Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/30/24: Krystal And Saagar Debate Texas-Biden Border Standoff, RFK Jr Says Trump Approached For VP, Trump Fortune At Risk Amid Defamation Case, Biden Caught With US Troops In Yemen, Israel Promises Imminent Lebanon War, Israeli Protesters Block Aid To Starving Gazans

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss the Texas Biden Admin standoff over the Mexico border, RFK JR says Trump camp approached him for VP, Trump fortune at risk amid defamation and business fraud cases, Biden caught with US troops on the ground in Yemen, Israel promises Lebanon war imminent, Israeli protesters block aid from getting into Gaza, and Israeli politicians push for resettlement of Gaza.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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. Many things to get to this morning. So the continuation of this border showdown situation, both with a number of red states sending National Guard troops potentially in support of Governor Greg Abbott of Texas. We also have the Republicans in the House signaling they're going to block the deal made by

Republicans in the Senate. A lot of interesting politics at play here. So we'll get into all of that. Also, RFK Jr. sparking Trump VP speculation. And also talking about potentially leveraging the Libertarian Party in order to get ballot access. So a lot to get into there. And dovetails with what we're doing here at the show as well, because we've got that RFK Jr. focus group coming up, which is going to be very interesting. Donald Trump hit with a massive judgment in that E. Jean Carroll. This was the defamation part. We will tell you the dollar amount. We'll tell you

what else is coming up for him and how much of a hit it is to his net worth, what it could mean for the politics as well. A lot going on with regard to Iran and with regard to Israel. The U.S. can't say whether we have troops in Yemen, which seems like kind of a critical point. We also have new details about that attack, which killed three U.S. service members, including who those service members are. This all comes as Israel is signaling that war now with Lebanon is imminent. So a lot to get into this morning. Yeah, that's right. Before we get to any of that, though, as Crystal mentioned, we have the RFK Junior Focus Group coming up. We're really excited for it, had fortuitous timing

considering how many moves the man appears to be making. So if you can support us, breakingpoints.com. We have an advantage for the election special going on right now since we have so much work to do. We have a big team, we have big goals and other things that you can help us out there. So breakingpoints.com, as I mentioned. Let's go ahead and start with that border story. We've been monitoring it over the weekend. So Ryan and I were able to bring everybody the immediate news that the Texas governor was going to continue building fencing and wire on the border. This was after the Supreme Court ordered the Texas National Guard not to get in the way of federal authorities from cutting said border wire. There's a standoff there between the Biden administration and the Texas governor.

The Texas governor then exploiting a loophole in the decision saying, well, I won't get in the way of the feds if they want to cut the wire, but that doesn't mean that I can't build even more wire if I want to, escalating then into a major standoff nationally. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. We've got a map here, a map in red. Anybody want to wonder? No, it is not the Civil War A24 map. This is actually a map of all of the Republican governors and 25 states now in the union who are supporting the Texas quote unquote constitutional right to self-defense, according to the RGA, which put out this graphic. So you've basically got every

Republican state in the country except for the state of Vermont. Vermont there, well, at least every Republican state with a Republican governor except for the state of Vermont that is backing Governor Abbott, as well as some of these states sending specific National Guard assets to the border to help the Texas National Guard continue to increase the amount of border fencing and wire that is there. This actually comes on top of major negotiations here in Washington over a border package. The idea, if you guys will recall, tying the border package to Ukraine aid funding, but that now appears to be going down in flames after former President Donald Trump and now the GOP frontrunner says he does not want that to pass.

That is ruffling some feathers in the Senate for Republicans who wanted to try and get this negotiated. Here's what Senator James Langford from Oklahoma had to say. Why give him this in an election year, the cover of this deal that critics say is still gonna let a lot of people in, but he gets to take a victory lap that he's gotten something done. Yeah, well, it's definitely not gonna let a bunch of people in. It's focused on actually turning people around on it. It is interesting, Republicans four months ago would not give funding for

Ukraine, for Israel and for our southern border because we demanded changes in policy. So we actually locked arms together and said, we're not gonna give you money for this. We wanna change in law. And now it's interesting a few months later, when we're finally getting to the end, they're like, just kidding. I actually don't wanna change in law because the presidential election year. We all have an oath to the constitution and we have a commitment to say we're gonna do

whatever we can to be able to secure the border. So what do you make of all this, Crystal? There's a lot going on here. There's a lot. We missed you whenever you weren't here. It was mildly enjoyable to have some of the Civil War maps again go viral, reigniting some of that discourse. But the border deal collapse is probably the bigger headline story out of all of this because it was probably the last chance to get anything done before the 2024 election. And now they're gonna basically keep it in the election considering how the House Republicans

and the Speaker are saying this is an absolute no-go for us. Just quickly on the Supreme Court decision that you referenced there and this sort of like, you know, potential constitutional crisis. It seems like both sides have somewhat de-escalated on that front and avoided the worst of what could have happened there. So that is good. Obviously, I think the Supreme Court very clearly decided this correctly, that it's the federal government that has authority here.

And already, the actions of the Texas National Guard and of Governor Abbott probably led to the death of three migrants, including a mother and two children, who the US authorities were unable to reach in order to rescue them. So on that piece, obviously, I think the Supreme Court was correct. And I think that all of these governors around the country, and this dovetails with the other piece,

they love to use this as a political issue. They love to do symbolic stunts, such as the willingness to send their own National Guard troops down to the border. But apparently many Republicans, much less interested in actually governing when it comes to this issue. And so it's sort of adorable to see Senator Lankford, who thought like, hey, guys, I thought we actually cared about this.

I thought we actually wanted these measures imposed. Here we negotiated a deal that gets 90% of what we've been asking for, and suddenly you are making it plain as day that it is more important to you to have a political wedge issue, a cudgel to use against President Biden, than you are interested in actually living up to the rhetoric and solutions that you claim to support. Now, for me personally, I don't support this legislation. I think it's draconian. I don't think it will deal with the problem. I think it's incredibly harsh and just on the enforcement side, doesn't deal with any of the root cause issues,

doesn't do nearly enough to eliminate the asylum backlog that really is sort of at the center of all of this. So I'm happy that the House Republicans are interested in blocking it, but it just shows you, to me, Sagar, and I'm very curious on your take as well. Like, it's a perfect example of how fake our politics are, how much of all of what these people are saying, I'm not just talking about Republicans now, but Democrats too.

It's just like political signaling. I mean, Roe versus Wade is a perfect example on the Democratic side. They would rather have it as an issue than solve the problem. Trump and the, you know, threat to democracy on the Democratic side. They would rather have it as an issue than solve the problem. Trump and the threat to democracy on the Democratic side, they would rather have it as an issue

than actually put forward a candidate that could defeat Donald Trump as an example. And I think it's the same thing here with the border. These people have been running around, acting like it's an invasion and this is existential and this is a war on our country. And when they're actually

offered a deal that could do some of what they claim they want, now we can't give Joe Biden a win in election year. So it shows you where their priorities actually are. I'm very conflicted because I think rhetorically it sounds good. I will say on that drowning incident, it is in dispute from the Texas side. And they say that it's actually the Mexicans' fault that that happened. But we can put that aside because those facts on that have yet to be completely clear. It's complicated because when we think about this as a fix to the border, it's not necessarily one because if we look back at some of the executive actions that the Biden administration took immediately after Trump, and I'm basically channeling the case for the House

Republicans here. They're like, listen, you removed the emergency declaration of the border. You stopped using the pandemic restrictions previously. You tried to get us out of remaining Mexico, and you've continued to embrace the asylum policy. So it's not a problem of legislation. If you simply enforce the law, then we wouldn't be continuing to have this problem. In that case, they are true. Now I'll give the Democratic side of this, which is that no president of the last four administrations has actually enforced fully immigration law because Congress has not given them the requisite resources to actually, quote unquote, deal with the problem. We're talking here as you reference asylum judges. Allegedly, this Porter deal does include some asylum judges

and increase in some of the backlog. But it doesn't focus on some of the problems that we have in general of people who are economic migrants taking advantage of an asylum-like system. So if I were to look at this purely from a Republican point of view, I'd be like, no, screw you, man. I'm not going to hold hostage aid to a foreign country, of which I don't even particularly want, for a problem that you created. Some of the details to hear, Crystal, are that this would effectively, as I understand it, the full legislation has not been released. They would allow 5,000, so the border would close after 5,000 migrants have passed per day. Now, you can quickly do the math of what 5,000 is

currently, and you could see that it's several hundred thousand people that would continue to be allowed in and effectively legalize illegal immigration through some sort of quasi like bargain system without any bargaining chips on the Republican side. So the issue, I think, is a this still legalizes like illegal mass migration, number one. But two, well, no, I mean, 5000 people are coming across a border. That's illegal. But go ahead. But Sagar, Sagar, it's not like 5000 come across and come across and it's just like, and you're scot-free and you get to go. The idea is if you hit a daily average of 5,000, they can shut down the border and completely end

due process and like throw out any semblance of following our laws or international laws, which is why I think this is an outrageous approach. So it's the polar opposite of what you're saying. The idea here is not 5,000 get to go in free. It's if we hit that limit, then we're going to do away with due process and completely shut the border. That's exactly the sort of hardline tactics that Republicans have claimed that they want. In addition, with regard to it, you know, being tied together with Ukraine and the Israel aid, I mean, that's as much because of the Republicans as it is because of the Democrats.

They claimed, and that's what Lankford was saying, like, you guys claimed you wanted to put these two together. We put it together. We negotiated the deal. And now when you see it, you're like, nah, it's an election year. We didn't actually want this. And lastly, with regard to executive action,

I mean, you know, it is always better to actually have legislation versus these one-off executive action pieces. So I think that's nonsense that they're suddenly like, no, no, we don't wanna have anything to do with it. You just handle it. You just deal with it with your limited powers that you have as president.

And as you said, even if Joe Biden said, like, I want to enforce the law in as draconian manner as possible, he just literally doesn't have the resources. And to back up for people who, you know, may not be totally enmeshed in the details, and this is something, you know, you and I have discussed many times. I know you agree with this. A big core of the problem here is the asylum process. There's no doubt about that. You have 3 million case backlog in the asylum courts.

