Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/3/25: Trump Plots Venezuela Strikes, Hegseth Panics Over War Crimes, Leftwing Populist Loses In TN, Tyson Wipes Out Nebraska Town

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

Ryan and Emily discuss Trump plots Venezuela land strikes, Hegseth panics over boat strikes, leftwing populist surpasses Kamala margin in deep red district, Tyson wipes out entire Nebraska town.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History, about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business.

First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline is. The most Texas story ever. Listen to Business History on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanksgiving isn't just about food. It's a day for us to show up for one another. It's okay not to be okay sometimes and be able to build strength and love within each other. I'm Eliy Akani, host of the podcast Family Therapy, a series where real families come together to heal and find hope. I've always wanted us to have therapy, so this is such a beautiful opportunity.

Listen to Season 2 of Family Therapy every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Jingle bells, jingle, jingle all the way. Yo, yo, yo, can we get Thanksgiving first? I'm hungry. What's up, y'all? It's Kadeen. And DeVal, the host of the Ellis Ever After podcast. This holiday season.

Tune out the noise and tune in to Ellis Ever After. On Ellis Ever After, we get real with our crew about family. and marriage, and everything else in between. Listen to Ellis Ever After on America's number one podcast network, IHeart. Follow Ellis Ever After and start listening on the free IHeart Radio app today. Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.

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We sure do. We are going to be debating some libertarians next week here in Washington, D.C., live in person. We're going to put the link in the email in the description. But this is us participating in the reason versus debate. So Big Tech does more good than harm. Ryan and I are arguing the opposite of that. That Big Tech does more harm than good. We're going to be up against Robbie Suave and Elizabeth Nolan Brown. So a little Robbie reunion in the works.

If we lose this, it will be like losing two flat-earthers. To be fair. We deserve the L. To be fair, it's a reason event and a reason crowd. So we may be fighting us to sit. and uphill battle. They love their big tech. Well, they took an L just yesterday because Ted Cruz, on behalf of Big Tech, was trying to sneak

into the NDAA, what they call AI preemption. It would be a law that would say you cannot regulate AI if you are a state or a locality. Only the federal government can regulate AI, and the federal government is not going to regulate AI. So absolute libertarian fever dream. They tried to get it into the one big, beautiful bill. It got stripped from there. It got exposed, and there was outrage against it, and so the people won again.

But Ted Cruz will be back. Stripped because it's just truly an insane law, which is... They'll get it eventually. Especially for, like, the right to champion this law. Like, their entire problem, as they argue, is that there's a patchwork of regulations in every state. It's like, that is called federalism. It's sort of how we've done things for a couple hundred years. Let's just make reason defend that.

Just spend the entire conversation, the AI Moradjorian. Because that's where it heads. Anyway. Well, anyway, so catch us there. That's on December 10th. There's a little party afterwards. The libertarians do like to party. Yeah, they do that at least very well.

We respect that. And it's going to be a ton of fun. So if you want to come out December 10th, you can check out the link in the description. Reason.com slash versus. Ryan, we have a big, big show because the news cycle won't slow down. Donald Trump held a two-plus-hour cabinet meeting, one of those long televised cabinet meetings yesterday where everybody reports back to him on camera. About how awesome he is.

About how much they love him, love working for him, how great they're doing. But they always are sure to say that anything that they're doing that is good is to his credit. Of course. Because he put them in there. All the mistakes are their own. Yes. So that made a lot of news. We have news to bring you from that.

Some of it is on Venezuela. Some of it is on Pete Hagseth. So we're going to break it all down. Afton Bain. narrowed that 22-point margin in the Tennessee special election, plus 22 Republican District narrowed it to eight. She lost by eight points last night. So we're going to break down those results, too. Yes. And then in Nebraska, Tyson is closing one of the largest beef processing plants while people are furious about beef prices. There are some Senate implications there because

Dan Osborne is running as an independent there. And there are also some antitrust implications as well, because even though this isn't getting much coverage, it appears like they did it so they could manipulate both the price they pay to cattle ranchers and also the price that they can then charge you for the beef. This is going to be, I think, a significant issue going forward. And so we're going to dig in on the closure of this processing plant, which will absolutely destroy this town, and which is not irreversible, like a government that actually cared about doing something for people could stop this from happening.

We'll see. Lots and lots of jobs on the line, not even just the jobs at the plant, but a lot of jobs that feed into the plant. So we're going to break that down as well. We're going to be discussing the fraud allegations and investigation in Minnesota. But on top of that, Ryan, Donald Trump,

continues to make news on this front. So we'll get into his order that TPS, so temporary protected status, be removed for Somalian refugees in Minnesota. Now, the numbers on that, it's about 700 people in a population of Minnesota that's about 60,000. It's according to Time Magazine numbers I saw yesterday. So we are going to bring all of the information that we have onto the table and talk about it this morning. And Ryan, we have a guest.

Yes, Sammy Hamdi, who Laura Lumer and others, got locked up when he came here to speak at a handful of care gals. He's a British journalist. They didn't like him. They didn't like that he was here. And so they arrested him. detained him for several weeks and because of public pressure, he did not end up spending kind of the year in detention that a lot of immigrants do before being deported. He's now been deported back to the UK from where he will be joining us to talk about what he was going

to say here and what his ordeal was like and what he saw while he was in detention. All right, let's get to it. Let's start with Venezuela this morning. We can put this first element up on the screen. This is Trump now giving Maduro an ultimatum, quote, you can save yourself and those closest to you, but you must leave the country now and has apparently offered safe passage for Maduro and his family, quote, only if he agreed to resign right away. Ryan, what do you make of that? Just stopping right there off the bat. Yeah, the deal that apparently is close. Like if you believe the reporting, and I think it's, I think it's credible reporting, Trump is saying you need to go. Maduro is saying, okay, like,

I've seen what happens. I've seen what the U.S. and its proxy Israel are capable of when it comes to, you know, breaching what we understood to be basic norms of civility. So at any moment, you know, he imagines he could just be executed. And so he's like, okay, if I go, then you have to lift sanctions on me. You have to lift sanctions on everybody that you've sanctioned and who is leaving power. He said that he apparently gave a list of about 100 people or so that who would go into exile. He said he wants the ICC case dropped.

The U.S. is already sanctioning everybody involved with the ICC. We don't like the ICC. I guess it would be funny if we were like, how dare you? Well, we did do that with Putin. How do you attack the sanctity of the international criminal court? Biden did do that with Putin. He did. It's not above us.

