Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/5/23: Kamala Screws Gaza Future Day One, Israel May Cost Biden 2024, Israeli Stocks Shorted Before Oct 7, Life Expectancy Crisis, Lindsey Flips On Ukraine, Biden Spox Caught Lying On Israel, And Ro Khanna Calls Out Biden

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss Biden tapping Kamala to handle the future of Gaza, shocking polls show Israel may cost Biden 2024, mysterious person shorted Israeli stocks right before Oct 7th, media hides drastic life expectancy crisis in US, Lindsey Graham flips on Ukraine after failed offensive, Biden spox called out for lie by journalist, and Ro Khanna joins to discuss Biden's failed Israel policy.   BP Holiday Merch LIVE NOW (Use code BLACKFRIDAY for 15% off Non-Holiday Items): https://shop.breakingpoints.com/collections/breaking-points-holiday-collection  To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways

we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do.

Lots to get to this morning. So the southern ground invasion in Gaza has begun. An amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Lots to get to this morning. So the southern ground invasion in Gaza has begun. So we'll give you updates on that. And Kamala Harris's team is traveling to the region. So a lot to say there. Also, apparently someone got rich short-selling Israeli stocks in the days before October 7th. A bit of a mystery of who and how and why, but

pretty conclusive report showing that there was unusual trading activity leading up to the horrors that were perpetrated on October 7th. In addition, we have some dire news about health in America, both in terms of life expectancy and also suicides reaching an all-time high. So we'll give you the details we know about what is happening there. A blockbuster report on Ukraine and what has been going on there, as well as Lindsey Graham, Mr. Warhawk himself, actually saying he is done with providing Ukraine with aid. So is this the end of U.S. support for Ukraine?

We will see. We've got a State Department spokesman caught live spreading misinformation, you might say. And Congressman Ro Khanna is going to join Sagar in the studio to explain why he is now supporting a ceasefire in Gaza. Yes, that's right. We miss you, Crystal, here in the studio, but we will have you back very, very soon. As you said, we're going to start with Israel. But before we get to any of that, I know that our good friend Ryan Grimm's got a book out. Why don't you tell the people about it? Yeah, so Ryan out with a new book that has a lot of exclusive inside reporting, actually much of it very relevant to

what is happening in domestic politics right now vis-a-vis Israel. It's called The Squad, AOC, and the Hope of a Political Revolution. I read the whole thing. It's really, you know, it's very incisive and lays out some of the details of what's happened with the squad, some of the disappointments, some of how things unfolded there. So highly recommend you guys pick it up. It is available online and in stores now. And in addition, Sagar, we are continuing our discount on premium memberships. Yes, that's right. We know so many of you took advantage of it yesterday.

We just want to say thank you all so, so much. It helps our business out tremendously. As we said, we are discounting the yearly membership. And if you sign up for a year right now, you are actively helping fund all of our election coverage for the future. It is because that's December. I can't believe it. In a year from now, at least the election itself will be over. Other shenanigans, I don't know. Can't promise that. Can't promise about the other shenanigans. As we said, it's going to be a wild ride. Breakingpoints.com if you can take advantage. And so then let us begin with what is going on in Israel. As you said, the southern invasion of Khan Yunus and

the likely envelopment of that city and of that portion of Gaza now probably beginning from what we know from satellite imagery. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. It went ahead and broke last night from commercial satellite companies. From what you can see right there is that in the south of Gaza, there are now fortifications, armored vehicles that are mounted in several different strategic areas. You've got tracks that show heavy vehicles, equipment that are coming in. You also saw, Crystal, yesterday widespread reports that there was telecommunication signal loss all throughout southern Gaza, which has been a precursor previously to the ground

invasions. This also comes as the IDF releases its official casualties this morning, officially 80 Israeli soldiers who've been killed in action in the north so far. So this is likely the beginning of that ground invasion after a much more shortened period of bombing. Now, that does not mean that the bombing itself is over, just that you will now see the transition to having ground forces go into there much quicker than happened before. So I'm curious for your reaction that they're beginning this so quickly. Well, I mean, a few things here. So I'm curious for your reaction that they're beginning this so quickly. Well, I mean, a few things here. So first of all, as we have reported on this show, and I'm sure you guys have seen, an endless number of U.S. officials have come out publicly and said that, you know, what happens in the southern part of Gaza has to be different than

what happened in the north. All of these leaks to the U.S. press saying we told the Israelis in no uncertain terms, comments from Tony Blinken that leaked out about, hey, you've got weeks, not months, and that it has to be different. This has to be more targeted in the south with less civilian death. And so far, there is zero sign that anything has changed in their approach. The only thing that they can point to and that American officials are pointing to as like, oh, this is going to be different with the southern ground invasion, is they put out this map that we showed you yesterday that has the whole Gaza Strip divided into hundreds of little units. And they're posting on social media where people should flee. And remember, now you've got

almost all 2.2 million residents of the Gaza Strip crunched down into the southern part of the Strip, which is where they were told to be safe. Now, of course, the bombing campaign has massively ramped up some of the most aggressive bombing we've seen yet in this campaign happening in the south among an even more densely packed civilian population. And Sagar, as you just mentioned, I said they're posting online where you should be moving to to remain safe. They don't have consistent internet. They don't have consistent telecommunications.

And this has done nothing to alleviate the concerns about the humanitarian situation and the loss of civilian life. Already in the first days of this Southern Gaza bombing campaign, the death toll among civilians has been over 700. That is consistent with some of the most brutal days of this campaign so far. So again, I was just reading this in the New York Times,

no very Western biased outlet, that there is zero sign that they have actually really changed the way that they're going about things. They're continuing to use these massive bombs that the U.S. completely ruled out in similar dense urban warfare. So that's where things stand as far as I can tell. Yes, so that's what we have in terms of the southern invasion. Obviously, we'll continue to keep everybody updated. Counterpoints will do that as well. We also, though, have some very unfortunate news for the Palestinians, the Israelis, and the American people. It seems that President Biden has turned to Vice President Kamala Harris to now be in charge of initiatives for the day after on who will govern the Gaza Strip after Hamas is destroyed, or at the very least after the military operation has concluded.

Kamala telegraphed some of her role in these negotiations and her vision for what the future of Gaza will look like. Here's what she had to say. Well, as I said, we have to revitalize the Palestinian Authority, which means giving the support that is necessary for good governance, understanding that on the issues that must be resolved as we think of a plan for the day after, it is about good governance, which will bring transparency and accountability to the people of Gaza and the West Bank. It's also about what we need to do to recognize there must be some plan for security for the region, and I suspect as a plan develops, it will take into account interim and then longer term.

And finally, what we must do in terms of rebuilding Gaza and a commitment to that. Okay, so that's as anodyne, I guess, as it gets. But it does seem that her and her team are very much in the driver's seat behind this project. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Times of Israel now reporting that the vice president's national security advisor and other officials will be arriving in Israel later today, quote, for meetings with their counterparts to discuss planning for post-war Gaza, led by the vice president's national security advisor, who was actually with Kamala Harris by her side while she made that statement in Dubai after meeting with other leaders.

This will also be led by an official that we named yesterday, the Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, former U.S. ambassador to the United States, or sorry, former Israeli ambassador to the United States. It also, though, does highlight that the Biden administration tasking this very, I guess, thankless task to not exactly their most competent member of government. I'm curious just what you make of this overall, Crystal, to put Kamala Harris now in charge and also spearheading this entire, you know, Palestinian authority plan for Gaza, which seems dead on arrival, both in the West Bank and in Gaza. And yet it appears to be

the official position now of the U.S. government. Putting Kamala Harris and her team on this particular project is preposterous on literally every level. It does make me feel actually like the people from Kamala's team who leak out how much the White House actually hates her and sets her up to fail may actually be correct. Because listen, think of the position that she's actually put in here, right? She doesn't have the ability to threaten to condition aid. She doesn't have the ability to threaten to pull diplomatic cover. All she and her team can do is the same finger wagging that every other U.S. official has been doing with absolutely no effect. So you're put in the position of going out there and saying, gee, I hope they do better on civilian life as we're watching bombs hit

residential high rise after residential high rise in densely packed areas, children being pulled out of rubble, et cetera. So that's the position she's put in. And then, of course, on the other level, in terms of it being preposterous, Kamala Harris has never proven herself to be up to the job on even the most basic of tasks. So already, you know, people were pointing out that she got asked this question about, we've been covering how the Netanyahu government says they want to, quote, fit out the population. They're talking about moving the borders. They're talking about pushing people out. And so she got asked a question about, you know, potentially changing the borders of Gaza. And she says, oh, we don't have a position on that. When her official statement that she put out said we're opposed to

that. So she doesn't even know on the basic details of what the administration's stated position is at this point. So it's, I don't know, it's a level of contempt for her, for the American people, certainly for Palestinians. And it is not a hopeful sign that the U.S. is going to be any sort of effective, forceful, or positive influence on the direction of this horrific war being waged right now. Well, and especially, look, if you took it seriously, then the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, any other member of the President's Cabinet who actually had their ear would be in charge. Anytime, if we look to history and in the past, presidents, whenever they took a foreign relationship especially seriously, would even elevate somebody who was on their most senior

