Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/2/24: FBI Fumbles New Orleans Attack, Cyber Truck Explodes, Trump Goes Full Globalist & MORE!

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

Krystal and Emily discuss FBI fumbles New Orleans attack response, Cyber Truck suspect revealed, Trump goes full globalist on H1b, Johnson doomed amid Speaker battle, NYT sued over Blake Lively piece, OpenAI whistleblower parents demand investigation, Gaza doc on Israel's destruction of Gaza.    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Breaking Points. Crystal, I'm in for Sagar. Thanks for having me. Always. Happy New Year, Emily. Happy New Year. Got off to a terrible but eventful start to 2025. We had two violent incidents that the FBI has investigated. Actually looking to see if there might be any link between the two.

So far, indications are no. But we'll break all of that down for you, both in New Orleans and also in Las Vegas. Trump did weigh in publicly on New Year's Eve about the whole Elon Musk H-1B thing, firmly siding with Elon Musk and indicating that actually we need a lot more immigrants in the country. So a little bit different note that he's sounding now versus when he was on the campaign trail and certainly when he was on the trail back in 2016 and 2020. We also have some drama in the Republican caucus. Mike Johnson faces a speaker vote tomorrow, and he can only, because the House Republican caucus has such a narrow majority, he can only lose one vote. He's already lost that vote. Thomas Massey has said he's not voting for Mike Johnson. So if anyone else defects, he won't be able to get a majority. We'll be in another negotiation a la Kevin McCarthy, Matt Gaetz, cetera. So we'll see where all of that goes.

They're also facing a hitting the debt ceiling very, very shortly. We're going to take a look. Emily's going to help me understand this Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni thing. He's firing back both at Blake Lively and at The New York Times, suing The New York Times, claiming that their reporting was false and that they were cherry picking and actually altering communications that they use for their blockbuster report, alleging that he had harassed her and also that he had retaliated against her. So we'll break all of that down for you.

The parents of the open AI whistleblower who was found dead, authorities deem that a suicide. The parents don't buy it. They have hired a private investigator to look into exactly what happened there. So we'll bring you those details. And we also are going to have an American doctor from Texas join us, who is just back from his second trip to Gaza. Obviously, we covered earlier this week the horrific latest raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza has been destroyed. All of the patients and medical staff forced to leave,

some of them detained, et cetera. So he's going to tell us what he saw when he was in the Gaza Strip. Before we jump into the latest that we know out of New Orleans and this horrific terror attack that occurred on New Year's Day, if you guys could help us out, help bring in the new year, help us be able to provide the best coverage we can by becoming premium subscribers. You can go to breakingpoints.com. If you can't do that, that's fine. It also helps us out a lot to like and share our videos on YouTube. So with that, let's go ahead and jump into the news. Yes. Let's start in New Orleans, Crystal, where the death toll has now risen to 15 people from the horrific New Year's attack on Bourbon Street. Now you've all in the audience likely heard the basics of what happened. Obviously a car, we have some video of this we're going to

show in just one moment, rammed into the packed crowd on Bourbon Street in New Orleans around three in the morning on New Year's Eve, but then really New Year's Day. People were still out in full force celebrating New Year's Eve. So it's clear that this attacker wanted to take out as many people as possible. Now, President Joe Biden late yesterday finally addressed the nation in some very, Chris, I would say some very strange, I mean, there was nothing strange really about the script, but certainly about the delivery. So let me go ahead right now and roll this video of Joe Biden addressing the nation from Camp David, which is where he was for the holiday. I'm going to get this in full screen so you can actually see his face up close. Here's Joe Biden from Camp David last night. Our hearts are the people of New Orleans after the despicable attack that occurred in the early morning hours. To all the families of those who were killed, to all those who were injured, to all the

people of New Orleans who are grieving today, I want you to know I grieve with you. Our nation grieves with you. We're going to stand with you as you mourn and as you heal in the weeks to come. I want to thank our brave first responders and law enforcement personnel who stopped the attacker in his tracks before he could kill or injure even more people. And I want to thank you to everyone at the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, including the FBI, for working nonstop to investigate this heinous act. The FBI is leading the investigation to determine what happened, why it happened, whether there was any continuing threat to public safety. Here's what we know so far. The FBI has reported to me the killer was an American citizen born in Texas. He served in the United States Army on active duty for many years.

He also served in the Army Reserve until a few years ago. The FBI also reported to me that mere hours before the attack, he posted videos on social media indicating that he was inspired by ISIS, expressing a desire to kill, a desire to kill. The ISIS flag was found in his vehicle, which he rented to conduct this attack. Possible explosives were found in the vehicle as well, and more explosives were found nearby. The situation is very fluid, and the investigation has a preliminary stage. And the fact is that right now, excuse me. There you go. The law enforcement and intelligence community are continuing to look for any connections, associations, or co-conspirators. Well, Crystal, I feel better. I mean, like, this is the least important part of this at this point,

given the loss of life and et cetera. But it's unbelievable this man is our president and that he still believes that he would have been able to beat Donald Trump. But, you know, clearly this was a horrific intentional attack. We are learning more about the the suspect who was killed after, you know, he fired at law enforcement and law enforcement fired back and shot and killed him. But, you know, the ISIS piece, so an ISIS flag was found in his truck. And the president there indicates that, according to law enforcement, he had posted some video sympathizing with ISIS. The more we learn about this dude, the more it looks less like an instance of some sort of like, you know, Islamic radicalization and more like some a dude who went through a divorce and lost his mind,

because apparently he had first threatened his own family and was thinking of killing them. And then decided, got this ISIS inspiration idea instead and goes and murders a bunch of, you know, innocent party goers on celebrating the new year. So we can go ahead. Emily, I think you've got the TikTok video of this individual born and raised in Texas, originally Christian, converted to Islam in the last number particular with, I think, the second wife, it appears like. But this is a video of him. He was a professional. He worked at Deloitte, actually. And this is a video of him when he was going through a phase where he was trying to launch a real estate business. And this, in any case, is how he presented himself in the context of that business. I'm Sadeem Jabbar, property manager with Blue Metal Properties and team lead at the Midas Group at Core Realty. I just want to say hello

and let you know a little bit about me. So I'm born and raised in Beaumont, Texas, and now live in Houston. And I've been here all my life, with the exception of traveling for the military, where I spent 10 years as a human resources specialist and IT specialist, where I learned the meaning of great service and what it means to be responsive and take everything seriously, dotting I's and crossing T's to make sure that things go off without a hitch. So I've taken those skills and applied them to my career as a real estate agent, where I feel like what really sets me apart from other agents is my ability to be able to, one,

be a fierce negotiator. So not only do I brilliantly market your property to make sure it gets sold as quickly as possible or gets leased as quickly as possible, but I'm also going to take every ounce of energy and put it into negotiating for you and for your property to get the best deal that you can possibly get for it. So once we get to the closing table, all the I's are going to be dotted. All the T's are going to be crossed. Everything's going to go off without a hitch. And that is my word that I'm giving to you as your real estate agent. And Crystal, what I'm sharing right here is from the New York Times. They say a man, they reported midday yesterday,

a man who knew Shamsuddin Bahar Jabbar tells us that Jabbar had converted to Islam and then began acting erratically in recent months. This is according to Mike Baker. The concerning behavior led to him having limited contact with his children. So certainly more reporting to that extent is coming in. No question about it. We're going to learn more. I just have to say, I mean, as the law enforcement response crystal transpired yesterday in the public eye, started with a news conference in which the FBI said that they were not investigating an act of terrorism. We're going to get into some of this in just one moment.

And then obviously they had covered up the ISIS flag, which is going to lead to a lot of questions for years to come, certainly. But then hours later, actually like moments later, pivoted to saying, yes, they were investigating this as an act of terrorism, which all seems to be adding up pretty quickly to the point where they should be able to confirm that. They then held a disastrous, disastrous midday press conference yesterday. And it wasn't just law enforcement. It was also Jeff Landry, the governor of Louisiana, Senator John Kennedy, Republican from Louisiana, involved in this press conference. It was honestly just bizarre. It was bizarre. It was like weirdly combative and for no reason at all. It was just weird. Yeah, it was horrible. I honestly thought it was just a disgraceful display. They were combative with reporters. Kennedy told a boomer

joke about NBC being on the left and the right in the middle of this press conference. Bodies were still on the street. This is really not the time when 15 people are dead and many dozens more injured and you're making like partisan weird boomer jokes. Right. Bodies were literally still on Bourbon Street at the time, which was another thing that they were confirming in that press conference is horrific. They did not want to answer questions. They all seem to be on completely different pages. They tried to end the press conference after delaying it for forever. They tried to end it quickly into the questions, a few questions in, because they were threatening reporters essentially saying, you're not asking questions that we can answer, so we're just going to end it. I mean, it was outrageous how that happened. So let's take a look at some of the

questions they were answering. One of the biggest questions that they've faced going into all of this is, how did this happen? Was there not adequate security? New Orleans obviously was hosting the Sugar Bowl. There were tens of thousands of people in town for the Sugar Bowl. It was supposed to be yesterday night on New Year's Eve. They postponed it a day. That was an announcement from the press conference we were just mentioning. But they're also hosting the Super Bowl and just plainly should be able to keep, obviously, people safe on Bourbon Street. Now, on a New Year's celebration. Now, this is video and it has some yellow boxes that you can follow of the car, which was rented on the app Turo. It was an electric vehicle. Let's go ahead and watch.

Follow those yellow boxes if you're watching this. Terrifying. So what we just saw there was the electric vehicle go around a squad car that we're now learning from authorities was there because they're working to get barricades. Basically, the types of barricades that you put up when you don't want traffic to come down a street and ram a street full of people. This is what they're saying as of right now. They were using squad cars instead,

but obviously you can drive around a squad car. And if you can get onto the sidewalk, then you haven't fully barricaded the street, Crystal. Their answers to this have been utterly unsatisfying thus far. Yeah. And apparently all they had up were just the little like orange gate barricades that you can easily barrel through. To your point, it seems like the most obvious thing in the world that if you're trying to block a street using a vehicle, which is a common practice, you know, I've seen this in New York or I've seen this in D.C. where they're moving even some of the like, you know, sanitation trucks to try to block off different areas like

you have to actually block off that area or else it doesn't serve much of a purpose. Also, the fact that he's able to just skirt right around it and there's not any, you know, immediate reaction. Now, I have seen video of local law enforcement, you know, immediately running into danger when they realized what was happening. And obviously they were able to neutralize the threat before it would cause even more loss of life. We should also mention in terms of the details here and part of what created this confusion around whether or not he was acting alone. Confusion, which I don't think has been completely resolved, although at this point it appears that the cat just showed up, that he was acting completely alone. Confusion, which I don't think has been completely resolved, although at this point it appears that, the cat just showed up, that he was acting completely alone. But there was an IED in addition to the firearms that he had in the truck. And then there was some indication that

there might have been some other IED that was found around the city. So, you know, there are some questions that still remain, but that, you know, that's part of what's been confusing is initially they came out and said, oh, we're investigating these other individuals that we saw planting these devices around the city and then had to come out and walk that. No, no, no. Actually, it turns out they weren't involved. So there were there was a lot of, you know, a lot of questions about the law enforcement response here. And we actually have a video of someone who was there, an eyewitness who said that he was concerned from the jump about the seeming lack of security of this area that is, you know, obviously famous in terms of America. It's this cultural historical destination known

for its revelry. Obviously, it's going to be a hotspot on New Year's Eve. And the fact that security was so lax in and of itself raises massive questions. Yeah, let's go ahead and take a look at that video, which is queued up right here. This is on CNN. We can go ahead and roll the clip. Last Mardi Gras, this happened to an extent, maybe not terrorism, but still people getting hit in mass population with vehicles. Those barricades were not awkward, period. They had the flimsy orange ones that you could just push over with your finger. We actually thought it was kind of odd because usually when you get to Bourbon Street, you can turn your back to canal and not worry about anything.

