Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/9/24: Trump Floats Mexico/Canada As US States, Jon Stewart Explodes On Trump Billionaire Agenda, Jay Z Underage Accusations

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump floats Mexico and Canada as US states, Jon Stewart sounds off on Trump billionaire agenda, Jay Z hit with underage accusations.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator,

and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it.

Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, the unexpected, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. On Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage, you'll hear about these heroes and what their stories tell us about the nature of bravery. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.

This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free,

and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. Let's go to Donald Trump. There was a big interview that he gave to NBC News. Kristen Welker, the big top line was about trade with Canada and Mexico. He suggested, perhaps if we're going to subsidize these two countries, they should just become the 51st and the 52nd states. Let's take a listen. You're subsidizing Canada to the tune of over $100 billion a year. We're subsidizing Mexico for

almost $300 billion. We shouldn't be subsidizing. Why are we subsidizing these countries? If we're going to subsidize them, let them become a state. We're subsidizing Mexico and we're subsidizing Canada and we're subsidizing many countries all over the world. And all I want to do is I want to have a level, fast, but fair playing field. Confirmed some of the reporting that apparently had told Justin Trudeau. He's like, look, if we're going to pay this much, then you might as well become a state. Listen, Sagar, you add Mexico, Canada and Puerto Rico, you've've got three new states that Democrats actually have a shot at winning at the Senate level. But there's no chance. Think about it. Well, first of all, Mexico is... I'm not taking it. I'm just joking. How many states are in Mexico? I don't actually know. It's a lot.

And how many provinces in Canada? Oh, man, is this a five? I'm going to guess. Five was what came to my mind as well. Okay, so we've got Quebec, BC, Ontario. Nova Scotia. What's Calgary? Is that a province or is that a city? Calgary's a city. Okay. But it's in something.

All right, sorry. Sorry, Canadians. Exposing our Canadian ignorance here. Hey, that's better than most Americans. You said British Columbia, right? Yeah, I said BC. Isn't New Brunswick, isn't that its own? New Brunswick.

Oh, shit. Newfoundland, is that its own? Yeah. And then the Northern Territories. But I don't know if that's a province or if it's like Indian Territory or whatever. Or whatever. Sorry. We did okay.

Anyway. Yeah, we did pretty well. I would say that's decent for an American political commentator. Mexico, don't even get me started. Oh, the only reason I know Mexican states is because of drug cartels. It's like Tijuana, Sinaloa, or Mazatlan or whatever. That's the only reason I know. That's the only reason I know.

That's the only reason I know of our media, that that's all we know. True. Yeah, good point. But anyways, that's what he's suggested in terms of some of the trade work. Actually, arguably the most important ones that he put forward. 31 states and Mexico. Oh, my God. That's crazy.

I can barely name five, and they're only the ones like around the United States. Shows my own ignorance. Let's get to Trump's comments on Ukraine. Arguably, this is the most important thing that came out of the interview. Let's take a listen. There are people being killed in that war at levels that nobody's ever seen before. You have to go back to the Second World War. And even that, if you take a look at, and you know what it is, it's the soldiers largely. The cities have been emptied out and demolished. The country has been demolished.

If I won that election, which you know how I feel about it, I won't get into it cuz we don't need to start that argument. I think it's an easy argument. It was really proven even more conclusively by the wind that I had on this one. But you did. Had I, that's your opinion, but I disagree with it. Had I assumed kept control. Number one, Israel wouldn't have happened. Number two, Ukraine would have never happened. It would have never happened, Ukraine, Russia. But the number of people that are being killed,

soldiers, young, beautiful soldiers, hundreds of thousands of people are being killed. And it's very interesting. It's level, totally level, the battlefields, totally level. You know what's happening? The only thing that stops a bullet, you know what it is, is a body, a human body, and the people that are being killed, hundreds of thousands on both sides. Russia's lost probably 500,000, Ukraine's lost higher than they say, probably 400,000.