staff. I'm thinking of FDR and Harold Hopkins and some of his other advisors who had frequently dispatched to Russia and others in a sign of like, this person speaks for me directly. Anybody who reads a newspaper across the globe knows that this woman doesn't speak for the United States government and doesn't even speak for President Biden. And her amateur level, as you pointed out, we don't have a position on that. Yes, we do. It's been the policy of the United States government since 1967. For her to have no idea about what the borders and our position on that would be is preposterous for her to be put in charge of this. It also does highlight just an ongoing, you know, real nightmare in the future over who is going to control Gaza. Let's put this up there

on the screen. The Washington Post wrote up a decent summary, at least, of all of this. They say, who will run Gaza after the war? U.S. searches for the best of bad options. But I actually thought that the lead paragraph put things especially well. The Israelis say they don't want the job. Arab nations are resisting. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas might volunteer, but the Palestinian people probably don't want him. As the Biden administration begins to plan for the day after in Gaza, confronting problematic questions such as who runs the territory once the shooting stops, how it gets rebuilt, and potentially how it eventually becomes part of an independent state, the stakeholders face a host of unattractive options. Unattractive, I guess, is certainly

one way of putting it. And it does honestly enrage me. I mean, the Israelis to mount a full-blown military campaign and then to say, oh, we want to wash our hands of this the moment that the bombing stops. Absolutely not. That is not how this works. You can look at every other nation that has had to occupy and had a military campaign to supposedly rid a territory. You break it, you buy it. It's the most basic rule of invading another country or at least another territory. And here, we somehow, we have become the people who are going to decide its future, which only means a couple of things. Diplomatic nightmares for the US, more funding, more calls,

possibly for the US to leverage its debt and other foreign aid relationships in the Arab region, effectively blow our political capital for the mess that Israel is now creating. And then in the future, we know what they want. Scott Horton brought this up yesterday. Israeli officials are writing in the Wall Street Journal, hey, you take them. You guys take these Palestinians, or at the very least, you deal with it. Or previously, they had floated a European Union and US peacekeepers patrolling the streets of Gaza. And if Kamala Harris is going to come into this with such an amateur level of knowledge

from a very basic question on day one, how can we have any trust crystal that she will not stumble us directly into a similar incendiary type scenario where she would not even know the backstory enough to agree to something necessarily, which is an absolute non-starter for all parties involved. So I'm honestly really worried about this. I might be more worried about this than anything else going on, because this is how the stage is set for decades-long conflict, just like we had to deal with in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, here's the thing that I've been very worried about from the beginning, as you know. The Israeli government has made it very clear what their ideal end state is. Netanyahu, now it's coming out, he tasked his top aide with

coming up with a plan to, quote unquote, fin, or you might say cleanse, the population in the Gaza Strip and are floating plans to Congress that apparently have been received positively by members of both parties to push our allies who we give aid to in the region to accept some number of refugees and to basically make good on Netanyahu and his government's desires to cleanse the Gaza Strip, at least of some number of Palestinians. And you might say, okay, the U.S. will never allow that. And Egypt is really dramatically opposed to that. And other Arab nations are opposed to it as well. But then you look at the other options that are on the table. Israel is basically making it with their campaign of total war and absolute destruction, that there are no good alternatives

here. And so that's how you end up putting pressure on Egypt. That's how you end up putting pressure on us. They're using these words already about how this is the humanitarian solution. No, the humanitarian solution is to stop the bombing and negotiate a just peace, including a two-state solution so that the aspirations, legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people can be recognized. So that's what I'm fearful of here. I mean, we've talked about how the U.S.'s plan, you know, which Kamala Harris was there talking about, is to beef up the Palestinian Authority and somehow have them take control of the Gaza Strip. And you've compared it, I think, pretty aptly to like Hamid Karzai

in Afghanistan or Ahmed Chalabi in Iraq. But it's even worse than that because those people were like sort of unknown. They weren't pre-hated. Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, they are hated, hated because they are collaborators with the Israeli security regime. I mean, they are part of the occupying force.

That is the role they occupy. And they're also corrupt and they don't protect the Palestinians in the West Bank. So, of course, the Palestinians in the West Bank don't like them. The Palestinians in the Gaza Strip don't like them. They have zero legitimacy and they'll have even less legitimacy if they're hoisted on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, you know, brought in in the back of IDF tanks, you can imagine how well that's going to go over. Part of that, what was interesting in that Washington Post piece

was they actually talked to some Palestinians about how they feel about the PA, how they feel about Hamas. And, you know, I thought that this was worthwhile. They talked to one individual, 28-year-old man who said, our current focus is solely on ending the war. While Hamas may be somewhat reckless, the Palestinian authorities riddled with corruption and unfit to govern us. He went on, Hamas is far from ideal, he said, but we are oppressed and those willing to help us must

respect our perspectives and facilitate elections, allowing the Palestinian people to choose their leadership, whether it be Hamas or others. A mother of two kids from Gaza City, 32 years old, said both Hamas and the PA are marred by corruption. We endure without support from any party. Current political discussion seems senseless while people in Gaza continue to suffer, not just from bombings, but also due to hunger and thirst. And of course, Israel says their goal here is to eliminate Hamas. Well, it looks like right now they're headed in the polar opposite direction. Put this up on the screen from Bloomberg. Support for Hamas, now this is in the West Bank, not in Gaza, where it's understandably very difficult to conduct any sort of polling or do any sort of analysis. Journalists

have very difficult time even accessing any of the people there. Support for Hamas right now is surging in the West Bank. So the polar opposite of your goal, your goal is to eradicate Hamas. You have created more support for Hamas. You have created more members of Hamas. And so it's already been completely, completely counterproductive. I did my monologue yesterday, this blockbuster report from 972 Magazine that I really recommend people check out and read in its entirety, because they talk about how the tactics of the Israeli military is not really to, you know, focus in a targeted way on Hamas militants or Hamas infrastructure. It's to create a, quote, shock among the civilian public that will put pressure on them to hopefully turn against Hamas.

What we've seen throughout history, that never works. When you bomb civilian population, you know what you do? You create more support for the government in charge. You create a rally around the flag effect. And that's exactly what we're seeing in Israel right now. Yeah, I think it's important to understand, too, about what the future and all that looks like. And the Hamas support in the West Bank is a very serious problem and indicative of exactly how this all may play out in the future. And it's something that I worry about very, very deeply, especially whenever we're looking at the supposed calls to the future. And worse, that the U.S. is even embracing, especially whenever we're looking at the supposed calls to the future.

And worse, that the US is even embracing the idea that we're the ones who are supposed to be solely responsible. You flagged this yesterday, Crystal, about a particular moment on BBC where the Israeli ambassador to the UK appeared. I think it was on Sky News to be asked around where Palestinian civilians

were supposed to flee inside of the Gaza Strip. And there was an almost immediate fact check. For those who are listening, what you're about to listen to is her saying that Palestinians should go to an area. And then the camera panning to that actual area, which basically refutes a lot of what she's saying. Let's take a listen. There is a place in Gaza called the Muassi. The Muassi is the place where they all can have shelters. Together with international organizations, we created shelters for the Palestinian people. So you cannot say Israel is not facilitating that. Together with humanitarian

aid. This is where she's talking about, a desolate wasteland of sand dunes next to the Mediterranean Sea. There is no aid in Al-Mawazi. There are no aid agency tents. There are no food kitchens. There is no help here. The only food I saw there was a dead camel. So anyway, that's what she's saying. Let's go and put this up there on the screen.

This was actually after she reiterated this after an Israeli organization also tweeted out this map, quote, the IDF calls on Gaza city residents to evacuate south for their protection. Al-Muwasi is where international humanitarian aid will be provided as needed. So at very least now, there is no international humanitarian aid in that region. And also, I mean, if you just look at that on a map, it seems, I mean, how the hell are you supposed to fit 2.2 million people inside of what, a couple square miles of territory? Gaza already being one of the single most densely populated places on the planet. So anyway, this just highlights the ongoing nightmare that remains there. And more importantly, the nightmare of the future. You may think that this war is the worst, but the more that this

continues, far, far worse could come. Let's go ahead this war is the worst, but the more that this continues, far, far worse could come. Let's go ahead and turn now. Sorry, go ahead. Just quickly on Al-Mawassi, and this is going to be, you know, even mainstream outlets like Sky News, like Jake Tapper on CNN are raising this question now of like, where are people even supposed to go? That area that they designated, oh, there's UN, there's humanitarian aid there, et cetera. First of all, obviously that was a lie. Second of all, that whole area is the size of LAX airport. For 2.2 million people, the size of LAX airport. To tell you how absolutely preposterous this is. And I think CounterPoints

will cover this tomorrow. But Jake Tapper talking to a spokesperson for the Israeli government, CNN had a producer who lost nine family members. And he's saying, where were they supposed to go to be safe? So even mainstream outlets are starting to realize the absurdity of this. And at the same time, you had Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman yesterday, you know, saying the same thing of, oh, people can flee to these, you know, UN-led areas where they can receive aid and they can receive shelter. And UN spokespeople came out and said, there is nowhere that is safe. There is nowhere that is safe.

So as horrific as the bombing and the ground invasion of the North is, there's even more of a risk for catastrophes for civilians now because people are even more densely packed in this area that they were told to flee to in order to be safe. The reality is, of course, there is nowhere to go that is actually safe. Wow. Yep. As you said, we'll continue to track it here. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin,

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Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now?

Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog

and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy, or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide,

listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's move to a more important story in terms of domestic politics, which is how Americans are feeling about all of this that is happening in front of us. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So this is some pretty extraordinary polling that has just come out from Gallup. And I want to actually spend some time here. Americans' views of Israel's military action in Gaza by subgroup. So if you look at it by adults, it's 50% approve, 45% disapprove. I think very different than how most people would look in the media. When you start to break it down, though, by age, it's extraordinary. 18 to 34, in the age group, you have 30% approve, 67% disapprove. 35 to 54, so Gen X, you have 50

approve, 44% disapprove. And then amongst boomers, it's more significantly 63% approve, 34% disapprove. I do think, though, if you look at the breakdown where things really split, it's party ID. So you've got 71% of Republicans who approve of the Israeli military actions in Gaza, 23% disapproved. Amongst independents, it's almost entirely equally split, 47% approved, 48% disapproved. Amongst Democrats, absolutely extraordinary to see this number. 36% approve, 63% disapprove. And of course, a Democrat is currently in the White House. Now, you shouldn't conduct all foreign policy just based upon what your party wants necessarily. But Crystal, this does highlight something that we've been trying to bring attention to here, which is not even just young

voters per se, but many Democrats who may feel very differently about the Israel conflict, who don't see their views really represented in the government, or at least in the party and the president that they are aligned with in a critical election year. And I thought that that was the biggest red sign I've seen yet for President Joe Biden, on top of all of his other problems, it explains why Trump right now is in the best position to win reelections for any Republican since George W. Bush in 2004. And it's not just that they don't see their view reflected in the United States government. And by the way, of course, consistently from the

beginning, the overwhelming majority of Americans, some two-thirds of Americans have supported a ceasefire. Not only do they not see those views reflected in large numbers outside of a few courageous members of Congress, but they've been treated with absolute contempt, smeared as Hamas or terrorist sympathizers, smeared as anti-Semites. There's a new resolution up in the House to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, which is absolutely preposterous. Now, I did see Jerry Nadler and some others speaking out against that.

That is good to see. But that is the level of contempt that young people and people of color, that's the other interesting divide here, is that the two real divides in terms of support for Israel or opposition to what Israel is doing here were generational. So young people, you know, far more disgusted with Israel's campaign in Gaza than older people. And then there's a huge racial divide as well. And you actually see this represented

in the members of Congress who have been for a ceasefire effectively from the beginning. They're overwhelmingly on the younger side and they're overwhelmingly people of color. There were effectively no white Democrats calling for a ceasefire for quite some time. It took a while. So those two parts of the Democratic base, obviously being very large and very critical, is why then you see this huge party identification divide in terms of support for Israel. I also don't want to miss the top line here. You know, you might look at it, okay, there's still a little bit of narrow, you know, 50% support what Israel's up to, 45% oppose. That is a remarkable shift. Yes, it is. From not only the early days of this war, but from how Americans have viewed Israeli actions in the past for years and years and years.

I mean, that should be sending shockwaves through D.C. And I think it is. I mean, that's why you see these groups like AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel coming out and saying, we're going to spend all this money, we're going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to try to quash any sort of dissent on this issue. Because they can see the way that they are losing the messaging and propaganda war with young people. And they are even losing some of their grip on a uniformity of opinion, even in the mainstream press.

So that's why you see such a freak out there. But yeah, for Biden, this is a complete disaster. You have far more Republicans supporting effectively his foreign policy than his own party. And you can only imagine, you know, if this was Trump with the same policies as Biden, you would have like uniform Democratic opposition to what was going on here. So especially given the amount of propaganda, people are consistently fed from the U.S. press to see a 50-50 overall divide and to see these kind of generational and racial and party splits as well is, it's extraordinary. It really is a remarkable turn. It's also important to know that is very different than even conflicts which have now become much more 50-50 or even in the case of Ukraine have switched entirely in terms of how Americans feel about aid.

If you look at the initial numbers on Ukraine, it was almost 90-10 in terms of people who were supportive of initial military aid. It took over a year, probably 18 months before reality started to set in. And we will talk quite a bit about that today. But nonetheless, from an electoral perspective, I think Biden certainly does face a problem. We flagged this report. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Swing state Muslim leaders are now launching a campaign to, quote, abandon Biden in 2024. They're specifically trying to leverage the uh muslim populations in michigan in minnesota arizona wisconsin florida and georgia and nevada and pennsylvania calling on the campaign quote

abandon biden vowing to ensure biden is a one-term president leaders have run separate pressure campaigns in these respective states now are banding together to try and get the hashtag trending and to try and to have organization. They say that the bubbling anger amongst Arab and Muslim Americans could threaten Biden's chances of reelection in many of these swing states in 2024 in key voting blocks. And one of the reasons why I think it really matters to break this down is the vote total in Georgia is only a couple of thousand. In Arizona, we're talking about 10,000 votes. If you combine Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona,

you only need 30,000, 40,000 votes to go in a different direction. And Trump is back in the White House and 2020 looks a hell of a lot different. I don't think yet that a lot of political analysis has caught up with just the slimmest margins by which Biden even won the presidency in 2020 and how precarious his chances are. Even the White House, everybody seems to be

swaggering, being like, oh, there's no way, or they're not taking it seriously. The DNC, a lot of the Democratic, the chattering class. Just yesterday, we covered the story that they're anointing Biden the nominee from the state of Florida. They're not even allowing democracy or any of that to creep in. So I think they're going to get smacked in the face come October of 2024, Crystal, when all of this just comes to a head. And they're looking at their internals three weeks, one month out to Election Day. And they're going to be like, oh, my God, this is a totally different election than we expected. Almost like a Hillary oh shit moment from 2016 that was happening, at least in some parts of her campaign, but she didn't want to listen to.

They still believe that this will just blow over, that young people, that Arab Americans, that Muslim Americans, when they're faced with the alternative of Trump and, you know, his floating of a Muslim ban and wanting to ban from the country anyone who is Palestinian or supports the Palestinian cause, that they will suck it up and vote for Joe, that they'll move on or they'll forget that any of this ever happened. And I just think that they're completely wrong in that. And the greatest effort that you see in order to win people over is not to change the policy,

is not to try to allay their concerns. It's to effectively berate and shame them for, you know, quote unquote, like voting to end democracy by not just getting on board with Joe Biden, who is complicit with these Israeli atrocities that we all see unfolding in front of our eyes every single day. So listen, you can make the lesser evil argument. That's fine. I do think Donald Trump is worse.

I've been very clear about it. But it's always the responsibility of the voters rather than responsibility of Joe Biden, his administration, and the party leadership. And frankly, I just don't think it's going to work this time. These Muslim leaders who are organizing this effort they were asked about exactly this and they said that they are not planning to vote for Donald Trump though they recognize their effort to rally support against Biden could elevate the former president but they said they're going to continue to have discussions about which candidate to throw their support behind as the primaries rapidly approach. Quote we're not supporting Trump we're not going to make the same mistake of thinking about President Biden the way we

thought. We don't have two options. We have many options, and we're going to exercise that. So I think that the Biden administration underestimates this political groundswell of outrage at their peril. And it is not on the young people or the Arab American leaders or the Muslim leaders who are disgusted with this policy. If Biden loses, which he is on track to do, that is 100% going to be on Joe Biden, his team, and his policies with regard to Israel and also with

regard to the economy. Yes, exactly. Well, I think it'll be very, very multifaceted. And I'll speak up, too, for the non-voter. You don't owe anyone your vote. It's up to you to decide what's the most important for you. And if you don't want to vote for somebody, you shouldn't be shamed into doing so. And I've long decried Lester of Two Evils voting and all that, even though we've basically been forced into it now for my entire lifetime in American politics. And I think people who are especially younger are very sick of it because they can't even remember or they're only reading about times when people might have promised to actually do something and had a chance of doing it. So anyway, I think it's going to be a very significant story. We've got independent candidates galore, people like RFK Jr., Cornel West, and who the hell knows,

I just saw yesterday, Joe Lieberman floated that Nikki Haley could run on the no labels ticket against Trump if she doesn't end up winning the GOP primary. Oh, my God. I mean, listen, the more the merrier as far as as far as you can ask me. OK, let's move on. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as

the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. 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. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and we need to talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now?

Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me, and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is, and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really like he's a legend so he gets it what does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family it means a lot to me just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy, or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us.

To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so this was a fascinating report that really caught our attention. Put this up on the screen. This is right up from Haaretz of an analysis of stock trading before October 7th.

Now, their headline here is, Did Hamas Make Millions Betting Against Israeli Shares Before the October 7th Massacre? Giant Gambles Against Israel in the Markets in Tel Aviv and Wall Street Days Before Hamas' Attack Made Billions. Somebody seems to have known about the plan in advance. Now, let me give you some of the details here. So first of all, they're sort of floating that obviously Hamas knew the attack was coming. So perhaps they were the ones that profited here. But we don't actually have any idea who it was that was placing these bets. We just know from these researchers' analysis

that massive bets were placed against Israel, so short selling here, in the days before October 7th. And it was on a scale that, you know, can't be explained effectively by, you know, chance or the random fluctuations of the market. So let me read you a little bit of this. And you can see up on the screen how remarkable the amount of short selling on October 7th versus other times were here, which is pretty wild. And if you're confused, they have, you know, this is that in Israel and other countries, they do the dates in the reverse order. So 2-10 is actually 10-2 when we're thinking about it. Anyway. It's the wrong order. Let's be clear. Anyway. Anyway, moving forward. So they were short selling Israeli shares, betting they will fall in advance of October 7th, far exceeding the short selling during numerous other periods of crisis. This is according to a paper titled Trading on Terror. They were betting on this ETF

that tracks Israeli shares in New York. So they're basically betting against Israeli shares without buying any, just to explain the concept of short selling for people who aren't super into this kind of stuff. To explain how unusual the gamble against Israel was, they checked the volume of short transactions in this ETF from 2009 to 2023, so quite a long period of time, during which Israel experienced plenty of crises.