You can just walk the street, especially on New Year's. And there were still vehicles coming after 8 p.m. And then, I mean, the fact that they never raised them, that's how this guy was able to get down Bourbon Street so quickly and cause so much damage. Because there's other barricades past the canal and Bourbon intersection. There's more like every two or three blocks. So what was 10 or 15 dead and 30 wounded could Could have only been maybe 5 and 15. I mean, who can say, but it definitely would have been minimalized because this truck cannot go around those barricades. Everything in New Orleans in the

French Quarter has a balcony. All the balconies have poles. Several steel poles. And there's no going around anything. If that barricade's up, that's a wrap. That's your end. So just to be clear, you're saying that they were just flimsy, the flimsy orange barricades that weren't up, that they weren't the same barricades there as elsewhere? No, they were, the metal ones were absolutely not engaged.

Wow, and that struck you at the time, right? Because there was that 2017 incident with Mardi Gras where a drunk driver drove through. And so from what my understanding is, they increased security measures in that area because of what happened there. But what you're saying is that you didn't see the security that should have been there to protect the Rugglers. Yeah, we were walking right across it. Like as you walk down Bourbon, you cross like five of them. And then even when you turn off the side streets of Bourbon, there's more. Like there's the precautions are there and everything's implicated. You just have to use it.

Now, just for a flavor of how the FBI's response changed over the course of the day, the Associated Press confirmed investigators have reviewed video of three men and a woman, a woman placing explosives in connection with the deadly car attack in New Orleans, French Quarter. The FBI does not believe the driver acted alone. So now there are three other suspects. This is in the middle of the day yesterday. There are three other suspects that are potentially being investigated as part of a terrorism cell and are loose, ostensibly, in the country. And the FBI then walks that back later in the day. So let's take a look at this report from CNN. Getting new information. You're getting some clarification from law enforcement officials. What are you learning? Yeah, well, for one of the things we have been focused on is the

FBI certainly was looking at this surveillance video that at the time at least appeared to show that there were other people who may have been involved in placing devices in the French Quarter. Now we know that law enforcement now has determined that those people had nothing to do with this incident. At this point, it appears that those people seen on surveillance video did not have anything to do with replacing devices in the French Quarter, that this suspect, you know, was solely responsible, certainly for the attack, at least as we know it at this point. Now, we should make clear that the FBI is still looking at possible associates. They're trying to see whether there's anybody who may have been involved in helping to create

the devices, the IEDs, whether those people, anybody who might have been involved in helping to create the devices, the IEDs, whether those people, anybody who might have been involved in helping to plan the attack. But at this point, at least on the part of the surveillance video, they now believe that those people had absolutely nothing to do with this actual attack that happened this morning. All right. Important information indeed. So, Crystal, it also appeared that reporters, like press, actually got to the suspect's house in Houston before the FBI. That's it. So far, we have New York Post saying they were there before the FBI was there, before law enforcement was there. And just to go back briefly to the moment at the disastrous, insane press conference in the middle of the day yesterday when John Kennedy made his weird

little joke. What he also did was basically box the FBI director out to get to the podium and make remarks. And the reason I think that's important is I can imagine if you're in Louisiana and your constituents are still lying on the ground on Bourbon Street, you are probably enormously frustrated with the FBI. It came out right away for some reason, said we weren't investigating it as terrorism, then flipped immediately on it. Later in the day, they would do the same thing. There's a level of incompetence that he may have been reacting there. Now, we have no idea why he actually boxed out the FBI director,

but it was a horrible day for the FBI yesterday. There's just absolutely no question about it. These things are incredibly difficult. Obviously, that's true. There's a fluid situation, thousands of people. There's lots of CCTV footage because it's Bourbon Street. There's lots of mobile phone video, obviously, no, we don't think that they were planting IEDs. That was a stunning reversal after their other stunning reversal on the terrorism question. Absolutely. And the first thing that you know, even just as an analyst covering these things,

is that the initial stories often change. Initial perception of what happened often changes. You would think the FBI would be the ones to be most well aware of that. So to be leaking to journalists like, oh, I think it's this larger ISIS terror cell based on a video that then they immediately go out and find out. No, they were just, you know, party goers like doing whatever they were doing. It's truly it's truly outrageous. And as I said before, I think there are still some questions remaining about whether or not he acted alone. But at least according to NBC News, they said the only indication that law enforcement had

that he hadn't been the lone wolf here was that video. So if there is other evidence, they hadn't uncovered it as of yet that there were other people who were involved in this. The indications, at least at this point, are that he lost his mind for whatever reason, decided to do some, let me grab my ISIS flag and do some, you know, horrific attack on innocent people and perpetrated this, came up with this on his own is what the indication is at this point.

The other thing, and this will help us transition into the other violent event yesterday on New Year's Day. So there were a few things that surface level seem to sort of connect this attack with this Vegas attack. So you have someone who drove up in a Cybertruck, Tesla, of course, manufacturer owned by Elon Musk, manufacturer of a Cybertruck, Tesla, of course, manufacturer owned by Elon Musk, manufacturer of the Cybertruck outside of the Trump Hotel, and then detonates

a bunch of explosives there, killing himself and injuring, I think, something like seven people who were nearby. So both vehicles were electric, used in both attacks. Both attacks used vehicles, both rented from this same, it's like a peer-to-peer rental car agency where it's like, you know, you can personally say, hey, my car is available for you to rent. That's what this app effectively was. And then the other thing is they both are apparently former military. Now, it doesn't appear thus far that there are actually any links. These seem to be coincidences. But in any case, that that's being investigated at this point, the fact that there were weirdly some surface level similarities between these two disparate attacks. Yeah, I mean, it was as this was playing out yesterday, it was obviously you

had the FBI saying there may have been multiple people involved. And then we start learning more about the Cybertruck explosion outside of Trump Tower in Las Vegas. And it starts to look incredibly frightening, immediately frightening, because it seems that there's like a chain reaction happening around the country potentially. And to your point, Crystal, we're going to learn a lot more about what radicalized this suspect. And that'll I mean, that's an interesting and unanswered question right now is basically what the hell happened. This is somebody who was in the military, as you heard President Biden say just a few moments ago when we played the video from his Camp David press conference. Somebody who was in the Army Reserves until not that long ago, seemingly normal person who was American, born here. Normal white collar job.

I believe the suspect's parents were also born here, not connected, unless there are other suspects that we learn of, but not connected to any type of immigration. That was another thing that was playing out yesterday. The car itself had gone through Eagle Pass, Texas, multiple times that he had rented on Turo, the app, to your point. So there's so much more to the story that we still don't know. But I do know one thing. A lot of people are not at this moment feeling probably very confident in what the FBI says as things transpire. Now, some breaking news, the FBI is set to brief Congress on Thursday. So there should be Congress is back in town. The new Congress is in session. We're actually going

to talk about how difficult that will be for Republicans in just a bit, because as they seek to turn the screws on the FBI and to get a new FBI director confirmed in the Senate, at least, over on the House side, Mike Johnson has like a one vote margin. So a lot to come later this week and a lot of questions that remain unanswered. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never

found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try.

She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got

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Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so we've referred now a couple times to this other violent incident that occurred yesterday, which thankfully resulted in a much lower loss of life than that vehicle attack down in New Orleans. But yesterday, a Cybertruck pulled up outside of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas and then reportedly after sitting there for 15 or 20 seconds explodes. Now, we have some video I can show you. So ultimately, the driver himself who perpetrated what is being described as an intentional act, he's the only person who died in this attack. There were something like seven people who were standing nearby who were also injured. But thankfully, again, lower loss of

life here. But in any case, let's take a look at this stunning video of what occurred here. Copy. So you can actually see these fireworks exploding. And sure enough, after the fact, when they got a look at the truck itself, you can see here them carrying this tarp and revealing the contents of this truck, you can see these firework canisters, gasoline canisters, camp fuel canisters, and they say large firework mortars

in the back of the cyber truck that exploded. So Elon Musk got involved immediately and helped out law enforcement trying to, you know, first unlock the car, which had automatically locked and then investigating to see, you know, was this some weird like Tesla problem where the vehicle just exploded out of nowhere? And no, he says we have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented cyber truck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself. All vehicle telemetry was positive at the time of the explosion. And as I just mentioned, Emily, you also had law enforcement confirming that this was being investigated as an intentional act. And, you know, obviously you could see the symbolism here. You've got the Cybertruck, which is Elon Musk, who's obviously closely affiliated with the Trump administration. You've got the Trump Hotel, etc. So let's take a listen to a little bit of the reporting here.

Let's talk about Las Vegas, because this has been a sort of interesting development. You know, the images of the Cybertruck parked outside the Las Vegas Trump property went viral, you know, sort of, I think people thought it was an accident and then it was heard. And so there was a sort of bizarre symbolism and that it was a Cybertruck. It was not Trump. As it's developed, it seems that this is being taken far more seriously. What have we learned about what authorities know and how they're investigating this. Right, Chris. So according to the reporting of myself, my colleagues, Andrew Blankstein and Kelly O'Donnell, right now, three senior U.S. law enforcement officials say that this explosion of a Tesla Cybertruck kind of in the portico there where you saw that smoke rising from in front of

Trump's property in Las Vegas is being investigated, at least initially, as a potential act of terrorism and that it was, quote, intentional. So there you go. Another potential act of terrorism appears very much to be intentional when you're driving around with a bunch of fireworks and gas canisters and other explosives would seem very much to indicate that this individual intended for this to happen. And I'll just give you the last couple of pieces that we know here. As we mentioned before, there are some surface level connections. I don't want to say connections, but similarities is the better word between this vehicle-based attack and the other vehicle-based attack in New Orleans.

The most noteworthy of this was the fact that both vehicles were electric and both were rented through the rental car at Toro, where people can put up their own vehicles to rent out to the public. I don't know, perhaps that's just like they both thought that this would be a way for the vehicles not to be tracked or the easiest way to get the particular type of vehicle that they were looking to get. I don't know how easy it is to rent a Cybertruck from a traditional rental agency. But in addition to them both using vehicles, both using this rental car app, they also both were former military. So this is who authorities said perpetrated this attack and ended up killing himself in this attack.

Matthew Livelsberger, 37, identified as the driver of the Cybertruck that exploded in Vegas, listed on LinkedIn as an operations director and intelligence manager who apparently is former Green Beret. So at this point, that's about all we know about this particular attack in Las Vegas, which killed the driver and injured a number of passersby. And both obviously used trucks as well. So those are, I think, more, I mean, they're superficial to your point, Crystal, because they're all on the surface level, but they're pretty, I think, interesting parallels. And it took a long time for people to talk about what was happening in the same breath yesterday. We didn't hear it from media and law enforcement, but it would seem to have been a fairly obvious question. Trump obviously was at Mar-a-Lago. He was not at Las Vegas, so there's no threat to Trump himself.

We may learn that they have absolutely nothing to do with each other, but the questions I think on the minds of a lot of the American people who now see two different things happening on two different coasts, almost at the same time or within hours of each other. I mean, this, the, I shouldn't say almost at the same time, but really within, you know, the 24 hour span really was within, I think, a 12-hour span, roughly, that raises questions. And the answer so far has been, again, entirely unsatisfying. So apparently law enforcement is investigating to see if there's any potential link between these two attacks. So far, they have not indicated that there are any other than these, you know, sort of

surface level similarities. But yeah, it's to your point, when we were talking about the New Orleans attack, like there was a very scary period of time yesterday, when law enforcement comes out and says, Oh, well, there were actually this wasn't just this lone wolf in New Orleans, we have video of these other accomplices who are still at large. And then that's at the same time that you're just starting to get these details that, oh, the cyber truck didn't just randomly blow up. This was another intentional act, potentially being investigated as terrorism. It certainly raised, you know, is there going to be a series of more attacks in the country? So far, there's as I said, there's no indication the two were linked. It looks like two separate lone wolf psychos who decided for whatever reason or whatever irrational reason their brains concocted to try to hurt and kill innocent people who were just going about living their lives. But, you know, that's still being still being investigated at this point to see if there's any potential connection here.