You're talking about hundreds of thousands of bodies laying all over fields. It's the stupidest thing I've ever seen. And it should have never been allowed to happen. Biden should have been able to stop it. So that was important because you couple it with the tweet that he or the truth or whatever he put out on Truth Social where he called for, quote, an immediate ceasefire. Also, let's take this since Trump is now the president elect and he's probably getting intelligence numbers. Just so you're aware, he said 400,000. Just yesterday, President Zelensky claimed that the total death toll in Ukraine was 43,000 Ukrainian soldiers who had been killed.

So, yeah, literally add another zero on top of that number for what the reality is. But it does show that this is going to be very difficult because what did Jeremy say in our interview? If I'm Iran and I just watch this, I'm accelerating my nuclear bomb, right? For preservation of the regime. That's the number one lesson North Korea took away from Libya. If you're Russia and you're looking at this, you just had a prestige hit, you know, in terms of your ally going down, you're embroiled in this war. We already learned from a Russian oligarch that the current quote unquote peace proposal on the table, which would mean, or at least from Zelensky, in terms of NATO membership in exchange for recognition of some

territory lost even in that, the oligarch was like, no, Putin would not take that. So they have a mess on their hands, like absolutely. In terms of the ceasefire and all of that, another piece of news that came out of this interview, which is really important, is Trump said he has not spoken to Putin since he became the president-elect. But now he's spoken with Zelensky twice. They had a phone call and they got cozy in the Elysee Palace, I'm sure by design by President Macron, putting him front and center and brokering some meeting there with Zelensky. So there are a lot of open questions about which way this goes. Remember, Mike Waltz and Keith Kellogg have both floated two separate theories of how they would force Putin to the negotiating table, which involves escalating the war in Ukraine. So already we have, you know, look, it's easy to say, I'll have it done by the time I take office.

Actually getting there, it's just like the Middle East, it's going to be a tough road. Well, that was my major takeaway from his comments there is he still falls back on this. Well, it wouldn't have happened if I was there. And it's like, okay, that was fine for the campaign. You know, people kind of bought that and what you were selling, but now you're about to be in that office and we are where we are. So what now? And you're right. The most consistent indications we've gotten from his advisors are that his plan is basically this like escalate to de-escalate. I think you're right to read into the fact that he's always like Zelensky, meeting with Zelensky multiple times. And, you know, Russia may be not in such a mood to negotiate given the prestige blow that they just took. So anyway, always interesting to hear

what he has to say. But by and large, it's just like, we'll see what he does when he gets in there because he says all kinds of things all the time. Yeah, he says all kinds of things all the time. Can we put D4, please, on the screen? This is what I was referencing. He says they have ridiculously lost 400,000 soldiers, many more civilians. There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. Too many lives are needlessly wasted. Too many families destroyed. I mean, look, I think the sentiment is great. It's like you said, though. It's like, well, were your advisors speaking for you? Were they speaking on behalf of themselves? What do you actually think? What are you going to push to happen? And this

will, you know, something I talked a lot about on the Lex Friedman podcast was Trump believed previously under John Bolton. He said on the Joe Rogan show, he was like, well, what I do is I hire these people who make me look more reasonable and who are scary. And it's like, okay, that's great. But while you're in the Oval Office dealing with tax reform, immigration, or any of these other things, they have a full-time job where they're running the administration. And they are running and presenting options and making all of these decisions that have nothing to do with you. And if those people have an ideology that's different than you, you literally, by definition, cannot spend all of

your attention focused on this. You're lucky as the American president if you get to spend 25% of your time on foreign policy. You're lucky if that happens. He's very malleable. He's very easily flattered and manipulated. And I mean, that's not to take the blame off of his shoulders. That's just a reality that it matters a lot who he surrounds himself with. And I think at this point, it's very likely that he would have to really pressure Zelensky into taking a deal that in no way is Zelensky going to want to take in order to get Russia to consider coming to the table with them. And so is he going to be willing to apply that pressure? Because what indication we're getting is that instead what he wants to do is say, we're going to give Zelensky everything he wants.