What that means is that people around the world at this point, this has taken on a life of its own. We're not just talking about Central and South America. We're talking about people coming from really all over the globe who know that they can show up and whether or not they have a legitimate asylum claim can say, I claim asylum. And it's gonna be years

before their case works through the system. That is really the core of the problem. And so this deal, again, which I don't support because of the draconian measures I just spoke to, but this deal does have additional asylum judges. I doubt it's sufficient. I doubt it will get rid of the 3 million case backlog that really is like the crux of this issue.

But I think if you're not talking about that piece, then you're not serious about dealing with the problem. And to me, it just reveals like they're, especially the House Republicans and certainly Donald Trump are not actually serious about dealing with the problem. They don't actually live up to this rhetoric of like, oh, my God, it's an invasion. It's the worst thing that's happening in the entire world. They like it as a political issue and they want to hold on to those images at the border and being able to solely blame Biden and run on it for Trump for 2024. That's what they really want.

I think some of that can be true, but I respectfully disagree because if 5,000 people are going to be crossing per day, and as you're saying, deny them due process. We're giving people due process before. It was in Mexico

and you just had to wait there. Biden administration has reversed that policy. Now you get to come to this country. After 180 days, you get a work permit. It takes years to go through the asylum process.

It's not fair. It's just not fair to people who are in the US. Most of these people are prime age working males who are, you know, basically working low paid jobs is good for big business. But I don't think it's fair to anybody who's involved, including the migrants and including us. But I mean, it is to me, I think it's effectively legalized mass immigration.

You have hundreds of thousands of people who are coming here who are economic migrants are not asylum seekers. The vast majority of them have their asylum claims who are dismissed at the eventual trial. They're allowed to stay here for years and years and years, and they're allowed to work. I mean, that's basically mass migration. I mean, it's one of those where they're allowed to stay. Now, in terms of deportation, we haven't had any mass deportation in this country, actually, basically since Obama, which is an inconvenient thing for Trump. Trump says he's gonna do it whenever he comes back. We'll see. But this is where I think- Biden has deported more people than Trump,

by the way. Pardon? Biden has deported more people than Trump has. But again, the 5,000 thing, I just think it's very, I don't think it's fair the way that you're framing it. Because again, this is actually the most draconian part of this legislation. It's not that the 5,000 people that come in, they just get a free pass. I mean, what we have right now. Look at the famous asylum. That's a free pass.

Yeah. That's soccer. That's how it works right now. What this is saying is after 5,000, that's it. Then there's no more due process. Then even people who have legitimate asylum claims,

which some people truly do, they don't get their chance. They don't get to make their case. And I think that is wildly unfair. But I just think it's very dishonest to frame that as like, oh, these 5,000 is just a free pass and you're greenlighting this many, you know, 100,000 migrants a month.

You can already look at the number they're coming across. The numbers are very high. I don't deny that whatsoever. So it's the polar opposite. It's that you are cutting off the number of people who get to come in and claim asylum. Right now, there is no limit. They're saying, okay, we're going to put in this 5,000 limit, which again, I don't support. But if you are an immigration hardliner, I don't see how you look at that and think that that's a step backward.

That is a step forward if you are an immigration hardliner. Well, I would put it this way, and I do consider myself a relative immigration hardliner, which is I think these people should all comply for asylum in Mexico. And then if they're legitimately allowed, then they can come in. That's probably going to be less than 1% of them. Right now, we have an insane situation. All of these Somalians and people from all over the world, as you said, who are just coming across the border, they're going to stay here for years and years. And the likelihood of their deportation is nearly zero, even if they do commit crimes. And this is exactly kind of where I get to the issue about sovereignty means that you get to have control. Now, in this, you're going to have some modicum of control. Again, I would channel

the House Republicans case, which I think is fair, is that you created a problem which genuinely did not exist as badly under Trump because you removed the Remain in Mexico policy and you fought tooth and nail in the Supreme Court in order to allow this mass asylum-like process, allowing to the release of approximately six to eight million people over the last three years. That's genuinely disorderly and it's dramatically much more than happened under Trump. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

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this. We can take a listen to what he said at the rally where he's like, you're damn right. I want to take credit for killing this border deal. Let's play it. We cannot let this happen to our country. As the leader of our party, there is zero chance I will support this horrible open borders betrayal of America. It's not going to happen. I noticed that and I'll fight it all the way. I noticed a lot of the senators, a lot of the senators are trying to say respectfully they're blaming it on me. I said, that's OK. Please blame it on me, please, Because they were getting ready to pass a very bad bill. And I'll tell you what, a bad bill is, I'd rather have no bill than a bad bill. A bad bill you can't have. And that's what was happening. So that backs up what you're saying. I think we can be honest, at least about that. Trump is seriously like, I would rather have no

bill than a bad bill. And I would also say this for people who share some of my immigration politics. If people want to go and watch Raihan Salam and others, they warn that if you have an incompetent president who has immigration views that are like this, and if you have bad execution, as we genuinely saw under Trump, where he was unable to get a bill passed, then you end up actually having some of the worst of both worlds. But curious for your reaction to the Trump segment. Yeah, I mean, he just says it out in the open, right? I mean, listen, there was, I can't remember who it was, one of the Republican senators who early on was like, listen, Republicans, you're not going to get a better deal than this under Trump.

And the reason you're not going to get a better deal is because there is no way in hell that Democrats would allow an enforcement-only bill with zero provisions for dreamers, with no pathway to citizenship for anyone. There is no way in hell they would agree to that under Donald Trump. The only reason that any of them would agree to this, which goes directly against everything they've said that they stand for on immigration for the past number of years, is because there's a Democratic president. So when you're talking about government, and again, I'm glad they're blocking this bill because I don't support it.

But if you're talking about governance, it's not, is this the perfect, ideal, everything that I want under the sun bill? It's, you said that this is an incredibly important problem. You said that these are some of the methods that you would go about fixing it. And now that it's on the table, do you actually care about the issue? Or do you just want a grandstand? And clearly Trump is indicating like, no, I just want to grandstand. I want to use this as a wedge issue. And there are other Republicans who are even more forthright about not wanting to give Biden a quote unquote win in an election year. So it's led to people like James Lankford and there are others who are

like, wait a second, who were sincere, apparently, about the issue. And now that it's here, they're confused that, oh, it turns out the rest of you people weren't actually serious when you were making these claims. You just like the issue. You like the problem hanging out there. You like to use it to beat up the Democrats and beat up Joe Biden, and you're not actually serious.

That's what, you know, it appears to me. And on the Rem remain in Mexico policy, I mean, just because you made the point, like Biden wanted to get rid of it. The court said he couldn't. It's still in place. So it's not like, you know, that's a major, like that's a lot of the Trump era immigration policy

has actually remained in place. This would provide this president. And by the way, if Trump gets elected, him as well with more power, more like hardcore enforcement power at the border. So if this is an important issue for you, if you're an immigration hardliner, if you believe these measures are actually going to do something, everybody that is on that side should be supporting it. And the fact that they're not shows you they'd rather play politics. I think it's tough, Crystal. So I would put it to you

this way. This is important as to Republicans. It is health care to people who support Bernie Sanders. So it's like, well, this is basically, this is not even Obamacare, like in terms of what it would mean for health care if we're going to put it in the comparable thing. Now, should you support it because it legally might get through? Maybe. Or like, are you going to keep fighting for basically the best of what you can get if you were able to take the House, the Senate, which, you know, it's very much within the realm of possibility that Republicans

control those. And then you're not going to get a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. That's okay. But I would put it this way then. I mean, does that mean you should stop fighting for, you know, Medicare for all or something like in comparison? Yeah. If public option was on the table, even though it's not my ideal solution, I would say go for it. If expanding social security was on the table, which though it's not my ideal solution, I would say go for it. I don't think this is public option, though. If expanding Social Security was on the table, which, you know, it was at one point during Build Back Better, I wouldn't say no because I just want to have this issue to run on in the next election. I would say no, this is going to help people.

This is important to me. We should embrace it and live to fight another day and keep pushing for more of what, you know, the direction that we think we should go in. Yeah, it's tough. I mean, I think just because the enforcement only is on the migration side and it doesn't deal with the illegal immigration side here already, it does actually set up for, you know, some sort of future fight, which definitely could go against Republicans. In terms of Speaker Mike Johnson, let's put this up there on the screen. He threw cold water on this. I've actually been basically saying this from the beginning because I've been talking to some of the people who are involved. And they're like, look, the entire Senate deal is fake

regardless because Johnson is already in huge trouble right now in the Republican caucus because of some of the spending deals that he's cut. If he allowed some sort of asylum and immigration bill to go through, the Freedom Caucus and a lot of the immigration hardliners, who barely he has two or three votes that are keeping him from getting his ass thrown out just like Kevin McCarthy, he would have the same issue. So he tweeted out, quote, President Biden falsely claimed yesterday he needs Congress to pass a new law to allow him to close the southern border. He knows that's untrue. As I explained to him in a letter last year and have specifically reiterated to him, he can take executive action immediately to reverse

the catastrophe he has created. That's kind of what I was talking about in the, uh, previously when I was trying to channel some of the house Republican and some of the more hardline talking points that I've seen who are out there. Anyway, uh, I'm curious what you think, Crystal, just in terms of how this will move forward, because it, one thing is correct. Even if you can read, you know, this is getting a lot of attention and all that immigration is the worst issue for Joe Biden. And the longer this goes on, it is worse for him. I mean, if anything, if I were to say that Biden won the election in 20, if we were to sit here in 2024 after election day, I'd be like, he won because of Roe and he won because, yeah, basically Roe and Trump insanity. And if I were to say that Trump won, I would say he won because of Biden's age and immigration were probably the top two

things that would contribute to that. Yeah, I think this is the worst issue. Well, it's one of the worst issues for Joe Biden. I also think Israel has become a really bad issue for Joe Biden. For different reasons. Right, because of his own base and how opposed they are to his approach. So there's a lot going on. But, you know, there's a lot of analysis from liberals who basically are like, see how clever Joe Biden is. You know, he offered this draconian bill and now Republicans are being exposed as not caring about the issue, which, you know, I mean, I think that is true. But I don't really think that that message is going to be successful. I don't know that people are following the ins and outs

to realize that Republicans have been exposed as just wanting to shamelessly demagogue on this issue and not actually interested in solving the problem. So I don't really agree with that analysis. And there was also, there was a study that just came out. It focused on European countries, but, you know, as we've discussed before, a lot of the politics globally