But as best we can tell, you know, I think we have we have certainly more details about the attacker in New Orleans. And, you know, looks like someone who was going about his life doing OK and then hit a rough patch. He was also under financial distress, had this difficult divorce, and appears to have just completely lost his mind and was thinking about killing his own family and then decides instead to kill a bunch of innocent random civilians

on New Year's Day, early in the early mornings of New Year's Day. So welcome to 2025. Not going so well so far. Yeah, well, on that point, it was insane in the 24 hours of New Year's where you had symbolically a literal lightning strike hit the Capitol, hit the Washington Monument. And all of this happens, starts unfolding within 12 hours of the new year. Not a not a great start, Crystal, but just a leave an omen. Yes, seriously, seriously. And just a last point on that. important that is, and the time span is enough that it potentially allows for this man to have been the suspect in Las Vegas, to have been animated in some way. We're likely dealing with somebody who had some level of mental illness, but could have potentially been animated in one way or another by what happened in New Orleans. There's enough time that whatever the

motivation was, maybe it's like something is a reaction in one way or another to what had happened in New Orleans in the Las Vegas case as well. So a lot more to be, a lot more questions to be asked and hopefully we'll get those answers sooner rather than later. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out

there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for.

If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This five months, we are not just celebrating. We're fighting back. I'm George M. Johnson, and my book, All Boys Aren't Blue, was just named the most banned book in America. If the culture wars have taught me anything, it's that pride is protest.

And on my podcast, Fighting Words, we talk to people who use their voices to resist, disrupt, and make our community stronger. This year, we are showing up and showing out. You need people being like, no, you're not going to tell us what to do. This regime is coming down on us. And I don't want to just survive. I want to thrive.

You'll hear from trailblazers like Bob the Drag Queen. To freedom! Angelica Ross. We ready to fight? I'm ready to fight. And Gabrielle Yoon. Hi, George. And storytellers with wisdom to spare. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

So, guys, earlier this week, we covered this whole imbruglio. Is that how you say that word? I never know. Between Elon Musk and Vivek versus laura loomer and a bunch of other mega types fundamentally over immigration but specifically over h1b visas and quote-unquote high-skilled immigration um so at the time when we spoke to you last trump had given some comments to the new york post that were I guess, still a little bit cryptic. But he was like, I like H-1B. And in fact, I use many H-1B visas on my own properties, which I don't even think is true. I think he means H-2B visas. But in any case, seems very much like he was siding with Elon. However, I did see some of his supporters who are on the more like MAGA,

like anti-immigrant right, who were kind of coping over this saying, until I hear from his mouth, I'm not going to believe anything, blah, blah, blah. Well, he got asked about this, Trump did, on New Year's Eve at his annual Mar-a-Lago party and made it pretty clear where he stands on the issue at this point. Let's take a listen. I didn't change my mind. I've always felt we have to have the most competent people in our country. We need competent people. We need smart people coming into our country. We need a lot of people coming in. We're going to have jobs like we've never had before. But sir, you changed your position. We need a lot of people coming in, Emily. Now, I'm old enough to remember when at the RNC, the crowd was holding mass deportation now signs.

J.D. Vance at the RNC gave a speech about how no longer would they let foreign workers come in and replace American workers. So since getting Elon Musk's $250 million into his campaign, his tone does seem to have shifted a bit on this issue. Yeah, I mean, the mass deportations can theoretically exist alongside H-1B visas. Like there's an ideological way that you can say we're deporting illegal immigrants and then we're going to bring in the best and the brightest. But that's not the position that Donald Trump has taken in the past. And it's not the position of people like Stephen Miller and people who are so hawkish on immigration that they believe in, this is typically for cultural reasons

and alongside labor reasons, that they believe basically the country is full is the way that they'll say it. Like we have to integrate people who are already here culturally and assimilate people who are already here culturally. And we cannot continue to import workers that are undermining American workers. So no immigration, full moratorium, legal immigration has to be reduced dramatically,

if not entirely curbed. You have to get rid of all of these visa programs. That is not something that can exist alongside H-1B visas without significant reform. Elon Musk, you've probably seen this, Crystal, has come out and said, basically, we all believe that there should be reforms to H-1Bs, which is, I think, an easy thing to say. It's another question of what happens when people actually try to make those reforms and what they end up looking like and who weighs in to potentially stop them if they are a threat to the way Silicon Valley does business, which this is important to their bottom line because you can see just the reaction from people over the last couple of

weeks, how important it is to their bottom line. Oh, this is a major issue for Silicon Valley. And you knew this back when Trump went on the All In podcast. And this is a major issue for Silicon Valley. And you knew this back when Trump went on the all in podcast. And this is one of the things that he promised the tech bro crew, including, you know, David Sachs and, and the rest of the gang there. This is like one of the things that he talked about, and he promised. So for those of us who've been listening carefully, it wasn't a surprise that he had made this dramatic pivot from the way he had positioned himself back in 2020 and 2016. You know, just to clarify, again, my position, I support more legal immigration, more pathways to citizenship, high skilled and low skilled. and effectively with all gas worker programs, is it does create this indentured servant class that is completely beholden to whatever, whether their corporate boss wants them there. Their

immigration status depends on pleasing their corporate boss. They frequently are underpaid. They're also used as a tool to bust, because if you've got this workforce there that is, you know, can only stay in the country so long as they keep the boss pleased, then they may not want to do something as adversarial as start a union, etc, join a union, etc. And so, you know, those programs are fundamentally exploitative, both for the workers themselves, and also have a deleterious effect on the existing workforce. It's also worth really noting something that people been, people have been pulling up and noting on Twitter. Tesla, among other tech companies, laid off thousands of American workers at the same

time that they're claiming, because you have to in order to get one of these H-1B visas that you can use for your company, you have to claim there's no American worker who can fill this role. And so at the same time, they're claiming, oh, we can't get anyone to fill these positions. You're laying off thousands of American workers. So for Elon Musk, it's very clear what's going on here. And for the rest of the tech oligarchs,

it's very clear what's going on. They like having an exploitable, easily manipulated, lower paid workforce. And they consider that to be really important to them and their, you know, capitalist bottom line. Just to show you so to give you a little visual representation of Elon's influence here, you can see him here, you know, vibing with Lil X on his shoulders, who is absolutely adorable. Partying with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. There's a New York Times report that he just he's just staying at the cottage at Mar-a-Lago. I saw someone on Twitter who was like, you know, he's smart enough to realize Trump is

very influenced by the last person he talked to. So he's just going to post up at Mar-a-Lago and always be the last person who talks to Donald Trump. But even beyond that, I think this deal was already made back when Elon basically like rescued his campaign. And who knows if he would have won or not if Elon wasn't involved in his money, et cetera, et cetera. But certainly possible that that quarter of a billion dollars plus organizing efforts on the ground was determinative, given how close a margin the race ends up ultimately being.

Yeah, well, and that means there's a sort of debt of gratitude, so to speak, that you would imagine Donald Trump owes Elon Musk. And in this case, Crystal, there was some reporting several years ago, it was a big controversy at the time, that Disney had laid off American workers and actually had them training their replacements. Again, it was splashy at the time, but sort of faded from the headlines, as you can imagine. But what's important about that in combination with something you just said, is that you have to say you can't hire Americans the next way. Like, this is the most qualified person, blah, blah, blah, to get your H-1B. That's already a protective

measure intended to be in the law. And so when you come in and say, I'm making reforms, this is going to be even more stringent. Well, Silicon Valley, if they stop protesting, usually means they found a way around whatever the reform is. It usually means they feel comfortable that they can still continue to hire people with these ways that are beneficial to their bottom lines and undercutting American workers. Because if you look at what happened with Disney, for example, it just raises this obvious point, which is if they can do it, why wouldn't they? If they are about maximizing shareholder value, why would they not do that if they can do it, if they can get away with it? Obviously, they don't want the negative media attention. That was fairly disastrous for Disney.

But now nobody even knows it really happened. So if they can do it, why wouldn't they? And that means they're always – That's Trump's rationale too. I mean he apparently has maybe a few – has applied for a few H-1B visas, which are like the, you know, knowledge workers. H-2B applies to hospitality and other seasonal work. So like hospitality, agriculture, things like that. He has long used at his properties many H-2b visas and so it's important for people to remember in spite of the way trump has branded himself he ultimately you know his class interests and ideological positioning are very much aligned with elon musk so you know for him to come out totally change his position and don't let him fool you like this is a change in position no one should be surprised because he avails himself and benefits from this very same, very exploitative system of visas, which are tied to your employment.

So if you piss off your employer, you get deported. That is a fundamentally exploitative relationship that, you know, even lefties like me who think that immigrants are good for the country and want more pathways of citizenship, et cetera, like this is a bad way to do immigration because it's bad for the person coming in and it's bad for the workers that you are undercutting with these lower wages and more exploitative labor practices. Yeah. It's not as though there's no way to bring in the best talent in the world. I think that's entirely possible. But the way these laws are written, you can poke them full of holes like Swiss cheese if you have the resources and you're a massive firm, multi-billion dollar company or anything like that. You can find a way around all of these different things that might hurt midsize or smaller businesses who are trying to use the same practices.

And that's why there's no, like, yes, H-1B visas, if you put Stephen Miller in charge of them, that's a threat to Silicon Valley. But there's always a confidence in the industry that they're able to write these laws in a way that still works for them, even if there are restrictions or reforms or whatever. So that's why I take seriously the idea that the program should be reformed if it's espoused by or endorsed by people like Elon Musk. I think that's great, but incredibly, incredibly suspicious that it would really happen in a way, a meaningful way. Let's take a look just for the record at a compilation of how Trump talked about

this issue in 2016, how he talked about it in 2020. And then we've already played for you what he just said, indicating, quote, we need a lot of people coming in. Let's take a listen to this. Nobody knows the system better than me. I know the H-1B. I know the H-2B. Nobody knows it better than me. I know the H-1B very well, and it's something that I frankly use and I shouldn't be allowed to use. We shouldn't have it. Very, very bad for workers. As we speak, we're finalizing H-1B regulations so that no American worker is replaced ever again. H-1B should be used for top, highly paid talent to create American jobs, not as an expensive labor program to destroy American jobs.

So there you go. And then they just play the 2024. And he's not the only one, Emily, this was kind of funny, who has really changed his tune with regards to this very specific topic. So Vivek Ramaswamy, who on Monday, you probably recall we covered, he put out that tweet, like attacking American culture as being mediocre and pushing for mediocrity because of our sitcoms that we watched in the nineties and hanging out at the

mall or whatever, all in order to back up Elon's position and now Trump's position on H1B visas. Back in October, not like years ago, I'm talking about literally this October 2024, he sounded very different on the topic. Let's take a listen. A lot of the people who have come here through the H-1B system would tell you, as I would, that it's just a broken system no matter who you're seeking to serve. For example, you want to talk about special interests and lobbying? This is direct Silicon Valley lobbying that said that if you get your H-1B visa and you're hired

by one company, you're effectively like a slave. You can't switch to a different company. That's not a free labor market. So there's so much that's broken and bureaucratized. Here's the next question about the H-1B visa system is why the heck do we do it on the basis of a lottery when you could actually just select the very best people. So there's a lot that's broken about the administrative state, the bureaucracy. My general approach is when something's broken in government, you can't really fix it when it's lasted that long. You need to shut it down, start with a blank slate and rebuild from scratch. And that's just a stylistic point that I've applied to this issue as to any other. So that last part where he's like, there's no reforming, you just got to get rid of it is particularly important because people had surfaced some of his comments before that were critical of H-1Bs. And he's like, I didn't change my position. I've always been for reform. I'm still for reform. But this makes it pretty clear, like, no, you weren't just talking about reform. You were saying a broken system, you really can't fix it. You just got to get rid of it altogether.