What was it, Seb Gorka who said what Biden gave him was going to be peanuts compared to what Trump is going to promise to give him. Again, I have no idea if any of this is true or not. A lot of these guys are just bullshitting on their radio shows, too, if we're all being honest. So it's like, okay, were they talking themselves? They talk for Trump. At least one good thing is that Trump hates when other people speak for him. So it's one of those where hopefully he'll put them in his place. But we'll see, man.

It's a big question mark. And the potential for an absolute catastrophic mess remains on the table. Trump was also asked about immigration policy and deportation. Let's take a listen. Four million families in America who have mixed immigration status. So I'm talking about parents who might be here illegally, but the kids are here legally. Your borders are Tom Homan. You're talking about separation?

Well, I mean, there are two aspects to this. Your borders are Tom Homan said they can be deported together. Is that the plan? Well, that way you keep the, well, I don't want to two aspects to this. Your border czar, Tom Homan, said they can be deported together. Is that the plan? Well, I don't want to be breaking up families. So the only way you don't break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back. Even kids who are here legally? Well, what you're going to do if they want to stay with the father? Look, we have to have rules and regulations.

You can always find something out like, you know, this doesn't work, that doesn't work. I'll tell you what's gonna be horrible, when we take a wonderful young woman who's with a criminal, and they show the woman, and she could stay by the law, but they show the woman being taken out, or they want her out. And your cameras are focused on her as she's crying, as she's being taken out of our country. And then the public turns against us. But we have to do our job. So that definitely shows that they're still talking a lot about what, quote unquote, mass deportation and all of that will look like. Tom Homan has talked about that before.

But, I mean, I just keep coming back to the reality of it. Like, they barely have enough resources to even deport criminals. Like, you know, the idea that there is going to be, I mean, unless Congress gives, I don't know, 10, 20, 50 billion, you know, to ICE, which I don't see happening, especially with the current makeup of the Republican Senate. And you've got guys who are in swing districts or elsewhere who are going to look out for it. So anyway, we'll see. That's how they're talking. But this is, again, like a big question mark to me. The comments to me were also very revealing because they really showed that he understood that the images that came out last time were incredibly damaging. I mean, he said the public turns against you. Yeah, right. And so he realizes the way that these images can be extremely potent and very difficult in spite of the rhetoric that he used on the campaign.

The other thing that was noteworthy to me in this interview is he got asked about birthright citizenship, which is in the Constitution. He says he wants to end birthright citizenship using an executive order. You certainly cannot do that. Now, there is some debate. I was going to say, let me give the case. There is some debate that you could, well, that you could pass legislation because what is the language it says, like subject to the jurisdiction thereof. And so there are some people who say, oh, well, you can legislate what exactly that means. That's a debate for the courts. Possible. But you can't do it through an executive order as far as I know.

Here's the debate. It says, here's the section from the 14th Amendment. All persons born or naturalized in the United States subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States of the state wherein they reside. Naturalized citizens subject are citizens thereof. So the idea is that if you're here illegally and you have a child in the United States, that because you are an illegal immigrant and you're not here under legal jurisdiction,

that that would not apply. So when they say end birthright citizenship, it's specifically about people who are not legally in the United States, which look, objectively, that's crazy. If you're here illegally, you get to then just have a baby and your baby is a U.S. citizen? Crazy. I mean, sure. Should it apply to green cards or anybody else? Fine. That's totally fine. That's what the executive order would say. But it will be a huge constitutional question. I mean,

there's no issue about it. Because as it's written, I mean, I could see it going multiple ways. Like I think that Clarence Thomas, Alito, you know, maybe in a few other, but somebody like Justice Gorsuch or any of those other, they would easily side. But what I've seen, though, is not that, is even from conservatives who support this, was not that you could do it through executive order. It was that, oh, we could pass legislation to define what it means to be subject to the jurisdiction thereof and change those parameters. Maybe, I don't know. That's what could go through the courts. But I think the idea that you're going to do it through an executive order is fanciful. Well, you could try. Well, what I just said is you could try it through executive order and you could try it through