There were 3,570 trading days during that period. The volume of shorts on October 2nd was in the top 99th percentile. The short ratio for EIS was also extraordinary on October 7th. It is extremely unlikely that the volume of short selling occurred by random chance. They also looked at other periods of crisis, including the recession following the 2008 financial crisis, the 2014 Israel-Gaza war, the COVID-19 pandemic, and nothing compared to the level of short selling that happened on October 7th and during other days in advance of October 7th. And they also note that this was during the Sukkot Jewish holiday. There was no expectation of anything crazy going on.

So somebody knew something in advance and placed some really big bets here that paid off to the tune of billions. Who it was, we have no idea. I have no idea. And we don't even know if it's a single individual. As you said, the Haaretz report speculated it could be Hamas. It could be a variety of actors. It could be people who, military intelligence officials possibly, who had been trying to warn the government. Nobody was listening, and then maybe they leaked out the word there. It could be Iranian-backed actors. People like Iran and North Korea have done things like this in the past with regards to cryptocurrency and others. It could be anything. It really, it's basically the plot of Casino Royales, or at least part of it for those who have watched that Bond movie, which is why this is so

intriguing. All of it traces back to this academic paper, which is pretty solid. I went and read through most of it. We can go ahead and put this up there on the screen. They're the ones who provided that chart to Haaretz. But if you go and you read through it, they say, we identify increases in short selling before the attack and at dozens of Israeli companies traded in Tel Aviv. One company alone, 4.43 million new shares sold over September 14 to October 5, yielding profits of millions of dollars on additional short selling for one out of hundreds of securities that were traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. They also have some pretty interesting stuff here about the exact timing of the report and just how good the intel of the trader was. Previously, it had been reported

from the Times of Israel. Hamas had initially planned the cross-border onslaught for the eve of Passover, but canceled the attack after Israel had raised the alert level. Military intelligence had caught the early signs of an attack on Passover. The year fell on April 5 and raised the alert. However, similar levels of trading were not seen within that. So whoever knew this knew not only to not trade short, you know, ahead of Passover, they knew that the plans were ironclad, were set in stone, that it was almost 100% that was going to happen. And the evidence, I mean, is basically incontrovertible if you look at this statistically. One thing they also point out are some of the shortfalls in US security law whenever you're actually trying to

even get down to the bottom. I know that there's been a lot of speculation in the past about 9-11 and possible insider knowledge and all of that, but they talk about the so-called trading on terror phenomenon and how it has materialized in the past. But at the very least, if some of this or even any of this touch US securities markets, they need to do a pretty big investigation here, hopefully, our own securities regulators, just to name them. If it's Hamas, if it's Iran, if it's some broken insider official or any of that, this is outrageous because it not only shows profiting from death, I believe there's also a billion subplot to something like this, which is just the purest

type of evil, but it shows that somebody was so sure that this was going to happen. They were able to place bets that reaped them extraordinary profits, but with also some pretty extraordinary risk if it was a normal type of bet, Crystal. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's really important to emphasize that they must have had a very high level of confidence to place this type of bet. Because when you're shorting an ETF like this, I mean, your exposure is absolutely massive. Your potential for profit is huge, but your potential for catastrophic losses is also really huge. So there was certainly a level of confidence going into these trades manifested by their size and by the level of the exposure. Now, you make a great point, Sagar, which is there isn't really any law in the U.S. at least against profiting off war, profiting off of terror attacks,

which is disgusting. And we could talk about that another day. But there are laws that prohibit the finance of terrorism. So if it was in fact Hamas or Hamas related or even Iranian related, the way that we will know is if there is some sort of an investigation. If there's no investigation, then you can feel pretty confident that it was probably one of our friends rather than one of our foes. Or if we never hear about the investigation, you can probably be pretty confident it was one of our friends versus one of our foes. I genuinely have no idea. I'm not speculating here whatsoever in either direction. But it is worth noting, part of the context here is, of course, we've now learned that the

Israeli government had this plan in great detail of what Hamas was planning for October 7th, more than a year before these atrocities were perpetrated. So there were people in the government who had this plan. Now they waved it off and said, oh, we don't think that they have, this is just aspirational. We don't think they have these capabilities, et cetera. And you also had this group of intelligence analysts, spotters who were looking into the Gaza Strip,

were basically spying and using these high-tech cameras to look at the Gaza Strip. We're basically, you know, spying and using these high-tech cameras. So, look at the Gaza Strip and watching Hamas training for exactly what is laid out in this document and sounding the alarm as clearly as they possibly could saying, no, no, this isn't aspirational. They're training for this. We are watching them in real time train for this. You need to take this seriously or this is going to be horrific. And of course it was the same, you know, wave them off. No, no, they can't do that. They just, they want to.

We've got it under control. Don't worry about it. Effectively, like you're being hysterical, calm down. So this information was out there. There's also indications that, you know, some other regional states, I believe it was, wasn't it Egypt that said that they also had some intel about the

plan and had warned the Netanyahu government as well. So there were people and governments in the region that had gathered some intel about this. So that raises the possibility of any variety of actors who potentially could have looked at this and said, you know what? I don't think that they're faking here. I don't think this is aspirational. I think this is real. And I'm willing to put my money where the bet is and profit off of this horror, which is just, you know, disgusting. Good point. It could have been in the Turks, could have been the Egyptians, you know, hell of a lot of people knew about this attack, could be Hamas. Look, I want an investigation because this is outrageous. And especially if any U.S. citizen or any other type of thing were

involved in U.S. security regulators absolutely should do one into this. And just let the public know, because that 9-11 one is one of the most enduring parts of the 9-11 conspiracy that goes back around short selling, allegedly going on airline stocks and things like that. I think it quite literally inspired the plot for Casino Royale. I'm not sure. I haven't read the book. But it was enough so that it remained in the culture, that it was a mainstay behind cable news before the age of – or at least in the very early days of the internet. And this certainly is already making the rounds. So it would be better off if we all had an explanation. Let's move on to the next one.

This is a story I've been really wanting to cover and spend some time on. Absolutely tragic. Debts of despair skyrocketing here to the next one. This is a story I've been really wanting to cover and spend some time on. Absolutely tragic. Debts of despair skyrocketing here in the United States. We're gonna start off one where you can either be glass half full or glass half empty. Let's go ahead and put this up there. I'm gonna choose empty just because of the sheer scale of what's happening.

This is about new CDC life expectancy data, which shows a rebound from 2020. Now, at a glance, you might think that that's good. A decline in US life expectancy from coronavirus eased in 2022. And that was the majority of the headlines that was released, including by the CDC. What they failed to mention is that the country remains, quote, well behind the overall peak of life expectancy in 2014. But even more importantly, Crystal, I went through and I reviewed the data. Our life expectancy data is now on par with 2001. So let that sink in.

We have had a 20-year setback now, and we continue on a decline of life expectancy. 2020 and 2021 obviously were extraordinary. They had the biggest drop in life expectancy not seen since World War I here in the US. Some of that was attributable to COVID. But if you read and you actually get into the data, there are two glaring reasons why life expectancy has been on a general decline since 2014. It is chronic illness, drug overdose, and suicide. Chronic illness being one of the number one killers here in the United States. Drug overdose already surpassing car accidents and others, one of the number one cause of death for people who are young. And then the suicide rate also going sky high. And to that end, we actually have the suicide data, which is really,

truly heartbreaking whenever you break it down. U.S. suicides per 100,000 actually went up to the highest per capita rate since 1941. The actual number of suicides has hit a record high. So there are two important parts of that. The record high number is obviously just devastating. You know, you're losing more than all nearly 50,000 people in the United States to suicide just in 2022. But I actually thought that per capita number was most important. And a lot of people might be asking what the hell was happening in 1941. I went back and I pulled the suicide data. Crystal, unfortunately, it was the tail end effects of the Great Depression. Suicides actually peaked here in the United States in 1937 per capita. Absolute untold numbers of people per capita were killing themselves

at that time simply because they couldn't feed their families from despair and more. And we are seeing a recreation of that. The tail end now effective, 1941 for the per capita rate on suicide, chronic illness, drug overdose. The deaths of despair has peaked now at 2022. That's eight years now into the decline. I mean, and this to me is the most important story in the US and something Andrew Yang, to his credit, always used to talk about during his 2020 run. I always loved whenever he brought that up. It's the most basic metric of how society is doing. Are people living or dying? In terms of the suicide numbers, what jumps out here is, you know, there'd been a really alarming increase in young people committing suicide and whatever interventions have been taken. I think also just, you know, teenagers being back in school and having their social networks back intact has probably been useful there as well.

Those numbers have actually gone down. So that's encouraging. So that tells you that there are things we could do about it. On the other side, you know, what is absolutely heart-wrenching is older people and especially old men are killing themselves at rates that we have just almost never seen before. And it's horrific and heartbreaking to think about what leads you to that place. You know, is it financial stress? Is it health stress? Is it feeling that you're a burden on people?