Yes, no, of course not. It turns out we don't have a whole lot of principle when it comes to any of this. Yeah, I mean, obviously this regime change. operation is afoot and the actual event itself feels imminent and yeah so it's the last last point of the deal is that Maduro has said what he wants is his vice president to take office for two years or so while they prepare for elections the vice president would not run for re-election and then there would be monitored elections and and that the US would be able to compete for Venezuelan oil US oil companies which

which is like it's like so it'd be really funny if we did a war for oil when the country is like, just take the oil. And then we're like, yeah, no, that's... We actually want the war. Yeah. Like... We want the war then the oil. It's not as fun if you don't do the war.

It's interesting. Yeah, everybody thinks that the war is for the oil. But the oil just justifies the bloodlust. We want the war, not the oil. We'll take the oil. But in Iraq, like, did we even take the oil? I mean, we control the Middle East, so like, sort of yes. But yeah, we really just want the war.

Clearly. So Secretary of St. Mark of Rubea was sitting next to Donald Trump at that long cabinet meeting yesterday. And so obviously this came up. Let's roll A1 here. If they come in through a certain country or any country or if we think they're building mills for whether it's fentanyl or cocaine,

I want those boats taken out. And if we have to, we'll attack on land also, just like we attack on sea. And now let's hear from Secretary Rubio himself. We can go ahead and roll A2. It never would have happened if you've been president. But this war is going on, and the president is trying to end it.

Not because, listen, we got a million things to focus on in the world as a country, but he's the only leader in the world that can help end it. And that's why even as we speak to you now, Steve Woodcoff is in Moscow trying to find a way to end this war to save lives of eight, 9,000 people, Mr. President, as you one hour dying every week. So you may have noticed for watching that, not listening to it, Trump seemed to have his eyes closed for a suspiciously long period of time at one point. I think he was deep in thought and basking in the praise from Marco Rubio. others have said that he was fast asleep

and it's funny if you watch Rubio's face like it's very hard for me to feel any sympathy for Rubio but in that moment like he just must be dying inside he's like here's my big moment he's just he's like okay the camera is on me and he keeps saying Mr. President he keeps saying Mr. President trying to wake him up yeah

I don't know it's hard to tell when Trump is just looking down versus when his eyes are actually closed This one looked pretty asleep. He did in this one, but with him, it happens. And I'm looking at him and I'm like, I can't tell if, because everything matches. Like, everything is a orange. And it's humiliation on top of humiliation because the thing that he was talking about, we'll get back to Venezuela in a second, sorry.

The thing that he was talking about there is that Whitkoff and Trump's son-in-law Kushner were at that moment across the table from Putin, negotiating this end to the Russian. Ukraine war. We're trying to. And who's not doing it? The Secretary of State. Secretary of State is stuck in this cabinet meeting blathering on while Trump is asleep in front of him. So it's compound humiliation for Rubio. Yeah, that one. That was a tough one. He went on Sean Hannity last night and said basically that if you're America first, you should be wanting, this isn't a surprising argument, of course, but you should want regime change in Venezuela because it is our hemisphere. And there's nothing more America first than our hemisphere.

So a little refining of the argument in progress. It's like the definition of Israel just keeps expanding where the borders are. America first, but America's the whole world. So we're doing that first. At least it's the hemisphere, though. And if you notice in there, there was a confirmation of a scoop to Stager and I had a couple weeks ago where you have Trump talking about bombing Mexico and Colombia. It's like there's all these sites.

Because what Sagar and I reported was that Trump said, okay, you're telling me all the drugs come from Venezuela. I'm hearing from this reporting at a job site that actually that's not true. I see intelligence community tell me where are the drugs coming from. He was like, I have this subscription to a great website. Right, website. So give me the targets. Like where are the drugs coming from? And they come back to him with a list that includes a couple of like coca facilities on the border, the stateless border,

between Colombia and Venezuela, but mostly the targets are in Colombia and Mexico. And that's how these wars expand. You start talking about war, start looking for targets. And then, hey, when you're a hammer, you see that the actual drug nails are legitimately in Mexico and Colombia. Yes. Like, Ecuador's got a pretty big role in it, too, when it comes to the shipment of it, the transit of it. But Colombia and Mexico are the players. And so, they're like, wait a minute, so now we're doing war with Mexico and Colombia? Yep. And Trump in the meeting is like, yeah, well, I'm happy to.

I'm not afraid to. I'm not afraid to do that at all. It's like, what's going on with Venezuela again? Like what? Can we, like, this is completely incoherent. What is happening? The entire argument, and you and Sarker have covered this, but it's obvious, the entire argument for this war would be applied to bombing Sinaloa or, you know, golf cartels.

Which is where it started because Trump in the campaign said that that's what he was going to do. And as it turns out, Clavia Shinebom knows how to operate with Donald Trump and has likely staved off. Yeah, she's like, you're not doing that. Escalation. Yeah. So, I mean, she's probably had to give a little on cooperating with CIA and drone flights and that sort of thing. But just in the context of military operations. But obviously, he learned early on it would be hugely escalatory with an ally in Mexico to really bomb Cina Loa cartel.

territory, even though if you took that to the American people, you could really make the fentanyl argument to the American people. It would be wildly different than making this argument about Venezuela, which isn't even the largest source of our cocaine. Right, the Venezuela comes, I mean, the fentanyl comes from China anyway, and then up through Mexico. It's like what it's not, none of this like Mexico, like Venezuela like every country. And we'll talk about this with this next one. We can put up A4. So this is an article in the Wall Street, Journal, trying to lay the predicate. It's called, if you're listening, it's called the headline is how Venezuelan gangs and African jihadists are flooding Europe with cocaine. Now, why would the Wall Street

Journal, Murdoch Paper, need to run this? Well, the AUMF, the authorization of the use of force, is specific to al-Qaeda. So after 9-11, they passed an AUMF that said if the president wants to wage war somewhere against al-Qaeda, stateless organization. He has the power to do that. Everybody voted for it except for like Barbara Lee, who was like, oh, this sounds kind of open-ended, dangerous. Maybe we shouldn't give this much power to the White House. And they said, nah, it's fine, it'll be okay. So then if you're a bureaucrat or you're a president who wants to wage war, but you don't want to have to go get permission to do it, you have to find al-Qaeda somewhere. All of a sudden, we start finding al-Qaeda everywhere.