judicial review and see what they say. So maybe they come back and they're like, well, you have to pass an act of Congress and then you do that. But look, do I think this is going to happen? He said it last time. Okay. He said it in the famous, remember the Jonathan Swan interview where Swan is like, hands him the piece of paper. They were talking about birthright citizenship in that interview. I've heard him say this since 2018. Will it happen? We'll see. In terms of the White House counsel and the lawyers and all of this and even their ability to competently get any of this done, I remain skeptical. The other piece, and this will help us transition to our monologue, is it's true that many of the billionaires that surround him now, they're very interested in high-skilled immigration. Oh, absolutely.

In particular. Remember Trump said that thing about stapledpled, stapled the college, which is a lib position. And he has shifted his position on any number of things to, you know, please this group, which were very important in getting him elected. I'm about to talk about Elon apparently gave a quarter billion dollars to this campaign. And given how close it was, like, you know, you could easily make the case that's the reason that he's headed back to the White House. So he owes this group quite a lot. I would say that Elon and them, even David Sachs, who I love, but, you know, let's be honest, David and the tech guys and all these other guys, they have a literal financial interest because a lot of their companies are started by, you know, O-1 visa types or foreign students and all that. Look, it's great, but that's just reality that's like 5% of the U.S. immigration system. I mean, Elon himself is from South Africa. Yeah, that's true.

His whole backstory is crazy. It was Canadian, South African, whatever. People should go read about it. In terms of the immigration, I actually think that the major influence, a lot of the people you're going to talk about, are some of the lesser-named billionaires and people who have ties to the retail business or big agriculture. That is where illegal immigration is like the greatest subsidy of all time. I mean, our new ambassador to China is going to be David Perdue, who was the CEO of Dollar General and the senator from Georgia. Amazing.

I mean, I guess the defense is he spent a lot of time in China and he knows them well. He spent a lot of time outsourcing jobs to China. No, he spent a lot of time brokering deals for cheap bullshit for $2 General.

That's a whole other story. I mean, he had to get something right. He ran as the Stop the Steal candidate in Georgia and got his ass kicked. So, you know, you have to get something when you show that level of loyalty. But I think that the pressure will come from retail and from Wall Street on immigration way more than Silicon Valley. The Silicon Valley one is going to be more about the immigration reform through legislation. Yeah.

But the actual beneficiaries of illegal immigration is Tyson's Food, big agriculture, you know, all these other companies, construction-wise. Something like half of the farm workers in the country are undocumented immigrants. It's extraordinarily crucial for that industry and also just for people to be able to get food at the grocery store and pay the prices they're used to paying, etc., etc. 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. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a

relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one.

The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick.

Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The last campaign finance reports are in, and we now know exactly how much Elon Musk, the richest man on the planet, paid in order to elect his man and secure his own whole sweeping government mandate. According to federal filings, the grand total is more than a quarter of a billion dollars. Now just think about it. Miriam Adelson was able to buy the entire U.S. foreign policy apparatus apparently for a mere hundred million. So you can only imagine what Musk is getting for the virtually unlimited fortune he plunked down on Donald Trump's behalf.

After all, given the closeness of the race, one must assume this level of investment likely secured Trump the White House. What's coming into focus, as we learn more details, is a sort of billionaire coup. Because Elon is, of course, just one of a rapidly expanding cabal of billionaires who have already been given plum gigs in the incoming Trump administration, earning slots that will allow them to directly plunder the federal government for their own benefit. In addition to these official roles that these plutocrats will occupy, they are also reportedly serving as headhunters for the incoming administration, helping to staff lower-level jobs with their cronies and ideological allies so that the billionaire takeover is even more complete than it appears at surface level. Now, billionaire