Is it our broken elder care system where there are no good solutions for our elders, you know, in the latter years of their life. And you're right, Sagar. I mean, this is a horrifying indictment of our entire society, both on the suicide rate and also on life expectancy. You know, if you dig into some of those numbers on life expectancy, there were a few things that I wanted to point out. First of all, they have it broken down by racial category. And the decline among American Indians or Native Americans over this period, you just, you can't even wrap your head around it.

They suffered a loss of almost four years in life expectancy to 68 years. Black people suffered the second largest life expectancy setback of two years. Hispanics suffered an almost two-year life expectancy drop. And these numbers are just, you know, unconscionable. Now, COVID, of course, played a huge role in this story. There was no other wealthy country that experienced so high a rate of death per capita from COVID as ours. But that is not disconnected from the other issues that they point out here, including the chronic health conditions, which are really underappreciated as one of the major reasons that we've seen this fall in life expectancy. To put it plainly,

our healthcare system is total shit. It's dramatically expensive. You still have so many people who are either uninsured or underinsured who can't go to the doctor when they're sick. Then you have on top of that, you know, the subsidization of like the worst type of foods, you know, and like the type of poison that we're just pumping into our people day in and day out. We have these incredibly sedentary lifestyles. And you add this all in, and you just see a calamity in terms of our basic health and in terms of our life expectancy. So even with COVID, it's certainly not gone, but more or less in the rearview mirror, you can see the effects of these long-term trends in decline in our basic health persisting. We're also the only wealthy nation

that doesn't have some sort of universal healthcare system. And I think that is a huge part of the story as well, which by the way, doesn't get a mention in the Washington Post article. Healthcare is a huge part of the story. Chronic illness is number one. By state, this also is just so obvious whenever it bears out. The lowest life expectancy in the US, the state of Mississippi, unexpectedly also is just so obvious whenever it bears out. The lowest life expectancy in the U.S. is the state of Mississippi.

Unexpectedly, also has the highest obesity rate and also a very high poverty rate. Number two, West Virginia, same thing. You've got tons of obesity. You've got a huge drug problem. You have an immense amount of poverty. Number three was Louisiana, then Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, South Carolina. All of the things that jump out from there is that if you have lack of access to healthcare, you have poverty, you have chronic illness, and you have extraordinarily high rates of obesity.

And that's what you also brought up. One of the reasons the US suffered more than any other developed country on the world is because we're the fattest developed country on earth. And this is one of those where you have underlying health conditions, you're extraordinarily unhealthy, you have a lack of access to healthcare, and it's much easier for a relatively minor illness like COVID to push somebody who is hanging on by a thread. Drug overdose is also a massive part of this, and I don't want to move past it as well, because drug overdoses, fentanyl overdose specifically, accounted for tens of thousands of deaths in the United States just last year in 2022. The official numbers, not yet clear,

but it does come through in the life expectancy numbers. So while it's good that we've made strides and we've slightly reduced the suicide rate for young people, the elder one there, we shouldn't move past as well because it actually was especially highest, and this is not surprising, amongst older men over the age of 75 who were either suffering from loneliness or a health condition. And the thing is, too, is this is a North American phenomenon. I don't know if anybody's tracking. There's a big debate right now in Canada over assisted suicide. But one, and whether it should be legal or not, I have complicated feelings about the matter and it's probably a subject for another day.

What is not deniable is that huge numbers of Canadians are taking advantage of this. And anytime people are taking advantage of a program to voluntarily end their life through the state, whether you think that should be allowed or not, that is extraordinarily grim. So I think some of this is downstream from like metaphysical, I guess, for lack of a better word, conditions. But a lot of it is a crisis internally and of structure of the US. But I don't know,

I can't help but look at that. You got the highest suicide rate since World War II and the Great Depression. And this like, you know, floated into the ether. I actually don't know a single major news outlet that talked about it in a cable format or in a discussion format like what we're doing here. I looked at it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, you know, it ties into not that everything's about politics, but all this debate online of like, oh, why are people saying things aren't going well? Why aren't they happy with the Joe Biden economy? And then you look at these metrics of just like the most basic measure of well-being and it's a catastrophe. So, you know, how can you look at those numbers and then, you know, imagine that people are going to think that things are going well and we're on the right track and the society's on the up and up. It's really tragic.

Camp Shane, one of America's longest runningrunning weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series,

we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. 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. It's a 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. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden

years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need To Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is.

And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important. And that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so the fact that my kids get to benefit

off of that I'm really happy or my family in general let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the iheart radio Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. At the same time, an extraordinary development here in Washington. Even Uber hawk Lindsey Graham says he's done funding Ukraine with the blank check unless it comes with a border security package. Stunning, I guess, everybody involved. Here's what he had to say. I think there are votes for Israel apart from the package. Republicans overwhelmingly support Israel, so do most Democrats. Republicans are divided on Ukraine. Republicans are 100 percent behind strong border security.

If you want aid to Ukraine, we need to control our southern border. I will not vote for any aid until we secure our own border. Reform asylum, reform parole is possible to do. Democrats don't want to do it. All Republicans want to do it. I'm not helping Ukraine until we help ourselves. So we are not helping Ukraine until we help ourselves. Where has this man been all my life? But I can, Crystal, offer some inside reporting from people that I have spoken to on Capitol Hill who are involved in this. A lot of this is a feint from Lindsey Graham and from others. They have come to terms with the fact that Ukraine is dead on its own in terms of just

aid going through, $61 billion. So what they have done is kind of co-opted this America first framework or whatever by trying to shoehorn a border security package that would be acceptable to the House Republicans, at least in rhetoric. So Lindsey Graham is trying to telegraph, no, no, no, no, guys, I'm on your side as these negotiations continue. Now, from what I understand, those negotiations are actually not going well at all. You had multiple of the sides who were nitpicking against each other, and these negotiations, or at least talks, whatever, continue on Capitol Hill. But I think the rhetoric itself,

when even Lindsay is forced to saying something like that, you've got to know that. What is the phrase? Like, the goose is cooked or something like that. Well, not only that, but you increasingly have administration officials admitting things aren't going well, admitting that we need to push for some sort of a resolution of this conflict. You even have officials within Zelensky's government admitting they're out of stalemate, admitting things are not going well. Now,

they're not saying, okay, well, let's come to some sort of a negotiated settlement of this. And by the way, it's a real question whether that's even on the table at this point, because as we've discussed before, if you're Russia, you feel like you're winning. Why do you feel like you want to bargain or negotiate at this point? The time when we should have done that was back when there were peace talks

at the beginning of the war that we, of course, short-circuited and said, we don't want, even if it is a real possibility. And listen, you never know until the thing is done and dusted. But we now have all of these admissions that many of the key details had been resolved.

And we and the UK were the major roadblocks to getting that done. And Ukraine was, of course, in a much better and stronger negotiating position at that point because they had outperformed in the early days of the war. And because Russia looked like they were in, you know, total chaos, disarray, they had dramatically outperformed in the early days of the war, and because Russia looked like they were in, you know, total chaos, disarray, they had dramatically underperformed.

It was humiliating. There were a lot of questions about what was going to happen with their economy. There was some dissent and domestic unrest within Russia itself. So, you know, that ship has sailed, but now administration officials and even people like Lindsey Graham

floating the end of this conflict is pretty extraordinary. The last thing I'll say in terms of this package that is supposed to be border security, Israel and Ukraine. At this point, all three pieces of that are very controversial. I mean, the border security piece, what, you know, what Democrats are going to accept there and what everybody can agree on. That's, of course, always controversial. Ukraine has become extremely controversial, certainly within the Republican Party. But also, as I said, even Democrats now acknowledging there's, you know, we've got to have some kind of end in sight here. And then on the Israeli aid, we've covered how there are increasing discussions and not just from Bernie Sanders and AOC, but from, you know,

sort of normal, democratic, mainstream, traditional members of the caucus who are saying, hey, maybe we need to condition aid to Israel as well. So every single piece of that package has become extraordinarily controversial. That is an excellent point. And I also want to take an opportunity to say this. This is why I hate bundling all these things together. And each one of these are absurd on its face. If you support Israel, why would you want to have Israel funding tied to Ukraine? If you support Ukraine, or let's say you support a border security package, I definitely support a hell of a lot of reforms for the U.S. border. Why should the U.S. border policy, security, and funding be subject to literally funding a foreign war? Each one of

these should be debated and presented on its face. Now, I'm not naive, and I know that's not the way that it works, but the reason that they do it is so the people like Lindsay, who have hidden agendas and all these other Republicans on Capitol Hill who want to defy the will of their voters, who don't support more funding for Ukraine, can hide behind it and, you know, dangle some shimmery package about some fake border thing. Now, I have no idea if it will even materialize or if it has any sort of chance of passing the House of Representatives. But do not think that the fight over Ukraine funding is dead at all. And that really brings us to what I wanted to spend some time on here, which is just a shocking and heartbreaking report

about US policy towards Ukraine. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. These were two key findings from a months-long investigation into the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. And I put them up side by side because they're two separate stories. The first was about US military planning.

I want to let some of this sink in. The United States held, quote, eight tabletop exercises at a certain point to try and game out what the Ukrainians should do. They advocated focused assaults by the Ukrainians amongst the southern axis. They encouraged them to basically take all of the weapons material in them and then run into fortified Russian positions at the hope of a breakthrough. They did this despite tons of intelligence that they were being told, the United States military was being told, the chances of Ukrainian breakthrough in these types of conditions,

not going to happen. So the US itself basically encouraged an entire generation of Ukrainian young men to run into their debts in this counteroffensive and it didn't even work. So we are very much to blame in this. But there's another side of this coin, too. The Ukrainian military leadership is arrogant and largely incompetent. Something that we talked about endlessly here on the show was the defense of Bakhmut, about how they were blowing billions of dollars of ammo and artillery and all these other things to eventually fight a battle that they were always going to lose. And it turns out the U.S. military was like, hey, you probably should conserve some of that for your counteroffensive. They said, oh, no, we know best.