and certainly in Europe is like downstream and connected to what is going on here as well. And Biden is not the first center left president to try to win electorally by basically adopting hard right positions on immigration specifically. And there was just a new political science study that came out that was like, this doesn't work. It's not successful because you are giving credence

to the arguments being made by the other side. Why would voters take like the watered down version of the argument versus the real genuine article in Donald Trump? No one's gonna think Joe Biden is harder on the border or harder on immigrants than Donald Trump. And you're gonna alienate the people in your own coalition who disagree with you on this issue and you're going to really undermine their enthusiasm for your candidacy. So I definitely disagree with those who are out there

who think that this is like a brilliant political maneuver by Joe Biden. I don't think so at all. I think it's very likely to backfire and, you know, not help him to win reelection. I think it's foolish all the way around. I agree with that. There's no way you can out-immigration Donald Trump. I mean, it's just not going to happen. Because even at 5,000, he's going to talk about the issue all day. It's not like the images are going to stop, right? It's like, well, he could still say, it's like, look, I'll get it to zero. It's one of those where even if he can't do it, he can say it. So rhetorically, I think that immigration voters in general, I guess the only case for

it would be to try and get it out of the news. But I don't see that happening either. Like we just said, it's going to be an issue whether people like it or not. You know, that's a really interesting study. I need to check that out. If I had to guess, it's like you said, is that if you're centrist, you're just never gonna be able to placate voters for whom this is the number one issue. And this is the number one issue for Republicans. Politically, just consider this. If you're an immigration voter, you're

almost 100%, or immigration hardline voter, you are almost 100% voting in GOP primary, like you are almost 100% going to vote for the Republican candidate. Joe Biden is not going to cross you over. Now, in terms of people who are upset about it and feel like it's chaotic and others, I could maybe see the case, you know, for Biden. But, you know, the left coalition point is not as important one as well, because if you already got problems here with Israel, now you're going to have some problems with the immigration groups and all this. And I'm skeptical as to their actual political power nationally, but I definitely accept their political power intra-coalitionally with the Democratic Party. They could cause real issues for him if something like this

went through, and for a lot of other Democratic candidates. So yeah, I think it's a bit of a wash. I think you're right. And I do think Trump will probably come out on top. Yeah. I mean, we've had elections before where Republicans really tried to make immigration the central issue. I think in 2016, it was one of the central issues and it was obviously successful. Donald Trump got elected. In 2018, there was a big push to use this to like migrant caravan, you remember all that situation, and it wasn't successful. In red states, I think that and the combination of the migrant caravan thing and Kavanaugh sort of locked in Republican voters and kept them from straying from the flock, kept them energized and perhaps blocked some upset elections in red states across the country. But with swing voters, it was not

successful. And my guess would be that, you know, we've seen in the midterms this last time around, like they were trying to make immigration a thing. They're certainly trying to make the economy a thing. And other issues won the day. I think, like you said, the people who are mostly voting on immigration are already Republicans. I think they're already going to vote for Donald Trump. I don't think Joe Biden, no matter how much of an immigration hardliner he tries to make himself appear at this point, I don't think there's any way in hell he's going to win any of those voters at this point. So I would be very surprised if immigration ends up being the issue that wins today. And then the last thing I'll say about it is,

there are some signs that not only is the economy somewhat improving, but that voters are starting to feel a little bit better about the economy. And concerns about the economy and concerns about immigration go hand in glove. If you've got people who feel very insecure about their own finances, they're looking for an outlet like that for, you know, what's going wrong for me. And, you know, it's classic. People come in, politicians like Trump are happy to come in and say, it's their fault, it's the immigrants' fault. They're the ones who are ruining your town, taking your job, et cetera, et cetera.

People are much more open to that message when they feel very economically insecure. So that'll be the other piece that's really important is how do people continue to marginally feel a bit better about the economy as we move towards election day? Or do they feel really insecure and are more open to those messages? So that's the other thing. I don't think those two issues are not separate, I guess, is what I would say, how the economy is doing and how people feel about immigration. No question. It's not an accident that major immigration politics spiked in the 1980s after the problems of the 1970s and after the 2008 financial crisis. Absolutely correct. The only X factor, I would say, is some of these blue cities like New York, Chicago, and others having a lot of migrants get bussed up there. That could maybe be the only way that I could see some of the dynamics change because that's

relatively new post-2022, at least at scale, in terms of stressing issues. But that doesn't mean New York is going to go red. It could mean that it could go less blue than before. Maybe it actually might change the popular vote, but we'll see. And I'm curious to see how it shakes out. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

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. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila.

And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened.

And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh, dad, all they was doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money.

I'm like, oh, my God, it's go time. You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Moms, Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcasts. So RFK Jr. giving an interview recently where he confirmed some rumors that the Trump camp had actually reached out to him to serve as vice president. Here's what he had to say. If he asked you that today, what would your response be? I would not take that job. I'm flattered that President Trump would offer it to

me, but it's not something that I'm interested in. Did he reach out for his team? People from the team have reached out to me. People from the team have reached out to me. We are definitely going to ask, by the way, our RFK Jr. focus group about this, whether this is something they want. By the way, you can support us there if you can for our premium membership. But what did you make of this, Crystal? What did you make? Because, I mean, there is some high-level jujitsu going on here, if it's true. I don't think it would be the worst move in the world.

Well, okay. So a few things. First of all, I can't help but notice whenever a politician gets asked one of these questions, like he didn't say a hard no, right? There was a little bit of wiggle room left in there. He said, you know, I'm not interested in it. Well, that's different. Maybe you'll get interested in it. Maybe they'll make you interested. You know, it's not like, no,

absolutely not. I'm running for president. I would never do that. I think Donald Trump is atrocious. In fact, he says he's honored to be considered for the job, which, you know, a real like, absolutely no, I can't stand Trump and he needs to never be president again. Like no one would in that camp would be like, oh, I'm honored to be considered for vice president to Donald Trump. So I noted that. To me, that means the door's kind of open.

He says this thing about people on his team breached out and the Trump people have denied that this is the case. But you know, who's on your team can be very loosely defined. It could have been someone who's sort of like vaguely affiliated, you know, who's on your team can be very loosely defined. It could have been someone who's sort of like vaguely affiliated, you know, affiliated with him, but not directly on the payroll, something like that. So I don't know what to make of it. From the Trump perspective, I don't actually think it makes a lot of sense from the Trump perspective, personally. Because what does, RFK Jr. at this point, and we'll talk about this in a

moment, he's only been able to get on one ballot. The polls that have been coming out don't show that he is taking more from Trump than Biden. It seems to be relatively split 50-50. Many of the polls that include RFK Jr. actually seem to show Trump doing a little bit better in that scenario with him on the ballot. So it's not just not clear to me politically what Trump gets out of it. And he also has seemed to signal he really wants to have a woman as vice president. And, you know, I think seems to be looking in that direction. So to me, it doesn't really totally add up. It depends. It's one of those where let's say he does go for, let's say he does get on all the ballots. It's gonna be very difficult. He's only gotten on one so far. He told us he'd get on all

50. We'll see. I remain, it's gonna be a very, very difficult uphill climb and he's gonna have to seriously hit. In terms of his volunteers, it's gonna cost a lot of money to get that out there. If we don't see that in the next couple of months, we'll relatively know whether it's going to happen. The second thing that he floated was going on the libertarian ticket. Let's actually take a listen to that because that would inform some of the calculus for Trump. Let's see what he had to say in a recent CNN interview. Is it possible that you will seek, as you are running as an independent, you will seek still to be the libertarian candidate, which would assure you getting on all 50 state ballots?

Is that something that we're looking at? We have a really good relationship with Libertarian Party. I'm going to be speaking at the California Libertarian Party Convention. I think it's next week or maybe a couple of weeks. And then we're talking about me speaking in New York. But, you know, so that is. And then we have our own political party now in six states, which have rules that make that give us an advantage to have our own political party. We're not going to have a problem getting on the ballot in all states.

I ask you the question. Yeah, well, we are talking to the Libertarian Party, and I feel very comfortable with most of the values of the Libertarian Party. And, you know, like I say, we have good relationships. I'm talking regularly to Libertarian groups. So we'll continue to do those talks. I can't give you a headline news story today, Michael. I'm sorry. Ask about something different.

Okay. I actually think this would be the best strategy for him. I just saw that the Libertarian Party is on the ballot in all of these states, especially the major and competitive ones. They've done the ballot access work, etc. It would generally make sense. And because we've seen previously between two to three percent of the vote go libertarian, especially when Trump is on the ballot like Joe Jorgensen previously in the 2020 election, 2016, actually did pretty well as well. Imagine if the Kennedy name was there. So if I were Trump, historically, many of these libertarian voters are people who have crossed

over from the Republican ballot and or would have voted for Trump, especially if he got Libertarian, I would want him on my ticket because it'd be one of those where that is a chaos factor. If he remains independent and he's not on the states that really matter in terms of ballot, then you're right. But it's one of those calculus, which he doesn't have to make this decision, Crystal, until the convention in June and July. So he's got several months to kind of marinate. And by that time, we're going to know what the ballot access and all of that looks like. So in terms of that, even though he splits equally, it's just enough of a chaos factor. And considering how Biden can't get Kennedy on his ticket, but Trump plausibly could,

then yeah, I could see it happening. But there are a lot of other reasons, like you said. Here's the truth. RFK Jr. has many liberal positions. I don't mean that in a denigrating way, but it could be a problem for the Republican coalition. I think it'd probably be fine, just because as a valence-wise, and like, for some of the voters and others he might be able to bring in, it would probably net-net out. The GOP establishment would definitely have a problem with that. I don't know if Trump even particularly cares. So yeah, there's some interesting analysis here. I don't know. There is no way that Trump picks a VP candidate that he is not 1,000% sure is going to be

absolutely loyal to him in every single circumstance. Right, that's true. Because even though Mike Pence, you know, licked his boots for 99.9% of the four-year term, when it came down to it. And he was like, how about you subvert the Constitution and rig the election for me? Mike Pence was like, no, I'm not going to do that. Trump is not going to risk having someone with even a tiny sliver of a shred of backbone and independent thought. And listen, maybe RFK Jr. would just go along to get along with whatever he wanted him to

do. That's possible. I have no idea. But Trump doesn't know that, doesn't know either. There's no demonstrated record of, you know, absolute fealty. There's no demonstrated record of like defending the most insane and outrageous things that Trump has ever done. And so there's no doubt in my mind that whoever Donald Trump chooses is going to be someone who has a consistent record of absolutely slavish devotion to Donald J. Trump. On the libertarian piece, this is starting to get some Cornel West vibes. And I say that with respect to Cornel West, who as an intellectual, I obviously, and a thinker and activist, I have deep respect for. But in terms of the way that he's run his campaign, RFK Jr.

