evidence to prove it. He's got, look, he's got like a 20-something long minute video. He's got the receipts. He goes through some of the other allegations. Does he have, what, like emails? He's got text messages, emails, like her saying this and this,

acknowledging, you know, that some stuff happened in the past. I mean, look, it's, on the prom thing, there's no question about it. Like she absolutely railroaded him. And on some of the other ones, I wouldn't say she railroaded him as much on the other ones, but she definitely misconstrued some of the things that he said. And she did not include the fulsome nature of his response. So I got to own up to it.

Hasan, I apologize. That's one of those where, you know, I fell victim. I'll tell you this too about'll say this too about belief in the mainstream media and all that. This wasn't even me trusting the New Yorker. It just looked factual. And I know that reporter, I followed her for years now, Claire Malone, who used to work over at FiveThirtyEight. So I was like, man, if this is Claire Malone's work, this is somebody who I know and I've trusted her work for a long time now. The response, you know, the way that it was presented, it looks totally ironclad.

Also, he did not have any comment immediately in the aftermath. So you couldn't help but just think like, oh, it was a huge mistake on his part. I agree with you. But after the fulsome nature of it all came out, I'm like, all right, you got to give it to the man

and I've been meaning to do this for a while. So Hassan, here's to you. Has she responded to the fact? She stands by the story, which is bullshit. Come on. They haven't done a correction. No, no correction. They said they stand by it 100%. And that calls into question the whole thing. Yeah, exactly. So now I'm like, is this whole thing? Because that makes it clear, like, oh,

this was a hatchet job. You had a story you wanted to tell about this, and you were trying to fit the facts into what you wanted to say, and so, yeah. And he had personal consequences from what I can see. I mean, he didn't get the daily. I mean, I don't know if he would want the daily show position, but I would tell him not to take it given where that show has gone.

But he probably didn't get a job up because of it. And, you know, that doesn't sit right with me. That could also play into why he didn't respond. You know, it may have been that they told him, like, you just never know behind the scenes what pressures he was under to just, like, stay quiet on it and hope that it goes away. Anyway. No clue. All right.

Our apologies to Hassan for, you know, not believing him in the first place. That's right. All right. My plot twist is, do you guys remember back when Mayor Eric Adams was elected mayor of New York City? And there was all this chatter. Oh, he's the next Democratic presidential candidate. And this guy's a superstar. And he's showing how to win and showing Democrats how it's done. Well, that has now completely flipped to him giving answers like this one. Mr. Mayor, we've come to the end of what was a very eventful 2023, right? So when

you look at the totality of the year, if you had to describe it, and it's tough to do, in one word, what would that word be, and tell me why? New York. This is a place where every day you wake up, you could experience everything from a plane crashing into our trade center to a person who's celebrating a new business that's open. This is a very, very complicated city. I'm going to be honest with you. I just really wanted to play that clip in the show. Because every part of it, you know what really bugs me the most? Is he asks him for one word, and then he says New York,

which is two words. And then it just gets more and more absurd from there. And he's like, it's amazing. You can wake up and see a plane fly into the World Trade Center or someone opening a small business. I have no— It's an incredible city. That is one of the most what-the-fuck moments I've ever seen,

where it's like, dude, what is wrong with you? Also, if you're a family of 9-11 victims, you'd be like, yeah, that was actually the worst day of my life, so thanks for reminding me of that. What's wrong with you? Incredible. I love how the interviewer just keeps his interview persona on, too. I feel like he had a list of questions, and he didn't even play.

I mean, you know how it is. Sometimes people are talking, you've got other stuff, and you want to make sure you're ready for the next question and all that. I don't think he realized what was being said. Especially when you're throwing out the softest of softballs of all time. And so, yeah, your brain probably just checks out. Like, I'm sure he'll say something, you know, anodyne here, and we'll move on to the next one or wrap it up or whatever.

And instead he just gives the most ridiculous and hilarious answer of all time. I appreciate it. I thank him for that moment. Thank you, Mayor Adams. I would have expected him to just like say a lyric from NYC from Annie or something. It's like, what are you doing? I mean, it's great. It's just like, anyway.

All right. Thank you, Mayor Adams. Yes. It's great. It's just like, anyway. All right. Thank you, Mayor Adams. And thank you to all of you for being with us this year, trusting us to cover news that has been oftentimes very difficult, very challenging, very complex. We are going to be off next week. But I'm going to look to do, Sagar is going to be out now. But if big things break on Israel or anything else, I'll do some little updates for you guys. And we also have additional content that we're looking forward to you all getting to check out. I did a long interview with Norm Finkelstein and Sagar sitting down with Tucker Carlson. So definitely look for

those as well. There you go. Take advantage if you can. We're going to be releasing them earlier to our premium subs. Otherwise, I will see you all in the new year. Happy holidays, guys. See you in the new year. Happy holidays, guys. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily, it's You're Not the Father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money

back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.

Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. This medal is for the men who went down that day. On Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage, you'll hear about these heroes and what their stories tell us about the nature of bravery. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.