And the Wall Street Journal knows about it. And so, like, for instance, Al-Qaeda in Iraq wasn't even a real thing. Like, these were Iraqi insurgents who were doing the insurgency against the United States. We rebranded them, Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Then we find al-Qaeda in Syria. Then we've got al-Qaeda in Yemen. And then all of a sudden there's al-Qaeda's popping up all over Africa. And if you talk to the people who actually follow us on the ground, it's like, yeah, nobody actually calls them that.

Like, they have their own names. But if we call them al-Qaeda, then legally we can use the AUMF to go to war against them. So now we need al-Qaeda in Venezuela. And Saddam had all of a sudden been meeting with all of these different people. Right. And so it is a fact, obviously, that drugs go from South America through West Africa and into Europe. That's been happening for many, many decades. And for my book, back 20 years ago, I interviewed this one mid-level trafficker who said that actually the advent of the 500 euro note created a huge demand pull for drug traffickers to move through West Africa into Europe.

Because if you think about it, and at the time, the exchange rate meant that a 500 euro note was worth like $600. This was before crypto. And so you had to move cash around. So moving, so you could move six times as much euros around in the same size bag as you could move dollars around. And that was a huge logistical problem, that you had just too much cash and didn't know what to do with it. So the fact that there was a 500 euro note, they're like, well, let's just sell to Europe then. And so, yes, drugs move from South America to West Africa into Europe. are there some insurgents in Africa who were associated with some like Islamic insurgents?

Yeah, sure. So that's where they get the quote unquote jihadist thing. But these are just rebel gangs. Right. And connected with their governments. So are there some Venezuelans who are involved with this? Yeah, sure. South America.

Like, yeah. Okay, fine. But like the idea that you should, that. that this, that if you, that the answer is to go to war against Maduro, like, no, this, this is a global, um, economy that, uh, where we sell drugs to people who want drugs. It's okay not to be okay sometimes and be able to build strength and love within each other. Thanksgiving isn't just about food. It's a day for us to show up for one another. I'm Eliy Akani, host of the podcast Family Therapy, a series where real families

come together to heal and find hope. What would be a clue that would be like? I've gotten lots of text messages from him. This one's from a little bit better of a version of him. Because he's feeding himself well. It's always a concern. Like, are you eating well? He's actually an amazing cook.

There was this one time where we had neighbors and I saved their dog and I ended up inviting them over for food and that was like one of my proudest moments. This is family therapy. Real families, real stories on a journey to heal together. Listen to Season 2 of Family Therapy every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. May 24th, 1990, a pipe bomb explodes in the front seat of environmental activist Judy Berry's car.

I knew it was a bomb the second that it exploded. I felt it ripped through me with just a force more powerful and terrible than anything that I could describe. In season two of Ripcurrent, we ask, who tried to kill Judy Berry and why? She received death threats before the bombing. She received more threats after the bombing. The man and woman who were heard had planned to lead a summer of militant protest against logging practices in Northern California. They were climbing trees and they were sabotaging logging equipment in the woods. The timber industry, I mean, it was the number one industry in the area, but more than it was the culture.

It was the way of life. I think that this is a deliberate attempt to sabotage our movement. Episodes of Rip Current Season 2 are available now. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith. This is Jacob Goldstein. And we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history.

And some of the worst people. horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want. First episode, How Southwest Airlines Use Cheap Seats and Free Whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The Most Texas Story Ever.

There's a lot of Mavericks in that story. We're going to have Mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons. So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business geniuses, along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked.

Like Thomas Edison and the electric chair. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is where people have to be, I think, kind of careful, unfortunately, with tossed around war crime and illegal war, because the sad reality is that we have laws that basically justify any war on the books. I mean, it's, the laws shouldn't exist. I mean, if you actually challenged, like, if you actually took the law seriously, you'd be like, no, there's no Al-Qaeda involved here. Of course, but we've never done that. Right.

We've used the AUMF, like, how many different regions? Which basically is lawless then. It's, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think we've used it in 22 different countries at the AUMF, the post-911 AMF, I think he's been used in like 22 different countries. I can fact check that in just one second way. It is, yeah, it is cute. that they think they need to, like, check a box. They didn't at first.

Check their paperwork box. At first, back in September, they were literally just saying, trust us. Right, we're doing whatever we want. And they're kind of still doing that because they still aren't giving us names. They aren't charging anybody. You know, they say they know who is on these boats, but they're not saying, you know, who they are, what their connection is, why they're confident that they're involved with Cartel de Los Aless. Did you see that a mom of a Colombian kid who was killed? on one of these boats is like suing now in the like the world like I forget which forum yeah

um and so our guy at dropside who covers Latin America for us Jose Luis Granato seha he was in honduras for the election uh and he went up to the the northern area where there's a lot of enormous amount of drug trafficking which won Orlando Hernandez who was just pardoned um by trump helped establish joe h built like six international airports in honduras Like, while he was president. Why? Like, why? Yes, why. And if you would ask, oh, this is for the drugs. Like, the people who are, like, this is to fly drugs. So he wrote, here in Honduras, people tell me, these strikes haven't dissuaded drug traffickers from running drugs on these boats, which are manned mostly by poor people trying to make money, not drug lords at the top of the pyramid. Not only are they not legal, they're not even effective. So think about that. This is for all the people who, think that these strikes are a good idea and are not bothered by the morality. So we're not talking to people who have a sense of morality around this, because if you have a sense of morality around this, you're against it. But let's say you think that they're effective and that they're actually

going to save 25,000 lives, which is absurd because a total of 75,000 overdose deaths a year. So we've hit 21 boats. You can pause this and go do the math on whether or not every single boat saves 25,000 lives. So set that aside. These are low-level people who are paid. a one-time fee, often equivalent to roughly the amount of money you could make in a year or two working in Honduras. So you're 20 years old, you're 25 years old, you've got parents to take care of, you might have kids to take care of, you're told we'll give you a year's salary for this one-day trip. And now it's possible that you're going to get lit up from the sky by the United States. But there's hundreds of boats that go every day, and they bomb like one boat a

week. So you have about a 0.1% chance. Let's say you have a 1 in 1,000 chance of getting bombed and burned alive. But if you make it, you get a year's salary. Right. Desperate young men are going to take that gamble. Enough desperate young men are going to take that gamble that you can kill hundreds of them or thousands of them and more are going to take it. Because you're like, well, I might die. It's a very low chance that I'll die. But if I don't do this, I can't take care of my parents, can't take care of my kids. So I'm just going to do it. I'm going to go for it. Men, young men at that age, take much greater risks for much worse reasons. So the point here, pragmatically, you cannot bomb your way out of a situation where as long as we here in the United States

are willing to pay for their cocaine, they're going to be willing to sell it to us. Well, it's not really, I mean, we're paying for cocaine, but we're barely paying for their cocaine. And we're also being asked to trust the Pentagon's process here that the boats they're blowing up, which do look like drug boats, but they're not showing their work on that. And so we don't actually even know that they're, I'm sure they are mostly hitting drug boats. You saw what Ram Paul said. Did you see this yesterday? From yesterday?