Now, he started in the Democratic primary. Then he jumps out and he's an independent. Now, in some states, he's formed his own party. Now he's flirting with a libertarian ticket. And it's like, this is getting really messy. And the other thing is, I don't know the backstory of why Cornel West, you know, dropped from being a Green Party candidate, but Green Party, Libertarian Party,

these aren't just names on a ballot or like theoretical, you know, ideas. These are actual parties with actual structures and their own actual internal politics. And there will certainly be people, and we've seen, you know, some of this commentary online, who are libertarians,

who have been activists within the Libertarian Party, who are like, who is this guy? He's not a libertarian. You know, here's 10 positions that he has taken, including his, you know,

devotion to Israel and unconditional support for Israel. Many of them have issue with, that do not fit with the Libertarian Party, with my values. And no, even though maybe he could get a higher percentage electorally, like what does that matter

if we don't have a candidate who actually reflects Libertarian Party values consistently down the line? I think that's an issue for him as well, is you can't just like be like, guess what guys I'm going to be the Libertarian Party nominee. They have their own process and their own politics as well. I was really interested to see Dave Smith. He's probably the most prominent libertarian that I know of who hosts the podcast, frequently a guest on Rogan. He says, I've admired many aspects of

the RFK Jr. campaign, his opposition to COVID tyranny, vax mandates, the Ukraine war, and the deep state has been nothing short of heroic. However, his support for the war in Gaza is disqualifying. We are the anti-war, non-interventionist party, and that is non-negotiable, period. He will not be our nominee. I will do everything in my power to see to that. Somebody like Scott Horton also comes to mind, who we've had here on the show, very prominent anti-war libertarian. I will say that is one area where RFK Jr. would have trouble with libertarians on Israel, specifically because so much, especially of the modern electoral libertarian movement, can be traced back to the Ron Paul 2008-2012 campaigns,

which were so foundational in the Iraq war and in opposition to the global war on terror. So if we consider it that way, especially if we get embroiled in a bigger Middle East conflict, it would be incredibly difficult to have, you know, let's be real, it's not a large group of people who vote libertarian. And within that, there's a critical mass who being anti-war is like the most important thing to them. Almost in many cases, more important to them than any of the economic policies, by the way, which I respect. And I have, that's a lot of friends I have on the libertarian anti-war kind of side is because I think that they see this so critically for the

future of the US and just how much it ruined America in the post Iraq war, post 2001 period. So now that I consider it that way, and especially some of Dave's commentary on that, it really could be a problem for him if he did try to go that way. Yeah, I think so. And I am really interested to see some of the thoughts of the focus group that we have impaneled for, what is it, like a week from now? We're going to be talking to them. We'll get their thoughts on all of this, you know, potential libertarian party, potential Trump VP, et cetera. But, you know, the difficulties in getting ballot access, it's not RFK's fault. This was intentionally, especially post Ross Perot, both of the parties, whatever states they controlled,

they decided to make this basically impossible to accomplish. And it's outrageous. It's an offense to democracy. It shouldn't be that way. I'm not an RFK Jr. supporter, but he should be on the ballot in all 50 states. He has a serious campaign. He's raised serious money. He has a real operation. It should be possible for him to get on the ballot in all 50 states so that voters, if they want to avail themselves of that choice, have that option available to them. But because of the, you know, dominance of the two-party system, the way they basically collaborated to shut down any and all other voices, it's going to be very difficult for him. And I doubt, I don't know, I'm not privy to like internal Libertarian Party discussions. I don't know, I'm not privy to like internal Libertarian Party discussions.

I don't know any activists in the Libertarian Party, et cetera, really. But I sort of doubt that that's going to be a real solution for him in the end either. Yeah, it could be very much. But yeah, and as you said, I completely agree with you in terms of ballot access and all that. By the way, if anybody in the state of Virginia wants to contact me, I will sign it in order to get him on the ballot. But it's a very, very difficult climb upwards in order to try and make that happen. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4 thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case,

bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still

somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got 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. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila.

And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically men talk too much and women have quietly listened and all that stops here. If you like witty women then this is your tribe with guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many

women protect predatory men and then me too happen and then everybody else want to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing.

She was like, oh dad, all I was doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower.

What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like,

oh my God, it's go time. You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcasts. Let's move on to Trump. This is a big, big story, not just for reasons that the media wants you to care about, but for Trump personally and how we can inform some of the stakes that will inform his needing to win the presidency in 2024. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. You guys might have been following the second case involving the defamation of, or allegedly, I guess now proven, of E. Jean Carroll. E. Jean Carroll, if we'll all remember,

had accused Trump of sexual assault in a previous defamation case in which she alleged that he had defamed her in her comments whenever he denied it. The jury did not find necessarily that the quote unquote sexual assault or any of that had happened, but they did find that defamation had occurred. I'm just phrasing it. Let me correct you on that, Sagar. They actually did find that sexual assault, not rape, occurred. There were three options available to them. And this was a civil trial. So the standard is different. It's a preponderance of evidence or more likely than not. There were three options that he raped her, that he sexually assaulted her, or that there was inappropriate touching. And they decided unanimously that there was sexual assault.

Thank you for correcting me because that has been incredibly confusing. Major Trump defense has been the jury did not find the actual allegation. And then when I had read in terms of the sexual assault and or harassment, what the jury had found, it didn't make any sense because of the connection there, as you said, to the actual defamation. It's like you can't necessarily find somebody guilty of defamation if you didn't find that the underlying claim had any merit whatsoever. Anyway, as we pointed out, it happened in the first case. Trump immediately came out and allegedly, according to E. Jean Carroll, defamed her. So she immediately then filed another defamation case against Trump.

This one, the jury award, now as we showed everybody, is some $83 million, which is an extraordinary sum of damages to be awarded to E. Gene Carroll in this trial. Now, the reason that matters is because it challenges Trump's own personal financial decisions and some of the legal problems that he's found himself in when we connect it to the fraud trial that previously happened in the state of New York, which accused him of artificially inflating the asset values of his properties. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. What they show here from the New York Times quote is that the jury's decision to award 83 million to E. Jean Carroll has come at a very opportune time for the

former president. Mr. Trump and his family business are currently bracing for the judge in that case to impose a punishment in the coming weeks that could also reach hundreds of millions of dollars as we relate back to that New York case. The enterprise that they say here is that Trump isn't going to be taken down by a bunch of criminal cases, but the enterprise that is Trump is going to be picked apart by these civil cases. And at some point, there is a risk of collapse, collapse being connected to his own personal financial situation. And that actually does seem to be a genuinely existential threat, Crystal, in a way that some of these legal charges and others are not, in that the other legal fees and other problems that Trump has in all these criminal cases and all that,

these are ones where he could fundraise off of and of which people can pay his bills, supporters and others. This is a well established kind of established way whenever political opponents and political supporters and other that are under or under trial or have to pay legal expenses. The RNC and others can chip in. But this is one that genuinely impacts his own personal fortune and he can't get the same level of bailout that he would need necessarily. And then even if he did, just imagine a scenario where he'd have to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to pay off personal defamation lawsuits and business problems, which kind of undercut so much of the foundational case for why he was the person in the first place to host The Apprentice and built the image and the brand that he did that

eventually carried him into the presidency. Yeah, I mean, listen, can Trump afford $83 million suit without, I'm sure it hurts, but is it, you know, gonna make or break him? I don't think so. When you add another potentially $300 million, which is what they're asking for in the civil fraud case with regard to his business, I mean, probably he can still stomach that, but that's real money even for a billionaire like Donald Trump. And he said before he has, you know, over $400 million cash on hand, which is, you know, sufficient to cover those expenses, but just barely. I'm not one of these, you know, people who think, oh, Donald Trump really isn't actually rich. It's like all a scam and a fraud and a house of cards or whatever. He has plenty of property,

has plenty of assets. He is genuinely a very, very wealthy person and very likely a legitimate billionaire. But we are talking about sums of money at this point that are extremely consequential for him. I don't think there's any doubt about that. You know, with regard to E. Jean Carroll and this particular, you know, finding of defamation

coming on top of the finding that he did, again, this is a civil trial, so the evidence is different. He's not going to prison for this. But in the civil trial, finding that he did sexually assault E. Jean Carroll those, you know, decades ago, you just have to, there's two pieces. Number one, it's one of the first times that Donald Trump has ever been found, like things have ever gone against him in terms of accountability. We're so used to him operating in a political sphere where there are just no consequences for the many things that he does that are like totally outside of what any other politician could get away with. So it's always a lesson for me to remember as we watch these criminal cases

unfold and develop that the results for him in the courtroom have been very different than the results for him in the political sphere. So that's number one. Number two, it kind of cuts in the other direction. If any other candidate, if this was Joe Biden and a jury found unanimously that he had sexually assaulted Tara Reid or some other female accuser whenever, this would be one of the biggest stories in the country. I mean, it would be incredibly consequential.