influence, of course, nothing new in politics. Without a doubt, though, this is the most overt transfer of government into the hands of oligarchs in our nation's history. It is my sense that Trump, desperate to avoid prison and not having ever been all that interested in ideology or governance to begin with, was happy to sell off different parts of his administration and is now sitting back to let this band of robber barons shape the government to suit their desires. Now, many of these unelected rulers, like the new AI and crypto czar David Sachs, they're Musk allies and friends who share similar ideological and self-interested goals. Quite a number of these goals are directly at odds with the alleged commitments of Trumpism. So where Trump claims to be a China trade hawk, Elon's

vast fortune is so tied up with that of the Chinese government that his new partner Vivek once roasted him for jumping like a circus monkey for Xi Jinping. Where Trump courted union member support, Elon fired striking workers, something that Trump did cheer him for, and is currently fighting in court to end the body that governs worker organizing in its entirety. And crucially, whereas Trump's ascendance in the Republican Party has come from bucking austerity politics, Elon and his cadre are fans of anarcho-capitalist leader Javier Millay and his shock are fans of anarcho-capitalist leader Javier Millay and his

shock doctrine approach. Now, if you're a billionaire, of course, what's not to love about Millay? He's slashing the social spending programs that make workers less desperate for whatever abusive, poorly paid gig to corporate titans that are willing to provide them. He's privatizing core government functions, creating more opportunities for oligarchs to siphon off of public funds. And he's slashed the regulations that constrain greedy bosses from abusing workers and consumers and poisoning our air and our water. Crucially, Millais also rolled back tariffs to the explicit praise of Musk, once again, polar opposite of Trump's stated program goals. Now, Trump's billionaire puppeteers seem to think they can smuggle this oligarchic agenda in through the Trojan horse of culture war. That strategy was on prominent display recently when one of the

billionaires informally advising Trump, investor Marc Andreessen, took to Joe Rogan's podcast in order to make the case for eliminating an agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has consistently stood up to business abuses of consumers. This agency, which has a comparatively small budget, mind you, has returned $21 billion to ordinary Americans in just more than a decade of existence. As we covered here with Matt Stoller, Andreessen hates the CFPB precisely because the work it does protecting consumers has been inconvenient for some of his scammier business investments. But instead of making the kind of unpersuasive case

that he and his allies should just be able to plunder unimpeded, he instead made up a lie to play to one of the right-wing culture war issues du jour and claimed that the CFPB was debanking conservatives for ideological reasons. That's not even a power the CFPB has, and on the contrary, the agency's head has pushed back on ideological debanking. Nevertheless, Andreessen's lies were immediately picked up by the Doge crew. Vivek responded on X, the only right answer, shut it down. Musk concurred, delete CFPB. If there was any pushback from the MAGA base, I certainly did not see it. But if Musk really wants to slash $2 trillion from the budget or anything close to that, much more must be targeted than this agency, which even if deleted in its entirety,

comprises a grand total of 0.031% of that $2 trillion goal. So it should be no surprise that the billionaires have set their sights on the longtime conservative fantasy of cutting Social Security and Medicare, contra to Donald Trump campaign promises. Now on Twitter, Elon re-shared a lengthy thread from libertarian Mike Lee making Paul Ryan-style conservative arguments attacking the foundations of Social Security. Meanwhile, Vivek has argued that they could slash hundreds of millions of dollars from Medicaid, Social Security, and Medicare through what he describes as, quote, basic program integrity measures. Republican members of Congress are rushing to back them up in this assault on our most popular successful programs. We are bringing the Democrats in to talk about Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare.