Then, even though we provided them with all these leopards and all these other Western, you know, this Western military equipment that they had asked for is that much of it was destroyed in a single battle and that they were incompetently employing it. They did not listen to the US military advisors. They retreated to Soviet tactics. Much of the troops that they had, 70% of them had never seen combat before. They were totally green. The Western military training that they tried to do over the course of a year, and in some cases, a summer, for many of these troops is a total failure. I mean, how many times do we have to learn the lesson? From Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan to the Syrian, what was it, the good

militias or whatever they were called, the good rebels, even Korea to a certain extent. We cannot competently train and equip a foreign military. It just doesn't work. And yet we pour billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars into this end. And I just want to end on this. And I'm trying aptly to place the blame on the hands of the military, who really encouraged a lot of these guys to just run into their death. So in some respects, I sympathize with those people who were like, oh, we should have given Ukraine long range missiles, air power and all of this. But what comes through on the Ukrainian side is a couple of things. Number one, these people are not trustworthy. They're incredibly arrogant. They absolutely would

have used it to attack Russia. And we have intercepts, spying, leaked records and all that that confirms it. So it was irresponsible on our part to do so. Number two, they were incompetent from the get go and were never going to succeed in this counter-offensive. And then really three is that at this point, when you combine the worst of all worlds of our policy, you have hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian young men who are either dead or maimed for the rest of their life and are out of the fight. We brought people the recruitment news last time about how the average age of the Ukrainian fighting male right now is 43 years old. You know, Crystal, there are 600,000 Ukrainian fighting age males who have fled the country. They don't want to fight. Morale is at an all-time low. At this point, they're conscripting

anybody that can even move, even with prior medical dischargement. I mean, as I've said previously, this is what it looks like in the last days of resistance. Now, I don't know how much longer they can hold on. Defensive is obviously a better position to be in, but this is a horrible situation for Ukraine. And the US really did hang them. We bled them dry.

We encouraged them not to take a peace deal. We bled them for, you know, to what is it, to degrade the Russian military, even though by many respects, we've sharpened them to be more combat effective than they've ever been before. We taught them all these new lessons about next generation combat. And at this point, you know, Jake Sullivan, I'll just end on this. He said yesterday, anybody who doesn't vote for the $61 billion package to Ukraine is a vote for Putin. That's basically what he said. But I would put it the other way. If you vote for $61 billion for Ukraine, you are voting to bleed the last able-bodied Ukrainian men dead, dry. You're voting to bleed them dry for maybe a few square miles of territory in the hopes of reaching peace deal that was

on the table in April of 2022. How is that a defensible policy? It's not. It's absolutely not. It truly sickens me the way that we have used Ukraine and used Ukrainian military age fighting men in particular as pawns in our effectively like imperial game, you know, hoping we can degrade Russia, hoping we can give Russia a bloody nose. It sickens me. It truly disgusts me because you are right. We hung these people out to dry. And here's the other piece that I want people to really take in. Think of how you have been lied to during this conflict. Lied to about the possibility of a peace deal. Lied to about, you know, the Nord Stream pipeline as one example. But in particular, from this report,

lied to about who really was in charge here. It has always been the U.S. who's been governing the time, manner, and direction of the fighting. We have always had a say in the direction of this war. And instead, Biden and other officials always, oh, it's nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine, and it's all on them, and we're just trying to help them. Bullshit. It has always been a complete lie. The other thing that I'll say about this is, okay, well, why are these things coming out now? And, you know, it's not that the reporting couldn't have been done earlier, et cetera, et cetera, but you now have this very clear realization that this thing has gone completely sideways. And so you've effectively got U.S. officials and Ukrainian officials trying to blame shift.

The U.S. officials are leaking about how it's the Ukrainians' fault and they're incompetent and we told them what to do and they didn't listen, et cetera. And the Ukrainians leaking that, no, they don't understand the reality of the war that we're fighting and they hung us out to dry

and we didn't have the equipment we needed. That's what's going on here. I mean, you see this all the time. I sort of hate sports analogies, but you see this too. When the team starts losing, everybody starts sniping at each other. Everybody starts blaming each other. You see it in political campaigns. Just go and look at what's happening in the Ron DeSantis campaign right now of this one blaming the other one and this one getting fired. And this is the problem with the campaign. No, that's the problem with the campaign. That's the stage we're at right now in the Ukraine war is everyone just trying to leak to the press to set the narrative of what the hell actually went wrong here. And so that's increasingly why you see these reports that give you some insight into what was going on behind the scenes. That's why these are coming out right now. Yes. And let's spend some time on that about the lying and also about the reporting.

This was evident from day one. I was saying it here on Bachmut, you can roll the tape. We're saying it six months ago. And it's funny, all of the professional military analysts were lying to our face. Now, I don't speak ill of former employers and of people who helped me out in the past, but there are a lot of organizations who are out there who were absolutely spinning things with all of these maps and all of these releases and leaking to the New York Times, people of real prestige with real military experience who went all over TV, the pundit generals, all these former NATO commanders, UCOM commanders, all this stuff, BS. Everything they said was a lie. And all of it was a lie perpetrator to just continue the money flowing into Ukraine.

And the thing is too about the money is if it would actually make a difference, I think that there is a little more of a debate on this. I would still be against it. But we have their own admission. They are stealing everything not nailed to the floor. They are one of the most corrupt nations in the entire world. How many untold billions of dollars have been stolen from this aid? We don't even have an inspector general. We'll never find out.

At least we found out some of it in Afghanistan. The troops on the front line, according to many Western reporters, even joke about how they are getting suboptimal supplies because so much corruption has leaked down to them. They're the ones who are fighting. They're the ones who are dying. 600,000 of them don't even want to fight. What is the point of continuing all of this? And really the worst part is, is that previously Russia might have negotiated. But now, since the West has basically moved on from Ukraine, why would you negotiate? I've said this before too. If I'm Russia, I got a hardened economy. I got industry spinning up. Russia is pumping out more ammunition than all of NATO combined. As I've said before, we did them a favor. We sharpened their military. We got rid of their useless initial generals. They've got

their tactics down pretty well. They're in a well-hardened defense battle position. They've got missiles that they're pumping out. They've got these new drones and other things that they're experimenting with, with the help of the North Koreans and of the Iranians. They're raining terror down on Ukraine. Ukraine is in a far, far worse position for its survival than it has been really since the beginning and early days of the war. Nobody is more to blame, I think, here than Washington. So congratulations to all of the people who supported this grift and this tragedy, I think, from the very beginning, because most of it could have been avoided. And it really is just, yeah, it's sickening. It really is sickening. When it does eventually come to an end, we'll see the final toll. That's exactly right. All of this time and money spent

for what? What has been accomplished here? Nothing. Just lives lost, destruction for Ukraine to be in a worse position than they were at the beginning of this war. It's, I mean, it is just a catastrophic failure. It's a humiliation. It is a moral rot. It is disgusting what has unfolded. The last, this is kind of a side note, but it just, it piqued my interest and I wanted to note it from one of the Washington Post reports. They talked about the centrality of these very inexpensive drones, which was also something that Hamas used to great effect in their horrors on October 7th. But they said Russia is deploying fleets of these hand-built attack drones. Ukraine is deploying them as well.

They cost less than $1,000 each and can disable a multi-million dollar tank. Yep. I think that is going to be, you know, putting this particular conflict aside. But as we look forward to the future of conflict and warfighting and guerrilla warfighting, etc., some of these technological advances are, you know, really terrifying for our troops abroad, for what these conflicts are going to look like in terms of evening the playing field here. And I think the drones and the use of them,

very inexpensive, effectively off the shelf at this point, is kind of the bleeding edge of some of this leveling of the technological playing field. There's a lot to be said about that, because for years there was something in military speak called the revolution in military affairs. The Gulf War showed everybody the shock and awe campaign of 2003 everyone's like warfare has changed forever technology has changed the game except in the biggest war since world war ii it looks more like 1914 than any book i've ever read about supposed drone warfare and all that

in 2025 instead it seems that technology and asymmetric warfare has flattened the battlefield and reverted tactics back to historical levels than any sort of fifth generation fighter aircraft that was promising that no American soldier ever had to be put in harm's way. So there's a ton of military lessons on this. I'm sure there's a lot of geeks at West Point and all these others who are studying it, but a lot of them are grim lessons for the billions of dollars that we've poured into Lockheed, Raytheon, and all these other people in the hope of keeping us safe. Why don't we move on to disinformation? Indeed. We'll save that. We'll save a deeper conversation on that for another day. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running

weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long.

You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. 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. 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. I think everything that might have dropped

in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now?

Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me, and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is, they're starting to be like yo your dad's like really the goat like he's a legend so he gets it what does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family it means a lot to me just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that I'm really happy or my family in general let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the iheart radio

app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast so state department spokesperson matt miller was So State Department spokesperson Matt Miller was at the podium yesterday, and he started discussing why the ceasefire broke down and why he alleges that some of the women who are being held hostage by Hamas were not ultimately released. And he says this thing, which apparently was pure conjecture, that it seems maybe they weren't released because Hamas doesn't want them to come out and say what they were subjected to. And in the very same press briefing,

he is forced to admit that he just made this up and actually has no evidence for these pretty you know, pretty inflammatory and extraordinary claims that he just casually put out there. Let's take a listen to his original comments and also the pushback that he received, the admission he had to make. They continue to hold women hostages. The fact that they continue to hold children hostages, the fact that it seems one of the

reasons they don't want to turn women over that they've been holding hostage, and the reason this pause fell apart is they don't want those women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody. The fact that it seems. Is this conjecture on your part or do you know, do you have very good reason to believe, evidence to believe that Hamas is deliberately continuing to hold on to female hostages because they're concerned that they will speak about atrocities that they were subjected to? So I will accept the edit, not fact. Seems is a better way to say it, but let me answer the question. I won't say fact because I don't know it for a fact. Okay, but when you say a number of people believe. Let me just say.

People in the U.S. government? Let me just finish my answer. We have seen Hamas commit all kinds of atrocities. I'm a little bit concerned. I am not suggesting that these things did not happen. And I am not suggesting that what you suggest is the reason for not releasing the remaining female hostages. I just want to be very sensitive in my language. Do you have any evidence to suggest that that is what it is or is it just conjecture?

I want to be very sensitive in my language when talking about people that continue to be held hostage, that have families on the outside. What I will say is we know Hamas has committed atrocities. Hold on. They continue to hold women. They were going to release these women, and then suddenly at the last point reneged on the deal and were never able to provide a credible reason why.

We hope that they will change their mind and release those women. But you don't know, though, for certain that the or a reason for them reneging on the deal and not releasing them is because they're worried about them speaking about what they endured. So I'm not able to speak with a definitive assessment that that is the case? So this was pure conjecture, just floated. And let's be clear what he's honestly floating here. He's basically implying that these women are raped. They were raped by Hamas.

And that's why they're being held back because Hamas doesn't want them to come out and tell the world what happened. He floats this and has to admit that there's no evidence to back it up. Now, that's not before, though. There are, you know, the original comments saying it seems this is what happened, picked up by any number of members of the press and, you know, tweeted out and spread like wildfire and the Israeli government before he then has to walk it back. And this is

disgraceful on any number of levels. I mean, first of all, there should be some expectation that U.S. government officials, when they say something from the podium like that, that it is based in some sort of evidence, fact, and reality, not just speculating for the sake of speculating. So that's number one. Number two, and Matt Miller himself sort of alludes to this. Imagine you're one of the families of these women and you hear a US government official implying that your mom, your sister,

your aunt, your grandma has been raped and that's why she's being still held by Hamas? Imagine that. Just imagine that. And then he has to admit, no, actually, I just made that up effectively. It's disgusting, and you can never imagine them doing this in the other direction of just sort of casually, oh, maybe the IDF raped this woman. Do I have any proof? Not that I have any proof, but I'm just going to go ahead and say it from the podium as State Department spokesperson. That's the key. Look, I mean, they're not, maybe we wouldn't put it past them.

Luckily, and this is the other thing. It's almost like everyone wants this to be true. Thank God, so far, no female hostage yet, as far as I understand it, has reported being raped. Thank God for that. Having Crystal, you and I sat here with the brother of one of those hostages who, thank God, was released and seems at least she has not reported anything. As such, if she does, we'll absolutely update people here on this show. Now, there's a lot of, you know, investigation into some of the things and the claims and all of that have been made. And when it bears out, what bears out to be true is very important. But it's also important not to just wildly speculate from the podium for the exact reasons that you said. And if that was the case, then the US government should say, based on intelligence assessments, we believe that

this is why. I mean, that's a shocking story in its own right. But then for them to, that on the very first question, Matt Lee, by the way, works for the Associated Press. He is one of the best reporters in all of Washington. He sees through the BS. He cuts through every administration, right and left, and he knows things like the back of his hand. I'm very glad that he asked that follow-up. Also, too, that the families of those who are held could see that. Because the inverse of if that was true, then you should really be resigned to, oh my God, these people never may be released. And if it's not true, then you can say and maintain some hope that a future ceasefire, future negotiation or something like that

could materialize. Anyway, I think it was absolutely outrageous and irresponsible the way that he handled that. Because as you said, it was immediately I saw it spread by the Israeli government and others. And that's just the worst thing you can imagine if you're one of the families of the people who are being held. And all we want is for those people to come home, and I hope that they're being treated in a humane fashion. Can't guarantee or anything like that. But yeah, I thought it was crazy.

Absolutely crazy that he just spread that. Yeah, 100%. And here's the other thing, is when you, as that reporter did, raise questions about, well, do you have any evidence of this? I mean, the risk is you end up looking like you're some sort of rape or Hamas apologist. When in reality, there is plenty of good deaths and doubted the civilian death toll. He has repeated some claims about the specifics of the atrocities, which were real on October 7th.

But some of the specifics of the claims he played up turned out to be completely untrue. The Netanyahu government certainly has been spreading multiple falsehoods. And this is not according to me, Crystal Ball. This is according to Haaretz, leading Israeli newspaper that did an investigation into some of the most horrifying claims that were being made about the atrocities on October 7th, and the gruesome nature of which have been used to justify the gruesome assault that is occurring right now on Gaza. I'll put this up on the screen from Haaretz. I'll go through a few of these. I recommend you read this entire report, which is in English, so it's easily accessible.

The headline here is, the Hamas massacre led to the spread of horror stories, not all of which happened in reality. The truth is hard enough, which I would just echo. Listen, not denying that there were horrors committed by Hamas on October 7th, but some of these stories turned out to be completely baseless. One of the most, I guess, infamous at this point is the story about 40 babies being murdered. In some cases, they were described as beheaded. That report was quoted on social media, often referenced as, quote, dozens of beheaded babies. Sometimes it was burnt babies. Sometimes it was hanged babies. The foreign ministry published an account from a colonel from the Home Front Command who said that in one house, he found the bodies of eight burnt

babies. You also had the prime minister office's Twitter account spreading this similar claims about the murder of a large number of infants, including graphic pictures that they said that Netanyahu showed to Tony Blinken. Well, it turns out that, listen, I hate to use the word only, but there was one baby who was killed during these

horrors. Now, that's obviously one baby too many that was killed here. But the reports of 40 babies beheaded, burnt babies, baby in the oven, baby on the clotheslines, et cetera, et cetera, none of these turned out to be true. The truth of what happened on October 7th is horrific enough. But these, you know, intentional embellishments and gruesome stories, again, are used to sort of justify the response and the atrocities here, but that's far from all. There was also claims by Netanyahu

that there were, quote, dozens of children that Hamas tied them up, burned them, and executed them. This also on every level, both in terms of the numbers of children who were killed by Hamas on that day, and also the nature and manner that they were killed. None of this was accurate whatsoever.

There was a horrific story about a pregnant woman whose baby was cut out of her and then stabbed. This also turns out not to be true. And then the last one that I'll mention here, and there were a number of others in this Haaretz story that were debunked as well, but the prime minister's wife, Sarah Netanyahu, wrote a letter to our first lady, Jill Biden.

She wrote that a woman who was taken hostage was in her ninth month of pregnancy when she was abducted and that she gave birth while she was being held hostage. The woman that they claimed was pregnant was not pregnant. She has now been released. She did not have a baby. She was not pregnant at any point. So again, this lie was spread from the first lady of Israel to the first lady of the United States. And you feel horrible talking about these things because they make you feel like you're downplaying what happened on October 7th. I'm not downplaying what happened on October

7th, but it's important that there be some fealty to truth, accuracy, and reality in the events that unfolded on that day. And now you have both the Netanyahu government and our own government caught in multiple lies. So yes, of course, people have every right at this point to not take what these government officials are saying at face value to demand evidence for every single claim that is being made here from their podium, our podium, Matt Miller, Joe Biden, or anyone else in between. Yeah. As you said, small lies beget big lies. It calls into question credibility. And many lies are often spread in order to inflame emotional tensions to a point where you can justify a different policy.

This is a time-honored tradition. You can look no past our WMD lie whenever it came to Iraq, just for a more potent example. But these things are a facet of warfare from the history, you know, going all the way back to whenever you have recorded history about what people would say about what others have done and propaganda and used explicitly for certain purposes. And I just think the number one message that we've been trying to spread here is you better be careful. Don't fall victim to this yourself because it's an emotional tool that is being used by great effect by a lot of people who are in power.

Yeah. And another thing that we've seen throughout this conflict is an effort to downplay the amount of civilian death. I referenced before Joe Biden calling into question the numbers and then privately apologizing for having done that and pledging that he'll, quote unquote, do better. There have been all of these viral fake stories about the, quote unquote, Hollywood conspiracy that all of these children being pulled from the rubble and all these horrific scenes that we're seeing. These are actually many of them crisis actors. Well, we had one of these that actually got picked up by one of the largest English language Israeli media outlets, the Jerusalem Post, put this up on the screen.