He backed up something we reported here before based on a Coast Guard source that he said something like 21% of drug boats that were approached by the Coast Guard are found to not have drugs. So this is a Coast Guard whose job it is to recognize from up close. Yeah. Not even in the sky from like Tampa Bay or whatever. Right. a drug boat and say, stop, we're going to board you. And 80% of the time, they're right. 20% of the time, they're like, our fault, go on about your business. Right. We apologize.

And we're not charging them. And we're not charged. Right. And exactly, we used to kill them, the survivors. Now we don't, now we just repatriate them. Right. They're just being repatriated back to, yeah. And so it's a hell of of a, I mean, it's a hell of a lift. And again, to take Rubio's point about your own hemisphere, that is actually where if you are waging regime change wars, if anything, I mean, we should be meticulous about legality of armed conflicts, period. But of course, when you're talking about a regime change war in your own hemisphere, where you could antagonize other countries. And by his own logic, I'm just saying, like, you could make the argument that this is the type of thing that destabilizes the entire region because it sends pink waves around Latin America as people

are furious. And that may actually end up happening because of all of this. I mean, this gets into the entire conversation about how this playbook has never really worked. But that's probably for another day. And meanwhile, one other piece of bizarre reporting that Socker and I did was confirmed by Trump. So we put up A6 here. This is a truth social from Donald Trump, where I I challenge you to get through all of this gibberish. You can pause this and try to read through this. But basically what Trump is sharing here is a theory that Venezuela in 2020, and also in 2008, but 2020, used their control of voting machines to flip the election to Biden over.

Trump. So what we had reported, what Sagar and I had reported, is that Rubio, along with his, we need to stop the drugs argument, was telling Trump that Venezuela stole the 2020 election from Trump. And that's one reason that we needed to go ahead and overthrow Maduro. This was a thing we heard from multiple sources, confirmed a bunch of different ways. And it was the kind of thing in the past, I wouldn't even have reported because I thought it would think it was too crazy. But I was burnt by, remember the Secretary of War thing? I had Pentagon sources. Oh, that's right.

I do. You had that. I had Pentagon sources telling me, Pete Hankseth keeps saying he wants to change the name to the war department. And you were like, no. I was like, that's too stupid to report. I forgot about that. So from now on, nothing is too stupid to report. So I thought this was too stupid report.

I reported it anyway. Sagar and I reported it. And here's Trump just tweeting it out, that he's tweeting out this conspiracy theory that Venezuela flipped the 2020 American election. Not Venezuela election, American election. There's a related theory that Hugo Chavez flipped Iowa 2008 against Clinton for Obama.

For Obama. The caucuses. That sounds like one you'd believe. No, like I think Obama clearly, want to Iowa. Yeah. Yes, we can. That was real. The Venice wheel and voting machines, man. That is, that goes deep. And then there's a whole theory that Elon Musk sniffed all this out and stopped it from happening in 2024. And that's why it wasn't stolen in 2024. Really? So, meanwhile, Wenduro continues to dance. We got A5 here.

to do this I know he so we'll see like he's literally dead if you're listening to this he's he's dancing in the streets of presumably Caracas but he seems to be in good spirits he well I mean one reason I think he's in good spirits is he keeps calling Trump's bluff

I think what was he was supposed to be out by last Friday yeah and then so Trump keeps bringing out bring the submarines bringing the aircraft carriers you've got until Friday we're bombing you close the airs you must close

the airspace and they don't close the airspace and he's like well it's fine we're not going to do anything about it so the the deal is there for the taking trump just has to say yes i think it seems like rubio was kind of standing in the way of it because rubio doesn't want a deal rubio wants maduro killed yeah he wants him out yeah well he's willing to leave he doesn't want him just out he wants him dead and he wants machado put in he doesn't want like yes he wants machado he doesn't want a peaceful transition in elections, he wants to install a South Florida puppet. That's the problem.

That's the problem. And he doesn't, he, that's why that deal. And she would get like 4% of the vote at this point, so you can't have an election. The idea that they're going to make a deal with Maduro to have two years of his vice president is not happening. It's obviously a non-starter. So it seems like intentionally non-starter

is the case. I'm Robert Smith. This is Jacob Goldstein. And we used to host a show called Planet Money. Now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want. First episode, How Southwest Airlines Use Cheap Seats and Free Whiskey to fight.

its way into the airline business. The most Texas story ever. There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons. So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad.

And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business geniuses, along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked. Like Thomas Edison and the electric chair. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. It's okay. not to be okay sometimes and be able to build strength and love within each other. Thanksgiving isn't just about food. It's a day for us to show up for one another. I'm Elliot Connie, host of the podcast Family Therapy, a series where real families come together to heal and find hope.

What would be a clue that would be like? I've gotten lots of text messages from him. This one's from a little bit better of a version of him. Because he's feeding himself well. It's always a concern. Like, are you eating well? He's actually an amazing cook. There was this one time where we had neighbors and I saved their dog and I ended up inviting them over for food and that was like one of my proudest moments.

This is Family Therapy. Real families, real stories on a journey to heal together. Listen to season two of family therapy every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network. IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. May 24th, 1990.

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

practices in Northern California. They were climbing trees and they were sabotaging logging equipment in the woods. The timber industry, I mean, it was the number one industry in the area, but more than it was the culture. It was the way of life. I think that this is a deliberate attempt to sabotage our movement. Episodes of Rip Current Season 2 are available now.

Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So also at this meeting, move over to Pete Hegseth's troubles. Also at this meeting, Hegseth continued to kind of back off of responsibility for the second strike on September 2nd that killed the survivors of the first illegal strike. Let's roll B1 here. I watched that first strike lot. As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do. So I didn't stick around for the hour and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs.

So I moved on to my next meeting. A couple of hours later, I learned that that commander had made the, which he had the complete authority to do, and by the way, Admiral Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat. He sunk the boat, sunk the boat, and eliminated the threat. And it was the right call. We have his back. You didn't see any survivors to be clear after that first strike.