And so, you know, he really is kind of caught here. Also, I guess, deciding to kowtow to his fellow billionaire. He is also a billionaire, although I guess a lesser billionaire than Elon Musk. He's a mere single or double billionaire as opposed to whatever Elon Musk has. But, you know, ultimately, but ultimately allowing here with his own class interests. Yes, that was a fairly detailed and substantive, well thought out argument against H1BV. There's no way around it. And what sucks for the American worker is it also used to be something that a lot of people, even like the higher profile people, Bernie Sanders on the left, used to make a substantive and serious argument against as well. And it just,

it's so, to your point about Silicon Valley, it's so valuable to them that we've seen those arguments just sort of melt away. And this idea that it could be reformed without, as Vivek said, I actually basically agree with what he said in that conversation that we just played. Because when you start quote unquote reforming things, you end up with those holes like Swiss cheese being poked in by lobbyists and industry, which is the system that we have now. It's a system likely we would have under a seriously reformed version of H-1B visas. So to see the change in rhetoric is just a it's a small sample of what American workers have been dealing with for decades from the political class.

Yeah, yeah, it is quite remarkable. I mean, you know, I think I think when we talk to Roe, I think he's got some good ideas and working bipartisan in a way to reform the program. But as long as immigration status is tied to job status, that's going to end up in exploitation. So if you're someone who wants to have more immigration, whether it's high-skilled, low-skilled, whatever, I really don't think doing it through these guest worker programs, which is something that the left has long critiqued,

the guest worker approach to immigration because of these labor dynamics that it ultimately sets up. So, you know, the last thing that I'll say here is even though Trump has weighed in, question is not necessarily completely closed. Steve Bannon has been very much on the warpath, specifically against Elon. I mean, that's the thing. It's like Laura Loomer, all these people like they never, that's the thing. It's like Laura Loomer, all these people, like they never really go directly at Trump. It's always like whatever proxy on the issue

and Trump's just being misled. And of course we love Trump and he would never do anything wrong. But like, let me sort of like do a roundabout critique of him. But in any way, in any case, Steve Bannon going very aggressively, still on this issue, really declaring war on it. Let's go ahead and listen to some of his latest comments here.

I've said many times that Elon came and Elon's money helped organize the grassroots of it. In his engineering mind, he saw what the problem was as we saw it, and he supported it. And for that, he gets a place at the table there's no doubt you should it's a quarter of a billion dollars in june not an entire cycle in five months but that dinner with sax and that check from elon came at biden's you know when biden you know in the debate or right before the debate and biden you know, they kind of saw the numbers where this thing was heading. They're recent converts. We love converts. Hell, I'm in a I'm a Catholic. We used to be in the convert business.

Not so much anymore. We can't keep what we got. But in the old days, you know, half the saints are missionaries. We'd love we love in converts. But the converts sit in the back and study for years and years and years to make sure you understand the faith. And you understand the nuances of the faith. And understand how you can internalize the faith. Don't come up and go to the pulpit in your first week here and start lecturing people about the way things are going to be. If you're going to do that, we're going to get and we're going to rip your face off. Because you can't beat us.

We're not beatable. This army of the awakened is not beatable because we're relentless and we will never surrender and we will never slow down. So there you go. We'll rip your face off.

We're not beatable. Never surrender. Never back down. I don't know. What do you think is going to happen with this? Because I sort of feel like now that Trump has said his piece, they are going to just like get in line. And I also find it creepy to compare the support for a politician or political movement to like, you know, religion, being a convert to your religion. I find that a little disquieting myself. But anyway, go ahead. Well, I think it's interesting that it gets to this question of how sincere their conversion

to continue that to the Church of Maga actually was. You know, Bannon there, Bannon is not gullible. He's not, you know, sort of a silly person. Like he obviously understands that their conversion, the sincerity of their conversion is very much in question. What part of MAGA do they actually agree with? And they agree with kind of the Doge part of MAGA, but the Doge part of MAGA and the don't touch entitlements part of MAGA, the everyone will have healthcare part of MAGA, which means different things, obviously, depending on where you catch Trump in the Republican Party on any given day. Donald Trump tried to come to the table with Nancy Pelosi on DACA in his first term, which is easily forgotten. What MAGA means to Donald Trump and what MAGA means to Steve Bannon

and Steve Bannon's many, many followers and listeners and the grassroots of the Republican Party, Tea Party activists who have been all around the county Republican Party headquarters across the country for years, it means something very different to Elon Musk and to Steve Bannon and to Donald Trump than it does to those people. Steve Bannon is more sort of has his finger more firmly on the pulse of what that looks like to the actual actual party faithful and grassroots. So the question, I think, Crystal, is where the stack's on priority. So if Donald Trump and Elon Musk continue to say we're plowing ahead with H-1Bs, maybe they do lift the cap, which is what kicked this all off was the AI appointment putting out a tweet that said we should lift the cap.

We should have unlimited, basically. If they did something like that, it's one thing to just go along with the existing system. It's another thing entirely to say we're blowing up the system, there's no caps anymore, we're bringing over all of these people to compete with the American workforce. If they did that, Bannon's going to continue to absolutely raise hell, and Bannon's followers will continue to absolutely raise hell. And I don followers will continue to absolutely raise hell. And I don't think it goes away if they just sort of keep the system as it is. I mean, then I think everyone just kind of goes along for the ride. But the question is what level of priority it stacks up as. And that'll depend on, I think, what we see right away. Well, because they are going to

do some day one executive orders in the direction of, quote unquote, mass deportation. You know how aggressively they move in that direction or not is a still open question. But, yeah, you've still got Stephen Miller in there effectively. And what's his face? Tom Homan, who's really, you know, very aggressively immigration hawkish restrictionist, who is the immigration czar. So you still have some very hardline people who are going to put together a series of very hardline policies with regard to deportations. So yeah, I think that'll satisfy the Steve Bannons of the world.

And frankly, I think most Trump supporters have proven themselves to not be particularly ideological. It is more of a cult of personality than it is a consistent ideological movement, because if it wasn't like he's already betrayed the supposed tenants of Trumpism many times, like you said, trying to make a deal with Nancy Pelosi on DACA in the first administration, making his primary achievement in the first administration, a giant Paul Ryan tax cut for the rich. And there was never any revolt among the MAGA base over any of these things outside of like some minor complaints, minor bickering.

And I don't see that as being any different this time around. The last thing I'll say on this with regard to the billionaires is there's a reason why these billionaires flip back and forth between the parties. It's not because they're having some like based awakening. Yeah, it's because they're going wherever they think they can get the best deal for themselves, where they think that they're very consistent ideal ideology of like enriching themselves and being able to, you know, have the type of captive exploitable workforce that they want to have. They're going to go to whichever party they think is most primed to deliver those results for them or whoever they think is most likely to win, whoever they think they can have the most influence with, et cetera. And so, you know,

that's that's what's going on here with Elon and David Sachs and all these people who have, you know, made some sort of a lot of the tech right that used to be in the Democratic Party, Mark Andreessen being another example of that. It's not that they've had some sort of, you know, ideological conversion, although they may talk about being anti-woke or whatever, but mostly they just use that as a cloak like Mark Andreessen does for pushing through whatever their sort of bottom line capital interests are. And I'm referring specifically to, you know, when he goes on with Joe Rogan, attacks the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has been decidedly a positive thing for American consumers

and has delivered money back to them when they've been defrauded by companies. And he's had some portfolio companies that have come into their crosshairs for having scammy practices. He doesn't like the CFPB. But rather than directly talking about what it is he doesn't like about it, which is that this regulatory body was negative for him and his portfolio companies and his self-interest. Instead, he cloaks it in this like, oh, it's woke and they're canceling conservatives and they're debanking conservatives, which is total and complete nonsense. So, you know, these guys are wolves in sheep's clothing. They don't align with, by and large, there may be some areas where they have overlap with your interests, but they're looking out for themselves.

Whether they're glomming onto the Democratic Party or they're glomming onto the Republican Party, the bottom line for them will always be the bottom line. And Bannon, for a while, said, this is one, maybe a crass way of putting it, but basically would look at all of these tech guys who were coming into the MAGA movement and said, you're our useful idiots, right? We're using your money to undermine your interests. Because Bannon is a populist on the cultural and economic level. He's not just anti-woke. He's genuinely anti-late stage Western capitalism. And he would look at them that way. What he sees happening, I think accurately, is that MAGA is becoming the useful idiot of the moneyed class. And that is a serious threat to Trump's second term if you're a Steve Bannon type of populist, or if you're just an average American who saw in Donald Trump somebody that would extend a helping hand to your interests. So, yeah, if you're bringing these people into your movement and you think they're your useful idiots,

you can very easily become their useful idiots at a moment, on a whim. Yeah. Yeah. Elon did not give a quarter of a billion dollars to get nothing out of this deal. He is the wealthiest man on the planet. He is extremely powerful. He rivals Donald Trump in terms of his level of power. And I think to not see that from the jump is and was foolish, which is why when Elon and Vivek were given their like Doge commission and everyone was like, oh, they just gave them this make work project and it's like pathetic and good job for just kind of like pushing them to the side. I was always very skeptical of that because no, you are giving them this whole government mandate. The Trump administration has thought through specific

legal mechanisms that they can use to try to effectuate some of the desires of Elon Musk. This person has the ear of the president and is in a very powerful position. And doesn't have to give up any of his businesses in order to have that advisory capacity. Exactly right. Whereas if he was directly in government, he would have to abide by these specific conflict of interest rules that any federal government appointee or employee

has to deal with. So since he stays on the outside, he gets to keep all his stuff. But that does not mean that his power is ultimately diminished. And that's what really, like, outside the specific

of H-1Bs and H-2Bs and all of the, like, you know, the policy wonkery here, that's what really like outside the specific of H-1Bs and H-2Bs and all of the like, you know, the policy wonkery here. That's the the meat of why this story is so important is because you have your first very clear ideological difference between the Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, you know, Laura Loomer and culture that wing of the party and the Elon Musk billionaire capitalist wing of the party. And Elon won and it wasn't close. Trump sided with him unequivocally. So if there was any question about how this was going to go, I think we got a pretty clear answer this time around. And there's no sign of, you know, there were all this like, oh, maybe Elon's going to overstep and Trump's

not going to like it and blah, blah, blah. There's no sign of that you know, there were all this like, oh, maybe Elon's going to overstep and Trump's not going to like it and blah, blah, blah. There's no sign of that. They seem to be getting along famously, fabulously. I'm not sure Trump really cares that much about what happens in this administration. He's staying out of jail. He doesn't have to run for reelection again. He can do what he wants to do. He doesn't have to care what MAGA thinks of him or Steve Bannon thinks of him ultimately because he doesn't have to get reelected. And he rightly calculates that at the end of the day, they're all just going to probably go along with what he does anyway. So I think that's, you know, it's a preview very much of things to come. Yeah, absolutely. It would have been interesting, actually, to see if Donald Trump had disagreed

with Musk on H-1Bs, how Musk would have reacted to that. So he is a lot on the line. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her.

And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter.

She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to

Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This Pride Month, we are not just celebrating. We're fighting back. I'm George M. Johnson, and my book All Boys Aren't Blue was just named the most banned book in America.

If the culture wars have taught me anything, it's that pride is protest. And on my podcast, Fighting Words, we talk to people who use their voices to resist, disrupt, and make our community stronger. This year, we are showing up and showing out.