And yet, because it's Donald Trump, it's like kind of a blip. I mean, not to say it doesn't get any coverage, but it's certainly not the number one story in the country. It's not the number one political story in the country. And that is kind of remarkable. Oh, I absolutely agree, Crystal. And the thing is, it both highlights the problems for Trump in the courtroom and also his political ability to survive, something that anybody else would never get away with, like you said, with Biden. I mean, even if we consider just some of the previous things that happened with Biden or in terms of media treatment and all of that, but

if we had an actual case that went through, it would be completely different in the way we think about it. I was fascinated to see this, which MAGA folks have been attacking Nikki Haley on. Haley appears to be trying to make a bid for these voters in the Republican Party who don't like Trump and who are very concerned kind of by her behavior, kind of more normie politics by supporting actually the E. Jean Carroll verdict. Here's what she had to say. I absolutely trust the jury. And I think that they made their decision based on the evidence. It cracks me up that people try and overanalyze. I just tell the truth as I see it. I think there have been politics played with prosecutors that have brought on some of these

cases. I think there's been politics played even with the judges. But I do think American juries still get it right. They listen to the evidence. They make the decision based on the evidence. And I do still trust any American that sits on a jury. I trust that they're making the right decision. But this goes to a bigger thing, John. We've got a whole nother year of this. So what we watched was Donald Trump throw a temper tantrum the night of the New Hampshire primary because 43 percent of Republicans didn't vote for him. Then I see him throw a temper tantrum in this courtroom. The reality is, are we going to have a country in disarray and a world on fire and deal with more temper tantrums? So I was fascinated by those comments, Crystal, because that's a great pitch for the general election. But when you're running in

a primary where people see Trump as the messiah who has not come since Reagan, what are you doing? They think that the media is rigged. They think that the court system and all that is rigged. They don't know any of the details about E.G. and Carol and all that. They're like, they're out to get him. They're trying to bankrupt him. He's fighting for us and all that. So I just don't get her strategy. It's one of those, like, which primary are you running in, lady? Well, to me, it's an indication that she's basically accepted. She's not going to be the Republican nominee. And so she's pitching for whatever her other future career prospects may be. Because earlier in the primary, she was much more careful about how she phrased her criticism of Donald Trump and, you

know, keeping the kid gloves on and never going too far and, you know, being very sort of like vague in her concerns and complaints about him. So not just with this, but we've seen other indications that she's now going sort of like all in Chris Christie, never Trump, anti-Trump lane. She doesn't have a path to the Republican nomination, barring Trump like dying or being thrown in prison. So I think this is more about her positioning herself for, I don't know, media career, board position, whatever she thinks may be the next step for her personally. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, just one of those where this was also like a major red line, you know, for a lot of Trump MAGA folks.

I saw Jason Miller works for the Trump campaign being like, this is it. She will have no place. Who knows? It could all be talk. She could for the Trump campaign being like, this is it. She will have no place. Who knows? It could all be talk. She could be a VP. Personally, I doubt it if you're going to be talking this way. Go ahead.

What were the t-shirts? She was selling his t-shirts. Like Trump said, what, they were banned from the MAGA movement or something like that. And then she was selling t-shirts that said banned.

It just feels like I may be wrong about the language, but is that what it was? Banned? I have it here. Permanently barred Nikki Haley for president. May the best woman win.

I'm going to go with permanently banned. Permanently barred because Trump said they would permanently barred anyone who supported her from the MAGA movement. And so she leaned into it. I mean, again, like in an earlier phase, she wouldn't have done that when she actually thought it was an active possibility that she might be the Republican nominee. Now, I think it's just sort of like

a YOLO moment and let me position myself for whatever other career I'm looking forward to that's not going to be president and is not going to be a Republican presidential nominee. Well, I hear Boeing still needs some help, Nikki, because you did such a good job last time. Just to highlight what you said as well, let's put the Bloomberg tear sheet guys, please, up on the screen, is that they say that the cash stockpile that they currently have of some $450 million genuinely is at risk here if both of these verdicts go against Trump from the $83 million to the initial $300 or $400 million. And that's one of those too where, you know, you highlight it correctly, where, look, $400 million hurts no matter how much of a billionaire you are, period. It could be worth $10 billion.

That's still a substantial chunk of your net worth. It also kind of misunderstands financially billionaires. I mean, most of these people do not have a lot of cash on hand. In fact, that's usually not very tax-efficient for them. They try to keep it as tied up in tax-advantaged assets like real estate, stock, and others, and have very little cash on hand than they borrow against those assets. So even if it did force him, like you were saying, to liquidate a portion of his portfolio, that's still very difficult. That's not all that easy. You've got to sell it. You've got to find a buyer. You've got to have equity

guys and all that come in and all this. So this could significantly complicate his life, no matter what, if this happens. Absolutely. And there's another layer with this civil fraud trial, which what I read said they're expecting a verdict as soon as this week. Yes. In terms of, you know, he's already been found that he committed fraud. Now it's a question of how much money he's going to have to pay. So he's not going to get off scot-free with this one. There's going to be some kind of penalty. And along with that judgment,

it is possible that he'll be forced to liquidate his assets in New York, which are really central to his brand. You know, you think about like Trump Tower and some of his most iconic properties are in the state of New York. And the other thing, Sagar, that I'm sure you have noticed with super rich people too, is that even when they have like millions and millions of dollars in the bank and tons of property and assets and stock holdings and whatever, they can still feel poor somehow, even, you know, when they take a hit to their bottom line or their cash dwindles or whatever. So I think these judgments, I think they bite, you know, I don't think that they're nothing. He clearly in the courtroom

with E. Jean Carroll was very agitated, very unhappy, very upset, couldn't sort of like keep that to himself. It was incredibly clear. And so we'll see what happens with this civil fraud judgment. But for me, the bottom line with all of these things, as I said before, is that the outcomes for Trump in the courtroom, very is that the outcomes for Trump in the courtroom, very different from the outcomes for Trump politically. His normal tactics and tricks and maneuvers and whatever aren't working with these judges, aren't working with these juries. And for all of the sense this man is invincible and Teflon Don and every ball, every bounces, always bounces his way. That has not been

the case in the, you know, in the court setting thus far. So we'll see what happens from here. Yep. Good flag. All right, let's get to Iran. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley

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and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. 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

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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. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. Apple Podcasts, or then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Stephens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened. And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade,

and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh, Dad, all they was doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And Slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh my God, it's go time.

You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Moms, Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcasts. We're getting new details this morning about that deadly attack that killed three U.S. service members in Jordan on the border there with Syria, including who those service members were. This is unbelievably tragic. Put this up on the screen. Three young Black soldiers,

all based out of the state of Georgia, are now dead because of those attacks. Let me read you a little bit about them. Three American soldiers killed in a drone attack at a U.S. base in Jordan this weekend were Army reservists from a Georgia-based engineer unit. William Rivers, Kennedy Layden Sanders, and Breonna Alexandria Moffitt were killed in that January 28th attack when an unmanned aerial system crashed into the container units they were using for housing on the base. At least, now these numbers have gone up, at least 40 additional U.S. troops were injured that according to Pentagon officials, this comes of course on top of the two Navy SEALs who were dead after attempting to intercept weapons that Iran was allegedly sending to Yemen. The service members who were dead in a training exercise and quite a number of U.S. service members

who have suffered also traumatic brain injuries and other injuries in additional of these similar style attacks. And as we covered yesterday, Sagar, we've had something like more than 160 of these attacks on our service members in the region. And one of the big questions that we immediately had yesterday was, how the hell did this happen? How did our air defenses fail to the point where this suicide drone attack was able to succeed? We're now getting some answers, at least this is the official answer coming from the U.S. government. As told by the Wall Street Journal, we can put this up on the screen. They say the U.S. failed to stop a deadly attack on an American military outpost in Jordan when the enemy drone approached its target at the

same time that a U.S. drone was also returning to the base. This, again, according to U.S. officials, the return of that U.S. drone led to some confusion over whether the incoming drone was friend or foe, officials have concluded so far, though they cautioned the inquiry into the attack was in an early stage. So what do you make of these revelations and the details that they're providing us so far, Sagar? Well, there are a couple of terrifying options. Number one

is that it's not true and they're hiding the truth from us. I would not dismiss that possibility. There's been a lot of discussion, Crystal, about whether this really did occur in Jordan or not, because they could have had legal complication problems if this did occur in Syria and others. But I'll put that to the side and let's just at least, you know, let's try and take the Pentagon at their word. If we take them at their word, then our billion dollar weapons systems, our, you know, air defense systems that we've spent hundreds of millions of dollars that allegedly are keeping safe all of our thousands, tens of thousands of American service members who are currently in the Middle East, if they are able to fail because a U.S. drone is in proximity and that's all it takes to allow an Iranian drone in there and that could

kill three American service members while they are sleeping on top of wounding some 34 others with eight in critical condition, that's pretty terrifying. That's actually was my immediate kind of response to this is that we are not nearly as prepared for 21st century conflict as the Pentagon and the media and everybody wants you to think. The drone warfare, specifically the asymmetric warfare that we've seen pioneered by the Ukrainians and the Russians in the Ukrainian war of the last two years has accelerated this to the point where you have groups like the Houthis that can cause multi-billion dollars worth of damage and shut down the Red Sea if they want

to with very little sophisticated technology. You can have the greatest Navy on earth, which we do, with the greatest weapon systems and all that, and you can't stop it. Same here with a suicide drone is that sometimes, or even suicide drone and all that, it just means one-way drone, just so everybody's clear. Some people don't like the terminology, but whatever. We want to call it. It doesn't cost that much money. We're talking in the thousands of dollars, and we have hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment that have been bamboozled and that failed on this occasion, and now you have the lives of our people at risk. I'm honestly terrified of what this means for what a future U.S. conflict is going to look like where our service members are there because the signs are everywhere from the Houthis to this.

But don't forget either those Patriot missiles that missed those ballistic missiles that were launched from inside of Iraq that landed on top of a US base. That was actually the biggest flag to me because that is supposed to be the most conventional type military technology we've been preparing for. And if that's able to penetrate a US air defense system, I mean, come on. They always tell us, like, don't worry, North Korean missiles never going to make it here. You watch all this going on, I don't believe you. I don't believe it at all, especially because none of it's been really battle tested yet.

Well, and there are some real parallels with the sense of complacency that Israel had before October 7th as well. I mean, they had really relied on this super high tech, you know, multi-million dollar fence surveillance. We've got the automatic machine guns pointed in at the Gaza Strip. And the very first thing that reportedly Hamas militants did is they used effectively like cheap off-the-shelf drones to disable all that tech. It didn't take that much and leave them completely exposed and allow the horrors and atrocities that occurred on October 7th to occur. So I think that's a very important, you know, part of this story and has a lot of

implications for current warfare and the future of warfare and the pain that a ragtag guerrilla group can inflict even on the greatest superpower in the entire world. So there's that piece of it. And then immediately, of course, there's the huge questions, which we talked about yesterday, of what happens now.