There's hundreds of billions of dollars to be saved and we know how to do it. We just have to have the stomach to actually take those challenges on. But we can't just talk about our discretionary budget. That's less than 25% of our budget. We have to have some real hard discussions. Well, we talk about this all the time. It seems like we're constantly talking about where to cut and the fact that the fight over defense. Do you believe that the defense budget should be cut? I'm not a big fan of that. I think we could do things a lot better. But when you talk about what's happening in Taiwan,

what's happening in the Middle East, what's happening with Israel, what's happening in Ukraine. This is an unstable place, an unstable time. We have to be very careful. So not big on those defense cuts, but very open to the social programs cuts. What's more, in Ilan and Vivek's quest to bring what they describe as a chainsaw to government spending cuts, the doge doer are also threatening programs where specific funding authorizations have lapsed. That's an easy way, perhaps, to cut spending without having to go through those pesky, duly elected representatives in Congress at all. Now, I know everyone's for cutting federal spending in the abstract. Sounds good, right? Trim the fat, all that stuff. Sounds good. But the reality can be quite harsh. Among the programs that could be slashed using Vivek's innovative approach are veterans health

care, new drug development, opioid addiction treatment, housing assistance, and the Head Start preschool program that gives low-income kids access to early childhood education. Trump's billionaires might not need these programs, but millions of Americans truly do depend on them. Now, there's one large and vastly unaccountable area of government that I would personally

be happy to see slash, and that is the Pentagon. Now, Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna have both signaled they would like to work to help Musk with this project if he's actually serious about it in an attempt to effectively call his bluff. But no one should delude themselves into believing that Elon Musk, who is himself one of the Pentagon's largest contractors,

is earnestly interested in trimming the sails of the military. Pete Hicks up too. Trump's nominee for the Defense Department, he's been portrayed as some sort of a revolutionary intending to hack away at the Pentagon. In reality, he's supported every war, including the Iraq War, up until shockingly recently. He's articulated a desire to expand American militarism abroad and frequently couches his critiques of the Pentagon in culture war terms. What's more, Trump has reportedly picked another billionaire to serve as the Pentagon's number two, a guy by the name of Steven Feinberg.

Now, Feinberg has made millions with large investments in defense contractors himself. In my experience, war profiteers don't tend to be inclined towards cutting back military spending or cutting back on endless wars. I suspect this crew will performatively cut some meaningless DEI program and then call it a day. After all, on site are like two people, Thomas Massey and Rand Paul, maybe there are a couple others. The Republican Party has no interest in cutting the defense budget. Trump himself increased it every single year while he was in office the last time. Jon Stewart made a similar point recently when he was speaking with Bernie Sanders about finding the balance between trying to work with Trump and his billionaires when they claim to want to do something good, but also not getting played. What Musk and Ramaswamy are proposing, boy, is something I've wanted for years. I'm just

not sure those are the guys that I wanted to do it because maybe I don't trust their, you know, I feel like they're too focused on woke or retribution or something along those lines. And we'll go in there. Is it Democrats' inability to reform those processes that has opened the opportunity for this more nihilistic approach? Yeah, Democrats are in many cases, not all, defending a system which is broken and people perceive that it is broken.

And Trump says it is broken. Now his remedies are going to make it even worse. And I think what I fear very much hasn't been discussed all that much. If I give you an example, the post office, the mandate of the post office is a very good mandate. It is to deliver mail to every house in America, no matter how rural it can be. It's a money loser, but it's the right thing to do. You can privatize the post office tomorrow, make it more efficient, and yet you will lose the beauty of what the post office is supposed to be. The challenge that we face is, can you have a post office functioning in the year 2024, which is efficient, which serves the needs of its customers?

I believe we can. I believe we can. And I'm fighting for that. What these other guys, I suspect, want to do is privatize, privatize, privatize. So you'll have even more power in the hands of the large corporate interests. Look, I genuinely get the surface-level appeal of Doge. And even if stacking your administration with billionaires, given the American mythology that financial success is indicative of general superiority, the truth is, though, with very few exceptions, your interests and the interests of billionaires are diametrically opposed. They want to degrade government until it no longer has the

power to impede their plunder, to slash the social safety net programs that can take the edges off of our vast inequality while fattening their own coffers with contracts and subsidies, and guaranteeing a future filled with limitless automation and crypto scams that funnel even more to the already rich. Musk and some of his friends, they've told Americans to prepare themselves for economic hardship thanks to their austerity program. But somehow it's never them and their rich buddies who are asked to participate in that shared sacrifice. But yes, by all means, let's ask the low-income four-year-olds and our nation's veterans and seniors to sacrifice so that Trump's billionaires

can execute a brazen smash and grab on our future. Trump has handed the keys over to the very globalist elites he once derided. And Sagar, this really gets at there a lot of tension. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. 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.

Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need

to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to Boy SoOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways.

Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Business Week editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain.

I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we had one more story we wanted to add in here that broke yesterday evening. And this is what I talked about before. So Jay-Z has been hit with a civil lawsuit alleging that he, back in the early 2000s, raped a 13-year-old girl at a party. You can put this tear sheet up on the screen from NBC News. I'll just go ahead and say up front he denies the charges, the allegations here. We'll read you the statement from his team here in just a second. In any case, this says the star rapper and entrepreneur, his real name is Sean Carter, was accused in a lawsuit Sunday of raping a 13-year-old girl in 2000, allegedly alongside Sean Diddy Combs.

The accuser is anonymous, identified only as Jane Doe. She says the assault happened after she was driven to an MTV Video Music Awards after party. Basically, what she alleges here is that she was trying to get into this after party. Someone saw her and was like, oh, I think that you're Diddy's type. Got her into this party again as she's at the age of 13. She arrives, she sees lots of drugs, including cocaine and marijuana being consumed. She has a drink. She starts feeling woozy,

feels like she needs to lay down. And next thing she knows, allegedly is being raped by Diddy and JC. And another female was also in the room who has as of yet been unnamed. Again, this is a civil lawsuit. The statute of limitations has expired, best to my knowledge, in New York for this woman, which is relevant to when we give you Jay-Z's response. We put this up on the screen. I'll read this for you in its entirety. So this is from Roc Nation. My lawyer received a blackmail attempt called a demand letter from a lawyer named Tony Busby.

What he had calculated was the nature of these allegations. The public scrutiny would make me want to settle. No, sir, it had the opposite effect. It made me want to expose you for the fraud you are in a very public fashion. So no, I will not give you one red penny. These allegations are so heinous in nature, I implore you to file a criminal complaint. Again, statute of limitations has expired. Anyway, not a civil one. Whomever would commit such a crime against a minor should be locked away. Would you not agree? These alleged victims would deserve real justice if that were the case. This lawyer I've done a bit of research

on seems to have a pattern of these types of theatrics. I have no idea how you have come to be such a deplorable human, Mr. Busby, but I promise you, I've seen your kind many times over. I'm more than prepared to deal with your type. You claim to be a Marine. Marines are known for their valor. You have neither honor nor dignity.

My only heartbreak is for my family. And then he goes on to say, my heart and support goes out to true victims in the world who have to watch how their life story is dressed in costume for profitability by this ambulance chaser

in a cheap suit. You have made a terrible error in judgment, thinking all celebrities are the same. I'm not from your world. I'm a young man who made it out

of the project of Brooklyn. We don't play these type of games. We have very strict codes and honor. We protect children. You seem to exploit people for personal gain. Only your network of conspiracy theorists,

fake physics, fake physics, okay, will believe the idiotic claims you have levied against me that, if not for the seriousness surrounding harm to kids, would be laughable. I look forward to showing you just how. Psychics, that's what it's gotta be. It was like, it has to be fake psychics.

Yeah, okay, maybe, I don't know. Anyway, I look forward to showing you just how different I am, and I believe there is a follow-up from the lawyer that I will pull up while you're reacting to this. Oh, I have the lawyer. Okay. He says, so this is Tony Busby, who Jay-Z was addressing there. He tweeted out, regarding the Jay-Z case and his efforts to silence my clients, Mr. Carter previously denied being the one who sued me in my firm. He filed his frivolous case under a pseudonym. What he fails to say in his recent statement is, my firm sent his lawyer a demand letter on behalf of an alleged victim, and that victim never demanded a penny from him. Instead, she only sought a confidential mediation.