You need people being like, no, you're not going to tell us what to do. This regime is coming down on us. And I don't want to just survive. I want to thrive. You'll hear from trailblazers like Bob the Drag Queen, Angelica Ross, and Gabrielle Yoon, and storytellers with wisdom to spare. Listen on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's go ahead and move on to this other Republican intro party fight.

Congress is returning to Washington, D.C. with an incredibly razor thin margin for Republicans as they enter. I'll go ahead and share this first element. This is a story from Axios about basically what Mike Johnson has as he returns, which is a one vote margin. So just a little bit of context here. Axios writes, House GOP hardliners continued hesitance to coalesce around Johnson suggests that President-elect Trump's endorsement of the incumbent speaker has had little effect so far. Now, this is a quote from Ralph Norman to Axios. He says, a quote, growing number of members want at minimum assurances from Johnson on meaningful cuts to spending before they vote to re-elect him. Now, I'm going to share a second story.

This is Donald Trump backing Mike Johnson for House Speaker, endorsement as Speaker. He said that on Monday on Truth Socially, referred to Mike Johnson enthusiastically, actually, as a, quote, good, hardworking religious man. He will do the right thing, and we will continue to win, so said Donald Trump. Now, this is interesting because there is, as Axios reported, a movement among Freedom Caucus types or Freedom

Caucus adjacent people like Thomas Massey, also Chip Roy, to block Mike Johnson from becoming Speaker. Again, they're absolutely infuriated by how the omnibus negotiations transpired in late December. Disgusted by it, said, we actually have the House of Representatives. You are the Speaker. You are a Republican. Donald Trump just won what they believe was a mandate. And you are still governing like the political class has, like you, Mike Johnson, stood up against before you were speaker. And we're basically heading into, Crystal, what I think is another Kevin McCarthy cycle here, where Mike Johnson is basically the only option that they have. So they're pushing right now. They were sort of testing the waters. It looked like, for example,

Chip Roy was testing the waters to see if Jim Jordan was a plausible candidate that they could quickly see if Jim Jordan had enough momentum to just be voted a speaker. But what I think we're heading towards more likely is another series of concessions from Mike Johnson to people like Chip Roy. They got some significant concessions, significant enough that McCarthy was ousted last time around by his own concessions to Matt Gaetz. One of the things was something called a very parliamentary arcane thing called the motion to vacate, which was always around until Nancy Pelosi hilariously got rid of this. She added a threshold and they got rid of that, which is how Matt Gaetz ultimately was able to oust

Kevin McCarthy by bringing a vote on the speaker to the floor. So, you know, Mike Johnson might be in a position where he has to make some concessions that could ultimately be his undoing. But Republicans right now know in their conference that they don't really have anyone to rally around. That is a consensus point between the centrists and the Freedom Caucus people when you have such a thin, thin, razor thin majority as they head back to Washington, D.C. So Mike Johnson has already technically lost the votes. Thomas Bassie says no. That's all he can afford to lose. It looks like Chip Roy is a no as of right now. But we'll see what happens. There's a lot going on behind the scenes with this. Yeah, he's got to get 218 unless people vote present. The math is a little

bit confusing for this, but it's not enough to get a plurality. You have to get a majority of the members of Congress in the House, which is why he can only afford to lose one. So Thomas Massey is a definite no. If you're saying Chip Roy is also likely a no, then that's it. He doesn't have the votes. Now, does that mean that Mike Johnson is not going to be the speaker? No. Mike Johnson is ultimately, unless something crazy happens, which you never know, Mike Johnson is ultimately going to be the speaker of the House, but not before going through what I'm sure will be a very painful and public exercise of having to go back and forth and figure out what sort of concessions he's willing to give and what Thomas Massey et al are willing to accept. And they have some bargaining chips to work with here. So first of all, Trump has to be certified as president. We all became intimately familiar with this electoral certification process January 6, four years ago. And so it's got to be approved by the House. And if you don't have a speaker, you can't do anything. So they

need to get a speaker in place in order to certify the election results and make Donald Trump president of the United States, which I'm sure is part of what motivated Trump to weigh in on this fight and to try to close the door to any potential challengers, et cetera, et cetera. So there's that. The other thing is you do have a debt ceiling constraint here you're about to reach here in early January. So Janet Yellen came out and Emily's got this up on the screen here. As soon as January 14th, the country could hit the debt ceiling limit. So in a previous deal, the debt ceiling had just been like suspended. By the way, debt ceiling is a stupid, archaic thing. No other country has it, but we

have it. It's like ridiculous. But anyway, like Donald Trump, Crystal, it's true. I agree with Donald Trump when he says things like that. Anyway, it was it was suspended. So they just like got rid of it temporarily until January 1st, because they're getting some refunds back and whatever, they're going to have enough money to not hit the debt ceiling until roughly January 14th. Even that is not a hard limit because then they can do what's called extraordinary measures, which means they move around the order of the payments, et cetera, et cetera, to extend what period of time they have. However, it's kind of like once you hit January 14th through the 23rd, somewhere in that range, then the clock is really ticking

and you really actually have to deal with this. People like Thomas Massey, they'll go out and Chip Roy, they'll say like, oftentimes they're just like, I'm not voting for a debt ceiling increase period period, end of story. We need to cut spending. That's their ideology. That's what they believe. And they're pretty consistent about it. So that's part of why they were so upset about the omnibus. Trump was upset about the omnibus because it didn't extend the debt ceiling, which creates immediate problems for him as his administration is coming in that he has to deal with. But in any case, that's one of the sort of like chips that they can play in terms of trying to extract whatever

concessions they want ultimately out of Mike Johnson. Then you have to remember, like, it's not just the House that we're talking about here. Any sort of, you know, spending cuts, et cetera, like that also has to go through the Senate, where as of right now, you also have to get a filibuster, you know, proof 60 votes, which requires a collaboration of Democrats. So again, Mike Johnson is going to be speaker, but it's just illustrates there's a lot of tricky issues that Republicans are going to have to be dealing with here in the coming days. This first speaker vote happens literally tomorrow in the coming days and weeks as Trump takes office. Yeah. And to your point, Crystal, this is all everything you just outlined. That's leverage. That was leverage that they understood they had with Kevin McCarthy.

And it's leverage that they know for sure they have now. So some of this is them saying, I actually can't take a vote for you. Like my constituents do not want me to vote for you. They don't want me to vote for this debt ceiling. I can't do it. So you need to give me something so that I can tell them you need to give me reason to make this okay. And so that's the leverage they have behind closed doors. And actually, out in the open right now, you're seeing some of this happen. What they can get from it is going to be fascinating because Mike Johnson is almost the only option. But obviously, if you're shopping around Jim Jordan, you can say, I'm voting for Jim Jordan.

There's nothing you can do about it. Democrats are definitely not going to help Mike Johnson this time around. I think Hakeem Jeffries has already said something to that extent. So good luck, Mike. You're probably going to have to give up a whole lot. I have to say, as, you know, as a as a lefty, I'm jealous of the way that the Freedom Caucus and the way Thomas Massey and others recognize this leverage that they have and recognize how to use it for their own ideological ends, even though those ideological ends are not my own.

I respect the tactics and I'm jealous that there isn't anyone on the democratic side willing to employ those tactics either. Um, and I think that, you know, the, like, it's become very clear that the tactical posture of the squad and a Bernie to let me, you know, play nice with the Democrats and let me see if that's the way that I can effectuate the most political change, like that really defanged them and made them just another sort of rank and file Democratic establishment member. I'm still glad that they're there versus, you know, another more corporate Democrat. You know, they're more likely to vote well on the issues that I care

about. But it has completely defanged them and completely undermined their the places where they could have wielded power. And there are a lot of places because, you know, in the Senate, but in particular in the House, when the Democrats have a majority is also very slim majority. And so they could have employed some of these tactics to further left populist ideological interests. And at every opportunity, effectively, I don't want to say every, but they never used any leverage whatsoever. That would be a misstatement. But they never were willing to go to the mat the way that the Freedom Caucuses, they never were willing to really just aggressively be adversarial towards leadership the way that

the Freedom Caucus is. And the most important case in point of this is AOC. She wanted to be ranking member on oversight. It would have been a good position for her because it requires someone who can communicate and be like membastic, whatever. She would do well in that role. And Nancy Pelosi actively, even after AOC, did so much for the party and was a good girl and fell in line and did all the things they wanted her to do and advocated for Kamala and back Biden, all that stuff. Even after all of that, and she reportedly promised I won't even primary, I won't even back primary challengers to incumbent Democrats.

They still behind the scenes, Nancy Pelosi pushes forward her chosen candidate, Jerry Connolly, and blocks AOC from that position. So it was a failed tactical decision. And I am envious of the Republicans' willingness to play a hard ball in these negotiations. Yeah. I mean, Ryan and I pushed Greg Kassar, the incoming chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, on exactly this. So if people want to see that sort of back and forth, go check out Counterpoints Friday from about a month ago, because I've always had the exact same question. And this gets to what I think might happen over the course of the next couple of weeks with the Republican conference, because fundamentally, the post Tea Party, this is very much came out of the Tea Party. The post Tea Party attitude of people like Chip Roy was bolstered by certain populist Republicans who came from the Tea Party wave themselves saying, oh, I know my constituents are behind me.

And not only are they behind me, they don't want me to go in here and make bad deals with you. They want me to make either no deals or good deals. And that's why we may see people like Chip Roy. Like, it's actually possible that they don't go along to get along with Donald Trump. We saw Donald Trump actually attacking Chip Roy a couple of weeks ago when the omnibus was on the table and Chip Roy was threatening that. They know fundamentally that their constituents are behind them when they block deals with the political establishment. So it gives them confidence. And the squad should operate like that as well, as sort of the post-populist iteration of left populism in Congress. I shouldn't say post-populist, but the populist wave iteration in Congress, they should know that that's where their constituents are too. And just finally,

that means that if your constituents are fully behind Donald Trump, they're going to want to see you go along with Trump. And that's the question that the Chiproys of the world have to ask themselves in the next couple of weeks. Yeah, it'll be interesting. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country

begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's

mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This Pride Month, we are not just celebrating. We're fighting back. I'm George M. Johnson, and my book, All Boys Aren't Blue, was just named the most banned book in America. If the culture wars have taught me anything, it's that pride is protest. And on my podcast, Fighting Words, we talk to people who use their voices to resist,

disrupt, and make our community stronger. This year, we are showing up and showing out. You need people being like, no, you're not what you tell us what to do. This regime is coming down on us. And I don't want to just survive. I want to thrive. You'll hear from trailblazers like Bob the Drag Queen.

To freedom! Angelica Ross. We ready to fight? I'm ready to fight. And Gabrielle Yoon. Hi, George. And storytellers with wisdom to spare. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Well, Crystal, the saga of It Ends With Us, starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, has officially crossed the threshold from a story of celebrity intrigue to one of greater import. I think it's really becoming a story about the media. And to be fair, we always could see a little bit of the internal Hollywood PR machinations creeping into public views over the course of the last several months since the movie came out and they famously did not promote the movie together. But it has since, just in the last even 48 hours, become a sort of post-MeToo story about how the media is handling allegations of sexual misconduct. Essentially, it's becoming a fascinating story, but I think a really important one. One of the reasons that I love following celebrity gossip so closely, Crystal,

is because it's a low stakes public relations game. And you see how journalists, and in this case, we're talking about the New York Times. We're not talking about TMZ. We're not talking about PopSugar or whatever else. We're talking about the New York Times. How easily they can be manipulated by powerful people in the public relations game. So right now it's sort of a question of who's a jerk, Justin Baldoni or Blake Lively. And maybe the answer to that question is both of them.