Because the idea that Israel's assault on Gaza was going to just remain in the Gaza Strip is now over. It's been over, but no one can pretend anymore when you have over 160 attacks on our service members who are on the region, which once again begs the question, what the hell are they even doing? They're sitting as sitting ducks to start with? I mean, there is no reason why these three young army reservists should be dead now and their families grieving. There is absolutely no reason that they should have been there in the first place, let alone the way that the Biden policy of unconditional support for Israel has incredibly predictably led to this very result. Sadly, it was only a matter of time

before there were direct losses and casualties as a result of that policy. You have obviously what's happening in the Red Sea with our strikes on the Houthis in Yemen and the fact that our you know, our policymakers, they claim this isn't a war. I don't know what a war is, if it's not, you know,

a repeated sustained military engagement, which is apparently what they're planning here, in spite of the fact that they have admitted, Joe Biden himself admits, we know this is not going to work. Then you add to this,

this is insane. This is a good catch from Ken Klippenstein. Put this up on the screen. I don't know even what to say about this, but the Pentagon is saying there are no U.S. troops in Yemen, but the White House is saying there are U.S. troops in Yemen. Who's right? Who knows? Why can't they agree on this? What should be like a basic fact that the American people should be well aware of, especially given now our attack on the Houthis? I mean,

is it ignorance? That's terrifying. Is it lies? That's also terrifying. What do you make of this, Sara, the fact that they can't even agree on something as basic as where our U.S. service members are even located at this point. They, let's be clear, they are absolutely on the ground in Yemen because that was a slip up. And this gets to, I covered the Pentagon and I know all their tricks. One of the things that they would do is to avoid saying that we had troops on the ground in a certain place. The threshold would be usually mandatory reporting if troops are there for a certain number of days.

It can be 90, it can be 180, there are certain various different thresholds. 180 going back all the way to Vietnam. So what do you do? You send some troops for 179 days, and you pull them out on the 179th day. So when you do that, you don't have to report it to Congress. The other way to get around it is to tend contractors, is to hire contractors and send them in on various danger missions, but to support them with the US military and basically just play an accounting gimmick where technically you don't have US service members who are on the ground, but you have a

combined force, let's say that's below said threshold. You can have at some point between four to 5,000 people on the ground in Syria. And technically, according to Congress, there's only 250 there. I literally watched that happen whenever we were in the whole counter ISIS thing. So when they're claiming they don't have troops on the ground here, the technical definitions for all of this become so like nitty gritty for the way that they can deny it, that in the spirit of it, they are almost certainly not telling the truth. And, you know, if you think about it, we are currently conducting military operations inside of Yemen. It would be insane to think that there were at least some U.S. troops, some U.S.-connected assets that are there on the ground. We've seen throughout all of our

military campaigns, it's very difficult to do everything solely from the air. Maybe they're connected assets, allies, whatever. So I absolutely believe that Ken is telling us the truth. I think the White House probably just slipped up and accidentally revealing it in their notifications because when it comes to the spirit of it, let's just be very clear, there's absolutely shenanigans that are going on behind the scenes. And this is how they always get away with it. Yeah. And I mean, there's so many issues here.

Obviously, there's the fact that they did not seek approval from Congress. And this is unconstitutional as a number of members on both the right and the left have indicated their concerns. There's a plan for an ongoing military campaign. The US, the administration, you know, swears all this isn't an act of war and we're not looking for escalation. I mean, just turn it around. If we had some country repeatedly bombing us and with boots on the ground in our country, I'm pretty sure we would see that as an act of war. There would not be any ambiguity about like, oh, well, we didn't technically get the congressional authorization.

No, if we were being repeatedly bombed in a sustained military campaign, which by the way has caused deaths in Yemen, and we had boots on the ground of a foreign government in our country, you better believe that we would understand quite clearly that these were acts of war and that we were at war with this other government. So let's keep that in mind for one thing. But, you know, to get back to where we started with these three

U.S. service members and the attack by these militias that receive funding and training from Iran, as we discussed yesterday, you know, the insta-reaction from all the most psychopathic neocons on the Republican side of the aisle was time to go to war with Iran, let's bomb the hell out of them, we've got to strike back, et cetera, et cetera. And the media class does us no favors either because that's always the direction that they push in as well, even though the heart of the problem here, the core of the issue is our unconditional support for Israel and our unwillingness to push for a ceasefire. When there was a brief period, six days of a ceasefire,

these attacks stopped and our service members and our country were much, much safer. So here is a reporter pushing John Kirby, spokesperson John Kirby, for strikes on Iran. Let's take a listen to his response. Is the president currently actively considering potential attacks inside Iran? We are not looking for a war with Iran. We are not seeking a conflict with the regime in a military way. And as I said in the opening, we're not looking to escalate here.

This attack over the weekend was escalatory. Make no mistake about it. And it requires a response. Make no mistake about that. I will not get ahead of the president's decision making. You're not saying either way whether striking inside Iran is or isn't. We are not looking for a war with Iran, MJ. I am not going to speak to the president's decisions. So hopefully that is accurate. Hopefully they are not looking to escalate and hopefully they don't want war with Iran and critically are going to do what it takes to avoid a war with Iran. But the most important thing they could possibly do, in addition to whatever the retaliatory response is, is to push for and secure a ceasefire. That would be the best path to de-escalation is that if that

is in fact what they want. And by the way, Sagar, there was actually an Axios report that had administration officials acknowledging that that was the case, that all of these attacks and tensions, et cetera, stem from Israel's assault on Gaza and our support of it. So it's not like they don't understand the nature of what we're facing in the region right now. Yeah, look, it's all obvious and it just gets to the games that are played. And I don't want to forget the three people who were killed here, you know, at the beginning. And that's why, that's why it really bothers me. I mean, even let's consider this, this base where this happened, Crystal, you know how it was in Jordan. It was on the border with Syria for a reason to support all of these black ops that are going on inside of Syria. The justification for the troops there is that they're fighting ISIS. This is laughable. It's

2023. Why are they there? Why are these army reservists somehow being called up for duty and sent there in order to support what? What are they doing? No one will tell you the answer to that question because it is so outrageous and nonsensical. And instead, it comes to this. It's like, all right, you're going to bomb Iran or not? Is that not on the table? It's like, look, even if we bomb Iraq and Syria, and I guarantee you we could take out the specific unit or whatever that has done this. It didn't happen in a vacuum. We tried very hard in Iraq. We tried to kill our way out of the insurgent problem. Didn't work. It only worked whenever we tried to try and deal with the political problems that were fueling the insurgency. And frankly, even that had very

limited success, required a lot of time, materiel, money, troop debts, and all of that. And we eventually ended up pulling out. But the limited amount that we ever made any progress in the country was commitment and to trying to deal both with fighting and killing insurgents, but to deal with the political problems that are underneath there. It is very obvious where all of this stems from. And it is also obvious, though, the Biden administration doesn't want to deal with it. Okay. But then you were signing us up for a continued tit for tat thing like this. And this, unfortunately, could just be opening salvo. Three troops killed here. Who knows how many killing in response? What does the response look like? Let's hope it's not a disaster and that people don't die in the initial response.

And then what? Because then if people do, then we're going to be responding to the response. That's exactly how these things play out, going all the way back to, you know, Gulf of Tonkin and others. It doesn't happen just immediately. It's a slow thing that you can't even necessarily recognize in real time where the turning points were. But if we were to, you know, if I were to guess, I think the Houthi action was probably it. I mean, that just really is what put the military operations outside the theater. And what bugs me again is that Israel is not paying for any of this. Israel is not doing any of this, but they're the ones who are responsible. We are somehow, you know, we're all paying a global Israel tax on our shipping,

on our military deployment. what? Like this is not something that is in our overall strategic interest. And, you know, I wish we could look those three, the families of those three people in the face and give them a better explanation for why they were in harm's way in the first place. It's, it is so sad. It is so tragic. And it really also underscores the fact that all of these neocons who are constantly hungry for war, it won't be them. They're not going to be the ones who are sleeping in a barracks and have a suicide drone kill them in their sleep.

It's not going to be their sons and daughters. It's not going to be their loved ones. We all know who this burden would fall on. And the political class has next to no connection or care ultimately for their lives, for their dreams, for their aspirations. And it's utterly disgusting. There is also a very ominous situation,

brewing conflict at the Rafah border in the Gaza Strip. This has become a really critical area because for a variety of reasons. I mean, for one thing, it is the critical border crossing that the Gaza Strip shares with Egypt. For another reason, you know, after northern Gaza, after everybody was basically forced out of there, the million plus people who lived in northern Gaza forced the south. Many of them went to Khan Yunus. Then Khan Yunus came under heavy bombardment. Many of them now fled to the Rafah area. So you have over a million Palestinians living in this area. It's packed densely. If you look at the photos, it's just tent after tent after tent.

And now the Israelis are saying, oh, if we actually want to come close to accomplishing our supposed military objectives of getting Hamas in the Gaza Strip, well, we're going to have to attack the Rafah area. That's the next piece of the puzzle. Well, Egypt is really pushing back in an aggressive manner on the budding Israeli plans for this part of the Gaza Strip. Let's put this up on the screen. So this is from Middle East Monitor. The headline here is Egypt told Palestinian factions of decision to prevent Israel from invading Rafah. Let me read from the report because this is very consequential. Informed Palestinian sources reported Sunday, Egypt told the Palestinian factions of its firm decision not to allow the Israeli occupation to invade the Palestinian-Egyptian border zone at