Since I sent the letter on her behalf, Mr. Carter has not only sued me, but he has tried to bully and harass me. And this plaintiff, his conduct has had the opposite impact. She is emboldened. I'm very proud of her resolve. As far as the allegations and the complaint filed, we will let the filing speak for itself, and we'll litigate the facts in court, not in the media. So there you go. That's all back and forth. You know, look, I mean, I don't know anything

about Jay-Z. I'm not a big hip hop person who's been, you know, tracking all of these allegations now. I do find it kind of an insane thing because look, like if we're talking about, like this is somebody who's 13 years old. This is like a small child, right? I mean, this is like pedophilia. This isn't something like mistaking somebody who's 17 for 18 years old. I would assume that there would be other instances and that stuff like this would have come out. I mean, in terms of other allegations, the thing is about the Diddy thing is it's been around in the ether for like 35 years, right?

Everybody knew that there was something going on that was sketchy. It would just took a while to catch up. For this to be true, I mean, you'd have to believe this happened and what, it didn't happen again for years or nobody kept quiet or everybody kept quiet around it. Look, definitely within the realm of possibility. It also, I guess in a civil sense, in terms of trying to prove it's true, that's going to be very difficult, right? In terms of recalling something that happened some 24 years ago and being able to provide witnesses and find culpability. So anyway, my point is I have no idea any of this. But I will say like when you hang out with sketchy people and you hang out in sketchy environments, then you definitely leave yourself vulnerable to such accusations. Yes. If that's the behavior that you guys are all indulging in and rapping about. I mean, you know, look, not to get too, but it's like, oh, we had a code and all this.

It's like you had a code when you sold drugs? Like, come on, what, you're checking people's, saw somebody make a joke, like, oh, he was checking IDs when he was selling drugs and making sure he wasn't selling to mothers. It's like, all right, spare me your code bullshit in terms of what that means. So he's, you know, He denies it, yeah. Until proven guilty.

Like, you know, we'll see what comes out and he deserves to be able to have his side of the story, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, he was close with Diddy. So he was one of the big names that people have been,

that's part of why this is a big story is because a lot of the chatter centered around, is Jay-Z going to be implicated in this? Because based on the allegations, which have been denied by Diddy and his team, based on the allegations against him, this was a large criminal enterprise that Diddy was engaged in, filled with a whole lot of enablers. And at the very least, it is hard to imagine that Jay-Z did not know quite a bit of what was going on and the sort of criminal abusive behavior that was being engaged in because the allegations suggest that it was quite systematic.

So that's why a lot of people were looking in his direction when the initial allegations against Diddy began to drop. I will also just note that when Jay-Z met his wife Beyonce, as other people are noting online, she was 16. Now they started dating, she says, when they were, at times she said 18, at other times she said 19. She was very young. How old was he? And he was, I want to say, 30. That's creepy. So in any case, that's putting out there on the public record.

Again, he denies all the allegations. And so we'll say, you know, we'll see where this goes. But just wanted to update you on that because he is such a giant name. And because there has been a lot of speculation swirling around him this is the first official allegation to drop against him um now we had seen this accuser come forward before with these details with regards to Diddy but the other male celebrity in the room had been unnamed so now we know the name she is giving is Jay-Z so we'll see crazy stuff man yeah it really is uh. I mean, even when reading it, I was shocked. I was like, this, I mean, as he, he's taking it seriously and he's coming out and going after this lawyer.

So, I mean, there are really only two options in terms of, but I don't know how we're going to find the truth. That's part of what's other scary. But perhaps we also may learn, even if this is not true, we may learn a little bit more about his life, right? And Diddy and some of their own things that were going on in the past. Have you seen this clip of Ash and Kutcher going around on Hot Ones being unable to talk about Diddy parties? I don't know if I've seen this particular one. It's gone very viral. People should watch it. It's pretty interesting. Anyways, we'll keep everybody updated and we'll see you all tomorrow. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids,

promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeartTrueCrime+. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today.

Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process.

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

On Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage, you'll hear about these heroes and what their stories tell us about the nature of bravery. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.