But just yesterday, Variety published a story that I'm going to share on the screen right now, because this is a hugely significant story in that it is quite a rebuttal to a New York Times story that really, really took Blake Lively's side. So this is the headline from Variety. Justin Baldoni files $250 million lawsuit against New York Times over Blake Lively's story, saying it relied on her, quote, self-serving narrative. Now, again, Crystal, I don't think we needed Justin Baldoni to file this suit to realize that it was relying on Blake Lively's narrative. Let me share the New York Times story right now. You can see we can bury anyone inside a Hollywood smear machine that had the byline. You may recognize that byline. Viewers and listeners may recognize this byline. Megan Toohy, who was one of the famous New York Times Me Too reporters, very celebrated for Me Too reporting in the initial wave of the Me Too movement.

And I don't know about you, Crystal, but as I was reading through the original New York Times story, it seemed to me, just as a casual reader who hadn't looked at any of these documents, that there was a huge context gap, that a lot of the producers' texts that were being published, so the one that's in the headline, it says, quote, we can bury anyone. We were missing a lot of other parts of those conversations. So the New York Times is making it look as though Justin Baldoni had realized that Blake Lively was not happy with him and was going to run her own kind of campaign against him. Obviously, millions and millions of dollars are on the line anytime you're promoting this. It's like a big product, essentially. And so it means a lot to bottom lines for these big companies.

And they treat it really seriously. And that's where celebrity gossip becomes a product in and of itself as well. So yeah. And, you know, these allegations are that Baldoni was walking in on Blake Lively while she was breastfeeding. Allegations that he bit her lip during a kissing scene. Basically, that he acted like a jerk. Nothing here, I think, constitutes like assault, obviously. But he was also sort of walking around clothing himself as in the sort of like moral garb of male feminism. So then it's like he seems to be orchestrating or his people seem to be orchestrating a social media campaign to take clips of Blake Lively and disseminate them and make it look like an organic uprising of people realizing that Blake Lively has always been sort and make it look like an organic uprising of people realizing

that Blake Lively has always been sort of a jerk. And then he comes in with this lawsuit against the New York Times and gives evidence to Variety suggesting the New York Times, believe it or not, Crystal, was overly gullible. And a lot of people would look at that more cynically and say it was, you know, taking some type of orders from Blake Lively for something in return. But I think what it looks like is they got drip, drip, drip bits from Blake Lively's team and did not confirm the context or were ideologically sort of wedded to the Lively narrative and to her side of the story that they weren't interested in the other context. Because what Baldoni is doing I don't think he he may get a settlement you're not going to win I think the suit against the New York Times and as a journalist you know I don't think he should win the suit against the

New York Times because they're free to publish whatever nonsense they want to and we're free to say that it's nonsense but it looks like some of these things, at least from a journalistic standpoint, would have been served by context, better context. And so the question now becomes whether the New York Times had that context. So Crystal, what do you make of what we learned yesterday? Yeah. So just to back up for people who are like me and we're not really following the story outside of my 16 year old being like, oh, my God, mom, what do you think about this? I'm like, what do I think about it? I don't even know about it. There was a lot of TikTok. That's where I had to start with is like, who is Blake Lively and who is Justin Baldoni?

That was where I had to start with all of this. But effectively, they're co-stars on this show, movie. It ends with us. Yeah. Okay. Movie. Movie. And the movie, one of the central themes also is around domestic violence.

So that's how Justin Baldoni comes to cloak himself in this, like, I'm an ally and I'm against toxic masculinity. And he's doing a podcast with Liz Plank, who's noted feminist, et cetera. So he adopts this whole mantle. And during the promotion for this film, neither one of them, they won't appear together. And also the entertainment media picks up on the fact that a bunch of cast members have unfollowed him. So there seems to be some rift between him and everyone else.

So then according to some of the texts that have been released, he starts to panic of like, obviously, she's not happy. They're not happy with us. Like, Like, for example, that quote, you know, about we could bury anyone, et cetera, et cetera, left out the emoji that would have indicated to readers that they were being sarcastic. Right. And they also left out a text that indicated directly that this PR team was actually not responsible for this specific article that appeared. But nevertheless, even putting that aside, he enlisted PR professionals to basically try to get ahead of the story and flip the narrative. So at some point, there seems to be this online organic,

like we don't like Blake Lively and she's kind of a bitch and she was a bitch in this interview and why is she just out there promoting her like alcohol company when you know alcohol can be linked to domestic violence and she doesn't talk about domestic violence at all there seemed to be this organic anti-Blake Lively narrative that took hold in the public and so when she gets her side of the story out in this New York Times piece she alleges with the aid of New York Times that effectively, like, number one, you were inappropriate on the set in any number of ways.

You mentioned a few of them coming into my trailer when, you know, at different times when I was naked. There were some allegations of like body shaming. She just had a baby. There were allegations that there were different boundary violations and they had sex scenes in this movie. So, you know, it's very fraught

and she's married and her husband apparently berated Baldoni at one point. So in any case, she alleges that that happened and that there's this orchestrated campaign

of retaliation against her. Okay. So now... Crystal, I'm just going to put up on the screen. Here you can see from Variety as an example, one of the juiciest tidbits from the New York Times story Okay, so now... the context there they have text messages of blake lively saying i'm just pumping in my trailer if you want to work out our lines and baldani saying copy eating with crew and we'll head that way so

effectively from these texts it's like oh she was like come on over i'm just here like pumping meaning breast milk um in my trailer if you want to work out our lines like come on over and at the very least that context was should have been in the New York Times story. Right. So maybe he's still barged in or whatever. Maybe there are more text messages saying knock before you come in or whatever. Yeah. It sounds like that should have been in the New York Times story.

Right. context was they say in the new york times story that she alleges he showed her naked a naked video of his wife which like that's like what are you doing there and it turns out not that i i still still wouldn't be really cool with this but it turns out the naked video was of her during a home birth. So like the least sexual connotation or context for a nude video that you could possibly get, that also left out of the New York Times piece. So, you know, he had his little PR campaign, which was successful in sort of turning the public against her. Then she fires back with this New York Times story that the New York Times was far too credulous about at best, at worst, like actively hid and manipulated some of the things that would be more favorable towards him. And now he's firing back with this lawsuit, which also you have to assume, right?

It's his lawsuit. This article is based on his side of the story, is also likely cherry picking and leaving out some of the less flattering details for him as well. So some of the core themes here are, number one, like, you know, he went out and draped himself in very intentionally,

like that was part of the PR campaign, drapes himself very intentionally in this, I'm an ally of women. I'm like, you know, I'm against toxic masculinity. I'm going to speak out against it. You should never harm women, blah, blah, blah. He's doing this as part of a PR campaign to undermine this very specific woman. So you've got that aspect. Then you have her basically engaging in some of the same behavior in the media, credulously picking it up. So you have that aspect. And then, of course, you just have the whole specter of the way these two individuals who are human beings, yes, but also brands with a whole circle of people invested in their brands who are waging like PR wars against each other. And, you know, the public is being manipulated in any number of ways. And I think that part is very real.

And also like, you know, to go and even layer deeper, we're about to talk about open AI and some of these AI stuff. Like one of the possibilities here is even that chatbots were potentially wielded in this war between Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively. And it does just make you, like this is kind of, you know, it's not that consequential of a story, ultimately what happened on the set between these two individuals.

But it does also make you question, like how much of what we're being fed by the media, fed on social media, like these, you know, interactions that appear to be real and appear to be organic. How much of this is already just fake, already just, you know, astroturfed, already just completely concocted by somebody for some reason to manipulate you and your perception of reality. And to me, that's like the most kind of like dystopian angle of this is that we really don't know how much of what we're already consuming on the web and in media is real and how much is just literally generated like falsely out of whole cloth. That's why this is damning for the New York Times, because if there's something that should stand between smear campaigns, information operations and the public, it's the free press. And for the New York Times, they're defending it and saying,

you know, but they didn't defend any specifics, to be clear. But they said, you know, we stand by our reporting. But this is a celebrated Me Too reporter at the New York Times who seems to have been at the very least taken for a ride by the extremely powerful public relations team of Blake Lively that I guarantee you weaponized the reporter's Me Too connections and feminist bona fides against them and for the benefit of the Blake Lively smear campaign. And we started this just by talking about how entertainment media is often just like a lower stakes example of what happens in political media. So if you imagine, remember, a lot of people probably do, like you were talking about your daughter, these clips of Blake Lively going viral around the

premiere of It Ends With Us. Their allegation is that Baldoni sort of, his team, whether or not he knew about it is a different question, but his team astroturfed this viral momentum against Blake Lively by sort of creating accounts or feeding accounts these old videos. And we actually have one right here that we'll go ahead and roll for everyone just for a taste because you probably a lot of people probably remember seeing this stuff go viral at the time but here we go this is an interaction that um blake lively had congrats on your little bump okay so that was just like a short clip but it was being used to say like oh look at blake lively gets congratulated by a reporter on her baby bump

and then turns it back around on the reporter like and it's basically like you're fat yeah it's it seemed girl crystal like not a uh not a very kind thing to do yeah well and but then here's where things get even more again complicated that particular you know, I guess she's like an entertainment reporter, YouTuber, whatever. Her last name, I think she's Norwegian. Her last name is like Fla. There's also a question about what her incentives were in resurfacing this interview. Because she resurfaced this and did this whole, like, the interview that made me want to quit my job blah blah blah right and she also so she also had been very much pro johnny depp in the johnny depp amber heard

trial and that whole drama and lo and behold baldoni and tap repped by the same PR agents. So now she denies that she says she did this organically, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, there's a question there, too, of whether or not she had some incentives. And maybe those incentives were just like, oh, I've built this particular audience. And here's a way that I can, you know, like get in on a similar storyline that may have a similar hook, et cetera. But this is also a potentially motivated actor in this whole thing as well. So yeah, these things that can seem like they just sort of like organically popped out of the ether and there's some public reaction against it. It's like, well, did that really happen? Or did you really have like an army of bots and some highly motivated influencers and credulous journalists to push a particular

view of the world that may or may not be accurate? So on that point, on that exact point, this is we were going to talk about this story before the Variety exclusive on Baldoni's lawsuit dropped because the New York Times piece was so conspicuously fed by Lively's team. And that doesn't mean that Lively is wrong and that Justin Baldoni is a jerk or a saint. It doesn't mean any of that. What it means is that you could see in the sort of anatomy of the New York Times piece that it was coordinated by a public relations team on behalf of Blake Lively because it was so conspicuously missing context. And again, that's fine if you are a feminist MeToo reporter who wants to stand

with Blake Lively and that's just your opinion. You've reviewed the text messages the team sent, you've asked the questions, you feel irrelevant, whatever, fine, go ahead and do it. But don't do it and act like this is the objective or the most neutral version of the story if you're leaving out context or not asking questions that would help you ascertain that context that is being conspicuously hidden from you by Lively's team. And again, to Crystal's point, these are multi-billion dollar businesses. These are important. The celebrity stuff, it's lower stakes, obviously, than politics, but it's important to their bottom lines, the health of their companies, to their shareholders. And so they treat this stuff like it's widgets. They treat these human

interactions like they're widgets. And the actors all know that. The actors are investors. They're part of that. They're producers, executive producers. So they play the game. They understand what they are in all of this. They're making a lot of money off of it. But now put this to politics and it's maddening to watch, to see stories like this about any given topic, like Crystal, from your perspective, the New York Times coverage of Gaza, or from my perspective, the New York Times coverage of any immigration story or something dumb that Trump said Like you can just see, you can see the fingerprints. The cheap fake stories were a great example ahead of the debate about how the Republican party was circulating these cheap fake videos. You could see in the New York Times coverage at the time, the fingerprints of the Biden White House and the DNC on those stories. And you have

that perspective when you're in media and you do this for your job. But this is the best example. If you're a member of the public and you want to see how the media can manipulate truth and information, read both of these stories and it'll be really eye-opening. Yeah. And the thing is, like, okay, so even if you took out or even if you included the context that the Baldoni people say was missing of like well she was being sarcastic here and they actually said one text earlier that like they weren't responsible for this story but they kind of wish they were you know like even if you added all that context it still doesn't look good for him it's still a story yeah it still very much

paints a picture of he was worried that she was going to say some bad things about him. So he cloaks himself in this whole I'm the women's ally and I'm against toxic. He cloaks himself in all of this, runs around talking about, you know, pretending like he really cares about domestic violence. And meanwhile, is launching this PR campaign of retaliation against her. Like, even if you add the context, that is all very clear. It's just they wanted it to be a less nuanced and more clear-cut indictment of him. They wanted the quote about we can bury anyone

to stand on its own without having the, you know, the supporting context, et cetera, et cetera. And by doing that, by reaching further than what was, you know, organically there and honest as best we can tell at this point in this story, they really, you know, they really end up undercutting her. Because now people would just say, well, look, you didn't include that. So obviously this is just a hatchet job. Like it's just bullshit.