Rafah. The sources pointed out Egypt had stressed that, quote, any attack on the Egyptian-Palestinian border is an attack on Egyptian national security. Palestinian-resistant factions praised the Egyptian decision and considered it a safeguard of borders and sovereignty, noting Egypt is firm against the displacement project. That is the idea floated by many cabinet ministers, pushed aggressively by many cabinet ministers, to push Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip entirely and into Egypt. A few days ago, the head of Egypt's state information service said the Israeli endeavor to control the Philadelphia corridor, that's this border region in the Gaza Strip along

the border with Egypt, is expected to threaten Egypt-Israel relations. And Sagar, this comes amid reports that some sort of operational plan and activity in the Rafah region is imminent. Also reports that Israel is saying they want to, you know, take greater security control over this crossing. And I don't think it's an accident that this more aggressive posture from the Egyptians of basically saying, hell no, we're not going to allow it, we're not going to be party to this. Also comes on the heels of the ICJ decision that it is plausible that Israel is committing genocide, which further puts pressure on Egypt to be no party to that whatsoever. Yeah, it's a big problem for them. I mean, it's a giant mess because of the

tunnel network that is currently concentrated mostly under the Rafah crossing. But more importantly, because they pushed all the humanitarian, the entire humanitarian situation is now consolidated there. So how exactly are you going to move people out of said region? Where are they supposed to go? It would honestly probably be even worse in some cases, just because it's so much more concentrated and because the defenses and other things, in many cases, you could consider this not a last stand per se, but at least the last stand in infrastructure for a lot of Hamas because it's the last kind of area that they have pretty good command and control. It's very likely also where all of the Israeli hostages are. We're raising questions there about how you're going to get these people or save them

if that's ostensibly even the goal. So I think it's a nightmare situation. It's actually probably outside of Lebanon, which we're about to talk to. This is the sleeper area where you could see major international tension. Egypt has long kind of been ignored throughout this entire thing. I know there's a lot of questions like why won't the Egyptians take them? Well, first of all, a lot of the Palestinian leadership and others don't want to leave the Gaza Strip because they fear they won't be able to return. Second is that Egypt has its own domestic political considerations. They hate the Muslim Brotherhood and they hate anything that even smells of Islamism. So they have their own domestic political considerations as to why they're kind of behaving

this way. But in terms of national pride, small d, democratic input on the Egyptian government such that it exists, the Palestinian issue is a hot one. And if they see, you know, troops firing and bombs on Egyptian territory and others, that's going to be considered, you know, a breach of sovereignty. And there definitely could be, you know, a major crisis that erupts here. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a sleeper issue as the Israeli war continues. Yeah, that is absolutely correct. And it's worth recalling that the status of this border, this was part of what was negotiated during the Oslo Accords. So this is sort of

longstanding, you know, settled agreements in terms of how this whole thing is supposed to function. You know, Egypt, I think you're right to lay out their own domestic political concerns, not to mention that they are in a lot of economic trouble and have a high debt burden, et cetera. So having an influx of a refugee population would be very challenging for them there. But I mean, there is also the fact that they do not want to be party to an ethnic cleansing.

And the Egyptian sort of like the Arab street, as they say in Egypt, is really sort of the beating heart of, you know, support for Palestine and of broader regional Arab sentiment. So, you know, they don't want any part of this. And I think they're feeling increasing pressure because I also think that South Africa has sort of shamed some of these countries of why weren't you all the ones that brought this case to the ICJ? Why haven't you done anything? You've sat back, you've done absolutely nothing.

And so I think that has also put pressure on a lot of these governments to at least posture like they are more in support of the Palestinian cause, like they're actually willing to do something on behalf of Palestinians, not just put out like strongly worded statements. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, not just put out like strongly worded statements. be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company

dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. 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'm Michael Kassin, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on good company. The podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi, for a conversation that's anything but ordinary. We dive into the competitive world of streaming, how she's turning so-called niche into mainstream gold, connecting audiences with stories that truly make them feel seen. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core.

It's this idea that there are so many stories out there, and if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Get a front row seat to where media, marketing, technology, entertainment, and sports collide. And hear how leaders like Anjali are carving out space and shaking things up a bit in the most crowded of markets.

Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That is not the only trouble brewing in this region. So obviously Netanyahu has every incentive to keep this war going forever. He has every incentive, and so does his war cabinet, to expand this war. And they have been teasing for a while a more aggressive approach

with regard to Lebanon and Hezbollah. And it looks like that day may fast be approaching. Let's put this up on the screen. According to Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant, Israeli troops will, quote, very soon go into action

near the country's northern border with Lebanon. Galant told troops near that border with the besieged Gaza Strip that others were being deployed to Israel's north. Quote, they will go into action very soon. He added, reservists would be gradually released to prepare and come ready for future operations. Now, obviously, there's already been fire exchange. There's been sort of back and forth skirmishes with Hezbollah along this region.

But, Sagar, they seem to be indicating that a broader offensive and opening up an entirely new front officially in this war that this could be coming in near days. Oh, yeah. I mean, they're saying it very openly. I believe the defense minister, whenever he says that you will be in action sometime soon. And I think that that is, look, even the most pro-Israel people, Barry Weiss, for example, who was just in Israel, she put out some tweet after her visit and all of that. And she said, even here in Israel, it's a matter of if, not when. It's going to happen. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when in terms of Lebanon. And it will be 10 times

what we have seen in Gaza for the Israelis in terms of the price that they would pay. For the domestic populace in particular, this would really bring the war home in a way that not even October 7th necessarily did. Because we're talking about conventional war, not terrorism. Day by day, missiles and others that can penetrate the Iron Dome and put hundreds of thousands of people at risk in terms of where they're sleeping. There's already been the largest internal resettlement in the history of the state of Israel evacuating the northern border. But many Israeli towns, cities, and others would very much be within the range of Hezbollah

missiles and rockets. It would require the remobilization of the IDF, which let's be honest, has not exactly colored themselves in glory from a tactical military perspective in their conduct with Gaza. Well, Hamas is nothing compared to the battle-tested guys in Hezbollah who've been fighting in Syria now for like a decade. I mean, these are people who are, you could compare it like to the Japanese military in the 1940s, which had honed their skills, their military leadership and others for a previous decade in China and Manchuria and elsewhere. I mean, these were people who are very battle-tested, very battle-hardened and well-equipped and supplied in a way that Hamas did not even come close. And I'm not sure that, I think we can all just say very clearly that if Gaza bled out to the

Houthis and to killing American service member in Jordan, then we should multiply the same 10. The same 10 factors should apply for Bahrain, for our troops in Jordan, Syria, Iraq, for what that would look like. I think it would turn things up to a whole other level. The other important point thing we should note is that Hezbollah is a much more strategic ally to the Iranians than Hamas was. Hamas is like a convenient thing that's out there. They fund them, but they're not like blood brothers in the same way. Hezbollah is a whole other story in terms of the way that the Iranian regime and Hezbollah have been kind of hand in glove now for decades, especially with Nasrallah, their leaders. So if this is going to happen, it's going to be a full-blown regional war. I don't think we should

go away from that. And they're the ones who are saying, I don't know why, we're the ones who obviously, since we're already with Gaza, the ones who are paying the outer price, that we're not doing anything about this. But apparently we're not. If they're willing to say it openly, then they don't care. They either are not listening or they just don't care what we have to say. Probably both. And they've been saying it openly from the beginning. I mean, how many comments did we talk about where Yoav Golan and others were saying, hey, we could turn Beirut into Gaza Strip, you know? I mean, and look at what has happened in Gaza. What an ominous, horrifying thing that is to say at this point.

I also think it's really important to keep the big picture in mind here. Hezbollah had nothing to do with October 7th. They weren't connected to that at all. So, you know, the logic of this is insane. There is no logic to it outside of Netanyahu and his, you know, Yoav Golan and the rest of the ministers in the war cabinet, their own desire to save their political skin, especially because the reality is their goals in the Gaza Strip, their stated goals in the Gaza Strip of eliminating Hamas,

which was not the real goal, but their stated goals of eliminating Hamas, was never possible. Even by their own standards and by their own metrics, they have really dramatically failed. They have not been able to kill any of the top leadership in the Gaza Strip. They have not been able to, with their military, secure the release of the hostages. The only time hostages were released were because of diplomatic negotiations. In fact, the military methods are contrary to keeping the hostages safe and being able to return them home. They have not even destroyed a majority of the tunnels. 80% of the tunnel network is still operational and still fine. So what they have been able to do, which is consistent with some of the real goals,

is to create conditions of absolute hell and horror and destruction of complete civilian life on the ground in the Gaza Strip as a sort of warning and a potential deterrent and a method of hopefully pushing Palestinians completely out of the Gaza Strip. And Egypt is now taking a hard line against that. The U.S. claims to be against that as well. But as I'll go through a report in a moment that describes how many of the cabinet ministers in the Israeli government, they don't care what we say. They're still out there aggressively advocating for exactly that ethnic cleansing plan, which has been part of the aspirational goal from the beginning. So the only logic here for expanding this front is to give Netanyahu some sort of military victory to keep the war going for as long as possible so that he can try to cling to power.

That's what's going on here. And, you know, to your point, Sagar, about how the U.S., you know, we've claimed from the beginning, oh, we don't want this to spill over into a broader conflict. How's that going for you? How many fronts are being engaged on at this point? You know, and the total insanity of the fact that these people, Biden and others, are admitting that they know our foreign policy is basically stupid and insane,

but they can't help themselves from pursuing the stupid and insane foreign policy anyway. Yeah, you're right. And, you know, a lot of this, look, I would hope for a ceasefire deal that may or may not be in progress right now. We're trying to monitor it live. Let's put this up there on the screen.

So as of yesterday, it seemed like there was a maybe. It said negotiators are closing in on a hostage deal. It would halt fighting in Gaza for weeks. Some of the details, Crystal, are, I mean, I'm still curious if you want to break it down. Like, what is exactly real and not because there's so much conflicting information. Right. Well, Sagar, the context of your comments and why you're sort of soft peddling it is

because we also got comments from Netanyahu this morning, basically pouring cold water on the contours of the deal that has been outlined in various press reports. So put the actually the next piece on the screen from Axios, which had more detail about what supposedly this potential deal could contain. They say Qatari and Egyptian mediators present Hamas with a framework this week for negotiations over a three-phase deal. The first phase would include a six-week pause in fighting, release of roughly 40 Israeli hostages in exchange for Israel freeing the numbers I saw were hundreds of Palestinian

prisoners. If you read into this report, they have more details on what these phases would theoretically be. The way that it's presented here by this reporter is effectively like this is being brought to Hamas as a potential framework. My understanding is this is based on some, you know, discussions by mediators with Hamas about what might be acceptable to them as well as part of a deal. So it's not like they're just have no idea whether this would be potentially, you know, a fruitful direction to engage in with Hamas. They have some idea that potentially they could agree to this as well. The first phase is that six-week ceasefire, release of a set number of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Hamas bringing 35 to 40 Israeli hostages. This would include women, older men, so men over the age of 60, and those who have serious medical conditions.

Then the second two phases, they haven't fully agreed on the details. The idea would be they'd sort of lock and stone the idea for the first phase, who would be released, how many Palestinian prisoners, how long it would go for. They'd have a rough idea of the second two phases, that's phase two and three,

but wouldn't fully lock that in until they were in initial phase one. But they say the second phase is expected to include the release of Israeli soldiers and civilian men under the age of 60 from captivity in Gaza. So basically like military age men and actual soldiers would be released

for additional Palestinian prisoners. In the third phase, you would include the release of bodies of hostages, hostages who have been killed, which are being held by Hamas. For each stage, they say a different key would be determined for the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released. The duration of the second and third stages has not yet been defined, and that would be determined in the negotiations. But the idea is it would be several more weeks of pause in fighting in addition to the original six-week ceasefire,

which is why you're hearing reports that this would be a roughly two-month ceasefire. Now, after having said all of that, we have comments from Netanyahu this morning basically saying, no, we're not gonna release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. We are not gonna remove Israeli IDF forces from the Gaza Strip.