So there was this theory going around that this five-month-old baby who had been killed in an Israeli airstrike that, you know, a photojournalist took pictures of his grieving father and family holding this baby, there was this myth floating around and conspiracy theory that this was actually a doll. Again, part of minimizing the civilian catastrophe that's unfolding here. And the Jerusalem Post actually published a story claiming that this was not a real human child who had been killed, that this was a doll. They then, after confronted with the evidence that, no, this is a real baby who was killed here, had to delete that fake story and apologize for posting it. But this sort of stuff is just running rampant. And again,

this is a supposedly, you know, quote unquote, credible outlet that just ran with a wild conspiracy theory based on absolute garbage. Yeah. I mean, I think that the baby doll, the Pallywood that we've talked here previously and more. Anyway, I just want people to take this away as you need to be very clear about what you're ingesting, what you're spreading, about what you can say is actually a matter of fact. You should question the government too, because they can fold almost immediately in terms of things. And much of it is being done in order to justify many things that are being done with, you know, for U.S. policy, for Israeli policy. We've seen and we've shown previous examples here from the Palestinian side as well. So yeah, it's a terrible facet of war.

Crystal, we've got Congressman Ro Khanna standing by. So any final thoughts that you want to say before you sign off? No, I'll be back on Thursday. And thank you guys as always for watching. All right. We miss you and we'll see you soon. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

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

You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. 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. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and we need to talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is.

And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important. And that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better.

So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Joining us now is Congressman Ro Khanna. He's a friend of the show.

We always appreciate you joining us, sir. And whenever you're here in Washington and our audience always wants to hear what you have to say. Well, it's increased my name recognition amongst Capitol Police. You've got that, that's your demographic. Yeah, I was telling you, we have a shocking audience amongst the Capitol Police. Yeah, every time I'm on Capitol Hill, we can see some of that. So I wanted to ask you about some of these things that are happening here in Washington. Something Crystal in particular really wanted to speak with you about was the idea of conditioning U.S. military aid to Israel based upon either having to abide with the international humanitarian rules, the Leahy Amendment and all of that. I know that's

something that you've been involved in. So give us your thoughts on some of the actions going on behind the scenes. Well, first of all, I've called for a permanent ceasefire. We just need an end to this cycle of violence and the release of all the hostages. But the aid should be following the Leahy Law. I don't understand why this is controversial. We have a law in the United States. It's called the Leahy Law. It says that any aid to any country has to uphold human rights standards, international law standards. The problem is that the State Department hasn't been enforcing the Leahy law in cases. And what I've said is that that has to be enforced. If we are going to pass an

aid package, we should explicitly say that it should be upholding the Leahy law. So on the permanent ceasefire point, I guess if we want to steel man the position, what the pro-Israel side would say is your only ceasefires are going to help Hamas. It's going to help them regroup. This will not allow us to rid Hamas of the population inside of Gaza. Is that even an attainable goal in your view? If we have a permanent ceasefire, what would the next step be for people who are advocating for that policy? So I had said Israel has the right to self-defense

when the brutal attack happened. I unambiguously condemned it. But Israel has diminished significantly at this point Hamas's military capability in northern Gaza. Now, there are 45,000 Hamas fighters. Israel has killed probably 1,000 to 3,000, depending on whose estimate you build. You believe. Macron is saying that it would take 10 years of a war to eradicate Israel. And

when you talk to Israel's or our allies in the Gulf, they'll tell you the same thing. So A, it's an unachievable goal. I guess if you were going to try to achieve it, it would mean massive civilian casualties. And we've all seen the women, the children who are being killed. I mean, it's heartrending. And you can't have 100, 200, 300,000 casualties or the entire expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. What do you think should come next? We had a whole segment on our show here, Kamala Harris saying the Palestinian Authority needs to be revitalized.

Do you think the Palestinian Authority is a legitimate actor that could take over governance? What is your view of what the next phase of this should look like? We have a ceasefire. Now we have to do governance, possibly elections. Who is legitimate? Who is not? What should that look like in your view? Well, I don't think it should be the United States dictating who is at the table.

I think we want to have every Palestinian voice under the condition that they recognize Israel's right to exist and they renounce violence, which has been the precondition for those negotiations. But then have the diverse factions of Palestine represented. So you have a Palestinian state with equal rights and Israel obviously at the table as well. The problem the United States made is for years we thought we could just ignore the Palestinian issue. And they tried the Abrahamic words. They didn't have Palestinians have a voice for a state. And now people are realizing that's not going to work. So what is your view then? You're an ally of the president. I know he talks to you from time to time. What's your assessment of how the Biden administration has handled this so far? What do you think? I don't agree fully with the way

that they've handled it. I mean, obviously, I'm calling for a permanent ceasefire. I thought initially the statement that Israel has a right to defend itself was completely fine. I thought initially the statement that Israel has a right to defend itself was completely fine. I thought the unambiguous condemnation of Hamas and the attacks were fine. But I don't think we should have beer hug Netanyahu, which gave a far-right government in Israel way too much of a green light to have the bombing that they did. These should have been much more surgical strikes against Hamas perpetrators who committed the attacks. And that, to me, was where I had disagreements with the administration. What do you make of the general ubiquity of support for Israel amongst the Democratic Party? One of the things that we covered here today was that 60-something percent of Democrats disapprove of Israeli military action inside of Gaza. I believe you said 40-some people

have called on for a permanent ceasefire, but nonetheless, not even representative of voters and all that. Have you heard organic pushback on this, And do you worry about electoral consequences as a result of this policy? I do worry about the losing young people, losing minorities, not just Muslim Americans or Arab Americans, but voters of color. I worry about it in the battleground state. And I think that you can stand with Israel, condemn October 7th, unambiguously condemn the horrors, the rape, the 1,200 people who were killed, and still say that we also recognize the dignity, the value of Palestinian lives. Here's what I'm hearing from people who, and I don't think this is fully understood, that they don't see American policymakers expressing the same empathy, the same value

for the Palestinian children, for the Palestinian women being killed as they do for people who are Israeli or European. And we have to make sure that we as a country in a multiracial democracy say that every human life has value. And that to me is really what's driving some of the anger among young people, progressives and minority communities in America. What do you make of some of the ongoing heightened attacks on U.S. forces? And I know you've got a lot of foreign policy. I know you spend a lot of time thinking about foreign policy as well. This is something that's worried me particularly about attacks on not only U.S. troops. Now we've had multiple weird incidents in the Red Sea.

We've got Houthi drone attacks and all that. Do you think that's derivative largely of what Israel is doing inside of Gaza? Is it of U.S. support or is this just part of the inflamed tensions have unleashed a lot of tension that was already simmering behind the scenes? And what do you think of the Biden administration's handling of it so far? I think the latter. I think you have a conflict that is escalating. This is why we need a permanence east fire, to ratchet down the tension so we don't get drawn into a Middle East conflict.

I mean, some of it is a remnant of the Yemen war, where the Houthis were fighting the Saudis. And that was a foreign policy mistake. The president has corrected course on Yemen, which I give him credit for. But overall, what I would say is that the administration needs to figure out a way for the bombing and the war to end. And once you have a permanent ceasefire

with the release of all hostages, then I think you can start to ratchet down the tensions and lessen the likelihood, not just of the United States getting into a war, but an attack on the United States. Yeah, that's something I'm deeply worried about. I also wanted to ask you something, I know Christopher was particularly up about this. Let's put this please up there on the screen.

It's about a new House resolution which could be voted on very early, which quote, clearly firmly states that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. I know that there were previous statements and resolutions that had passed the House. What do you make of this resolution, which I know even people like Jerry Nadler have spoken out against? I'll be voting no. Look, I voted for resolutions to say we do not want any anti-Semitism on college campuses. And I recognize the genuine fear of anti-Semitism in this country. I mean, there are Jewish Americans who tell me they're changing their names when they're

getting on their cab drivers. And that's a real issue. But you can't say a resolution like this basically says if you're criticizing the Netanyahu government, if you're criticizing the Netanyahu's policies on annexation, if you're calling for a Palestinian state and saying that Palestinians have legitimate grievances against occupation, then you may be seen as anti-Semitic. And I don't think that the criticisms of Israeli policy

should in any way be equated to anti-Semitism. That diminishes actually what anti-Semitism is. When you speak with your colleagues generally, what is the feeling behind the scenes? You have 40-some people now calling for a permanent ceasefire. is actually what anti-Semitism is. When you speak with your colleagues generally, what is the feeling behind the scenes? You have 40-some people now calling for a permanent ceasefire. Do you think that the overall sentiment is beginning to grow? Do you think that maybe a particular event may push things?

Because it does seem that things, at least on the Democratic side, are trending in a very different direction. Even when you look at the Senate, people like Mark Warner and others who have said things very discontinent with the current U.S. policy towards Israel and its military action. I would say the last two weeks there has started to be a shift in both the scenes of the bombings and the children, the women, the devastation. I mean, people have seen that from a human perspective, but also the fact that we did have a temporary ceasefire. Hostages did start to be released. That shows that through diplomacy, we can get all the hostages out and a diplomatic solution and end to the violence.

So there was hope there. Even the president was saying, I hope this is lasting. But now we've got to move beyond hope to making it lasting. Just one basic point. The Gaza war in 2021 ended when Biden called up Netanyahu. And he said, that's it. The runway's ended. And Netanyahu was the hours before saying, we're going to continue. We're going to continue.

An hour later, they stopped. Reagan, when he called up the Israeli prime minister in 1982, they stopped within hours. Reagan said to someone, I didn't know I had that much power. So the American policy, American policy makers have a lot of power here. Well, Congressman, we always appreciate you joining us on Slack. Crystal wasn't able to join us, but we always appreciate your views. And thank you very much, sir. Thank you, Sagar. Absolutely. We'll see you guys later. I think everything that might've dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and we Need to Talk is tapping in.

I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like, that's what's really important, and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app,

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