I did not personally see survivors, but I stand, because the thing was on fire. It was exploded and fire or smoke. You can't see anything. You got digital. This is called the fog of war. This is what you and the press don't understand. You sit in your air-conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill and you nitpick, and you plant fake stories in the Washington Post about kill everybody phrases on anonymous sources, not based in anything, not based in any truth at all. And then you want to throw up really irresponsible terms about American heroes, about the judgment that they made.

I wrote a whole book on this topic because of what politicians and the press does to warfighter. So first of all, these are drone attacks that were launching at these boats. Why are they not in air-conditioned offices also? So you reporters sitting in your air-conditioned offices criticizing our commanders who are also sitting in air-conditioned offices, criticizing our commanders who are also sitting in air-conditioned offices. Conditioned office. Hey, if Centcom is a little warm, like get up and turn down the thermostat. Right. You can do it. You can do that. Yeah. You can do it. Well, and he's coming in. Southcom, sorry. Southcom. Yeah, he's coming in real hot, obviously, because they feel now with the Washington Post report that the wind is at their back and that they...

With their face? At their face, right? At their back. Well, they feel like they have momentum is what I was saying. Like, they feel like they, Heggseth, I think, feels really comfortable right now. Yeah, I think so. I think they feel like it's turned. Because of the Times story or the, wait. Because the Times, yeah, the Times' pushback on the Post report, which obviously the Times story, and you've been posting about this is planted. It was planted. But it was basically identical.

Well, but Hegsteth feels he's, like, completely off the hook now because that's a distinction with a difference, whether or not he came in and said, out of here. Or whether he just said, quote, kill everyone. and the admiral was the one who... Here's where I disagree with you, because the Post story, the one distinction is that the post has him saying, kill everybody, right? Hegeseth acknowledges he ordered lethal kinetic strikes.

Yes. And he keeps repeating this phrase, lethal kinetic strikes. Lethal kinetic strike means kill everybody. So what he's trying to say is he didn't say it colloquially. He just said it in the military term. But the post story didn't say that Hegseth ordered the second strike. What the post story said is that Bradley interpreted the lethal kinetic strike order

to mean that the second strike should be taken. And the time said the same thing. So that's why I don't quite understand why he feels like he has the wind at his back. And that's why I was like, why is back? I thought you're mixing up your metaphor. No, I genuinely think they feel totally fine. you also saw he people on the internet thought he was like cooked because he had in early september 3rd the day of the strike said he watched the whole thing and now he's saying well yeah

but you can't really tell in the moment exactly what's going on so anyway all that is say i don't think they're worried one bit when you look at the way heggseth is talking about i mean trump would pardon them anyway even even if they were a problem trump would pardon them Trump would part. Yeah, Trump doesn't care. But Trump does care about the bad press. He always asks, how's this playing? How's this playing? Yeah. And he doesn't like that Republicans are pushing back against him. Hague's this whole approach here, if you go back and look at the time that he instituted new rules on the Pentagon and basically kicked out the whole Pentagon press corps, lines up exactly with this. And so he kicks them all out, tells them, you know, any, if you want to come and cover the Pentagon,

you have to agree only to speak to authorized sources. You cannot solicit information from unauthorized sources. Another word for that is reporting. That's like journalism. And then you can come into our press briefings and then you can get a Pentagon access. And he got what he wanted. So here is how this new press call. is covering this issue.

Let's roll B-2. Does the Department of War plan on pursuing any sort of legal action against the Washington Post? And what consequences will there be for lying to the American people? Because, of course, the implication there was that Pete Heggseth and Admiral Bradley are war criminals. It is frankly disgusting that the Washington Post would publish something that is so insanely false. And we've seen this from the mainstream media before, right? anonymous sources that are being quoted that probably have no idea what's going on. And the Washington Post actually went so far as to falsely attribute a quote to the Secretary of Defense, of War,

excuse me, that he never said. That is preposterous that they would write that and pass that off as true journalism. So the Washington Post, I think readers, readers should think twice before reading that outlet again. It is disgraceful that they call themselves journalists. And we told them as such, right? We get press queries like we do from all of you. We told them this story was completely fake news on Thanksgiving evening with a three-hour deadline, and they still published it anyway. It's disgraceful. My point there is they are feeling pretty good now. I feel like they think they flipped the narrative. And I think that's why you saw Hegseth going in so hot at the cabinet meeting. And they're now having reporters, if you were listening to this,

you missed. In the corner of the screen, Matt Gates. And right behind him, James O'Keefe. James O'Keefe right behind him. So the Pentagon... This is an SNL called open. Indistinguishable from an SNL called open. That clip was from a Pentagon press conference. It was about a half hour long yesterday where the new Pentagon Press Corps

is all like MAGA new media. And Matt Gates, former Congressman Matt Gates was there, actually asked a good regime change Venezuela question. I don't know what you thought about Gates' question, but he was like, what's your plan? And he was wearing his representative Matt Gates' check. didn't even understand the question. If she did, she answered a completely different question. It seemed like she didn't even understand it. He asked, hey, when we did the Iraq war, debathification turned hundreds of thousands of just regular government employees into insurgents. Right. Like, do you have a plan to not do that again? Or is everybody associated with the Maduro government going to be considered a narco terrorist? Yeah. And she answered, everyone in those boats, according to our intelligence is a narco trafficker. It's like, okay, you either didn't listen to the question. You didn't understand. understand it. You don't know about debathification. I mean, she would have been like three

at that time. I don't know how old she is. She's like, can we just get back to that guy who's asking if we're going to sue the Washington Post? Right. Because, yeah, they suck. Right. They call themselves journalists. You all are journalists. It's the amazing setup. We gave you a little badge that says journalists. How bad is the Washington Post, Kingsley? Very, very bad. That's a good question. Excellent question. They are terrible. Laurelumer was also there. She was. She asked an adversarial question. It was fine, yeah. I'll give her that. It was fine. It was fine. It was bonkers. But she wasn't asking how bad is the Washington Post? Right, right. She asked Muslim Brotherhood is evil, so therefore, and you're designated some of them as terrorists, so

shouldn't you stop Qatar from using this American air base? I actually think that's a fine question. Yeah, especially from her right-wing, like, she hates Muslims' perspective question. Like, it's at least adversarial. Yeah. It's done the line with my politics on it. That's not what I asked for in a journalist, just adversarial is all I ask. And then there were the, it was peppered with questions from guys like that who were just like, tell us, how hard do you think you could smack the Washington Post in the mouth, Kingsley? That, uh, yeah, three hour deadline on Thanksgiving, that's kind of dirty. That's shitty. That's shitty. That's not good. If that's true, I don't know if that's true,