Where I don't think it is all just bullshit. Like I think the general, the basic contours of she was unhappy with him he wanted to get ahead of it he launched this pr campaign of retaliation again like i think that is all true i don't i don't think that's really deniable at this point but because they wanted to go that extra mile and really paint him in this sort of like one-dimensional villainous way, they end up overreaching and undercutting their entire story. So, but not that I think they'll learn any lessons from this. They won't, but anyway.

Nope, but big question to come is what the New York Times saw. And if this suit proceeds, we will learn a lot more. Oh, yeah. And the discovery process could be interesting. Yes. And sadly, the winner from all this might be Harvey Weinstein, who is able to then say, you know, as egregious as what he clearly did was that, you know, this is the same thing to your point, Crystal, like some of these stories can be real and newsy. And then because the media does such a bad job with them, they end up undercutting actual victims. True. Yeah. So there's much more to come from this, to be sure. And it's more than

celebrity gossip at this point. So Sagar and I brought you recently the news that a whistleblower who had previously worked at OpenAI, who had raised concerns about the way that they may be potentially violating patent and trademark agreements, that that whistleblower had been found dead. Now, authorities deemed it a suicide. But now we have the parents of that whistleblower, whose name was Suchi Urbalagi, raising questions and saying that they are going to hire a private investigator in order to try to get to the bottom of what really happened here. Let's take a listen to a part of their press conference. Last person to talk to him, he was happy, more is not depressed or anything.

And it was his birthday week. He made plans of going to CES in January. That was the last phone conversation he had with anyone. He went into his apartment, never came out. There was no suicide note left. And there was nobody else in the scene. That doesn't mean they can just come to conclusion. And we have seen the blood shots in the bathroom,

signs of fight in the bathroom. Vigil organizers say they're honoring Balaji's bravery and raising awareness to corporate accountability in artificial intelligence. So there you go. Obviously, I mean, AI is the highest stakes game that exists in the world right now. The amount of resources, government and corporate resources that are being poured into AI development is we genuinely don't even know how much money is going into this. There is an arms race going on right now to develop AI. Some of this is public, like the war between Sam Altman and Elon Musk. Some of it is not public. Peter Thiel has funded a number of stealth companies. You've got DARPA, which is a secretive agency within the U.S. government that is funding

research and development, Israel, China, like the list goes on of actors and interested participants here. So the amount of money at stake here is truly, truly mind blowing. I mean, probably sums that we've never seen in history. It's not an exaggeration. Just to give you a sense of some of what he was sounding the alarm over. And in particular, we're talking about the New York Times, in particular was featured in a New York Times story raising concerns about what he had seen when he was at OpenAI. He elaborated on that interview in this post. He said, I recently participated in a New York Times story about fair use and generative AI and why I'm

skeptical that fair use would be a plausible defense for a lot of generative AI products. I also wrote a blog post about the nitty gritty details of fair use and why I believe this. To give some context, I was at OpenAI for nearly four years, worked on ChatGPT for the last one and a half of them. I initially didn't know much about copyright, fair use, et cetera, but became curious after seeing all the lawsuits filed against Gen AI companies. When I tried to understand the issue better,

I eventually came to the conclusion that fair use seems like a pretty implausible defense of a lot of generative AI products for the basic reason that they can create substitutes that compete with the data they're trained on. I've written up the more detailed reasons for why I believe this in my post. Obviously, I'm not a lawyer, but I still feel like it's important for even non-lawyers to understand the law, both the letter of it and also why it's actually there in the first place. That being said, I don't want this to read as a critique

of chat GPT or open AI per se, because fair use and generative AI is a much broader issue than any one product or company. I highly encourage ML researchers to learn more about copyright. It is a really important topic and precedent that's often cited, like Google Books isn't actually as supportive as it might seem. Feel free to get in touch about this if you'd like to chat about fair use ML or copyright. And this is a central issue he's touching on here, Emily, because all of these large language learning models, all of them are trained on whatever data they can gobble up. And this is one of the critical components in how they learn and are able to produce the products like ChatGPT

and other products that we're all now able to use. And so we're talking books, we're talking transcripts of YouTube videos, we're talking literally anything they can get their hands on. And without that data, they're unable to train these LLMs and push them out into the world. So this is not a side issue. This is, you know, alongside like having sufficient, you know, electricity and having the computational power. These are the key ingredients for the development of AI. And, you know, he was outspoken on it. And now his parents who, listen, you know, these are grieving parents who I'm sure nobody wants to think that their son or daughter was so unhappy as to commit suicide and to end their own life. So, you know, we always have to keep that in mind. worth taking seriously this investigation simply because this is one of a relatively small number of whistleblowers who we've seen who've said, you know what, what is being done here is wrong,

and I'm not going to be associated with it. It determines whether AI is built on a house of sand or like a really well-built foundation. AI can be a house of cards if their fair use argument is erupted. And whether that's legally or in the court of public opinion, generative AI LLMs will be a house of sand if they can't defend their fair use practices. So obviously what he was doing was very high stakes. And a notable point from his parents there, they say there was no note. And also they believe what they saw was a sign of struggle. So the police obviously ruled this, as you mentioned, Crystal, suicide.

But if the parents are saying the police ruled it a suicide despite there being signs of a struggle, that's, I think, something just in the investigation stage people will be looking at very closely and we will be looking at very closely if there are serious signs of struggle that still resulted in the investigation being concluded as a suicide. That's a hugely significant piece of information from the parents. Yeah. And I'd be remiss if I didn't note that there were two Boeing whistleblowers who were found dead and was also deemed suicide. And in one of those instances in particular and, you know, same thing, friends and family said he seemed fine.

No indication of depression, no indication of, you know, anything that would lead directly to him taking his own life. Authorities deemed it a suicide. That's where things stand as in mind. That last poster, he's saying, get in touch with me. I want to hear your thoughts. That's a sort of active process of learning more, coming to different conclusions to undermine the sort of fundamental, the foundation really of LLMs. So you can see where that would be of interest to people who have a lot of interest in those LLMs. Yeah. And just to tie this whole conversation, zooming out from this whistleblower back to what we were talking about with Elon and Trump and David Sachs and all these people, like the H-1B fight is a side show to the main event, which is AI development. The resources that are being thrown into this truly arms race, both between nation states and between corporations, to be the furthest ahead in AI, to achieve what's called AGI,

artificial general intelligence, to be the first to develop that. This is all going on. Some of it is, you know, you can you can read about in the press, but there is not nearly enough media coverage, democratic debate, transparency about what the plans are for this technology, how it will be deployed in our lives, what that will look like, how we'll upend the labor force. We're talking about potentially greater than industrial revolution level change over a much shorter period of time. That's the real undercurrent of the political games that are being played right now and the political moves that are being made. Obviously, Elon Musk is a big player in that. Sam Altman of OpenAI, a big player in that. Noteworthy to me that after Trump wins, Sam comes in and is like, let me give a million dollars to your inauguration, right?

They have so much at stake here. Zuckerberg as well. Zuckerberg, absolutely. Zuckerberg as well. All of the big tech players massively invested and betting on this AI future. And partly because I mean the, you know, chat GPT, like it's fun and seems harmless and I use it and whatever, like it's hard to wrap your head around the scale of potential, just like incredible disruption that we could be facing and even darker scenarios that, you know, are truly dystopian that if I, you know, lay them out right now, you're going to think I sound like a crazy person, but that AI researchers take very seriously as a possibility. This is all happening effectively behind closed doors with a few comparatively small number of scientists and technologists who are making these

decisions that could completely upend all of our lives. And so, you know, this incident with this whistleblower is just a tiny window into the stakes of this game and how much is happening and how consequential it could be it truly is like the biggest and most existential political question of our time and it's not being treated or debated that way so i mentioned before like i'm trying to learn as much as i possibly can because i do think that the stakes are potentially that high and that significant. Like I said, this is just like one little window into some of the concerns about AI and the way that it could transform our entire economy. I mean, yeah, the story, even just the fate of Balaji himself, there's a lot more to be learned about that, given what we just saw from

the parents, basically, the commitment. The commitment is the idea that this is not what he would have done. So much more to come. Absolutely. All right, let's go ahead and transition to American Doctor, who's just back from Gaza, who has a message to share with the world. Let's get to that. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. I've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is

still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.

Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This Pride Month, we are not just celebrating. We're fighting back. I'm George M. Johnson, and my book, All Boys Aren't Blue, was just named the most banned book in America. If the

culture wars have taught me anything, it's that pride is protest. And on my podcast, Fighting Words, we talk to people who use their voices to resist, disrupt, and make our community stronger. This year, we are showing up and showing out. You need people being like, no, you're not going to tell us what to do.

This regime is coming down on us. And I don't want to just survive. I want to thrive. You'll hear from trailblazers like Bob the Drag Queen, Angelica Ross, and Gabrielle Union, and storytellers with wisdom to spare.

Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We are very grateful and fortunate to be joined this morning by Dr. Muhammad Khalil. He is an American doctor based in Texas, a surgeon actually, who has just returned from his second trip to Gaza and wanted to share with us and our audience what he experienced there and his concerns based on what his colleagues are continuing to tell him are happening there on the ground. Doctor, great to see you, great to meet you, and thank you for joining us this morning. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, of course. So just tell us a little bit about the context of your visit and some of the things that you saw

there operating on the ground. Yeah, so I went I went with a, um, uh, humanitarian, uh, group into Gaza. Um, I'd actually been there the first time in April, uh, at, uh, European general hospital and, uh, saw, uh, you know, a lot of lower extremity injuries, a lot of, uh, I think that we signed this letter to the New York times about all the sniper shots that were, that we saw in, in, uh, children. Um, a lot of, uh in children. A lot of targeted attacks and indiscriminate bombing. This time I went up north in November to the Ali Hospital, which if you remember was the first hospital that was attacked. And there was a lot of questions as to whether a hospital would be attacked by the Israeli military. And this experience was completely different,

just a lot of death and destruction. We did, you know, quite a bit of operating orthopedic surgery, just, you know, as a lot of stabilizing fractures. And unfortunately, you know, in this setting, there were a lot of amputations, just a ton of blast injuries up north, though. It's a very different type of warfare. You can't shake the feeling that the north is almost a testing ground for technological warfare. We saw a number of drones that were dropping bombs. And then off the back of those drones, they've got quadcopters that come down and shoot anything that's left moving. We had a number of children telling us that they would just have to lay there after an explosion so that they wouldn't move and get shot.