So whether these negotiations are still possible, whether they're ongoing, we just can't say at this point whether this is a real direction or not. Right. And that's really the TLDR. It's like, in this morning, President Netanyahu is like, no, I won't release anybody. I mean, I just think that the schizophrenic nature of the negotiations and all of this just highlights the problems inside of Israel is that Netanyahu's got an extreme right-wing coalition. They're the only people who are protecting him as long as he advances their aims. They don't want a ceasefire.

They want war with Lebanon. They literally said it as we opened here. There's also, you can't help but highlight this, Israeli anti-war protesters have been cracked down dramatically on to the point of being arrested and others. For days now, there has been a protest to stop humanitarian aid that was actually going into Gaza that is being openly allowed by the government and even visited by them. So here is a news report from inside of Israel on English Israeli news channel that spotlights some of this. Let's take a listen. We're going to interview some of them that we can try and find to talk to some of them who came out, but there are members from all different sides of the Israeli political spectrum. They say they're from the right. There are people from the

left. They're religious, they're secular. All some of them are families of hostages, but all coming out for the simple goal of saying, trying to stop humanitarian aid. So Shoshana, do you want to join me and tell us a little bit about why you came out here today? Why it's important for you to come here and protest? Why do you think they need to stop this aid? Well, all the hate that's going in is going straight to Hamas. It's just supporting the terrorists. I don't see any reason to support terrorism. Nobody wants that. We just want our hostages home. We want to stop Hamas. I don't understand why that's a problem. That's really the argument that she's making. It's pretty clear also. I wonder where that lady's from, though, by the way. Karina, kind of curious accent. I love the way that that news presenter, too, portrays this like some, oh, heartwarming

coming together of all factions of Israeli society to starve the children of Gaza. Even the Israeli government does not claim that all the aid is going to Hamas. They have said, and I don't even think that this is accurate, but at most 10% of the aid is being intercepted by Hamas, at most 10%. And we're not talking about missiles. We're talking about basic foodstuffs, water,

maybe formula, milk, flour, sugar, things that are absolutely essential at a time when the majority of the people in the Gaza Strip are literally starving. Every single person there is in a food hunger crisis. The worst by far in the world and all sectors of Israeli society coming together to block any of this aid to get it to the starving children of the Gaza Strip. But just to give you a little bit of a sense of the flavor of these protests, we have some video we can show you

where they're talking about how they're thinking about what they're doing, which is insane. And then we have a video that we'll show you as well of Defense Minister Yoav Galant, who's visiting some of the IDF reservists in uniform, who are telling them how much they support these efforts to block the aid. And by the way, they also say, hey, don't be scared about resettling the Gaza Strip, which is, you know, another subject of much conversation with the Israeli domestic audience. So here you can see a little bit of video of some of the protesters, you know, walking up to the protest. They say the trucks you see here before you are full of flour bags and sugar. When you mix this up with fertilizer, you get explosives, which are used

for the rocket warheads and the rocket fuel. What you're looking at is not humanitarian aid. It is military munitions. What we call flour or sugar, to them, it's explosives. Now, this is the Reservist. He says, don't be afraid of occupation, no aid and no nothing. We are now going to block the trucks containing aid. So, you know, getting a very clear picture of some of the sentiment from the soldiers charged with this military operation in the Gaza Strip and Yoav Galant, you know, hearing this directly from them. Sagar, what did you make of those videos?

And also the idea that flour and sugar to starving Palestinians, that's actually rocket fuel. It's actually explosives. That's how they think about flour and sugar as their children are literally starving to death. You know, I thought I'd seen a lot growing up during the Iraq war. And it turns out I didn't see shit. And that's like a pretty crazy thing to think about.

Like I grew up thinking that Donald Rumsfeld was the actual devil and that George W. Bush and all these other people were some of the worst people who would ever live and had since Robert McNamara and all the other people who got us into Vietnam. But this is, I mean, listen, if anything, it just confirms that history certainly does repeat itself. And then a lot of the, you know, the things within the human character are easily replicable and that you should never take that for granted whenever you enter a new age. So yeah, that's just the only way I could look at it. It's just crazy. I think what's crazy to me in general, the way the Israelis have conducted themselves, is I just don't understand how they don't know that we live in a social media age and that in the age of translation and others, every single thing you say is going to go viral. And the world and the critics and all of them will see it. So, I mean, sure, it hasn't had an impact in terms of U.S. policy, but that can't

be the only thing that you care about. You know, people are going to remember this as dramatically changing politics here in the United States. So, I don't know. Maybe they just don't care, which is a crazy thing, in my opinion, for a nation that literally relies on foreign direct investment and military aid from a global superpower. You should probably care how you're perceived in that country. But they're completely used to acting with impunity and there being no consequences. I mean, when was the last time that there were really significant consequences? This is the result. I mean, that brazen nature of, you know,

all the IDF soldier TikToks and the rhetoric from every level of government up to and including BB, Net, and Yahoo, I think it's a direct outgrowth of the fact that the Biden administration from the beginning said, we don't care what you do. No red lines.

Do what you need to do. We'll ship you the weapons. We'll expedite the weapons. We'll occasionally leak to the press about how upset we are, we don't care what you do. No red lines. Do what you need to do. We'll ship you the weapons. We'll expedite the weapons. We'll occasionally leak to the press about how upset we are, but we're not going to do anything about it. So of course they act with impunity and they let it all hang out.

Speaking of which, this report from Haaretz about this Gaza resettlement conference, which just occurred in Israel and was attended by many Likud party members, senior Likud party members, and government cabinet ministers, is really something.

You should really read all of it because the comments that were made, the brazen nature of them, the fact that, you know, some of the most insane psychos on the far right, I mean, they're hailed as heroes for these comments. So, I mean, that gives you another idea of why the comments are made, why this is all publicized. It's because it's popular among plenty of sects of Israeli society. This is bolstering the images of people

like Smotrich and Ben-Gavir every time that they thumb their nose at the U.S. and they say, we don't care that you don't want us to do ethnic cleansing. This is our plan and this is what we want to do. So put this up on the screen from Haaretz, the headline here, the people of Israel will settle Gaza. Netanyahu's ministers at far-right conference endorse expulsion of Palestinians. Keep this up for a second because they have one of the quotes in here that was completely insane. They say, voluntary immigration is at times a situation you impose until they give their consent. That was according to Netanyahu's communications minister who said this on stage to cheers and applause, exposing the true message of the

Conference for the Victory of Israel, the transfer or expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. In this report, they talk about how there were many different ideas for how Gaza could be resettled. Sagar, there was something for every potential settler here to get behind. One offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take part in the rebuilding of the Jewish city of Gaza as a green technological city, open to all and uniting all sections of Israeli society. Ethnic cleansing using like liberal lefty language is really quite something to behold.

They have a list of all of the ministers and Likud party members who were there. It was very well attended. Many people in power were there cheering on the idea of ethnic cleansing and resettlement. They said the biggest response came for videos of soldiers in Gaza calling for therip to be resettled, shouting out that there are no innocents, or photographing themselves with banners for the settlements that were previously dismantled. Ben-Gavir called for the execution of terrorist encouragement of what he terms emigration for Gazans.

He says, we have already seen and understood that running away brings war. If we don't want another October 7th, we must return home and control the territory, as well as propose a Torah and halakhic, I don't know that word, logic, encouraging immigration for Gazans and the death penalty for terrorists. So this is totally contrary to U.S. government policy, Supposedly, anyway, official government policy. You'll recall, Sagar, that we felt compelled to at least put out some sort of a statement condemning the language of these ministers in the past. Clearly, without taking

further action, this has not deterred them whatsoever. And it also, of course, comes after the ICJ specifically cited some very similar comments that were made as plausibly inciting genocide. Clearly, they do not care because the text of what they were saying and what was being cheered on here is absolutely wild. Yeah. If you read this and you also couple it with some interesting comments that Gallant actually made today about security control over the West Bank, it seems that within the allowable options, the best option, quote supports, which was Israeli security control over Gaza and no future government, Palestinian state, et cetera, which Netanyahu has ruled out. That seems to be the best one under option. The other option is this one. So this just, again, raises questions for the United States where we've put sanctions in place on people, Israeli settlers specifically, taking action against settlers or who have been supporting

settlers and who have been attacking Palestinians in the West Bank because it's contra to overall U.S. policy. I'm wondering where is the simultaneous U.S. sanction in action on this part if we do believe ostensibly in what the sustainable quote unquote solution should look like afterwards. And, you know, if something like this is just so brazen and so obvious, you know, at a certain point, you either endorse it or you don't. So they need to make that clear. Yeah, and these people know what they want.

There's no like, oh, day after, what are we going to do? We're still thinking about, we're still figuring. No, they have maps of exactly where and when and how they would resettle Gaza and come in and, you know, reinvade that land. They know exactly what they want to do. And that in and of itself is a very powerful thing, especially when you look at the Gaza Strip today and you realize it is uninhabitable.

I mean, the northern part of the Gaza Strip in particular, has been utterly destroyed. The civilian infrastructure from universities to hospitals to schools to residential houses and apartments, I mean, it is decimated. So that's step one, is make it unlivable, push them south, push them south, push them south. Now you've got over a million Palestinians in Gaza sheltering in Rafa right on the border, just one step further into the Egyptian desert. And these folks at this conference completely get their way and their goal of what they want to see

for the Gaza Strip. All right, guys, that's it for us today. Crystal, we're hoping that you're gonna be back here in the studio on Thursday. Things are looking good on that front. Again, thank you to everybody for the well wishes. If you want to acknowledge them, Crystal. Yes, I very much appreciate that. Everything is going good here. So fingers crossed, I'll be back in studio with you guys on Thursday. There you go. In the meanwhile,

we've got the RFK Junior Focus Group work that's coming up. You can take advantage if you want, breakingpoints.com. Great counterpoint show for everybody tomorrow, and we will see you all on Thursday. Stay informed, empowered, and ahead of the curve with the BIN News This Hour podcast. Updated hourly to bring you the latest stories shaping the Black community. From breaking headlines to cultural milestones, black information network delivers the facts the voices and the perspectives

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