but that's not good if that's what happened. That's when you know you have the story completely nailed and you're not actually interested in hearing the lies from the government? Well, I mean, I'm sure their sources told them with great confidence what they were telling them. And so they probably, I mean, they have... In the room, notes from the meeting. Like, you don't report that without confidence. If you have high-level sources who are telling you that, the story might be incorrect, do your due diligence, but you also still have two high-level sources telling you that. Yeah. So, I don't know. I don't know. Who knows what went wrong on that story, if anything,

man what a what a time at the pentagon yes indeed let's move to tennessee where afton bain did lose that special election last night but the margin was single digits so this is a plus 22 plus 22 gop district that afton bain was expected to eat away at that margin and did again 22 she loses after bane loses by eight points to republican matt van epps Eight points is a margin Republicans are still feeling pretty comfortable about. I saw some in the GOP consultant type world like Matt Whitlock saying it's basically a five-al-on-fire because if there are margin erosions like this, so 14 points in other swing districts in the midterms that's going to be a bloodbath for House Republicans. Obviously, that math is true. Right on the other hand, special elections are special elections.

We could put C-1 on the screen. These are the results. And this is Tennessee's seventh, obviously, to replace Mark Green, about 97,000 votes as of right now, 95% of votes in for Van Absen, about 81,000 votes for Afton Baines. So we're looking at 54 to 45, basically. And Afton Bain, I think, Ryan, coming to 45, nearly half of the electorate, is definitely a win for populists. She didn't get it quite as close as people wanted to. some people thought maybe she actually had a chance to win, didn't come down to anything quite that close. Yeah, in order to win, she would have needed kind of this almost contradictory situation,

which would have been enormous excitement on the Democratic side and very little attention from the Republican side. Right, right. And so you've had this debate breakout online, which has said that Afton Bain was too left. you know, for the district. So you've got the Galatius types saying if they had run a very boring centrist candidate who you couldn't hit with anything, then actually she would have performed even better.

Wrong. Yeah, the problem with that analysis and besides just vibes and feelings and like that, you know, biased because we like her and when I share her politics, the problem with that analysis is that she blew it out of the water in Nashville. And, you know, she wins, you know, 78-22 there, expanded her margin over Harris

by like 30 or something. Which, by the way, is kind of ironic because the people in Nashville are the people who actually love Nashville, who should have been devastated by that clip of Afton Bain saying she hated Nashville. And the people outside of Nashville are already going to be the ones that are screw Nashville. They actually do hate Nashville. Just a little point. Yeah. And what Bain was saying also she hates the Times Square tourist part of Nashville so she also had this one quote that was in every ad where she said I'm a very radical person and so the centrists are like that's that kills you it's like okay but the fact that she had so much support among Democrats created a situation where she had thousands of door knockers and you know phone bankers

and an enthusiastic base of support that then put her within two percentage points in the polls which then brought in millions of dollars from Republicans. So it's sort of like a chicken and egg situation, like, okay, if you have a boring candidate who doesn't generate any excitement among Democrats, then it's true that you might not get the millions of dollars being spent by Republicans

and then in a super low turnout special election, you might be able to eke out those last nine points and you might be able to claim that district. But the problem, let's even say that that's possible. The problem there is that that's not representative of what the midterms are going to look like. So turnout wound up being roughly what it was, I think, in 2022 in this special election, which is really unusual.

like it's hard to match a midterm with a special election turnout so people were tuned in here and why that matters is that in the upcoming midterms of 2026 you're not going to be able to sneak through like everybody's going to know there's an election happening so you actually want to play and if this is an exhibition match you want to play on as similar conditions as possible to the regular midterms so now you know that in a district like this plus 20 plus district Republican district, you can look for about a 13 point swing, 13, 14 point swing. Whereas if you ran some boring centrist who snuck through just based on anti-Trump turnout, that doesn't tell you as much. So that would be my counterargument to the Iglesias types that might actually be

right that if that if if you could have kept turnout to fifth to half of what it was that may be enough of that tilts democratic but so what like you then get annihilated in november in that same district yeah i don't think afton bane um no offense is the best candidate i don't think anyone would say that somebody who had such a candid podcast is the best candidate she should have said it was PTSD from the war something like that but um the idea of culture wars PTSD from the culture wars from the culture was, well, we all have that. But the idea that this debunks the point that populists make, and I should say populists on the left and the right, this goes back to Barry Goldwater, literally. This goes back to Ronald Reagan. Goldwater had the line extremism in defense of liberty is no vice,

and what was it, moderation, and appreciative justice is no virtue. And that was basically to say, these electability questions that, you know, are going to send Gerald Ford or whomever, aren't necessarily, I mean, Reagan himself said bold colors, paint with bold colors instead of pale pastels. And the argument was that the Reagan Revolution would be politically more powerful than moderate Republicans at the ballot box because people are actually

going to believe what you say. People are actually, or they're going to believe you believe what you say. They may not agree with you 100% of the time, but it's obviously a race-by-race designation. I mean, if you're talking about writing somebody who's super, super mega, in, you know, the Boston area, it's probably actually not going to improve your margins, but in a special election where you can flood the zone and, you know, maybe try to sneak someone past. That is different. So at the other hand, what was the Pennsylvania race, not Dr. Oz,

should I'm forgetting the super mega candidate's name who lost. And he, like, probably lost Maestrian because Doug Maestrian, because he was, like, you know what I mean? Like, Those sometimes, it's obvious that you needed just a better candidate, but that'll always get used to say, oh, it's populism that's killing them. And sometimes you get cucky populist candidates. Christine O'Donnell, for example, that's a fun throwback. And the problem really is the candidate, but it's often used as a smokescreen to say the populism was the problem, not the candidate, was the problem,

because populism can be extremely energizing, especially in little special election-type races, where you can send in a lot of money and the base gets really excited and you bring attention to the race. One final point, you made a really interesting observation that if they thought they could sneak Afton Bain past,

they actually ended up getting like a ton of Fox News coverage for the race, which probably woke up a bunch of Republicans in the area. They were covering this race a ton. Right, right. So if you, and maybe they would have ended up covering any race a ton, just because there would be enough anti-Trump energy

that the polls would show at least a competitive race. It certainly made it more salacious that they had to like, I hate country music and I hate Nashville and I'm a radical person and all that, you know, all that, you know, video for like,