I think there's a lot of a sense that this is very much kind of utter destruction. What I would say is in April, we saw a genocide. In November, it just seemed like a full-on holocaust. Everything is destroyed up north. There's really barely any buildings left that are standing. And the ones that are, are partially destroyed is very hard civilians to combatants, you know, you're not interrogating people when you're treating them. But in terms of like women and children that you saw, what do you make of the Israeli line that they are, you know, this is a defensible ratio of civilians to combatants? We we did not see anyone that you could clearly identify was a combatant. I assume that they're probably seeking help in other environments, because pretty much everyone that we treated was a non-combatant. A number of them were actually family members of

the medical providers in the hospital. I know one of the nurses that was working with us in the OR, his brother, his entire family, most of them were dead, but a few people survived. And we saw them in the ER and, you know, this was at the middle of the night. And then the next morning, that nurse was back in the OR with us, you know, just getting back to work. And it really is, if somebody was a combatant, I assume they were seeking help in other locations. Because pretty much the majority of people that we treated were children, women, or known family members of people that we were working with. Doctor, we covered earlier in the week, the raid and destruction of Kamal Adwan Hospital, which was in the north. My understanding was it was really the last functioning,

significant hospital in northern Gaza. What can you tell us about the state of the healthcare system in northern Gaza when you were there, both in terms of facilities, personnel, and also supplies? We were actually north of the Netzerim Corridor. So we were in what was considered northern Gaza above the Netzerim border. So that's in Gaza City. Kamala Dwan was about another 10 minutes north of us. And Kamala Dwan and

Indonesian are the only two hospitals up there, and they're completely non-functional now. There was a discussion of having our group go up to Kamala Dwan because one of the purposes that we serve as European and American teams is sometimes we can be protective for the people that are at the hospital. I think there's the, you know, when we left European hospital in Gaza in April, that was one part of the discussion is once the team stopped showing up, then we know we're about to be attacked. And so going up to Kamal Adwan was not an option. And we knew that hospital was under siege the whole time we were there. And there were a bunch of messages because everyone knows Dr. Hassam

Abusafia up in the in the area. And, you know, we're WhatsApp messaging him and stuff and kind of getting an update. But it was it was not very functional even back in November. And now it's completely non-functional after having been invaded and destroyed. Well, yeah. And let me ask about another line of argumentation. You hear a lot from Israel and actually from the United States as well about hospitals in particular being used as Hamas strongholds or places of strategy or organization for Hamas, sort of using hospital patients as human shields.

What did you see to that extent, if anything, and what do you make of that line, doctor? I think at this stage, that is a, it's a hard thing to continue to, to push that narrative. I mean, so many hospitals have been destroyed and nothing has been found or at least, you know, shown to have, have, have actually been uncovered. The actual hospital functions are what are getting limited. I think the death tolls and the counts that we're hearing are horribly underwhelming. Every night that you're at the hospital, you see them bring the dead bodies to the area where they will wash them and then bury them. And it's, I mean, on average, you're probably seeing 20 to 30 a night.

And the death toll has kind of been stalled for many months now. The use of human shields, I think, is a very tenuous argument. A number of the nurses and doctors that we talked to were there actually at the al-Shifa invasion. And during that siege, they were actually drinking Ringer's lactate and normal saline to, you know, get hydration. And there were a number of the providers that recounted stories of being told to undress, and then they would have to go room to room and basically search the hospital for the Israeli military with a drone and a dog following them. So they were effectively being used as human shields by the IDF. Exactly, exactly. And as far as the Hamas using human

shields, the challenge is that right now, I think there is no real evidence that that is being done. Because at least in the hospital setting, because for pretty much, you know, since a month or two into this war, there have been medical teams in a number of these hospitals. And I don't think there's been one story from any of the American, European or foreign medical providers of the Hamas coming in and using human shields in the hospital. Doctor, what can you tell us about, you know, the availability of food, of clean water, of basic sanitation at this point in northern Gaza? It's incredibly limited. I mean, I think, you know, from our standpoint, you know, we go in

to try to help and provide medical relief, but we really learn so much from the medical providers that are there already in Gaza. I mean, it is a masterclass in taking care of people with very limited resources. So, you know, right now, just equipment-wise, when we were up north, there's basically no external fixators like we were using in the south. They're reusing external fixator equipment that's taken off of other patients when they get fixed or when they pass away. There's no intramedullary nails, like the nails that we put down the shaft of a bone to stabilize it. No pedicle screws. I mean, it's just very limited from a medical supply standpoint. Food is also incredibly limited. Like I actually turned, I had my birthday there

when I was there in November and they kind of made the joke that, you know, we would get you a cake, but there's no sugar and no eggs in Gaza. And it's incredible what great lengths they go to to try to provide you food when they have so little. So we would have pita bread, and one of the other visiting teams brought olive oil. And so we would have pita bread and olive oil in the mornings with the team. So many of the people have lost an incredible amount of weight. I actually, you know, before I turned 40, I got on a health kick and lost a bunch of weight. And so I just shared my overweight photos from the past just to kind of, you know, uh, show them where, where I was, but every single person, we had like a,

kind of a humorous moment, like in between cases where everybody was showing me their pictures when they were big and how, how skinny they are now. And it's just like, it's, uh, it was kind of a, an interesting way to kind of relate to the people there. But, um, obviously my, my weight loss was intentional. And for a lot of these guys, it is not. And what was your experience with seeing what aid is able to get through, what medical assistance is able to get through? Obviously, you're based in Texas, and you were able to get over there.

But I imagine they're very short-staffed when it comes to hospital positions, doctors, medical care. In addition to then, you know, you probably saw a lot of malnourishment and food shortages. So what was it like sort of watching people try to get medical aid, even just yourself, and food into Gaza? Yeah. So the first time we went in April, it was actually, we went through the Rafah border, and we were able to bring in, you know, I think we had like 90 suitcases full of not just equipment, but also emergency food packs, you know, baby formula, feminine supplies.

All those things were able to get in because when you go through the Rafah border, there was a year, there was an Egyptian entry and an Israeli entry and the doctors, the medical teams could go through the Egyptian entry. So we were able to bring in a bunch of stuff. This time, you're going through Kerem Shalom and you're not really able to bring in anything other than personal supplies. So it's limited to one suitcase and one carry on. And so we really weren't able to bring as much. You're just kind of bringing in your own stuff. We did bring a lot

of... One of the suitcases is full of emergency food supplies and protein bars and stuff like that. So brought in a surplus so that we could hand some of that out. But there is an incredible limitation in resources. I think the other thing is the limitation in money being brought in. I mean, we talk about inflation at an astronomical level. Like, I mean, you know, a gallon of gas is about $80 or, you know, a gallon of diesel. And it's remarkable how everything is in shekels or US dollars. There's no discussion of any other form of currency. The first time I went, I brought some Egyptian currency and they were like, yeah, we can't use that here. It's just everything is incredibly inflated. And it's interesting when you go north,

I think it's a sad marker of how much the population has thinned. The aid that does get in, if you talk to the people on the ground, there's this suspicion that the aid that is being brought in is being given to businessmen and not necessarily people on the up and up so that they can take the aid, mark it up, and try to sell it to people. And they feel that that's being conducted through contacts in the Israeli military, if you ask the individual people on the ground, the supply is actually better in the north because the demand has gone down and south prices have skyrocketed. So it was a very interesting thing when we went into the south, you know, we prayed behind the, one of the guys that runs the morgue was, was leading prayer. And so it, after his prayer, like he put up his hands and, and specifically made a prayer for the people in the North,

um, because there's, there's, uh, you know, it's known that there's so much death and destruction there. But then when we went North and then we're coming back down South, they actually, um, a lot of people in the North wanted to give things to us to take to their family in the South because they're going to die here. And this, this stuff needs to get to our family and things are so expensive down South that they can't, they can't get anything. So the, the supply is actually lower in the South and demand is higher. So the prices are just skyrocketed. Doctor, what do people, um, what, what hope are they holding onto? Um, because, you know, at this point, like just for me personally, I feel like there was a huge college protest movement in terms of the U.S. context.

Like that didn't move the needle. You know, there was some hope that perhaps Biden and Harris could be pressured in some way. That obviously didn't move the needle. Now you have an incoming administration that, you know, is, has long been very hostile, basically long done what, um, you know, the Israelis have wanted them to do. So what do people want us to know and what hope are they hanging onto at this point? It depends on who you ask. So, you know, when we were, uh, meeting with one of the guys that, that does run the morgue and he gets a lot of the um yeah you know the the bodies to to prepare and then barry um he's a very upbeat guy and was

joking around and and you know very social and one of our teammates asked him uh give us a message of hope for the people uh out and out in the world and he's like what hope there is no hope we're all gonna die um we just have to do our best while we're, while we're here. And it, you know, it's, it's very humbling to hear someone as upbeat as that saying something like that. But then, you know, on the flip side, uh, whenever the election results got announced, uh, everyone's kind of joking in the OR and in the, uh, in the courtyard of the hospital, you know, one of the nurses' daughters was killed. And so his other daughter and sons were playing by the, you know, because they bury everybody in the courtyard or right outside the hospital. It's just graves as far as you can, as you can see.

And this, you know, one of the nurse's sons is a teenager. And he was just like, he's like, you're going to meet Trump. He's like, if you tell, if you see Trump, tell him Gaza is not just going to free Palestine, it's going to free the whole world. I think there's this sense that even though Trump, one of the doctors was like, oh, Trump has a son-in-law that's Lebanese. Maybe he's going to be a little more favorable. I think that the general sense is that even though Trump has been pretty derogatory in

the way that he's talked about Palestinians. I think the thought is that you can't really appeal to his humanitarian side, but you might be able to at least appeal to his ego to not look subservient to Netanyahu and Israeli leadership in perpetuity. I mean, I think on the Kamala Harris and Biden side, there just seemed to be no light at the end of the tunnel in terms of them ever standing up to, you know, what was being done in Israel, even if it violates our own laws. But with Trump, perhaps you can count on his ego eventually taking over. with us. And thank you so much again for the work that you do, which to me is unimaginable, your level of personal courage and ethics and morality to go and put yourself in such a difficult and dangerous situation. So we're really grateful. Is there anything else you want to share or anywhere you want people to go to follow what's happening on the ground? Yeah, no, I think I appreciate you saying that. I mean, when we're there's, I've never felt

the feeling of survivor's guilt before, but this is something that, that you get, you really, it hits home when you're, when you're leaving Gaza. And as much as we, you know, as much as it, it may take, you know, kind of putting your, your fears to the side to go there, you're just humbled by how brave the people that are there actually are. Like, I mean, it's, they literally tell you, they won't even tell you the number of family members that they've lost unless you ask them. And then they just, they take it so well and then continue to work to help people even without pay, like in the hospital. It's just unimaginable. It's truly unimaginable. And I think like, you know, anything that, all I can tell people is, you know, if the money and donations, if you can find organizations like,

you know, World Central Kitchen, Rama keep donating. But the biggest thing is, I think, speaking up, like, I don't know how long this can continue to happen. But at some point, it's got to stop. And I think like, you know, a lot of the attention on this has been diverted. Now, after a year of this going on, it's kind of hard to And I think a lot of the attention on this has been diverted now. After a year of this going on, it's kind of hard to keep focused on it. But I would say just anyone who's got an interest, please just keep educating people. Doctor, thank you so much. And happy new year to you as well.

Thank you, guys. All right, everyone. Once again, happy new year to you. Here we go, 2025, ready or not. And Emily, thank you so much for hosting with me today um monday soccer will not be back but emily is a little busy that day so i'm gonna book a bunch of um really interesting guests we're gonna do a show i'll be back in the studio for that and um then soccer will return we'll get back to the regular scheduled programming but always a pleasure emily we always

talk too much though i know we always do it. We always do. It's so stereotypical. Although sometimes the bro shows go along. That's true. Not quite this long. That is true. That is true. All right, guys. Thank you so much for watching. Enjoy your weekend. I'll see you back here next week. This is an iHeart Podcast.