you know, doing a sit-in in the state legislature and, you know, they had stuff to work with that got the Fox Newsbase riled up. Nashville 20. point swing. So even in Nashville, it didn't quite swing enough. That's a significant, though. 20 point swing is massive. Yeah. You don't see that much in politics, especially with

turnout that high. Right. Low turnout in Nashville, maybe you see a 40 point swing, but it's a much, now or a number of aggregate votes. A Republican candidate could campaign on saying they hated Nashville in Tennessee, and everyone would know what they were talking about. And that's increasingly about to happen. Like, oh, the traffic, all the New York libs and the LA libs, all moving to Nashville. So it's actually kind of funny. Yeah, they've been running against the cities for 200 years. It's funny. Yeah, 2,000 years maybe. May 24th, 1990, a pipe bomb explodes in the front seat of environmental activist Judy Berry's car. I knew it was a bomb the second that it exploded. I felt it ripped through me with just a force more

powerful and terrible than anything that I could describe. In season two of Rip Current, we ask who tried to kill Judy Barry and why? She received death threats before the bombing. She received more threats after the bombing. The man and woman who were heard

had planned to lead a summer of militant protest against logging practices in Northern California. They were climbing trees and they were sabotaging logging equipment in the woods. The timber industry, I mean, it was the number one industry in the area, but more It was the culture.

It was the way of life. I think that this is a deliberate attempt to sabotage our movement. Episodes of RipCurrent Season 2 are available now. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's okay not to be okay sometimes and be able to build strength and love within each other. Thanksgiving isn't just about food. It's a day for us to show up for one another. I'm Eli Akani.

The podcast Family Therapy, a series where real families come together to heal and find hope. What would be a clue that would be like? I've gotten lots of text messages from him. This one's from a little bit better of a version of him. Because he's feeding himself well. It's always a concern. Like, are you eating well? He's actually an amazing cook. There was this one time where we had neighbors and I saved their dog and I ended up inviting them over for food and that was like one of my proudest moments. This is family therapy. Real families, real stories, on a

journey to heal together. Listen to season two of family therapy every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people. Horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing. It's like not having it at all.

It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want. First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The most Texas story ever. There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons.

So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the clerks. classic great moments of famous business geniuses, along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked. Like Thomas Edison and The Electives Chess. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's take a trip over to Nebraska, Ryan, where the Tyson Beef, where Tyson Beef is just shedding thousands of jobs, literally in a new announcement. Yeah, a heartbreaking story, but it doesn't have to be over. Yes. If the federal government takes this seriously, they could reverse this. So put up the first element here.

So about a week and a half ago, Tyson announced that it would be closing one of the largest beef processing plants in Nebraska, in the town of Lexington. So this is a processing plant that employs 3,200 people in this town of just 10,000 people. But importantly, it will also have national implications, and it doesn't have to happen. The federal government could step in and stop this because it is probably illegal, and we'll talk about why in a second. But just for some background, nearly 5% of the cattle that is slaughtered every day goes through this processing plant, 5% in the whole country. 15% of the slaughter that goes through in Nebraska every day goes through this processing. plant. Now, what the mainstream press is reporting about the closure of this plant is that this is because the size of the herd is down and there's less cattle going through every plant.

In 2021, the herd size was 94 million. Last year, the herd size was 87 million. So, you know, down 7 million cattle. Significant reason for that is that in May of this year, the Trump administration banned importation of Mexican cattle because of this parasite. So I'm not saying that that was a bad move. I'm not blaming Trump for that necessarily, because this is a parasite that would be devastating, you know, to the U.S. cattle industry if it creeped, you know, across the border.

So the press seems to be mostly satisfied with this answer, that this is about the number of cattle. declining so you have so we got to you know shut down this processing plant and it's a shame for this town of 10,000 now as you think about what's going to happen to this town you put up this next element about a week after it was announced this plant was closed a contractor for tyson who basically was contracted to do like trash and cleanup around the plant said it would be laying off it's 139 workers so 3200 workers iced add another 139 workers And then if you think about it from there,

everywhere that these workers go is now screwed. Fast food restaurants, regular restaurants, shopping centers, everywhere. This is like this town will be wiped off the map if this is allowed to stand. But so I hinted earlier, why might this be illegal? Dan Osborne is making this point. So Dan Osborne, as viewers may recall, was the independent Senate candidate who lost to Deb Fisher last time, but he's running again.

Who's the Pete Ricketts? Pete Ricketts. Like a billionaire, right? Yeah. Like, it's almost comical at this point. Like, so he's running as a billionaire senator named Pete Ricketts. Name Pete Ricketts. Give me a break.

And so he's making the point that this appears to be a violation of antitrust law. So let's run through. Osborne's argument, we can unpack this. So he says, I believe Tyson's decision to shut down its Lexington, Nebraska plant, instead of selling it, is a ploy to manipulate cattle and beef markets in violation of our antitrust laws. Let's move to the next one. He says, we have an antitrust law in the books right now called the Packers and Stockyards Act. This law was passed in 1921 to protect farmers and ranchers from concentrated abuse of monopoly power in the livestock industry. The act makes it illegal for meatpackers to, quote, engage in any course of

business or do any act for the purpose or with the effect of, and that's important, manipulating or controlling prices or restraining commerce, unquote. By shutting the plant down instead of selling it to a competitor, Tyson is driving down the prices they have to pay to ranchers for cattle and driving up the prices they can charge to consumers for beef, which is the quote, manipulating or controlling price or restraining commerce part of the aforementioned act. This plant in Lexington, and he goes on, accounted for 5% of beef production in the U.S. By shutting down a plant that produced such a large portion of beef in this country,

Tyson will cut demand for cattle and reduce the number of buyers competing for ranchers' livestock. With this increased leverage, Tyson will be able to pay ranchers less for their cattle because ranchers will have precious few alternatives to sell to, if any. This is why a monopolized food system is so dangerous. Nebraska ranchers will suffer the most because, because they will lose a local buyer. Normally, when a politician speaks, I would try to interpret it a little bit for people

and put it into language that you can understand, but I don't think I need to do that here. Emily, what did you think when you saw this news in Osborne's reaction to it? I mean, it's amazing how Dan Osborne, who is getting some support from national dem organizations are still technically running as an independent, but this guy has his finger on the pulse

of the conversation in a way that no establishment politicians do and obviously Dan Osborne has a background where you can see I mean you and I talk about this a lot like maybe the biggest barrier to entry is just class in politics and journalism

and Dan didn't come from the traditional political background he's still what just a couple of years into his political journey and it shows because he understands but also I just have to add like this of really sophisticated, I think, analysis. Yeah, straightforward.

Of how... Clean. Get it. But concentrated power. I mean, and that is just... It's not just that it's hard for people to talk about because they're taking a bunch of money from billionaires and whatever. It's that they have never really bothered to care. And they don't understand that the average Nebraska sees this as kind of a class issue.

Like, obviously, it's going to have an economic, devastating and devastating economic ripple effect. But on top of that, it's also infuriating to people because it looks like billionaires organizing the economy in a way that they profit and the normal people get screwed. And so there's just, it's almost a culture war. You know, it's economic superficially, but it's, I think it hits people as a culture war question, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, I think so. I mean, what could be more culture war than destroying an entire town? Right. For multi-millionaire billionaire profits, massive corporations hurting the little guy, right?

Like, that's what it is. And so the counterargument that you'd see from folks who support the free market would be, well, A, they would just say let companies do whatever they want, and we don't like federal laws, like antitrust laws, period. Oh, but they'll like the laws that help them consolidate their power. They do like that. Yeah. But the other argument that they would make would be, while Tyson has been reporting in its quarterly reports that it is losing money, losing significant amounts of money at its processing plants, that because the cattle herd is down, that they're operating at a loss and you can't require them to operate at a loss, I would say that they're what the counter argument to that would be that they're cooking the books, that because they have such market control,

control because they can and because they are so friendly with the other big three you know companies they're help they're basically setting prices and the the the processing plant part of their operation is overall a part of their price setting and so they might be reporting on their on their books that they're you know they're they're they're taking X loss when it comes to the processing but the but the but the business that they're doing in the processing is directly related to their control of the supply that goes out to the market, which is related to their ability to set prices. Right.

Which, and they're doing quite well overall. So it's like, okay, you're not really, okay, you're claiming to be losing money on the process, but actually it's furthering this extremely profitable, monopolistic business that you're operating, which will now be more profitable because of Osborne's point, that now you're going to pay farmers less, who are going to have to drive their cattle much further, and you're going to cut supply further, which allows you to then increase prices at the grocery store for people who are buying beef. By the way, the Trump administration is talking constantly about beef prices,

and actually Brooke Rollins talks about cattle. They know, they're populist enough to know that it's a serious concern and problem in the economy. And so that puts Pete Ricketts in a rather interesting position because Pete Ricketts is not really a populist. And so here you have the competition between Dan Osborne, who's technically an independent and a Republican who probably doesn't really want to talk about all this stuff, even though he's not like a realignment Republican. He's not going to like to talk about this at all. Right. And so it puts a, it sets up a very, he's going to want to say, well, it's such a shame. Yeah. And we should be there for the workers, and we should retrain them.

Exactly, exactly. They can learn a code. You can expect something that sounds a little bit like that. And this just underscores the point that we have to take a trip out to Nebraska to cover this campaign because it's really becoming interesting. It was always going to be interesting, but. Yeah, he's a mechanic, and the only major poll I know of was released by Osborne's campaign itself found him trailing 46, 45 to Ricketts.

Although it's going to be like, this will be close. A way the new poll has him leading. Anyway, so it's going to be a close race. And I think that Osborne is going to just hammer this point over and over. And if Trump, so here's where politics and electoral politics can be useful. Like, hey, if you're in the Trump administration and you're watching and you're watching and You want to deprive Osborne of this issue because you want to save your billionaire buddy Ricketts, tell Tyson they have to keep the plan open, that you find it to be in violation of the Antitrust Act.

They might do that to neutralize the problem. Do it. I mean, they obviously have a really closely divided Senate. The Senate is in competition, so they may honestly just do it. You let this plant close. You are probably going to elect Osborne. The Tyson Pact gives more to Republicans than Democrats. That probably doesn't surprise anyone, but I'm sure they have an open line of communication with Tyson.

And let Ricketts take credit for it. Let him come in, be like, look, I saved this plant. Maybe that'll happen. And like that, the point is to make people's lives better. So if this threat of Osborne, like, you know, one of the things that was the best for American workers throughout the second half of the 20th century was the threat of communism. And so the American government and American companies were much more generous to workers because of the threat. Osborne is not the Soviet Union, but Osborne's a threat. And like if, you know, so keep the plan open or you get Osborne.

How about that? How's that for a deal? What an interesting, well, actually, I was telling Crystal this recently. I was, you never texting, and I was like, should I watch Roger and me or bowling for Columbine? And you were like, I was trying to choose between the two on a Friday night. So a very exciting life. And Ryan was like, you've got to do Roger Me. Yeah, no question.

It's funny because Roger and me is so coded. Like it was then coded as like left-wing hippie stuff. But it's now so coded as Trump is. It's America First. Yeah, it's America First. But what Roger and me does a really good job zooming into is how these plants are part of an ecosystem and a really fragile ecosystem. And so what can happen is sad, just like personally sad, obviously. But also it's like devastating a swath of a state of, like that can, when it ripples out, it's not just about the plant.

It's not just about retraining those workers, telling them to learn to code. It can devastate the culture of an entire region. It's criminal. Right. It's a crime visited upon this entire community. And all that is to say, Dan Osborne is getting out in front of this. because he has good political instincts, and anybody who's not in Nebraska is behind the ball,

like they're missing it. Also, the other thing you could say is factory farming is evil. Well, there's that. So maybe the Trump administration actually is just strongly against factory farming. I want to know what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. thinks about. And wants to reduce the amount of suffering from animals. Let's hear from RFK Jr. about the Tyson plant.

I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business. First episode, How Southwest Airlines Use Cheap Seats and Free Whiskey to fight. its way into the airline is. The most Texas story ever. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You know the shade is always Shadiest right here. Season 6 of the podcast Reasonably Shady with Jazele Bryan and Robin Dixon is here dropping every Monday. As two of the founding members of the Real Housewives Potomac were giving you all the laughs, drama, and reality news you can handle. And you know we don't hold back. So come be reasonable or shady with us each and every Monday. Listen to Reasonably Shady from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

I'm Yvalongoria. And I'm Maite Gomezrejorn. And this week on our podcast, Hungry for History, we talk oysters plus the Mianbi chief stops by. If you're not an oyster lover, don't even talk to me. Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells to vote politicians. into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way. Bring back the OsterCon. Listen to Hungry for History on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.